Kimetsu no Yaiba: Katanakaji no Sato-hen

For centuries, the Demon Slayer Corps has sacredly kept the location of Swordsmith Village a secret. As the village of the greatest forgers, it provides Demon Slayers with the finest weapons, which allow them to fight night-crawling fiends and ensure the safety of humans. After his sword was chipped and deemed useless, Tanjirou Kamado, along with his precious little sister Nezuko, is escorted to the village to receive a new one.

Meanwhile, the death of an Upper Rank Demon disturbs the idle order in the demon world. As Tanjirou becomes acquainted with Mist Hashira Muichirou Tokitou and Love Hashira Mitsuri Kanroji, ferocious powers creep from the shadows and threaten to shatter the Demon Slayers' greatest line of defense.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kamado, Tanjirou Main

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Kamado, Nezuko Main

Kitou, Akari Japanese

Kanroji, Mitsuri Main

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Tokitou, Muichirou Main

Kawanishi, Kengo Japanese

Agatsuma, Zenitsu Supporting

Shimono, Hiro Japanese

Hashibira, Inosuke Supporting

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu Japanese

Rengoku, Kyoujurou Supporting

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Kochou, Shinobu Supporting

Tomioka, Giyuu Supporting

Tsuyuri, Kanao Supporting

Ueda, Reina Japanese

Miyake, Masanori Producer

Takahashi, Yuuma Producer

Fujio, Akifumi Producer

Murakami, Maasa Producer

Reviews

Jun 18, 2023

moustafa356780

Recommended

I am only writing this for the sake of the old days of DS and how much I enjoyed previous seasons .at the same time I admit that this season is the least favorite of all previous ones but that doesn't mean it's bad by any means
DS probably has the most number of haters in the anime community and why? the show is constant in all its terms of story, animation, etc. so I don't get what people are complaining about if it's not your type don't watch it

So why this season is heated? basically because of the number of episodes so you feel ... you didn't witness anything new but if we compare it to the previous season we can tell it has the same slow start but unlike the previous season this one didn't have the same kind of thrill and action during the fight and also the last season's demon was much better in writing quality. for that reason, I think the season should have more episodes
also one of the reasons is the viewer kinda expected the season events cause it's basically a copy of the last season
another reason that the animation quality has dropped a little and I am talking about the CGI, especially the fish I think it was so bad

away from these problems, I think everything else is the same as the old DS there is not so much happening but the arc is important for the characters and story development and that last episode was absolutely gorgeous and IMO is the best in DS so we hope for a better next season.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 18, 2023

Stark700

Mixed Feelings

Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc is probably high up on a lot of people's watchlist this year and for good reasons. The franchise has amassed an enormous fanbase. Helmed by one of the most famed animation studios today, there's no short in terms of expectations for this season. At least that's what it looked like from the surface because prepare yourself, those expectations aren't what truly holds up this season.

Coming straight from the previous seasons, Swordsmith Village Arc immediately features a host of characters ranging from the main cast, the Upper Rank demons, and among characters that we may or may not ... care about. As a pilot episode, I confess that upon rewatches, it did not truly hold up to its standards. Perhaps my expectations were a bit high but I can't deny the fact that the season premiere featured far too many characters. Some of these include supporting characters that seems irrelevant or beg us to ask why we should care about them. On the other hand, the Upper Rank demons are a fascinating side with their unpredictable natures. We should remind ourselves that they are the elite among the elites, and likely serves as the main antagonists for the rest of the season. Still, we do also have the familiar cast rejoining this season such as Tanjiro, Nezuko, Genya. New faces among the cast includes the charismatic Mitsuri Kanroji and the mysterious Muichiro Tokito. Brace yourselves because this season is more than just about Tanjiro's life and his adventures.

The first few episodes tries its hardest to appeal with entertainment by throwing in humorous gags and comedy. Demon Slayer has been a serious anime from the start but it also loves to have fun with itself when given the chance. However, fun doesn't come easy as Tanjiro trains his hardest. With its cartoony segments, we are also introduced to cartoony characters such as Kotetsu. As Tanjiro trains, we are reminded ourselves the harsh life of a demon slayer. Luckily, he's given the chance to be part of the Swordsman Village. Without going into spoilers, it is a setting where weapons are forged and is a prominent part of demon slayers' society. The arc focuses this location as it also becomes a central battlefield between the demons and demon slayers.

One of the more fascinating element of this anime is the antagonist Hantengu, with a very unique ability revolving around emotions. To be honest, he has potential to become one of the most dangerous antagonists of the franchise, given what he's capable of. Watching his battles against the demon slayers shows the testament and capabilities of the upper ranks. They are no pushovers as Tanjiro quickly finds out the hard way. Meanwhile, we also do have some of the other prominent supporting cast playing their roles. Muchiro is perhaps he most interesting for his background story and his unorthodox way of dealing with problems. On the other hand, we don't get to see much of Mitsuri in action until later on. By the time she does get the highlight, the arc seems to have its climax and peak. And to be honest, I think this is a problem with the season. It can be described in one simple word: pacing. The first episodes had a slow awkward way of introducing us to the Swordsman Village while trying to progress Tanjiro's training. The mid-season focuses more on the battles themselves with some background storytelling thrown in between. Structured in the format as an "arc", I suppose they were focusing exclusively on events at the Swordsman Village. The main supporting character known as Muchiro managed to outshine majority of the cast with his characterization. Meanwhile, Mitsuri becomes a source of attraction or distraction, depending on how you perceive her character. Nonetheless, 11 episodes designated that the season had to start and conclude with events in this village. Even with the finale extended to more than 1+ hour long, it's a questionable decision. The season deserved more episodes or part of something bigger than 'arc'. It tried to be too safe and lacked the character development compared to previous seasons. Knowing this season, it felt like the arc tried to just be fundamentally sound as possible with its pacing. Don't get me wrong though, it's still a watchable season for sure and among one of the most extensively chereographed anime of the year.

And of course, we can't forget about Ufotable being the force of bringing this anime to life. Watching Swordsman Village had its explosive energy and chereography with jawbreaking cinematics. Every episode did have its movie-like feel that captured the height of its action elements. Still, don't expecting much different compared to the previous seasons. As I said before, this season played it too safe.

The question we should ask ourselves is not whether this season is enjoyable but if Demon Slayer can truly exceed our expectations. It felt like the first season was its absolute peak while now, it just feels the anime is more or less on autopilot mode. There's no doubt the anime community and Internet will talk about this season for years to come. But compared to the first season, this one missed the mark.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 22, 2023

SingleH

Not Recommended

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Katanakaji no Sato-hen Episode 11 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) anime-prime - Jun 18, 2023	710 replies	by Capitan_Orejitas »» Yesterday, 4:07 AM
	Poll: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Katanakaji no Sato-hen Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) anime-prime - Apr 8, 2023	454 replies	by jasiy100 »» May 21, 7:46 AM
	Movie entry gone from DB JVskunkape - May 12	17 replies	by DigiCat »» May 20, 4:16 AM
	Poll: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Katanakaji no Sato-hen Episode 2 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) anime-prime - Apr 16, 2023	262 replies	by almasri002 »» May 19, 10:19 PM
	Which episodes to skip? ( 1 2 ) sakuraspace - Apr 5	52 replies	by bassyey »» May 13, 1:54 AM