Kimetsu no Yaiba: Katanakaji no Sato-hen

Perhaps I’ve just grown up. When I watched Season 1 of Demon Slayer a few years ago, I genuinely had a great time with it. Episode 19 had me incredibly emotional, and I was in awe over the world-class animation by Studio Ufotable. The Mugen Train movie was incredible as well, with a very emotional scene at the end. I enjoyed Season 2, but not at the same level of Season 1, since it was mostly fight scenes with very flashy animation. It was not until this season where I noticed how garbage the dialogue is in this series, and maybe it’s just because I’ve ... watched much more anime since Season 2 of Demon Slayer. The dialogue is just terribly done, with lines like “I slashed him!”, and “I got slashed!” We have eyes, we can see what’s going on, there is absolutely zero need for a good chunk of the things the characters say. I’m convinced the dialogue is just there so the episode run time gets padded and they can make additional seasons of the show by stretching the events of the arc.

People love to throw around the phrase “carried by animation” if they have a negative stance on Demon Slayer, and I admit, I’ve been one of those people before. In Season 1 and 2, I believed Demon Slayer had one of the best animation productions in our modern generation. This season, I cannot with a good conscience, say that this show is even “carried by animation” anymore. Sure, there is a fair share of sakuga to go around, but nothing that really transcended previous seasons, as the studio promised. The CGI is indeed an issue, but not in the way most people say. Having CGI is not inherently a bad thing, and the CGI in this season of Demon Slayer wasn’t bad, but given how much of a focus what on 2D animation in the past seasons, it just feels uncharacteristic of the show, and a bit of a letdown. The animation is still great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just not enough for me to really get a kick out of it. The fight scenes also felt more uncreative than previous seasons. Remember when in Season 1, the settings were more interesting, and the fights weren’t all just screaming in the air, and slashing, and there was some strategy to the fights? There’s none of that anymore. It’s just riding the hype.

The story for this arc felt the most shallow of the seasons so far, and one that felt very “empty” to me, without a real objective other than killing the demons that pop up every episode. It was also a very backstory heavy season, with three backstories almost back to back. A problem I find in both this show and in Hell’s Paradise is that they try to characterize the characters by giving them a dark backstory where either all their families die, they were on the brink of death, or some kind of sob story. Just because they had a dark past, I’m supposed to suddenly care about the character now? I just don’t understand why every single character needs to have a sad backstory, it gets repetitive quick, and in my opinion, it’s a terrible way to give development to the characters, as it doesn’t reflect on what they’re doing in the here and now, but just to play on the viewer’s emotions.

The characters this season were extremely unmemorable. The villains this season were also very annoying with their antics and hugely inflated dialogue-heavy moments. They feel completely un-threatening, and completely devoid of any semblance of depth other than gimmicky actions of being in a vase, crying every two seconds, or whatever else they were doing. The amount of needless dialogue some of the villains spouted just made episodes go from 5 minutes to 25 minutes, just for the sake of padding the episode, and then ending with a cliffhanger.

All in all, this season felt like a soulless, passionless pile of uninspired drivel, and Mitsuri was just there to provide fan service for how bland the writing was. The flashy animation can only take the series so far, and this time around, it wasn’t nearly as flashy either. I probably have more enjoyment just laughing at how dumb some of the writing is.

Hopefully this is the worst that this series has to offer. I want to enjoy this show, I truly do. No problem if you like this season of course, nothing against fans of the show, we all have varying taste. If anything, if Demon Slayer can keep the lights on at Studio Ufotable and fund their next project, whether it’s more Type-Moon content, or the Genshin anime, I guess that’d be a nice trade-off.

Does Kimetsu no Yaiba even need an introduction at this point? The first season blew up like crazy in 2019 to the point it turned into one of the most popular anime series, the movie is the highest grossing anime movie of all times, and this is already the 3rd season. The problem with this season isn’t that it is doing the same thing as the previous one, the problem is that it does that worse than its predecessor. Everything is a downgrade from the characters, presentation, visual effects and yes, animation suffered a downgrade too.

This arc focuses on two Pillars, Mitsuri (the energetic pink ... haired girl with big breasts) and Muichiro (the guy who was looking at the clouds instead of paying attention on the first season), and let me tell you this was a terrible idea because it didn’t know how to balance the showing of the characters. Up to some point I could only fake that I cared about Muichiro, and so many episodes where nothing happened centered on him without developing anything about him weren’t helping, I guess you can say that they showed his backstory for a whole episode, but if you have been watching Kimetsu then you already saw his backstory, his parents are dead, someone of his family was killed by demons and then he turned into a demon slayer. Compare him to Uzui, he maybe wasn’t the best character, but he showed personality with his looks alone, he quite literally looked like a star from the glam rock era, and then you see his characterization and it’s actually entertaining to watch unlike 99% of the characters in the series, to the point I can say I liked him. Then you look at Muichiro, he has as much personality as a self-insert MC in an isekai series, and none of his scenes are actually entertaining to watch and some are even painful like his sudden character development after some nice boy words from Tanjiro, what’s worse is that he is the Pillar we spend the most time this season with, I cannot even fake to care about him at all, and I could do that even with Zenitsu.

The other is Mitsuri, when she appears we see her naked in an onsen, which actually surprised me, the series didn’t have so much blatant fanservice, sure there were some revealing outfits like Daki’s but no actual scene was this blatant on it, and not only that but even her breasts going full “boing” in another scene, before you think this is a complaint, it isn’t, I liked that as I’m not one to usually complain about fanservice. Her backstory is nothing special, but she isn’t “oh, my family died by a demon” for a change and I can at least thank for that, even if her backstory is basically “people didn’t want to marry me because I don’t fit with the standards of women”. I have seen people claim this didn’t make sense because of how attractive or sexy Mitsuri is, but it actually makes sense, women stronger than men was obviously not looked well back in the time this series takes place, she was so clearly out of the “norm” of how women should usually behave to get a man. Overall, Mitsuri is pretty to look at I guess, she is a sweetheart, but that’s pretty much it.

Tanjiro and Nezuko stay pretty much how they always were, just that Nezuko for some reason can get into her “adult form” without losing control unlike last time she transformed into it, not much to comment on those two this season. The other companion this season is Bakugo, I mean, Genya, I barely remembered him when he reappeared, so Tanjiro reminding us of stuff we should already know was helpful for once, he also has a sad backstory where his family was killed by demons and his brother is one of the Pillars. Do I care about him? Well, no, he is still as unremarkable as he was before, just that he is at least in battle now to say that he isn’t only a background character anymore, and he has a gun! Because of course someone should have a gun that also slays demons but no one else uses them as far as we have seen, katanas are just better I guess.

Then there are the Upper Moons, these ones were so lame that I cannot even bother to remember their names, when compared to the previous ones that appeared they end up even worse. Akaza was a little memorable, even if his debut was just suddenly appearing and fighting a character I barely cared about and lasted for about 10 minutes or so, as his fight had great visuals and good choreography and he even managed to kill Rengoku. There was Daki and Gyutaro, who also had a great fight that lasted half of the previous season, and they almost killed the main cast, Uzui and his wives. When you see that, it is no surprise why they said that Upper Moons haven’t been killed in 100+ years, everything they showed up to this point being incredibly strong even for the strongest demon slayers. And finally, we have these two who, aside from being completely unmemorable, one has one of the lamest fight scenes in Kimetsu no Yaiba where he is killed easily by 1 SINGLE Pillar, and how did he do this feat previously seen as impossible? Easily, he had a mark, but what’s this mark that served as the key point to one of the most important scenes of this season? Erm, well, we don’t know. You know your writing is extremely subpar when a series over 40 years old did foreshadowing better than you in the same genre, just look at Dragon Ball, we had a whole arc talking about the Super Saiyan, it was “hyped up” for a long time as a big power up that would turn the tides of the battle, and so when the time came where Goku turned into a Super Saiyan, it was actually exciting, because it was a pay-off of what has been built up until that point. Now, what is this mark again? I think it appeared last arc but under no explanation of why or what happened neither there nor on this season. These battles were here, but there is no tension, no excitement, no anything, because even those two Upper Moons Kokushibou and Douma were more memorable with just a couple of scenes under their belt than these two and their whole season.

But I think one of the things that bothers me the most is the obvious false advertisement this season had, apparently the producer Yuma Takahashi said that this season’s animation would “enter in a new level”, and unless he meant a new level of low, you’ll see this is a blatant lie if you have eyes. The animation this season isn’t better than in the previous ones, in fact, it is worse, the example that everyone could have noticed is the CGI used on this season, going from the absolutely ugly looking fishes that were simply laughable, and this is a thing that every Kimetsu no Yaiba season have suffered, because Ufotable cannot hide their CGI, but this looks as bad as the snakes in Mugen Train, and the CGI when Emu turned into a giant larva or whatever he turned into looked hideously bad. Take for example the CGI used last season, Daki’s ribbons were made of CGI but they didn’t look ugly, sure, they were pretty noticeable but they wasn’t a problem in their actual look, here, aside from the fishes that some may argue were intentionally made to look bad, there is also the wood dragons, that are as noticeable as Daki’s ribbons but when people interact with them it looks really bad, like when Tanjiro was holding onto one of them, it almost looked like MAPPA level CGI, and with that I mean that it looked almost like a green screen where the actors were put over and not properly interlayered. I know, Ufotable is mainly known for making their CGI backgrounds and actually making their characters interact with them naturally with their great compositing that still remains for these season’s backgrounds, but when it comes to the attacks that the characters use, the CGI usually looks from meh to bad, and this season unfortunately had to eat up the bad part.

And with this I’ll say that the crowd saying that Kimetsu no Yaiba has the best animation in the industry have always confused me, I cannot even comprehend why anyone would say that, pick literally any anime from Kyoto Animation, ANY OF THEM, and it has better animation. No, I’m not saying that Kimetsu doesn’t have some incredible cuts of animation, including things from the previous seasons, and even this season had a very good one of Tanjiro with the Sun Breathing technique against the fourth moon thanks to Nozomu Abe, but aside from some places, the series has pretty regular animation. No matter what they do while adding the layers upon layers of digital effects, people will eat it up as “the best animation” disregarding anyone who complains about the visuals, but the visuals in Kimetsu no Yaiba aren’t perfect, not even close, and I would like for Ufotable to be more confident in their actual animation and not just in their digital effect spam. And speaking of too many digital effects, this season got definitely the worse treatment, I think the people at Ufotable thought that they weren’t adding enough digital effects and for that they decided to add even more, just look at the first episode with the reunion of the Upper Moons, there was so much exaggeration to the most minimal thing that it looked like an Indian soap opera, you can even see the comparisons on internet about that, it made the scene look funnier than any of the jokes in the series, and I know that’s not a high bar because the humor in this series has always been and will probably keep being terrible in the future, yet this scene was actually funny, and I know this series has never known the concept of being well directed but this is just too much, this is directing that is just damaging the scene instead of helping it.

In my tags about the first season I said that this series puts me to sleep, it is like a sleeping pill, this is a thing I cannot say about many series because as much as I complain about some of them, since they get on my nerves they just bother me more than causing another emotion, but Kimetsu no Yaiba is different, I don’t hate it, it’s just that it puts me to sleep, but while the first season had multiple memorable moments that were actually engaging, the Red District arc also was engaging and what’s more I don’t remember any episode actually putting me to sleep that arc, sadly, this season returned to putting me to sleep, even while watching an episode a person walked close to me and told me that I was falling asleep, that’s mainly why I remember the episode where Tanjiro trained and got that sword. This just puts this series in this very weird situation where I don’t hate it, but when there’s absolutely nothing happening it literally makes me want to sleep because of being so superfluous when there isn’t any of those scenes with good animation. This season isn’t engaging at all and it is a step in the wrong direction.

Thank you for reading.

Demon Slayer, the overhyped anime sensation that swept the world, falls disappointingly short of its lofty reputation. Despite the fervent fandom, I found the series to be nothing more than a flashy spectacle with little substance.

First and foremost, the plot of Demon Slayer is uninspired and painfully predictable. From the very start, it follows the tired trope of a young protagonist seeking revenge for his family's demise. The lack of originality is exacerbated by the formulaic structure of the storyline, offering no surprises or genuine moments of intrigue. It becomes nothing more than a mindless and tedious cycle of defeating demon after demon.

Moreover, the characters ... in Demon Slayer are shallow and one-dimensional. While the main protagonist, Tanjiro Kamado, has a sympathetic backstory, his development is disappointingly minimal. The supporting cast fares even worse, as they are mere caricatures with little depth or growth. Their interactions feel forced, lacking genuine chemistry and failing to evoke any emotional investment.

Adding insult to injury, the pacing of the series is abysmal. Countless episodes are filled with mind-numbingly long battles that drag on without purpose or innovation. Instead of focusing on character development or advancing the plot, Demon Slayer opts for mindless action sequences that feel more like filler content than engaging storytelling.

In conclusion, Demon Slayer may appeal to those seeking mindless entertainment and stunning visuals. However, for those who crave originality, compelling characters, and a well-crafted narrative, this series is nothing more than a hollow shell of mediocrity. Save your time and look elsewhere for a truly remarkable anime experience.

Edit: Literally Peppa Pig got a better written story
Edit2: I have watched all 11 episodes and my opinion hasn't changed. Half of every episode contains backstories. Before a charactrer dies you watch 10-15 minutes of backstory to "get" some feeling for them. You cannot do this in all 3 Seasons + Movie now.

Edit3: People who send me messages to **** myself, should know that everybody got a different opinion. If you cannot accept other's views then you are still a kid. Grow up.

Edit4: I still stand by my first edit.

If what you’re used to is reading the writing of SingleH drowning in the poison of liquor or stumbling through the daze of the following hangovers, then I’m afraid what you’re going to now have to get used to is the writing of SingleH desperately clawing through partially self-induced insomnia and, relevantly, unprecedented exhaustion and overwork. Back during the Fall 2022 season of anime (before my not-at-all self-induced Winter 2023 vacation), I was writing a lot of sappy, optimistic shit. I was writing a lot of ooey-gooey, Disney Princess shit about how happy I was and in what a loving social circle I had finally ... found myself. There was this line in my Bocchi The Rock! review that went something like, “I don’t see any of what I’m currently building crashing and burning anytime soon.” Which should be an infamous line now…because, surprise surprise, it all crashed and fucking burned. Having lost my job, been robbed of my friends, and now being seemingly set in a routine of working two comparatively demoralizing jobs, seven days a week, every single week, I’ve been left with even less time to delve into anime than the ditzy retard of six, seven, eight months ago who so naively thought the happy times—having finally decided to start for the first time in over two miserable decades of life—would somehow never end. It therefore only had time to occur to me just yesterday that Demon Slayer is no longer “the new” popular anime. I had become so used to talking about it as the sort of “new hotness,” that when I remembered season one had aired four whole years ago AFTER I began watching this season and been reminded of this particular cookie cutter’s shape, it finally dawned on me that to most of currently engaged seasonal anime viewers, Demon Slayer is a well-established, tried-and-true juggernaut. And it feels like it. It feels exactly like the rerun of itself which it has utterly devolved into.

The Swordsmith Village Arc feels almost indistinguishable from The Red Light District Arc insofar as being just another shounen battle manga arc that isn’t the beginning of the story, but also isn’t the climax of the story, and which perpetually exists in this sort of template format where buddies, mentors, and monster-of-the-week villains stand out to you as being almost entirely interchangeable. The series can’t really introduce you to anything since it isn’t beginning, and it can’t really take you anywhere meaningful or exciting since it isn’t ending. It’s just meandering through this phase of the “overarching narrative” which every popular shounen series eventually finds itself in, where the author and the publisher have both been made aware of the titles’ success and have thus stumbled upon their respective reasons to keep it going with new, sometimes seemingly (arguably) random story arcs, but where the former is made to confront the biggest inherent weakness of shounen narratives: the fact they are only ever designed to begin and end. Shounen concepts are created, packaged, and sold in chapter one, and they always have been. I spoke about this in my previous Demon Slayer review where I dismissed the “Demon Slayer is only popular due to its dazzling animation” argument people love using when they attempt to shit on this series, so please just let me remind you of what you already know. Finding One Piece and becoming Pirate King, becoming the Fifth Hokage, obtaining all seven Dragon Balls, turning Nezuko back into a human, etc. These were the examples I used to explain the classic shounen structure of [initial setup] + [far-away goal] = [you can literally publish a manga like this for decades by thinly veiling filler arcs as real arcs], and Demon Slayer is no stranger to using this formula. Entirely forgettable mid-sections such as The Swordsmith Village demonstrate this painfully.

Let me ask, what happens when you take Tanjiro our protagonist, a few demon slayers along with a Hashira or two, Upper Moon Demons who you wouldn’t consider “main villains” in the grand scheme of things, and a location that could for all intense and purposes have been conveniently and relatively effortlessly fished out of the author’s ass? The answer, if I may, seems to be yet another season of Demon Slayer which can most easily be remembered as “another season that made the series as long as it ended up being by filling air time between the beginning and end.” Nothing feels terribly consequential, and any new characters involved just feel like “the new characters” who “just happen to be involved.” At least in The Red Light District Arc, there was some sort of a rhyme or reason for Daki and Gyuutarou to physically be located within the red light district itself, because in The Swordsmith Village Arc, the villains obtain information off screen to get themselves on location, and then they just appear suddenly as if to meet a quota. Our previous Hashira, Uzui, was no masterfully deep character or anything, but he and his wives had some charm, and stylistically they looked and felt like they belonged in that environment. Hashiras Tokito and Kanroji, on the other hand, really just come across as “the Hashiras who this arc is going to feature mainly because they’re the most easily marketable Hashiras which the author has yet to assign generic and deeply uninspiring backstories to…oh, and also they use swords I guess (like all other members of the Demon Slayer Corps).” I can’t honestly remember if this arc’s Upper Moons, Gyokko and Hantengu, were previously teased in previous installments of Demon Slayer, but I’m going to be generous and assume they were so I can immediately turn around and say that if they weren’t, this arc would remind me most of an anime-only, made-for-TV Fairy Tail filler arc.

I picture whoever it was in the studio, whichever individual cinematographer can actually, singularly be credited as responsible for coming up with the idea to smother everything with digital effects in the now-trademarked ufotable style as if they were Ragyou Kiryuuin, some diabolical villain cackling maniacally as they sew our brains together with this spectacularly spectacular, vapid display. We’ve now—I hope you don’t mind—reached the part of every Demon Slayer review which inevitably feels like an exercise in treading water, because whether you’re the one writing or the one reading, it’s the section where we get to have the same argument with ourselves over the caliber and importance of the production quality which, depending on who you ask, either by itself cements the series as a timeless masterpiece destined to go down in every hall of fame constructed and to be remarked about in every history book written throughout the remaining history of mankind, or which stands as little more than an excuse the series uses to pretend it’s worth any more than a tirelessly polished piece of literal shit. I still just don’t understand how the discourse surrounding this series got so deeply seated in arguments, positive or negative, regarding the overall quality of Demon Slayer which BOTH feel the need to operate off the admission or the insistence that “the animation is great, but X, Y, and Z make the show terrible” or “the animation is great, and A, B, C just make the show that much better.” I’m sorry to burst everyone’s bubble, but just as you will, no doubt, occasionally find yourself uniquely impressed with certain showcases of animation, you will also occasionally find yourself taken aback by some goofy-looking CG fish monsters, because Demon Slayer is not and has never been immune to the peaks and valleys of general TV anime production. It just happens to be flashy more often than not, simple as that.

Thank you for reading.

Well. I hope I'm wrong, but Ufotable seems to have gone the way Mappa had - they grew too comfortable on the park bench and can't help but throw at us whatever waste they have at hand. Anime industry really is like feeding pigeons: get them used to you with a fancy treat or two, and next time they'll gladly eat any garbage.

Let me preface this by admitting that I do know where the real problem lies: the manga. KnY is not a literary masterpiece, far from it in all honesty. There's glaring issues all over the 205 chapters, and the Swordsmith Village arc is ... arguably the least liked among the fandom. Working with such source material is basically like being given a bucket of shit and expected to paint something as an acrylic masterpiece. I do believe, however, that the first two anime seasons and the Mugen Train movie managed to perform that miracle of alchemy.

Can't say the same about the third season. The glaring issues with the manga should be mentioned as they're almost at fault here. Almost.

To start with, the characters are unthrilling, and that's putting it mildly. Some are just a background noise, some suffer from the quick exposition syndrome which makes it hard for the reader to form any sympathies... but above all, MOST of them have uninspired, tragic backstories that fail to feel like a proper motor for their actions. It's difficult to tell them all apart, going by just their personality. The way we get to know them is, in fact, my biggest gripe - no mysteries or reveals to be had here, each arc throws in another set of demons/hashira, whom we learn about through poorly placed flashbacks. This is especially tiresome with the demons who, in the author's ridiculous effort to humanize them in their final moments, are flashbacked into oblivion as they're about to die. No exceptions, pretty much. It also doesn't help that every character presented in KnY is one-dimensional and doesn't really develop or grow over the course of the manga.

The action is formulaic at its best, and repetitive at its worst. Starting Mugen Train arc, the plot follows the same trope and line of logic: a random location is presented and the setup is established, then the demons reveal themselves and the Corps put up a valiant effort to defeat them. Rarely does a hashira die, despite what we had been told over and over; instead, we're witnessing the slow but sure annihilation of the Upper Moons as the heroes push forward, winning through anger, willpower and sheer coincidence. The entire action structure is coincidental to an extreme, which is a no-go for a shounen. We're watching Tanjiro become more and more powerful alongside the hashira, but we're given no explanation for how exactly did he acquire his newfound powers. If the author were to pull any more stuff out of her ass, she'd be gutting herself.

The plot. Is there any? KnY is as basic as it gets. We're told that the Upper Moons are hashira executioners and none stood a chance against them in hundreds of years, yet there we are, watching their entire ranks being obliterated, despite the stakes set up before. This leads to no stakes being present, as not only do we not give a flying fuck about the characters, but we're also aware that somehow, Tanjiro will find a way. And save mostly everyone. And the fabled Upper Moons will succumb to the power of one deus-ex-machina or another. Someone got poisoned? Bam, it's now revealed they're immune to poison. Someone's on the verge of dying? Bam, a hashira/Nezuko intervenes. Tanjiro's out of breath? Bam, he breathes again cause someone has to go all tatakae on the bad guys to wrap up this nonsense. There. Are. No. Stakes in KnY. Nearly everything can be predicted 1:1, rarely does it fly differently. And since there's no stakes, there's subsequently no plot to speak of, as the action leads nowhere in particular.

The power system is incomprehensible and self-conflicting. Power scalling is done poorly, with no rhyme or reason, which leads to every fight feeling same-ish, but it also leads to another problem: if Tanjiro is to survive, he has to contribute, and therefore is scaled beyond all logic just to meet the demands of the arc. Training doesn't seem to be relevant in the world of KnY - you're either gifted with a mark, forced to push the "plot" forward (enter Hinokami), or you're a background goon yelping about how helpless you are. There's no hype to it nor a well-established path for the main cast to follow, all we have is the nagging feeling that something is going to happen, something that will turn the tables and allow progression in the story.

The humour. Do I need to elaborate? I don't think so.

Now that we're done with the manga issues, here's the issue with Katanakaji no Sato.

Ufotable did not do ANYTHING to remedy those issues. Not a THING. This came as a surprise to me, as I remember the changes they made to e.g. Heaven's Feel in order to push the story in a more unique, horror-like direction. Season 3 of KnY suffers from all the things listed above: bland, overly exposed characters that could've been utilized better by simply having them shut the fuck up and do their thing, instead of needless commentary and back'n'forth exchanges lasting entire episodes. Awfully timed flashbacks nobody's interested in, that could've been handled via OVAs and perhaps enhanced (no shortage of good writers at Ufotable). Dully engaging combat that felt like skipping rope, when it could've lasted for half of the screentime it took and would've been better off that way. No plot to speak of, this entire season felt like a filler. No stakes due to poor characterisation and lack of tension, with Upper Moon deaths feeling borderline unearned and disappointing - the build-up should've been much longer, like it was with the Entertainment arc. Power-ups and random techniques conjured up from thin air as required by the plot, when all Ufotable had to do was precede this season with a proper training OVA, or anything to explain the nonsensical logic of KnY universe, and if not that, just shift the focus to the hashira and mask the inconsistencies. And the god-awful, horrendous, brain-numbing, cringy humour of which there was way too much this time for me to handle - now that's entirely on Ufotable's writing, and might've been where all the tension dispersed.Lastly: this season was inflated for the sake of meeting the 12-eps quota and it shows, it really does. The pacing was all over the place, which is a no-go for a series devoid of both plot and intriguing cast.

Actually, no. Lastly would be: we were promised a "new level of animation" with this season, weren't we? Where was it, then? See, here's the problem: KnY really *is* being carried by animation as it has little else to offer. Season 3 was a major downgrade in this department, with "Sun Halo Dragon Dance" being the only highlight of the entire runtime. Gone were the cinematic executions like Hinokami Kagura in season 1. Gone were choreographies of the Mugen Train's Rengoku vs Akaza. Gone were the gorgeous movements seen with each sequence in the Entertainment arc. This time around, animation was non-existent, and an extra layer of CG and VFX were plastered all over the action to cover the deficiencies up. Should you disagree, play Muichiro's sequences in slow motion, you'll see what I mean. I wish Ufotable would show more trust in their animation crew, rather than complacently vomit visual effects and lackluster CG at every turn. If you wanna know the difference, compare their Fate entries with KnY season 3.

Hey, at least the opening was the best one yet. Really digging the song. Too bad the opening's animation didn't carry over to the actual show.

It's baffling how this season has a rating that's on par with the first season and the movie because this season has been a considerable downgrade in almost every single aspect other than the comedy which has always been Demon Slayer's weakest link.

Animation was always Demon Slayer's defining trait. The one aspect of the series that has gotten better with each season. I feel like it's safe to say that things have regressed in quality substantially. This season just looks underbaked and janky. The excuse at the start of the season was that they were saving the budget for the finale. Well, we're done with ... one-half of the two upper moons, and I'm still left wondering, "Where's the mindblowing blend of VFX and animation from the entertainment arc?". The CGI has been borderline atrocious, especially for all the fish-related demons and demon arts and nothing has really stood out in terms of framing or movement when it comes to the fights. They're fighting some of the toughest demons this universe has to offer and the fights feel so small and anticlimactic in their scope.

This brings me to the tonal inconsistencies and general pacing of the show. The manga the show is based on isn't a literary masterpiece - it's alright. Character motivations for the protagonists usually boil down to "demons killed my family, therefore I must fight!". Which is fine - but maybe don't focus on that repetitiveness, and rather focus on playing to your strengths (the action)? This season has been bogged down by so many of these boring backstories, coupled with the subpar "comedy" that Demon Slayer is famous for, that all interest and tension in the ongoing conflict fizzles out.

Overall, seriously disappointing.
Would honestly recommend skipping this whole season.

They should've just cut the fluff and made a 2ish hour film instead.

The art continues to be phenomenal. Now that that's out of the way:
There are three huge issues that are not-forgiveable with both this season AND last season of Demon Slayer.

1. Fights should not legally exceed 5+ episodes. You cannot simply carry the momentum that far and keep topping the last move which was allegedly the strongest (it wasn't).

2. You CANNOT take a 20 MINUTE PAUSE, MID-FIGHT, to tell us the backstory of the person who is fighting. TELL US BEFOREHAND. I DONT CARE ABOUT THIS PERSON NOW. TOO LATE. NOW YOU'VE RUINED THE PACING OF THE FIGHT.

3. This is an anime classic.: the deus ex ... machina. Just randomly at the end, pulling a twist out of nowhere which saves everyone. "Oh she actually didn't die because the whole time she was immune to that but she's only realised just now that's why we just told you". It's so unearned. There are now no stakes. The main characters are gods I never think for a second they're going to die.

Look, I may continue watching, purely because it takes 0 brain cells and I can be on my phone and not miss a thing. But the first season was pretty good, I really was hoping for more.

Too much backstory for too many uninteresting characters in this season. A desperate effort to create nuances, and scratch that sympathy in an attempt of characterization, but falls flat to be deep that it instead ended up being exposed wide open to our faces on how unashamedly forced and unimpressive a lot of things are.

This whole season feels like nothing more than a speedrun attempt on the author's side, who's maybe just starting to realize now, how much bigger the whole concept is for them to handle, or to commit any more of their time into. It feels tiresome and uninspired. And their biggest qualities, ... which are the action sequences, ended up being redundant and unimaginative.

And for that much of a stakes that they had from the past season, where even the defeat of a single, weakest Upper-Moon demons is being celebrated as a once-in-a-hundreds-years of achievements, it's hilarious and heartbreaking to see the premise of this next arc is, that they gonna lump and speedrun two of the Upper-Moon demons together. That big of an escalation back then in terms of strength since we saw the Lower-Moon in the Mugen Train Movie, to the highly impressive Upper-Moon we saw in Entertainment District Arc, and then comparing it to this?! It really should be legal to sue the author and the anime production, after what they've done in this season.

At least the last showdown is a banger, but not enough to redeem the whole season, because they had the guts to pulled that fake out on us. One of the worst tropes in anime.

A repetitive, predictable, and uninteresting season. Endless fights with literally no stakes. Extremely boring characters who add next to nothing to the plot. Most of them are clichés with a colorful touch.
90% of this season is just characters fighting and learning nothing, always "going above their limits" (but they actually have literally no limit). Where is the story? A 10-minute backstory, very similar to the one of absolutely every demon slayer out there, is just extremely boring: "I had a tough life and then a demon [almost] killed my family, so now I kill them back".
The animation is gorgeous though, ufotable did a great ... job. The colors are magnificent.
This season is very disappointing for an anime that started so well. Honestly, it's just so bland and boring I don't have anything more to say.

I have to admit that I really find "Demon Slayer" worse and worse with each new season.

And I'm repeating myself, because I already said that in the review of the movie and the last season, but let me rattle it off again.

The first two episodes were once again godlike. Demon Slayer has mastered a humor that I incredibly like. Slice-of-life scenes, in which Tanjiro simply relaxes, are incredibly well done, especially because characters are very sympathetic, fleshed out and diverse.

As it should be otherwise, though, the series again only has in mind to deliver the most impressive fights. Beautiful animations that can't be topped, breathtaking ... music, that's what you can expect here. But over the last few seasons (and the film) this has almost become the weakness of the series.
For one thing, it leads to scenes that aren't good for anything except showing off the soundtrack and animations. Usually those are absolutely fantastic. but here they are so long and there are so many, than at some point it just gets dull, albeit beautiful.
Secondly, there's no room for anything here except combat, which is split into twenty chapters and shown in detail. The jokes and slice-of-life scenes I just praised so much are an absolute rarity and maybe that's why they struck me so positively, because I just got bored with the fighting at some point.

In addition, there is even less time spent on character development this season. Maybe it just seems that way to me, but at least the devils get much less love as characters; compared to Daki and Gyuutarou, which I learned to appreciate and admire as characters, here the devils are not much more than empty shells. One gets a little bit of a mention at the end about how he became a devil, and with a little imagination you can fill in the blanks yourself to explain his abilities etc as well, but that's far too little when the anime already spends so much time on him.

Bottom Line: Ugh. If the anime doesn't finally regress in a different direction, I unfortunately see black for it. Even if animations etc. make it still worth watching, I don't know anyone (from my friend group) except me, who gave the season a chance. And even I'm getting tired of it.

Overall Impression: This is the season where the wheels fell off. Every bad tendency that Demon Slayer has displayed in previous years is amped up to 11 in the Swordsmith Village Arc and the action spectacle has eroded to the point that it's no longer capable of papering over serious and foundational flaws. Deeply disappointing that one of the most popular and celebrated anime series in recent years has devolved into this.

+ Positives:
While I was negative on the action as a whole, this is still a high budget Ufotable project and some parts are undeniably slick, and the fire effects in particular look quite good. ... Sidelining Zenitsu for the entire season was a blessing.

- Negatives:
There are a lot of problems with this season of Demon Slayer, but many of those can be traced back to a single, fatal flaw: it's one of the most atrociously paced TV shows in recent memory. The content of this season could have comfortably been covered in 4-5 episodes, but instead it's stretched past the breaking point to fill out 11 episodes, with super-sized, hour-long episodes on both the front and back end. There is simply not enough material here for a season of TV anime, and it is painfully, arduously slow as a result. The entire season is essentially 2 fights with a pair of upper rank demons, and sometimes those fights progress by as little as 30 seconds of in-story time per episode. One character spends 3 full episodes attempting to free themselves from a water trap, because 75 minutes of the show's run time doesn't even cover a sufficient amount of time in the story for a person to drown. Any drama or excitement in either fight is emphatically snuffed out by the dreadfully slow pace at which it plays out.

A related issue here is that the directing has never been worse. Demon Slayer has always used slow motion and mid-fight flashbacks in its action sequences to mixed effect (if we're being charitable), but both are egregiously overused to the point of parody in the Swordsmith Village Arc. It's not uncommon to get 2 or even 3 mid-fight flashbacks in the same episode now, often some insipid version of the same "demons killed my whole family so I want to kill the demons" sob story that you've already seen half a dozen times in earlier entries of this very show. These flashbacks are constantly wrecking the flow of the action scenes and forcing you to sit through interminable backstory that didn't need to be dropped smack dab in the middle of a sword fight. The overuse of slow motion has a similar effect. Instead of building tension like it's supposed to, it drains it by over-explaining obvious points to the audience instead of simply letting us watch the action. You may have noticed the shortcomings of this sort of thing in one widely-mocked sequence where Tanjiro explains at length that his sword is changing color and turning red, which viewers can simply see with their eyes instead of needing a paragraph's worth of dialogue to explain it.

Visually, this season is also a step back from previous efforts. As mentioned above, there's a pretty high floor with Ufotable projects, so the show rarely looks ugly or poorly animated, but it is simply not on the same level previous seasons. The CGI monsters, which often looked very good in past efforts, are passable at best here, and not as well integrated with hand drawn elements as you're likely used to. There is also far too much camera swooping and panning, notably in one sequence in the villain's lair in the season premiere where the camera spastically flies around the 3D environment like it's being directed by an 11 year old playing Garry's Mod.

And if all that weren't enough, the content of the season is remarkably shallow. Most of the season is fighting and flashbacks, and none of it illuminates the supporting characters much. Both major antagonists are perfunctory villains and don't even get the customary "actually they had a sad life as humans so you should feel bad for them" dying flashback like they have in previous seasons. Tokito and Mitsuri, the featured Hashira this season, get long flashbacks that only tell you what you already know about them (Tokito is emotionless after his family got killed and Mitsuri is boy-crazy but can't get married because she eats too much). While Tokito at least gets a 1 on 1 faceoff with a demon, Mitsuri is relegated to secondary character status despite being all over the promotional material for the season. She shows up to distract the big bad while Tanjiro handles the important parts, and that's her entire role. The finale (which I won't spoil here) at least has one significant plot development that moves the overall story forward, but otherwise the entire season feels like filler material.

That will ultimately be the legacy of the Swordsmith Village Arc, I believe. Overly long, distressingly paced filler that delivers neither a good story nor the kind of spectacle we're used to seeing from Demon Slayer that would at least make it easy to consume. Next time, just make it a movie.

I'll be brief;
1. All the budget goes into the animation, and anime fans will call anything a masterpiece as long as it has cool fights.
2. Absolute dogshit storytelling; story is not anything special, and the amount of times the MC gets a flashback that just happens to be containing the specific hint about what he needs in that given moment, is ridiculous. This mf has a flashback every 4th swing of his sword.
IF youre looking for a good simple anime, watch this.
If youre looking for something that will require more than 3 braincells and actually give you some brain thought or engage you in some ... way other than "wow what an epic fight," do NOT watch this

I dot't understand the hype around Demon Slayer anymore. The only positive I have to share is the animation style except for the "3D parts". The fighting scenes are colorful and really cool to look at. So far the good parts and now I will start ranting.

Story: so predictable... ofc the highlevel demons are "difficult" to defeat and OFC at the brink of the heroes death, they suddenly get a sobbing flashback then awakening and then lastly an energy burst. Suddenly their broken bodies are not so broken.... sounds familiar? Yes it was like the previous seasons.

I don't feel like we learned anything new ... or groundbreaking this arc. They're just a bunch of vampires, looking for a cure. I feel like the cure is going the be something cliche like "love"

The most annoying part is Mitsuri's screaming and oversexualisation. Still don't understand why I keep watching it, eventhough it's not even top tier anime.

At the point reached with the 3rd season, even great animations could not save Kimetsu no Yaiba. Although Kimetsu no Yaiba has always been a very cliché and basic job in its genre(literally how to Shounen 101) it has managed to be an above the average job up to this point with the animation quality that everyone is aware of, fun characters and good action sequences. But with the Swordsmith Village Arc, that's all gone. Characters made me want to poke my eyes out. I wanted to slit my wrists every time there is a flashback scene for a character who is about to recieve ... a fatal blow, the efforts to dramatize them in those scenes and force sympathy down my throat, and when they are saved by someone else in next scene to follow. Two Hashira we see in this arc really made me miss Uzui so freaking much. Two Upper Demon in this arc made me miss Gyutaro so much. Action sequences? After Mugen Train and Entertainment District Arc, I have no idea how they managed to make them so soulless, boring and with zero hype. Dialogues? Most scenes go like this:

Tanjiro: I'm gonna cut that demon's head!
Someone: Cut it Tanjiro!
Tanjiro: I'm cutting it!
Someone: You can do it Tanjiro!
Demon: He is cutting my head!
Tanjiro: I am cutting your head!

Inosuke could have saved this season. Even though he's basically a cliché character too, most of the entertainment value of this anime comes from Inosuke for me. Take him out of the equation, add everything that I just mentioned above and what do you get? A pile of garbage. Totally a waste of time.

This is the worst season by far.
wait 10 episodes for good animation.
Horrible cg (due to a change in animation director)
Most boring villains this season
In every fight they stop for an episode to give a side characters some backstory and that takes up an entire episode to just say that it's basically the same as Tanjiro's
The ending was good
I did miss zenitsu and Inosuke this season
Thank god Tanjiro is no longer a pussy
ngl next arc is a training arc so i feel like demon slayer might be on a down slope for a couple seasons.

Overrated. Gets Hard carried by Animations. Story is a bit worse than your typical shounen, its easily pretictable, if your Not dumb tho. The characters are plumb and have almost no personality. The character Designs suck too. The Fights are a bit above average at Best. The pacing is worse than in one piece. Villains also have almost no personality whats so ever. The backstorys are average. The Music is fine I guess maybe a 6/10. Also IT was unrealistic as fuck. The characters cant eben Show emotions properly. Anyone who likes this Show, please watch an anything that is above mid. IT would be ... better than this shit

- Great art;
- Great animation;

That's it. The rest is made just for the show to be, like AOT, a money machine and an endless, bad show.

Characters are bad, endless cliffhangers. The entire latest 4 or 5 episodes were 5-minute long actual episodes, all of them with cliffhangers at the end. No one really cares for Tankiro and his friends as story plots or characters. That crazy train movie was actually good because the only okay-ish character there was the fire-breathing one, i already forgot his name, because how irrelevant the character actually feels.

The season will be over soon and all the *slayy* corps ... will have done is to talk about friendship, or motivational screams.

The characters feel dumb. We want fights, development, and intelligent characters.

The swordsmith arc is defitely a downgrade from the preceeding seasons, the fights weren't anywhere as entertaing, the character development was rushed, i mean 4 flashbacks of 4 different characters in one season is just not well paced for the number of episodes the season has, also the backstories are just becoming repititive at this point, not to mention the fact that zenitsu and inosuke got no screen time, they just make an appearnace in the first and last episode and thats it. The only good parts of the season were when akaza was in the alternate dimension and the final episode.