Unfortunately, in my opinion Season 3 might be the worse out of all season that has been released so far. It doesn't mean it's bad. It's still an extremely enjoyable and beautiful looking piece of animated show, offering a similar general experience to the previous ones. One would say this show presents "typical Demon Slayer experience", and it wouldn't be an overexaggeration. It's just... it feels dull at times. Next to stellar looking animation with beautiful art there are moments with mediocre looking CGI models looking off, or scenes with the overusage of certain special effects, such as slow-mo. Same goes with slight change in comedy elements' frequency in the show. I liked them myself and I'm glad they were faithfully adapted, but at the same time, I can imagine somebody disliking that subtle change, or disliking Demon Slayer humor as a whole. All those things do not decrease the joy coming from watching this season by a huge margin, however, it is a visible downgrade compared to what he could see in Entertainment District arc anime adaptation. When I was watching it on an almost weekly basis, I didn't feel that spark I had felt while watching the previous season.
As a manga reader, Swordsmith Village arc is among Demon Slayer story arcs that I consider as the weakest in the whole series. It is not on the last place only because of having a rather decent length and some nice elements introduced in it, so basically it's carried by some cool moments happening throughout it. That's why I hoped to see anime fixing at least half of the issues I had with this arc when I was reading the manga.
A blessing in disguise, this adaptation is very faithful to the source material, limiting potential modifications to just making the whole story look good in an animated format, and focusing more on enhancing action sequences by additional scenes rather than meddling with the script. Sure, there is an anime original content present in this season. However, it's more like extending already existing scenes known from the manga, not coming up with something previously unseen in the source material. ending the existing ones. So, no matter whether we are talking about the writing of this arc and its pros or cons, the source material is to be blamed for both positive and negative aspects of this arc.
Nevertheless, I recommend watching it. It's still anime representing quality way higher than a regular seasonal show. Awesome animation, beautiful music, great looking art, top-notch voice acting and overall good direction (despite few problems I mentioned earlier in this review). Ufotable has proven many times that they know how to handle the adaptation of this manga. It's definitely worth checking and just focus on pure fun coming from watching it. Why? Because paying too much attention to seeking for "Entertainment District arc v2.0" might result in disappointment.
It might not be a case for most anime only fans, or even most fans familiar with the manga. Like I said, this adaptation is faithful to the manga, with all positive and negative elements coming from it. I just could not stop thinking about how rather big potential offered by this arc's premise wasn't fully unleashed in the manga, and remained pretty much the same in the anime. It was an enjoyable watching, but I feel that without much more effort it could've been even better.
