After finishing this manga I upranked it to the 6th best value-added manga I've ever read. Value-added means manga that has no anime adaption and thus can only be experienced as a manga. That's super high, beating out even Akatsuki no Yona.
Maybe someday Kimetsu no Yaiba anime sequels will chip away at that value added until there's nothing left, but for now it's one of the most important things to read in the world.
Last time I attempted to read Kimetsu I complained the art was bad and quit. Well, the art does get better over time, but the real issue is during joke chapters the manga-ka lets the quality slip, and I just so happened to be reading a joke chapter. When it's a fighting scene the art scintillates again. I got the wrong impression.
This manga isn't too very long, which I like. There's no need to draw things out so much like in One Piece. There's no need to keep facing off against new threats one after the other like in Dragon Ball. There's one antagonist from the very start and once you beat him the story ends happily ever after. That makes so much sense.
Another improvement this series has is that everyone works together to defeat the last boss, unlike Bleach where inscrutably no one bothered to show up to fight Ywach. Also Tanjiro, the main character, is not so overpowered compared to his companions that they're absolutely no use to him. Instead he relies on them and they save his life over and over again. They're partners. That's so welcome compared to the power creep of Dragon Ball or similar offshoots.
Plus the heroes don't just curbstomp the villains, winning over and over while taking no losses, like in Fairy Tail. In Fairy Tail they hype all these villains to the moon and then once you actually fight them they turn out to be totally harmless -- often randomly just killing themselves or not taking opportunities to win when they're right in front of them. In this way the cast survives ridiculous situations over and over again, endlessly (Fairy Tail is as long as One Piece when you count all the spinoffs. That's a lot of narrow escapes from death.) Instead the good guys and bad guys attrit each other evenly and they just barely pull it out after sacrificing a great many friends. It's not just emotionally moving, it also lends realism and significance to everyone's decisions and choices from the beginning of the story to the end. Everything mattered precisely because it was such a close-run thing. If anyone hadn't put in their all they would've come up short.
I also like that there wasn't power creep like in Naruto where mountains were blowing up per attack. Both the heroes and the villains stuck to sword arts so the fights stayed grounded and cool looking due to elegance and skill instead of 'big bang punch!' like nonsense.
So many people were dying I was choked up for like fifty chapters running by the end. That's great art.
Fairy Tail is still the better manga for an entirely different reason, the charm and humor of getting to know so many wonderful people with such wonderful warm bonds between each other. Kimetsu no Yaiba was never able to build up a strong cast of lovable characters and their bonds were always kinda cringe -- except of course for the tearjerkingly strong sibling love of Tanjiro and Nezuko which will go down in history as one of the greatest stories ever told.
One of the problems is all the pillars when introduced acted like such assholes that my initial negative impression of them never went away even after all the heroics they later performed. I'm not sure why the author wanted me to hate all her(?) characters but it certainly worked. . .But the pillars all ended up being more likable characters than Zenitsu and Inosuke, who are such horrible main characters they almost wrecked the story. Zenitsu's high whiny voice about everything and Inosuke's dorky looking boar mask and murderous aggression against innocents are absolutely unacceptable. Then there was Genya randomly manhandling a little girl for absolutely no reason. Yukishiro attacking Tanjiro for no reason. Etc. Everyone was always introduced as a total asshole and then you were supposed to gradually like them later. Well, sorry, no. When you do outlandishly outrageous things for no reason, you don't get to make up for that with a good deed later. It's still completely inexcusable and unforgivable. You just don't do these things. It's like raping a girl and then donating $5 to charity on the way home. You think that makes it okay?
A lot of the demons were more relatable characters than the heroes. . .
Oh well. Kimetsu no Yaiba has its strengths and its weaknesses, like almost all stories. In summation it's a definite must-read. So long as a second season isn't announced, all of humanity needs to drop everything they're doing and read the manga. Life without Kimetsu is a life totally wasted.
The train arc will soon be covered by the anime so it hardly matters. After that is the flower district arc which is really good. Both the heroes and villains are cool. Then there's a sort of bland smith village invasion arc where both the heroes and villains aren't very cool. And then suddenly we enter the climax of the series and for the rest of the journey everyone is at absolute maximum effort and it's absolutely amazing. At least the last fifty chapters were perfect. Shonen action series seem to always have terrible endings -- whether it's the uninspired Spriggan 12, the Quincies, Soul Eater, or the Buu saga. . . I liked the final duel between Naruto and Sasuke even though the zombie armies were ridiculous so I'll give Naruto a B. But Kimetsu no Yaiba is an A++. It's off the charts good compared to everyone else. Kimetsu no Yaiba shows everyone how it can be done. There's no reason why your conclusion has to suck. You just have to be willing to let your characters die and let the villains pose a serious threat. It's really not that hard.
Meanwhile, I dropped 'Welcome to the Jungle' because I'm not a fan of samba. -1 to the music hall of fame.
I also published Sellsword over at Scribble Hub, encouraged by the positive reception given '100 Waifus.' It promptly got 2 5-star (top possible!) ratings and even a positive comment of its own. Even if it only made two other people happy in the world, that's still an achievement. A part of me will stay nestled in their hearts forever. Becoming a writer wasn't a waste of time.
Unfortunately I don't have any more good books on offer. My earlier works don't measure up, so there's no point wasting anonymous strangers' time with them. But if anyone hasn't read Sellsword yet they definitely should do so. It's short and sweet and amazing, and now two other strangers agree with said assessment so I'm not just making this up: http://diamed-the-road-less-traveled.blogspot.com/2018/09/sellsword.html
Index GT volume 2 is fully translated now and fully read by me. As typical the situation wasn't resolved, only postponed, so that yet more novels can be written. Index never dies. Next I need to catch up on the newly translated chapters of Lazy Dungeon Master.
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