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‘Demon Slayer’ final volume released; fans flock to bookstores

Full-page ads to mark the launch of the 23rd and final volume were published in the Friday morning editions of five major newspapers in the country. (AFP)
Full-page ads to mark the launch of the 23rd and final volume were published in the Friday morning editions of five major newspapers in the country. (AFP)
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04 Dec 2020 07:12:21 GMT9
04 Dec 2020 07:12:21 GMT9

TOKYO: The final volume of “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” went on sale across Japan on Friday, with fans flocking to bookstores for the 23rd issue of the blockbuster Japanese manga series.

At stores in Tokyo, people were seen lining up, keeping a distance from those ahead of and behind them to avoid possible infection with the novel coronavirus.

Many customers seeking to buy the book, including corporate workers, visited the flagship Maruzen bookstore in the Marunouchi business district in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward from the start of the day’s operations at 9 a.m. (midnight Thursday GMT). The shop had secured thousands of copies of the final volume.

“I’ll read the final volume ahead of my son,” Keitaro Hirano, 55, from the city of Narita, Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, said at the store. Hirano became a Demon Slayer enthusiast, inspired by the son, 10, also a fan of the series. “I feel sad that it has come to an end, but I look forward to reading a spin-off story,” he added.

“The sales floor has never been so lively recently, at a time when the number of visitors to bookstores in the heart of Tokyo has fallen due to many people working from home (amid the coronavirus crisis),” Naoya Iki, deputy manager of the bookstore, said. “With earlier volumes of Demon Slayer continuing to sell well, I expect the popularity of the series to continue for some time.”

Full-page ads to mark the launch of the 23rd and final volume were published in the Friday morning editions of five major newspapers in the country.

According to Shueisha Inc., the publisher of Demon Slayer, 3.95 million copies were printed for the first edition of the final volume. The cumulative circulation of the series, created by Koyoharu Gotoge, has reached 120 million copies, including electronic book versions.

The manga series depicts the fight against demons of Tanjiro Kamado, a Japanese boy in the Taisho era in the early 1900s, and others as the protagonist seeks to return Nezuko, a younger sister, to a human state after she is turned into a demon when other members of his family are killed by a demon.

JIJI Press

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