17
Demon Slayer/ Kimetsu No Yaiba
Author: Koyoharu Gotouge
Volumes: 23 English & Japanese (Complete at 205 Chapters)
Publisher: Shonen Jump [click HERE for digital chapters]
In a publication consisting of stories that were becoming increasingly complex, I feel like the simplicity of Koyoharu Gotouge’s Demon Slayer was a breath of fresh air. Tanjiro comes home to find his whole family wiped out apart from his sister, Nezuko. Tanjiro is subsequently faced with the task of preventing his sister from becoming a full fledged demon like the one who attacked his family by preventing her from drinking any blood.
On top of preventing her from the warm red stuff in our veins, Demons have the additional vampiric quality of not doing so well in the sunlight, and so there’s the added challenge of keeping her in a box during the day as well as biting a bamboo stem for avoiding getting all blood thirsty during the night too (the latter of which was a massive hit with cosplayers, various figures and merch in general).
In a way that feels like it could possibly be more than a little inspired by the magic system in early JoJo, breathing combines with swordplay to create these fantastic elemental effects during combat that add an extra layer to the fights. Without this magic system, Demons would hold even more of an advantage against their more squishy human opponents (they’d be near invincible bar sunbathing troubles), and for that I’m thankful as it means each encounter requires problem solving on both sides, while still ensuring the demons appear menacing in each confrontation.
Demon Slayer probably has the strongest female cast of any shonen jump title I can think of where action is the main focus. There’s an incredible amount of variety to them all, and they have some of the most memorable character arcs too. My personal favourite being Shinobu Kocho, who uses an effective poison in her more direct approach to swordplay.
I’m actually the most surprised I placed it here and not higher up since I’m so obsessed with good character writing, but as we go on, we will see that even when I think the character writing may be some of the very best (even better than some of the titles to come) that it’s not the only metric to measure by.
I don’t really have anything bad to say about Demon Slayer. I found Zenitsu to be a bit too grating at times, but it was at least satisfying to see him mostly ignored, and that I don’t recall him ever being a pervert as well, he was more whiny and clingy. It’s just you can only be pathetic for so long with minimal growth of character before the joke dies long before he has a chance to turn things around much much later on.