Mixed Feelings
As someone who hasn't seen the Mugen Train movie, I went into the first half of the second season of Demon Slayer with an open mind, expecting it to be at least slightly better than the first one, because I really thought there MUST be something behind all the hype. Well...yeah, not really. The animation, art and sound was stellar, it was the same quality as the first season, and so was the weak plot, the although beautifully animated, but very simplistic battles, the tone issues, the repetitive, annoying "jokes", the emotionally manipulative, tearjerking scenes that without excemption fell flat on their faces this time(at least some scenes in the first season were kind of touching), the shallow, irritating characters and cringe dialogues.
So why the 5 star review, you may ask. I am a person who can, and is willing to see just why other people would like this anime. It's not only visually pleasing with beautiful soundtracks, it also provides mindless fun to those, who can turn off their brains enough to disregard every illogical/cliché/cringe moment and enjoy it (also to those who haven't seen much anime before and think that this is some completely unique, never-ever-done before story). I'm giving a 5 stars because I was partially able to turn my brain off and enjoy some parts of it.
Let's elaborate a little bit on why I think Demon Slayer is well...generic. Okay, there, I said it.
First of all, the characters.
Tanjiro is still the same self-righteous, courageous, kind, positive, motivational, respectful guy, he doesn't have a single flaw, a single human quality about him, he is just perfect, the prodigy, the chosen one, the Mary Sue (or Gary Stu), the protagonist of every (okay, most) shounen anime. The reason I am looking for "realistic" and "relatable" traits in characters is because that often helps me form a kind of connection with them, thus care about them more (although being "real" is not always necessarry for me to like a character). Tanjiro isn't only a very simplistic, cliché character, he is also just generally boring. Furthermore his screaming/whining/crying in the last episode instead of making me feel emotional, made me think "please shut up" and want to punch him in the face. Thanks Inosuke and Tanjiro for ruining a moment that maybe(!) could have been emotional.
Next character is Inosuke, although he was pretty irrelevant in this arc, but not enough, because he still managed to be annoying. Incredibly. Zenitsu barely had any screentime, but he surely made up for it! To be honest I didn't even mind him in season 1, maybe his whole "meme" personality just got boring since then, well it is Demon Slayer's style to overuse the same (barely or not at all funny from the start) jokes, switch tone and break the tension with them for some reason in like every episode. (And I am someone who has seen Gintama, I KNOW that humor can be good enough and timed just right for it to hit and not make you unable to take things seriously that are supposed to be taken seriously.) Honestly, I haven't managed to figure out what the point of Inosuke's character is, is he supposed to be solely a comic relief character? Because he hasn't gotten anything else going for him, and he s*cks even at that.
Zenitsu was even more irrelevant this arc, probably for most people's relief. Needless to say, he is still the same comic relief character who's only personality traits are that he is a pervert and he is a coward. Him perving over Nezuko is quite creepy too.
On that note I should probably mention Nezuko, but there is no need, since she isn't a character. She is a plot device and the mascot. Tanjiro literally petted her head once this arc, as if she was a dog! Well, she is, it turns out.
Next is Rengoku. Now I have to say that I usually like his character archetype. You know he is that one op, badass character (although Demon Slayer might have more than one, Giyuu and some other hashiras probably also qualify) who teaches and inspires mc. I did like his personality and found most of his moments cool so that was the main reason why I mildly enjoyed this arc. I still don't think he is a well-developed character and if you think about it, he is Tanjiro, but cooler. Maybe if Tanjiro was this character this anime could actually be enjoyable. You could see there is a problem when a guy that's only appeared in a couple of episodes and barely did anything is more interesting than your main characters combined, who we are supposed to be spending seasons with.
SPOILERS follow from here!
But that is the problem with Rengoku: no time to develope him, no time for the audience to warm up to him and next thing you know, he is dead. And his death wasn't even slightly emotional, because one: I was already cringing at that cliché flashback with his mother before, so her smiling at him had no effect on me, and second, as I mentioned, Tanjiro's stupid monologue about him "not having lost", crying and screaming made me annoyed and again, cringe a lot.
Lastly, let me talk about the laughable villains.
We got train guy (turns out his name is Enmu, but that isn't worth remembering), he had some motivations about climbing the demon hierarchy but well, s*cks to be him cuz our main characters' plot armors are thicker than Akaza's neck. He got a laughably pathetic death scene after he got finished by our whiney little kids, I actually expected the typical Demon Slayer treatment, the "look at this few minutes-long flashback from the time he was a human, look what a tragic man this one is and now cry". But nah, dude was just crying about how he couldn't kill the kids and as I was checking discussion posts I saw that he still managed to get sympathy out of some people. Unbelievable! I did say you gotta turn your brain off to enjoy this, but please keep at least a tiny portion of it on!
The other villain, Akaza, was stronger and he had Ishida Akira's voice so that's a positive. We don't know anything about him but it's not like anything deep is expected of him. Anyway, we will see him again, so Tanjiro can defeat him when he levelled up (this isn't a spoiler, just an "assumption").
That sums up the pathetic character writing of Demon Slayer, 2/10 and that 2 is all because Rengoku was kinda cool.
Now to the story, the dream sequences were jarringly bad, except for Rengoku's, I actually liked the details of his past and it was quite cool when he grabbed that girl still asleep, even though that was also obviously well...plot armor. Inosuke's and Zenitsu's dreams were pathetic attempts at making anyone laugh, and were as out of place as all the other "jokes". Tanjiro's dream could have been good, if only his awakening made any sense. First Nezuko tried waking him up with her demon flames, which I don't see why would work and they didn't even seem to work at first, but then he somehow realised he is in a dream, and later even his dead father's spirit appeared to give him some vague advise, which he of course immediately understood. (It was a totally logical assumption which he could have easily thought of by himself, sparing us from some cringe but nah, I guess a shounen protagonist using his brain just doesn't feel right.) Then Nezuko was somehow able to wake everyone else up quickly, but we aren't supposed to be thinking much about the how. The fight with the train demon was unnecessarrily long and boring, and it was time for Inosuke's plot armor to shine, when apparently he managed to not look into the eyes, even though they were literally EVERYWHERE.
Since Rengoku is apparently too op, he was left defending the people on the train, while the kids did the real work.
Then for the fight against Akaza, guess it was a decent one, even though the attacks are still painfully uncreative and uninteresting, if it wasn't for the beautiful animation...
I already expressed my thoughts on Rengoku's death scene, but let me rant a bit more about Tanjiro's stupidity, because his words didn't only make him look stupid, Akaza's reaction to his monolgue also made HIM look pathetic, and we don't want him to look pathetic, do we? We want him to look dangerous, and threatening, someone who has easily just killed one of the strongest demon slayers! Instead we have an angry stupid kid shouting after him that he had lost the battle and is a coward, even though it was blindly obvious that he had won and ran away because of the sun, and a stupid, prideful, childish, petty man getting all angry cuz a kid questioned his power, like some low-grade villain from a kid's show (well that's pretty much what he is).
I'm gonna be honest, I enjoyed even season 1 more than this, and that was also very far from being any good.
