Ok, I may have cried A LITTLE when Nezuko was reunited with Tanjiro...
But that's all to say, I do think this season was probably my least favourite compared to the others so far:
I loved seeing more of the Hashiras in battle, but missed seeing Inosuke and Zenitsu, who are supposed to be main characters alongside our brother/sister duo. They bring a lot more of the comedy aspect to the show, which I also missed.
The pacing of this season felt WAY too slow for me, for some reason. Like this could've been done in half the episodes, or something. Overall way too many flashbacks to ground the "newer" characters that appeared-the attack on the village started in episode 4, which meant we had 7 whole episodes to finish up those battles - the same amount of episodes Mugen Train's arc was, and the timeline for that arc is about the same (a day).
As always, the animation has never been a let-down. It's so great, especially in the moments it counts.
Finally getting some insight into how Muzen became a demon is fine, but I do wish we'd gotten it a little sooner, I guess? I don't know. He's not really that impressive as an overall antagonist for me, tbh. He just... Hates people and thinks they're inferior, and is striving to become the most powerful demon? Yeah, ok...
The demons were meh, too. Hatengu and Gyokko felt uninspired, just lazily written villains. I wanted them dead so much quicker than any of the others we'd seen previously, especially the former.
What about the marks the demons were talking about? Are they gonna explain those? Because I still am confused on that whole thing, and I'm sure the manga has touched on it more.
I think my main issue for the whole thing is the power creep/dynamic between the humans and the demons - there didn't feel like there were any big stakes in these fights this season. Yes, the demons are difficult to beat because they're upper rank, but Uzui had to literally retire after becoming essentially disabled (he lost an eye and a hand!) during the fight with a slightly weaker (or lower level) demon... And all our protagonists were at least on his level by the time we got to this arc. Nothing of the sort really happened this time around, even though we got very close w/ Kanroji.
All this to say, I'm still keen to see how this goes in the next season. While the quality of the writing has gone down, the animation is still on-par and it's at the very least enjoyable to watch/binge.
Review by KiBlockedParentSpoilers2024-04-21T12:27:56Z
Ok, I may have cried A LITTLE when Nezuko was reunited with Tanjiro...
But that's all to say, I do think this season was probably my least favourite compared to the others so far:
I think my main issue for the whole thing is the power creep/dynamic between the humans and the demons - there didn't feel like there were any big stakes in these fights this season. Yes, the demons are difficult to beat because they're upper rank, but Uzui had to literally retire after becoming essentially disabled (he lost an eye and a hand!) during the fight with a slightly weaker (or lower level) demon... And all our protagonists were at least on his level by the time we got to this arc. Nothing of the sort really happened this time around, even though we got very close w/ Kanroji.
All this to say, I'm still keen to see how this goes in the next season. While the quality of the writing has gone down, the animation is still on-par and it's at the very least enjoyable to watch/binge.