Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Season 1 Episode 5 Recap – My Own Steel

Memories

The demon keeps taunting Tanjiro, and he recognizes the boy as one of Urokodaki’s students.

Enraged, Tanjiro charges forth. He sees the thread of weakness and slices the demon’s head off.

A flashback into another time appears, showing the demon when he was young. He is feasting on a few innocents along the road, and Urokodaki comes in and challenges the demon. The demon is wounded and cornered as the swordsman rushes to him. Desperate, he runs to an alleyway before Urokodaki slices him clean.

Back in the real world, the demon sees the swordmaster’s face in Tanjiro. His severed head disintegrates into ash. He can’t accept fate.

The demon remembers his memories from when he was a child. He has a brother he dearly misses. Tanjiro touches the demon’s hand and laments the latter’s loss. He takes the demon’s hand and prays.

Tanjiro reflects on all the other students that the demon murdered, including Sabito and Makomo. Now, their souls can rest, and he prays for them.

Final Few

But the test isn’t over. As Tanjiro fights other demons, he keeps asking them to turn one back into a human, and none of them answer. Later, he runs into the border full of wisteria blossoms. The Final Selection ended, and only four people survived. Tanjiro is mad that he couldn’t save the other candidate he met.

The twin girls welcome and congratulate them. The sisters give them their ranks and uniforms. There are ten ranks among the corps, and the four of them start at the lowest.

They are asked to choose an ore from which their blades will be forged. A Kasugai Crow is assigned to each of them for communication. However, one of the boys received a sparrow instead.

The scarred-face candidate is impatient; he wants his katana now, but Tanjiro tells him to back off. The girls continue like nothing happened. There’s a lot to choose from, but none of them know how to pick. Tanjiro uses his sense of smell and takes one.

Long Road

On the way home, Tanjiro feels discouraged as he realizes the journey to cure Nezuko is a long one. He falls to the ground carrying his heavy uniform, tired from the ordeal.

Tanjiro finally arrives at Master Urokodaki’s hut. He finds Nezuko awake, who quickly hugs him. He breaks down and cries, happy to finally see her up. Urokodaki hugs them both.

He reports to his master that he killed the morphed demon. Urokodaki tells him that he’ll encounter more of those types. Some demons have Blood Demon Arts that can produce supernatural spells. Fighting them will be more challenging than what he’s experienced, but the master thinks he’ll be fine.

He asks if Nezuko is the same as those spell-casting demons, and she probably isn’t. Right now, she’s using sleep to counteract the fact that she isn’t eating humans.

The Blade

Several days later, a strange man comes to the hut to deliver the Nichirin blade for Tanjiro. The blade’s ores come from materials mined near the sunlight mountain. The man recognizes Tanjiro’s bright red hair and eyes, saying he is a child born in fire. It’s a good omen.

The man asks Tanjiro to unsheathe the blade. It changes color based on the owner. Tanjiro inspects it, and it slowly adapts a black hue. The two masters are shocked as a pitch-black sword is an unusual thing. The blacksmith expresses his disappointment because he expected it to glow bright red.

A crow comes to Tanjiro. He’s tasked to go to a northeastern town where young girls are reported missing every night. He has to find the demon behind this and defeat it. The crow tells him to exercise caution for his first mission

Our Thoughts:

We see some great characters from the Final selection exam that I can’t wait to meet and interact with Tanjiro again. The lore behind the Demon Slayer Corps keeps getting cooler. I rate this 3.8/5