Marcus Grant | Managing Editor
Demon Slayer, or Kimetsu No Yaiba, has returned for a second season, streaming exclusively on Funimation and Crunchyroll. The first season aired in the Spring of 2019 and the movie, Mugen Train came out in April of this year. Both were very well received. Currently, Demon Slayer has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
But what makes the anime so good? Honestly, a lot of things. The most striking thing that most people notice is the visuals. Demon Slayer is animated in a very clean way, with beautiful colors showing waves, flames, lighting, flowers, etc. (the list goes on), keeping the viewers’ eyes glued to the screen.
Not to mention that the characters are extremely loveable. Tanjiro Kamado, a young boy with an abnormally good sense of smell, attempts to become a demon slayer after his sister becomes a demon. Nezuko Kamado, his sister, protects him as he goes on his journey. They run into Zenitsu Agatsuma and Hashibira Inosuke. Zenitsu is a very anxious boy who has to battle his mind as well as the demons throughout the story and Hashibira is a very energetic, short-tempered, and proud boy who can be seen wearing a boar mask.
Koyoharu Gotouge wrote eleven arcs within the story of Demon Slayer, which was published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from February 16, 2016, to May 18, 2020, and then in 23 individual volumes. Season one covered the first six arcs. With that in mind, I think it might be safe to say that this will probably be the final season of the anime.
On October 10, 2021, Demon Slayer started the second season. The first seven episodes are set to cover the whole of the Mugen Train arc from the manga. The movie with the same title was not meant to stand alone so this gives the audience more context for the events that occurred. This is great for people who may not read the manga or who aren’t caught up.
Episode one is titled “Flame Hashira Kyojuro Rengoku” and follows the character, Kyojuro Rengoku the day before he boards the Mugen train. We see him sitting in a restaurant when he is approached by another man, who updates Rengoku about a woman that was saved the night before. The shop owner explains that business has been slow because of someone known as ‘The Slasher” and because the Mugen train is down after 40 people disappeared on it. Rengoku and the man go to the station to try and find The Slasher and run into a young girl, Fuku, and her grandmother, who sell bentos to the people boarding the train. He buys their whole stock and goes to find the Mugen train, which leads him to where it’s being repaired so it can depart the next day. There, he finds The Slasher and ends up fighting him. I won’t spoil the bigger parts of the episode so you can watch it for yourself but the episode ends with Rengoku getting on the Mugen train and eating a bento from Fuku and her grandmother, while Tanjiro, Nezuko, Zenitsu, and Hashibira go to board as well.
Overall, I think this was a great start to season two, and am really excited to see where it goes from here. Episode two, “Deep Sleep,” will air on Sunday, October 17, at 11:45 AM Eastern Time.