Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Train Arc

Kimetsu no Yaiba: Mugen Ressha-hen, also known as the Mugen Train arc in a 7-episode TV series format is a remake of the Mugen Train Movie. The first episode is anime exclusive and it covers some events before the main group jumps on the train. Even though the episode itself isn't anything mind-blowing, it surely does visually look as stunning as ever. After episode 1, the TV series is basically the same as the Movie but with some additional content like more dialogue, a few new scenes and camera angles as well as some improved visuals. There are also the short post-credits scenes that contain somecomedic sketches or Taisho-era secrets as seen in the first season. The pacing of the series is a bit slower and sometimes the episode recaps are unnecessarily long + add the OP and ED to that. Having watched the Movie already, do I think the TV series is worth watching? Well, it depends whether you want to experience the Mugen Train arc again or not. If you want to see the anime exclusive episode and then basically watch a bit modified version of the Movie again then yes I'd say it's worth it. I definitely enjoyed it even after seeing the Movie multiple times. Having only watched the first season, is it worth watching the TV series instead of the Movie? Watching the series weekly wasn't as enjoyable as watching the Movie in one go but if you were to binge watch all 7 episodes and skip the recap, OP and ED for every episode then I suppose the experience would compare to watching the Movie. As a fan of the anime, I enjoyed each episode a lot but if I wanted to rewatch the Mugen Train arc, I would rather rewatch the Movie instead of the TV series.

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.

Demon Slayer is a series that needs no introduction. Having taken over the anime world, it is a series so "good" that it landed a remake of the highly acclaimed Mugen Train movie. I've seen here and there reasons for individuals disliking this remake due to it being "pointless" or just a "waste of time". From what I have seen, I can say that the remake isn't such. Of course, it still covers content that has existed beforehand, however the directing is vastly different. A TV anime and movie have different fundamentals, in which, the TV remake did a remarkable job at exploiting. It pretty muchshaped the movie to suit a TV format in which I will then say that due to such, I'd recommend everyone go and watch the TV version in a way to experience the same thing but in a different fashion. I suppose it would still be true that you aren't actually missing out on much other than a different performance which is still relatively equally as good. The only problem I have is that it is a little slower paced which makes the action kinda lacking, everything is (literally) broken into different parts which may kill the continuous mood. But other than that, it is still very good in its own right. I'd imagine that most who get into the series have no reason to watch Mugen Train TV over the movie. So I have no real reason to explain the basics (y'know, story, art and whatever). Besides, I have literally done a review on that already. Also I find it hard to believe people even read reviews past the year 2017 on this site, pretty sure people just look at the score or name of the reviewer these days. But regardless, I don't recommend watching the TV version if you are completely new unless you want to see the wholly original episode 1 which is actually very good in itself; does no harm to the main movie section too. Anyways, I was going to give this a 10/10, but considering how the movie exists, giving a 10 would be better off awarding the movie rather than the little slower TV version. So 9/10 seems fitting.

I think the 3D animations were horribly out of place among otherwise peak of the artistic animation effects and one of the main characters was mostly one-dimensional, annoyingly larger than life without any backstory suitably explaining why, making me unable to empathize with them for the most of the story. Long shots, scenes and dialogues where nothing really happened. The fights were, again mostly just plain boring and repetitive. Story didn't seem very unique or interesting, little to no character development, same old over the top quirkiness that, for the most part, I've found just annoying. I didn't watch the movie, but I wish I did instead, asI assume it'd be more compact and thus more enjoyable than those 7 episodes that seemed too long for the amount of the content present.