Do I need to introduce Kimetsu no Yaiba?

I mean, it’s the most talked about and best-selling anime and manga of the past two years. It actually is one of the 20 best-selling manga of all time, and the 7th best-selling manga in Weekly Shounen Jump. It’s the only series in the list that isn’t at least 10 years old by now, and honestly, other than Bleach and Attack on Titan, every other series started in the 20th Century, having a decades-long start ahead. It’s even more impressive when you realize that this little manga had 10 million copies in circulation by September of 2019, more than 3 years into it’s 4 year-long run, but as of this month (October 2020) it has 100 million copies in circulation. To note that this isn’t the sales numbers and rather a mix of digital sales and number of physical books printed, but it should help you understand just how big it’s growth was just this past year.

Which, you know, is the entire reason as to why I didn’t plan to write this review in the first place. If you haven’t seen or read Yaiba, you certainly know someone who has and has definitely told you why you should or not check it out. But the more I talked about the manga with people the more I realized I’m part of a minority in my opinion of the manga, and I wanted to put it out there just for diversity and curiosity’s sake. That probably has to do with the fact that my experience with it is probably different from most people for two reasons.

First of all, I started reading it before the anime came out, and look, this is not me trying to be a cool hipster dude, I read it because I wanted to read all of Jump and this was just one of 20 other manga I started because of that, and the anime was not only announced, but it also was about a month away from starting. But the point is, I started the manga without any influence or expectations. As a matter of a fact, I was never even aware Kimetsu no Yaiba existed until I started it. And point two, I never jumped into the anime, sure I saw some clips of the famous episode 19, but never saw a full episode, so my opinion is 100% based on the manga.

And let’s talk about probably the biggest whiplash anime watchers will suffer when jumping into the manga. Art.
From the very little I saw of UFOTABLE’s adaptation, the animation is amazing, it seems to be the one thing everyone agrees on, but in contrast, the manga art style is not great. It’s arguably not even good. And yes, if we look at double spreads, big panels, covers and color pages, there’s an undeniable quality to it, but this is true for most weekly shounen manga. It’s in the bulk of the manga, the smaller panels, that most problems appear. Again, for most weekly shounen manga, this is also true. The smaller panels get less attention than the big eye-grabbing ones, but even with that in mind, there’s a clear need for improvement in Gotouge’s art skills. It can be messy a lot of times, and make some panels really hard to read, which is a big, big problem.
I will admit, however, to having a soft spot for the potato faces of Yaiba’s cast. They are derpy a lot of times, and very cute and funny. And I’ll admit that in terms of expressions and emotions, Gotouge does know how to make them come through in their style. But this doesn’t excuse the fact that manga looks cute, derpy and funny even when it’s supposed to look serious, dark and gory. A decapitated head is not supposed to make me go “That’s kinda adorable”, but that was 100% my reaction.

With that said, I think the presentation is probably the biggest contrast between both medium’s versions of Yaiba, but I can live with the artstyle as I think it has its charm. My biggest problem with Kimetsu, however, is the pacing.
And to be more specific, it’s the pacing for the majority of the first part of the manga. The best example is the first training and the exam arcs, which happen back to back and have an emotional narrative connecting them. A narrative that I really couldn’t care about, and the reason why I couldn’t care is because it goes by so fast that I don’t have time to have an emotional connection with the characters in question. And that saddens me because I think the emotional response that Gotouge manages to deliver is one of the best things they do in the later part. But here it doesn’t work because of the pacing of it all.
And then the exam arc is, supposedly, a week-long exam that features four of the most important characters later on in the series. Not that we know, because this arc doesn’t really spend much time in them, just casualty showing them in the background. We are shown the very start of this exam, where immediately the last boss appears and after that we get a small time-skip, letting us know that 6 and half of those 7 days really didn’t matter for shit. It’s such a short arc that I don’t understand why we didn’t spend a bit more there, getting a small preview of characters to come. Everything here just goes lightning fast.

And if I’m going to be completely honest, I didn’t like Kimetsu no Yaiba at the start, but things did start to change once we got introduced to Inosuke. And it’s not just the fact that Inosuke is the best character in the series, tho he is, it’s the fact that once we get our main trio, Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke, that’s when one of Gotouge’s strong points really started to surface.
I already liked Tanjiro, in the midst of all the classic “good guy” character tropes, I find him to be oddly unique. I love that he shows remorse and forgiveness to the demons, but he still delivers the final blow, signifying that the characters still have to atone for the sins and crimes they commited. The demons are an evil that needs to be exterminated, and Tanjiro never really wavers, but still shows compassion.
Yet, to me, it’s when he starts interacting with Zenitsu and Inosuke that the manga really becomes an enjoyable experience. The characters are fun and unique, and their interactions really elevate this manga. And admittedly, it’s not just these three. All the cast is simple, but interesting to watch. These are characters that are ready to give up their life for their mission, characters who lost everything or almost everything and only have each other. There’s a deep melancholy to them, but also a great sense of comradery between the Demon Slayer Corps that I really love.

As the story grows I feel like it does start to get better overall however. The first arc I really enjoyed was the train arc, that just got adapted, and it was honestly the first time the manga managed to give me a genuine emotional response to it’s characters and events, but from there on out, it feels like the mangaka learned how to effectively deliver on that. It culminates rather well on the last arc. And sure, every one and their mom complains about the last battle, but I personally think that forcing the pace to slow down (admittedly, most likely because money) ended up serving for the story to flow better. And sure, there are some problems with the final battle, tho I still found it at least better than most battles outside of the last arc, but this arc starts with the best part of Kimetsu no Yaiba, hands down. The battles in the first part of the last arc are amazing, especially in the storytelling department.
The way that Gotouge writes these battles, characters and their relationships, the flashbacks in them… sure, the beat is the same for most of them, but it works every single time. These are events that the author makes me get involved, excited and thrilled about. If this first half of this arc was the entirety of Yaiba, my score would be WAY higher. But sadly everything else still exists.

It feels weird that most people think that the early Yaiba is, without a doubt, the best Yaiba. To me this manga shows a growth in storytelling skill, or at least in learning your strong points and how to put them in the forefront for Gotouge. I think the mangaka has lots of potential, and sure, I don’t think Yaiba is one of the best shounens of all time and I’ll never understand it’s sales, but I do think that Gotouge and Yaiba have good points, mostly in the later part of the story, and I think the mangaka can still put out something even better than Kimetsu down the line.