I didn't enjoy this much, to be honest. While initially I was intrigued by the premise of a demonslayer-brother and a demon-sister on an adventure together, by the end I was tired. Granted, I took some breaks watching this, so maybe some things were harder to follow for me, but the plot felt very meandering, sort of drifting aimlessly from place to place without a clear direction. After Tanjirou completes his training, he ends up at some sort of tournament, and then, a city where he meets the big baddy, then gets attacked and leaves, and then there's a village with a minor demon problem, then there's a house with a demon in it that he spends a long long time on, and then he winds up in the woods fighting a Blood Moon, and then he's at the Demon Slayer base. Locations seem to change on whims without ceremony, driven by happenstance.

But that's how a most of the plot seemed to me. Tenjirou's overall goal is to kill the demon that turned his sister into a demon (the biggest, baddest demon, naturally), but his plan to do so beyond his training arc seems to be wandering around until he either bumps into him or someone who knows him (which seems to work a lot, strangely). There's not much else I want to say about the plot other than that I ended up losing investment because a lot of the time I couldn't tell what Tanjirou was trying to do or what the story was moving towards.

That said, I did enjoy some aspects of the story, and the overall message of the sibling's strong bonds overcoming their seemingly opposing natures is wholesome and precious in ways that I love, I just wish we'd seen more of it.

Which brings us to characters, and unfortunately I find just about everyone unlikable. Nezuko is likable, of course. How could she not be, she's barely in the show and her devotion and struggle to 'never harm humans' despite increasingly unreasonable circumstances is unavoidably endearing. Tanjirou means well but rarely says or does anything interested or unexpected. He's not that smart or clever, but moreso compared to the rest of the cast. All of the big demon slayers are utterly bonkers apart from Bigger-Tanjirou-kun. Zenitsu is so aggressively incompetent for every second he's on screen that giving him a pitiful backstory 18 episodes in doesn't come close to redeeming him, especially when his near-death experiences ultimately result in no character growth. Inosuke I actually did enjoy, not because he's not bonkers because he totally is, but because he actually gets a (minor) character arc where he realizes he's not as strong as he thinks and devotes himself to getting stronger as a result. He actually gets humbled, mellows out, and carries that experience forward. I-- hold on. ...Is Inosuke the only character in this show with an actual character arc? I think he might be. What a missed opportunity. Of course Tanjirou grows stronger and more 'resolved' during the training arc but the core of who he is, his worldview, is never challenged or questioned in any real way.

Part of the reason is, as I mentioned before, everyone who opposes him is off their rocker. From the deliberately nonsense demons to the equally deranged demon slayers, they're all so extreme in their presentation that Tenjirou's straightforward sensibilities hardly waver under the scrutiny. For example, towards the end of the show

Spoiler, click to view

all the biggest, baddest demon slayers hold Tanjirou on 'trial' for protecting his sister, and their wild-eyed proof of her non-aggression is to stab her repeatedly and drizzle blood on her and if she drinks it, she's a threat.

Like, this is so obviously biased and cruel that it's impossible for Tanjirou or the audience to doubt if he's actually doing the right thing, because at that point even if she did lash out, she'd be well within her rights to do so by any reasonable standard. So no matter what happens, Tanjirou's moral foundation is rock-solid despite the allegedly questionable things he's doing. He's always morally right, because everyone else in this world is morally bankrupt.

This doesn't really fit anywhere else, but I just wanted to throw in, I don't get Shinobou's character at all. She gets shown as this rather psychotic lady that enjoys teasying and tormenting her demons as she kills them, taking great joy in doing so, and seems fully in favor of killing Nezuko right until the master demon slayer says no. This behavior conveys that she doesn't value demon lives and find them unworthy of consideration. Then, suddenly, she has a tragic backstory and it turns out that what she really wants is to save the demons and find a way for them to coexist. It just struck me as odd and not consistent with the prior characterization. Then again, a lot of the villains get a similar treatment; while alive they act horrible and remorseless, going out of their way to do bad things, but once they're defeated we get a sappy sad story explaining why they are this way. While I like the idea of the demons being more sympathetic than they first appear, I guess it seems like a tough sell when they act so heinously on their own volition while they have power. It would have been nice to see these backstories shaping their actions more instead of being a last-minute addition to prompt sympathy.

Also, Tanjirou (and everyone else) narrates everything that's going on in every show situation constantly. If you're used to that sort of thing it might not bother you, but I found it quite annoying. There's so little to engage with, as what little is happening in the story is constantly being processed by Tanjirou for the audience, so you don't even have to think for yourself to follow the plot. Autopilot let's goooo!

Animation's great, you don't need to read a review to know that.

I've heard this anime praised for it's fights; while they are artistically lovely to watch, there aren't actually that many of them, and most of them are pretty forgetable. Despite the emphasis on fighting, the combat mechanics for this setting seem narrow and bland. In short, it seems that generally demons can only be killed when decapitated by a demon slayer's blade. Demons are able to make their skin harder coresponding roughly to their power level, and demon slayers can make their blades cut harder things by using certain moves. I'm not sure which moves are supposed to be sharper than others, and therein lies the rub. The typical fight will feature a lot of back and forth, Tanjirou narrating how rough he's got it, reminding himself to breath, and jumping around until enough time has passed. Then he'll perform one of his moves and it either will or will not cut the demon. If the move fails, the process repeats until he finds the move necessary or simply wills himself to win or gets bailed out by another character. Again, it's nicely animated but there's not a lot to process.

Oh, and in the final big fight Tanjirou asspulls a prior

Spoiler, click to view

unheard of ability out of nowhere at and uses it to defeat the boss. Except not actually because the boss decapitated himself...before Tenjirou could...and thus...is fine. At least until Giyuu shows up suddenly and actually kills him.

I have no idea why they added a deus ex machina only to nullify it and then pull ANOTHER deus ex machina, but they did. They could have had him pull off the cut the same way he sliced through the boulder back at the start, but no, we get new powers granted and explained and justified in the moment right as they're needed. They even lampshade it. "Why did I think of that just then?" Bizarre.

Overall...I'm having a hard time putting a feeling to this show. I don't think I'd watch it again, there's too many episodes and not enough happening in them. Most of the cast is tiresome to watch and overall it just doesn't do anything for me.