I don’t really have to say much about that episode, do I?

There’s nothing too complicated about it.  That episode of Kimetsu no Yaiba was highly problematical to me for obvious reasons.  I almost never find this show funny – which is only a problem when it tries to be, and it tried non-stop this week.  And Zenitsu, well – that horse is long-dead and beaten down to subatomic particles.  I never had a chance, but I take a certain pride that I managed to get all the way through it without skipping anything.

Positives?  Well, it looked good.  Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter in Tokyo was still at full boil in the Taisho period, with several thousand mostly syphilitic prostitutes working legally in the area Tokugawa Ieyasu originally set aside in the early 17th Century.  Just to be clear, these are not geisha – and geisha are not prostitutes (they’re entertainers).  These are sex workers, most having been sold into what was effectively sexual slavery by men (often their fathers or brothers – or even husbands).  Accounts of its “glory” days paint Yoshiwara as a pretty glamorous looking place, but for the bulk of its residents it was anything but.

Kimetsu no Yaiba certainly glosses over the grittiness of the place, and makes light of the situation with a comedy-driven episode, but it’s not guilty of glamorizing at the very least.  The plight of these oiran is spelled out pretty clearly in nonchalant fashion.  If I have any hope for this arc despite its first episode it’s because this is a setting with some potential, and that includes the fish out of water element with the choir boy and the two idiots (only Screech even knew what “pleasure district” meant) being dumped in the middle of this den of iniquity by Uzui,

As for the rest of it, well – woof.  Uzui himself is a lot to take, and the spectacle of these three being passed of as girls it utterly absurd on the face of it (especially since they don’t even seem to be going to any effort).  Boaris is relatively tame by his standards – once again we can thank Uzui, this time for telling Boaris to keep his trap shut – but Screech is in full screech mode.  The equation with Kimetsu no Yaiba never really changes for me – if it avoids the stuff that drives me crazy, it can work.  If not, you get what we got this week.  I don’t know what the rest of Yuukaku-hen is going to be like on that front, but it’s the only factor that really matters in the end.