‘Demon Slayer’ Episode 5, The Love Hashira Unleashed

Demon Slayer continues to progress through its Swordsmith Village Arc, and here in episode 5, we are in the midst of a full-on demon battle at last with two hashiras and Tanjiro facing off against two Upper Rank demons.

This week, Demon Slayer gave us our first real look at the Love Hashira, Mitsuri Kanroji, actually fighting in combat, where she is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful hashira, presently. We only saw one form of her Love Breathing, but we did get to see her wholly unique ribbon sword that’s unlike any weapon from any other hashira. With it, she uses it to carve up an entire village of fish demons without breaking a sweat, albeit the damage has already been done to the village and its populace. I cam certainly curious to see Mitsuri get involved in an head-on match against an Upper Rank demon, albeit there may only be one left after this episode. I’m still not sure about that.

The Mist Hashira, Muichiro, is squaring off against Upper Rank Five, Gyokko, who might be one of the most bizarre, powerful demons we’ve ever seen with his magic pots that so far:

A) produce giant fish demons

B) produce tiny fish demons that shoot poison needles

C) produce water prisons that contain hashira, eliminate their breathing and may suffocate them to death

D) serve as an infinite form of teleportation due to the fact they spawn out of thin air.

Tough fight ahead, and we leave Muichiro trapped in a bubble.

Meanwhile, Tanjiro is faring far better facing off against Upper Rank Four, Hantengu, who has split into four powerful demons that must be beheaded at once. Nezuko lights Tanjiro’s sword on fire with her exploding blood, which allows him to channel his ancestor(?) to blaze through three of the four demon parts, beheading them all. He tries to find the fourth, as you need all four at once to kill Hantengu as a whole, and finds that Genya has killed the final one. But he’s also been stabbed and uh, possibly turned into a demon himself. At least that’s what his face is saying.

From Nezuko, we know that demons don’t necessarily need to be evil, but I mean, most of them are, so this does not seem great. I’m also not 100% convinced that Hantengu is dead because we have yet to see his body dissolve, so we’ll have to figure out if that is actually the case or not next week, I imagine.

This was a really great, action-packed episode, as I always love when we get to the “6-8 episodes of demon fighting” part of a season. Good stuff.

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