Another commentary I watched mentioned an idea of how Zenitsu could counter his fear by closing his eyes instead of going full-on slumber mode & I genuinely think that it's a genius idea considering there's so many people irl who actually do this, and how it affects the development of his character before the whole showdown with Kaigaku.

Oh my god finally, someone said it. I hate how the fandom glazes over these obvious missteps

this really makes so much sense to me I love this analysis! I really liked zenitsu from his introduction and I didn’t even mind him being the pervert character from the beginning because we were shown the reason why he is like this — he’s an orphan and he’s been saddled into living as a demon slayer to pay off debt and he wants to get married and have the family he is scared he’ll die before he gets a chance to have. When we see him protect the box with nezuko—not because he knows she’s in it but because he has been won over by tanjiro’s kindness it immediately sets up so much potential for him to grow past treating girls as objects that are the key to saving him from loneliness and opening him up to a found family. But instead everything in his character regresses except when he is in isolated fights having backstory flashbacks. He still seems to respect tanjiro but later in the story it feels a far cry from how he was introduced, allowing himself to get beaten to a pulp to protect something just because the person who cared about it invoked so much empathy through his own kindness. I do like all the sweet emotional moments inosuke has in the story but to be honest I also think they are quite underdeveloped and all of the shonen trio deserved to be shown as emotionally complex, in fact tanjiro might have been better were he allowed to be slightly flawed at times. And well, the objectification of nezuko is its own can of worms 😢 I certainly wish she had the time to be like, a person at all

the way you addressed all the qualms i had about his character is actually insane i've never felt this understood🫶 rest in peace zenitsu ur design was too good to be treated this way

The sleep rhing didn't even need to be the narrative deadweight that it is. It could've been a clever trick that also made him grow as a character if they did one thing with it: make him uncontrollable. That's it. Make it so that when he falls asleep, he becomes a danger to both friend and foe alike. It lets him show off how powerful he is while also making it a liability that motivates him to be an active participant in battles. It would've been so easy to implement, I'm honestly baffled by the fact that they didn't do that

6:29 THANK YOU!!!!!! This ship makes the least amount of sense in any media I've ever consumed. I dont get it and I dont support. Nezuko deserves better.

Cash is..alive? And...climbing out of a bsd rabbit hole...?

as someone who is in love with the idea of zenitsu as a character (and parts of zenitsu),  thank you…
i really really see him as some sort of potential man in terms of writing

Honestly the sleep solution is such bs because there are literally no drawbacks to it. It's a cheap far fetched solution

The problem with zenitsu is basically that he doesnt have enough development and the moment that he DOES develop (i think) literally happen offscreen

Before kaigaku, we never see a single breathing form from him awake and we never see his thought process while trying to create the variants and such "how did he create godspeed? Why is he the only one to know this?" We would never know

First season was great for him, second season he doesnt do much, he has his moment at the beginning but nothing much after, he literally has a single scene in a movie about sleep and all his dreams are a joke, he presumably fights awake during the mission on season 3 but thats gets offscreened, so actually he just doesnt appear on season 3 and he is just a joke on season 4 until the kaigaku message, he basically did not use the screentime he has at all

At this point, i'm convinced that the creator of demon slayer has something against zenitsu because the amount of times he was done dirty in both anime and manga is crazy to me

It genuinely feels like he was only created to be hated

I feel like he would be a better character, If instead of fear driving him to a point where he falls asleep, it would be his rage forcing him to fight through the fear. And for just general Personality they should Focused more on the straightman aspect.

Hate how he ended up with Nezuko.. the romanting pairings in this series are just "what if girl and boy are in a relationship?", which makes them completely boring and insufferable to watch. The canon couples are in a romantic relationship because of obligation and not because actual love (well yes it's something usual of hetero pairings but like c'mon now).

THANK YOU! I never been a big fan of Zenitsu to the main characters and I’m so happy someone explained the reason why since I’ve never been able to fully get it

Ok. Just finished the video. The character you're looking for Zenitsu to have been is literally Hakuri Sazanami from Kagurabachi. Every point of development and character flaw you pointed about Zenitsu, happens with Hakuri. If you haven't read Kagurabachi already, give it a read, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I never tought i would live long enought to see kny content from cash

I think he should’ve just not been able to distinguish friend or for when asleep, and for Nezuko, if they wanted to make it work more he should’ve been the one to help Nezuko speak again(even before she conquers the sun).
I also agree with you that he should’ve also helped Nezuko receive more “things” from the outside world that she would never get until conquering the sun

Zennitsu deserves way more slander than Megumi from jkk got

I kinda hoped that zenitsu would be a pervert character like denji was. The reason denji is a pervert is because he was literally robbed of the opportunity to explore the different types love and attraction as a developing boy. He is SIXTEEN(same age as zenitsu) at the beginning of chainsaw man so that means his childhood is basically over by society’s standards and for the time period he’s canonically in. They would both be so unlikable as real people, but the way they try to cope with the lack of love and guidance they received as kids with an almost obsessive focus on romantic/sexual attraction is so sad.

More insufferable tbh I hate him, and he just locks in at the end make it make sense "making a character annoying to see/read is worse than making a hateable/evil character"-idk where I read this