Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer)

That's a vain hope, slim.

Wait a minute it says the game will be "competitive action".

The fuck, how do you make this competitive?

Itll be a flashy yet bog standard arena fighter. I almost guarantee it.

I think a Dark Souls-style RPG would be much more in-line with the spirit of the story.

Clearly, the best game for KNY is a Dating Sim.

Only if Inosuke is one of the dateable options.

Y'know, I think I just isolated why this fight hasn't been particularly interesting for me. There's a panel where Inosuke is doing a bunch of cool attacks and chopping off Muzan's tentacles. And then they've all regeneration just fine in the very next panel.

Which kind of microcosm of the entire battle. It doesn't feel like anything anybody does actually accomplishes anything. They just show off all their attacks against an opponent who can instantly negate all damage from all of them. Like, Muzan's suffered setbacks, but they've all been from the poison rather than anybody's attacks. There's a lot of spectacle in this fight, but it's all extremely empty spectacle. None of it serves any purposes other than just distracting Muzan for a few seconds. And Muzan can't seem to permanently put anyone out the fight either. It's really starting to look like he's not going to manage to kill any of the Pillars, so he's had a less impressive showing than the top 3 upper moons. He's essentially just a sandbag for everyone to punch.

And that's what the second longest fight in the series has been like.

Isn't it always been the case here? Demon can regenerate and can instant kill anyone if their attacks land. The key of most fight were always about finding one moment to deliver an decisive strike. Human simply can't match the demons infinity regeneration and stamina so drag out fights were always the last result. I think the point of these final fight here is to see Muzan world fall apart. Little by little strip away his invincible facade.

Well, no. Regeneration has never been this extreme before. It's always mattered when the good guys get hits in before now; they've always affected the flow of the battle. Sometimes, even if the blow wasn't lethal, it still made the demon reel back in pain and give the slayers a chance to press their advantage. And sometimes the time spend regenerating was time they couldn't spend attacking, and that gave our heroes the breathing room they needed. Sometimes having the sword stuck through the demon's abdomen damaged their mobility enough for the tide of battle to shift a bit. Sometimes it's not even about regeneration, it's about getting into close range so the slayer can actually use their cool attacks, and the battle revolves around the demon's attempts to play keep away.

And sometimes, seeing the demon casually shrug off an injury that our heroes worked really hard to inflict was a dramatic Despair Spot.

There's always been some dramatic weight behind the things our heroes do. Until now. With this fight, I really find myself without much reason to care about the details of what's going on. Because it's all just the slayers whacking a sandbag until the author decides it's time for dawn to happen.

Like, as it stands now, I would've much preferred it if the poison had just turned Muzan human like it was supposed to instead of all that other stuff and we skipped the 'battle Muzan' phase entirely. We still would've gotten to see is air of invincibility shatter into a million pieces, just without a bunch of stuff that doesn't actually matter slowing things down.

Edited by Gilphon on Mar 15th 2020 at 10:50:45 AM

Well he the final boss and even Akaza have extreme regenerate. Most high ranking demons up until now treat wounds like nothing. And it already established from the start of the fight that decapitation mean nothing to Muzan. And I don't think everything they done is meaningless, this fight go against every fights in the series so far in that what matter is the longer it last the better. Every second the main cast can stall Muzan the closer he get to his death.

Muzan also was never a good fighter. Without his immortality he have nothing. But now even that can't help him anymore. It's more fitting for an immortal demon main strength can't even help him now.

Edited by BattleRaizer on Mar 15th 2020 at 10:37:09 PM

I thought we were going to get a shift in the battle once his decapitation immunity was identified to be a result of keeping extra organs in his body. I'd figured they'd try to isolate his bits and whittle him down. But it was instead used to justify why physical strength and effort just didnt matter. Just bog him down and let the sun/cure do the job.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Mar 15th 2020 at 11:52:48 AM

I mean. I think from the context it was pretty clear that by 'meaningless' I meant 'accomplishes nothing but distracting Muzan for a second or two'. Which is actually meaningless, because the time until dawn how quickly the time passes is a totally arbitrary decision on the author's part. This entire battle has done basically nothing but pad out the chapter count.

And extreme regeneration doesn't have to mean fights have to be boring or that attacks from the good guys don't mean anything. Like look how things went against Koku. Even though he could regen from the attacks, Genya and Muichiro's attacks still made a huge difference in how things turned out. Kanao, Inosuke and Shinobu were all horrendously outmatched by Douma, but they still did things that mattered beyond the wasting time, and all directly contributed to his defeat. The fact that Akaza theoretically could've regenerated from it does very little to rob the moment where Tanjiro decapitates him of its weight.

And, indeed, I've seen fights in other series that fit this general template- a battle where a large number of good guys have a desperate battle against a seemingly invincible regenerator- that weren't this boring. Like Youpi from Hunter × Hunter, where the good guys quickly realize they have no chance of beating him in a direct physical confrontation, and instead adopt hit-and-run tactics in hopes that they'll find a way to use their unique abilities to find a way to turn the tables. Or Priscilla from Claymore, where the good guys had enough collective firepower to fully occupy her attention, so that she didn't see an attack from a totally mundane source coming, and the shock of being blindsided like that distracted from the battle for just a fraction of a second, which they were able to use to press the advantage and annihilate her so completely that there was nothing left for her to regenerate from. And a key factor that both those battles had that isn't present in this one is in those battles, the antagonist wasn't as static as Muzan's been. They regenerated into a new form every time they took a significant hit, constantly adapting and changing as the battle wore on. Muzan's just been doing the same ineffectual thing this entire fight.

He argue that the point of Muzan. He hate change and hate been powerless. He could run away anytime, he could turn into a more monstrous form before now but her won't because that would mean admitting he not perfect. The fact that in this fight one of his priority was to cover his scars showed that. He could use his AOE attack from the start but he didn't because he think the DS don't worth it. Another thing to considerate is that Muzan could stop medicine effects if he have time and what everyone doing right now is both stall for dawn and distract him from neutralize the medicine's effect. Every strike right now all chip away Muzan strength.

Edited by BattleRaizer on Mar 16th 2020 at 12:01:55 AM

OK, but special attack => nothing => special attack => nothing is a tiring loop to see played out over and over again.

Think of it like this:

He's a Raid Boss where the objective is to survive time running out rather than the raid beating him before times up.

Cause the way they are fighting reeks of a Raid Boss.

To be clear. I like Muzan as a character and as a villain. I've enjoyed watching him gradually lose his mind as his overconfidence comes back to bite him time and time again. I've enjoyed watching his worldview crumble into pieces before his eyes.

What I don't like is everything else about this battle.

Really I feel like it hasn't gone far enough towards disproving Muzan's worldview? Like, if this was gonna be the direction we were gonna take, I'd have preferred it if he's shrugged off the poison entirely. Like, if he was fighting them in perfect condition, giving this everything he had, and then slowly realized that his best simply wasn't good enough; that he'd never been as strong as he thought was; that it turned out that he'd been so reliant on just using his blood to insta-kill his opponents that he didn't actually have any idea how to conduct himself in a real fight once that was taken off the table. So the Slayers were just more skilled than him, and had faster reflexes, and might've not been able to deal the finishing blow, but could certainly pin him down long enough for the sun to do.

That's something that would've crushed his mind. Whereas here in can still hide in 'I totally would've killed them all by now if it wasn't for that poison'

It probably wouldn't have helped with boringness of loop we're seeing here, but if we're going in that direction anyway, we might as well commit to it.

Edited by Gilphon on Mar 15th 2020 at 1:27:33 PM

Raid bosses aren't fun to watch.

Not with that attitude!

Also nice that Love comeback and rip off Muzan arm with her bare hand. Speaking of Raid boss, the newest chapter does seem like it, Tanjirou is the main DPS, Inosuke is the tank aggro the boss while Zenitsu a rouge with hit and run.

The plan was always to throw everything at Muzan to prevent him escaping and let the sun do the job.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the sun doesn't actually work and they just have to destroy all his brains and hearts at the same time like Tanjiro said.

Tanjiro, Inosuke, Zenitsu, Kanao and 5 pillars make 9. We need 3 more people for 12.

Edited by WashTheLaundryHero on Mar 16th 2020 at 2:00:24 AM

Urokodaki, Uzui, and Rengoku would make the most sense, assuming they followed Nezuko when she ran off.

Yushiro is still around, but he's not the direct combat type. And there's the remaining Slayer Corps minor characters, but they're probably not up to par. That said, if things go this route, I'm gonna predict the final blow will be delivered by Murata.

Urokodaki maybe but unlikely due to when Nezuko run away she still have her demon strength. The other two probably not since they still remain at the headquarter to protect the kids.

The once planned March 20th event, which was seemly cancelled, will now be a streaming event scheduled for March 22th; expectations are for more news about the two unveiled video game projects, and more anime news, possibly about the movie.

https://www.gematsu.com/2020/03/demon-slayer-kimetsu-no-yaiba-demon-slayer-corps-report-broadcast-featuring-game-news-set-for-march-22

More than just the "heroes throw everything at him, he regenerates, counterattacks, they hang on by a thread, repeat" that's been going on for like a dozen chapters now, I'm just bored by how uninteresting the combat itself is. Even just regular fights can be made interesting with good choreography and back-and-forth but this chapter was almost literally nothing but particle effects and attack names. I miss when forms actually meant something specific and affected the way the battle was fought.

5 bucks that when this fight is finally animated it can all be easily condensed into 2 episodes or so.