I had had my eye on this for some time, but never got to watching it. Now I finally got my chance, and boy was it entertaining! I frankly shouldn’t have to recommened this to you more if you watched the series first as it should have been compelling enough to get you to watch this anyway. But if you haven’t already (like me a little while ago), then by all means feast your eyes upon this glorious animation and story.

So let me ask you this if you’ve already watched it did Tanjiro get his sword back? Hopefully I’m not the only one who noticed it still embedded inside the demon while he made his escape. As an afterthought I think that might have been done by design. They probably wanted to give out the impression that despite losing his hard earned sword, Tanjiro was much more engrossed in other emotions which were unavoidable at the time. Well anyway, I cannot imagine getting back his sword would be part of the continuation of the story. Surely that part has been shrugged off. Alright, let me try to forget it happened.

So was the heaviness of the emotional impact really felt? I felt the movie did its part to emphasize on it. But was it really deep enough to make that lasting impact that viewers would remember? Maybe it’s just me and I’ve stopped feeling emotions, but I didn’t think there would be a death of an important person as part of the story but probably the worst part would be I thought I should have gotten sadder at the loss. At least it seemed like the movie wanted to invoke those emotions in me, but unfortunately it wasn’t successful in doing so to a large extent. Ignoring my personal callousness, my opinion is that it was due to the lack of character development. I mean there weren’t that many moments to develop Rengoku’s character in a meaningful way, so maybe there should not have been such a moment in the first place.

My only worry is, I want this anime to flesh out characters for maximum impact, something that other shouen anime like Naruto for instance excel at. I feel like they are torn between delivering as much as the story as possible in as little time as possible. And it’s clearly showing in the lackluster character development.

The movie seemed to come out like a filler episode, but it felt like they didn’t want to portray it like that, and so to bring some impact to the story, some big change needed to be brought. That was the probable reason behind the death.

There was also no clear motive in mind for several of the characters it seemed. Like the Upper three demon appearing out of nowhere just seemed like a ploy to extend the movie, and supposedly kill Rengoku. Also, they have stopped reminding the audience the true purpose behind Tangiro’s journey which is to turn Nezuko back into a human. But that is kind of acceptable as this was more of a movie, which shouldn’t have to cover various other nuances of the parent story.

In any case, it was a really fun watch. The fight scenes were epic as expected, and there was the usual comic relief taking place among the main characters.

That said, bear with me but I have a few more critical remarks to make. This is quite a concern for me though. I observed that barely any character development happenned. The only character that we got to know was Rengoku, and even he was killed in action. So in terms of the story, we basically did not learn anything new. Except of course, we saw the Upper Three demon who seemed so keen to fight Rengoku and get him to convert himself into a demon. I’m sure there would be some reveal later about why an Upper three was sent to fight them, but the movie made no effort to describe that on its own.

In fact, this movie could have been two separate episodes each with one demon fight dedicated to it. And after the ending, it really felt to me that something was missing. The story lacked the closure, tying up the loose ends or at least a promise to tie them up in upcoming seasons. However, the Demon Slayer series continues to deliver tasteful fights that are always enjoyable to watch despite its other shortcomings.

My final thoughts are, I had a good time and I would recommend it to you if you’ve watched the first season. Cheers folks, stay safe and binge some anime!