Demon Slayer Vol. 17: Successors
- ISBN
- 9781974710614
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 143–151
- Anime
- Film: Infinity Castle – Part 1
The first full book of the final battle, and three fights at once. Chapters 143 to 151 open inside the Infinity Castle with the Corps scattered through it and the Upper Ranks waiting, and the volume cuts between separate duels instead of following one. The rest of the series is built that way, so this is the book that tells a reader whether the last third is for them. Nothing on television reaches this far: season 4 ends six chapters into Vol. 16. The first Infinity Castle film, released in 2025 and subtitled 'Akaza Returns', covers all of this volume and stops partway through Vol. 18, whose page says where a film viewer picks up. Buying this book alone makes little sense either way, since none of its three fights is both started and finished here except one. Viz lists it in print at $11.99.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Chapter 143, 'Wrath', is where this site's Shinobu line comes from, the one about things that have to be done whether or not they can be. She is fighting Doma, Upper Rank Two, the demon who killed her sister Kanae. Her poisons stop working on him, and he kills and absorbs her; her ward, Kanao, arrives too late and takes her place. The middle of the book is Zenitsu's, and it is the one complete fight: Kaigaku, a fellow student who became a demon and the new Upper Six, whose betrayal drove their master to seppuku. Zenitsu kills him alone, with a form of his own invention, which is a long way from the coward introduced in Vol. 3. The rest is Tanjiro and Giyu against Akaza, who killed Rengoku in Vol. 8, and the book ends inside that fight, on the most delicate chapter title in the series, 'The Sound of Bells on a Snowy Moonlit Night'. The structure is the argument. Three simultaneous revenge stories, each with a flashback attached, is either the series cashing in everything it planted or a formula showing its seams, and Anime News Network's C+ review of the film took the second view.
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