SPOILERS

Let’s start off with the good.
This series started out with a lot of promise. Our main character, Tanjiro, goes through an intense trauma with his entire family being killed and the only family member being left alive was turned into a demon. Despite all of this, he still shows kindness towards demons because they were once human. This was a very strong start to a series that had a lot of potential with interesting concepts and characters. The characters, although very one note, were lovable. The breathing styles were very cool and looked great being drawn. The first few arcs were great such as the Entertainment District Arc and the Mugen Train Arc. Although showing the demon’s sad backstories before their death was formulaic and got old fast, I enjoyed this series. All in all, when I first started this series, I was looking forward to seeing story elements develop further.

BUT THEY NEVER DO. Character development feels rushed and incomplete. Concepts such as breathing get a half-assed explanation and origin.

I could get into a lot of the characters but I want to talk specifically about Tanjiro and Nezuko, Inosuke and Zenitsu, and the Pillars.

Tanjiro and Nezuko were an interesting dynamic that felt genuine and authentic. It felt like Nezuko was going to develop further as a character as the story progressed toward the direction of her finally becoming a human again. But in the end, Nezuko becomes human, says a few words, and the story ends. It felt so rushed. It felt like Nezuko was never really a character but just a symbol of Tanjiro’s end goal. This would have been fine if not for the sprinkling of glimpses of characterization for her throughout the story. Tanjiro was great at the beginning. He felt like a character like Gon from Hunter x Hunter. He was this character with a one track mind and was morally good most of the time. The interesting part of his character was that he was kind unapologetically towards demons. But his attitude towards Muzan was a complete 180. It was jarring to see such a kind character like Tanjiro go completely apeshit at Muzan and while yes, Muzan is a piece of shit, it felt weird for Tanjiro to do this. It also doesn’t help that his bloodline aspect was poorly explained.

Inosuke and Zenitsu both had character arcs that felt incomplete and rushed. At the end of the day, I wanted more from Inosuke and Zenitsu. Zenitsu, for example, had made a completely new form of his breathing form. I would have loved to see Zenitsu actually develop it and grow as a character and not be shoe-horned into the series. It’s worse for Inosuke, whose development felt completely shafted and incomplete. By the end of the series, I felt betrayed by the complete lack of care when it came to handling these characters. It’s a shame too because they were set up to be two of the main trio of characters but they felt nothing more than side characters.

The Pillars were an interesting concept and they were definitely very interesting characters. But again, character development felt too rushed and too shoehorned to be called meaningful or integral to the story. In the final arc, almost all of the Pillars were eliminated and because of this, the author decided to shoehorn their development right before they died.

If you’ve read this series (I’m sorry that you did), you would know that a lot of these complaints are in the final arc of the series. This is because I feel the final arc killed the series. The final series takes what complaints I had of the show and cranked it up to 100. Things like showing sad backstories before character deaths are extremely, extremely prevalent in the final arc in the Pillar members. The lack of explanation runs rampant in the final arc with questions still being unanswered like how spirits interact with the cast. And when they do explain concepts like how Tanjiro’s family bloodline works, it feels nothing more than a shoe-horned explanation than a well executed plot point.

Muzan was terrible. He was a lackluster villain with a goal that was simply just to get stronger and live longer. Nothing special at all.

The actual ending was so unsatisfactory in so many ways. If I had to compare it to something, I would compare it to the ending of Bleach. It just felt so off.

If I had a word to describe this series, it would be shallow. Everything was very surface level without any real substance and the potential that this series showed in the beginning just faded away. I feel pretty angry and sad that this series ended the way it did.