Guess I’m going to be reviewing these after all. After saying his farewells to his old sensai, we kick right off in episode six with Tanjirou arriving in the town to the north with the goal of dealing with the demon that’s been abducting young girls. As per usual, we’re wasting no time with getting right into the meat of things.
Mixing current events with flashbacks, we learn that his uniform gives him some kind of protection and that the Slayer swords all take different hues based on their owners that give different powers. Because so little is known about the black blades that Tanjirou has, it is said that those who have them have little potential. Which is pretty typical shonen fare to be honest, making Tanjirou into the underdog, but honestly, since completing his training, he seems to already be a cut above the peers we’ve encountered thus far.
Within the town we get a creepy scene in which a girl is stalked to her room and abducted from her bed by a demon that can sink into solid surfaces. This show combines a gothic moodiness with a level of shonen hype I am really enjoying.
With the help of a local whose sister has been taken, Tanjirou catches the demon’s scent and reveals him while he’s about to consume the girl, saving her and beginning the battle with the demon.
The show seems to be mastering the art of “by the way” exposition; flashing back to conversations that happened between Tanjirou and the mentor Sakonji, where he’ll reveal some vital piece of information just before it becomes relevant to the events of the story.
Normally, I might complain about how this is poor story structure, and things like this could have been brought up up in previous episodes, but honestly, as I mentioned when I last spoke about Demon Slayer, I am enjoying the pace at which the show is running, wasting no time in forging forward and not worrying about the details.
In one of these flashbacks, Sakonji reveals that humans that become demons all come from the same original source, a thousand year old demon by the name of Muzan Kibutsuji, who Tanjirou should search out in efforts to cure his sister of her demon plague. However, as the battle begins, the demon is predictably, not of a mind for conversation.
Between an ability to split into three, each strongly displaying a different aspect of personality and his need to defend his companion and the unconscious girl, Tanjirou struggles to get a foothold against the demon.
Thankfully, Nezuko kicks her way out of her box just in time to support. In another “by the way” piece of exposition, Sakonji reveals that during one of her prolonged power naps, he used hypnotic suggestion to make her view all humans as her family and all demons as an enemy that needs to be destroyed.
With everything that’s going on with her, and now this on top of it all, it’s difficult to access if Nezuko really has a personality or agency of her own anymore. Coupled with her inability to speak, I wonder how much character or development she’ll end up getting, considering the duality of her nature and all that, which seems to be a non-issue at this point. I’d be nice to see some more conflict from her. She displays way more personality in the credits and the post credits skit than the show itself, which has been pretty serious and not that “cutesy” so far.
I dig this show though, the Gothic score mixed with the more traditional shonen style battle music really works and compliments the dark and bleak feeling tone of the show without actual seeming all that oppressive in itself. This is the kind of show that it kills me I have to wait for on a weekly basis.
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 