Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba S3, Ep 8 Review

They say when you’re about to die, your life starts flashing before your eyes. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s always a good plot device in fiction. Besides serving as a means to remind people of key moments in a character’s life, it also helps explain more about how they ended up the way they are now. In this case, we get to see the life of Muichiro Tokito and learn what made him into the Hashira he is now. The obtuse, potentially thoughtless Hashira we’ve come to know.

This Was My Life…and it Sucked!

Even though he managed to free himself from the water pot thanks to Kotetsu, Muichiro’s in no better shape. Those needles Gyokko and the fish Demons hit him with were poison. As a result, he’s still on the verge of passing out right as the low-level grunt Demons swarm around him.

And this is the moment where Muichiro remembers all of his traumatic past. It soon becomes apparent why his mind chose to suppress the memories, though.

When he was younger, he was the son of a kind and compassionate woodcutter, and he took a lot after his father. However, tragedy struck their family when his mother died from an illness brought on by overworking herself. In addition, his father died trying to find herbs that could’ve helped her. He lost both his parents in one day, leaving him an orphan and alone.

Alone, that is, except for this twin brother.

Yuichiro and Muichiro Needed Therapy!

In essence, Yuichiro, in order to cope with the loss of his parents, shut himself off from the world and not caring about anyone else, thinking that it would keep himself and his brother alive. That’s why even though the wife of the head of the Demon Slayer Corps came to recruit them since they were descendants of one of their members, he kept turning her away. However, that proved to be a massive mistake when a Demon came to kill them both. 

 

In what can only be described as a fit of primal rage brought on by the urge to survive, Muichiro somehow managed to kill the Demon. The episode leaves the details a mystery, with not even the future Hashira knowing. What is known, though, is that Yuichiro didn’t survive the attack. In his final moments, the boy prayed to the heavens for forgiveness for his misguided attempts to protect his brother, something Muichiro witnessed. 

No wonder Muichiro developed amnesia! He might have gone insane had this not happened.

 

Awakening a New Power and Wasting Gyokko

As painful as his past was, remembering it did help Muichiro in the long run. As a result of this near-death experience trigger his dormant memories, the Hashira unlocks a new level of power. His face gains markings similar to the ones displayed by Tanjiro in his fights against Demons. Without going into spoiler-territory, it’s safe to say that these marks are the Demon Slayer equivalent to the Super Saiyan. Once he gains them, Muichiro wastes all the fish Demons to save Kotetsu, then turns his attention to the distracted Gyokko.

What follows is the beginning of a fight that, once again, shows off Demon Slayer’s greatest asset: it’s animation. The animation becomes smoother, crisper, and breath-taking to look at. That’s the anime’s way of showing that the stakes are higher than normal, and that we’re going to see things get destroyed, as Gyokko soon learns.

The fight’s between the Mist Hashira and the psychotic artist Gyokko isn’t over yet, but I can already see the writing on the wall: Muichiro’s going to win. 

This was another great episode of Demon Slayer, but I do have one complaint: the meaning of the episode’s title. It’s referring to how the Kanji for ‘Mu’ in Muichiro can have two meanings, according to his late brother: incompetence…and infinite or infinity. However, that loses a little meaning in translation to Western Audiences. Chalk that up to cultural differences, I suppose.

I Give “The ‘Mu’ in Muichiro” a 4/5

Also, this is a quick reminder that the dub for this season of Demon Slayer is now airing on Crunchyroll. If you’ve been waiting to watch it dubbed, then now’s the time to start!