Demon Slayer Vol. 4: Robust Blade
- ISBN
- 9781974700554
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 26–34
- Anime
- Season 1: Tanjiro Kamado, Unwavering Resolve Arc ep. 1–26
One arc closes in this book's first pages and the next is not finished by its last. Chapters 26 to 34 start with a fistfight and a rest stop, then send the three swordsmen up Mt. Natagumo from chapter 29, and the volume ends on the mountain with the fight unresolved. It is not a place to stop. Vols. 4 and 5 are one story sold as two books, and anyone buying singles should buy them together. Season 1 covers both: its episodes 14 and 15 are titled 'The House with the Wisteria Family Crest' and 'Mount Natagumo', so a viewer still starts reading at Vol. 7. The history attached to this volume belongs to its Japanese edition and not to its contents. It is in the section below because it shows how the series was regarded before anyone animated it.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
The fistfight is Tanjiro and Inosuke's, the rest stop is a house under a wisteria crest, and the mountain belongs to a family of spider demons whose mother works captured swordsmen as puppets; chapter 30 is 'Marionettes'. Tanjiro kills her in this book. She welcomes it, and warns him that one of the Twelve Kizuki is on the mountain. He and Inosuke are then separated by the Father, whom Tanjiro takes for that Kizuki. He is wrong, and the real one is Vol. 5's business. The last pages send two Hashira toward the mountain: Giyu, who spared Nezuko in Vol. 1, and Shinobu Kocho, who is new. The history is this. When the Japanese Vol. 4 came out in December 2016, its wraparound band carried a recommendation from Yoshihiro Togashi of Hunter x Hunter, and Vol. 5's band carried one from Osamu Akimoto of KochiKame. Two of Jump's senior authors vouched for a ten-month-old series more than two years before its circulation reached 3.5 million. Its reputation among professionals ran well ahead of its audience, and the usual account, in which the anime discovered it, leaves that out.
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