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[shigsapologist]

The empathy of Tanjirou Kamado

DISCLAIMER: I WILL NOT BE PROOF READING OR EDITING THIS AT ALL. THESE ARE JUST MY THOUGHTS. LIKE A DIGITAL DIARY.

SPOILER WARNING.

sympathy | noun: feelings of pity and sorrow..

empathy | noun: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another .

Let me start this off by stating— tanjirou is best boy. Caring, loving, understanding— all the traits of a loveable mc. Now, we can all agree that its mad annoying when a main character let’s an antagonist live simply because they feel bad. It’s unrealistic and paints a picture that everyone deserves a second chance. True antagonist deserve to reap what they sow and oh boy does Gotouge do such a great job at having them reap.

If you are here, you’ve watched/ read ‘Demon Slayer’. The way that the antagonist are written (apart from Muzan) is absolutely beautiful. The creator does such an amazing job of showing how fear can strip away the humanity or any trace of humanity from a person. The demons under Muzan are simply scared and feel they have no choice but to be evil.. which makes it even easier to pity them. I remember when I first watched Demon Slayer I was soooo upset when we saw the sad ass backstory of one of Muzan’s followers— yet they still died. After a while I Realized— my temporary pity was not enough to atone for their sins. I also realized how unfulfilling it would have been if Tanjirou just said “oh you had a sad life? i’ll let you go and say fuck those poor humans”. It’s unrealistic in a negative way.

For now, i’d like to focus on the deaths of Rui and The mother spider demon. The mother spider demons death always brings me to tears from the animation to the emotion it’s just AGH. Tanjirou is immediately ready to end her life with no second thought but, as soon as he notices her willingness to die— he takes a moment to show mercy.. to display empathy. Even without hearing a word from her, he can sense that she is nothing more than a pawn in the twisted game that Muzan is playing. When this scene happened I truly thought that he would let her live lmao. But in all honesty, him simply changing the movement of his sword was even better. In that moment, he realized that pitying her wasn’t enough. Allowing her to continue to live would do nothing more than leave her with trauma from that entire experience for all of eternity. She was no longer who she was before the mutilation.. so what was the point? Death was her freedom and he understood that and that’s fucking beautiful. He got all of this without her speaking a single word dude like come on he has such a strong intuition and uses it in the best way.

With Rui, when his headless body started crawling to Tanjirou and Nezuko I broke. down. Once again, Tanjirou understood that Rui was no longer the innocent child that was trapped inside but, he also understood that Rui was nothing MORE than a child. The animators do such a good job of showing the pain in Tanjirou’s eyes as the bodies fade. He has such a good balance of thoughtfulness while also stripping away his mercy just enough. I’m just so happy that demon slayer isn’t fueled by the power of friendship.