Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 3

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 3

Gyokko, the Pot Demon

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 3 was a pretty good episode. At least, if you ignore the first 9 minutes. while I was watching the episode, I was getting worried that I wouldn’t have anything to write about. But, luckily, the second half pulled through.

Now, let’s talk about Gyokko, the Upper Moon Five demon. He lives in a pot, for some reason. Is the pot a part of his body? Can he come entirely out of the pot? How does he move around? Does he walk on his many hands? I need answers.

Something we do know about Gyokko, though, is that he has ways of gathering information. He was the one who located the Swordsmith Village. But, I don’t remember if he said he found it himself or he had an underling find it. My guess is the latter.

Upper Moon Five, Gyokko from the anime series Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 3
Upper Moon Five, Gyokko

What’s odd is that his information network didn’t tell him who was in the village. Or, maybe he was aware that 2 Hashira and Tanjiro were there and that’s why he attacked now. It could be that he figured this would be a good time to wipe them out along with the swordsmiths.

But, if it were up to me, I’d attack the village when there weren’t any Hashira present. I know the demons haven’t really had to worry about Hashira in a long time — 300 years. But, that’s changing now. Uzui helped take out Gyuutarou and Daki. And Rengoku almost killed Akaza.

The days when the Upper Six demons had nothing to fear are over. And Gyokko doesn’t seem to understand that. Sure, taking out some Hashira is good. But, eliminating the source of Nichirin swords is likely more important. It’ll make killing the Demon Slayers easier.

Tokitou Is More Impressionable Than I Thought

At this point, I’m still not sold on Tokitou being a good character. But, that’s also how I felt about Uzui at first. Uzui seemed like a knock-off Rengoku. However, over the course of the Entertainment District Arc, he grew into his own character.

The same thing could happen with Tokitou. He’s emotionless most of the time. But, something Tanjiro said stuck with him. He liked when Tanjiro said that helping others will make good things happen to you, too. And later in the episode, we see Tokitou act on those words.

This is something I wasn’t expecting at all. I never would have thought that Tokitou would be such an impressionable person. Or, maybe this is Tanjiro’s Talk-no-Jutsu at work. It could be that those words only affected Tokitou because they came from Tanjirou. I’m not sure why that would be, though.

Tokitou protecting Kotetsu from a demon from the anime series Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 3
Tokitou protecting Kotetsu from a demon

Something we should probably keep in mind is that Tokitou is young. I believe it was only last week in Episode 2 that Tanjiro said Tokitou appeared to be about the same age as himself. And, unless I’m mistaken, Tanjiro is supposed to be around 16 years old.

It’s possible that Tokitou is even younger than Tanjiro. And this could be why Tanjiro’s words had such an impact on him. Sure, Tokitou is the more experienced Demon Slayer. But, that doesn’t mean he can’t look up to Tanjiro in a way.

My question then is, why would he look up to Tanjiro? If he doesn’t remember who Nezuko is, does he even remember who Tanjiro is? Does he know that Tanjiro helped take down one of the Upper Six demons? Or, could it be that it’s Tanjiro’s personality he looks up to? That seems more likely, to me.

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Hantengu, the Multiplying Demon

Obviously, the most interesting thing to come out of Episode 3 is Hantengu. I wasn’t considering him to be a threat despite him being the Upper Four demon. But, now that we know a bit more about his abilities, that’s changed.

So, what’s the deal with Hantengu? Well, every time you cut off his head, he splits into 2 bodies. This is different than Gyuutarou and Daki. They were siblings who became demons who relied on each other. With Hantengu, it seems to be a case of multiple personalities in one demon.

Yes, each split personality is distinct and has its own name. But, the feeling I got was that this is still a single demon. Maybe that will change in the future. However, it seems like it would be a bit odd for 2 of the Upper Six demons to have the same gimmick.

Upper Moon Four, Hantengu flying away with Tanjiro from the anime series Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 3
Upper Moon Four, Hantengu flying away with Tanjiro

What else do we know about Hantengu? Well, so far, we’ve seen him split into 4. And I’m going to predict that 4 is the maximum number of personalities. He can still split further as we saw when a new head grew from the severed foot of the flying demon.

But, something you may have noticed is that this head wasn’t a new demon. It was another head of the flying demon. That’s not the only reason why I think Hantengu only has 4 personalities, though. The other reason is that each demon has its own abilities.

We saw one of the demons used a fan to cause an air blast. Another used a staff to create electricity. And the flying demon used sound to attack. If they all have unique abilities, there has to be a limit to how many of them there are.

Conclusion

What do you think of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 3? How do you think Gyokko moves around? What do you expect from Tokitou’s character development throughout this arc? And how many personalities do you think Hantengu has? Let me know in the comments.

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Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and JasonHK for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of Episode 4 is available now.

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