Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (2017)
[鬼滅の刃]
Volume 7
Author/Artist: Koyoharu Gotouge
Publisher: Jump Comics
Synopsis:
Tanjirou completes his recovery and seeks the Hashira's knowledge about the Hinokami Kagura.
Story/Characters:
We open with Shinobu giving Tanjirou a clean bill of help but unable to give him any information about the Hinokami Kagura, suggesting he try speaking to Rengoku the Flame Hashira. Afterward he comes across the scarred fellow with the bad attitude he met during the Final Selection. Tanjirou's polite but gets ignored. Next he thanks Aoi for her help and we learn that the reason she's doing her current job is because she's too afraid to fight. She doesn't think much of what she does, but Tanjirou—being Tanjirou—praises her for serving the Corps in her own way. Next, he goes to pay his regards to Kanao and he finds that she won't even talk to him without a favorable flip of a coin. Basically, she has no will of her own and was given the coin so she could make decisions. He then makes a wager with her to try to listen to her own heart if the coin comes up heads. He succeeds, but the gesture baffles Kanao. She asks how he knew it would come up heads. He tells her it was just a fluke, but if it hadn't turned up heads, he would've just kept flipping the coin until he got the result he was after. This gives her some food for thought as Tanjirou says the rest of his goodbyes before he, Zenitsu and Inosuke are sent off to their next mission.
And that next mission takes them on a train ride. Country boys Tanjirou and Inosuke take some getting used to with this whole train thing (with Inosuke trying to take on this "master of the land" and Tanjirou thinking it's a bad idea to attack a local deity). Inside they find the very Rengoku that Tanjirou was wanting to talk to. However, Rengoku hasn't heard of the Hinokami Kagura either, but he does provide some useful information about the breathing styles. We then learn that this train, the Mugen Train, is actually the site of the current mission. As if on cue, an oni shows up and gets promptly dispatched by Rengoku. And then... things get odd. We soon come to understand the reason for this turn to the odd. Everyone is out like a light. You remember that oni from the cliffhanger last volume? This is Enmu, who has the power to manipulate people's dreams. He has a collection of unfortunate souls who do his dirty work in exchange for some sweet dreams to escape their bitter existence. Basically, Enmu isn't taking any chances with Slayers by fighting them directly and instead uses human proxies to invade the targets' minds and kill them by destroying the core of their consciousness. We then get a look into the dreams each main character is trapped in. Rengoku is having flashbacks to exchanges with his father and brother, Inosuke is having comical adventures with demihuman versions of the rest of the main quartet, Zenitsu is frolicking about with Nezuko, and Tanjirou finds himself with his family as if the events of the series thus far hadn't happened.
Enmu's minions tie themselves to the sleeping Slayers so they can infiltrate their minds. We see one girl go for Rengoku's core, but as she tries to attack it, Rengoku's finely honed survival instincts prompt him to throttle her even while he's still unconscious. Tanjirou is dealing with a bit of a split consciousness with another side of himself warning his dreaming self, and around that time Nezuko wakes up. As she didn't have a ticket to be punched, she wasn't subjected to Enmu's spell. She tries waking Tanjirou and when that doesn't work, she headbutts him, though his stone noggin actually makes her bleed, and she uses this blood to trigger her Blood Art. This translates into Tanjirou's dream and causes his self-image to transform into his current self. This causes him to realize that he needs to break free of the dream, no matter how much he would rather remain in this world where his family is still alive. The minion infiltrating his mind breaks into Tanjirou's core consciousness and finds this pristine waterscape as you'd expect from someone as pure-hearted as Tanjirou. The other minions aren't faring so well, with one being chased by a feral Inosuke and another facing a yangire Zenitsu who doesn't appreciate another dude showing up in his little paradise for two. Back to Tanjirou, he has a vision of his father that leads him to what he needs to do to get out of the dream: kill himself. Tanjirou realizes the possibility that dying in the dream could result in dying for real, but he knows there's no time and so makes the plunge. And... well, it was a fun series, wasn't it? No, I'm just kidding. Tanjirou wakes up and finds that when Nezuko used her Blood Art, she burned the rope connecting him to Enmu's minion. Tanjirou tells Nezuko to do the same for the others when he gets attacked by the minions, except for the one tasked with killing him. The minion explains that within Tanjirou's consciousness, little glowing being guided him to the core and the purity of the scene overwhelmed him and he couldn't go through with his job. Tanjirou knocks out the other three minions while the remaining one simply wishes him well as he goes to take on the oni.
When Tanjirou confronts Enmu, we learn about the trick with the ticket that was used to put them out. Tanjirou goes on the offensive and gets put right out. Since an ideal world didn't contain Tanjirou, Enmu decides to make things worse for him, having his family curse him and such. This has the opposite effect, giving the dream less hold and infuriating Tanjirou. Tanjirou takes Enmu's head, only to discover that the body before him is just a vestige of his original form and that he has incorporated the entire Mugen Train into his body. Tanjirou is now stuck between the twin challenges of protecting the passengers and defeating Enmu. Fortunately for him, Inosuke is back in action, so he can split the load. Nezuko is also doing her bit, but as she gets overwhelmed by Enmu's tentacles, a still unconscious Zenitsu (the best kind of Zenitsu) comes to her rescue. Rengoku is also up and at 'em. He pledges to defend five of the eight cars, leaving Nezuko and Zenitsu to defend the other three while Tanjirou and Inosuke work to take out Enmu. Thank to Inosuke's keen senses, he identifies the target as lying in the engine and the two of them quickly uncover Enmu's spine. Enmu then spawns a big eye-studded meat wall to make it pretty much impossible to escape his sleep spell. However, in the rapid sequence of getting put out and killing himself to wake up, he dang near slashes his neck in the real world. Things get complicated further when the engineer is revealed to be another of Enmu's minions and manages to stab Tanjirou in the gut. Our boy isn't going to let that stop him and our cliffhanger is him busting out the Hinokami Kagura to sever Enmu's spine.
Art:
We get some significant contrast between the more humorous dreams of Zenitsu and Inosuke and the more serious ones of Tanjirou and Inosuke. The action picks up nicely once Tanjirou wakes up and the train changing into a massive fleshy nightmare is suitably horrific, especially when all the eyes start popping up like a Resident Evil boss. Interestingly enough, for me at least, the googly-eyed Rengoku slowly becomes less uncanny as we progress.
Other:
We get an illustration showing a nervous Inosuke clinging to Tanjirou when they first get to the city, one of a lovestruck Zenitsu carrying Nezuko piggyback, a buck-toothed Zenitsu that shows up in more than one person's dream, "Muuko" (a Nezuko angry because she's not getting headpats), the feral Inosuke which is apparently his idealized form (three meters tall and able to breathe fire), an explanation of the awl used by the minions (being made out of Enmu's bones), a Taishou Secret explaining that the others were woken up because Nezuko burned their tickets (and Gotouge apologizing for not showing it in the story proper) and another explaining that Nezuko is using her claws against Enmu's tentacles because she had used too much blood for her Blood Art. We also get a bonus comic about how Kanao was adopted into the Kochou family after being taken from a slaver and the origin of the coin Kanao uses to make decisions.
Conclusion:
The Mugen Train Arc may well be my favorite in the series and was wisely chosen for the series' theatrical outing. There's nice emotional drama with the dream trap and good action once the fight properly kicks off. Pretty much everything you like about the series is in top form here, which is more than enough reason to add it to your collection.
Rating:
Own It