Demon Slayer Vol. 11: A Close Fight
- ISBN
- 9781974706488
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 89–97
- Anime
- Season 2: Entertainment District Arc ep. 34–44
The cleanest place to stop in the whole run, and the only one where the manga and the anime agree to the page. Chapters 89 to 97 finish the Entertainment District fight, and chapter 97 is the last chapter of the arc, the last chapter of this book and the last chapter season 2 adapts. A reader who wants one complete story and no more can buy Vols. 9 to 11, with the final chapter of Vol. 8 for the setup, and stop here. A viewer who has finished season 2 starts at the first page of Vol. 12 and re-reads nothing. Season 2's finale, a 32-minute episode, takes its title from this volume's last two chapters, 'No Matter How Many Lives', parts 1 and 2. Those two chapters are the reason to own the book.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
The fight ends the only way it can, with both heads cut in the same moment. Tengen, poisoned and motionless, comes back to hold Gyutaro; Tanjiro's scar becomes a mark and carries his blade through; Zenitsu and Inosuke take Daki. Gyutaro's body then erupts and levels the district, and Nezuko's fire burns the poison out of the survivors. The last two chapters are the siblings dying while insulting each other, until Daki is gone and Gyutaro calls her by her human name, Ume. Their history follows: born into the district's poverty, she was burned for attacking a customer, he killed the people responsible, and the Upper Six of the day found them. They walk into hell together. It is the series' best use of its habit of mourning its monsters, because for once the flashback explains the fight instead of interrupting it; the same device is what Anime News Network's review of the Infinity Castle film marks down as repetitive. The cost falls on the winners too. Tengen retires as a Hashira, and Kagaya Ubuyashiki, visibly sicker, reads the victory as the beginning of the end for Muzan.
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