Demon Slayer: Season 2 – Entertainment District

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls it’s about that time we got into Demon Slayer Season two, The Entertainment District.

Now as we all know the second season of demon slayer first began with episodes from the “Mugen Train” movie with added scenes, however for today’s review, I’ll only be talking about the episodes from the Entertainment District Arc. So without further ado, let us begin this spectacular season, shout out to Ufotable for the incredible visuals and work put into this season, truly amazing.

One of the small aspects I appreciate Ufotable for adding at the beginning of the Entertainment District was when it was made clear that Tanjiro and the rest of the gang, Inosuke and Zenitsu had been training and going on missions for a few months before going up against Upper Moon Six – Daki and Gyutaro. 

This small aspect made it easier for the audience to understand that they had grown from their last fight with Lower Moon One – Enmu and had learned new abilities and grown in more ways than we could ever predict.

Now as for the beginning of the arc, Tengen Uzui needs three girls for his current mission and tries to kidnap the three girls working for Insect Hashira – Shinobu Kocho. This though doesn’t go so well for Tengen as Tanjiro coincidentally hears the girl’s screams and comes to rescue. The two stubborn demon slayers come to an agreement that Tanjiro, Inosuke, and Zenitsu will take the place of the girls instead thus beginning the Arc.

The Entertainment District is exactly what it sounds like, a place that rests during the day but once the sun sets the people come to live with glittering lights, streets filled with people of all types of different statuses, and the perfect place for demons to reside.

Tengen has been on the lookout for the demon that lurks in this area, even working with his three wives to assist him in identifying and killing the demon however he hasn’t received any reports in a while and this prompts the Sound Hashira to take matters into his hands before it’s too late.

From the second episode, the team of Tengen comes up with a plan to place each of the rookie slayers into the three houses that Tengen’s wives each worked for and be on the lookout for anything and report back on certain intervals. Tengen’s wives’ names are Makio, Suma, and Hinatsuru.

At first, one would think Tengen Uzui is certainly blessed for having such great looks, being as flashy as he is, and not only having 1 but 3 wives, this is though far from the actual truth which we will get into later in the review.

Once all three slayers have been hired by the respected houses Tanjiro meets two young girls who are packing the Oiran’s gifts in her room and are discussing the disappearances of late. Tanjiro overhears this and Tanjiro being who he is can only comfort the little girls but their conversation is cut short by the Oiran who walks in behind them.

Inosuke on the other hand being forced to pretend to be a shy girl eavesdrops on a couple of girls talking about a girl named Makio who’s locked herself in her room for a couple of days now and won’t even come out to eat. Inosuke remembers the name as one of Tengen’s wives and starts investigating the matter. He comes out short though hence the demon is using the narrow interior of the house walls to move around freely without getting noticed.

Zenitsu hears a young girl crying and goes over to console them, however as he hears this the young girl’s pains, the Oiran of the house returns and grabs one of the girl’s ears by force almost tearing it off. Zenitsu immediately notes that the sound this Oiran Warabuhime is making isn’t human but a demon, he quickly grabs the Oiran’s hand stopping her from abusing the girl any further but this doesn’t sit well with the Oiran Warabihime and she lashes out at Zenitsu knocking him out unconscious.

The husband of the house afraid of Warabihime apologizes to the Oiran trying to calm her down and Zenitsu is taken to his room and treated for his wounds. It’s then revealed that a long time ago, decades even there were rumors of a particular beautiful Oiran who was loved by the entire district, her beauty knew no bounds, and men from all over would do anything just to even meet her but the rumors that particular Oiran was a demon due to her beauty never fading and she never aged.

One of the iconic things everyone knew about this Oiran is the movement she always did when she felt annoyed or even irritated, she’d tilt her head to the side and give you this cold look of disapproval. It’s at this moment that we are shown that Warabihime is in fact that Oiran that had been living for over 100 years. Her name is Daki and she is the Upper Moon Six.

Daki is certainly beautiful even for a demon, Muzan even admits to her being a rare kind of demon, this was shocking to hear as all we’ve seen is that Muzan sees himself as the ultimate being and no one be his equal or even close but he admits that Daki is one of a kind and shows her only his gentle side. Daki herself bows to Muzan, submitting herself to her master as we’ve never seen.

As Zenitsu wakes up from being knocked out by Daki, he is given words of thanks from the young girl he defended against Daki but as the girls return to their work a cloth sneaks behind him and abducts him before he could meet Tengen to report his findings.

As Tanjiro and Tengen are awaiting Zenitsu’s report Tengen makes a statement that Zenitsu won’t be coming, assuming the worst that he has been captured by the demon but luckily Inosuke is still trying to find the whereabouts of the demon that has taken Makio. Inosuke being extremely flexible finds the holes behind the walls and follows them to a man-made cave that’s filled with cloth lingering all about. 

It’s there that Inosuke finds a piece of cloth with the face of Zenitsu sleeping happily as nothing happened. On the top side, Tengen is in search of Zenitsu when running past a dark room sees his wife Hinatsuru hung up against the wall barely alive. He rescues her and treats her wounds as quickly as he can but she is more worried about the others and insists he continue his search, she will be alright.

Filled with tears and gratitude Tengen continues his search for the others, that’s when he hears a clash of a battle going on underground and heads over to investigate. 

Tanjiro meets Daki as she is about to consume the Oiran whose room was filled with gifts and had met the young girls. He notices that Oiran’s body is nowhere to be seen but her face is definitely inside the cloth, Daki strikes out at Tanjiro with blinding speed and abnormal strength stunning the young slayer as he tries to comprehend what just happened in what looked like a split second.

Up to this point, the season had presented a beautiful story about the Entertainment district and the people who live in it being both good and bad people mostly just people trying to survive by any means necessary however even though they have it tough demons are the one thing they won’t tolerate.

Daki at this point focuses all her attention on Tanjiro, even though she admits that she wouldn’t eat him as she only devours those being hashira, fresh and extremely beautiful she takes a liking to Tanjiro’s eyes and tries to break the young man’s spirit by constantly reiterating that she has defeated numerous hashira before and a rookie like him will only be child’s play.

As the two are fighting on the top, we return to the cave where Inosuke seems to be fighting a demon that’s part of Daki’s power, she’s keeping the people alive inside the cloth so that when she finally gets hungry she will have a countless number of meals to pick from. The demon notices a thunderous smash through the ceiling of the cave and it’s non-other than our Sound-Hashira Tengen Uzui to the rescue. 

In a blink of an eye, Tengen has not only defeated the demon but also saved everyone that had been sealed inside the pieces of cloth. Tengen instructs Inosuke to help evacuate the others escape as he will go look for Tanjiro.

With the remaining pieces of cloth gathering and returning to Daki, her full power is also restored with the knowledge of a Hashira being around arousing Daki and filling her with excitement that she gets to make her master Muzan happy by murdering another hashira.

As her black hair turns white and power flows through her, Daki decides to leave Tanjiro and go after a more appetizing meal in Tengen but as Tanjiro shouts at her a man from one of the houses comes out to discipline Tanjiro and Daki for making so much noise. Daki hating humans as she does grows more irritated and unleashes a great many slashes killing all standby people on the streets and even those in their homes unaware of what was going on.

This moment is pivotal to the story as for the first time since witnessing the “Hinokamo Kagura” Tanjiro goes into a berserk mode that grabs Daki’s leg and slashes it right off. To Daki’s shockingly perplexed moment she begins to see visions of the past, her cells are in fear and she can’t help but shiver at the man in front of her in the memories. She realizes that these aren’t her memories but Muzan’s.

Tanjiro asks Daki whether she feels anything when she kills people as easily as she does even though she was once human herself? Daki’s replay only solidifies Tanjiro’s resolve to kill her and nearly succeeds but runs out of breath at the crucial moment of cutting her head off.

As Daki looms over Tanjiro who’s struggling to breathe Daki tries to finish him off but is kicked so hard from behind by Nezuko who’s become infuriated at how Daki almost killed her brother. The memories of when Muzan killed their entire family and turned her into a demon shoot into Nezuko like a heroine rash and Nezuko transforms into a lady demon with flowers covering parts of her body.

The downside of this is that Nezuko during this enraged moment forgets herself and losses herself to the anger, meaning she can’t distinguish between enemy and ally. As she’s wrecking the town with Daki who’s trying to regenerate Nezuko hears the sound of blood falling on the ground from a nearby human who’s gotten injured due to the fight between Nezuko and Daki.

As Nezuko leaps towards the human, Tanjiro has recovered his breathing just enough to stop her but she can’t distinguish between ally and enemy so she fights to get Tanjiro off her back and Daki returns with her face half-burnt and as she is about to attack the siblings Tengen from the lower quickly surprises Daki by cutting her head off without her even noticing.

This is just to show us the incredible speed at which Tengen can move, Daki sobs with her entire body moving on the floor with though her head is cut clean off. Tengen finds it strange at this phenomenon but as he tries to add two and two together Daki screams out for help to her brother, next thing the shadow moves another body comes out of Daki. 

The new demon to appear is the actual holder of the Upper Moon Six – Gyutaro, elder brother to Daki. This demon uses blood scythes filled with poison to injure even Tengen who even as fast as he is could not avoid the blow. Gyutaro upon laying eyes on Tengen immediately assumes that Tengen must have had a blessed upbringing and lived a fabulous life.

But upon hearing this Tengen laughs, Tengen had lost more than one can imagine. Being a shinobi, Tengen grew up in a large family but had lost almost all his siblings due to war, his father then fined-tuned his children to become stronger and was willing to sacrifice even those that remained to achieve this. 

Tengen who grew up seeing nothing but coldness from his father and saw his brother becoming just like that decides to become different, he decided to he’d live the flashiest life for not only him but all his siblings that died and he decided to care about his wives, not see them as only tools but to care and love them and put them ahead of himself.

The clash between Gyutaro and Tengen is exactly what I had hoped for, movie quality animation, I don’t know how many times a repeated the fight scenes of this season, remarkably tuned, the sound, the intensity could very well be felt through the screen. The collaboration between Tanjiro, Inosuke, and Zenitsu was just breathtaking. 

Even though victory was assured by the Demon Slayers, you couldn’t help but see the contrast between Tanjiro and Nezuko against Gyutaro and Daki. The demon siblings would have been Tanjiro and Nezuko if Tanjiro had been home on the day Muzan came to attack the family. And if so, who’d been there to stop them? Tanjiro says he has faith that someone would have stopped him but I disagree. The demons are overpowered in ways the demon slayers can’t possibly comprehend.

Before the season ends we get the story of Gyutaro, a boy and elder brother of Ume/Daki. He was born in the entertainment district and his mother could barely feed herself let alone him. Gyutaro had been eating insects and snakes to get through the day and was constantly looked at by the district as some kind of freak, but that all changed when his mother gave birth to Ume/Daki.

Ume had the appearance that made men gaze in awe and when their mother passed while she was still at a young age, Gyutaro did everything he could to raise her. He taught her to take from others before they could take from her. But what Gyutaro wanted was a great future for her, he blames himself for what happened to Ume. 

One day away from collecting debts, Ume had stabbed one of her customers who in turn burnt her to a crisp. Upon returning home and seeing his sister burnt, Gyutaro was slashed from behind by that very customer however, Gyutaro in that rage killed everyone present. No one would help him no matter what he did or asked, until one day a demon approached him and offered to help him but he’d have to become a demon in turn.

Gyutaro happily agreed if it meant helping his sister and that’s how Gyutaro came to be. Even though he believes that Ume would have been better without him there was something he had forgotten, the promise they made together on that cold snowy day, the promise they made to “stay together no matter what.”

Season 3 has been confirmed so till then people, let’s share and leave your comments.

Storytelling at its finest

Thanks for reading…