Yeah, I pretty sure no one saw that coming. The fact that Rui cut his own head off mere moments before Tanjiro does was pretty clever on his end. However, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Episode 20 was all about Giyu and Shinobu, and their powers.Usually when a demon dies, you tend to get a sad backstory that really gets you feeling bad for them. For the case of both Rui and the lady demon, I didn’t feel anything. Despite how powerful Rui was, you’d think he’d at least have some type of backstory that propelled him to create this insane family of demons that explains his desire to create a family. However, it turns out he has no memories of his past life as a human so for me I didn’t get his desperate desire to build a family. It was the only disappointing thing about Rui for the most part.
Of course the highlight was seeing both Giyu and Shinobu in action. Giyu’s mastery over the Breath of Water Style was pretty impressive, so much so that he in fact invented an eleventh style, Eleventh Style: Lull. This even surprised Tanjiro who at this point probably assumed that there was only ten styles. We didn’t get a full explanation as to what the ability does, but from what I could gather, it just nullified Rui’s attack. So yeah, this Giyu guy is on a whole other level. Shinobu on the other hand, despite not being able to slice the neck of a demon of her own, was still a threat with her poison blade. Her graceful maneuver against that demon was pretty cool to see. Overall, it was a pretty good episode. I mean after episode 19th, my expectation are on a all new high. It’ll take a while for that hype to faze out.
