Demon Slayer Vol. 18: Assaulted by Memories
- ISBN
- 9781974717606
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 152–160
- Anime
- Film: Infinity Castle – Part 1
Akaza's fight ends in this book, and so does the first Infinity Castle film. Chapters 152 to 160 open with Tanjiro and Giyu still facing the demon who killed Rengoku in Vol. 8, and with Shinobu's fight against Doma passed to the people she left behind. The film's plot ends on the outcome of the first of those. This site's line from that scene is sourced to chapter 157, so a film viewer picks up in this volume at about chapter 158, six chapters in, and has not seen its last three. No publisher states that boundary; it is this site's reading of the film's plot against the chapter list, and the chapter titles are the way to check it. It is the first natural pause since the castle doors opened in Vol. 16, and not a place to stop, because the second fight is left open.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Tanjiro reaches what chapter 152 calls 'The Transparent World', and with it he takes Akaza's head. It is not enough, because Akaza will not die of it: the body fights on headless. What stops him is memory. Chapter 154, 'Assaulted by Memories', starts returning his human life to him, a thief named Hakuji stealing to buy his sick father's medicine, then a dojo master who took him in and the master's daughter, Koyuki, whom he was to marry. All three were dead before he ever met Muzan. The strongest fighter in the book destroys himself instead of continuing, and this site's line from chapter 157 is that moment: a man telling his dead that he is home. It mirrors Rui in Vol. 5 and the siblings in Vol. 11 and outdoes both, because the series spent ten volumes making Akaza hateful first. In the other fight Kanao is joined by Inosuke, who learns that Doma killed his mother as well as the Kocho sisters; chapter 160 is where this site's Inosuke line comes from. Anime News Network's objection to the film of this stretch was that every duel stops for a flashback. Here the flashback is the duel, and the objection fails.
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Lines from this volume
Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.
“You have my gratitude for making me remember. Just cutting off your head won't be enough!! I'm gonna send you to hell!”
Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.
“I'm home, father. I'm back. Master. Koyuki. I'm home.”
Three names and a word he has not been entitled to for over a century. The demon has lost, and losing gives back what being a demon took: he was Hakuji, a boy who stole to buy medicine for a father who then hanged himself so that he would no longer be a burden on his son, and who was afterwards taken in by a master, Keizo, and engaged to his daughter Koyuki, both of whom a rival dojo poisoned. A demon's human memories fade, which means Upper Rank Three spent more than a century unable to recall what he was angry about. What the fight returns is not redemption. It is an address. He stops regenerating, and the last thing the character does is decline to survive.
Doma is the Upper Rank Two who ran a cult and ate its members, and one of them was Inosuke's mother, Kotoha, devoured when she tried to flee after learning what he was. Just before she was killed she dropped her son from a cliff to save his life. So the thank-you is not sarcasm, or not only: the demon has handed back a memory of her, and the only thing Inosuke can offer in return is the rest of the sentence. The promise is kept, though not by him alone. Shinobu lets Doma consume her poisoned body, and the weakened demon is killed by Kanao and Inosuke.