‘Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc’ Ep. 7 “Awful Villain”: Protagonist-Centric Morality Decon [Anime Review]

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain” gives us a pretty rare thing in anime. Heck, it’s pretty rare in fiction in general. This whole episode is basically a deconstruction of the Protagonist-Centric Morality trope. as demonstrated by the newest Hantengu’s highly skewed idea of morality. Naturally, Tanjiro is the one who does the deconstructing here, and he deconstructs it hard.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain”: Details

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain” is the latest episode (you can read reviews for Ep. 1, Ep. 2, Ep. 3, Ep. 4, Ep. 5, and Ep. 6 here) of this latest season (after the previous Entertainment District Arc season) of this dark fantasy martial arts adventure anime series. Said anime is the anime adaptation of the manga of the same name by Koyoharu Gotouge. Ufotable (Tales of Symphonia: The Animation, Fate/zero, Tales of Zestiria the X) remains the animation studio behind this latest season of the anime.

Hideki Hosokawa is the director of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain”, with Yō Miura responsible for the storyboard. As for the anime series in general: Haruo Sotozaki remains the director, with Akifumi Fujio, Masanori Miyake, and Yūma Takahashi producing. Ufotable still claims collective credit for the writing, while Yuki Kajiura and Go Shiina together composed the music.

Speaking of music: Man with a Mission with Milet sang both the opening theme song “Kizuna no Kiseki” (English: “Bonds of Miracle”) and the ending theme song “Koi Kogare” (English: “Yearning”) for Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc as a whole.

Voice Cast

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain” features the voices of Natsuki Hanae (Zach Aguilar in English dub) as Tanjiro Kamado and Akari Kitō (Abby Trott in English dub) as Nezuko Kamado. Other notables voices for this episode include Nobuhiko Okamoto (Zeno Robinson in English dub) as Genya Shinazugawa, Kengo Kawanishi (Griffin Burns in English dub) as Muichirō Tokitō, and Ayumu Murase (Jeannie Tirado in English dub) as Kotetsu. On the villains’ side: we have Toshio Furukawa (original), Yuichiro Umehara (Sekido), Kaito Ishikawa (Karaku), Shunsuke Takeuchi (Urogi), and Soma Saito (Aizetsu) as the various voices of Hantengu and now joined by Koichi Yamadera as Zohakuten; with Christopher Corey Smith voicing them all in the English dub, and Kohsuke Toriumi (Brent Mukai in English dub) as Gyokko.

Where to Watch

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain” premiered on May 21, 2023. You can watch this episode only on Crunchyroll at the moment.

Warning: spoilers for Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain” below. If you want to watch the moral hypocrisy for yourself, then stop here and come back once you’ve also thoroughly dissected Hantengu’s reasoning.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain”: Plot Summary

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain” picks up directly where we last left off in the previous episode. Tanjiro is in the middle of trying to cut into chibi Hantengu’s neck with his flaming sword. Unfortunately, he then feels a gaze of pure malice behind him, but he can’t stop to look in the middle of cutting an Upper Rank Demon’s neck. Then Nezuko’s burning blood burns out, and now he can look. Except now he has a lot more problems than that. The immediate problem is that his sword is no longer cutting any deeper into a tiny neck without that burning blood to help. This has the unfortunate side effect that Tanjiro now also can’t pull the sword out to deal with the threat behind him.

Fortunately, Nezuko saves Tanjiro from a gruesome death. It only costs her an arm and a leg. Literally. Fortunately, she regenerates them in seconds, so it’s all good for her. Now there’s “only” the problem with this new threat. As it turns out, this “new” threat is actually all of the Hantengu’s combined into a single being. Or rather: Sekido absorbing everyone else. Meet the new kid on the block: Zohakuten, and he’s hopping mad…metaphorically speaking. There’s a reason why he has “Hatred” on his tongue, after all. Even worse: Zohakuten is protecting chibi Hantengu with a rock hydra, and has a serious case of Protagonist-Centered Morality. Tanjiro refutes it hard, but Zohakuten is, of course, unwilling to listen to reason. It’s time for a big fight for Tanjiro, Nezuko, and Genya.

However, we’ll get back to them later. For now, there’s someone we forgot in the chaos in the distance.

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Muichirō

Yup, Muichirō Tokitō is still in that water vase prison thing, with even his strongest thrust not able to pierce the gel-like stuff making up the vase. However, the man has the emotional expression of a dead fish. Thus, Gyokko quickly gets bored and decides to poke around in the shed a bit to see what the Demon Slayers are protecting. As it turns out, they’re not protecting a “what”. They’re protecting a “who”. Namely: Hotaru Haganezuka as he obsessively sharpens the red sword Tanjiro found, completely unaware of anything else around him. This includes Gyokko slashing at him to get him to break his concentration. Which fails to do so, irking Gyokko to no end.

Meanwhile, Muichirō is hallucinating Tanjiro consoling him due to lack of oxygen. Fortunately, Kotetsu tries to come to his rescue. Unfortunately, his little knife and puny kid arms can’t break through the gel vase. Even more unfortunately, Gyokko had left a guard in the form of a scissor(?)-handed fish. It attacks Kotetsu and leaves an apparently fatal wound on his solar plexus. Undeterred though, Kotetsu staggers to the water vase thing, and breathes out bubbles into the water. Those bubbles give Muichirō enough oxygen to make one last attack, and now he’s free. Will Kotetsu be okay? Well, we’ll likely find out in the next episode of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain”: The Good

Being a direct anime adaptation of Koyoharu Gotouge’s manga, the story of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain” is clearly the best part about it. In particular: the aforementioned deconstruction of Zohakuten’s Protagonist-Centric Morality. It’s pretty clear that Zohakuten’s skewed worldview is Hantengu’s way of justifying his own existence. He can’t be the villain in his own story, so he makes everyone else the villain. Especially those who try to stop him. It’s not only a perfectly logical worldview for someone like Hantengu in order to justify his mass murder of humans for consumption, but it makes his conflict with Tanjiro all the more interesting because it shows that Tanjiro is just as much a philosophizer as he is a warrior.

Zokuhakuten basically causes Tanjiro to reveal that under his ultra-hard head, there’s definitely a thinking brain in there. Tannjiro understands the morality of his own actions pretty well, as well as the morality of the Hantengus’ actions, and is thus able to see through Zokuhakuten’s skewed morality. Honestly, this conflict of ideologies and morality is what makes this battle just as good as the action sequences. Although I have to give Ufotable credit: Tanjiro battle-dancing with that rock hydra was pretty spectacular to watch.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain”: The Bad

Honestly, if you don’t like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc Ep. 7 “Awful Villain”, then I’m not sure why you’re watching this anime. It’s got everything that makes the manga and anime great. Both in the drama and the action department. Maybe a nice slice-of-life comedy or romantic comedy is your thing if you don’t like either one?