Kimidtsu no Yaiba somehow manages to keep lowering its quality every season. The overall quality of the production has dropped drastically since season 2 with this most recent installment, and the writing quality of the narrative and characters has gotten worse too. The latter being quite surprising as two of the most insufferable characters in the show, possibly the entire medium (Inosuke and Zenitsu), have been essentially written out of the show during this arc. Good riddance, though, those characters are an eyesore and them being absent is the only thing saving this installment from a 1/10

I’m sure it doesn’t take a filmographer to notice the decline in the quality of the CGI, in direction, and in the animation. The CGI fish and the wooden dragons are a big step back for the series; by CGI standards they are relatively good, but they heavily clash with the art style of the show, which makes it janky and disconcerting. This season’s fights are also a downgrade from the previous, no scene came even close to Tengen’s fight with the upper-moon, and that season boasted many scenes encroaching on that level, we didn’t get that here, which is very disappointing as that animation is the only redeeming feature of the series. It still isn’t terrible, there are a few cool moments here and there, but it is a far cry from what we have had previously, and a far cry from what a series such as this needs to be enjoyable. Doubly disappointing since we were promised next level animation.

The narrative of this season is simply atrocious, the premise is terribly uninteresting, and the repetitive nature of Demon Slayer’s arcs is just getting grating. Every arc in the series is where any major change unfolds in the world of Demon Slayer, every major event happens to occur wherever Tanjiro is by sheer coincidence, and for one reason or another, there is a hashira with him. It is repetitive, lazy writing, and it feels like the entire world revolves around Tanjiro, as nothing happens or progresses in areas where he isn’t, and characters that aren’t near Tanjiro do not progress either. This is something that most other shounen anime do better. It’s also notable how devoid of substance this arc really is, all that happened is some demons died and Tanjiro found a cool sword. How did so little happen in an entire arc?

Another big issue with the narrative of this season is how it was conveyed. For each of the “hype” fights, our heroes were getting thrashed, the momentum of the fight was interrupted with a ten-minute flash-back, the hashira gets buffed, and then they win. This last-minute characterization, like the rest of the writing was terribly lazy. It feels as if the author forgot to add anything beyond a quirky personality to his characters until it was their big moment. This was most terribly executed in Muichirou’s fight. He really got drowned for 3 episodes, impaled with a bunch of poisoned needles, and then managed to easily obliterate an upper-moon just because he had a shitty backstory play for the viewer? How contrived; the author knew nothing except that Muichirou needed to win, had no idea how to make it happen reasonably, and just willed it into existence. His powerup was also nonsensical, an asspull akin to that of Super Saiyan in Dragonball. This isn’t too different with Mitsuri, we received an information dump in the middle of the fight that came out of nowhere and this new information enabled her to win, she got the same shitty powerup, and the same forced victory. It’s a little more forgivable than Muichirou’s though as it wasn’t a free win like a power fantasy anime after all the nonsense, and because that victory still required the effort of the rest of the cast.

Now we have arrived at the biggest flaw of the franchise, the characters. All of the characters are surface level or shallow, mostly with one-note personalities. All but two characters in the entire season possess any charisma whatsoever, these characters being Haganezuka and Muichirou’s dead brother. The interactions between characters are widely uninteresting, and just contain boring, generic dialogue, pathetic attempts at comedy, or weak insults and idle threats. I would rejoice if someone could point out a line of dialogue with any real depth to it, because I didn’t seem to notice any, maybe it just isn’t there. Before dissecting the more noteworthy characters, I’ll just start with this, every side character besides the aforementioned two are absolutely garbage for one reason or another. Either insufferable like Zenitsu, or boring like Nezuko; pick your poison ig.

To begin with the least notable of the notable characters, Nezuko is still the biggest nothingburger in the medium, she doesn’t talk, and she does the same few things every time she is on-screen, don’t really understand how anyone can like her, she’s no more than an animal or a prop at this point. Zenitsu and Inosuke are hardly in this season but they’re still notably dogshit, moving on.

Muichirou… where to begin with this trainwreck. His entire arc can be summed up in two words, ‘contrived’ and ‘generic’. He began as an apathetic goon who made calculated emotionless decisions, and just did his job, he was a bit of an asshole, but it is what it is, and to be honest, that was him at his best. When he told Tanjiro his voice was annoying, I stood with him. A few words from the guy with an annoying voice that he did not care about in the slightest shook Muichirou to his core, and he recalled his tragic backstory. His backstory was just a pity party, and all it succeeded in doing was creating and killing off a character more compelling than himself, not to mention his backstory followed the same formula as nearly every other character in the series. His arc kind of played out like a Dhar Mann video, “you shouldn’t misjudge the asshole because he may have his own circumstances and secretly be a stellar dude”. His entire personality completely flips around after hearing those words from Tanjiro, and that sudden progression was poorly written and way too sudden, and also out of character for the guy, considering he is supposed to be apathetic and not care about what hooligans like Tanjiro have to say.

Genya Shinazugawa is a fresh contender for worst character in the series, with his horrible writing and terrible attitude. He has the same copy-paste backstory that the rest of the characters in the series share, an unlikable personality that even a mother couldn’t love, and more contrivances and conveniences than pretty much every other character. He is literally a non-character before the season starts, the most painfully irrelevant dude on the block, and he of all people possesses the legendary 12-gauge, as well as an unheard-of ability that frankly carries him. Yes, I know his ability was foreshadowed in season, but that doesn’t really make it good considering it belongs to a previously irrelevant and currently intolerable pillock.

The antagonists of this arc are god-awful, plain and simple. They aren’t menacing at all, they have cookie-cutter personalities, zero depth, awful designs, boring powers, and all the whimsy of a looney toons character. There isn’t a single good thing about them except for the fact that they are “strong”, but that is by no means a good argument for why a character is good. In fact, if one makes that argument, it would be pretty apparent that they have no media analysis skills to speak of. These two antagonists are indefensibly bad and the only thing they’re antagonizing is the quality of the show.

Mitsuri isn’t terrible like the rest mentioned before her, I don’t think she is any better than average, but she is definitely better than most demon slayer characters. Her personality is mostly a blatant attempt at waifu-bait, there isn’t much depth to her, and the fact that for some reason she is just a superhuman and also got the same poor writing in her fight as Muichirou did are all factors that hold her back a little bit, but that is balanced out by her backstory. This was the first unique backstory in the entire franchise, insane. She had a different reason for being a demon slayer than living a nice quiet life with a loving family before they all got slaughtered by a demon, and her backstory had nuance to it in the form of social commentary. Still poorly placed like Muichirou’s but a step in the right direction for sure.

Lastly, we have Tanjiro, the mediocre yet inoffensive protagonist. Like Mitsuri, Tanjiro isn’t utter garbage like the rest of the cast. He has a lot of issues such as falling into the unfunny comedy and poor interactions with other characters, but he can have decent interactions and moments too. I can’t think of anything too standout about the guy in terms of writing, he is just there, a little boring, but also a little admirable. Tanjiro and Mitsuri not being horrendous like the rest of the cast is the main saving grace of this season, besides the two blundering oafs being out of the show.

In summary, this season of Demon Slayer is riddled with issues, with very few redeeming qualities to speak of, and if you haven’t gotten to it yet, I’d advise against it.