Spoilers ahead!
Warning: This episode contains major spoilers for Demon Slayer season 3 episode 5
The third season of Demon Slayer has been going all guns blazing as soon as protagonist Tanjiro reached the Swordsmith Village — a hidden community where the swords of demon slayers are made — and the pace doesn’t let up in episode five.
Picking up immediately where episode four left off, ‘Bright Red Sword’ sees both dozens of giant frogs, and a pair of powerful Upper Rank Demons laying waste to the Swordsmith Village; Tanjiro is locked in battle with the four aspects of Hantengu (a demon who clones himself whenever he’s decapitated), while Tokito encounters the sadistic, artistic Gyokko. And even though both of these fights showcase some of the most compelling things about Demon Slayer, they also shine a light on some of the problems that this latest season might end up running into.
Before fighting Gyokko, Tokito saves two swordsmiths from a frog demon, and it’s clear that his icy emotional exterior is slowly beginning to thaw. When Kanamori — who’s been making a new sword for the haughty Hashira —reveals to Tokito that not only was it Tanjiro who asked him to begin making a new sword, but that he should “be understanding towards you,” Tokito is, for just a second, stunned into silence.
It’s these moments in between the elaborate swordplay, where the show and the characters are able to breathe, that are some of Demon Slayer’s greatest, as it offers stark, simple illustrations of how its cast can grow and change.
But this reprieve can’t last for too long, and Tokito and the two people now in his charge make haste for Kanamori’s work shed — where the new sword is held — and on their way, encounter the Upper Rank Demon Gyokko.
Gyokko illustrates another one of the real high points of the start of Demon Slayer season three: the demons themselves. From their politicking and interpersonal drama at the start of the season (they’re brought together by the Demon King Muzan after the death of the first Upper Rank in over a century) to the visceral horror of their animations, these are monstrous villains its impossible to look away from. Gyokko creates hideous, body-horror tinged sculptures that emerge out of vases, and he taunts Tokito with what he calls “Death Throne of the Smiths,” a twisted nightmare of death swordsmiths.
The fight between Harisha and Upper Rank is short and inconclusive — although Tokito learns this is a demon he can kill by decapitating it — and the real highlight is another small, character focused moment. When Gyokko says to Tokito that all he did was “save some worthless lives,” one of the latter’s lost, repressed memories comes back to him. The lower half of a face, through grit teeth, says “because your life is worthless” to a young Tokito, as the puzzle pieces of his youth and memory slowly come back together.
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It’s memory, more than anything else, that connects the two plot threads in ‘Bright Red Sword,’ with Tanjiro’s conflict with the aspects of Hantengu full of more drama and shock, while also exposing some flaws with the start of the Swordsmith Village Arc.
After continuing to unsuccessfully defeat Hantgenu in a fight, Tanjiro and Nezuko flee, only for a powerful attack to leave them trapped under rubble, while multiple parts of Hantengu search for them. Even as he frantically tells his sister that he can move the rubble she’s trapped under if she just lets go of his sword, Nezuko holds on, digging her hands deep into the blade, covering it with drops of demonic blood. It’s in this moment that the promise of the title is revealed, and Tanjiro’s sword explodes with flames, burning a bright, vivid red. And this is when, briefly, Tanjiro steps back into the past.
One of the plot threads revealed at the start of the arc is the relationship between Tanjiro, and a Sengoku era samurai who he once saw in what might have been a dream. These, it turns out, are inherited memories; a part of his family’s past, many generations ago, that Tanjiro still carries with him. The change in his sword is what takes him to another one of these, as a woman he doesn’t know talks about the way a samurai’s sword changes colour from black to red during battle.
But time waits for no man, and Tanjiro must use his new found power in combat against Hantengu. This time, it’s the demon who’s struck by the power of memory; Tanjiro’s weapon is recognised as “the sword of the swordsman who drove Lord Muzan into a corner, and nearly beheaded him. I see that swordsman in [Tanjiro].” In one of the most striking images of the episode, past and present collide as Hantengu sees Tanjiro’s face become that of the Sengoku era samurai who almost killed his master. In a brilliantly animated flurry of flames, Tanjiro unleashes a new power — Sun Halo Dragon: Head Dance — decapitating three of Hantengu’s four bodies.
And this is where the Swordsmith Village Arc might be playing its hand a little too soon; before this season, it had been over a century since an Upper Rank was killed, but the way things are going, two more could bite the dust within the next couple of episodes. This is the kind of thing that can not only undermine the power and horror of the Upper Rank Demons, but also turn the show into something of an arms race, sacrificing the moments of respite and character development that make it so compelling even once heads have rolled and swords have been sheathed. The pace of the Arc seems a little all over the place, as if its afraid to hit the breaks.
Because slower burns can work well in Demon Slayer, and the end of ‘Bright Red Sword’ is no exception. The standoffish, isolated Genya has been a question mark looming over the early episodes of season three. And it’s only as he stands, run-through with a spear and staring down the final, decapitated aspect of Hantengu, that the truth is revealed; as Genya turns to face Tanjiro, with furious eyes and demonic teeth. There can be no respite for the hero yet.
Demon Slayer season 3 is available to stream on Crunchyroll.
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