Welcome all, to what I believe to be the half-way point for this season of Kimetsu no Yaiba! You know what to expect at this point, so lets cut the chatter and just dive right into it.
The main thing I want to talk about this week is flashbacks. On their own, flashbacks are fine. Not everything can happen in the now, especially not if it’s part of a characters backstory. So they aren’t intrinsically problematic. The issue though is how Yaiba uses, which is usually mid-fight. Again, this isn’t an automatic deal breaker. Stuff like the Hinokami Kagura flashback back in season 1 was fine. But if that was the high end for Yaiba’s flashbacks, then this week was the low end. Coming between all of the action, a sort of “Life flashing before your eyes” thing, it felt really out of place. Like a complete tone shift. I’m not even talking about the details yet, just it’s placement in the episode felt… rough. Yaiba really needs a new way to exposit, or to better set these this up before hand, because this wasn’t good.
Sadly the details of the flashback didn’t help much either. I found the whole thing just… painfully generic. I could tell what was going to happen the moment the other kids showed up. To be frank, I’m more interested in Genya’s brother, Sanemi, than I am Genya. He’s the one who had to kill his own mother, who was denied by the very sibling he had saved. With the way Yaiba presented, his story just feels so much stronger. Meanwhile Genya’s whole deal is just that he questioned why his brother killed their mother in a moment of extreme grief. Pretty understandable if you ask me, and no reason to be this whole big thing. Plus none of this has anything to do with him being part-demon himself or how he got that way, by far the most interesting thing about him. It’s all just kind of torture porn.
It’s a shame, because I think Yaiba really could have done something here. The idea of being raised by a demon, either out of love or as eventual food, only to have to kill that demon you still view as a parent, is a good one. There’s a lot of potential for a compelling story. Maybe if Genya still held on to the belief that they could have saved her, because he himself is part-demon or because she was a demon from the start, it would be more compelling. It would also help sell Sanemi’s own extreme hatred of demons, as we saw with his interactions with Nezuko. I’m sure there are plenty more ways to improve on this flashback, those are just a few. Give it more time, introduce it before the big fight, structural fixes as well. The point remains though, this was not the way.
Flashback aside, the rest of the episode was good, classic Yaiba fun. The Upper Four being this little midget thing was honestly pretty funny, probably the best piece of comedy Yaiba has had for a while. It’s just so ridiculous, so out of place, yet still works perfectly within Yaiba’s rules and is a nice shakeup to how I expected this fight to go. Hiding in a corner while your invincible clones beat the shit out of people, unable to die so long as you don’t? It’s a great idea, and a solid switchup to what we saw with Daki and Gyutaro. And if the OP is anything to go by, I don’t expect it to stop here. So overall, does it look stupid? Yes. But is it really fun? Also yes.
So yeah, all in all this was another episode of Kimetsu no Yaiba. There were no real surprises here, just more solid action, a really amusing villain power, and a subpar flashback. All things we’ve seen before. Am I enjoying this season? Yeah, I’m always down for pretty lights and action set pieces, those are just a good time all around. Has this season wowed me, or impacted me in any way though? No, not yet. After the Daki/Gyutaro stuff, this pair of demons just feel… weak? Not physically, obviously they are stronger. I more mean in the personality department. Neither is particularly compelling. Still, we haven’t gotten their stories yet, so maybe that will change when they get their own mid-fight flashbacks. I think the brother/sister bond from season 2 was already strong by this point, but lets wait and see I suppose.
I just hope it doesn’t take to long if it’s coming.
Flashbacks in shonen stories are always annoying especially when they occur in the middle of a fight. One Piece is especially guilty of this, with every arc having a fucking flashback interrupt a fight.
Lenlo, I have a plausible theory about Genya being able to turn into a demon that was shaped by the episode in which Tanjiro nearly got killed by the mechanical doll given that he picked up a shiny blue rock when he was about ready to pass on, regaining his ability to see scents visually in the process and also his vitality.
If you want to read my thought process, there are two blog posts on which I commented that you can see for yourself.
https://drunkenanimeblog.com/2023/05/05/demon-slayer-swordsmith-village-arc-episode-4-review/
https://www.crowsworldofanime.com/posts/demon-slayer-swordsmith-village-arc-episode-5-review/#comment-9476
I used to think Kokushibo, the Upper One, is Yoriichi, but after this episode, I no longer believe that. Tanjiro’s scar growing to match Yoriichi’s when he uses Sun Breathing to its fullest extent suggests that Tanjiro is either Yoriichi’s reincarnation or possesses the essence of Yoriichi in his body. If that is the case, it’d be impossible for Kokushibo to be Yoriichi, so I believe he’s likely a close relative of Yoriichi’s, either his father or brother. I did post last week that I believed the shiny blue rock Tanjiro picked up either gave him divine powers or contained a special essence, and now I’m leaning towards certain characters in this series possessing the essence of dead people considering there’s nothing divine about Genya transforming into a demon.
One thing I have long wondered is how Zenitsu could be so much more confident of a fighter when he was asleep, and after the events of this season, I believe Zenitsu’s body also possesses the essence of a dead person. That deceased person’s more confident persona probably kicks in when Zenitsu loses consciousness and no longer has access to his own memories from when he was alive, making him pretty much a split personality of Zenitsu’s.
This might also apply to Genya in that his body contains the essence of a demon that once died, which gives him the ability to transform into that demon somehow. I don’t know whether the transformation has anything to do with the chant he was reciting or how he’ll revert to human form, but I believe he might be in the same boat as Tanjiro and perhaps Zenitsu with essences of dead people in their bodies.
I don’t think Genya is part-demon because from what the anime has shown so far, it’s likely that being a demon is a state of being rather than being a completely separate race. People become demons by ingesting Muzan’s blood, and the head of the Demon Slayer Corps said that Muzan is his clan’s biggest mistake, which perhaps indicates that Muzan also used to have the same sickness that Ubuyashiki did and overcame that sickness by turning himself into a demon. If being a demon really is a state of being, then that female demon that is researching how to reverse demonic transformation is on to something, making it a real possibility that Nezuko will be a human again at the end of the story.