With Tanjiro finally slicing that boulder, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Episode 4 – Final Selection leads off with him heading to the final selection, much to the regrets of Urokodaki’s wish.
Urokodaki never wanted Tanjiro to succeed in slicing that boulder and now we know why. Every student that he’s ever taught has been killed going to the Final Selection. Despite that, Urokodaki gives him a feast, the Ninchiri Sword and a warding mask that has been imbued with magical protection. As it turns out that, demons get stronger the more the eat humans, and with enough training you can tell their strength through smell. So at least there’s some form of power scaling in this world. Anyways, when Tanjiro arrives at the Final selection, the rules are explained to him and the other participants.
To pass Final Selection, one must survive for seven days on Mt. Fujikasane where demons captured by the Demon Slayers have been imprisoned. Now armed with the breathing techniques and stances he’d learned from Sakonji Urokodaki, Tanjiro manages to slash two demons with ease. Man, I can’t get over how amazing the animation looked when he unleashed his attack.
However, things take massive turn for the worse when a morphed demon that has been imprisoned for 47 years shows up chasing another person. Tanjiro being the good person that he is, jumps in to safe the guy but that same guy turns his back on him the moment he gets a chance.
Anyways, we learned that this morphed demon has eaten 50 kids over that period, 13 of which were Urokodaki’s students. It’s here that we learned that this was the same morphed demon that killed Sabito and Makomo which confirms that their indeed dead.
Now this raises a question about that boulder. If Urokodaki was the one who captured the morphed demon, and set up the test with the boulder, did both Sabito and Makomo pass it or not. See, if they were able to slice that boulder, they technically shouldn’t have fallen to the morphed demon. Especially as that demon probably hasn’t eaten as many kids by then.
Or maybe the boulder was a new training steps that he came up after their deaths, which would have it be just as strong as the morphed demons neck. If that was the case maybe Sabito and Makomo saw this as an opportunity to reveal themselves to Tanjiro guide him.
The demon goes on to brag about how he killed them which infuriated Tanjiro into lashing out. After a failed attempt, he tries again and this times succeeds in slicing that morphed demon’s head off. That fight got me thinking. If fifty humans was enough to turn a demon into a morphed demon like, then I can’t imagine what a 100 or a 1000 could create. Overall, it was a very interesting episode that explained a lot more about the threat of these demons and why they feed on humans.
