Perhaps I’ve just grown up. When I watched Season 1 of Demon Slayer a few years ago, I genuinely had a great time with it. Episode 19 had me incredibly emotional, and I was in awe over the world-class animation by Studio Ufotable. The Mugen Train movie was incredible as well, with a very emotional scene at the end. I enjoyed Season 2, but not at the same level of Season 1, since it was mostly fight scenes with very flashy animation. It was not until this season where I noticed how garbage the dialogue is in this series, and maybe it’s just because I’ve watched much more anime since Season 2 of Demon Slayer. The dialogue is just terribly done, with lines like “I slashed him!”, and “I got slashed!” We have eyes, we can see what’s going on, there is absolutely zero need for a good chunk of the things the characters say. I’m convinced the dialogue is just there so the episode run time gets padded and they can make additional seasons of the show by stretching the events of the arc.

People love to throw around the phrase “carried by animation” if they have a negative stance on Demon Slayer, and I admit, I’ve been one of those people before. In Season 1 and 2, I believed Demon Slayer had one of the best animation productions in our modern generation. This season, I cannot with a good conscience, say that this show is even “carried by animation” anymore. Sure, there is a fair share of sakuga to go around, but nothing that really transcended previous seasons, as the studio alluded to. The CGI is indeed an issue, but not in the way most people say. Having CGI is not inherently a bad thing, and the CGI in this season of Demon Slayer wasn’t bad, but given how much of a focus what on 2D animation in the past seasons, it just feels uncharacteristic of the show, and a bit of a letdown. The animation is still great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just not enough for me to really get a kick out of it. The fight scenes also felt more uncreative than previous seasons. Remember when in Season 1, the settings were more interesting, and the fights weren’t all just screaming in the air, and slashing, and there was some strategy to the fights? There’s none of that anymore. It’s just riding the hype.

The story for this arc felt the most shallow of the seasons so far, and one that felt very “empty” to me, without a real objective other than killing the demons that pop up every episode. It was also a very backstory heavy season, with three backstories almost back to back. A problem I find in both this show and in Hell’s Paradise is that they try to characterize the characters by giving them a dark backstory where either all their families die, they were on the brink of death, or some kind of sob story. Just because they had a dark past, I’m supposed to suddenly care about the character now? I just don’t understand why every single character needs to have a sad backstory, it gets repetitive quick, and in my opinion, it’s a terrible way to give development to the characters, as it doesn’t reflect on what they’re doing in the here and now, but just to play on the viewer’s emotions.

The characters this season were extremely unmemorable. The villains this season were also very annoying with their antics and hugely inflated dialogue-heavy moments. They feel completely un-threatening, and completely devoid of any semblance of depth other than gimmicky actions of being in a vase, crying every two seconds, or whatever else they were doing. The amount of needless dialogue some of the villains spouted just made episodes go from 5 minutes to 25 minutes, just for the sake of padding the episode, and then ending with a cliffhanger.

All in all, this season felt like a soulless, passionless pile of uninspired drivel, and Mitsuri was just there to provide fan service for how bland the writing was. The flashy animation can only take the series so far, and this time around, it wasn’t nearly as flashy either. I probably have more enjoyment just laughing at how dumb some of the writing is.

Hopefully this is the worst that this series has to offer. I want to enjoy this show, I truly do. No problem if you like this season of course, nothing against fans of the show, we all have varying taste. If anything, if Demon Slayer can keep the lights on at Studio Ufotable and fund their next project, whether it’s more Type-Moon content, or the Genshin anime, I guess that’d be a nice trade-off.

Here's a fishie to brighten up your day though.