after reading 190 chapters
may contain spoilers
when i watched the anime i really liked the series so i decided to give the manga a go, It was a bit disappointing that the quality of manga was not as good as the anime but it was still enjoyable. its an OK shoounen but i don't see why it was so hyped up, it's not that special and it was hyped up more than MHA and made it most selling of 2019 surpassing one piece which is way better series than demon slayer
ok now let us get into it
STORY(5/10): the story is pretty simple, we have demons, we have demon slayers and, it's pretty obvious now. The story follows tanjiro who has his whole family killed by a demon and has one of his sisters turned into a demon(MOE character of the series). now he went on a journey to become a demon slayer and save his sister, and on the way encountering different demons and demon slayers, pretty simple story but quite enjoyable, there are things in the storyline which could have made the story a lot better, but it didn't. for example in one of the arc, it was told that the demon slayer organization is illegal and is not supported by government, the potential to create a good plot based on this was huge but was never used, and almost every arc is predictable, enter->a demon stronger than the last arc->has some cool techniques->defeated. and usually, every shounen has plot armor, but the level of plot armor in this series is huge, in the final arc we are getting powerups and plot conveniences just for the sake of defeating the final villain which really destroyed a lot of build up the story had.
ART(7/10): the art is pretty decent and the changes in facial expressions of characters at different occasions are pretty amazing, the art in the manga is average and not that special, and i have never seen a single demon slayer fan saying "that manga panel was amazing" or "the art in that chapter was amazing", all I can hear is "this would look amazing when it is animated" clearly shows the effect Ufotable has on this series.
CHARACTER(7/10): some of the characters are good while some are really bad, like the main character tanjiro is decent, not that good, his personality is like fully grown-up naruto even tho he never had any character development to back that up, inosuke is one of the most enjoyable characters, while zenitsu is straight-up annoying. while all of the pillars have distinct character designs and personalities, they are all pretty simple. while the main villain(muzan) is just a rip off of Michael Jackson :P. the main villain is one of the worst written characters in this series, every other villan in the entire series is a better character than muzan himself. Muzan is just an OP villain and that's it, there's nothing else to his personality other than being OP and ruthless. one of the best things in the series is the backstories of each and every character, it seems like the author put way more effort to write those backstories than anything else and it is actually really good. Akaza(upper moon 3) is one o my favorite characters in this series 90% due to his backstory, and almost every character has a tragic backstory(like almost a lot of series), while backstories do a lot of things to flesh out these characters, there are a lot of things that should have been done in the story to show how each and every character has evolved, rather than putting all the effort on the MC and giving him the ultimate plot armor, series could have been a lot better if each and every character's growth was shown at a steady pace.
ENJOYMENT(7/10): while there are a lot of moments that feel like "why is this even happening" the series is really enjoyable up until a certain arc. The series was going at a steady pace and each character was growing at a steady pace until the author decided to end it suddenly, usually we will get a feeling that series is going to end a few arcs before, but here it all happened suddenly. I was like "final arc already?? seriously??" I was a bit disappointed but decided to continue, it was going good but when every character is going in full out(and we don't know everything about each character), and each particular character requires a specific setting to show how good he is, and all of this was compressed in a single arc. Now I like the side characters a lot and very disappointed in how they were treated in the final arc. The title of pillar was build up as a big thing in the series, but in this arc, the MC is as good as a pillar without any "pillar level growth". This growth had to be shown sooner or later but in my opinion, this was done too soon. A whole revenge arc was building up in which tanjiro should be going to revenge for a certain someone from Akaza, but all of that was also compressed in this final arc. And the way he gets the powerups is just simple plot armor. And the way the pillars are being disrespected by how powerful the MC has become has destroyed all the buildup given to the name pillar. To make things clear tanjiro becoming as good as a pillar this soon in the series would be equal to luffy defeating an admiral during marineford war in one piece, while in one piece luffy is still not as good as an admiral, tanjiro inn this series is currently more powerful than the strongest pillar, and all that growth happened in a single night. tanjiro went from pillar level(somehow he was pillar level at the beginning of this arc) to be stronger than the strongest pillar in a single night, now the ones who have read the manga know that the difference between the weakest pillar to the strongest pillar is huge, Upper moon 3 is strong enough to kill an average pillar mid difficulty while tanjiro destroyed the same guy after getting a simple plot armor and in the same night he got another plot armor to fight against Michael Jackson... i mean MUZAN
Overall the series is good, but not as good as it was hyped up by its fans and NINJA, the series is enjoyable but doesn't deserve everything it's getting(in my opinion)