Love Hashira Mitsuri Kanroji

This installment is the fifty-fourth episode of the anime and the tenth of season three. Having pulled Tanjiro out of a wooden dragon, Mitsuri Kanroji confronts the demon of hatred, Zohakuten, to rescue Nezuko and Genya. She holds her own against his combined assaults, but a close-range attack drops her unconscious before she can land a finishing strike. As death looms over her, she remembers the rejection she faced in her youth and the rare physical constitution that set her apart.

Mitsuri severs a dragon's neck to free Tanjiro and then demands that Zohakuten release the captives, only to be mocked. She counters his lightning, wind, sonic, and spear attacks with successive forms of Love Breathing, slicing through his Crazed Cry of Thunder Death and his swarm of striking trees. When she wraps her blade around the demon's neck, he answers with Compressed Sound Waves, a sonic blast that fells her.

A series of memories follows. A suitor breaks off their engagement when she is seventeen, scorning her hair color and her strength. Childhood scenes show her lifting a heavy stone as an infant, out-eating sumo wrestlers, and beating a grown man at arm wrestling. Ashamed of being different, she once dyed her hair black and ate less to seem ordinary. A talk with Kagaya Ubuyashiki, who urged her to be proud, and a gift of socks from Obanai Iguro restore her resolve. She awakens, thanks her comrades, and a Demon Slayer Mark surfaces on her neck as her speed climbs. Meanwhile Tanjiro tracks Hantengu's burl by scent, Genya bites into the wooden stalk to gain demonic power, and Nezuko's Exploding Blood sets it ablaze. The burl proves empty, and Hantengu flees again.

The episode draws on chapters 122 through 125. It expands material the manga delivered through narration, adding scenes of Mitsuri's father encouraging her and an arm-wrestling victory that illustrates her muscle density, said to be many times that of an ordinary person. The second eyecatcher echoes the cover of chapter 124. Several anime-only beats appear, including Tanjiro spotting the burl crawling away and Mitsuri halting a dragon head with her bare hands.