Kimetsu no Yaiba: Yuukaku-hen

Frankly, I disliked the first season of Demon Slayer, and if you go back and read my review that'll be quite evident. I didn't quite dislike the Mugen Train Arc, but I didn't overly like it either. I was probably somewhere in the realm of indifferent. So, going into this, my expectations were pretty modest. I'm happy to say this wildly exceeded what I thought it could be and this is genuinely very, very good.

The visuals here are insane. It could easily be a really high-end anime movie that one goes to see in theaters. I don't know of any series that looks better than ... this does right now.

The pacing dramatically improves here, the action is fervent and the villains are super badass and threatening, both before and during the climactic fight, which spans many, many episodes.

In many ways- primarily how good it looks, how hard they nailed the atmosphere and how intense and unrelenting the action is- this really is peak Shounen. This falls just short of a 10 for me because the secondary characters are still loud and obnoxious (though admittedly a LITTLE bit less so here than in previous seasons) and because of the wild, borderline offensively stupid conveniences offered up as explanations in a handful of instances. One that really offended me was a character who was gravely wounded casually stating they can simply "rearrange my internal organs", and therefore they're fine. Likewise, a different character managed to "stop my own heart" (and of course, keep fighting with a stopped heart...) to cure the poison they'd been afflicted with. Those moments made me roll my eyes because they're cheap and stupid, but if you're able to overlook that kind of thing there's a lot to like here.

OBJECTIVE RATING- 9-10
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 9.5

THIS REVIEW ENCOMPASSES BOTH MUGEN TRAIN AND ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT ARCS

The first season of Deamon slayer wasn't perfect, nevertheless, I can understand where the popularity emerges from. It was a complete season without any setups for the future. So the expectations for the sequel were pretty low: slightly improvement of the story, characters, world building: nothing over the top. I also expected drastic improvement in visual, given people's praises to ufotable. Although, the initial expectations were mild, plenty awards and community love had given a hope that some enormous leap would happen in the movie or next season.

The biggest change is the quality of CG: the ... first season had OK-ish CG, but it wasn't impressive. However, the movie and second season did make progress, it is hardly the best CG overall but definitely one of the best among anime TV series. There were a big improvement in fight direction to boot. Contrarily to the first season, where fights consisted of one-sided attacks, the movie has a spectacular final fight and a half of the second season is one fight with excellent visual, delectable animation, splendid direction, and superb choreography. Sometimes camera barrels too quickly so it's hard to get a grasp of what's going on, I am pretty sure it was done to optimize expenditures. The Mugan train arc is overrun with repeated scenes, maybe it's because of conversion of the movie to the TV series, but it's uncomfortable to watch. Contrarily, the Entertainment district arc seldom does this. The ost is still good, but not as mesmerizing as the first season's and the anime reuses a lot soundtracks and sound effects from the previous season as well. The movie's OP and ED are good, but they are barely distinguishable from the previous, as well as all Lisa's songs in general. However, Aimer in the second season really slaps.

The plot of Demon slayer is a joke. The story in the first season was the weakest I've seen in shonen, but this definitely sets a new level. Where should I even start? The characters has no development whatsoever, they still behave like idiots, but as soon as a fight starts they immediately become normal. Luckily, the fight in the second season occupies almost a half of the runtime, so they are slightly less irksome. I would be happy to say that dialogs were so amazing that it made Tarantino envious, but, in practice, they are flat. It is either a prattle about training in order to get stronger, or never give up in order to get stronger, or conquer your fears in order to get stronger. But the pinnacle of Demon slayer is bits of drama sporadically popping out here and there, that looks like a parody of cheap drama tropes rather than drama itself. Death scenes are exaggerated to the point where it gets similar to the frog death from Shrek 3 and makes you laugh how ridiculous it is.

It's getting harder and harder to not perceive everything that happens beyond fights as fillers. It's not original, it's not interesting, it's just forgettable. The biggest challenge, when it comes to a shonen' plot, is to keep it simple but, in the same time, compelling and reach. And Demon slayer completely failed it, turning any resemblance of the story into skits, which instantly vanish from memory when the next fight begins.

The first season has extremely simple world building. There are demons, who are evil and, of course, ranked, demon slayers, who can perform special abilities and kill demons, and means to covert humans to demons and vice versa. It's a simple set of rules to stick to, but the second season was able to stand out here. One of the classes of demons is upper class, who have been invincible for generations, so what the approach to kill them? Maybe the corps will try to outsmart them or come up with scientific method instead of use of brute force. But Demon slayer keeps it simple and anticlimactic: everything you need to beat invincible demons is to hold on to your principles and never give up. To explain some character's victorious stunts the show resorts to something silly e.g. "He used his muscles to force his heart to stop, huh? That enabled him to temporarily stop the poison from circulating." this is a real quote from the show. Some characters also forget what abilities they have, that conveniently allow to elongate the show. Like the boar guy can easily track down any creature in a large vicinity, but instead he on a par with the other protagonists waste several days to find the abducted.

Some of you could forget that the initial Tanjiro's target was to turn his sister back to human. But don't worry it was not only you but Tanjiro himself and the author as well who forgot this. Since the first season there has been almost no progress and big bro sometimes even forget that he need to collect blood from slaughtered foes. And Tanjiro doesn't seem concerned about his sister's curse and why should he; she regularly saves him, doesn't kill humans and she is definitely different from other demons. What the point even turning her back?

Demon of slayer is an anime of contrasts: some aspects have a high quality, thanks to ufotable, the other ones are pretty mediocre, thanks to the source material. Therefore, it can appeal to some people, but being rejected by others. The franchise is definitely going to be remembered, not because of quality but because how it effected viewers. No one remembers the story of Jaws but everyone knows the fear of sharks it produced, something similar will happen to Demon slayer.

Kimetsu no Yaiba and its movie were loveable. They both had a couple issues here and there but I and my family enjoyed it.

This - second/third/whatever the hell - season dissapointed us.

Tengen Uzui was not as cool as we were hoping he would be. He put up a boring fight. His wives were creepy, they each had one of the teen boys' personalities and their outfits weren't creative, looked very cheap.

The teen boys are quickly losing their charm. They are each defying too many odds to root for them. It is painstakingly obvious none of them will die or retire from fighting.

Nezuko wasn't too ... bad this season, she did something interesting, I hope her voice actress has more lines next season.

I was excited for the villains because they are an inverse Tanjiro and Nezuko, but their story fell flat because nothing felt like it mattered by that point.

This arc should have been longer. The author is starting to run out of steam if this is a direct rip from the manga...