Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Review

The manga that became the biggest media property in Japan is, on the page, modest. Gotouge's art is rough and occasionally clumsy, the panelling is hard to follow in action, and the fights that became spectacular in the anime read as a series of named techniques shouted at each other. What makes it work anyway is the writing underneath. Tanjiro is a rare shonen lead whose defining trait is kindness, the demons are given backstories that make their deaths sad rather than triumphant, and the story knows exactly where it is going and gets there in twenty three volumes without a single arc of padding, which in this genre is almost unheard of.

The cast is warm, the humour lands, and the ending is earned. It is a good manga that the anime elevated to a great one; the grade here is for what Gotouge drew, and honest about which half of the phenomenon that is.