I don't agree with that, nor do I agree with Tanjiro's taunts as he was leaving.
He was winning that fight handily. It's not his fault there's literally nothing he can do about the sunrise. Would sticking around until the sun autokilled him been...courageous?
He just has a hard time limit, while his opponents don't. I'm not sure how fighting with that limitation makes him cowardly.
Do we even know if the other 2 have been captured?
Ok, new answer for Ryll:
"Why are the wives kept alive?"
"So the doujins can happen."
;>
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
You know, I think you missed the entire point of that battle.
Upper-3 spent almost the entire fight trying to convince Kyoujurou that he can become more powerful by becoming a demon like him and honing his fighting skills "forever." He deliberately avoiding mortally wounding him to get him more time to convince him. He finally relented and delivered increasingly serious strikes as the sun was starting to rise in a last-ditch effort to convince Kyoujurou of his mortal weaknesses and embrace the offer. Repeating over and over and over how much stronger he would be after becoming a demon.
He leaves Kyoujurou, not actually killing him just mortally wounding him, as the sun comes up because he's wrong. Becoming a demon means taking on a horrible weakness of the sun. Making Upper-3 a coward because the Demon Slayers always fight demons when the demons don't have their weaknesses, when they're at their strongest. Yet when the daylight rises, they flee away because they're truly weak.
Upper-3's entire argument to Kyoujurou about the strength it brings is a lie, to himself. He flees like a coward every sunrise. He wouldn't dare try to fight in the shadows, surrounded by the sun. Going into that significant threat is something that Tanjiro and all the other Demon Slayer Corp have been doing from the very start. Even Nezuko has done it in reverse in their very first fight.
It hits even harder when we realize that Kyoujurou's father viewed him as a failure (partly because of the Sun Breathing being a limit that Flame Breathing had yet to replicate and partly because he apparently thought his kind-hearted son was weak), even when his brother and all the other Hashira thought he was one of their best. Obviously his mother was the correct one to follow...
Upper-3 lost to a "failure" of a Hashira.
That just seems like nonsense to me.
The choice is pretty binary. A demon has to either fight when they're at their strongest, or when they would INSTANTLY DIE. That's not, like, a handicap. That's an AUTOMATIC FAIL CONDITION.
I don't see how NOT CHOOSING SUICIDE makes you cowardly.
If sunlight just made them weaker instead of instantly destroying them, then you'd have a point. But suggesting that they're somehow taking the coward's way out by not exploding themselves into dust is ridiculous.
He didn't though. The Hashira died. AFTER he took it easy on him and repeatedly tried to spare him.
Kyoujuro called himself a failure because his father did. He actually wasn't a failure and not weaker than other hashira.
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
Upper-3 portrayed being a demon to be the path of true strength. That power comes at a cost of being permanently weaker (instantly die) in the sun, so all his arguments to Kyoujuro were wrong.
He's trying to prey on any insecurities that demon slayers have. Like Kyoujuro's father has in retiring relatively early. But Upper-3 is actually only showing his own insecurities about his own weaknesses (mostly mortality in being a "warrior").
Kyoujuro doesn't have any insecurities despite being a "failure", which agreed with MFauli, he isn't.
Tanjiro screaming that stuff is for people like you who missed the subtext going on there. And yet you're still missing it.
Kyoujuro won decisively because the demons failed to kill a single person aside from him. Not the maintenance kids, not the bento girl or her granny, not a single soul on that train (even the bad kids), and not Tanjiro or Inosuke. And he goaded Upper-3 into almost killing himself along with him. But he fled like a coward.
But...he wasn't weaker. He won. Even with the drawback of daylight, he still killed the Hashira and walked away afterwards.
And he could have killed him much faster and made the sun a non-issue, but he kept holding himself back.
Lol, okay guy. "We won cause we stopped you from killing anyone other than the guy you killed."
Like, it's great that they did that, and they definitely won against the train demon, but claiming they "won" against the Upper-3 because they stopped him from doing some stuff he wasn't even really trying to do, and sacrificing a Hashira to do it...I just don't get it.
He's definitely not. Losing a fight against a stronger opponent doesn't make you a failure.
Really? Cause it just feels like sour grapes to me. It's just Tanjiro going "NUH UH! YOU DIDN'T WIN! YOU CHEATED!".
And look, I understand what you're saying. And I understand that that interpretation is what the series is GOING for. But I still think that conclusion is stupid. And I think the show is stupid for making it.
Even the demon was like "What are you, fucking stupid?"
Last edited by DarthEnderX; Wed, 12-29-2021 at 06:12 AM.
I agree, it's basically just a "hype/moral" boost for everyone around him and himself.
It's like a "valiant defeat", you still lost, but you made the best out of it.
It's commendable that the humans face a strong enemy at a disadvantage but that's about it.
(similar to how sports anime portray "hard workers" against "talented guys" that somehow manage to be relatively equal)
You could consider it a failure in the first place that they have to do that and can't force demons to fight during the day or make use of it, or force demons into it by smoking out their hideout.
It's not even as bad as a phyrric victory for the demons though, because they still killed one of the strongest fighters the humans have, while they themselve only lost minions.
I don't think the subtext was lost to Darth at all, it's just that when you are talking about winning and strength, the humans simply lost on all accounts other than "moral" and "duty"- they are just the "winner of hearts"
But Tanjiro's taunts mean very little in the grim face of reality and can be translated to 2 guys playing a video game and one of them saying "You only won against me because you used OP units/weapons and we almost won against you anyway!"
These weapons were always part of the game though and everyone knew they exist, even if they are overpowered.
Last edited by KrayZ33; Wed, 12-29-2021 at 08:38 AM.
Where was this debate last year?
I'm on the side where Tanjiro's post fight taunts came off as sour grapes (and said as much in my comment on the movie), but there is truth in that choosing to fight with human limitations against a stronger foe for the sake of others is noble.
If you were reaching to justify upper 3-san's 'loss', it would be in reference to when he chose to become a demon (assuming it was a choice), abandoning his humanity and taking 'easy mode' demon resilience/strength. Demon slayers train tirelessly to get where they are, while upper crust demons get periodic Muzan juice and always skip leg day. Running from the sun was obviously the right call for him, but honestly, demon slayers corps should utilize it more often than we've seen them do.
Oh I completely agree.
The only thing I was arguing against was that Upper-3 is a coward just because he chose not to stand in the sun and die.
Anyway, my takeaway is that none of the Uppers are going to be cool, because Muzan wouldn't let them be. He seems like a really shitty, petty boss. And I don't like him.
Last edited by DarthEnderX; Wed, 12-29-2021 at 10:10 AM.
Yuukaku-hen - 05
--------------
This episode exemplifies everything I like about Kimetsu no Yaiba over a lot of other shonen series.
- It doesn't take itself too seriously, until it does. Crybaby nurse, crybaby wife, more muscle mice, Innosuke being aware of how useless Zenitsu is when he's awake...
- ...Offset by phenomenally well executed action. I kept rewinding parts of this episode again and again, just like the more-famously known episode 19. It wasn't Tanjiro's scenes with Daki as much as it was just everything in the snakepit. The fluidity on the wives' fairly simple movies is really good. ufotable movie quality good. Especially the crybaby wife. The expressions are cute and funny, but she's fairly strong and quite skilled with a kunai despite how useless she says she is. Or Daki skating through the dirt on her obi tentacles in order to decapitate the prone Tanjiro.
- We get some touching emotional development too, even for "throwaway characters" like the wives, many of the denizens of the Entertainment district.
- Daki is threatening. Tanjiro may have leveled up, but she is better than he is, has him at a complete disadvantage, and he's wearing himself out just to stay alive.
- The kunoichi all have some meat on them. There's subtle muscle definition on each of them, and they're not normal anime scrawny crane legs with big tits.
Last edited by Ryllharu; Sun, 01-02-2022 at 12:00 PM.
Inosuke is a suicidal madman. When he went down that hole, all I could keep thinking was "omg, so what if there's a dead end?!"
Two things:
- kinda toxic relationship when your wives call you "-sama". Could it be any more distanced?
- do we have doujins yet? The blonde tomboy wife is super hot :>
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
Taisho Era and the ninjas are kind of archaic to begin with. Tengen uses "nyoubou" for them to their faces, which is really outdated. But he's used "tsuma" to refer to them to the main trio. Pretty proper.
He's higher ranked than them, as the bleach tips wife explains in her flashback. So it is somewhat appropriate. The interesting connotation is that he's actually told them it is okay to fail a mission as long as they come back alive. He told them right to their face how much he values them over literally everything else.
It's the opposite of toxic.
And yet they address their husband with "-sama". Toxic.
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
Weird that Tanjiro is only now saying water breathing isn't compatible with his body. We've never brought up comparability till now and while old mate trainer kept shitting on Tanjiro and never expecting him to finish, he never mentioned suitability and the like.
That said, it's probably rare for people to experience two styles to compare. It still doesn't make that much sense when you think about Water Breathing being a derivative of Sun. You'd think that compatibility should be similar, and only effectiveness would differ.
If someone was going to be able to slash loose cloth it'd be Inosuke. He's got serrated swords.
Makio was super hot when strung up.- do we have doujins yet? The blonde tomboy wife is super hot :>
Hinatsuru looks better overall in terms of fitting traditional beauty standard etc, but she came off as boring this episode.
Suma's hilarious. She reminds of of Zenitsu's role in the trio.
Uhh...
lol.
Last edited by Buffalobiian; Sun, 01-02-2022 at 06:08 PM.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Now that you mention it, I think this might be intentional...
Makio is rough around the edges, brash, and noisy, but confident and has very bright wide eyes.
Suma is more talented than she states about herself, a crybaby, and based on the Taisho Era Secret is very forward with her affections for Uzui and approached him first to request to be one of his wives.
Hinatsuru is gentle, level-headed, thoughtful, and considerate (she did keep Daki's farewell gift even though she suspected her, later getting trapped by it).
There are too many similarities to the main trio for it to be a coincidence.
I'm curious if we'll ever get to see Tanjiro dual wield fire and water at the same time.