Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc
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tintor2
 Posts: 1817 |
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This whole new demon appears reminds me of the Cell and Buu arc where Toriyama kept extending the amount battles by making the villains get an upgrade with the latter losing all the personality that made him interesting. Cell also became so weird when absorbing the androids rather than being a monster who enjoys eating people. In fact, Kid Buu lasted for less than a single volume so Toei tried to extend his screentime as much as possible.
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MrJeremyT
Posts: 4 |
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I'll start off with saying that I tend to agree with a lot of James' opinions on shows and a lot of his weekly breakdowns are excellent insights. However, I am getting so sick and tired of every one of his reviews for this show being "it sucks." I'm assuming that James has forever despised shows like Dragon Ball and his poor shonen heart has long been shattered and therefore is incapable of enjoying the simpler non-high-art shows for the masses.
I mean, we get it, Demon Slayer is not high-art. We all know the story is middling to bad at times. That's not why it's so popular and arguably one of the biggest "anime" franchises in the world. I just think sometimes the "reviewers" on this site need to take a moment away from actively disdaining the shows they're assigned to watch and think about the fact that maybe there's a reason so many people wanted it to be covered in the first place. (Side note: it's not just James' reviews this season either. There's a few different shows this season that are getting the "this show is actively bad, I hate having to review it, so I'll make you hate it too" kind of reviews and that's not productive for the reviewer, the reader, or the website. There's a fine line between the satirical descent into madness that was James' covering of The Fruit of Evolution and this zero-effort show bashing) |
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Guy Tizio
Posts: 58 |
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Let me get this figured out, guys.
But if this anime makes you so disgusted, so much so that every week you do nothing but complain about nonsense .... but why do you keep doing it? Don't follow him anymore and you will be much more serene. |
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Guy Tizio
Posts: 58 |
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But here we are talking about the main villain. Hantengu, on the other hand, is only a subordinate, whose power to generate clones makes him particularly difficult to deal with. That's all. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1388 |
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It's funny you bring up Dragonball, because for as many pacing problems as the original anime had, something that series was really good at was building up to its fights. Pretty much any Z-era climactic battle would take multiple episodes to play out, but they were always the big payoff for longer stories that worked their way up to that. Goku vs Frieza was protracted as hell, sure, but it was a lot easier to swallow because there had been so much tension built up. There was a whole adventure with the other characters avoiding or taking on Frieza's forces. There were smaller but still threatening enemies that Goku and the others had to overcome. It wasn't just 3 episodes of the crew arriving on Namek and then immediately fighting Frieza for another 10. Also, if your argument is that James has some obligation to be more generous with his reviews, starting off with "we all know the story is bad, but-" isn't a great move. If you like Demon Slayer more than James, good for you! You're more than welcome to disagree with him, and express what you like about this show. But if your argument is that James needs to launder his opinion because the show is popular, or that a popular show should only be covered by somebody who will uncritically gush about it, then I think you'd best go elsewhere. |
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Hal14
 Posts: 664 Location: Heart of africa |
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Yeah, this is a really awful take. It would almost be better if you thought Demon slayer was the second coming of sliced bread, and that's why you were upset it was reviewed poorly. Almost. But complaining that it should be reviewed better because it is "popular for a reason" is weird. You know what else is massively popular? Procedural shows. The kind of cop/lawyer/hospital shows that play in waiting rooms and receptions because you need little to no foreknowledge/investment to follow them. Those are incredibly popular but how often are they mentioned as amongst the best tv shows? I don't think DS is on the level of a procedural. In fact, i think DS is a genuinely good series. However, I feel this arc is very poorly paced and the tv adaptation has done it no favours (in that area), and like James said: it would have been better as a film. |
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MrJeremyT
Posts: 4 |
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My point about it being "popular for a reason" is that despite the mediocre story, THERE CLEARLY IS something about the show that transcends its individual parts. The animation, the storyboarding, the legitimately great use of CGI and CGI integration that ufotable has become known for are all excellent topics to cover; and each episode inevitably doing better or worse in each of these aspects is content ready to be analyzed and evaluated. Yet it absolutely feels like all that gets reviewed is the pacing and story which are constantly bashed on. Perhaps my complaint is, more specifically, that these feel like negative reviews where only the negative points get talked about and any positives are brushed aside or ignored completely. Literally the most positive thing stated from this week's review is this sentence: "The only good news, at this point, is that we only have a few weeks left in the season, meaning there are only so many opportunities left for Demon Slayer to waste our time before finally getting to the damned point." And honestly, that's quite a depressing statement from a reviewer. I am unsure about how much freedom the reviewers have when it comes to which shows to cover, but if they truly dislike a show so much, perhaps it should go to someone else or be dropped from the review list if this is the result. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2293 |
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I've never really understood the advocacy for reviewers to only cover shows they like. Like -- what would be the point to the criticism of a critic hand-picked because they'd gush about whatever media? Feels like it largely removes the point of 'reviews' in the first place.
Maybe there is a kind of separate goal -- mmm, to parasocially feel like you're super psyched about the same show as the reviewer, and just to feel good that your love for it is being reinforced? I guess I can see some appeal in that, but I think I prefer the idea that a reviewer might disagree with me, even vehemently, and could challenge my p.o.v. on a show (although in this particular case I think James is spot on; all the lovely CGI in the world can't redeem the pacing and dialogue of this arc, IMO). |
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James_Beckett
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 274 Location: USA |
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Okay, but here's the thing: I've been covering this show for *years*. Since Episode 1 of Season 1. I've written literally thousands of words about the show's quality art direction, it's top-tier production values, etc. We all know that the show does those things well, and that it does them well consistently enough that there is little point in me rehashing the same points over and over. So, when we've reached the point where all of the other elements of the show that don't involve those aesthetic standards have begun to dip significantly - the writing, the pacing, the actual choreography of those well animated fights, the overall delivery of the story experience - yeah, the reviews are going to skew negative, because the show itself is doing a worse job of telling its story than it did in past seasons, at least in my opinion. For folks that disagree, that's all well and good, because opinions are subjective and all that. To argue that I am somehow being lazy in my critical approach of the show, simply because I am not devoting x-number of words every week to repeatedly describing the virtues of the production that we're all already well aware of, is both silly and insulting, and for the exact same reason that it is silly for anyone to say that I should just stop watching the show if I don't like this season very much. That is not how this job works, at all. |
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TheSleepyMonkey
Posts: 894 |
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Animation? Yes, even though it's still overrated in that aspect. CGI integration? Eh, debatable, honestly. Storyboards? Not at all, DS' storyboards are mediocre/terrible for most of the time. Only the Toshiyuki Shirai episodes are genuinely great in that regard. |
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Hal14
Posts: 664 Location: Heart of africa |
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James has said what i could say better but another thing to add is that even if he'd praised the wood dragon or the rest of the prod. values, people would still have fixated on the rest of the review. Frankly, i don't think this episode was that impressive visually (compared to the rest of the season). DS has a consistently above average to high animation, but we grow used to consistency so it stops being something to talk about every episode. In fact, it's not something that needs to be said every episode; even a consistently bad looking show will eventually have other talking points. But the pacing of this season, while a bit off from the start, has only gotten worse, which is why it deserves mentioning again.
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1204 |
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I think you have "Reviewer" confused with "Yes Man", which none of the reviewers on this site are. Clearly a negative review on something you don't care about is haha "satirical" while one for a show you enjoy is "bashing". There are many avenues on the internet for you to find others that will nod their heads in agreement with you on how awesome something is every week. |
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Unculturedman
Posts: 57 |
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I’m glad people are finally coming to the conclusion that this series is terrible. Modern shonen battle manga is a joke. There’s nothing thoughtful or sincere going on in these series anymore. This series always felt like the most rushed, barebones, poorly plotted、by the numbers, factory produced shonen story I’ve ever seen. The insane popularity of it continues to confound me, because it’s clearly just the anime’s production values that keep it from being just another forgettable modern battle shonen.
Last edited by Unculturedman on Mon May 22, 2023 1:43 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5504 Location: Mexico |
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There was a lot I hated about this episode, but the breaking point for me was when everything came to a halt so Genya could have a full two-minute flashback to explain to us in extremely slow motion how the four emotions combined as if Tanjiro saying "i can't feel the other four" wasn't enough to make us infer what had happened. And if that wasn't bad enough, Genya had to narrate the whole thing??? Those dialogues 100% could've been cut, it looked so goofy old school shonen to have the play by play of that whole already unnecessary scene.
Another thing that bothers me is that we've now spent a solid 20+ minutes watching Tokito in the water jug doing nothing whilst Mitsuri hasn't been seen in like three whole episodes? It's already bad enough that the one female Pillar we've seen since season 1 gets relegated to fighting minions but she doesn't even get screentime. Instead of Tokito floating motionless in the jar and the 5th moon mocking him for the 20th time, they could've added a new scene of Mitsuri fighting and protecting the villagers or something, they could've had really cool action scenes with her whip katana last week to liven things up and have all the Tokito focus this week without making it so obvious that they're stalling to fill in the runtime |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2293 |
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When it cut to the kid trying to cut him out of the bubble, I honestly thought Mitsuri was going to show up and save water-bubble guy from his swimming lessons---uhh, phrased this poorly, but I mean that I thought it was going to be Mitsuri, not the kid, that attacked the bubble.
I assume they're saving her for something more significant in this arc? It will be really weird if they introduced her only to have her do nothing but fight some minor trash baddies. |
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