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Demon Slayer’s Entertainment District arc reached the pinnacle of intensity in Season 2 Episode 17. The fight between the Demon Slayer Corps and the Upper Rank Six siblings shifted dramatically in the latter’s favor once Gyutaro entered the battle and injured Sound Hashira Tengen Uzui.
The tides seemed to be turning in Demon Slayer Season 2 Episode 16 when Inosuke Hashibira beheaded Daki and started fleeing with her head. However, Gyutaro ambushed him, stabbing him in the heart.
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In the aftermath, when looking for Uzui, Tanjiro Kamado found him unmoving on the ground, with his left arm cut off.
Demon Slayer Season 2 Episode 17 highlights
Gyutaro taunts Tanjiro
Demon Slayer Season 2 Episode 17, titled “Never Give Up,” began with Tanjiro falling from the roof after the buildings were slashed through. He fell onto the ground and lost consciousness, all the while apologizing for not being useful enough.
Nezuko Kamado appeared to him in a dream, chastising him for constantly apologizing and reminding him that sometimes things don’t work out despite people’s best efforts.
He woke up to find the entire area on fire and Nezuko still asleep in her box, lying behind him. Just as he turned around to do whatever he could, he was left sitting face to face with Gyutaro, who seemed surprised that Tanjiro was still alive.
The demon proceeded to taunt him, telling him that everyone else but him was already dead. Gyutaro claimed that he had killed Inosuke, Uzui’s heart had stopped from being poisoned, and Zenitsu was trapped under a pile of rubble, left to die.
He repeatedly called Tanjiro pathetic for being unable to protect his sister, rather, letting her defend him. Instead of killing him, Gyutaro broke Tanjiro’s fingers and pulled him by the hair, daring the young Demon Slayer to try and kill him.
Tanjiro, frozen stiff with pain, exhaustion, and dread, and knowing the demon could kill Nezuko and him at any moment, picked up Nezuko and ran.
Tanjiro’s counterattack
Gyutaro and Daki were momentarily stunned by Tanjiro’s reaction, breaking into laughter at crushing his spirit. The former followed the protagonist, kicking him through buildings and toying with him like a predator toying with his food.
Tanjiro then found pouches of the courtesans’ perfume on the ground toward Gyutaro, who was walking up to him.
The Upper Rank Six demon told Tanjiro that he found the latter pathetic but didn’t hate him since he liked miserable, ugly things. He even offered to turn him into a demon, threatening to kill Nezuko if he disagreed.
Tanjiro, who had been stalling and buying himself time to recover, headbutted Gyutaro and stabbed him with Hinatsuru’s poisoned kunai, having masked its smell with the perfume he had thrown at the demon earlier. He took advantage of the wisteria poison paralyzing the demon and slashed down his neck with Hinokami Kagura.
Hearing Daki scream out for her brother made Tanjiro see himself in Gyutaro’s situation for a minute, making him realize that with one false step, he would have turned into a demon. He was convinced that someone in the Demon Slayer Corps would do him the favor of beheading him.
At that moment, Gyutaro started resisting, trying to pull out the poisoned kunai.
Zenitsu diverts Daki, and Uzui returns
Daki, alarmed at seeing her brother’s head being cut off, began attacking with her obi but was stopped by Zenitsu blasting out of the rubble. She started attacking him instead, saying she knew how he could go, having seen his technique several times during the battle.
But to her shock, Zenitsu began moving even faster using Thunder Breathing First Form: Thunderclap and Flash Godspeed. The move was fast enough to drag Daki along with him as she quickly turned her neck into elastic fabric.
However, he admitted to himself that it was his final chance since he could use the Godspeed technique only twice in quick succession, already having used it once to escape from within the rubble.
Meanwhile, Tanjiro could not cut through the hard neck, and Gyutaro managed to pull the kunai out, attacking with his Flying Blood Sickles. Tanjiro kept parrying the demon’s attacks, which got faster.
Just as it was about to gouge his eye out, Uzui stepped between the two, stopping the attack by holding one of his two blades in his mouth.
Gyutaro realized that Uzui had intentionally forced his muscles to stop his heart and stop the poison from circulating. This is the moment in Demon Slayer Season Episode 17 where Uzui’s title as Sound Hashira is highlighted. He tells Tanjiro they would win since he had completed his Musical Score technique.
He then deflected every single one of the Blood Sickles Gyutaro launched his way, reading the attack like a musical score. A fierce duel followed, Gyutaro and Uzui being evenly matched, even with the Hashira losing one arm.
Tanjiro’s Demon Slayer mark awakens, Inosuke beheads Daki
Tanjiro prepared to attack, realizing that Uzui would reach his limit first. The Hashira cut off one of Gyutaro’s arms, losing his eye in the process, but yelled at Tanjiro to still attack.
The younger Demon Slayer jumped, but Gyutaro stabbed him right through the chin, hooking him like a fish.
Tanjiro swung his blade anyway, forcing himself to slash through with his entire body strength and forcefully summon a hundred times the strength if that wasn’t enough. Flame-shaped marks, similar to the one possessed by Yorichii, appeared over his forehead, as Tanjiro used Hinokami Kagura to slice Gyutaro’s head off.
Gyutaro hoped to save himself and Daki by ensuring the latter managed not to be beheaded, deciding to kill Zenitsu first. But Inosuke appeared at the crucial moment, boasting that he rearranged his organs before Gyutaro could kill him.
With a final combined burst of strength, Gyutaro and Daki’s heads were severed completely.
Makio, Suma, and Hinatsuru rejoiced at the demons being defeated until Hinatsuru noticed that something was wrong. Demon Slayer Season 2 Episode 17 ended with Tanjiro frantically trying to prevent the poison from spreading through him and failing, while Uzui screamed at him to get up and run.
Gyutaro’s Blood Demon Art, which he was trying to activate right before being beheaded, exploded out of his body, seemingly destroying everything in its path, including Uzui and Tanjiro. The ending theme of the Demon Slayer Entertainment District arc was replaced by an instrumental theme, with the entire pleasure district razed to the ground in the background.
Preview to Demon Slayer Season 2 Episode 18
Demon Slayer Season 2 Episode 18’s preview showed Nezuko telling a still gasping Tanjiro not to die, then moving on to the Taisho-era secret. She revealed that Tanjiro had inherited his rock-hard forehead from their mother, who had allegedly once defeated a wild boar by headbutting it.
The title for the next and the final episode of Demon Slayer Season 2 is revealed to be “No Matter How Many Lives.”
