>>279927800 (OP)
I haven't read this in a while so I might be forgetting some stuff, but off the top of my head, things I would consider to be an asspull are:
- Tanjiro pulling out the hinokami kagura for the first time against Rui
- Inosuke adjusting his internal organs to avoid being fatally wounded by Gyuutaro
- Muichiro acquiring the Mark vs Gyokko
- Nezuko surviving being out in the sun at the end of the SSV arc
- Kanao pulling out an eye hax ability to finish Douma off
- Everything involving the see-through world
- The myriad of poisons and debuffs afflicted on Muzan
- Demon King Tanjiro being taken out of this state because of Nezuko's intervention
And although these next ones aren't asspulls, they sort of sit in the same realm of making the progression and outcome feel unsatisfying (in my opinion):
- Shinobu letting herself be consumed by Douma to poison him
- Akaza offing himself to give Tanjiro and Giyuu the victory
- Koku allowing himself to be defeated in his fight against the Pillars
Most of these stem from the fact that the writer wanted a certain outcome to happen (the good characters to win) but couldn't think of a natural way for them to achieve that victory. The initial hinokami kagura from Tanjiro is acceptable though because Rui deflects that asspull with an asspull of his own by revealing he had cut his own head off, which I think works. Ultimately, I think it comes down to who is performing the asspull that determines if it feels "right" or not. if the good guys, the characters we follow, get the asspull, then it can feel unexpected or unearned because we've followed their journey up to this point and generally had no idea that they could do the thing that they're now doing. At least with the demons, it makes sense that they would be able to do random unexpected things because at the point of facing them, we have no idea what their abilities are to begin with.
It's another case of "Good guy asspull = bad, bad guy asspull = good"
