Review of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Entertainment District Arc

Personally I don't really think Demon Slayer is "carried" by the art. I've always known ufotable to be god tier in animation, I'm a Fate/Nasuverse fan after all and we've been eating good because of ufotable. Of course, Demon Slayer is being helped so much because of ufotable's ability to animate action scenes but also bring movie level art to a show format - this season especially did that. When Demon Slayer was first annouced as a ufotable project, I was confused. What is Demon Slayer? Season 1 was great, but the story itself was weird in pacing, a lot of time skips and someparts dragged on. But I enjoyed it because it was fun, it was mindless, and the action made me go "ooo" and "aaa" everytime. Maybe a "good" anime doesn't need me to think all the time or have be completely dragged into the world it paints.

All the criticism about the characters and the story I think are based in fact, but then exaggerated because some people really don't like this show and need to justify it with these flaws. I think they're right, but it's not so bad. Yes, in S1 the characters were shallow, the fighting was doing most of the work for the show and the demons got more dynamic characterization than our main three/four characters. I think in this season (not sure if the manga made this improvement or this is an anime exclusive) the characters got better. With the addition of Uzui, this season was a blast to watch.

Thankfully, the story is very straightforward, no thinking needed. But it wasn't stupid or anything, it was just very simple. I still really like that Tanjiro's inner thoughts are very important to his actions, we still get to see his drive and why he's doing what he is doing. We also get to see his struggle with his power vs his inability to fight the people he's up against. Inosuke finally speaking meaningful stuff, like his whole time in his House, he did a pretty good job of actually being mission focused and not just screaming random lines about being the master in the group or a wild beast. I hope that keeps up. Zenitsu, well at least we get to see that he is a nice guy but also...they gotta do something about his power only being an asleep thing. Like...it's getting a little hard to convince myself that's it's a sleep thing when the man is talking coherent action plans and having an inner dialogue about his legs giving out. Again, haven't read the manga, but I hope the next arc does something about that for his character.

Overall, this season does a lot of repair for what season 1 did with these characters. I think Demon Slayer is on it's path to be a really good anime. At least for the simple, brain off feeling. I enjoy the emotional scenes as I do with the action scenes. I like that people think this should be the next Big 3...while I don't agree that we should be making a new Big 3, this show is doing a lot of work for the anime community in that a lot of normal people are watching this show. For years, my interest in anime had to be a hidden thing. But now even my parents are watching Demon Slayer and enjoying it. Whether you think Demon Slayer is good or bad, you cannot deny that it is making anime a staple in society and I really think that's a good thing. People deserve to enjoy the vast amount of content and storytelling that out here. This, Attack on Titan (my family is also watching), JjK, and BnHA are doing so much for anime and regardless of them being good, really good, or meh - they are really exposing people to a format that people should've been in a long time ago. No long is Death Note my go to first recommendation, now it's these four. Congrats, I hope Demon Slayer and ufotable keep it up.