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.
