I’ll never not mourn that we didn’t get the zenitsu arc that was set up, because I truly believe it would have done wonders for how the fandom views Zenitsu.
It makes me quite angry that he’s dumbed down to nothing more than a pervert and a coward, now. I wouldn’t even go as far to say Zenitsu is a pervert, a coward sure, he even says so himself. But a pervert is someone who purposely creeps on women, tries to feel them up, tries to be a peeping Tom.
Zenitsu does literally none of that, he’s a girl lover/chaser when we meet him, I’ll admit. But he in no way shape or form harasses a woman from the point on where Tanjirou rips him off the woman he’s begging to marry him. After that, he’s very kind to the women he meets, cringe sure, but still polite and respectful,and he’s extremely devoted to Nezuko. Even if she cannot reciprocate, and even then he’s not a fucking creep, he just has a puppy crush on a pretty girl.
So to compare him to someone like, let’s say mineta from MHA, is not only extreme but just plain wrong.
Back to Zenitsu’s cowardice, I think it’s actually pretty cool he’s a coward. We get to see him grow from it, we get to see him learn to be more confident with the support of Tanjirou and Inosuke behind him, the most noticeable moment of this is when he defends the girl that Daki is harming in anger, even if at this point he’s semi aware he’s found the uppermoon, he still steps in front of her and tells her off.
Even during the actual confrontation with Daki, he still tells her she’s wrong, and cruel. And tells her to apologize to the poor girl she hurt.
And Zenitsu is intimately aware of his own flaws, even going as far to say “I hate myself more than anyone else” and listing off that when he’s scared, he freezes or runs. But he also mentions that he’s hurt that Inosuke and Tanjirou just left him at the mountain, he says that if they had tried to coax him, he more than likely would have went. And this claim is 100% supported by the flashbacks we see with Jigoro Kuwajima who was the only character to never give up on Zenitsu and constantly push him to be better and stronger.
If Zenitsu truly wanted to leave the demon slayer corps, he would, now that he’s a full fledged demon slayer and out from under Jigoro’s thumb he had every single opportunity to leave the core and go pursue an actual life outside of it, and yet he doesn’t. Because he wants to make his gramps proud, because he wants to help Tanjirou, because he finds a support system/family with Inosuke and Tanjirou that he’s never had with even Jigoro and Kaigaku.
He’s insecure, he has anxiety, he has anger issues, he wants to honor his mentor and help and protect his friends, he wants to live a happy life, he wants to be respected, he wants to be genuinely loved. He’s so much fucking more than a “pervert” and a coward, but the fandom still sticks to this perception of him because we never got the Zenitsu backstory, I don’t like the term “there’s always a duo in a trio” but at times it really felt like Zenitsu was just kind of there, while Inosuke and Tanjioru continued to get more depth and he didn’t.
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