Demon Slayer Vol. 16: Undying
- ISBN
- 9781974714773
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 134–142
- Anime
- Film: Infinity Castle – Part 1; Season 4: Hashira Training Arc ep. 56–63
Chapters 134 to 142, and the point where the television ranges run out. Season 4 ends at chapter 139, six chapters into this book, so a viewer who finished it starts here and re-reads six chapters; the where-to-start form, given episode 63, answers chapter 140 and names this volume. The Infinity Castle arc went to cinemas instead of television. The first film begins where chapter 140 begins, and its plot ends on a death the manga reaches in Vol. 18; that volume's page says where a film viewer picks up. What can be said without spoiling the inside is structural: this is the last volume in which the series has arcs. From chapter 140 to the final chapter, 205, there is one engagement, and those 66 chapters are the end of this book and the whole of the last seven, close to a third of the run. Viz lists it at $11.99 in print; the complete box set is the only other way to buy it.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Muzan walks into the Ubuyashiki estate in chapter 137, 'Undying', and the volume title is his. Kagaya's answer is a bomb. Chapter 138 levels the house and kills him and most of his family, Tamayo's drug goes into Muzan, and chapter 139, 'Falling', drops every Hashira and Tanjiro into the Infinity Castle. That is where episode 63, a forty-minute special, stops, and it is the cleanest seam in the adaptation: the anime ends on the fall and the next chapter is titled 'The Final Battle Begins'. Chapters 141 and 142 open Shinobu's fight with Doma, and the book ends inside it; her death, and chapter 143, which this site quotes her from, are in Vol. 17. The argument here is pacing, not plot. Gotouge opens the book on training, dismantles the arc structure of the series in three chapters, and never rebuilds it: chapters 140 to 203 are one night and the morning after it, and the two chapters left are epilogue. Serialization ended in May 2020 with the series the best-selling manga in Japan for the second year running, which is the opposite of the usual Jump ending. Whether the compression from here is an author choosing to stop is the question the last seven volumes leave open.
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