Kimetsu no Yaiba: Demon Slayer - Final Chapter Review

Written by Shiggins

A beautifully bizarre choice.

I know I haven't reviewed the manga or the anime before, but I'm a human being (technically). And because I'm a human being, I fell in love with Demon Slayer last year. I read the entire manga as soon as I saw the first season, and I have no shame in saying that it is easily one of Shonen Jump's greatest. So because of that, I want to talk about the final chapter that has come up.

Note: FULL SPOILERS for the final chapter, and the complete manga. Do not read past this sentence unless you have read all of the manga!!

To avoid spoilers for the anime-only watchers, here is the cover of Volume 1 instead!

You still here? Then that means you've read the manga. Let's begin!

Chapter 205 is set in present day Tokyo, and starts with Kanata Kamado failing to wake up his brother Sumihiko, so he decides to leave for school. Meanwhile, Yoshiteru Agatsuma is crying over a manga until his sister Toko interrupts him and berates him for reading their grandfather's manga instead of studying or getting to school.

As the brother and sister walk down the street, Yoshiteru asks Toko if she believes in reincarnation, in which people who died years ago are brought back to life as new people, and comments that he does. As he wonders about the people who thought the demons long ago, Toko ignores him and goes gaga over a news report that the famous athlete Tenma Uzui has won a gold medal.

Yoshiteru doesn't care because Uzui is male, but does show interest in the botanist Aoba Hashibira but shows dislike as soon as he realises Aoba is male too. They continue down the street, see some twins with a blanket resembling clouds or "mist", two sisters who take part in an all-girls school and then Toko begins flirting with Kanata, showing the two are clearly in a relationship, to Yoshiteru's clear jealousy and disgust.

Hilarious how the source of all demons was killed by accident. So... does this mean Inosuke is the true final victor?

We see a massive preschool teacher being surprisingly caring, and Toko talks about going to a restaurant where a wife who serves lots of food and husband who likes pictures of snakes work together, but Kanata says to avoid it because Yoshiteru's perviness got him in trouble last time. Finally, Kamado wakes up and realises he's going to be dealing with the cliche of being late.

After some weirdly amazing acrobatics, Kamado makes a run for school. He passes some old guys playing shogi who are annoyed by him cutting through their garden every day, and then a television where the news is doing a segment about the oldest man in Japan, Ubayashiki. Next, after a trio of girls, he jumps over a police car with two very aggressive brothers inside it, who decide to give chase.

Starting to lose breath and faith, Kamado keeps going as a young boy with long black hair shows off the rare character he collected to his two friends, before we cut back to Yoshiteru talking to Goto about the artist Yamamoto Yushirou, who is known for drawing a beautiful woman named Tamayo. And after that brief break, it's back to Kamado who comes across his energetic friend Tojuro!

A spin-off about Kyojuro Rengoku has been announced, which I'm excited for, but this panel is full of questions and tragedy I need answered.

As Toujurou and Kamada talk about sports, the police car from before gives chase. A teacher (I think) tries to close the gates on the duo out of spite for those slackers and troublemakers, but the two jump over the gate beautifully and are now in school! As the teacher is stuck dealing with the wrath of the brothers, we see cute Aoba sitting by himself and lamenting the trouble he's going through with his lab, wishing he could live in the mountains. And finally, we cut to the mother of Kamada and Sumihiko getting a phone call about her son the troublemaker, while we see a photo of the survivors from the final Muzan fight, all smiling together as if they were graduating high school. And with that, Demon Slayer is finished.

Opinion: What a surreal and bittersweet idea.

I've lost count of how many manga and anime out there have added an epilogue in recent years to show us the kids or descendants of protagonists enjoying a new peaceful life, and let's not even speculate how many high-schools there are, so on paper this idea seemed very boring and uninspired. However, by adding the idea of reincarnation, the entire final chapter's tone is changed significantly.

For starters, how adorable is everyone here?! A worried Aoba, clearly a reincarnation of Inosuke, living a life as a hermit and researching the Blue Spider Lily, (the fictional flower which was always considered the cause of Muzan's transformation into a demon), and maybe this is a stretch, but botany is the research of plant life and... well, Shinobo's Insect Breath was connected to the Flower Breath...

Are all these meetings ridiculous? Yes. Do I care? Ha ha ha no.

There's moments like this all throughout the chapter, from the baby twins that were Muichiro and Yuichiro, to the brothers of Genya and Sanemi working together as policemen, to Gyomei's job as a preschool teacher... If you've read the series, there's tons of little references here that make worth reading this chapter a few times worth it. Some are obvious, like Giyuu reunited with the friend he believed he had let down, while others are blink-and-miss, like how Ubuyashiki is the oldest man in Japan, showing that not only is the family curse that punished the bloodline for creating Muzan gone, but the family have been able to live on and prosper to make up for the tragic punishment that Kagaya and many others received.

Which brings me to what really gets me about this chapter; Everyone is happy, even if it's not how we'd expect it.

I was heartbroken when Muichiro and Sanemi died, and all the other losses from the wrath of Muzan was just terrible! All these characters I loved and cared about, gone in such a painful manner... I'll admit. I was selfishly hoping for a bullshit resurrection like what happened with Pain at the end of his invasion, but Demon Slayer was merciless and didn't give me that. As it shouldn't, because that would have undermined every sacrifice and loss, and been a cheap trick.

What's amazing though is that despite not going for the easy route, everyone is happy in the end! Those that survived lived happy lives in the end, as shown by the picture in the final panel. They had babies, eventually passed away from non-demon means, and became reincarnated eventually through their descendants alongside those that were tragically lost, and lived the lives they never could before. Except for one... Muzan! So if you ever needed a sign that Muzan was the true loser, I point you to the picture of Mitsuri and Iguro, happily married in a restaurant, while Muzan is nothing more than a distant memory the world shall hopefully never need to face again.

This is my everything.

I'm sad to see Demon Slayer go, even more so when I realise I only discovered it last year and so my time with these characters was short-lived, but the time I got to spend with Tanjiro, Zenitsu, Nezuko, best boi Inosuke and the others was enough for them all to become among my favourites in the entire Shonen genre's insatiable roster, and I regret none of it. It's too early for me to be 100% sure obviously, but as of writing this review, I'm going on record to call Demon Slayer a masterpiece from beginning to end. A manga that never overstayed it's welcome, knew when it was time to end, and has one of the best anime adaptations I've ever seen. Our time together was brief but beloved.

Whether it be a sequel set in modern day Japan about Aoba's botany, or an entirely different story with brand new characters in a different world, I'll be sure to check out Koyoharu Gotōge's next work right away, and I hope you do too.

Goodbye, Demon Slayer.

Shiggins:[Admin]
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Born under the stars of the Dark Gods, Shiggins owns the power of the Great Eye and is utterly magnificent in his omniscience. If you dare to discover more about someone as great as him, then go ahead. And to all my friends and family members, YOU are wrong and I should be disappointed! Not the other way round!,. You can find out about him or ask him stuff on ask.fm/shigginsishere or go to his tumblr page http://otakugajeel.tumblr.com/