Kimetsu no Yaiba: Hashira Geiko Hen – Episode 07 & 08 Review (END)

「岩柱 悲鳴嶼行冥」 (“Iwabashira: Himejima Gyoumei”)
“Stone Hashira Gyomei Himejima”

THE FINAL PUSH

The latest Kimetsu no Yaiba makes one last push to get Tanjiro caught up on his training before Muzan appears. In the last bid to get better acquainted with the remaining Hashira, we’re given a backstory on how Himejima came to be a Hashira.

It was nice to see a little more of Himejima’s backstory considering that he was the last Hashira we got to get better acquainted with. Everyone else has had a reasonable enough day in the sun except for him, so getting more of him was a pleasant surprise this time. That being said, it was a bit odd to hear how he talked about the one kid who survived the tragedy that happened to his found family. The boy who got the others killed to spare himself might’ve taken the extra steps to make himself unsympathetic, and Himejima still bears the guilt of not reassuring the children who didn’t stay behind him when told.

But when he talks about the little girl who couldn’t explain properly through the trauma what happened, he places a ton of responsibility on her to make things right. I get that being accused of murder due to her testimony was terrible, but being like “I was expecting her to thank me, but this is the thanks I get!?” is an unusual takeaway from this because it frames this entire flashback as Himejima blaming all those kids for not being alive or clear-headed enough to help him explain properly to the cops what happened.

Outside of this, it was nice to get a few last moments with the rest of the cast before Muzan made all those smoke machines do the heavy-lifting to make him look cool. Zenitsu always gets well-deserved guff for existing, but in his serious moments, he comes away looking pretty sharp, so I’m looking forward to Zenitsu getting a neater plotline to work with. Sanemi having to do the most to keep himself from killing Tanjiro was also funny considering how Tanjiro’s pure intentions make it look like he’s passive-aggressively trying to get on Sanemi’s bad side.

「柱・結集」 (“Hashira: Kesshuu”)
“The Hashira Unite”

FINAL IMPRESSIONS

It’s hard to talk about the last episode without reflection on this season as a whole. There are a lot of high tensions over Kimetsu no Yaiba as a franchise, especially with the expectations that Ufotable keeps in mind as they adapt the series. This season exacerbated these tensions even higher given that the Hashira training arc doesn’t translate well for an eight episode TV anime.

While we were able to get valuable information on Giyu, Sanemi, Himejima, and Obanai, a bulk of the runtime has been invested in Tanjiro left mulling about and entertaining the grunts or coming up with ways to spice up the Hashira training seminars. Because of this, Tanjiro spends most of his time catching up with the Hashira who we already know from top to bottom. It’s always nice to see Mitsuri and a kinder Muichiro, but not every Hashira is Mr. or Ms. Personality.

The crux of the issue is that, when the show isn’t covering material from the manga’s Hashira training arc, it comes off like an adaptation of an Official Character Book. As someone who liked the manga, it doesn’t feel nice to constantly check the clock while an episode is still going on, and I don’t like that the show managed to make these really neat characters a chore to be around.

This final episode also cuts to the core of the show’s biggest complaints as it functions as a marketing tool to get you hyped for the final arc’s movie trilogy. There’s a cynical flair to the finale as it pulled all the stops to make Muzan sucking the demon slayers into the Infinity Castle this big, grandiose teaser on the quality you can expect from the upcoming movies.

It feels like the final episode’s animation spectacle was meant to be a drawn-out apology for how dragged out the last couple seasons felt in the TV anime format. The problem with this kind of statement, however, is that it tells you that the series is too big to fail, so you’ll be getting as much Kimetsu no Yaiba as they’re willing to give you regardless of whether it justifies needing that much material to work.

Did the people who saw To the Swordsmith Village and To the Hashira Training in theaters luck out because they watched a version of the arcs that weren’t padded out? Is there a need to adapt movies into TV shows if the extensions made to them only feed into the general apathy about the Kimetsu no Yaiba anime having more style than substance? Is it even fair to say there’s more style than substance if they’re trying their damndest to make the new substance worth the extra episodes? There are enough fans that would tell you the substance added is worth the watch and that’s completely valid. I’m just personally worn out as someone trying their best to treat Tanjiro mulling about or drawn-out sakuga like a spectator sport.