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「縁壱零式」 (Yoriichi Zeroshiki)
“Yoriichi Type Zero”
The Swordsmith arc of Kimetsu no Yaiba starts off a bit on the slower side as Tanjiro gets better acquainted with Kotetsu, one of the swordsmiths of the village. But as he gets a better understanding of himself and the training doll he inherited, he also learns more about Muichiro Tokito than he would’ve liked to.
IT’S A SURPRISE TOOL THAT WILL HELP US LATER
As an expository training episode, this episode served more to help introduce the cold Mist Hashira Muichiro Tokito and the young swordsmith Kotetsu. You aren’t really getting the best of Muichiro though because he can’t let his abject cruelty go as he smacks around both Kotetsu and Tanjiro for interfering with his training. His bird isn’t much better because they’re just overly sassy and vindictive toward Tanjro. It might take a little more time for Tanjiro’s undying optimism to thaw the frost in his soul.
For the most part, it was Kotetsu’s episode to shine as he was able to open up to Tanjiro about the anxiety of living up to his family name and inheriting a mechanical doll as the one family heirloom attributed to him. And because the doll was modeled after someone that Tanjiro was energetically aligned with, it gives a clearer image of the kind of clairvoyance that helps assist Tanjiro in his training.
Speaking of, because it’s a training episode, we wound up seeing a lot of Tanjiro having to dig deep into his subconscious for the inspiration to hone his senses toward outsmarting the doll. I recently read something that kinda soured me on the action segments about shonen choreography and how much of it emphasizes whipping out a couple of big special moves rather than trading a series of blows. This episode’s main training is emphasizing the big sweeping moves Tanjiro can manage to land on the doll, so choreography wasn’t exactly what was going to be celebrated in this particular training montage.
But on the bright side, it is still nice to see how expressive much of the artwork is in making the characters flow through the wind as they slash at the doll. Not to mention how it’s been much more pleasant to see how Tanjiro acts in these last couple of episodes since his personality really shines through as they tinker around with his precocious, spiteful, and pained expressions.
While his actions are usually that of a plain goody-two-shoes, his personality is far pettier and more reactive in that he has a hard time fitting in when he butts into everyone’s affairs. It makes for some fun banter as Tanjiro tries to make sense of why people treat him differently depending on how much they appreciate his white knight tendencies. Hopefully, the next episode gives us a little more to chew on with the reveal that the doll was hiding a legendary sword.
Omake:
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ED Sequence
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ED: 「コイコガレ」 (Koi Kogare) by Man with a Mission and Milet