I was tempted to fill this opening section with MCU Thanos riffs, as it seems like we’re entering the final arc of the series with Chapter 140, but I’ve got a few more volumes to come up with better material. Get ready to groan at my puns everyone. It is inevitable.
Cover by Koyoharu GotougeWritten and Illustrated by Koyoharu Gotouge
Translated by John Werry
English Adaptation by Stan!
Lettered by Evan Waldinger & John HuntTanjiro finally chases down the main body of the upper-rank demon Hatengu. However, dawn is approaching, and the rising sun is a threat to Nezuko. Tanjiro’s concern for his sister is a distraction from the focus he needs to fight Hantengu, and if he hesitates it could be the last mistake he ever makes! Elsewhere, Tamayo ponders the nature of Nezuko’s curse and how she could be so different from other demons.
Volumes 15 & 16 are divided into three distinct sections: the resolution to the Swordsmith Village arc, the Hashira Training arc, and the start of the final confrontation between Kitbutsuji and the Corps. I shouldn’t be surprised that there wasn’t much left for the Swordsmith Village arc but I was caught off guard by how few chapters we ended up getting. I was mostly expecting more with regards to Hatengu’s backstory but what I should have realized is that he is less like Gyutaro and Rui and more like Enmu and Gyokko.
While the life he led was marred by the ugliness of humanity, as most of these demon’s lives were, his was a life that weaponized pity and used it as a shield to harm others. He refuses to take responsibility for his actions, blaming them on other people or something outside of his control like his hands moving on their own – hence all of his offensive, rather than defensive, actions being undertaken by distinct entities to the central body. Whether it is calculated or a self-delusion, this “they made me do it” argument remains, in the eyes of “Demon Slayer,” a callous and selfish disregard for other people.
However, unlike Enmu and Gyokko, we ultimately did get a glimpse into his past, one which condemns the world that failed to provide the help Hatengu needed to grow beyond that selfish worldview. Thus the text tells us that, while his actions and justifications remain reprehensible, they do not rise to the same level of pure selfishness and monstrousness as Gyokko and Enmu, who we don’t even get a flashback for. Now, this doesn’t hold true for Upper Rank 2 Doma & Muzan Kibutsuji, both of whom we get flashbacks for – in Chapter 142 and Chapter 127 respectively – but those each serve to clarify their current positions and attitudes rather than complicate them.
For Doma, he’s just kinda always seen death as the ultimate ideal and does not value life. Gotouge once again condemns the actions of the world around Doma – this time for putting a child on a pedestal for a religion – but it is intentionally murkier as to whether or not this shaped Doma’s worldview or if he just always saw life, and people’s lives, as a game. He is not cruel, however, and I believe this is why we get the flashback for him despite his non-chalantness with killing people and the fight not being with Tanjiro. We know that being a Demon has, rather than twisting who he was as a human, has simply amplified and augmented it.
As for Kibutsuji, the flashback serves as a logical rather than emotional beat, conveying to us previous hidden knowledge about how he became a demon and why he has been searching for this “blue spider lily.” It furthers the above theme though, as the whole reason Kitbutsji cannot walk in the day is because he killed the doctor out of impatience. We learn he never had qualms about killing and eating humans to live and is angry that he is inconvenienced by only being able to go out in the night. Pure selfishness encapsulated and, thus, the progenitor of all demons.
Continued belowWell…not all demons as it seems that Nezuko’s special blood has allowed her to not only avoid his curse and get stronger without having to eat people but also to remove the curse from other demons, though not completely cure them of demon-ness, and has allowed her to now walk in the sun! That’s a monumental development and it’s made all the more monumental because Nezuko is slowly regaining the ability to speak. Tanjiro cried, Nezuko cried, I cried and even the three random swordsmiths – Tetsutani, Tetsudoji, and Tetsumotonaka – cried.
There’s so much to love about the way the end of this fight plays out prior to the reveal. I keep saying that “Demon Slayer” distillation of Shonen tropes makes it a more powerful story and chapter 126 is the perfect encapsulation of why. Rather than drag out all the events, it allows us to feel the full rollercoaster of emotions the final moments of a big fight are supposed to have in just 20 pages. We go from the horror at realizing that this final body is Resentment and thus not Hatengu’s real body to the creeping fear of Nezuko being stuck in the sun to Tanjiro choosing to shield Nezuko and the conflict this creates as Hatengu gets closer to the villagers and no one else is able to jump in to the mixed SAVE THEM and NO PROTECT HER of Nezuko making a choice and kicking him off her so he can save the villagers to the despair at seeing Nezuko smile as the sun burns her up to anger we feel at Hatengu to the utter joy and relief when it is revealed that Nezuko survived and is talking.
It’s such a triumphant moment and because it all happened so fast, the action and emotions on the page are mirrored within the reader. It doesn’t feel like a contrived fake-out death but rather a genuine relief that what we thought was going to happen didn’t. I can’t think of a better way to cap off the battle than that.
It’s amazing how Gotouge has managed to avoid power creep. I am in awe because despite there being a strength progression within the characters, most notably within Tanjiro and Nezuko, the villains never feel arbitrarily more powerful. There are the ones with overwhelming strength, speed, etc but it’s often complicated by the ways in which they fight and how their personalities are reflected in their fighting styles. Additionally, the team aspect of the narrative is always front and center, wherein the Demon Corps members always, always require assistance from an outside party to defeat the demon they’re fighting. I love it and I love how this transfers to the training arc.
The teamwork aspect is less emphasized during the training with the Hashira but this allows “Demon Slayer” to highlight the differences between the styles and how they have their own unique strengths. It also gives us an extended look at the Serpent, Wind, and Stone Hashira, in addition to gaining a deeper understanding of Giyu, the Water Hashira and a brief, fun check-in with Mitsuri, Muichiro, and Tengen. Gotouge stuffs so much character building and gut-busting physical comedy into these 10-14 chapters. All I need to do is put a panel of Zenitsu here and you’ll get the gist.
I also want to compliment Gotouge on how these later arcs have flowed one into the other. Rather than having a distinct breaking point where, say, Tanjiro has to go on a long journey to find out more about the blue flower lily, we have a battle transition directly into a recovery and lower stakes setting which is interrupted by Kibutsuji showing up and none of it feels like we’re just biding our time between big events. The training arc feels integral in part because it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting for the characters without stopping for too long.
Tanjiro blows through the first three trials in a single chapter but the in-universe time is close to a month across all three. Only the key moments are shown and they’re told in a light but firm fashion, impressing upon us both how far Tanjiro has come but also how vital this training still is. It also allowed us to compare the characters who grew alongside Tanjiro to the ones who have not had those interactions with him yet.
Continued belowGiyu is a special case because he gets a real heart to heart with Tanjiro thanks to their shared master Urokodaki and Tanjiro helps Giyu come to grips with the guilt he feels for surviving “Death Mountain” without having defeated any demons while his best friend Sabito, one of the ghosts from volume 1, died. He falls somewhere between the former group and the latter and as such, his interactions with Tanjiro are complicated in the same way.
Gyomei, the Stone Hashira, is the only one who treats him kindly, or at least as kindly as he can with the grueling, buddhist inspired training regime he’s prepared, because of the kindness shown to him by Kagaya Ubuyashiki in his past. He also acts as a foil to Giyu, being the one to absolve Tanjiro of his guilt over being unable to choose to save the villagers and having to have Nezuko make that choice for him. Or, more accurately, he does not absolve him of the guilt but he reaffirms the qualities in Tanjiro that make him worthy of respect, such as his truthfulness, and pledges to help him hone and direct those qualities so he does not make the same mistakes as he did in the past. It’s a moving scene and once more illustrates how well Gotouge is able to transition from comedy to drama and back, with both hard stops and slow weaving of tones into each other.
As for the other two Hashira, they’re brutal to Tanjiro. Iguro, the Serpent Hashira, because Tanjiro is close to Mitsuri, who Iguro has a crush on, and Sanemi, the Wind Hashira, because of Nezuko’s demon-ness/because he’s friends with Genya, who is kinda hated by his older brother for reasons we saw in volume 14. I also just realized that the reason the elder Shinazugawa likely hates that Nezuko is around likely stems from his own inability to save his mother. Gotta love that good, good childhood trauma.
I don’t know if this was done because “Demon Slayer” was gearing up to enter the endgame and couldn’t take the same approach we took with the others or if it was the natural progression but regardless, it was handled beautifully. It also totally lulled me into a false sense of security!
Despite the teases that Kibutsuji was coming, I did not expect him to arrive, for us to get the obligatory “pre-death flashback” for Ubuyashiki, and for Ubuyashiki to BLOW HIMSELF UP TO WEAKEN KIBUTSUJI. Then, THEN everyone shows up and we get transported into his magic final boss castle???? And then we cut away to have a very meaningful and emotional fight between Doma & Shinobu which ends volume 16 with an intense cliffhanger of maybe Doma’s death??? I expected none of this and I am wholly invested in what’s coming next.
Will it really be the end? Or will we have a few intermediary battles before the final confrontation? We’ll just have to wait and see what volumes 17 & 18 have in store.
