Trainer Sakonji Urokodaki

This is the second installment of the anime, adapting roughly the second and third manga chapters. Tanjiro travels to Mount Sagiri on Giyu Tomioka's advice, repairing a borrowed basket so he can carry Nezuko while keeping her shielded from daylight. A nighttime encounter with a man-eating demon in a forest temple becomes a test of resolve, and it draws out an older swordsman named Sakonji Urokodaki, who will decide whether Tanjiro has what it takes to become a Demon Slayer.

The temple demon

After fixing a basket so Nezuko can ride inside, away from the sun, Tanjiro presses on toward the mountain. At a wooded temple he catches the smell of blood and rushes in, finding a demon feeding on corpses. Despite a clean strike from his hatchet, the creature regenerates almost at once and overpowers him. Nezuko resists the lure of blood and throws herself into the fight, kicking the demon's head loose. Tanjiro pins the severed head to a tree with his hatchet, then hurls the thrashing body off a cliff, where the impact knocks the head senseless. As dawn arrives, sunlight reduces the demon to ash.

Urokodaki's verdict

The stranger who appeared mid-fight buries the temple's dead and introduces himself as Sakonji Urokodaki, the man Giyu sent Tanjiro to find. He confronts the boy with a hard question about what he would do should Nezuko ever kill, and his hesitation earns a sharp rebuke. He then sets Tanjiro a trial: descend a trap-laden mountain by daybreak. Bloodied and battered but unbroken, Tanjiro completes the descent, and Sakonji, recalling Giyu's written request, accepts him as a pupil.

The eyecatchers loosely echo the covers of the manga chapters this episode draws from. The anime treats Nezuko's attack on the temple demon more seriously than the source, dropping the exaggerated comedic expressions seen on the page. Giyu's letter to Sakonji is also handled differently: the manga frames it as a memory before the two meet, while the adaptation shows Sakonji recalling it as he chooses to take Tanjiro on.