Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Train Arc

Episode 5

Fair warning: This might end up a pretty slight review, overall, if only because I'm not sure how many words I can reasonably expend on “Move Forward!” It's just an action scene. Literally, from stem to stern, it is one single action sequence that starts with our heroes near the middle-rear of the Mugen Train, and by the end they've slashed and dashed their way to the front. Plenty of television series and even feature films have been able to concoct compelling narratives out of such singularly simple arcs of forward momentum, and it isn't even like this is the first time Demon Slayer has had a middle-of-the-arc episode that is almost entirely devoted to spectacle. There's just that recurring problem of the pacing of this Mugen Train Arc, which to me still feels distinctly like that of a full-length movie instead of a serialized manga adaptation.

To put it another way, imagine if you took the climactic chase scene from, say, Mad Max: Fury Road, isolated the most pulse-pounding 20-and-some-odd minutes of it, and then called it an episode of TV. Even if you had all of the requisite context from the previous hour of the movie in your mind, to sit down and watch just a single slice of Mad Max's medley of motorized mayhem would be entertaining enough…but what would you say about it? That's the dilemma I'm facing here. I can't very well repeat myself about the narrative inconsistencies or disappointing balance of characterization again, and there aren't really any twists or surprises in this episode's plot for me to chew on. The train and the demon are one and the same. Inosuke and Tanjiro need to work their way to the engine and try to slice off the demon's head. It's the usual shtick, except, you know, the demon is a literal steam engine train now.

Even in a movie like Fury Road, there are little character beats and flourishes of world-building peppered throughout the chaos to make it narratively interesting in addition to being a positively kickass sight to behold. With Demon Slayer though, there are hardly any characters to develop, and the world-building isn't complex or novel enough to warrant so much fine detail. So, instead, all that's left is the kickass spectacle, where what you see is exactly what you get, and nothing more.

To the credit of “Move Forward!”, I was certainly never bored watching it. Inosuke is awake, for whatever reason, so he gets to do all sorts of cool flips and spins with his swords, right along Tanjiro. Kagura is also awake, too, somehow, and he's also doing all sorts of flamey sword moves, which are fun. Zenitsu, thank the Lord, is still asleep, which means he is allotted exactly one cool sword move when he helps out Nezuko. The CGI demon goop doesn't look fantastic, I'll admit, but it's hardly the worst melding of 2D and 3D I've seen. Lots of flips. Lots of stabs. It's neat to look at.

There are only two other details I can really think of that stand out to me. The first is the fact that Inosuke and Tanjiro uncover flame demon's spinal column in the bowels of the engine car, which is great—I wish there was even more weird organ shit going on with the Mugen Train instead of all that CGI goop. There's also that brief moment where Tanjiro becomes so disoriented by the Train Guy's dream attacks that he nearly cuts his own throat in the waking world. Again, this is an idea I would have loved to see even more of, where the characters can't even tell if they're awake or not anymore, but I'll take what I can get.

And there you have it. The big, elaborate fight scene of the mov…er, the season has finally arrived after six weeks of anticipation, and it's exactly what you'd expect from ufotable and Demon Slayer at this point. Next week will probably have even more shiny animation to look at. My one big hope is that it has even a morsel of interesting story to go along with all the carnage, since we're quickly running out of time to make this otherwise forgettable plot into something special.

Rating:

Odds and Ends

• Inosuke gets a lot of opportunities to be an adorably stupid badass this week, which I appreciate. His best line of the episode might be when he admonishes Tanjiro for almost falling for Dream Guy's nonsense, screaming, “Don't die such lame deaths!” Words to live by, those are.

• I almost laughed when Nezuko seemed so baffled by Zenitsu's heroic entrance, only to be even more confused by how quickly he reverted back into a sleepy dweeb. However, if the show earnestly tries to sell us on a Nezuko/Zenitsu ship, I'm going to eat a shoe in rage.

• I forgot to mention that Tanjiro got stabbed real good near the end of the episode, but it hardly seemed to affect him, so who knows if it will actually amount to anything. Oh, he did his fiery Hinokami Kagura, too! That's probably important, right?

• The end credits tag sees Tanjiro back in the dream forest, being tormented by… a giant Nezuko who has a big ol' butt chin. I, uh…I don't get it.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Train Arc is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.