Welcome one and all to what I would describe as the first concerning episode of Kimetsu no Yaiba! This time we have a lot of reused footage, a beautiful muscle bound woman and a fun fight. Lets dive in!
Starting off, repeating sequences aside, Production is the one area Yaiba had no issues in. It looks fantastic. Yeah, sure, the CGI was noticeable. You could tell when Tanjiro’s face became a static 3D model and such. But the actual movement in those sequences looked fantastic. Using the full environment, holding the shot as Tanjiro jumps off the wall and twists around the screen. It all looked very fluid, however noticeable the change in medium was. The water effects also continue to impress. The stark blue, and thick black lines really make it stand out beautifully on screen. All in all I loved it. Before jumping into spoilers this week though, I want to thank commenter Revokkin, for correcting me on Yaiba’s composer. As it turns out Go Shiina is also responsible for the music with Yuki Kaijura. So we have to thank them both for this great OST.
Onto my actual criticisms. To me, this was the first episode of Yaiba that felt like a “generic” shounen. The pacing was all out of whack compared to previous episodes, such that it felt like the fight could have ended this episode. Like it was stretched out to fill the time instead of Yaiba’s usual quick compression of things. My reason for this is all of the reused footage and odd pacing decisions. For instance we saw Nezuko kick Yahana, the arrow demon, in the tree 3 times. The first two I was ok with, sell the impact. 3 right after a break is starting to get egregious. Or the reused footage throughout the fight, such as Yushiro’s head, and Tanjiro’s constant black & white inner thoughts. It was like Yaiba was doing everything it could to slow the fight down. A first for the series.
It wasn’t all bad of course, like I said previously, the fight itself was gorgeous. Beyond that, though, I enjoyed the tactics and the villains. They had a combination of powers, that they used as a team. They weren’t just two individual’s fighting separate battles, (not at first at least), but came in working together. I thought that was pretty damn cool. For the villains themselves, Yahana and Susamaru, lets just say I find muscular women who could kick my ass sexy. The 4 extra arms and veiny drawing may be a bit of a put off, but I can work through it. Plus her voice, I don’t know what it is about Yaiba, but they pick good VA’s. All in all, it was a fun fight with a good bit of personality for each of its characters. And Yaiba wasn’t afraid to be brutal.
I was actually surprised by how brutal Yaiba was willing to go. From blasting off Yushiro’s head, to ripping off Nezuko’s leg. It did not care. In particular, the regeneration of Yushiro’s head was very graphic. Shown in full view with now blurring, or darkness, or anything. I was impressed, on both a technical animation level, and a willingness to show everything. The sad part about it all though was that, because they were demon’s, its ultimately pointless. For whats being shown, they are basically immortal. With the only real way a demon can be killed being shown to be the Demon Slayer’s sword. There is a bit of foreshadowing with Nezuko’s leg not healing quickly of course. Probably because she doesn’t eat people/blood, which gives me hope for future moral conundrums. But in the terms of “danger” in a fight, it doesn’t leave much.
Finally, some small things I wanted to talk about that didn’t deserve a full paragraph. These things such as, the inventive use of powers. From Tanjiro’s use of the 2nd Form, but sideways, to take advantage of the forced rotation from the arrows. Or Yushiro’s illusions being used to grant him invisibility, matched with his hand-to-hand. Yaiba also had the consistency for Tamayo’s ability, how they couldn’t use it without affecting Tanjiro as well. Making it clear that hers is not a power that can be controlled easily. These may be small things, but I find that in a Shounen, the small things add up. They show an attention to detail that could very quickly come back to bite the author in the future.
So all in all, how was Yaiba this week? It was concerning, but ultimately still good and enjoyable. Yaiba was going to have to show some general shounen tendencies eventually, it’s unreasonable to assume otherwise. It’s a genre for a reason. And up to now, Yaiba has done a good job of burning through all of the more dull aspects of a Shounen. Such as training or lead villain introduction. For its worst offence to be dragging out a fight is hardly the worst thing. Especially when that fight actually looks good. Take Naruto for example, it dragged some fights/the war arc out for literal years. I think we can cut Yaiba some slack for the good job its done so far. Personally, I plan to have some faith that Yaiba will stay consistent, dipping back into it’s Shounen Foundation when it finds the need.
