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EP. REVIEW: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Hashira Training Arc


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gumbaloom



Joined: 11 Sep 2017
Posts: 301
PostPosted: Thu May 23, 2024 2:16 am Reply with quote
Geez why all this bickering about A, B, C plots ?

It's irrelevant - in 2 or 3 episodes time (assuming no anime only stupid filler and the pacing continues as is) all hell will break loose Smile

GUARANTEED Smile
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gumbaloom



Joined: 11 Sep 2017
Posts: 301
PostPosted: Sun May 26, 2024 10:33 am Reply with quote
What the fudge was that?!?!


spoiler[
Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes
We go from 1 - 2 chapters episode to a fraction of a cahpter
ANIME ONLY FILLER

Good if you’re a Tengen fan but otherwise uhh no just get on with it….


]


If they are making the rest of the season "hashira of the week" and rush the ending I'll be pissed....
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Cryten



Joined: 19 Jan 2019
Posts: 1103
PostPosted: Sun May 26, 2024 8:35 pm Reply with quote
So the manga just had a montage of him going through the Hashira?
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blahmoomoo



Joined: 27 Jan 2020
Posts: 493
PostPosted: Sun May 26, 2024 8:42 pm Reply with quote
Cryten wrote:
So the manga just had a montage of him going through the Hashira?


Yep, this episode was 5 panels of chapter 132 (just over one page). The chapter took Tanjiro through five Hashira (counting Tengen).
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KayWhy



Joined: 06 Feb 2024
Posts: 19
PostPosted: Mon May 27, 2024 9:47 am Reply with quote
honestly, i’m glad they’re giving tengen some more screentime considering they basically gloss over him in the manga. the pacing dream may be dead, but the anime original stuff is pretty solid and fun to watch so i cant complain. i hope we dont spend too much time on muichirou though, since we just got done with swordsmith village.

also, i think a bit more happens in this episode plot progression wise than the review is giving it credit for. like, we know now that a spooky eyeball is stalking the demon slayers!!! and character development (sorta?) for the collective horde of demon slayer npcs. tanjiro can hold his ground against a one armed and half-blind hashira, for the powerscalers to analyze.

i agree muzan hasn't had too much to do lately, but we did get a very sizeable flashback monologue from him last season finale.
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Minos_Kurumada



Joined: 04 Nov 2015
Posts: 1174
PostPosted: Mon May 27, 2024 12:17 pm Reply with quote
Man, I remember at the end of HXH they were making one episode per manga chapter and I was really displaced.

I am happy I am not a KnY fan, I would be raging knowing they are making full episodes of random manga panels.
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Gem-Bug



Joined: 10 Nov 2018
Posts: 1285
PostPosted: Mon May 27, 2024 12:40 pm Reply with quote
It's kind of wild that even James' reviews of shitty episodes end up like 3 times longer than other weekly series reviews. Shocked
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Glordit



Joined: 11 Sep 2020
Posts: 623
PostPosted: Mon May 27, 2024 1:50 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Harisha training arc


"it's nothing but training!" Laughing
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flamemasterelan



Joined: 17 Apr 2022
Posts: 486
PostPosted: Mon May 27, 2024 7:43 pm Reply with quote
Shay Guy wrote:
But he's not mad at Tanjiro for trying to stop him. If you look at what he actually says, he's mad at Tanjiro for being bad at it. Like if this 13-year-old civilian were able to beat up the elite Hashira, it'd mean Tanjiro was right about Nezuko's remaining humanity.

I think you missed the point. Tanjiro just lost his entire family and Nezuko was the only thing he had to hold onto. Giyu recognized this, but knew that the demon had to be put down, and then Tanjiro would likely take his own life in despair. His inner monologue specifically begs Tanjiro not to give in to despair in the moment, so his words are meant to incite hatred to give him something to push him forward. He might not have intended to spare Nezuko, but he wanted to give Tanjiro a reason to continue living, whether it was to spite him, or to channel that anger into the Demon Slayer Corps if he proved his potential.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4738
PostPosted: Mon May 27, 2024 8:10 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Here's the thing: I actually think Demon Slayer is at its best when it is prioritizing its “vibes” over its long-running narrative and major character arcs—if only because it isn't very good at either of those two core storytelling components.

I'm only as far as the Toonami broadcast of the series, so I'm a full season and a couple of episodes back, but I peek in at the episode reviews sometimes, and this line jumped right out at me. I was thinking the other day about the two full seasons (or half-season and a movie depending on your consumption preferences) I've seen so far, and I kept coming back to this question: "What has actually happened in this series up to this point?" And I think it's fair to ask, because there's been precious little in the way of actual narrative progression for a long time. After the introductory material and Tanjiro becoming a Demon Slayer, you have a bit of greater plot with the potential for Nezuko's cure, but after that it's a sequence of shonen check boxes. Fight against cannon fodder. Introduction of sidekick characters. Fight against near-major demon. Recovery. Extended fight against major lower-rank demon. Recovery and training. Fight against another major lower-rank demon, immediately followed by defeat by major higher-rank demon. More recovery and training. Extended group fight and defeat of major higher-rank demon. Presumably more recovery and/or training after that. It all feels so...empty, like a thin excuse to string a sequence of cool fights together.

And I could deal with that just fine, provided the series had strong characterization, yet somehow that's even more lacking. Tanjiro is a Certified Good Boy, but his personality can be largely distilled down to "I must protect Nezuko!" and "I must get stronger to better protect Nezuko!" The closest thing he's had to long-term development up to what I've watched was the realization that, oh hey, maybe he's really meant to use flashy fire moves with his sword instead of flashy water moves. Nezuko isn't allowed to be anything more than a glorified mascot, other than the moment or two per arc that she's allowed out of her box and gets to kick demon ass. Inosuke is my favorite feral hog son, and Zenitsu...unfortunately exists, but they're pretty much glorified side characters who are mostly there for shenanigans. The Hashira are even worse, complete one-note roster-fillers in the same vein as Bleach's Soul Reaper officers. The same goes for the major villains, who only get any sort of development with their dying breaths (to be fair, that's a bad trope endemic to many shonen series, so I'm not holding Demon Slayer solely responsible for it). So most of the cast are mere archetypes who don't show any real extended development, and the narrative doesn't give them much interesting to do...James is right, the vibe is about all the series has going for it most of the time.

Quote:
(By the by, I know I cannot be the only one who finds it weird that the main villain of this entire series—the dude whose evil machinations are the driving force behind everything the DSC is up to right now—has barely had any screentime in what feels like forever.)

This might be the worst bit of all. Muzan is ostensibly the greatest threat in the entire series, the man who single-handedly destroyed Tanjiro's life and gave him the impetus to fight...and yet he might as well not even be a character for how little we see him do. After his initial appearance in front of Tanjiro he was probably on-screen all of five total minutes through two full seasons, and mostly then only to murder some ineffective subordinates. As far as I watched, his sole moment of interest was randomly showing up in the guise of a child, which I'm sure gets explained later, but the show whisked away from it so quickly without further comment that I was left more confused than curious. Say what you will about Inuyasha's repetitiveness, but at least Naraku was a demonic villain who knew how to have face time with the protagonists on a regular basis and push their buttons in all the right ways. And he actually got a full-fledged backstory soon after he showed up, whereas through 45 episodes and counting I still have zero idea what Muzan's deal is.

And I know that the retort to this will be that a lot of these characters get explored more later. I'm sure some of it has already happened in animated content that I haven't seen yet. But there's such a thing as too little, too late. If the show didn't give me anything at all to latch onto with these characters when they are new, then I'm going to be hard-pressed to care about them when it tries rolling out more information dozens of episodes later. By that point, it's already lost me.
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Cryten



Joined: 19 Jan 2019
Posts: 1103
PostPosted: Mon May 27, 2024 10:06 pm Reply with quote
Nope, not heard much of him since. Muzan is the Queen Beryl of Demon Slayer. He see's fit to only occasionally berate his minions for failing to kill the sailor scouts / demon slayers.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3787
PostPosted: Tue May 28, 2024 12:29 am Reply with quote
I find it amusing that everyone is so exceedingly ripped (even the rank and file members), but you can't tell at all when they're wearing their outfits Laughing
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Sekaro



Joined: 12 Nov 2018
Posts: 383
PostPosted: Tue May 28, 2024 5:51 am Reply with quote
Even for a training arc, I have to agree that very little has actually happened in this episode. I also found it funny that the biggest takeaway that the NPC Slayers got from this training is that they are indeed trash who won't be of any help against the upper ranks but hey we'll try our best to become the best meatshields ever... Pop off I guess.

From the way last episode ended, I was under the impression that we'll delve deeper into Shinobu's backstory this episode which I was kinda looking forward to but we got this instead.
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gumbaloom



Joined: 11 Sep 2017
Posts: 301
PostPosted: Sun Jun 02, 2024 10:11 am Reply with quote
Welcome to Hashira of the week week 2

Hope this fan service filler isn’t at the expense of 133 - 136 being galloped at hyper speed
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NeverConvex
Subscriber



Joined: 08 Jun 2013
Posts: 2461
PostPosted: Sun Jun 02, 2024 1:02 pm Reply with quote
Man, this is rough. I guess the price we pay for off-screening Zenitsu is episode lengths padded almost ala One Piece...

With so little happening, it did make me stop and wonder: is there anyone useful in a fight in the Demon Slayer Corps, outside of our 3 triagonists and the Hashira? Based on the training eps, the drop-off after them seems to be immediately all the way down to the Corps zerglings. EDIT: Oh, there's the insect lady's apprentice; forgot about her.
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