OH JUST OPEN ON THE MOST EMOTIONALLY DEVASTATING CHAPTER OF THE FIGHT WITH KOKUSHIBO WHY DON’T YOU? I’LL BE FINE (*sobs into my volume*).
Cover by Koyoharu GotougeWritten and Illustrated by Koyoharu Gotouge
Translated by John Werry
English Adaptation by Stan!
Lettered by John HuntThe fight with Kokushibo, the highest-ranking demon among Muzan’s servants, is over. Although Himejima and Sanemi defeated Kokushibo and sent him to hell, the price the Demon Slayer Corps has paid is very high. Kiriya Ubuyashiki, the new leader of the Demon Slayers, struggles to recover from the losses. With the battle against Muzan far from over, the remaining fighters will need his help more than ever. Meanwhile, deep within Infinity Castle, Tanjiro and his friends come face-to-face with their nemesis at last…
I know I said I wouldn’t be surprised if this were really the end for Genya and Tokito but I was not prepared for just how damn hard chapter 179 would go to fuck with my emotions. On some level, I thought maybe Genya would pull through due to his demon blood regeneration and maybe Tokito could be saved but would end in a critical condition but NO.
Instead, Gotouge makes me BELIEVE Genya is gonna pull through only to have him fade away in the most heart wrenchingly dramatic fashion: holding his brother’s hands as he apologizes for yelling at him when their mom became a demon thereby adding even more trauma to Sanemi’s already full trauma basket. And that’s not even touching on Tokito’s tearful reunion with his dead brother as they lament each other’s unfortunate deaths.
It’s brutally effective at making me cry, as if Gotouge plugged straight into my brain and poked at all the sadness receptors and let loose. It’s the right moment to have, though. You don’t want to launch straight into another battle but because this is such a high stakes time, the characters have to get moving again quickly. This chapter balances that by taking a step to decompress while also redoubling on the stakes of the fight and providing more emotional motivation for the remaining characters that doesn’t feel cheap.
Because “Demon Slayer” has never shied away from having characters die or be seriously injured in fights with high level demons, and because the line between the two is thin but the circumstances of where they fall are consistent and well-conveyed, it’s able to keep the threat and execution of the death of a character as meaningful within their own arc AND within others. I’m angry and sad that they’re dead rather than angry and sad not because they’re dead.
That praise aside, Volumes 21 & 22 exemplifies both the best and the worst aspects of “Demon Slayer” across its run. For one, Nezuko has always had a much smaller role than Tanjiro, even if her impact was serious and large, and that’s been especially true since she gained the ability to live in the sunlight. Once that happens, she is shuffled offstage to be cured and kept in a secret location so that Kibutsuji can’t get to her. That’s been her status quo since. A brief check in here and there before, in chapter 185, she runs off because Tanjiro is dying. Then she’s absent until eleven chapters later, other than a title page here and there, where she finally changes back into a human and regains her memories of being Nezuko Kumado.
If all of that sounds kinda thin, it’s in part because we’re never treated to Nezuko’s interiority when she is a demon. This is intentional, as the implication “Demon Slayer” makes is she’s being driven, much like most demons, by a single drive from when she was human. Her humanity is hidden in a haze and only the fuzzy shape of something important and central shines through. Because Nezuko has Tanjiro as an anchor, and because of the huge quantity of Kibutsuji’s blood she was given, she is able to break Kibutsuji’s curse, retain her faculties, and gain strength not through eating humans but through herself. However, none of this is consciously considered by Nezuko since, until chapter 196, she doesn’t really have access to anything sharper about herself and her actions than “protect Tanjiro” and by extension other humans.
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The path that began to rebuild her sense of self started after she could withstand the sun but because that is also the narrative moment which triggers the endgame, we don’t get to spend much time sitting with this new status quo, which is a shame. It would’ve gone a long way to really making her transformation back feel as impactful as the deaths of Genya and Tokito or the flashbacks of Yoiichi. I really do hope Nezuko gets to play a major role in taking Kibutsuji down in the last volume, to help complete her journey.
My other complaint with “Demon Slayer” is that, because it moves with such a rapid pace, both small details are lost and it feels like we entered this endgame state a little too early. The second complaint is really only because of the presence of Iguro’s backstory in the fight with Kibutsuji. It feels out of place, as he’s the last Hashira to get his backstory expanded upon and it’s during the final fight rather than during a fight with a Kizuki like every other Hashira, though it tugs on the heartstrings as all the others do and provides the kind of clarifying information needed to better understand Iguro. It’s also clear that, because Gotouge wanted to keep things as streamlined as possible, a lot of clarifying details had to be dropped. This is a good thing but it is also quite apparent when you’re reading these later volumes, as the bonus pages have gotten longer and information dense.
As for the small details being lost, this harms the clarity of the work only because Gotouge uses single panels or background developments to telegraph later developments. This would be great if it weren’t for the breakneck pace we’re moving at, which expects the reader to be moving at the pace of the manga and thus it is easy to miss a key moment. It’s also easy to forget a scene because so much happens between it and the result of it.
For example, Kibutsuji’s cocoon & his consumption of Tamayo. Midway into volume 16, in chapter 138, she shoves her hand into Muzan’s chest to force him to absorb the drug which turns demons to humans. In chapter 139, they fall into the Infinity Castle and because your attention is focused on everything but Tamayo, it’s easy to miss that she’s taken away with him. Then, at the end of chapter 146 in volume 17, there’s a two page scene of a strange meat cocoon getting ready to absorb Tamayo.
Context clues clearly show it’s Kibutsuji but so much has happened between Tamayo sticking her hand in Kibutsuji’s chest and the appearance of the cocoon, it’s really easy to have forgotten and to wonder how we got there. We’re not reminded that Tamayo is trapped with Kibutsuji and we don’t follow up on any speculation on how he’s recovering. We also don’t follow-up again on the cocoon until chapter 180 in volume 21, which is quite a while.
This also happened with less vital moments, like how Mitsuru and Igruo being saved from the Biwa demon is foreshadowed by a hand grabbing Mitsuru and pulling her up in chapter 181. It’s easy to read that as Iguro saving her from another attack and because of the intensity of the previous chapter – the one where we get the Doc Ock, Many Mouthed Muzan – but it’s also really easy to miss that moment altogether, which provides a whole lot of whiplash during the subsequent chapter. On the flip side, missing this moment did make me think Mitsuru and Iguro were dead, making their return feel more impactful, and having ambiguity in the moment is helpful for selling, albeit briefly, their “deaths.” Still, it’s an issue that recurs throughout and worth mentioning one last time before we reach the end.
Lest it seem like all these volumes made me think about were the negatives, let’s get into the meat of the final battle because OH MAN is it a doozy. Gogouge has a lot of really clever uses of established powers and characters working together in order to keep Kibutsuji at bay. Because he’s the big bad, he decimates the Corps, selling his newfound power and final form while demonstrating why only one person has ever gotten close to taking him down in the past.
Continued belowI particularly love the way the non-Hashira crew – Zenitsu, Inosuke, and Kanao – use the eye charms to keep hidden from Kibutsuji. That’s so clever! And an example of the little details dropped throughout working, as we saw the Chachamaru the Cat use this power a few times, priming us to see it as a viable tool. It is also a multi-use tool as Iguro gets to use it as his eyes, in the same way the Ubuyashiki clan is, after he gets his own eyes scratched out, which is pretty gnarly.
The actual back and forth of the battle is the usual high quality that “Demon Slayer” has set for its action, both as a stage for fisticuffs and fancy powers but also for emotional development. Kibutsuji is the most desperate fight these characters have ever, and will ever, face, as he is the sole reason for the creation of the Demon Slayer Corps, and that’s conveyed beautifully on every front. From Yushiro, the demon boy who worked with Tamayo, trying to fight Muzan’s influence in the Biwa demon to expel him from his castle to Tanjro, Giyu, Mitsuru, and Iguro all barely hanging on and getting shredded to the massacre of the lower level Corps members as they fight to give the Hashira (and Tanjiro) even a second more time, we’re never allowed to forget how dangerous Kibutsuji is.
However, they are holding their own. The time until sunrise continues to dwindle with each passing chapter. Characters come back from the brink thanks to each other, be that Murata getting Tanjiro out of the battle so he can later be saved, Chachamaru dispensing medicine to Giyu, Iguro, Gyomei and Sanemi mid-battle, or Tanjiro learning deeper knowledge of Sun Breathing from his ancestral visions and using that knowledge to hold Kibutsuji back. It is truly one of the purest representations of the Shonen Battle trope of fighting for and with a community versus selfish individualism. Hell, this even is baked into what the mythical 13th form of Sun Breathing is.
I love this development. You always need in a Shonen battle series a final powerup that will defeat the final boss, but here, rather than feeling like another new power that comes out of nowhere or a complete deus ex machina, it is a thematically appropriate development that ties together what we already knew about how Sun Breathing worked and why the Hinokami Kagura was so vital in preserving the knowledge. The 13th form being a cycle which builds from the past, returns to it, only to move forward with more force and precision supports “Demon Slayer’s” assertion that one can only accomplish heretofore unimaginable things by working together.
Just as Tanjiro struggles to perfect the chain, we know that not every combination works out right away and that it takes practice and time to get it right. Zenitsu, Inosuke, & Tanjiro didn’t get along when the first met and it took a bit for them to work together in a stronger fashion than their individual talents. Moreover, the repetition of the dance and the cyclical nature of it ties into Yoriichi’s views of the world and the promise of the future, a promise that isn’t actually present in much of the ancestral memory Tanjiro sees.
Yoriichi is beaten down, empty after failing to avenge his family’s death, failing to keep his brother safe, and failing to prevent the senseless deaths he knows are coming from Kibutsuji. He’s lost his way in this memory and it’s tragic to see. On a side-note, it turns out that I was slightly wrong with my guesses last time, as Tanjiro’s ancestor was Sumiyoshi, not Yoriichi, but that tracks better with the visual logic of “Demon Slayer’s” visions. That said, Yoriichi is definitely the swordsman who inspired the robot and nearly killed Kibutsuji. Two out of three ain’t bad.
It’s fascinating to compare this memory to the rose-colored one Yoriichi’s brother painted. Because of Tanjiro’s ancestor’s bond with Yoriichi, we get to see him as the person he was rather than the icon he was made to be. He still contains the qualities we see as admirable, and continues to act how we’d expect him to act based on Kokushibo’s memories, but we also get to see him as human, with flaws and failures and messy emotions.
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He spares Tamayo’s life because he believes in her ability to be good, but he is filled with regret over failing to kill Kibutsuji and for the pain that will cause. He treasures Mitchikazu’s flute because it was a gift in defiance of a cruel set of actions but he tortures himself because he feels he failed to reciprocate once he hears Mitchikatsu became a demon. He is alienated from the Corps because of these things and loses his drive to fight in the melancholy and depression of what he sees as his failures.
It is sad. It is tragic. It is so very human. And what’s even more human is, at what seems to be his lowest point, he reaches out to an old friend so that he can talk to someone he knows will listen. And it is because of this decision that he is able to start the journey back out of his own head. “Demon Slayer,” and by extension my articles, have hammered home the vital importance of community. Were it not for this human connection, Yoriichi might have ended up like his brother or every other demon who was alienated from society, from their community, for one reason or another. That’s what Kibutsuji represents as well, this force preying on the outcasts at their lowest moments, amplifying their worst instincts and foregrounding their worst actions.
When Yoriichi goes to visit Sumiyoshi, he doesn’t know what he wants. He is lost because he has lost so much. Were it not for the Corps, that community, he would likely have died next to his wife and child of starvation. To lose it is to lose a part of himself. To lose what he thought was his reason to fight. It is only when he is asked to hold up Sumiyoshi’s child to the sun, in that moment of pure, unbridled joy, though, that Yoriichi remembers why he fights.
He doesn’t fight because he was a Corps member. He doesn’t fight because he hates Kibutsuji. He doesn’t fight because he wants to be the second greatest swordsman. He fights for the promise of future generations. He fights for the goodness in people.
He fights for change.
Next time, the final volume.
