Demon Slayer Vol. 10: Human and Demon
- ISBN
- 9781974704552
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 200
- Chapters
- 80–88
- Anime
- Season 2: Entertainment District Arc ep. 34–44
Nine chapters from the middle of one fight, with no beginning and no ending inside the covers. Chapters 80 to 88 are the center of the Entertainment District battle: it has started before the book opens and it is not over when the book closes. Bought alone it is close to unreadable. Bought with Vols. 9 and 11 it is the stretch that shows why this arc is better collected than serialized, because what was two months of weekly cliffhangers is here one continuous action. The anime covers it inside season 2, and three consecutive episodes, 39 to 41, take their titles from chapters in this book: 'Layered Memories', 'Transformation' and 'Gathering'. The last pages are a bonus story, 'Inosuke's Fairy Tale', about a feral boy raised by a boar and the old man who took him in. It is the lightest thing in the volume by a distance.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Tanjiro fights Daki past what his body can sustain, nearly takes her head, and collapses because he has stopped breathing to do it. Chapter 81, 'Layered Memories', is where Daki sees, through Muzan's cells in her, the memory of a swordsman who looked like him. Nezuko steps in, and chapter 83, 'Transformation', is hers: she matures, regenerates faster than Daki can cut, and then nearly attacks a bystander before Tanjiro calms her. It is the first time the series treats Nezuko as a danger and not only as someone to protect, and it does not return to the idea as often as it should. Tengen arrives and beheads Daki without effort, doubts she is an Upper Rank at all, and is answered when Gyutaro climbs out of her body: the true Upper Six, whose sister cannot die while he lives. From 'Gathering', chapter 87, all four swordsmen are in the fight, and the problem is fixed for Vol. 11: both heads have to come off at once.
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