The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Koyoharu Gotouge Before Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

What's It About? 

See how best-selling creator Koyoharu Gotouge, creator of the worldwide sensation Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, got started. This collection features four short stories packed with supernatural action—including a deadly vampire hunt starring Tamayo and Muzan that would serve as the direct inspiration for Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.

Koyoharu Gotouge Before Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba has a story and art by Koyoharu Gotouge, with English translation by Dan Luffey. Evan Waldinger lettered this volume. Published by Viz Media (October 8, 2024).

Contect Warning: Suicide

Is It Worth Reading?

Sometimes there's a good reason why a creator makes their splash with a certain series. Koyoharu Gotouge's early works all have the seeds of what would eventually become Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, but that's all they are: seeds. None of them have the growth potential to become something more, and while they're interesting showcases of how Gotouge has grown as a storyteller and artist, they also aren't very good.

Of the four pieces anthologized here, the strongest is the third, “A Man Called Ribs.” The story is about a man with unconventional sight; he's largely blind, but he can see people's feelings inside the hazy outlines of their bodies. When someone is infected with a noxious urge or a terrible emotion, Abara purifies it, saving them. Or at least, freeing them to be punished by the law, as is the case in this story – while he's out walking around, casually flicking evil emotions off of people's shoulders, he stumbles upon a trail of bad feelings linked to hair, which leads him to a woman collecting women with beautiful hair and holding them captive. It's a thin plot, but the premise is solid, and Abara is interesting as a protagonist.

That's not always the case; the bug brothers in the second story, “The Monjushiro Brothers,” are little more than outlines, one-note characters whose powers are never adequately explained. Gotouge mentions that this was originally intended to be spun out into a serialization, and I can't say that I'm surprised that it didn't happen; Gotouge's ability to draw bugs aside (the reason given for the abandonment of the story), it just doesn't have any depth. The idea that everyone has a bug inside them is interesting but not enough to carry it. That story and Abara's involve the same group home, a link that isn't explored in the book but suggests that Gotouge is creating stories all set in the same universe.

Watching Gotouge's art evolve throughout the volume is probably the best aspect of it. The first story, “Overhunter Hunter” (which is credited with being the inspiration for Demon Slayer) has an almost ukiyo-e look to it, and the art shifts subtly until it's nearly what we're used to by the final tale, “Zigzag from Haeniwa.” It's rare to see such a clear, step-by-step progression in an artist's work, so either Gotouge did evolve like this or these were very well-chosen stories for that purpose.

In any event, this is simply an okay book. If you're a die-hard fan of Gotouge, it's probably worth it, but otherwise, it's a collection of stories from a creator who hadn't yet found their groove.

Few manga authors get series right out the gate; most start through newcomer contests and various short story submissions. Unless these stories end up packaged at the end of a volume of a more serialized narrative, they rarely make it to English-speaking audiences, even with blockbuster artists. With Before Demon Slayer, Viz is experimenting with a new method of bringing Koyoharu Gotouge's short-form works to their Anglophone fans in a collected volume.

The first story in the collection, “Overhunter Hunter,” is Gotouge's first published work, and as is often the case with early attempts at narratives, it is nigh-incomprehensible. Gotouge apologizes for its lack of readability, citing that they didn't yet have an editor to convert their raw, inexperienced work into a more polished, professional attempt. The other three stories are much more engaging, delivering punchy action stories in a short format.

It's also a fascinating piece because the throughline to Demon Slayer is crystal clear. None of them are obvious rough drafts that got converted into a long-form story like Romance Dawn, the predecessor of One Piece; the connection has more to do with the themes that occupy Gotouge's imagination. Empathy for your enemy, how the cycle of violence perpetuates, devotion to one's family… it's all here. Their distinctive art style, which I've always thought looked like it was carved from wood, is here. Gotouge is the kind of artist who revisits the same ideas from different angles over and over, and if those themes interested you in Demon Slayer, this one is worth spending time on.

Demon Slayer is one of the most popular shows to have come out in the past couple of years, which means now the opportunity to go back to Gotouge's side stories and one-off ideas. I'm not the biggest fan of Demon Slayer personally as the story is a bit basic for my liking and the artwork is nothing to write home about. Considering that it seems like a good chunk of these stories came before Demon Slayer was in serialization, they are arguably less refined than what we have in that series.

That being said, I actually find a lot of the concepts and ideas explored in these one-shots more interesting than what we would eventually get in Demon Slayer. Almost all of these stories have something to do with creatures, demons, and curses so Gotouge definitely had a preferred type of story they wanted to tell. But I like how these stories explored some of the surreal and morally ambiguous nature of some societies. The setups are very simple and easy to understand but the way the characters interact with each other is very interesting.

It feels like there's a lot of history in the dialogue as oftentimes characters will speak while hinting at a larger story that I'm genuinely curious about. I wonder how some characters got to certain points in their life and you could see that a lot of this foundation was being laid to be explored in later chapters but those chapters never came out. There's this idea of what it's like to live in a messed-up society with bad people. Sometimes you're forced to kind of be a bad person yourself or other times you just wanna do your best to persevere despite all the craziness. There are some sections towards the end of the book that go into detail about why some stories weren't expanded upon and Gotouge even admits that some things in the one-shots don't make sense. It's a very humble compilation and I appreciate that. If you're a fan of Demon Slayer then I think it would be worth checking out to see even more types of Demons that could potentially be explored in the future.