This season gets pretty lean when it’s time for a JoJo recap episode, huh? With Bucciaratti’s boys stuck reliving all their most recent traumas, it fell to my other three ongoing productions to keep the peace this week. Fortunately, all three of those shows are pretty darn good, so I wasn’t really left wanting for entertainment either way. Demon Slayer continued to stick to its familiar narrative template, but also persisted in bolstering that template with lots of phenomenal art direction, as well as some theoretical thematic substance. Sarazanmai also stuck to its regular formula, but did a terrific job of fleshing out Toi as a protagonist. And Carole & Tuesday basically shored up any deficiencies in the other two, offering yet another ridiculously charming and far too short collection of capers. All this at greater length, as we break down the highs and lows of another week in anime!

Demon Slayer continued to stick pretty closely to shonen training fundamentals this week, but managed to give those fundamentals more of a novel twist than the last couple episodes. The key choice here was the first half’s focus on the actual history of Tanjiro’s opponent, as Demon Slayer worked to humanize a theoretically unforgivable killer. Family is clearly key to Demon Slayer’s perspective, and the tragedy of demons turning on their families was immediately contrasted against the Buddhist view of reincarnation, with the demon slayers themselves seemingly working to counter cycles of violence with more positive cycles of reincarnation.

The rest of the episode mostly just hurried us through the end of Tanjiro’s training, but Demon Slayer’s vivid visual strengths once again made this familiar material surprisingly rewarding. The focus on CG arenas that has given Demon Slayer’s battles such a clear sense of physical space also seems reflected in the show’s non-CG compositions and backgrounds, with the show very consistently creating a strong sense of depth through the layouts and layers of its compositions. Demon Slayer’s scenes possess a tactile physicality that consistently makes me feel like I’m right there with Tanjiro, and as long as the show is able to keep up that level of profound visual engagement, I’m happy to let it find its feet in terms of its narrative identity.

In terms of its own unique content, this week’s Sarazanmai was fairly engaging. Toi is definitely one of the most intriguing and unique characters in Sarazanmai, and this week’s revelations about his family situation went a long way towards solidifying him into a coherent, sympathetic protagonist. The evolution of his perspective towards justice was illustrated beautifully through his naturally escalating responses to his brother’s actions, as the simplistic idealism of childhood eventually morphed into a tempered determination to at least be his brother’s protector in an unfair world. Sarazanmai is also stronger for having established casual relationships between its main leads. The incidental, character-based drama of stuff like Kazuki begging Toi to help him pull off a kidnapping is exactly the emotionally resonant stuff this show needs, a necessary counterbalance to all the cryptic symbolism and repeated refrains.

On the other hand, I’m frankly getting pretty fatigued with the symbolism and repetition. I’ve fallen out of love with “uncover the clues to discover the message!” storytelling for a while now, and generally find it less effective for conveying a point than dramatic clarity. If your theme is so obscured that it demands careful interpretation of a rich symbology to divine, then I don’t think your story’s message will reach anyone except those specifically fascinated by puzzle-box storytelling. But that stylistic preference is far less of a problem than the plain fact that basically every second episode half of this show has been the same exact sequence so far, barring the specific details of whatever secret that episode is revealing. I left my chair to go refill my water during this week’s otter dance, and again to go pee during its final “battle.” Twenty minute episodes shouldn’t feature eight to ten minutes of total visual/dramatic repetition, and when you combine that with the generally slow pacing of this story so far, you end up with a production that’s beginning to feel a lot like work.

Finally, Carole & Tuesday continues to make this shit look easy, offering another twenty minutes of beautiful, funny, and deeply engaging band journey mishaps. With a great deal of the show’s central variables already established, this episode was able to make terrific use of the contrasting personalities of our two heroines, Gus, and Roddie, with Gus’s ex-wife Marie making a very welcome surprise appearance. Marie’s conversations with Gus went a long way towards selling him as a sympathetic lead within this production, while her own story of remarriage continued this season’s theme of unabashed and naturally integrated representation.

Meanwhile, this episode’s overt narrative caper was as silly and entertaining as they come, mining strong characterization and comedy out of the filming progress, and ending on the hilarious and reference-laden video itself. Carole & Tuesday combines Watanabe’s profound strengths as a director, strong connections within the industry, and reverence for music with many of the slice of life and character drama conventions that make anime a uniquely appealing medium for character-focused stories. It consistently feels like one of anime’s greatest directors directly celebrating that which is most unique and engaging about his medium, and I feel like I love it more every day.