No one has any doubt at this point that Kimetsu No Yaiba (Guardians of the night in our country and Demon Slayer in the americas) is one of the best manga in history; proof of this is the monopolization of the weekly sales lists in Japan (surely in Spain as well) and the accumulated sales figures to date that exceed 150 million copies in circulation until February of this year.
Kimetsu No Yaiba is the best seller in Japan. / Shueisha
The triumph of the manga gave the green light to the inevitable production of which it has become one of the best Japanese animation series and very few in the West have managed to dodge that bullet.
Despite the ‘target’ that these series have, Kimetsu No Yaiba has shown how easy it is to break a generational barrier and has half the world hooked; from teenagers who have their parents measured their TV time, to those in their forties who measure their children’s TV time while they enjoy the adventures of demon hunters. No one escapes the charms of this story.
For those dismissed, we will say that in Guarianes de la Noche you will meet Tanjiro Kamado, a young man who will taste the most absolute misery in his flesh when he finds his family murdered by a demon and will have to become a demon hunter to find a way to make her sister, Nezuko, human again.
On his way, always with her at his back, he will meet Zenitsu, a fearful hunter with narcolepsy problems, already Inosuke, which hides its human face under a boar mask. The four of them will undertake a journey through Japan in search of demons whose direction will be set by the informant crows of the hunters’ guild. Hectic days of exploration and nights.
It is a highly entertaining series and one of the greatest achievements of Japanese serial animation in recent times. The problem is that we’ve reached a ‘dead end’ in the anime. The first season ended to make way for the feature film; “The Infinite Train”, Which would continue the adaptation of the pages exactly where the series left off and with the same level of production.
Now, we are waiting for the second season of the series (which will arrive in the second half of 2021) but which will again give way to a waiting period that causes more and more damage.
The solution to these problems has been on the table for months (or on store shelves), this time with a ‘full stop‘, and new readers will be surprised how tremendously faithful the animated series is to the original story.
Jump to manga Being an audience of the animated series has many advantages. First of all, you know the world, your characters now have a voice and that gives your brain a huge advantage in making the lines of the speech bubbles resonate in your head.
Anime and Manga of the Night’s Watch / Select / Standard
Second, and more important, you are reading the material original; material that the animated series has treated to date as a holy grail when it comes to composing its stories, following the action page by page and composing key scenes exactly the same as those seen in the vignettes.
As you can see, it seems like a good time to jump from TV to paper. Knowledge is power, and knowing how this story that has turned the Japanese people “upside down” ends is a more than desirable idea. In addition, the accounts are easy: at 8 euros per volume and with a total of 23 numbers, almost anyone can jump into the pool without fear, knowing that Editorial Standard will keep reprinting this series a priority in its catalog.
What should be clear to you is that ‘Guardians of the Night’ is an essential series and that one way or another (ideally, both) you have to incorporate it into your life. Personally, I have jumped into the manga and I am glad I did, but I will follow the anime closely in our country as Selecta-Vision is sending it to us.