Kanroji Mitsuri is the most mishandled character of Demon Slayer

MANGA SPOILERS AHEAD

90% of the cast of Demon Slayer is badly underused, but Mitsuri stands out as the biggest example for me.

So, she's introduced as the average comedy relief fanservice character almost any anime/manga has nowadays, then on her subsequent appearances her character is explored more deeply, we get to see that she is an actual superhuman, kinda, being about 8 times stronger than an average woman, at the cost of needing immense quantities of food to sustain her body, which also caused her hair to turn pink & green, all of this, her diet, the hair and her strength not only earned her weird looks by almost everyone, but made her be rejected as a woman in early XX Japanese society, this made her go into a depressive episode where she dyed her hair and almost starved herself for the sake of being seen as attractive.

Cool, we start with my favorite backstory of the series as it tries to be more than "demons killed something I loved so I fight them now". And now we have this pretty looking character, with a nice backstory and an cool looking set of abilities and fighting style, also teased to be really strong.

What does the story do with her?

Give her almost no character moments, give her 1 battle in her spotlight arc, where she is mostly just stalling the opponent, then in the final arc suddenly make her way dumber in battle, reduced to mostly gags, and then make her the first pillar to fall to Muzan. With her final moments feeling so random, like, oh she was in love with the Snake pillar the whole time?, we never saw them interacting before the final arc, and she never really threated him different from the rest of the cast, like yeah we get some flashback to explain why they loved each other, but it would have been fun to, you know, SEE that couple grow, because the idea of pairing one of the nicest members of the cast with one of the most fucked up characters in the series (of the good guys) without any setup is just....weird, almost like the author used a roulette to pick the pairing.

And to top it off, they didn't even allow her to die onscreen, then like 5 manga chapters later she's alive again, so her death almost feels like killing for the sake of shock value.

Also, I really don't mind fanservice outfits as long as it isn't egregious/stupid stuff like Pyra from Xenoblade 2 or most JRPG female armors, Mitsuri has it pretty mildly, and she doesn't get cringy scenes like "haha she tripped and we can see her underskirt", but the inuniverse explanation as to why she wears that uniform is just awful, being in that a pervert tricked her into using it, what?, it just makes the thing kinda uncomfortable to look at now, and why did she never ask for a new one?. It was so easy to give an explanation that fits her character, like:

-One day she washed it wrong and the cloth shrinked, which would fit with her clumsy behavior.

-Like how she painted her hair black and stopped eating to attract men before joining the Slayers, having her reveal skin for this same purpose would be an organic extension of her backstory.

So yeah, Mitsuri looked like a really fun and strong character with a pretty design, just to be done dirty by the story. I still love her character, but it could have been done so much better.