The Entertainment District Arc of Demon Slayer Explained

The current season of Kimetsu no Yaiba: Demon Slayer started airing in December, 2021 and has been the top viewed anime of the season ever since. The 3^rd season covers the entire Entertainment District Arc from the original manga chapters 51-100. We got the movie Mugen Train and the 2^nd season which cases the Mugen Train Arc which basically bridges the gap between the 1^st season and the current season. So let’s talk about the flashiest arc of Demon Slayer which is the Entertainment District Arc. This article is going to contain some of the major spoilers.

A HIGHLIGHT OF THE PREVIOUS ARC :

After a short introduction to Giyu Tomioka, the Water Hashira, in the first season of the anime, we properly get introduced to the Flame Hashira Kyojuro Rengoku in the Mugen Train arc who instantly became the fan favourite in a heartbeat. Although his screen time and life span was short, the impact of his whole character was huge nonetheless. We see him fight the Upper Moon Three, Akaza with burning passion, unmatched skills and unwavering bravery which speaks volumes about how well written this character was. This arc ends with our beloved Kyojuro sacrificing his life in order to kill Akaza and to protect Tanjiro. In the beginning of the Entertainment District Arc, we see Tanjiro still grieving and trying to cope with Kyojuro’s death by visiting the Rengoku family, especially Kyojuro’s beloved brother Senjuro.

THE ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT ARC IN A NUTSHELL :

Four months after the passing of Rengoku; Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke are seen recovering and training relentlessly to improve their strength for upcoming missions. Tanjiro comes back from a solo mission which was to visit Kyojuro’s little brother Senjuro and upon returning, he meets the flashiest Hashira, Tengen Uzui in the Butterfly Mansion.

INTRODUCTION TO NEW CHARACTERS : TENGEN UZUI AND HIS THREE SUPPORTIVE WIVES 

The Sound Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps, Tengen Uzui is a former ninja whose obsession with glamour is overwhelming. He fights with a variation of the Thunder Breathing called Sound Breathing and to his credit he created this explosive combat style himself. He has a ninja background and wields giant dual Nichirin cleavers rather than one normal blade. Even among the Hashiras, the manga emphasizes that Tengen excels in speed. We soon see how good Tengen is at using sound to figure out what’s going on from a distance. Another strength of Tengen is, because he is from a ninja family he has developed some resistance to poison He also has three beautiful wives – Suma, Makio and Hinatsuru. All three of his wives were undercover during the Entertainment District Arc and worked alongside Tengen and the Tanjiro squad as shadows. Once Tengen and Tanjiro squad arrive at the Yoshiwara red light district to hunt down the demon that have been terrorizing the area, Tengen informs the boys about the mission. While Suma, Makio and Hinatsuru were all stationed within three separate establishments, narrowing down the location of the demons, their communication cuts off and the boys set out to find them.

Now, Tengen has an extremely fierce past. He was raised as the next leader of an endangered group of ninjas in the Taisho period. It’s revealed that he grew up in that family where his father forced him to train intensely and he was only two of his nine siblings who survived. Even though he was against his own existence, he escaped his village with his wives. For a while he made a habit of saying he would go to hell. After angering all three of them, he stopped saying that. At a glance, he is obsessed with anything glamorous and he is incredibly sensitive and kind at heart. He also has his priorities set in stone in order of his three wives, the citizens and himself. In his flashy fight against Gyutaro, we see why he is ranked as one of the top Hashiras. His wives being told that Kunoichi ninjas had to risk their own lives for anything, their skills are top class. While undercover in the Entertainment District, Hinatsuru drinks poison to escape the Kyogoku House and Makio stays silent despite being captured by Daki. Suma was the very first one to get captured but she did not spill anything either. They were furious when Tengen came very close to dying but as his supportive wives they were only showing their incomparable bonds.

UPPER MOONS SIX : DAKI AND GYUTARO

Introduced as the Upper Moon Six, Daki has been repeatedly infiltrating the Yoshiwara red light district since the Edo period to prey on people. In the current Taisho era, she named herself Warabihime and was a top oiran at the Kyogoku House. Initially it was said that she was a formidable foe who preyed on 22 Hashiras before but 15 of them were eaten by her brother Gyutaro who is the other part of the Upper Moon Six. Daki by herself was significantly weak for an Upper Moon rank but the two combined made things far more complicated. The only way to beat them was to cut both of their heads off at the same time. When Tengen cut Daki’s head off in a blink of an eye, Gyutaro only showed up because Daki started crying for his help. His determination to punish anyone who made his sister cry is scary.

Both Daki and Gyutaro had incredibly hard lives when they were humans. Their backstory as mere children is so tragic, I was brought to tears each time I read the manga. The two were born into poverty within the lowest class in the worst part of the Entertainment District. Their mother who was a prostitute by profession, would often beat and try to kill Gyutaro since she could not feed him and she eventually died from syphilis. Throughout his childhood he was berated for his appearance, voice and poor hygiene by the other residents of the district. Daki in her human life was named after the disease her mother died for, which is ‘Ume’. Ume, unlike her brother Gyutaro, was so beautiful that it presented her with a lot of opportunities as an oiran. However, for the same reason Gyutaro felt very necessary to protect her from others. Following their mother’s passing, Gyutaro raised Ume. He taught her to take what was hers before others could use her, believing in her beauty above all else. He taught her this as they shivered as they shivered in the cold, freezing and starving, with no money or home to sleep in. Ume enters the world of prostitution herself following the steps of her mother. One day when Gyutaro was away collecting debts, Ume stabbed her customer in the eye with a comb, blinding him because he badmouthed her brother in front of her. Gyutaro returned home to a tied up Ume in a ditch, burnt alive and almost left to die. He jumped into the ditch and began to hysterically panic as he cradled his sister’s charred body praying to all the gods out there to turn her back to normal. While he was grieving for his sister, the same customer who had his eye stabbed by Ume, sneaks up behind him, slashing his back with a knife in order to kill him because the manager of the brothel requested him to. Despite being injured, he carried his sister and jumped out of the ditch and killed the customer and the manager. He then carried Ume throughout the whole district, injured and cold, in search of help but was ultimately denied of any aid no matter where he went. As he finally collapsed on the ground due to exhaustion, both of them on the edge of death, he was finally approached by the Upper Moon Douma who stumbled upon the siblings while hunting down young women throughout the Entertainment District. Douma offered to “help” them by turning them into demons and began giving them a few drops of his blood to initiate their transformations. They eventually become Demon King Muzan’s favourites and have been terrorizing the Entertainment District ever since.

TANJIRO SQUAD IN THE MISSION :

In the first season of the series, we see that, in the Natagumo Mountains, Tanjiro squad had a remarkable fight against Muzan’s beloved Rui and in this season, with Sound Hashira Tengen and his wives, they defeat the Upper Moons Six Daki and Gyutaro, which has been a hindrance for the past 113 years. Tanjiro has already acquired the total concentration breathing constant which allows its user to expand their lungs and take in more air. During the Mugen Train Arc he learned how to fight with variations after receiving advice from the Flame Hashira Rengoku himself. Up until now, tanjiro has been using the water breathing technique and Hinokami Kagura to fight but that evolved during the Entertainment district Arc. While being pushed past his limits in the fight against Daki, he creates his own breathing style. He could use more power in water breathing and make up for his exhaustion with Hinokami Kagura. However, because he’s not used to use his new breathing style, his body succumbs to exhaustion and Nezuko saves the day. While Zenitsu went undercover in the Kyogoku House where Daki was as Warabihime, with his incredible hearing he figured out Warabihime wasn’t in fact a human. However, he gets caught by Daki in her sash and later joins the fight and immediately becomes overpowered in a sleeping state when Inosuke frees him. And with Inosuke, he’s finally learning how important it is to cooperate with others in order to deal with these demons. He’s badass when finding the underground cave where the captured victims are being kept. All of their growth and developments are astonishing in this arc.

NEZUKO’S AWAKENING AS A DEMON :

Until now, Nezuko’s fighting style contained punching and kicking. During their fight in the Natagumo Mountains, she acquired the Blood Demon Art. During the Entertainment District Arc, when Tanjiro gets in deep trouble, she shows up to assist in the fight and the rage and hatred from seeing her family murdered instantly takes over her senses. She awakens her demon self which gives her the appearance of a full grown adult. She’s now on par with an Upper Rank demon with her strength and regeneration skills. The way she fights Daki, it’s evident that she is losing control of her humanity, succumbing to demonic urges. She enjoys beating Daki to a pulp, smashing her head to the ground, tearing off her limbs, not giving her a chance to regenerate. In the anime, it was a sight to behold! As soon as Tanjiro gains his consciousness and sees Nezuko in her demonic state, he intervenes just as she was about to devour a citizen and struggles to bring her back to consciousness. But finally upon hearing her mother’s lullaby from Tanjiro, she is brought back to reality and she falls asleep after crying hysterically. And thus the fight continues when Tengen and Gyutaro show up.

So far, this is the Entertainment District Arc of season 3 of Demon slayer. There is a lot to look forward to in the upcoming episodes. Let us know about your favourite moments of Demon Slayer and your thoughts about this article in the comments below. Also, please don’t forget to subscribe and share. I will see you on the next one.