Kimetsu no Yaiba: Yuukaku-hen

The back half of Demon Slayer‘s second season is yet another stellar outing for Tanjiro and his friends. The heart, humor, and characters that fans love shine almost as brightly as they did previously, with my only real issue being that Nezuko still isn’t given much to do. Partially outweighing that is the fact that studio Ufotable’s animation has reached an almost unbelievable level of quality. Aside from the finale of the Fate/stay Night Heaven’s Feel films (also a Ufotable production, one I’d wager had a much higher budget), I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more visually entrancing battle in animation than the one ... in the Entertainment District Arc. The first season of Demon Slayer really stood out because of the way it presented beautiful, painting-in-motion brawls that would lead to one final, thoroughly satisfying and visually captivating moment, and season two doubles down on that; almost any segment in the big battle from this 11-episode arc could nearly rival the very best from season one, and that aforementioned “moment” was lengthened to an entire episode. Ufotable has once again set a new standard for action anime, something they’ve done so many times by now that it shouldn’t be a surprise to any long-time anime fans.

The overall is very good, Tanjiro makes friends along the way, exceptional animation and very bloody and complex fights. But what really bothers me is watching the same thing over and over. Every arc Tanjiro has to fight a demon that is way more powerful than he is and keeps winning every single fight with the power of friendship. I mean, it's a shounen after all but all of the battles last 4/5 episodes where Tanjiro keeps passing out and coming back like, a thousand times, then when he is almost dying he finds strength to be the one who kills the demon. Every single ... arc. And then, the demons has a super sad backhistory to make them less mean and more reasonable for doing what they are doing. It's a great show, but it lacks depth and originality

This was a pain to sit through.
The main focus of this season is a single fight between the Demon Slayers and a Rank 6 demon. The producers used 9 episodes to portray this fight, dragging it out to the point of boredom. During this long, long fight, you get the typical shitty shounen tropes: villain talks to themselves for 10 minutes; heroes that seemed like they were knocked out, out of the fight, lying in a pool of blood on the ground suddenly find more will to fight by force of friendship/love/insert other trope here, and then conveniently save their friends from certain death, at ... the absolutely last second. These tropes get repeated episode after episode, with no end in sight.
The first two episodes of this season were interesting in terms of world building and introducing some new characters, but once the fight started, this show was done. The pacing was way off. This entire arc would've been better off had it been condensed into a 90 minute movie instead.