Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc

Episode 10

I'm going to start this one off with a compliment because I do think that "Love Hashira Mitsuri Kanroji" is the episode that I've actively enjoyed the most since the season began. For one, despite how criminally underused she's been all season, Mitsuri is simply the most interesting and fun character that we've had to work with for this entire arc on an aesthetic level alone. Her colors may be a bit garish, but that works just fine in the world of Demon Slayer, and her vibrant and stylish ribbon-dancing swordplay is the exact kind of break from overdramatic sword slashes that the fights of this season have sorely needed. The single cut of Mitsuri wrapping her blade around the wooden dragon's mouth to toss it over her head is, as far as I'm concerned, the most entertaining bit of action choreography we've seen in ages (I'm very much over the "Tanjiro Makes a Single Dramatic Swing with Some Sort of Elemental Whoosh Effect Slapped on Top" School of Action, sorry to say).

Also, it finally feels like the show is willing to (almost) shut up and let the audience enjoy the fight that has been in progress for two-and-a-half months now—at least in the second half of the episode. Like, it was kind of fun when Genya just started wolfing down bits of the Hate Dragon like it was a fresh plate of oyakodon, you know? Maybe I'm just glad we're back to focusing on the real threat of the season and not that godawful Mouth-Eyes dweeb.

Now, there are still way, way too many instances of the characters' inner monologues pointing out the incredibly obvious shit happening on screen, which kills the dramatic potential of the fights. But you know what? Screw it. This season has been pretty damned boring, to be perfectly frank. So, I'll appreciate those rare moments where I can feel even slightly invested in the chaos unfolding on-screen.

The issues are the same as they ever were, insofar that this is still an egregiously paced and overlong adaptation of a story seemingly written for a target demographic of nine-year-olds that has, for reasons that have begun to truly elude me, been given Prestige Anime levels of money and spectacle. Now, before y'all start yelling at me on social media, let me be clear: Media for nine-year-olds is great! Some of my favorite works of art have been cartoons meant for children. There's just something about Demon Slayer's inability to reconcile its simplistic and juvenile storytelling with its highfalutin' production values that have completely failed to stand up to scrutiny, this season, and it means that even fun episodes like this can still be a drag to watch.

Take Mitsuri, for instance. The entirety of her character is summed up as "She is strong, she eats a lot, and she wants to find a man." The problem is that, according to the social expectations of early-20th-century Japan, those first two qualities make her an inhuman monster unfit for marriage. So, instead, she joins up with the Demon Slayers to use her freakish powers for good.

There. I just summarized everything there is to know about Mitsuri in three sentences. Did we really need to pause the fight for another godforsaken flashback to spend five minutes explaining all of that, especially when there isn't any other level of characterization or storytelling to appreciate in the meantime? We do, and for the same reasons that every single person in this universe spends their every waking moment narrating the events of their lives in excruciatingly blunt detail: Demon Slayer isn't just a story for nine-year-olds. It's a story that seems to suspect that its audience of smallish children is not bright enough to follow all the shiny flashing lights on the screen without holding their hand through every second of every episode.

This is not a problem that is endemic to all-ages storytelling. It's simply a byproduct of bad all-ages storytelling. It's never been more apparent, I think, that ufotable has produced an exceedingly pretty and often very entertaining adaptation of a manga storyline that was doomed to be the victim of its mediocrity if any of this writing and pacing is to be believed. All season long, I've been thinking that Demon Slayer deserves better than this. Now, I can't help but wonder if “disappointing and mostly boring, with a few bright spots scattered throughout” is the destination we've been headed towards all along.

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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.