Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba #1-15

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba #1-15

Originally released in 2016

Written by Koyoharu Gotouge

Art by Koyoharu Gotouge

After considering it last week, I decided to try Demon Slayer this week.  I know it was quite popular not that long ago, and the anime adaptation apparently had some gorgeous visuals that helped it to become a big hit, though I completely missed out on it for whatever reason.

The story is about an industrious young boy named Tanjiro whose mother and siblings were slaughtered by a demon, with the exception of his younger sister Nezuko.  However, her survival comes with its own problems - Nezuko was infected by that demon's blood, turning her mute and borderline feral.

Even in this state, though, Nezuko still cares for Tanjiro and won't let him come to harm.  Tanjiro desperately seeks a cure for Nezuko's condition, and his search brings him to a masked demon slayer named Sakonji Urokodaki, who trains him.

Tanjiro's main weakness in the eyes of the demon slayers is that he's too compassionate, which causes him to be indecisive at crucial moments. However, he has an extremely keen sense of smell, making him an excellent tracker.

He's also extremely hard-headed, both figuratively and literally.  It takes him years to learn and improve the skills that Urokodaki teaches him, but by the time that he's done training, he's on his way to becoming a skilled demon slayer.

His compassion remains despite all that he's been through, and it was good to see that it stopped being treated like a bad thing after a while, with him comforting a demon in death and praying for the soul of the human that they once were.  Tanjiro and Nezuko are well-designed characters, and Tanjiro is written well in these early chapters. (It's hard to comment on Nezuko's writing given that she's mute)

To my surprise, Tanjiro discovers the identity of his family's killer in these first fifteen chapters - the first demon, Muzan Kibutsuji. He even manages to find him, albeit by accident, though Muzan slips away.

It's shortly after this encounter that Tanjiro learns that there's hope to cure his sister.  However, in order to do so, he'll need to get much stronger, because the people who are working on the cure either need Muzan's blood or the blood of a demon that's almost as powerful. That seems to set up the series-long goal in a tangible way; Tanjiro had already been trying to find a cure, but now he knows how it can be done.

While it seems too early to say if the series lived up to the sheer hype surrounding it, I'm not sure if that surge in popularity was due to the anime version.  I liked what I read of the series, though I'm hoping that as time goes on, the supporting cast will expand; we haven't seen many other demon slayers (three or four others passed the test alongside him, though I don't think they were named), and Tanjiro's largely a solo act at this point.  It would be nice to see him interact and form bonds with other members of the demon slayer group.