My Goodreads Review of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 15: Daybreak And First Light by Koyoharu Gotouge

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 15: Daybreak And First Light by Koyoharu Gotouge
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So much going on here; I'll spoiler-tag my thoughts on the story here and then give my general thoughts on the title overall:

view spoiler --[Man Gotouge makes his heroes earn every bit of victory they get--and still always finds a way to make something worse be right around the corner! We come into the action with everybody in danger and almost the whole team getting annilated in just the first two pages. They manage to win thanks to a long-hinted at surprise (that I won't even spoil in the spoil-tag) happening and the assault on the Demon Slayer Corps armory is over and it is time to asses the damage. Making the twist be what transitions us to the last arc of this series is a genius move. The Hashira are as unhinged and dangerous as always, but we get more back-story on them and we learn more about the big bad as he begins his plans for the final showdown with the protagonists. (hide spoiler)] you'll have to go to Goodreads to see this.

I've wondered for awhile why this title takes place during the Taishō era as opposed to the Meiji period or late-Edo period. I think it may be a meta-commentary on modernity, but I'm not sure. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba could be my favorite manga right now if not for the art and story-pacing. The Promised Neverland (which share the same publisher) still edges it out at both. The pacing was actually a little better here, but only by a slim-margin. Koyoharu Gotouge handles the art and story of the manga, so you can't argue that the decompressed story is the fault of differences with the creative team, but still the story is good even if it is obvious the author is writing for the trades. I'm glad I won't have to wait long for the next volume (yes I'm trying to read the English translation for this title the right way unlike the rest of the reviewers of this book (though some of y'all might be reading the actual licensed-translated chapter releases).

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