Demon Slayer Vol. 22: The Wheel of Fate
- ISBN
- 9781974723416
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 188–196
The middle of the last fight, and a book nobody should buy alone. Chapters 188 to 196 are nine chapters of the Corps holding Muzan in place and waiting for sunrise. Nothing begins in this volume and nothing ends in it. That is a description and not a complaint: a holding action is what the story calls for at this point, and it reads better collected, with Vols. 21 and 23 on either side, than nine weekly cliffhangers could. It has one event that is not attrition, and the spoiler section names it. In Japan the volume topped Oricon's manga chart for four consecutive weeks in October 2020. Viz's English edition followed in June 2021, two months before the last one.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Tanjiro wakes. Carrying what he learned in the vision at the end of Vol. 21, he returns to the fight and leads the counterattack, and the volume is named for chapter 192, 'The Wheel of Fate'. Around him the Corps is taken apart to buy minutes. The event that is not attrition is Nezuko. Certain that her brother needs her, she runs toward the battle, and the medicine developed to cure her works: the girl who has been a demon since chapter 1 is human again in a volume whose cover story is someone else's fight. It is the plan from Vol. 2 paying off, Tamayo's research and the blood Tanjiro collected for it, with Shinobu's work added. The placement is the argument. The goal the series stated in its first volume is achieved off to one side, without a fight, while the book's attention is elsewhere. That is either the most honest thing the ending does, since cures do arrive quietly, or a sign that the quest had stopped mattering to its author somewhere around Vol. 16. The last chapter is titled 'I Am'.
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