Kimetsu no Yaiba S2 – 15 [Gathering]

Welcome everyone to another week of Kimetsu no Yaiba! While last week was the quintessential Yaiba episode, this week is a bit more subdued. Not in the fight or anything like that, more in what you can expect from it. Interested? Then lets jump in! Once you find a site to watch the new episode come back and tune in. You can easily find a free site online, but does anyone know where to watch jackass forever movie?

Immediately I need to get something off my chest: I have issues with Yaiba, and by extension Ufotable’s, animation style. Oh its all technically very good, we can all see that. The lighting, the movements, the coloring, that’s all obviously good. But this week also shows a big issue of mine: The speed. So much of this weeks fight just moved to fast. We cut from camera to camera at lightning speed, the blurs and closeup shots, the overreliance on the 3D camera. I get it, we CAN move like this. But SHOULD we? The episode cut between so many different close ups so quickly it make it difficult to follow what was going on. I almost always found the wide shots, where we could see and follow the characters movements, to be more appealing. Does this mean Yaiba looked bad? No. But it was difficult to follow.

Meanwhile content wise there isn’t much to actually talk about. This is mostly due to the fact that like… 80% of this weeks episode was combat and there isn’t much narrative significance to that. We can gleam a few small things sure, such as how Daki and Gyutaro work together compared to how our heroes aren’t completely in sync. Or how Uzui is bluffing about the poison and how its affecting his movements to keep up moral. But both of these things are pretty straight forward, Yaiba goes so far as the spell them out for us. So there really isn’t much point in talking about them I don’t think. Instead let’s focus on the one big thing we did get: Uzui backstory!

Once again Yaiba makes it clear, however I think it’s still worth talking about. If only because Uzui has big shoes to fill in regards to Rengoku. And I love how Yaiba points that out! I really like that Rengoku is in Uzui’s head. That we get to see how he thinks of not just Rengoku, but the other Hashira as well. That he puts on this brazen, flashy, vocal attitude as a way to seemingly compensate for what he sees as his own deficiencies compared to the other Hashira. In a way, he’s trying to live up to their expectations just like Tanjiro and co are. And I think that’s a really humanizing angle to take with a character who was originally larger than life! I hope in the episodes we have left we get to see more of Uzui’s take on what it means to be a “Hashira”

As for his backstory this is also laid out pretty clearly, but it informs his attitude on “Hashiras” well. Uzui grew up in a very harsh family, one that viewed its members almost as tools. There was clearly very little love to be found there, though maybe a possible future villain. Refusing to be a pawn himself, it makes sense why he wouldn’t treat anyone else as one either. As far as quick backstories go, this is fine. I wish we got a tad more to connect this to how he treats Tanjiro and the others but I think we can infer most of it without issue. The way he berates and points out their mistakes in private, but when in public facing the enemy he does nothing but talk them up and shower praise on them. Boosting their confidence through his words and keeping any troubles strictly private.

Compare this to Daki and Gyutaro, who are anything but private. They seem to spill their grievances, with both their opponents and each other, whenever they can. It’s not a very healthy relationship, regardless of whatever love they surely do have for each other. Indeed, their entire characters seem to be built on the idea of “taking” from other people. We see this in Daki’s views on how women are property to Gyutaro’s obsession with revenge and jealousy. They very clearly had poor lives while human, having no food and possibly being assaulted if Daki’s comments are anything to go by. What I’m trying to say here is that for all of our leads issues, they are a much more well functioning “family” than our two villains. And I think Yaiba is doing this comparison on purpose. Only time, and the end of the fight, will tell though.

And with that we come to what is my only real complaint with the episode: Zenitsu. Dear God Yaiba, what compelled you to do this to this man. I wasn’t a fan of the sleeping gag in the first season. But now he’s able to not only run around town, but hold a fucking conversation? While asleep?! At what point is this man just possessed! Yaiba is pulling out all of the stops to avoid having to give Zenitsu a character arc and deal with this problem. It’s become a stupid gimmick and he might as well not exist in this arc for all the effect it will have on his character. Imagine if he had to fight Daki and struggle with his “chivalry” or his attitude towards women in general. Or I don’t know, actually overcome his fear to help his friends! Instead… instead he sleepwalks through it all.

So yeah all in all this was a fine episode. Not perfect, I think last weeks was better, but I’m still enjoying it. Yaiba is pretty when I can make out what the hell is happening and Uzui has grown on me a lot since his initial introduction. At this point I really just want Zenitsu to become an actual character and not a comic relief caricature. As for Daki and Gyutaro, they continue to be a good time. I think Yaiba has something good going here with the family comparisons. We will have to wait and see how it handles the finale before I’m really sold on it though. If they turn on each other in the end or stick together in certain death rather than abandon their sibling. I’m looking forward to it! The finale, not uh… not the familial murder and betrayal.