Kimetsu no Yaiba S3 – 7 [Awful Villain]

Welcome all, to another week of Kimetsu no Yaiba! This week sees yet another twist to the combat, as well as a bit more backstory for Tokito. A good bit worth talking about this week, so lets dive in!

So, starting off with my overall impressions of the episode… It was kind of mid. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the episode, nothing that stood out. At least not in a positive way that is. Rather, I’m kind of getting tired of the constant “twists” in the conflict. Part of this is probably due to the Upper Five fight really not doing anything yet, leaving the Upper Four to stand on it’s own. But even that doesn’t seem right, as by this point the Upper Six fight with Daki and Gyutaro was still going strong. Part of this was the presentation, last season was just overall more visually engaging. But I also think it has to do with the villains themselves not being near as interesting. As squandered as Daki and Gyutaro were, they still had something going for them. These two? Not so much.

As an example of this, let’s dive into the Upper Four fight this week. We’ve gotten multiple twists so far, coming about once an episode. One demon shows up and, when cut, he splits into smaller, weaker demons. Those demons can each continue to split up, spawning more and more enemies. This is then forgotten as we move on to a smaller version of the demon, the “real” body that must be slain. Only for this to also be moved on from as a more threatening “merged” version of the previous splits appears. All of this for the “true” opponent to finally show up and begin spouting philosophical dribble about “I’m not a bad guy for killing people, you are for trying to stop me”. You can see how it’s starting to wear a bit thin.

Had the Upper Four some kind of throughline, something about loneliness or even a retread on siblings or family, it might be bearable. Some kind of emotional connection we could latch on to and start to read into as more and more of his power set is revealed, similar to many of the other, better, high-ranking demons. But as it is, rather then seeing multiple sides of the same character through his emotions it instead feels like we are seeing many vastly different characters. It just… It’s not engaging. Especially when the most we get out of him is some kind of weird philosophical argument with Tanjiro about needing a reason to help strangers.

The Upper Five suffers from a similar, though much worse, issue: He’s just boring. I mentioned it before, but this guy is just kind of a twat. We get a small hint at more this week with his reaction to Haganezuka’s dedication to his art, and that’s nice. Similar to Akaza and Rengoku, it’s a play on this idea that to become a demon is to give up, lose that human spirit that has always driven us as a species to greater and greater heights. That by becoming a demon, by losing the “time limit”, the Upper Five has lost that drive. And if Yaiba does something with that as the focus switches to the Upper Five fight, then awesome! Maybe Upper Five will be worth watching! For now though? He’s just stereotypically evil.

On the flip side, if the demon’s are becoming less interesting as time goes on, Tokito is only becoming more interesting as his memories return. Sure, I’m not huge on Tanjiro continuing to become this Christ-like figure that everyone looks up to and sees as the pinnacle of goodliness. But if that’s what it takes for Tokito to awaken memories of his family, to be driven forward by the apparent death of a child, to stop this utilitarian view of the world and start truly living… Then fuck it Yaiba, go for it, because Tokito was great this week. I’m actually really looking forward to where he goes from here and how the Upper Five fight develops now.

So yeah, all in all while I wasn’t terribly enthused by this episode, it had enough to be fun. I think Yaiba really shot itself in the foot with Daki and Gyutaro, as they were such strong villains that fit really well into Tanjiro and Nezuko’s story. Moving on to these B-listers with no real connection to our cast feels like a step down. The same goes for our token Hashira of the arc. Tokito is quickly rising up the ranks, and that’s good! But Kanroji still hasn’t done anything to really make me care for her, and we’re already halfway through the season. That’s still some time to show up and do something, yeah. But at this point I’m not expecting anymore more then a token “Cute girl fight good”. And even then, she’s not that cute, stupid watermelon hair.

P.S. I forgot to mention, the CGI wood dragons looked absolutely great. Yaiba is really doing a good job with the CGI integration this season, that much is worthy of praise. Tanjiro jumping around and reacting to them was just a fantastic sequence, great stuff.