At this point it doesn’t seem necessary to search for deeper answers.  For me at least, my engagement with Kimetsu no Yaiba is inversely related to the prominence of Zenitsu and Inosuke in the narrative.  A week like this and we’re fine – their two little dream sequences were annoying but short enough not to be a major distraction.  That said, it does make me wonder all the more – why are these two characters even here?  What do they add to the equation?  I know the answer of course – Zenitsu does seem to win every character poll, after all.  But in hard, practical terms?  Squat.

Here’s a little thought experiment I just thought of.  Some of you will know about the “Indy doesn’t matter” theory with Raiders of the Lost Ark (one of my favorite films of all time).  It was popularized by The Big Bang Theory but it’d been around for years before that.  To wit, it states that Indiana Jones actually has no impact on what happens at the end of the movie – if he didn’t exist things would have ended exactly the same way.  My take on this is “correct, but irrelevant” – it doesn’t work as a criticism of the movie, but as a parlor trick is does hold water.

Take this episode of Kimetsu.  Hell, take the entire series (at least the parts I’ve seen).  Then take the Screechy and Boaris parts out of it.  Would anything have changed materially?  No – they’re totally irrelevant.  Tanjirou and Rengoku’s dreams are the only ones that actually move the plot.  And thinking back on the first season, I couldn’t come up with any situation where Inosuke and Zenitsu did anything that was really essential to the story.  That’s a tricky path to take with characters, and popular as they are, it does seem to be that these two are pretty divisive.  If you love characters in that situation great, but if you don’t, it’s easy to get very irritated with them for existing.

The other thing that strikes me is that the casting with this series is… odd.  Children don’t sound like children, generally, and so many of the seiyuu, even the good ones (like Hirakawa Daisuke playing Enmu) seem to be putting on a weird, overly mannered persona.  It’s another of those elements of Kimetsu that really stand out when you think back on it, and I can only assume this is a deliberate stylistic choice.  The brief appearance by Miki Shinichiriou as Tanjirou’s dad this week really reminded me how badly this series misses the really good, restrained performances – like Seki Toshihiko as Muzan – when they’re absent for long stretches.

Still, for all that the dream sequences for the main duo were very well done.  Maybe I’m supposed to know why these urchins are helping Enmu and it was explained in an episode I missed, but the whole scenario has a palpable sense of despair to it.  You can really feel Tanjirou’s pain as he experiences a world that should rightfully been his to live in, but was ripped away in the most brutal fashion available.  As for Rengoku, my takeaway from his dream is that the facade he shows the world is just that, a facade – a smile he tries a little too hard to maintain at all times which is hiding a great deal of pain.

I don’t know about this whole “spiritual core” thing – it’s pretty metaphysical and gives the impression that the series is trying to operate on a level the writing isn’t quite up to.  But the dreams are interesting just the same, and while I still don’t quite see why this arc in particular was deemed epic enough for a big-screen treatment, the scenario is pretty engaging, as long as the balance doesn’t start to tip in the wrong direction as it did in the first season.