Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

From left to right: Inosuke Hashibira, Zenitsu Agatsuma, Nezuko Kamado, and Tanjiro Kamado.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Japanese: 鬼滅の刃, Hepburn: Kimetsu no Yaiba, lit. "Blade of Demon Destruction") is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Koyoharu Gotouge. It was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump from February 2016 to May 2020, with its 205 chapters collected in 23 tankōbon volumes. It's also had a 26-episode TV series by Studio Ufotable in 2019 (covering until the first part of chapter 54), a sequel film from 2020 (which covers from the rest of chapter 54 to chapter 69, and also is by Ufotable), two video games, some light-novels and spin-offs, etc. A second anime season that ran from December 2021 to February 2022 first covered the same arc from the movie and added one episode worth of new material (covering from the rest of chapter 54 to chapter 69), and then covered the following arc (chapter 70 to 97); and there's both a sort-of prequel movie that debuted in February 2023 (covering the end of the second season, a meeting between Muzan and the Upper Moons and the first episode of the following season), a third season aired through April to June 2023 (covering the arc from chapters 98 to 127), and a fourth season (covering from chapters 128 to 136, at very least) was released in May 2024. The two last arcs will be delivered as movies, and the first one may be released in 2025.

The story begins in the Japan of the Taisho era and follows a teenaged charcoal maker/vendor named Tanjiro Kamado and his younger sister Nezuko, who are the sole survivors of their family. Their father Tanjuro died of illness last year, whereas their mother Kie and their younger siblings (Takeo, Shigeru, Hanako and Rokuta) were slain by demons; Tanjiro survived because he wasn't there when this happened, but Nezuko's survival comes from her having been turned into a demon when the killer's blood fell on wounds that should've been fatal.

As poor Tanjiro is assessing the horrible blow dealt to the family, a young man from the Kisatsutai aka Demon Slayer Corps named Giyu Tomioka arrives and tries to strike Nezuko down since she's a demon girl and not a human anymore. But when Tanjiro is still determined to protect Nezuko no many times Giyu insists that she's beyond salvation AND Giyu sees that Nezuko retains enough humanity to be willing to protect Tanjiro as well, he temporarily incapacitates Nezuko rather than slaying her and tells Tanjiro to visit his master, Sakonji Urokodaki, who can give him the training he needs to join the Corps. From then on, Tanjiro becomes a member of the Corps alongside Nezuko and two new companions, two boys around their ages named Inosuke Hashibira and Zenitsu Agatsuma; he's completely determined to both slay as many demons as it's needed and to find out how he can heal Nezuko and make her human again...

See also Gotouge Koyoharu Tanpenshuu, a one-shot volume that includes a story named Kagarigari which can be considered as the "proto-Kimetsu".

Tropes used in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba include:

• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Inosuke can dislocate his joints to fit through any hole that is bigger than his head. He uses this when Daki ramps her rampage up the moment what she is doing is exposed on the good guys' grapevine and he goes after her.
• A Boy and His X: Obanai has a pet snake to fit his role as the Serpent Hashira.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Demon Slayers use Nichirin katanas to kill Demons. As Tanjirō demonstrates when he and Rui square off, these katanas can still be broken by striking their thicker faces.
  • The Demons themselves may have a biological variant as their main weapon, although they can manifest other powers, either instead or as well. Nezuko uses the claws as her go-to weapon in the video game adaptation, though she also incorporates kicks and can perform the Exploding Blood technique as a Limit Break.
    • Rui crosses this trope with the Whip It Good trope. He uses razor-sharp webs that can flail his opponents alive. A jerkwad Demon Slayer who tried to kill him for a pay raise of all things ends up getting reduced to chopper slaw as a result. It does NOT work with Giyu, however; he has a technique that lets him No Sell Rui's Razor Floss, then he simply beheads the crazy kid.
  • Tanjirō himself gets sharp claws after his transformation into a Demon when Muzan infects him with his blood.
• Abusive Parents:
  • The father of Sanemi and Genya Shinazugawa, Kyougo, was an abusive drunkard who beat their mother Shizu, his sons and their younger siblings. He was eventually killed by a guy he had a fight with in the streets, and the two boys weren't happy but didn't mind that much either. However, when Sanemi nearly dies in the Final Battle, Kyougo's spirit (who's in Hell) has a rough Pet the Dog (and probably atonement-induced) moment via all but forcing Sanemi's soul back into his body because it's not Sanemi's time to die yet, urging him to keep on living.
    • Shizu herself is a subversion. She's an excellent and kind mother most of the time, but she takes this to the extreme (though she didn't WANT to) when she gets infected by Muzan's blood and devours her kids.
  • Kyoujuro and Senjurou Rengoku's dad, Shinjuro Rengoku, started more or less okay, but at some point, he snapped over a certain revelation about the Breathing Styles and the death of his Ill Girl wife Ruka, becoming a mix of this and Troubled Abuser. He doesn't recover until after the death of Kyoujuro in battle.
  • Inosuke Hashibira's father was this to him and also abused his wife/Inosuke's mom, Kotoha. He and his mother, who did nothing to stop him, were slain by the demon Doma around the time he took Kotoha and baby Inosuke under his wing.
  • Kanao Tsuyuri initially grew up in a very destitute household where her parents abused her and her nine brothers to incredible degrees, beating and drowning them if the kids did anything they didn't approve of. According to her when Tanjirō voices his concerns, some of her brothers did die due to the abuse, which is why she became an Empty Shell until the Kochou sisters took her in.
  • Subverted with Rui's parents. They were about to kill him... as a Mercy Kill after he became a demon and started eating humans. They were also willing to kill themselves as an atonement, and Rui's mother's Famous Last Words were an apology to him for not giving him a strong body.
    • Rui himself becomes an inversion of this with the so-called "family" that he made. Having convinced himself that parents and older sibliungs have the role of protecting the younger ones in the family, Rui played the Youngest Son role and took in other Demons to be his protectors, with those failing him being subjected to heavy torture (mostly, by being sliced up by his spiderwebs or being beaten up by the stronger family members). He ends up regretting it after getting defeated, though.
  • Tengen Uzui's father was extremely obsessed with their clan's Ninja tradition and his own The Social Darwinist view of life. As such, the horrible Training From Hell he subjected his kids to pretty much got them all killed save for Tengen and one of his brothers, who ended up taking several levels in jerkass as a result. Tengen himself ended up so angry and disgusted at all of this, he left the Uzui clan with his wives and joined the Demon Slayer Corps, becoming a Hashira very soon.
  • Gyutaro's mother was a prostitute who absolutely hated him and saw him as a pest. She also hated her younger daughter Ume and once tried to cut the little girl's pretty hair by force, causing her son to attack her in defense of his sister. When she died of syphilis, Gyūtarō had to raise himself and his much younger sister Ume in the streets...
  • Hantengu was one prior to his transformation into a Demon, cementing his nature as a Hate Sink. He married and sired kids more than once... and tried to protect his "innocence" whenever each of his families called him out on his duplicity by absolutely flipping out and assaulting them, leading to his wives and kids to bite the bullet MANY times. Whether any of them survived his familicidal rampages is still up in the air.
  • Dōma is revealed to have had this for his father in a backstory. Both of Dōma's parents made a cult where he had the spotlight, but his father cheated on Dōma's mother pretty much in front of the boy (this behavior can be seen as sexual abuse) whereas the mother "merely" neglected the kid, and he ultimately was killed for it by his vengeful wife.
  • Given an horrible, horrible twist in one of the light novels. In The Wind's Tell-Tale Sign, everyone thought a local lady named Yae was a very unlucky woman whose abusive husband died in an accident and then her Ill Girl daughter died plus her burial place was defiled, causing Yae to disappear. In reality Yae killed her husband in retaliation for his mistreatment of her, then started abusing Sae in ways that heavily resembled Munchausen by Proxy until it killed her, then ate Sae's corpse as soon as Muzan turned her into a demon. Decades later Yae had become the Lower One Rank from the Twelve Kizuki, Ubume, and even then she was this - she targeted children and teens who had been mistreated by their parents, locked them up in an abandoned house, and touted herself as "their savior" and "their new mother" while slowly weakening them enough to kill them, and either killed them herself or manipulated them into killing themselves if they tried to leave her...
• Absurdly Youthful Parents:
  • Kagaya and Amane are barely 23 and 26 years old, and their quintuplet kids are 8 years old. This means they had them at age 13 and 17, respectively. It's a very Justified Trope when one remembers the Ubuyashiki clan's Hereditary Curse.
  • Douma noted that Kotoha was about 17 or 18 when he first met her, yet she already had a child.
• Action Girl: Nezuko Kamado, Kanao Tsuyuri, Mitsuri Kanroji, Shinobu and Kanae Kocho...
• Actor Allusion: In the English dub, Hantengu is played by Christopher Corey Smith, who portrayed someone in One Piece in a high-ranking position who mainly relies on stronger subordinates to fight instead.
• Adaptation Expansion: The Ufotable anime adds some more meat to the story:
  • The scenes depicting Nezuko and Tanjiro's lives right before the murders of their family and Zenitsu's training with Jigoro were longer. Zenitsu's sparrow Chuntarou also got more screentime.
  • Nezuko's own thoughts, child-like as they can be, are featured more frequently.
  • In the Natagumo arc's manga rendition, other Spider Demon siblings (two younger brothers, a little sister and an elder sister) are shown in a panel. There's a whole anime scene depicting how bleak life is for them when under Rui aka the Youngest Son's thumb... The Elder Sister and the Older Sister try to run away, but when Rui finds them the Older Sister backstabs the Elder to save her own ass, and the Elder is executed by being beaten to near death and then hung with strings until the sun rises and kills her.
  • The Kimetsu Academy Yonkoma and foot notes, plus the Taisho Secrets Author Notes, become mini-sections at the end of some episodes. Kimetsu Academy itself would later become a Spin-Off on its own right.
  • In the manga, there was an allusion to Kagaya talking to the Hashira after the Kamados's trial. The anime shows the reunion in itself and what they spoke about -- more exactly, the current situation with Muzan (since Tanjiro did meet him face to face, albeit briefly) and the future of the Corps as a whole.
  • Kanao's Dark and Troubled Past was featured in a bonus manga chapter released alongside chapter 59 rather than in the manga proper, but the anime inserted it in the Butterfly Mansion arc as her inner thoughts.
  • The scenes right before the Mugen Train movie/TV series where Giyu drops by the Butterfly Mansion and speaks with Tanjiro, Shinobu chats with Kyoujuro in the headquarters and later gives a report about Tanjiro to Kagaya are anime-only.
  • The TV rendition of the Mugen Train arc has a whole episode worth new material, with Rengoku first befriending a bento maker named Tomie who twenty years ago was rescued by his father Shinjurou and her granddaughter Fuku, then investigating the Mugen Train itself (and catching a demon that others mistook for a Serial Killer) before it starts its voyage.
    • Additionally, in the manga Tanjiro simply sought Rengoku out to ask him about the Hinokami Kagura and had Zenitsu and Inosuke follow him so they wouldn't styay in the Mansion. Here, they're explicitly assigned to help Rengoku in his mission.
  • The beginning of the Entertainement District arc stated that Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke had to go into solo missions once in a while. The anime shows one of Tanjiro and Nezuko's missions - they're seen hunting down a demon together and killing it before the people in a house it tried hiding in even noticed its presence.
    • The scene where Haganezuka chases after Tanjiro AGAIN for breaking the nichirin swords he makes him and then is seen eating his favourite food mitarashi dango is followed by one where the Team Mom Aoi and the nurse girls sneak Tanjiro inside the Butterfly Mansion to help him dodge Haganezuka's fury. It also inserts a bit of Ship Tease between Aoi and one of the boys (Inosuke: she explains that Haganezuka was last seen eating dango, he says he wants to eat dango too, and Aoi smiles a bit and promises to make some for him)
    • Mitsuri's backstory is also expanded, especially by making her Good Parents Ascended Extras.
  • In the very first episode of the Hashira Training arc, there's quite the additional scene... Sanemi and Obanai are paired up in a mission to rescue a kidnapped woman from a VERY strong demon that uses a Haunted Castle as its lair... and as they kill its companions and chase after him, the two manage to briefly find their way towards the Infinity Castle itself and almost get in...
    • The movie version of said chapter later also add an originally manga-only omake that features how Mitsuri was tricked by the perverted uniform maker Maeda into wearing her super Stripperiffic combat uniform.
    • The second episode makes Tanjiro's quest (given to him by Kagaya) to follow Giyu around and convince him to join his fellow Hashira in the training deals is quite longer and more detailed. It has Tanjiro straight up taking a Stalker Without a Crush approach to a comically peeved Giyu and also expands on the flashbacks to his Dark and Troubled Past (ie, the manga implied that Murata was the boy that took care of the severely wounded Giyu and the anime confirms it and has the about-to-be-killed Sabito explicitly asking him to do so). An anime-only scene right before that has Tanjiro consulting Aoi on how to approach Giyu, and she tells him to bring him good food in his first attempt and even gives him a homemade lunch to help.
    • The scene where Kagaya's crow finds Tamayo and tells her that Kagaya wants her to work with the Corps happens after the deals with Tanjiro and Giyu in the manga, but it's moved to right before that in the anime. There's also an additional one where Yushiro and Tamayo discuss the situation. It also adds the omake scene where Yushiro falls off a flight of stairs
    • In the manga, several Hashira's trainings were not shown outside one or a few pages. In the anime, each Hashira gerts his or her own episode that shows their training regimes in detail; ie, Tengen's shows his Training from Hell itself and confirms him as a Handicapped Badass even after being forced to retire from active combat, has Tanjiro interacting with Tengen's wives and them confiding on him as well about Tengen's massive frustration at not being able to fight directly, and adds another Obanai and Sanemi scene where they discuss what they saw at the gates of the Infinity Castle.
    • Towards the end, a scene from Gyomei's past confirms without any doubt that Kaigaku was the boy who betrayed him and the other orphans to demons. (It was said in Author's Notes).
• Affably Evil: Karaku and Urogi are cheerful in battle and compliment their opponents when the latter gets a hit on the former. While he and Sekidō take fighting seriously, Aizetsu counts to some degree, as he derives no joy in fighting and wants to give opponents quick, painless deaths.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • The first example is from the Final Selection arc: Teoni, the infamous Arm Demon that took a bloody Revenge by Proxy against Tanjiro's master Urokodaki (who got him locked in the mount where the Final selection took place) is finally slain by Tanjiro, and in his last moments recalls his forgotten past as a shy child demon who completely broke over awakening as such and eating his beloved older brother. Tanjiro cannot know that but realises that the dying demon is keeping its hand extended as if asking for someone to hold it, as as the boy does, the demon tears up and dissolves away.
  • Susamaru from the Asakusa arc wasn't ultra sympathetic on-screen, but then she's tricked by Tamayo on spilling info about Muzan... and a fatal Geas that Muzan puts on her kills her with lots of Body Horror. Tamayo is clearly unhappy over this and cannot bring herself to watch, Yushiro is stunned into terrified silence, and Tanjiro is horrified to the core and can only have words of sadness and compassion towards the dying demon. And when her Famous Last Words turn out to be a child-like request for her temari ball, Tanjiro places it near her torn off arm and watches as her corpse dissolves.
  • Despite his role as one of Hantengu's Emotion Clones and Sekidō's minion, Aizetsu gets some sympathy after his body is burned by Nezuko's flames and when Sekidō absorbs him for his Emergency Transformation
  • In the Natagumo Mountain arc, the Spider Demon Mother was the most sympathetic member of the Spider Demon family, as a young demon girl tricked and then forced by the Arc Villain Rui to serve as such, and who'd be harshly tortured whenever she slipped out of the role. Realising that Tanjiro can free her from her torment, when he moves in for the kill she willingly surrenders to him so she can die and be released, and Tanjiro uses a Mercy Kill-like technique so she won't die in pain.
    • Rui himself, believe it or not, fits this despite his cruel treatment of his so-called family. Once a little Ill Boy who took Muzan's Deal with the Devil to heal (unaware that he would turn into a monster as a result), he killed his parents when they tried to kill him for it, but thought that they did it out of hate instead of the Mercy Kill-like Murder-Suicide they intended. He only understood that his parents dearly loved him as Tanjiro's Big Brother Mentor Giyu killed him, and in his last words Rui called out to his parents, whom he missed deeply. Their souls appeared in front of him, apologizing for everything (just as he does apologize himself) and willing to go to Hell with him; they're last seen in an embrace.
  • Four of the Lower Ranks of the Twelve Kizuki: Rokuro, Wakuraba, Mukago and Kamanue. While they the Big Bad Muzan's henchmen), all one actually sees of them is how they're pissing in their pants as Muzan summons them to his presence in the Infinity Castle. . . only for him to kill them in very sadistic ways while lecturing them on how useless he thinks they are no matter what they do or say.
  • The most tragic Twelve Kizukis (Ume aka Daki, Gyutaro, Hakuji aka Akaza, and Michikatsu aka Kokushibo) get this as well. The defeated Gyutaro gets ready to go to Hell, then Daki refuses the chance to go to Heaven (apparently coming from Gyutaro making the Deal with the Devil rather than her) because she doesn't want to leave her brother alone, and they end up going to Hell together; Akaza remembers his life as Hakuji thanks to the intervention of the soul of his dead girlfriend Koyuki and deeply regrets all of his actions as he willingly lets himself die because he's that tired of fighting for Muzan, then Koyuki comforts him and willingly goes to Hell with him; and Kokushibo dies realising and lamenting how all of his actions amounted to nothing, especially his hidden desire to be more like Yoriichi.
  • Akaza gained LOTS of hate for being a Hero-Killer who fatally took out fan-favorite Rengoku. However, in the second-to-last arc the readers witnessed not only his fight against Tanjiro and Giyu, but learned that he had one of the cruelest Dark and Troubled Pasts in the whole series. As a result, when he actually died (or better said, all but commited suicide so he'd be able to escape Muzan's grip and concede the fight), fans were sobbing for him.
  • Downplayed with Douma: his death scene explains his Dark and Troubled Past as a supposed Holy Child raised in his parents' Religion of Evil, but it's less to make him sympathetic and more to tell the readers why he's the way he is. And he's rather subdued about it.
• All for Nothing: As Enmu lies dying, he lampshades this as he planned to merge with the train and had several hostages, but got trashed anyway.
• All-Loving Hero: Oh, Tanjiro... He fits so much here, he often shows compassion for demons if he sees or senses that they've had Dark and Troubled Pasts. (To be fair, many of them do.) Any time Tanjirō acts like a jerk to someone could be a MASSIVE red flag that that other person shouldn't be liked. The Upper-4 Kizuki, Hantengu, exemplifies this, since he is a MASSIVE jerkwad who constantly lies and has tried to weasel his way out of trouble by getting others in trouble instead so Tanjiro has next to no sympathy for him. By contrast, the Lower-5 Rui was very ruthless and cruel during his moments as a Demon but Tanjiro sensed great loneliness from him as the other died, so he showed compassion for his dying opponent in his last moments.
  • Out of the Hashira, Mitsuri is the closest to this. She's a VERY Nice Girl who loves helping and rescuing people, and is considered as The Heart of the squad; it's said that near every Hashira thinks they can lay down their defenses even if just a little when around her, and the light novels show that they worry quite a bit if she's sad or depressed.
    • The late Kanae fitted in here near perfectly as well, feeling sorry even for the demons like Tanjiro did. Including the one who killed her.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: According to the Hashira, even when the Big Fancy House that the Ubuyashiki live in has next to no guards or protection other than being located in the mountains, this has never happened. Gyomei says he once pointed out the possibility to Kagaya, but he refused to have people specifically guarding him when there are demons to be fought. At the end of the Training arc, Muzan personally shows up at the HQ and sets it on fire... but Kagaya has already guessed this and outsmarted him by blowing up the mansion with him still inside (plus Amane, Nichika and Hinaki willingly die with him), severely injuring Muzan (with help of Tamayo) and giving the Corps a chance to find and attack Muzan's Infinity Castle
• An Arm and a Leg: It could give Star Wars a run for its money. Though it's a minor inconvenience if you're a demon.
  • Teoni loses many of his arms when Tanjirō slices through them with his Nichirin sword. Inverted when Teoni's arms grow back.
  • Susamaru loses her arms when Tanjirō severs them with his Constant Flux attack. She regrows them as she taunts him regarding his poor aim given his failure to behead her. For massive irony, when she's subjected to lethal doses of Body Horror, several massive arms grow out of her mouth and her torso before they crush her to pieces.
  • Losing his right leg is what forced Jigoro, Zenitsu's Parental Substitute and once the Thunder Hashira, to retire from the Corps.
  • A nameless Demon with horns loses his head and arms to Inosuke during his bout with him in a Cruel and Unusual Death. The arms are not severed in the video game version.
  • The Spider Demon Father loses one of his arms (although he regrows it later) when Inosuke slices through it with one of his swords.
  • At the end of the Red District arc, Tengen loses his left hand when Gyūtarō slices it off with one of his sickles.
  • Before he became a Demon, Hantengu was threatened with amputation at the wrists, but escaped. Sekidō even loses one of his hands at one point, and Urogi loses one of his legs which grows a separate head to continue attacking.
    • The same threat is made towards a Street Urchin named Hakuji, who some time later would become Akaza
  • Almost happened to Sanemi during the fight with Kokushibo, and would've taken place if not for Gyomei's quick reactions. He still lost two fingers. Gyomei himself loses one leg in the Final Battle, whereas Giyu has his right arm cut off and Mitsuri loses both arms.
• All Your Powers Combined: Due to his origin being when Hantengu's emotion clones merged together in their last-ditch effort to protect his life, Zōhakuten has all four clones' powers.
• Animal Motifs: Boars, for Inosuke. Justified: he was raised by one of them after the disappearance of his Hot Mom.
  • Butterflies, for Shinobu. (She is the Insect Hashira.) Also, for her late sister Kanae, her adoptive sister Kanao, and all the girls from the Butterfly Mansion.
  • Serpents, for Obanai. The reasons why come from his Dark and Troubled Past.
  • Rui has a spider motif, fitting for his powers and the fact that his family is themed around spiders.
• Anti-Hero: Inosuke starts as such. He's is trying to kill demons for the greater good, but shows no restraint in trying to outright kill his blonde comrade Zenitsu for standing in the way between him and the demon who Tanjiro keeps on a box (his sister Nezuko). Tanjiro has to beat the FUCK out of the guy to get him to back off.
  • Some of the Hashira count too, especially Sanemi and Obanai. who are huge jerks but still fight for the sake of the people and later are shown to have very sad reasons to be the way they are.
• The Apprentice: Sabito, Makomo, Giyu and Tanjiro are this to Urokodaki, the former Water Hashira. Were, in the case of the first two: a Final Selection demon with a grudge against Urokodaki specifically targets and kills all the kids trained by him as his Revenge by Proxy. Giyu survived thanks to Sabito and due to losing the Cool Mask that Urokodaki gave to each of his apprentices; years later, Tanjiro manages to defeat and kill the demon
  • The once Thunder Hashira, Jigoro Kuwajima, trained both Zenitsu and an older boy named Kaigaku. After Kaigaku's Face Heel Turn, he committed Seppuku.
  • The tsuguko are young and promising Slayers handpicked by still active Hashiras to not just be their pupils, but to become their eventual successors. Tanjiro's potential girlfriend Kanao is this to Shinobu (and she had three other tsuguko before her, but all of them died fighting demons), whereas Kyoujuro offers Tanjiro the chance to be his own tsuguko but both he and Shinobu die in battle; and Tengen refers to Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke as his tsuguko as he fights Gyutarou.
    • The Love Hashira, Mitsuri Kanroji, actually was the tsuguko of the aforementioned Kyoujuro. Her Love Breathing is actually derivated from his Flame Breathing!
  • Averted in the case of Genya Shinazugawa, who sought to become the Stone Pillar Gyomei Himejima's tsuguko but could not because he wasn't really able to use Breathing Styles. Still, Gyomei did provide reliable advice and training to Genya otherwise.
  • In the backstory, a boy named Hakuji was this to a martial artist and the caretaker to the guy's Ill Girl daughter. That boy? Akaza the Third Upper Moon, who lost it when both his master Keizo and his girlfriend Koyuki were killed.
• Arc Villain: Tanjirō has faced a lot throught his series' run:
  • In the Natagumo Mountain Arc, the Lower-5 demon of the Twelve Kizuki, Rui, took this role. Having been born with a weak body, Rui got turned into a demon to stave off his death, but was forced to eat others. Just before he was murdered by his parents to stop him from losing his humanity, he attacks and kills them in self-defense. He was later gaslighted by Muzan regarding the incident and had spent years building a new family, becoming the main threat. Only after he gets trashed by Giyu does Rui go down and realise how this mess really started.
  • The Lower 1 Demon, Enmu, is the main villain for the Mugen Train story. He tried to devour the titular train's passengers by merging with it and put them to sleep. He's actually in a sort-of Big Bad Duumvirate with the Upper 3 Demon, Akaza, who shows up riiiight after Enmu is killed off and becomes one hell of a Hero Killer.
  • The Upper 6 Demons, Gyūtarō & Daki, become this for the Red Light District story. Their backstory and motivations were similar. As a human girl named Ume, Daki was abused by her mother just because she was more beautiful than the latter. Only Gyūtarō, Ume's brother, showed any support, and he was UGLY!! (Though one could be forgiven for finding him ugly cute.) They were horribly abused through their human lives, then were rescued by Doma and became Demons.
  • Hantengu (Upper 4) and Gyokko (Upper 5), become this for the Swordsmith Village arc, their goal being to stop the production of Nichirin Swords, which are the titular villains' weakness. Gyokko was eventually trashed by Muichirō slicing his head in half and Hantengu was destroyed with one slice to his core.
• Asshole Victim: One guy attempted to kill Rui hoping he would get a pay raise. The guy did not even care for his dying comrades, not even the moody yet good-hearted Murata, and Rui delivers sweet karma on him by slicing the jerkwad to pieces, hence how the guy got his fanon name, "Sliced Steak Senpai."
• Asteroids Monster: In a non-video game example, the Upper 4 Demon of the Twelve Kizuki, Hantengu, splits every time his neck suffers a cut. His core must be destroyed to kill him. The Demon Slayers learn this the hard way the first time Hantengu gets his head chopped off. These "asteroids" are known as "emotions," since they embody Hantengu's emotions.
• Bad Liar: Not that he likes to lie, but when Tanjirō tells a lie, you can tell because he literally feels pain whne he tries.
• Baleful Polymorph: Gyokko turns several swordsmiths into a sculpture in a fatal example. Muichiro quite reasonably loses his cool from this.
• Barrier Maiden: One way to see Nezuko, as not only she can replace flesh eating with sleep, but she eventually develops the ability to walk and live into sunlight - unlike the rest of the demons. This makes her a prime target for Muzan.
  • To a smaller degree, the marechi - normal humans whose blood, for one or another reason, is seen by demons as Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious (apparently, killing and eating one single marechi equals to doing the same to 100 humans) and therefore are prime targets. Tanjiro and Zenitsu must rescue a marechi boy named Kiyoshi in their first joint mission, and later Sanemi Shinazugawa is revealed to be one too.
• Beam Spam: Aizetsu can launch lasers from his spear via his Weeping Spears attack.
• Beautiful All Along: Inosuke, as seen above, uses a hollowed boar's head as a mask and head protector. When he does not wear it, however, he looks... extremely pretty. Tanjiro and Zenitsu even get brief Stupid Sexy Flanders moments when they see him!
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Zigzagged: it seems that the more plot-important the fight is, the more severely wounded an Action Girl will be. Shinobu may have defeated the Spider Demon Sister cleanly but she got severely bloodied by Douma before he killed and ate her, and while Mitsuri was merely beaten up and got a cut on her forehead while fighting Hatengu and his Literal Split Personalities, in the Final Battle she was so seriously wounded she had both of her arms cut.
  • Poor Nezuko is an extreme aversion: she lost a leg against Susamaru (and had to get it reattached, good thing she has a Healing Factor), was caught in Razor Floss and tortured by Rui by having him tighten the bonds to make her bleed further, was beaten to near death by Daki (and had to go through quite the Mid-Season Upgrade to gain the upper hand), and in the Swordsmith arc she near burned herself alive to death by fighting as the sun rose to defeat Hatengu - had she not developed sunlight resistence literally at the last moment, her burns would've killed her
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • Tanjiro feels this way towards Giyu because even when at first he was set on killing his demon-fied sister Nezuko, he ultimately didn't do it and instead sent the siblings to his master, Urokodaki, so he'd train Tanjiro to become a Demon Slayer. It becomes even stronger when Tanjiro finds out that both Giyu and Urokodaki are willing to commit Seppuku to guarantee that Nezuko is not a harmful demon.
  • Zenitsu Agatsuma feels like this towards his own master, Jigoro Kuwajima, who paid the massive debt that his once girlfriend pinned on him and then took the boy as his apprentice.
  • Kanao Tsuyuri used to be a much abused, unnamed, emotionless slave girl. The ones who purchased her, Kanae and Shinobu Kocho, helped her choose a name and took her as their adoptive sister. So Kanao feels this way towards the two sisters and wants to repay the favor...
    • She also kinda feels like this towards Tanjiro, as he told her to listen to her own heart rather than take decisions basing herself on a coin toss when she wasn't given orders. This helped her greatly to start feeling emotions again and voice them...
  • Yuushiro's huge Subordinate Excuse towards Lady Tamayo comes from her being his treating doctor and making him a demon not to have him serve her, but to let him live.
• Berserk Button: Tanjirō hates it when his sister gets judged due to her nature as a demon. She is nearly tempted by Sanemi when the latter slashes one of his arms, but she rejects it.
  • Haganezuka also needs to control his temper better when Tanjirō breaks his swords. A few of Haganezuka's lines when this happens include: "How dare you break my sword in two! You've got a lot of nerve!" or "You lost your sword!? How dare you lose your sword! You deserve to die ten thousand times over!"
  • Do. NOT. Call. Akaza. A. COWARD. Or. Say. He's. Weak. EVER.
  • Don NOT contradict Rui about his family views.
• Big Bad: Muzan Kibutsuji, the progenitor and leader of demons.
• Big Good: Kagaya Ubuyashiki, as the leader of the Demon Slayer Corps.
  • Arguably Lady Tamayo, as a demon who's allied with humans and opposes Muzan. It's seen more strongly in the Asakusa arc, where she takes the Kamados under her wing and then they must protect her from two demons. And in the last arc, where she dies at Muzan's hands but is ultiomately vital to his defeat with her concoctions that greatly weaken him.
• Big Brother Instinct: Tanjiro, Tanjiro, Tanjiro... oh, and did someone say TANJIRO? Extremely justified, considering his and Nezuko's other siblings (from pre-teen to toddler age) were horribly slain.
  • Despite being a child-like demon girl, Nezuko not only can still recognize Tanjiro as her older brother but she also inverts the trope when he needs it. What convinced Giyu to send the Kamados to his master so he can train Tanjiro is not solely seeing how strong Tanjiro's protective instincts towards the just demonized Nezuko are, but seeing Nezuko pull a Go Through Me for a knocked-out Tanjiro rather than devouring him.
  • Giyu eventually develops this towards the Kamados and especially Tanjiro. It's seen in the Natagumo Arc when he's willing to fight Shinobu to make sure Tanjiro and Nezuko will escape safely, in the Butterfly Mansion arc where he defends the two from the other Hashira and it's seen he's willing to commit Seppuku aka ritual suicide for them if needed, and in the Infinity Castle arc where he explicitly tells Akaza that if he wants to kill the boy, he'll have to kill him first.
  • Gyutaro is the definition of this trope towards his younger sister Ume, aka Daki. When they were tiny kids, their abusive mother tried to forcibly cut the girl's hair and that caused the boy to go berserk.
• Big Brother Mentor: Giyu and later Kyoujuro, both members of the Hashira, fill this role for Tanjiro in their own ways. Too bad Kyoujuro ends up slapped with the Sacrificial Lion role.
  • Kyoujuro also was this tohis apprentice and fellow Hashira, Mitsuri. She developed her Love Breathing from his Flame Breathing, and she even refers to him as a big brother type.
  • Another Hashira, Gyomei, is this to the Kocho sisters and later on to Genya.
• Big Fancy House: The case where Tanjiro and Nezuko properly meet Zenitsu (and at the end, Inosuke) takes place in an abandoned mansion that used to be this, until its master became a demon. Now it's dark, creepy, and with quite the case of Bizarrchitecture
  • Kagaya Ubuyashiki, the leader of the Demon Slayer Corps, lives in a lovely Japanese mansion.
  • The sort-of hospital for the Demon Slayers, the Butterfly Mansion / Estate, is pretty much a Japanese castle. It's also owned by one of the Hashira, Shinobu Kocho, who lives there alongside her apprentice Kanao Tsuyuri and the nurses of the estate itself. After Shinobu's death in battle, Kanao and Aoi take over and keep their medical work there; it's implied they transformed the Estate into a proper hospital, since they don't need to stay hidden anymore.
  • Downplayed with the other Hashiras; since they get paid as much as they want for their very risky work, they tend to live in pretty nice Japanese mansions... but unlike in Shinobu's case, they tend to live all alone there, without any staff taking care of their daily needs. Rengoku is an exception as he lives with his Alcoholic Parent and younger brother, but the three also seem to be on their own otherwise.
• The Blacksmith: A whole Hidden Elf Village of these is allied with the Demon Corps. One arc has them under attack of TWO Kizukis, Gyokko and Hatengu; Tanjiro, Nezuko and Genya must team up with two Hashiras, Muichiro and Mitsuri, to protect the smiths and kill the Kizukis.
• Blob Monster: This trope gets combined with the Clipped-Wing Angel trope when Enmu dies. After Tanjirō slices through the train's "neck" with his sword, Enmu is last seen as a blob, distressed about how he just got trashed.
• Blood Magic: The Blood Demon Arts spells.
• Blow You Away: Karaku can create powerful gusts of wind with his leaf fan.
• Body Horror: Enmu gets this after his Fusion Dance with the titular train of the movie, The Mugen Train. After Tanjirō trashes him, we can see the full damage that was wrought on the train by Enmu. Flesh is everywhere.
  • Gyokko has an eye in his mouth, another eye on top of his forehead, and two additional mouths where his eyes should logically be. Nightmare Face: The result.
  • Poor, POOR Susamaru got this trope in spades, when she was tricked into mentioning Muzan's name and the Geas in her activated...
  • When Douma is fighting Inosuke and Kanao, he suddenly starts falling victim to this... It's because he had fought, defeated and killed Shinobu, who was a Poisonous Person.
• Boobs of Steel: Shinobu averts this trope although she does garner fear from Demons - her Hashira uniform covers her whole body yet doesn't hide her somewhat large curves, but she's the physically weakest of the Hashira and can't even behead a Demon with her nichirin blade. Which is why she stabs and poisons them instead.
  • Played straight by Mitsuri. She is not only a very big-chested Ms. Fanservice with Absolute Cleavage but has Super Strength due to her very unusual muscles.
  • An artwork piece by Gotouge has Shinobu, Kanao, Nezuko and Mitsuri in bikinis. Out of them Shinobu is still the smallest (though not tiny either), but Mitsuri and Kanao are both larger-chested than she is.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: As Tanjiro trains hard to pass the Final Selection and join the Demon Slayer Corps, Nezuko sleeps deeply so she won't need to feast on humans. In the meantime, Urokodaki uses this trope via talking to the sleeping Nezuko as he watches over her and telling her to see humans as her family and protect them from the enemy aka demons. Tanjiro is understandably unnerved when he finds out, but it more or less works in the end.
• Break the Haughty: Urogi brags about he cannot get scratched by Tanjirō, but when Tanjirō awakens his mark, Urogi starts to fear for his life with the All-Loving Hero rushing towards him.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Tanjiro and Kanao are a genderflipped version. The Brooding Babe Kanao went through lots of abuse and poverty before being adopted by the Kocho sisters, and even with the girls' help she's a borderline Emotionless Girl who desperately needs orders to fully function; in comes the Gentle Guy Tanjiro, an All-Loving Hero Nice Guy who learns that she needs to flip a coin to take decisions alone and tells her instead to follow her heart, which becomes a huge theme for her. She returns the favor via having quite the part in the "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight that releases Tanjiro from Muzan's control in the Final Battle, and they ultimately marry.
  • The Brooding Boy Sanemi Shinazugawa had two Gentle Persons in the past, according to the light novels and a scene in the story proper: Kanae Kocho (Gentle Girl) and Masachika Kumeno (Gentle Guy). And he lost both of them in battle.
• Bunny Ears Lawyer: On one hand, the Hashira are the top fighters of the Corps. On the other, with the exception of Shinobu and maybe Gyomei (and they're not without their issues), they can be... very eccentric. i.e., Mitsuri is pretty ditzy, Giyu has No Social Skills, Kyoujurou has quite the hammy reactions to his favorite food, etc.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: Tanjiro never dreamed of being a hero, or even think demons were real, and was perfectly content with being a charcoal seller. But then demons attacked his home and killed most of his family...
• Canon Foreigner: The Demon with spider forlimbs in place of arms that haunted the shrine that Tanjirō visited during his solo mission is only seen in the anime.
• Career-Ending Injury: Jigoro aka Zenitsu's master and Parental Substitute had to stop being the Thunder Hashira after he lost his leg.
  • Tengen Uzui suffers two of these, as he both loses an eye and one arm after he and the main cast's absolutely brutal fight against Daki and Gyutarou from the Twelve Kizuki.
  • At the very end of the story, while the Demon Slayers Corps is disbanded anyway, some of the Final Battle survivors suffered these. The list includes: Giyu Tomioka (who has his right arm cut off while fighting the Big Bad Muzan, Sanemi Shinazugawa (who loses two fingers in his right hand), Kanao Tsuyuri (who loses use of one of her eyes after using the Flower Breathing's Dangerous Forbidden Technique against Doma and later Muzan) and Tanjiro Kamado (who after being turned into a demon and almost becoming Muzan's host through a Fusion Dance inflicted on his almost dying body, not only also cannot see from an eye but also has his left arm, which was cut off and then re-grown, severely crippled)
• Chosen Family: Tanjiro, Nezuko, Zenitsu and Inosuke. Tanjiro and Nezuko lost their father to illness and their mother plus younger siblings to demons (and Nezuko herself was turned into a demon), Zenitsu's parents are never accounted for, and Inosuke only vaguely remembers that his mother abandoned him with tears in her eyes. Their initial meetings were pretty rough, but as time passes they become VERY tightly knit. After the Final Battle, the four return to the now-rebuilt Kamado family's home and live there together from then on. The now back-to-humanity Nezuko even marries Zenitsu, making him and Tanjiro brothers in law.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Enmu gets reduced to a helpless Blob Monster in his final moments... and we do not even see him do crap other than wallow in fear.
• Color Failure: Tanjirō suffers from this when the Red Light District Arc starts up, with his colour draining from his body when his swordsmith Haganezuka attacks him with his knife all because Tanjirō lost his sword. This was done to accentuate Tanjirō's fear, alongside his "IT'S HAGANEZUKA!" line in the next shot showing a closeup of an angry Haganezuka.
• Combat Pragmatist: The series has very strong humans fighting demons who are often far beyond the humans' capabilities, so many human fighters and especially the Pillars/Hashira absolutely swear by this trope:
  • Tanjiro showed traits of this from the very start. When faced by his soon-to-be Big Brother Mentor Giyu, who's captured his demonized sister Nezuko and is hell-bent on killing her before she starts devouring humans, at some point he dashes towards Giyu with what seems to be full intentions to attack him directly even when he has no chance -- but before Giyu fully notices, he tosses his hatchet at Giyu's head right before reaching him instead of trying to injure him with it. Giyu himself is extremely impressed and even a little scared by Tanjiro's quick-thinking and massive guts.
  • Out of the Pillars / Hashira, one has to give the crown to Shinobu Kocho. She knows that her arm strength is abysmally low so she cannot properly behead a demon, so she had her nichirin katana modified to actually inject the demons with wisteria poison which is also extremely lethal to them. She also has quite the leg strength and uses it to dash across the battlefield skillfully, and at least once she pinned one of her rivals with her legs to the ground and kicked her repeteadly before injecting her with her poison. And since she knew her Arch Enemy Douma was a demon with quite the case of Monster Misogyny and much more powerful than near anyone in the Demon Slayer groups, she willingly turned herself into a Poisonous Person and betted on how, should he kill and devour her, the poison stored in her body would kill him or weaken him enough to have others do it. The second happened: she was killed and devoured, but her apprentice Kanao and her friend Inosuke who also had his own beef with him finished the job.
• Consummate Liar: Hantengu spreads lies like mosquitos spread malaria, plus a touch of Believing Their Own Lies. It became engraved in his character, and he wound up hated by even Tanjirō (who himself is an inversion) as a result!
• Cool Big Sis: Shinobu is this to Kanao, her apprentice and prospective successor, and eventually to Tanjiro and his friends. Her Dead Older Sister Kanae was this to the two of them.
  • Mitsuri also takes up the role when she interacts with the Kamados. She seems to be the only Hashira who takes a direct interest into interacting with Nezuko, and even plays with her!
• Creepy Child: Rui became this after his Demon transformation, and when Muzan enables him after killing his parents, he embraces his Enfant Terrible side.
  • According to their backstories, Dōma and Managi aka Gyokko were this.
  • One of Muzan's human disguises is that of a creepy-looking young boy who's then adopted into a rich family.
  • Out of Hantengu's Literal Split Personalities, Zohakuten is the youngest-looking and the most merciless.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Susamaru is subjected to this when she openly says Muzan's name, causing her to get trashed by Body Horror due to a Geas that Muzan placed on his minions.
  • Lower-5 subjects an unnamed jerkwad Demon Slayer rookie to this with his super-sharp webs. He also strung up the demon who tried to abandon his family to the roof of the house after beating her up, allowing the Sun of Tanjirō's homeworld to finish her off.
  • Any demon that is exposed to sunlight long enough is bound to die a horrible death. It’s narrowly averted with Nezuko.
  • One of the Spider Demon sisters gets this while she scurries down the mountain to get away from the scene. The Insect Hashira, Shinobu, poisons her with Wisteria, in retaliation for all the horrible things the Demon has done.
  • Enmu had planned on eating his victims by turning the train's interior into the train's stomach, but Tanjirō trashed him anyway.
  • Gyokko ends up on both ends. When he and Hantengu raid the titular village of the Swordsmith Village Arc, Gyokko turns several swordsmiths into a lifeless sculpture, which he is proud of, and which quite reasonably enrages Muichiro. Gyokko later ends up on the receiving end following his decapitation with his head being reduced to chopper slaw to stop his rant.
• Deader Than Dead: Muzan's final fate after Tanjiro manages to fend off his attempt to merge with him. His soul is devoured by the darkness as he screams that he doesn't want to end up being forgotten, ensuring that he will never come back.
• Deal with the Devil: Muzan seems to be quite fond of showing up in front of people who are at the lowest points of their entire lives and prey on their despair to make them demons and then his followers; i.e., that's what happened between him and Tamayo, Kokushibo, Akaza, Hatengu and Rui.
  • As someone who once was a cult leader and now is among the most powerful Twelve Kizuki, Douma is seen doing this as well, albeit he does point out that he needs Muzan's authorization for it. It's how he demonized Ume/Daki and Gyutarou.
  • The most powerful Kizuki, the aforementioned Kokushibo, subverts this via forcefeeding Muzan's blood to his prospect sires and then asking Muzan about it. He got to Kaigaku like this and almost to his descendant Muichirou
  • Tamayo subverts it too: she's a demon and she can transform people into demons, but NOT to make them follow her. In fact, she'd only do it after she has asked the other person several times if he/she is willing to be transformed and after explaining the downsides of being a demon. The only person known to have been turned by her is her assistant Yushiro, and he was an Ill Boy right at Death's door.
  • To a smaller degree, Enmu does this as well by getting some humans to aid him in his plans to take over the Infinity Train and kill the Demon Slayers sent to deal with it, in exchange for having beautiful dreams forever. This includes three naive teens, a boy with tuberculosis (which back then was fatal), and the train conductor whose wife and kid had died.
• Death by Materialism: One jerkwad tries to kill Rui to get a raise to his salary, despite Tanjiro's warning against it. All he gets is not just death by mutilation, but also the embarrassing nickname "Sliced Steak Senpai" as he crashes through a super-sharp spider web trap deployed by Lower-5.
• Death From Above: Due to his wings, Urogi can strike enemies from great heights.
• Declaration of Protection: The story begins with Tanjiro and Nezuko losing their mother and other siblings at the hands of demons and Tanjiro doing what he can to save the severely wounded Nezuko. That's already hard enough - but soon it turns out Nezuko was turned into a demon herself! Therefore, now Tanjiro must not only protect and raise Nezuko and himself, but start searching for a way to turn her back into a human...
• Died Standing Up: In the backstory, Yoriichi aka the creator of the Breathing Techniques and the strongest Demon Slayer of all times dies in the middle of the match of his life against his demonized brother Michikatsu/Kokushibo. Even more so: he died of old age.
  • When Tanjiro collapses and pretty much dies at the very end of the Final Battle, he's seen on his knees rather than lying on the ground. And then Muzan takes a hold of him.
• Dirty Coward: Kaigaku makes Zenitsu look like a Fearless Fool by comparison with his desire for power; he sold an entire orphanage out to a Demon to escape, and the only reason he became a demon was to stave off death itself when Kokushibo showed up in front of him!
• Disney Death: For a series that has most characters who die get Killed Off for Real, some of these do occur:
  • Tanjiro thinks that the first demon he encounters is dead after he cuts his head off. But while he did inconvenience him, the head and body are able to act independently. It turns out that he needs a special sword to kill demons this way; the demon only dies when exposed to sunlight.
  • Rui saves himself by willingly slicing his neck riiiiight just before he gets beheaded by Tanjirō. Subverted - Giyu soon shows up and beheads him for real.
  • Enmu lampshades this as his battle goes to part two. After Tanjirō beheads him with his sword, Enmu reveals that his essence had been merged with the train itself. Cue phase 2. Subverted after Tanjirō slashes through the train itself to stop the fight, where Enmu survives for not even an hour before his blobby form evaporates.
  • After Hantengu gets trashed as karma for his crimes, Tanjirō believes that Nezuko died due to the fight finishing with the Sun already up... until she returns, having become immune to the Sun's radiation.
• Distaff Counterpart: Coincidentally, Tengen’s wives Hinatsuru, Suma and Makio... have personality traits similar to that of Tanjiro, Zenitsu, and Inosuke. As such, one could consider him a spear counterpart to Nezuko.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Tanjirō feels pity for the Demon that haunted the shrine, but the Demon brushes it off.
• Driven to Suicide: Kagaya's father took his own life before turning 19, since the Hereditary Curse was literally eating him up and he was past the Despair Event Horizon due to the deaths and sacrifices of the Slayers.
  • Jigoro took take his own life via Seppuku when he discovered that Kaigaku went rogue. Zenitsu is not happy to hear that.
  • Much later, Akaza willingly shuts down his demonic Healing Factor at the end of his fight with Giyu and Tanjiro, so he can finally die and stop serving Muzan.
• Dude, She's Like, in a Coma: Enmu, a Dream Weaver, has the ability to force his victims to sleep.
• Empty Shell/Emotionless Girl: Kanao was turned into one as part of her coping mechanism when she was abused to ridiculous lengths. Thanks for trashing her (and her brothers), nameless parents.
• Everyone Has Standards: Tanjirō is usually an all-loving hero, treating everyone in his way with kindness, and many terrible figures have been sympathised with, even Rui and Kyogai, who were affiliated with the Twelve Kizuki, but Hantengu gets flack even from HIM due to his incessant falsehoods.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When called out for Playing the Victim Card even though he and Hantengu killed countless, Zōhakuten cannot (or probably even refuses to) understand the reasons behind Tanjirō's anger on behalf of "complete strangers."
• Evil Sounds Deep: Although he looks like a child, Zōhakuten has a deep-sounding voice, deeper than Wolf O'Donnell from Star Fox. Fitting, as he is the strongest Emotion Clone of Hantengu.
• Exclusively Evil: Demons are heavily implied to be this because Giyu was willing to kill Nezuko on the spot, though the fact she was attacking Tanjiro didn't help. She of course immediately averts this trope, and once Giyu is convinced of it he sends the siblings to Urokodaki's home.
• Exotic Eye Designs: The twelve Kizuki have their numbers placed in their eyes. Rui takes it further by having more pupils in his eyes.
• Eye Scream: In the Mugen Train arc, Kyoujuro Rengoku loses his left eye before dying at the hands of Akaza
  • The Red Light District arc has this trope among the severe injuries suffered by Tengen Uzui as a consequence of the fight against Daki and Gyutaro. He ends up having to retire from active Demon Slaying as a result.
  • Hotaru Haganezuka suffers the loss of an eye in the Blacksmith Village arc.
  • The Flower Breathing's Final Form and Dangerous Forbidden Technique, Equinoctial Vermilion Eye, can potentially cause this to the user since it greatly amplifies their eyesight and lets them see the world as if it was in stop-motion, but the strain in the eyes can severely damage it via bursting their blood vessels. Kanao Tsuyuri is the living example, as she uses said technique twice (against Douma and Muzan) and one of her eyes is permanently crippled as a result.
  • One of the injuries that Tanjiro Kamado himself got in the Final Battle rendered one of the guy's eyes completely useless. In the same Final Battle, Obanai Iguro has his own eyes slashed out and must keep fighting with external help.
• Face Death with Dignity: As Muzan trashes Lowers 2 through 6 to satiate his fury after the death of Rui, Enmu shows absolutely no fear over his upcoming demise. He even expresses delight seeing his lessers be mutilated by the most powerful Demon himself and wishes that he be consumed by Muzan as well. That actually saves his life, as such evil and obsession with him are exactly what Muzan looks for in a demon.
• Failed a Spot Check: Genya has a flashback during his bout with Hantengu that explains his excuse to join the Demon Slayers, and this trope pops up here. His mother Shizu was a good parent, protecting her children from their Alcoholic Parent Kyōgo... but one night, she ends up coming home late, and then the kids are fatally attacked by something that looks by a wolf. In order to protect his siblings from the "wolf," Sanemi tackles "him" and scraps with him outside, but when Genya rushes out to get first aid, the "wolf" has "his" true identity revealed: Shizu had been warped into an abuser herself by Demon blood, and the "wolf's" silhouette was actually hers. Not noticing that her corpse is dissolving due to Solar radiation, Genya curses Sanemi out and called him a killer. He regretted it ever since.
• Fan Disservice: In Episode 1, a Nezuko in a kimono and with her legs and thighs exposed should be an alluring sight, since she's said to be the prettiest girl in the nearby area. But not only she's as much 13 years old, the blood all over her mouth and her unnaturally grown fangs detract away from it.
  • Daki, the Upper Moon 6, is a powerful and busty Dark Action Girl who fights in pretty much a Battle Bikini and spices it up with Zettai Ryouiki. But as she gets beaten by the heroes and gets many gruesome injuries from that, including some truly epic burns on her face, this is not as appealing as it seems, even if she can regenerate.
  • Much later, Mitsuri is SEVERELY wounded (as in, she has one of her arms AND a part of her cheek cut by Muzan’s Combat Tentacles)… as her Boobs of Steel are on full display.
• Falling Into His Arms: Tengen is caught trying to force Aoi and Naho to join him in a mission. When confronted by the main cast and told that Naho is not a proper member of the Corps, he drops the poor girl - and since he was standing atop of the Butterfly Mansion's gate, she falls from quite the height and Tanjiro must catch her in his arms.
  • Subverted right before that! Earlier in that scene Kanao, Kiyo and Sumi were trying to force Tengen let go of Naho and Aoi. When Tanjiro arrived and realised what was going on, he tried to attack Tengen as well - but being a Hashira and one heck of a Lightning Bruiser, he managed to jump away and on the Mansion's gates. Sumi and Kiyo fell off him, but Tanjiro and Kanao had no time to really catch either of them on their fall so Kiyo ended up falling atop of Tanjiro and Kanao had to quickly grab Sumi mid-fall to shield her.
• Find the Cure: Tanjiro's goal is to save Nezuko via turning her back into a human.
• Fingore: Just a few minutes after Tanjirō wakes up from a bad fall during his battle with the Upper 6 duo, Gyūtarō bends Tanjirō's fingers in the wrong direction to break the Demon Slayer's spirit. It fails.
  • Sanemi loses at least two fingers when he, Genya, Muchiro and Gyomei are fighting Kokushibo.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Even when Tanjiro is an All-Loving Hero who feels sorry for sufficiently Anti-Villainous demons, he does acknowledge this trope as well. Sorry, Hantengu, your excuses won't get you pardoned for your crimes. This is downplayed with Rui: Tanjiro senses the latter's sorrow and feels sorry on his behalf, but isn’t able to deny he was horrible as a demon.
• Friend to All Living Things: Kanao has No Social Skills due to her past, but can interact very well with animals. She bonds immediately with her Kasugai crow, is often seen surrounded by butterflies, and at the end at Sanemi's behest, she adopts the late Obanai's snake companion Kaburamaru.
• Fun Personified: Urogi's nature as the manifestation of Hantengu's happiness and joy makes him essentially this.
• Fusion Dance: Zōhakuten makes his debut in the Swordsmith Village Arc when Hantengu's Emotion Clones merge together to protect him after Tanjirō and Genya find Hantengu's real body, although Aizetsu tried to protest against it.
  • Muzan, in a last-ditch attempt to prevent his impending death, tries to do this with Tanjiro. It ALMOST works.
• Geas: Muzan places one on each demon that follows his lead: they can't ever give away info about him, ESPECIALLY his name, lest they'll be subjected to a Cruel and Unusual Death right on the spot. The Swamp Demon from Tanjiro's first official mission absolutely freaks out when Tanjiro attempts to pressure him into telling him about Muzan, whereas Susamaru from the Asakusa arc is tricked by Tamayo into mentioning Muzan's last name and ends up subjected to a lethal dose of Body Horror.
• Girl in a Box: Given quite the spin: Tanjiro carries Nezuko (who can shrink herself as part of her newfound demon powers) inside a special wooden box made by Urokodaki that he carries like a backpack during the day. With good reasons, that way Nezuko can sleep and keep her energy levels up, which keeps her from needing to feast on humans. It also prevents her from becoming a demon fajita.
• Go Out with a Smile: Kyoujuro Rengoku died like this in the Mugen Train arc, doing his best to reassure Tanjiro and Co. with a soft smile on his face as he passed on.
  • As Kagaya unleashes a Suicide Attack against the Big Bad Muzan Kibutsuji by blowing himself up alongside his Big Fancy House (plus his wife Amane and their two eldest daughters, who had decided to die with him) when Muzan drops by, he gives Muzan a smile that the latter describes as "like that of a Buddha". Some time later, as their remaining children work as Mission Control guiding the Demon Slayers through their storming of Muzan's Infinity Castle, one of them recalls the last time they saw their older sisters, and remembers they were smiling at them
  • At the very end of Giyu and Tanjiro's fight against Akaza aka the Upper Three of Muzan's Twelve Kizuki, the latter recovers his lost memories of his extremely sad human life, and concludes that he doesn't want to actually keep fighting for Muzan any longer, but to finally die. So, since he has a near unbeatable Healing Factor, Akaza pretty much kills himself to finish the fight and concede to Tanjiro and Giyu - and right before that, he stares at a shocked Tanjiro and gives him a sad smile...
• Gone Horribly Wrong: In his last-ditch effort to beat Tanjirō, Enmu tries to break him by having projections of the Kamados who died berate Tanjirō for being the Sole Survivor (along with Nezuko). Tanjirō immediatelly calls that out as bullshit, so he instead stands his ground and beheads the Lower-1 Demon with his sword.
  • Heck, Enmu lampshades this about his plan being derailed when Tanjirō stops him by slashing the train's head from its cars. To rub salt in the wounds, this is after Enmu had made precautions to make sure his plan would work!
• Graceful Loser: Akaza ends up ceasing all of his bloodlust when he breaks free of Muzan's influence with the help of his long-dead loved ones' spirits (especially his once-girlfriend Koyuki) reaching his soul, leading to his self-destruction so he can finally be free.
• Gravity Screw: By tapping the drums on his shoulders and hips, Kyogai can rotate the gravity in his room. Fortunately, Tanjirō manages to counter the changes to the gravity, leading to Kyogai's death.
  • Additionally, the Action Survivor Kiyoshi managed to do this when he escaped from Kyogai and other demons, then took one of the drums for himself.
• Green Thumb: Zōhakuten can manipulate trees when he fights.
• Handicapped Badass: Kagaya Ubuyashiki is blind and unable to fight due to the Hereditary Curse he suffers from his lineage but it has NOT stopped him from being a Guile Hero and the VERY effective leader of the Demon Slayer Corps.
  • Gyomei aka the Stone Hashira is blind from childhood and a VERY badass Warrior Monk, considered as the strongest of the Hashira aka the top fighters of the Corps themselves. Heck, The Dragon (Kokushibo) is VERY impressed when they cross weapons.
  • In the Final Battle against Muzan and the Upper Kizuki, Giyu loses an arm, Sanemi has two fingers cut off, Obanai has his eyes slashed; Mitsuri loses her arms and part of one ear, Muichiro loses both arms and a leg, AND the aforementioned Gyomei has one leg cut off. They keep fighting as much as possible in their terrible physical states; the last four fight until they die, Sanemi has a near-death experience but manages to return to the living, and Giyu keeps fighting and doing what he can when Muzan tries his last stand by merging with an almost-dead Tanjiro.
  • While Tengen loses an eye and an arm in the fight with Daki and Gyutaro and is forced to retire (so he cannot join said Final Battle), he fights like a goddamn beast even as he's bleeding out and being poisoned, then he still helps out in the Hashira Training arc AND he and the now fully recovered Shinjuro Rengoku keep watch over Kiriya, Kuina and Kanata as they become the Corps' Mission Control.
• Hair Decorations: Nezuko wears a tiny pink ribbon to keep her hair off her face.
  • In one of Tanjiro's earlier missions, a missing girl named Satoko tied her hair with a fuchsia ribbon. When her boyfriend Kazumi and Tanjiro find themselves in front of the demon who captured and then ate her, they find the ribbon among the Creepy Souvenirs that the demon took off his victims (all of them being girls under 16 years old)
  • All the girls and women affiliated with the Butterfly Mansion wear butterfly-shaped hair decs, whether it's tiny and simple hairclips (the nurses-in-training Sumi, Kiyo and Naho) or bigger and more elaborate hairpins (Shinobu, Kanae, Aoi, Kanao, and Shinobu's deceased tsuguko). It's such a trait of the Mansion girls that even Shinobu's own Kasugai Crow, En, wears one.
    • Kanao's own butterfly clip is actually one of Kanae's, which she took as a Tragic Keepsake after her death in battle. After Shinobu dies as well, then she and Inosuke kill the one who did her AND Kanae in, she picks up Shinobu's clip and replaces her broken one with it.
  • The girls from the Ubuyashiki family wear flower-shaped pins, and so does their brother (who must dress up as a girl for complicated reasons).
  • Among the villains, the Upper 6 of the Twelve Kizuki is the Dark Action Girl Daki. In her human disguise as an oiran she wore VERY elaborate hair decs proper of her social standing (known as Ōgi bira kanzashi pins), and as her demon self she had six more simple kanzashi pins on her.
  • The Spider Demon Daughter wore both baubles and paper ribbons on her Girlish Pigtails. The Eldest Daughter, according to the anime, used big green baubles on hers.
  • Lady Tamayo wore a kanzashi pin on her Prim and Proper Bun, shaped as a red camellia flower. After her death in the Final Battle, her assistant Yushiro keeps it
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He may be a self-proclaimed coward, but Zenitsu is this throughly. He wholeheartedly serves the heroes, can be shockingly brave when things REALLY go south, and at the very end trashes his former classmate Kaigaku for turning on him and Jigoro.
• Harping on About Harpies: Urogi greatly resembles a harpy with his wings and clawed extremities.
• Hate Sink:
  • While Gyokko comes off as comical, being quite happy and having a goofy laugh, he gets tons of flack from the fandom. Prior to his transformation into a Demon, Gyokko was quite necrophilic and abusive towards animals, and a child who made fun of him bit it by having his body stuffed into a vase. As a Demon, Gyokko is quite repulsive in his personality.
  • Although not as bad as Muzan himself, Hantengu is quite clearly shown to lack redeeming qualities and was terrible before he became a Demon; he therefore gets no sympathy from Tanjirō and gets cut down without hesitation. His absurd survival is also the reason why Nezuko had to throw her own life away to help Tanjirō stop him. (She does manage to survive, but the scene is still incredibly painful, which can add another layer of hatred onto Hantengu.)
• Healing Factor: All demons have this power and that's one of the reasons why they are so hard to kill. It can only be negated by specific methods like exposing them to sunlight, beheading them with nichirin katanas, a demon willingly forfeiting said healing power to, essentially, commit suicide (like in the case of Akaza), getting them poisoned with enough wisteria poison to nullify the healing (like it happened to the Spider Demon Sister and later to Douma) or in the case of Muzan, using a specifically made concoction brewed by Tamayo.
• Healthcare Motivation: Hakuji, the boy who'd become Akaza, was a thief to support himself and his Ill Boy father. Then, his father committed suicide so he wouldn't have to resort to theft.
• He Knows Too Much: In the Entertainment Arc, Mrs. Omitsu really should have not let Daki know that she had more or less deduced that the latter was a demon...
  • Muzan Kibutsuji sometimes hides among humans to make research about his goals. Anyone who finds out that he's a demon will be swiftly subjected to this, and he does it twice onscreen.
• Hero Antagonist: Giyu briefly plays the role. He just wanted to kill Nezuko because demons are Always Chaotic Evil, and therefore he saw no choice but to kill her to save more lives. Once he sees she retains part of her humanity, he ceases to be an antagonist and guides Tanjiro and Nezuko.
  • The other Pillars also are this at first, since save for Mitsuri they all shared Giyu's belief that no demon is truly good. And even after Kagaya shows up and explains the whole situation, almost all of them cannot fully accept what happened. It takes them quite a while to truly see Nezuko as a non-vicious demoness.
• Heroic Willpower: When Enmu tries to make him back down via projections of the deceased Kamados berating Tanjirō with his powers, Tanjirō stands his ground and drives his sword through Enmu's neck.
• Horror Hunger: Demons sustain themselves by killing and eating humans, so almost EVERY human who's been made into a demon goes through this as soon as they're turned / and double if the one who did it is the Big Bad Muzan Kibutsuji. ie., when Nezuko was turned rather than killed she attacked her brother and could barely get a hold on herself, Teoni aka the Hand Demon killed his older brother like this some time before being captured and imprisoned in Mount Fujikasane, Muzan himself turned a random Asakusa man solely to get Tanjiro off his back and the infected attacked his wife so he had to be restained by Tanjiro before Lady Tamayo stepped in to help, Rui started killing the people in his village after being turned by Muzan, Sanemi and Genya's just demon-fied mother Shizu ate her younger children and a teen Sanemi killed her in self-defense; and the aforementioned Tamayo's biggest regret EVER is that she lost it and killed / ate her husband and children and then everyone in her village as soon as Muzan demonized her.
• Humans Are The Real Monsters: What Zōhakuten implies during his debut scene. Tanjirō quite understandably calls him a liar for that.
• Hypocrite: Hantengu in a nutshell. This guy calls humans monsters for making his life a trash fire, even though he brought it down upon himself with all the lies he told. Zōhakuten also qualifies, given his willingness to defend him disregarding all the atrocities Hantengu committed prior to his transformation into a Demon.
• I'll Kill You!: Tanjirō ends up on both ends. During the Swordsmith Village arc, Tanjirō declares his intent to take Hantengu's life for all the atrocities the Demon committed. Tanjirō also ends up on the receiving end whenever he breaks or loses his sword and Haganezuka blows up on him.
• Identical Stranger: Kanao may only be Shinobu and Kanae's adoptive sister, but no matter what Doma says, she physically resembles them enough to actually pass as their sister.
  • Even more so: even when Tanjiro and his father Tanjuro are NOT descendants of Yoriichi Tsugikuni, they both look a lot like him. Yoriichi was a good friend of their ancestor Sumiyoshi Kamado, however.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Numanooni aka the Swamp Demon distinguishes himself from his copies by having only one horn.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: The Downer Beginning has Tanjiro trying this on the just demonized Nezuko. It seems not to work at first as she keeps attacking him even as he pleads for her to stop, but when she pins him to the ground and he restrains her with his axe while still calling out to his sister to keep her from attacking him, she recognizes him and cries Broken Tears. Then Giyu arrives and almost kills Nezuko, and Tanjiro has to struggle a lot to convince him to not do it.
  • Tanjiro must do it again to Nezuko some time later, in the Entertainement District arc, but in very different cicumstances. Tanjiro and Nezuko have become a rather skilled Brother-Sister Team and are fighting next to Zenitsu, Inosuke and Tengen... But the middle of their fight against Daki, Nezuko experiences a MASSIVE Mid-Season Upgrade... yet in return, the poor girl also suffers a huge bout of Power Incontinence and not only gives Daki a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown but becomes notoriously more bloodthirsty and aggressive, even being willing to attack injured humans (something she's been trying VERY hard not to do after the first day). Tanjiro must pretty much jump on Nezuko's back, use his scabbard as a muzzle, and constantly try talking her down so she'll calm down and heal herself instead. He only manages to fully get to her by singing an old lullaby that their Missing Mom used to sing to them as little kids; she remembers their mother and that reignites her self control, letting her return to normal.
  • This trope and Cooldown Hug are VITAL in the Final Battle. Muzan has managed to get a hold of a dying Tanjiro and forcibly merge with his body to keep on living and kill the rest of the cast that still remains alive. Tanjiro's companions are desperately trying to either kill him before he's completely assimilated by Muzan or do this to bring him back to his senses, but nothing seems to work... In comes a Nezuko who has just been released from demon-hood; she goes Plucky Girl, fiercely hugs Tanjiro, clings to him even as he drags her around and bites her like he did to her in the past, and keeps telling him to come back to her and their loved ones. This greatly helps Tanjiro's conscience to start Fighting From the Inside against Muzan (with a push from his fallen Demon Slayer comrades), and it also gives Kanao time to approach the guy and inject him with a dose of a powerful anti-demon drug brewed by Tamayo; ultimately, Muzan is killed and Tanjiro is saved.
  • Kagaya Ubuyashiki, the Demon Corps leader, is a Non-Action Guy because he's been hit by an Hereditary Curse that severely impacted his health: it left him blind, completely deformed his face, and is slowly and painfully killing him. And as the series goes on, his health gets worse and worse...
  • Tanjiro and Nezuko's father, Tanjuro Kamado, died the year before the series began of a mysterious, painful illness that weakened him progressively through the two's childhood and early teenagedhood, and in its last stages had him coughing heavily, looking terrifyingly emanciated, and sometimes caused him to scream in pain. The fact that the birthmark on his forehead is all but screamed to actually a Demon Slayer Mark did not help.
  • Yuushiro was one, before Tamayo made him a demon to save him.
  • A certain Arc Villain (Rui) was this while alive. Then, Muzan paid him a visit. . .
  • A teenage boy who shows up in the Mugen train arc has tuberculosis and is already at the fatal stage. Enmu, the Lower Rank 1 of the Twelve Kizuki and a member of the Big Bad Duumvirate (alongside the Upper Rank 3 Akaza), uses him and several others as his pawns against the Demon Slayers, promising to use his powers so they'd be in happy dreams and forget their cruel lives. Fortunately, he and the others more or less snap out of it.
  • Hakuji aka Akaza's father, too. And as said above, he committed an Heroic Suicide in an attempt to keep Hakuji from resorting to a life of crime for him.
  • The most plot-important ill dude here is. . . Muzan. Yes, MUZAN. As a human he almost died in his mother's womb and then right after birth, his illness was supposed to kill him before he turned 20, and then a kind-hearted doctor tried to heal him but the medicine he made for him was what made him become a demon. . .
• Ill Girl: Tamayo was this as a human. And not unlike Rui, Muzan paid her a "visit" and shit went down for her and her family VERY soon. . .
  • Hakuji's girlfriend, Koyuki, was this as well, and could only start recovering under her boyfriend's care. And then she and her father were killed, and Hakuji became Akaza after killing the culprits with his bare hands...
  • Muichiro and Yuuichirou's mother died of illness too.
  • In the backstory of Yoriichi and Michikatsu/Kokushibo, their mother Akeno was terminally ill and somehow managed to hide it from everyone. Save for Yoriichi, and that's because of the Transparent World ability he had even as a tiny kid.
• Imperial Japan: The action takes place in the Taishou Era, which went from 1912 to 1926. It seems to be specifically set between 1912 and 1915.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Muichirō is a double subversion. During his debut appearance, he is shown being aloof. The Swordsmith Village Arc starts portraying him as an inversion somewhat, but his good side resurfaces later as hjis Trauma-Induced Amnesia is undone and and he sticks to the side of good. He was also shown as a straight instance before becoming a Demon Slayer.
  • Aizetsu downplays this. His eyes are blue to convey sorrow, but he is more Affably Evil than outright good. Then again, he is the Token Good Teammate (to some degree) in the quartet, and is shown protesting (or at least trying to) when he, Sekidō, Urogi, and Karaku fuse together.
  • Kaigaku is an inversion. He is cruel and cowardly, had very cold green-blue eyes as a human, and his Demon form portrays him with brighter blue-green eyes.
• Irony: Akaza shows this:
  • Akaza has been attempting to get stronger than Uppers 2 and 1 of the 12 Kizuki (Douma and Kokushibo) ever since his debut, but discards it when Tanjirō defeats him and the old memories come back.
  • Akaza's Start of Darkness came about when a dojo of samurais poisoned his fiancée and her father (his mentor) because they couldn't win in a fair fight. Akaza finally accepts his loss when he gets punched in the face.
  • Tanjirō tends to feel pity for the Demons who die by his blade, yet Akaza gets none of that from Tanjirō despite his backstory being one of the most tragic. Three factors may have contributed to Tanjirō's out-of-character jerkassery towards Akaza: firstly, Akaza killed Rengoku, who was one of Tanjirō's most exalted, and Tanjirō is still salty over it, secondly, Akaza only has his backstory disclosed to the audience and there's no time for Tanjiro to sense sadness coming from him like in other cases, and thirdly, he was fighting alongiside the Big Brother Mentor he still has left, Giyu. Quite predictably, Akaza ends up bamboozling Tanjirō with his self-destruction. Albeit Tanjiro does realize that he was smiling...
• Kick the Dog: Enmu tries to do this to Tanjirō in a last-ditch effort to overpower him with phantasmal copies of the dead Kamados berating the boy for being the Sole Survivor. It backfires when Tanjirō stands his ground, but Enmu manages to survive his resultant beheading by merging with the train itself...
• Kissing Cousins: One of Tengen's three wives, Makio, is also his distant cousin.
  • In the epilogue, a boy who's a descendant of Tanjiro and Kanao (Kanata Kamado) is dating a girl who's a descendant of Nezuko and Zenitsu (Touko Agatsuma), meaning they're distantly related. . .
• Knife Nut: Haganezuka has a bad habit of threatening Tanjirō with his knife when something breaks the news to him that Tanjirō lost, broke, and/or damaged his sword. Subverted in the Swordsmith Village Arc, where Haganezuka just writes "I have no sword for you." and several other negative messages in his letter to Tanjirō.

You lost your sword!? How dare you lose your sword!

• • Hilariously, he at least once ties two knives to his head to avert being headbutted by Tanjiro.
• Light Novels: There are several, written by Aya Yajima and illustrated by Gotouge. These include: Flower of Happiness, One-Winged Butterfly, and The Wind's Tell-Tale Sign.
• Mad Bomber: In the Rengoku Gaiden manga, during his battle against Rengoku, Hairo tried to blow him up via dynamite. It failed.
• Mean Boss: Sekidō leads Hantengu's emotion clones, giving his three fellow Emotion Clones orders. He is also the cruelest to fit his nature as the manifestation of Hantengu's anger.
• Meaningful Name: Tanjirō comes from a line of charcoal sellers, and the "tan" kanji in his name means "charcoal."
  • Zenitsu has a deeply good personality despite his apparent immediate flaws, and his name means "good." His surname, Agatsuma, comes from "wagatsuma," which means "my wife," referencing his attempts to get a girlfriend.
  • Inosuke derives his name from the Japanese term for "boar," referencing his boar motif.
  • Teoni has many arms coming from his body.
  • Gyokko uses vases as his main weapon, and his name containes "Ko," which can be Japanese for vase.
  • Hantengu embodies the negative half of tengus, and his name means "half tengu." His Emotion Clone Squad also qualifies.
    • Sekidō derives his name from Japanese "gekido," meaning "fury," true to his nature as the manifestation of Hantengu's anger.
• Minion with an F In Evil: More like Minion with a "C" in Evil, but Aizetsu is as terrifyingly efficient as his brethren, but hurting others displeases him, especially more than the sadistic Urogi and Karaku and the serious-yet-cruel Sekidō, as witnessing pain makes Aizetsu sad. This leads Aizetsu to try to kill his foes as quickly and painlessly as possible. After he fails to kill Genya, he feels sorry for the latter due to Genya still being alive.
• Miss Kitty: Three of these show up in the Entertainment Arc as Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke must go in there Disguised in Drag and investigate the disappearances of Tengen's wives and the rumors about demons being there. As it turns out, the former owner of the House where Zenitsu went was killed after she tried to confront the most popular and cruel Oiran there...
• Monster Misogyny: There are male demons that quite like to feast on women, as it's believed that their bodies possess higher nutritional value than those of men. The biggest examples are the Swamp Demon aka Numanooni (who mostly ate girls under sixteen) and Douma (who was introduced carrying the corpse of a woman he was eating and all). It backfires fatally for Douma - the last girl he killed and ate, Shinobu aka the Insect Hashira, was Genre Savvy enough to turn herself into a Poisonous Person with wisteria venom, which greatly weakened him from the inside and left him open for being slaughtered by both her adoptive sister and one of her friends (whose mother was also one of Doma's victims).
  • One of the hints that Akaza is a Noble Demon is that he utterly refuses to eat and hurt women no matter how many times his fellow Kizukis (especially his "best friend" Douma) tell him to do so. Unbeknownst to him, it's because as a human he had a girlfriend that he loved very much; she and her father were killed, and that drove him towards the Despair Event Horizon and demonhood.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Teoni has lots of arms sprouting from his body. Hey, he wasn't called "Teoni" for nothing! (The name is derived from the Japanese translation of "hand.")
  • Susamaru at first has two arms, but when things gets serious she grows four more from her sides. Ironically, she has some more sprouting from her mouth and torso as she's killed by Muzan.
• Mutual Kill: At some point in the very beginning, Tanjiro lunges at Giyu with his work axe, seemingly to sacifice himself for Nezuko. After Giyu knocks him out, however... he soon realises that the boy's plan to defeat him hinged on this, with Tanjiro being decapitated and a distracted Giyu being hit by said axe, which Tanjiro tossed at him rather than using it to hit him directly.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Rui feels ashamed of his actions following defeat at Giyū's hands.
• Near Villain Victory: Even after his head is severed, Akaza still continues to fight Tanjirō and Giyu. However, Akaza's old memories as Hakuji cause him to realize he doesn't actually want to keep fighting any longer for Muzan, then concede to the other two, and then turn against himself.
  • Later, MUCH later, Muzan almost fucking succeeds to live forever and destroy the Demon Corps via grabbing a hold of a dying Tanjiro, forcibly merging with him and transforming him into "The True King of Demons". If not for the now human Nezuko's arrival...
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: During the Mugen Train arc, Enmu gets beheaded after his Kick the Dog moment fails to break Tanjirō's spirit. He manages to survive by merging with the train itself.
  • Inverted later during the Swordsmith Village arc when Muichirō gets his chance to fight Gyokko after Karaku uses his leaf fan to blow Muichirō's body away. LOL, Karaku.
• Nightmare Face: Most evil Demons have this trait, but there are some exceptions: Daki is still quite the looker. As long as she doesn't get burned.
  • Daki's brother and partner Gyūtarō takes Gonk to the extreme!
  • Gyokko has an eye in his mouth and mouths where his eyes should be and an eye on his forehead!
  • It's implied that Obanai, despite being a human, covers his face with bandages because he has this. Confirmed later: the flashbacks to his past show that, at age 12, he was forcefully given a Glasgow Grin by his female relatives and the Snake Demoness they worshipped.
  • The aforementioned Snake Demoness has this since she has the face of a snake.
• No Honor Among Thieves: This is the weakness of the demons in Demon Slayer. While the demon slayers are willing to work together, the demons themselves are not.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Gyokko looks quite different from the rest of the Kizuki; his eye sockets-turned-mouths are ringed with green lips and square teeth while his mouth contains an eye and another eye appears on his forehead.
• Not Brainwashed: In the Mugen Train arc, Tanjiro at first thinks that Enmu's human accomplices (four kids his age and the train conductor) were Brainwashed and Crazy. They were not: Enmu had convinced them all (three naive teens, an Ill Boy almost at the final stage of tuberculosis, and an adult man whose wife and daughter had died) that if they aided him with his plan, in exchange he'd use his Dream Weaver powers to help them have beautiful dreams forever.
• * The Not Love Interest: There is no question Tanjiro would move heaven and earth for Nezuko, that he deeply loves her and, humorously, he is furious at the idea anybody would think of her as ugly, finding her extremely beautiful. But she is his biological younger sister and this is no Unwanted Harem show (which sometimes include adoptive sisters in said Harems), so all of those feelings are strictly platonic.
• No Ontological Inertia: Zōhakuten is destroyed when Tanjirō finds and kills the original Hantengu; had this trope been averted, Mitsuri (who was fighting him to Hold the Line as Genya, Nezuko and Tanjiro chased Hantengu himself) would have been toast.
• Off with His Head: How most of the titular protagonists kill Demons, though the catch is that one need to use a Nichirin sword to do this; otherwise, it's a Disney Death.
• Oh Crap:
  • Enmu gets this big time at the moment of his demise. His plan has failed, the train that held his essence was destroyed, and now he himself is being destroyed by the effects of the Nichirin sword. Enmu's last words are a wish for him to turn back time and "end this nightmare."

My body's breaking down! I can't regenerate... Have I lost? Am I going to die? Me? Ridiculous! Absurd! There was so much more to do! (The camera cuts over to the train that Enmu merged his essence with.) I couldn't devour a single human! My plan to fuse with the train and eat everyone was a complete failure! (Cut back to Enmu's blobby form.) And now look what I've been reduced to! After all the preparations that I had taken! It was him... This is all HIS fault! (Images where Rengoku swings his sword play. The camera cuts back to the train.) Even with all the human hostages in my possession, I still wasn't able to get the upper hand. Is this the power of a Hashira? (Cut back to Enmu's blobby form whilst he extrudes a pseudopod.) Have I truly lost? Is this the end? What a horrible, wretched nightmare this is! Am I no different than the lesser demons who get themselves killed? (Images of the Demons who fill the Upper Ranks of the Twelve Kizuki play.) The Upper Ranks of our kind have stayed the same for hundreds of years. Even Hashira with high body counts have fallen by their hands. It's not fair... if only I can turn back time! Then I can undo this awful, horrible nightmare... (Enmu expires.)

• • Tanjirō himself suffers this after his return to the Demon Slayer headquarters at the start of the Red Light District arc, having thrown his sword at Akaza like a lance at the end of the Mugen Train arc, after Haganezuka gets his lid flipped over what happened.

Haganezuka: "Mumumumumumumumu...! Nunununununununun!" (Close-up of Tanjirō Kamado in greyscale, panicking. Tanjirō Kamado: "AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" (Close-up of Haganezuka screaming in rage.) "IT'S HAGANEZUKA!" Haganezuka: "You lost your sword!? How dare you lose your sword!" (Haganezuka brandishes his knife.) "You deserve to die ten thousand times over!" (Haganezuka charges as Tanjirō runs for his life.) Tanjirō Kamado: "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please! I'm truly sorry!"

• • The scene where Sekidō merges with him, Karaku, and Urogi so Zōhakuten can rear his ugly head sees Aizetsu attempt to protest, but Sekidō consumes him too quickly for Aizetsu to even make a sound.

Aizetsu opened his mouth as if to protest, but he was absorbed before he could get a word out! —Genya explains how Zōhakuten makes his debut.

• Out of Character: Tanjirō usually shows pity for Demons who die by his blade, but he treats Hantengu and Akaza cruelly. To be fair, Hantengu is a massive jerk himself, believing his own lies and spreading them like flies spreading disease, while Akaza killed Rengoku and Tanjirō was still salty over that plus he had no idea about Akaza's Dark and Troubled Past.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Demons are killed by sunlight, feed on humans, and can convert others into one of them by having their blood enter their victims.
• Parental Neglect: A boy known as Doma was raised as the Holy Child of sorts for the cult that his parents created after seeing that he had natural Mismatched Eyes. In practice, however, they were con-artists who neglected the boy's emotional needs to pretty much criminal degrees while using his looks as the front of the cult, and the father went straight up into Abusive Parents territory when he didn't give a fuck about screwing around with the female followers in front of the boy, which can easily be seen as sexual abuse... The mother snapped and went the Murder-Suicide way with her unfaithful husband, all in front of their six-year-old Creepy Child son.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Kagaya Ubuyashiki went into an Arranged Marriage with one condition: that his bride-to-be, who's supposed to be his wife and The Caretaker to him, actually liked him. Fortunately, he and Amane Himorogi did hit it off, and they're Happily Married with five kids.
  • Tengen "Sound Hashira" Uzui managed to mix this and Polyamory, since he was engaged to three young ladies (Makio, Suma and Hinatsuru) by his father who REALLY wanted grand-kids, but he cares for the three gals very much and encourages them to be themselves rather than just Baby Factories for the Uzui clan.
• Polite Villains Rude Heroes: Aizetsu is one of Hantengu's four emotion clones and is the friendliest, while Genya can be a little crazy with his belligerent personality.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Sort of. The Ship Tease between Giyu and Shinobu is mostly from the anime, the Tomioka Giyu Gaiden manga, the light novels and ESPECIALLY the anime-based merch, rather than the manga itself.
• Promotion to Parent: Tanjiro took up the "man of the family" role one year before the story started, due to his father Tanjurou's death of illness; Nezuko helped him and their mother Kie as much as she could by taking care of their younger siblings, especially the toddler-aged Rokuta. And then everyone in the family, save for Tanjiro and Nezuko, were killed, so Tanjiro must finish raising himself AND Nezuko (whose mind has regressed to that of a little girl after being turned into a demon) while fighting all kinds of demons.
  • The Twelve Kizuki's Upper Rank 6, Gyutarou and Ume/Daki, were the children of a very abusive woman who later died, so a young Gyutarou hadto raise his little sister...
  • Sanemi "Wind Hashira" Shinazugawa did what he could to help his mother Shizu and his siblings, including his brother Genya, after the death of the abusive family patriarch, Kyougo. As a plus, Genya is seen helping him out at work. And then Shizu was turned into a demon, and not unlike in Tanjiro's case, everything went South for him and Genya...
  • Giyu "Water Hashira" Tomioka was raised by his older sister Tsutako. And then she gave her life to save him from demons.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Several demons display behavior like this:
  • Susamaru is a Dark Action Girl who fights with temari toy balls, acts like a sadistic little girl who's just playing with her "victims", and treats her hunt for Tanjiro, Nezuko, Tamayo and Yushiro as a game. She's horribly killed when she's tricked into revealing info on the Big Bad, and her reactions in her last moments are those of a lost, terrified little girl begging her killer to spare her. Her last words as her corpse dissolves under the sunlight are a weak, child-like request for someone to give her back her temari ball; Tanjiro, All-Loving Hero that he is, quietly complies.
  • The Demon Spider Mother is rather smug as she controls her victims through spider threads, but when her "son" and leader Rui warns her that she's taking too much time and threatens to tell "Father", she starts panicking and throwing a terrified tantrum. As Tanjiro and Inosuke take the lead, the Mother has another child-like freak out before she kills said victims via snapping their necks and uses a powerful demon's corpse to attack the two; THAT doesn't work either, and when the boys reach the clearing she's in, she's clearly having a serious Villainous Breakdown out of pure, childish fear. More justified than one would expect: she's a young demon girl whose looks were modified to become an adult woman's, before being forced into a "Mother" position that she's clearly not qualified for yet.
  • Daki, the Upper 6 from the Twelve Kizuki, is a beautiful young woman who acts like an Alpha Bitch in the Red Light District, kills other courtesans on whims, abuses her trainees to the point of making them cry, reacts very childishly when at a disadvantage, and absolutely loses her shit when she sees fire. When she's almost defeated and someone else comes to her aid, she first throws a child-like tantrum (complete with Water Works) after Tengen accuses her of not being strong enough for her rank, then cowers and whines like a little girl who's scrapped her knee while her savior tells her to gather herself and quit complaining. Justified: she was turned into a demon when she was just 13 years old, and right before that she had been burned alive. And the one who comes to help her is her older brother/father figure and Stronger Sibling, Gyutarou.
  • Doma, the Upper 2, is a very smart and powerful Magic Knight, but he acts like an over-excited Keet even as he slaughters his way through everyone and everything.
  • Muzan himself seems cool and collected... but he's this when looking at him closer. He kills either his servants or random people just to make points or on whims (which works against him when he murders powerful underlings for no real reason), is so self-centered that he swears 100% by Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, and his ultimate reason to pull all the shit he did for so many centuries is that he simply doesn't want to die.
• Rags to Riches: Tanjiro's friend Kanao was from a very poor and very abusive family that sold her as a slave. Two young women purchased her to free her, then took her as their sister: they turned out to be Kanae and Shinobu Kocho, members of the Demon Slaying Corps and start as middle-class, but later are quite well-off.
  • By the time the end hits, a side story states that after Kiriya Ubuyashiki disbanded the Demon Slayer Corps due to the defeat of the Big Bad and destruction of all demons (save for their ally Yushirou, who lives solely because he was sired by their other demon ally Tamayo), he gave Tanjiro and Nezuko a large sum of money as an act of good will. It's never said how much, but it is known that the siblings (who started the series as the eldest children of a poor family of charcoal merchants) didn't have to work or worry about their livelihood for the rest of their lives. (Tanjiro still works as a charcoal seller because he likes it and, even after chacoal falls out of grace to favor gas, there's still some degree of demand)
• Razor Floss: Rui uses his webs as whips that slash those who touch them, crossing the Absurdly Sharp Blade and Whip It Good tropes. A dumb and hapless Demon Slayer rookie who tries to take Rui's life for a pay raise gets his own life taken instead via mutiliation, and when Rui captures Nezuko in Unwilling Suspension he deliberately tortures her by tightening her bonds and making her bleed.
• Razor Wind: Aizetsu can thrust his polearm with sufficient force to send piercing blows of compressed air.
• Redemption Equals Death: Akaza kills himself when his human memories return and that makes him realise that he doersn't want to obey Muzan's orders anymore.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • Straight Examples:
    • The Swamp Demon has red eyes.
    • Kyōgai, Hantengu, Sekidō, Zōhakuten, and Kokushibō have eyes with red sclerae as Demons.
    • Rui has a red tinge to his pupils as a Demon.
  • Inversions:
    • Tanjirō is an All-Loving Hero who shows mercy to most, but his eyes have a red tinge to their irises.
    • Rengoku is another heroic character with red pupils.
    • Nezuko is a cvery sweet Cute Monster Girl (most of the time), and she used to have Tanjiro's reddish eyes. When demonized, her irises become pink.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Played completely straight by the sweet and cheerful Mitsuri and the serious, stoic Obanai.
  • Subverted by Giyu and Shinobu. Giyu mostly plays his Savvy Guy part quite well as Shinobu snarks and trolls him, but Shinobu is a Stepford Smiler rather than a Genki Girl.
  • Tanjiro and Inosuke are an excellent male/male version, and Tanjiro and Zenitsu fit in as well when the latter is in Large Ham mode.
• Seppuku: Tanjiro is told by his Parental Substitute Urokodaki that Nezuko hasn't been exterminated solely because she hasn't eaten humans... but if she ever starts doing it, Tanjiro will have to kill her himself and then commit seppuku.
  • Urokodaki and Giyu join the promise when Tanjiro is under trial for sheltering Nezuko, swearing to go through seppuku alongside Tanjiro if Nezuko ever eats a human. Thankfully, they never need to do it AND the mere fact that they promised this helps convince Kagaya to take the Kamados in - it still took, well, a lot of guts for them to promise it in the first place.
  • Much later, Zenitsu is absolutely horrified and then VERY fired up when he finds out that his master and adoptive grandfather Jigoro killed himself like this when his other disciple (Kaigaku) went rogue. Even worse, the man did not have a kaishakunnin, meaning his death was extremely painful. Zenitsu later gets the chance to face Kaigaku, who's become one of the Twelve Kizuki, and naturally is determined to make him pay for it. And he does, despite all the power that Kaigaku has on his side.
• Shonen Demographic: One of the most successful shonen manga in the 2010-2020 decades, indeed.
• Shipper on Deck: Surprisingly, Gyomei Himejima (of all people) is revealed to be one in the second databook. He was especially fond of shipping his fellows Hashira between them: he was an Iguro/Mitsuri fanboy, believed Sanemi liked his "younger sister" Kanae, and thought that Giyu and his other "little sister" Shinobu liked talking to each other. (Which their own snippets confirm).
  • Much later in the series, not only Tanjiro comes to fully approve of Zenitsu and the back-to-humanity Nezuko being together, but encourages Zenitsu to confess to his rather Oblivious to Love sister...
• Snake People: A Demon with a snake's tail replacing the legs and a serpentine face ended up presenting the first threat that a pre teen Obanai had to face in his entire life. Even worse: She's "the Goddess" of his family, and they sacrifice all the men and boys of the clan to her. Obanai only survived because he managed to escape and Shinjuro Rengoku was on the hunt for the Demoness already.
  • Gyokko becomes one in his strongest form, but Muichrō manages to overpower that via his Demon Slayer Mark.
• Snow Means Death: The Downer Beginning happens in a snowy winter morning. Tanjiro returns home to find his whole family save Nezuko horribly dead in their home, and as he tries to carry her on his back to get her medical attention, he finds out that she survived solely because she was turned into a demon...though considering the weather protected Nezuko from dying in the sun, one can also argue that it means life.
  • As Rui from the Spider Demon family is about to die after being mortally wounded by Giyu, he has a vision of his fallen companions looking at him as the snow falls on them. Additionally, some of his flashbacks show that as a human Ill Boy, Rui collapsed in the middle of a snowy street in an attempt to play with his neighbors.
  • The flashbacks to Gyutaro and Ume/Daki being near killed and then given a Deal with the Devil invoke this as well, with a twist: the demon who turned them was not Muzan but Doma, who has powers over ice and thus deliberately creates a small snowfall as he recruits the siblings.
  • Dōma uses ice-based attacks during his battle.
• Sore Loser: In his last moments, Enmu throws a minor tantrum over his failure. To be fair, he is dying right now.
  • Yahaba also was VERY displeased when he was defeated and killed, spending his last moments ranting and swearing to kill Tanjiro.
  • Gyokko ends up throwing a fit with his head severed. Muichiro blends the severed head to stop it.
  • Hakuji alias the still human Akaza was too strong for a rival dojo to beat, even on his own, so they get revenge by poisoning his fiancée and her father/his master.
• Spank the Cutie: At the start of the Entertainement District arc, Tengen tries to forcibly take the Team Mom Aoi (by lifting her up on one of his shoulders) and the nurse girl Naho (by tucking her under his other arm) into a mission. As Tanjiro arrives and tells him that Naho isn't an actual member of the Demon Slayer Corps, Tengen lets of Naho but still has Aoi (who IS a Demon Slayer), but when the main trio (Tanjiro, Inosuke and Zenitsu) offer to go in her place, he accepts but not before he slaps the poor girl in the butt with a big-ass grin before releasing her.
  • In a volume 20 extra, it's shown that at some point Aoi told Kanao to spank Inosuke as punishment for getting into a fight with his fellow Slayer Murata. Which she did.
• Spanner in the Works: The first one is the old man Saburou, who forces the soon-to-be protagonist Tanjiro Kamado to spend the night at his lonely hut rather than travel back home in the middle of the night, which according to him is littered with demons. That saves Tanjiro from being massacred alongside his family by said demons (actually, the Big Bad Muzan Kibutsuji himself) AND led him to try taking the other Sole Survivor, his sister Nezuko, to safety, kicking off the action of the story...
  • In the backstory, Teoni aka the Hand Demon had sworn to kill off all the disciples of the VERY powerful Demon Slayer who captured him alive and had him taken to the Final Selection grounds, Sakonji Urokodaki. His plan went well, until the last one he killed (a boy named Sabito) died in an Heroic Sacrifice against him... and managed to save not only the other Selection assistants but his best friend and fellow Urokodaki student, Giyu Tomioka (whom Teoni overlooked because his Cool Mask, which let the Demon identify Urokodaki's disciples, had been broken). Years later Giyu would send the aforementioned Tanjiro and Nezuko to his master's presence, and Tanjiro would end up slaying Teoni himself.
  • And later, it turns out Muzan REALLY should have NOT turned a random human man into a demon in the Asakusa arc just to get Tanjiro off his back. That simple act bit him in the ass because Tamayo took the guy and his wife under her wing and used him as the ultimately successful test subject for the creation of the anti-demon medicines that she intended to use to restore Nezuko's humanity... and then she used another dose of it to weaken him enough to ultimately be slain by the Demon Slayer Corps.
    • As for the last one, Yoriichi also had a hand on it. He was the one who released Tamayo from Muzan's control, after all.
• Spared by the Adaptation: It’s implied the Demon Slayers controlled by the Spider Demon Mother survive in the game, rather than being killed by her.
• Spiders Are Scary: Rui and his fake "family" have spiders for their central theme. They're literal Demonic Spiders, ESPECIALLY the Father and Rui himself.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Iguro "Serpent Hashira" Obanai and Mitsuri "Love Hashira" Kanrouji can be seen as this rather easily. Obanai was very in love with Mitsuri but hated himself too much to be able to tell her due to his horrendous Dark and Troubled Past, and Mitsuri cared a lot for him yet seemed to be Oblivious to Love (but, according to Word of God, she liked him yet had been burned out due to failed marriage interviews). When they were both mortally injured in the last battle against Muzan, they mutually confessed their feelings as they died together, hoping they will be able to love one another in their next lives. And they are.
  • Also Yoriichi Tsugikuni, the Founder of the Breathing Styles, and his wife Uta. They met as young teens, got together and were Happily Married, but she was slain by demons when she was pregnant with her and Yoriichi's twin kids. The Epilogue also has them reborn and married.
  • And then there's Hakuji and Koyuki. They had a decent start as he, once a Street Urchin, was taken in as The Apprentice for her martial artist father Keizo and he also told him to take care of the Ill Girl Koyuki; he did so well in both tasks, Keizo decided to have the two marry so Hakuji would inherit the dojo and take care of his dear girl... But then, a rival dojo master had Keizo and Koyuki poisoned to death when Hakuji wasn't there. As soon as Hakuji found out, he went into a terrifying Roaring Rampage of Revenge and brutalized everyone in that dojo with his bare hands (save for the dojo's maid), before Muzan went to him and made him a demon. He'd eventually become the Upper Three of the Kizuki, Akaza, and he suffered of Trauma-Induced Amnesia that led him to spare women without knowing why...
• Strong Family Resemblance: Tanjiro Kamado looks like a younger version of his and Nezuko's late father Tanjuro, while pre-demonization!Nezuko looks like their also late mother Kie. Their late little siblings (Takeo, Hanako, Shigeru and Rokuta) also resemble their parents and all have the same pale skin/reddish eyes combo; as a plus, Takeo looked like a pre-teen Tanjiro. And Tanjuro (and the siblings, to a degree) also resemble the family ancestor, Sumiyoshi, with a touch of Yoriichi's own looks for Tanjuro and Tanjiro. (Also, Nezuko and Hanako look like Sumiyoshi's wife Suyako and their eldest daughter Sumire.)
  • Inosuke Hashibira's Dude Looks Like a Lady actual looks are explained by his extreme resemblance to his Missing Mom, Kotoha.
  • The Flame Hashira, Kyoujurou Rengoku, looks like a younger version of his Alcoholic Parent Shinjurou and also heavily resembles his younger brother Senjurou.
  • Subverted by the Spider Demon Family: several of them look alike (especially the Mother and the Daughter), but that's because their leader (Rui, the "Youngest Son") modified their looks via making them drink his blood. Flashbacks show that said Mother and Sister did NOT resemble one another until they joined in. But later it's revealed that Rui, when he was an Ill Boy human, looked like a tiny version of his also human father, down to the hairstyle.
  • In the anime-only first episode of the Mugen Train arc's TV version, the Cool Old Lady Tomie and her granddaughter Fuku look alike a lot. Even more when a flashback shows Tomie as a young woman who, alongside her young daughter/Fuku's mother, is saved by Shinjuro
  • There are brief glimpses of Shinobu and Kanae Kocho's parents as the sisters' souls are reunited with theirs and go to Heaven. Both girls look near exactly like their Missing Mom. The sisters themselves subvert it: Shinobu's resemblance to Kanae was somewhat limited in the past due to their Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling dynamics, but after Kanae's death Shinobu deliberately invoked the trope to try filling Kanae's dying wishes.
• Stepford Smiler: Shinobu is one of these, especially if you’re a demon.
• Super Senses:
  • Tanjiro: Smell
  • Zenitsu: Hearing
  • Kanao: Eyesight
• Super Doc: A young and still human Muzan’s parents consulted a doctor when he experienced a fatal illness. Not only did the doctor cure him, he gave him superhuman strength. (Muzan developed a weakness to sunlight, but that was only because the cure was not completed.)
• Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious: The Marechi are humans whose blood somehow is VERY nutritious to demons, and it seems that killing and eating one is equivalent to doing the same to 100 people. (As such, it’s in the demon slayer’s best interests to protect them at all costs.) In the Tsuzumi Mansion arc Tanjiro and Zenitsu must rescue a marechi pre-teen boy named Kiyoshi who's sought after by at least three demons, including Kyōgai (aka the Mansion's owner and the former Lower 6 Demon), and later it's revealed that Sanemi Shinazugawa aka the Wind Hashira is one too and used it to his advantage in battle in the past.
• Super Speed: The Lower 3 Kizuki, Wakuraba, appears to have this. He is shown running at high speed from the Infinity Castle and is chased by Muzan. However, his high speed fails to stop Muzan from catching up to and doing away with him.
• Take a Third Option: Attempted - and failed. When Tanjiro and Inosuke are attacked by other Slayers controlled in a People Puppets way by the Spider Demon Mother, rather than killing them or running away, Tanjiro convinced Inosuke to help him get them neutralized by launching them into the tree branches and leaving them hanging by the threads. It seems to work at first... but the Mother throws an angry fit and decides she "doesn't need these dolls", then snaps the caught kids' necks.
  • Later attempted again - and it fails too. When Muzan summons the the Lower Moons to the Infinity Castle after Rui's death and starts killing them, one of them (the aforementioned Wakuraba) decides that rather than either staying there and letting himself be killed or fighting back which would kill him as well... he should attempt to run away and leave the Infinity Castle. But before he could find the exit, Muzan caught up and killed him anyway.
  • And at the end of the Swordsmith Village, Tanjiro is stuck in one doubling as Sadistic Choice between letting Nezuko burn herself to death under the rising sun and letting a still living Hatengu eat three smiths and run away (plus having Zohakuten defeat and kill Mitsuri, who's trying to Hold the Line elsewhere... Nezuko is the one that takes the option, via kicking Tanjiro away enough to catch up to Hatengu even as the sunlight PAINFULLY burns her, making sure he'll slay the Kizuki and kill him for real. She does survive, but solely because her body develops enough sun resistence for it.
• Tap on the Head: At the beginning, Giyu knocks out Tanjiro by hitting the boy in the shoulder/back of the neck area with his sword's hilt. When Nezuko decides to protect the knocked out Tanjiro, she leaps towards Giyu but he knocks her out with a chop to the neck rather than killing her. Neither kid has permanent damage, but it's more justified in Nezuko's case due to being a demon.
  • In the Infinity Train arc, Tanjiro apologizes and then knocks out three kids who are in cahoots with the Arc Villain Enmu through this.
  • Parodied in the Red Light District arc, where Tengen applies the solar plexus punch to Inosuke and Zenitsu when he gets fed up with them.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: A flashback has Nezuko sewing her kimonos as she tells Tanjiro to not buy her new clothes yet, and instead buy more food for their family. She's such a good seamstress that, according to side materials, after the Final Battle and her return to humanity, she grabbed Giyu's almost destroyed haori and managed to re-make it almost from scratch, giving to back to him as thanks for having spared her at the beginning.
• Thanatos Gambit: Shinobu's life goal was to defeat Doma, the killer of her older sister Kanae, but as the physically weakest of the Hashira she knew that she might not have the chance. But she also knew about Doma's Monster Misogyny that led him to kill and eat ladies. . . So, throughout a whole year, she slowly and carefully consumed a high quantity of wisteria-based poison: since wisteria plants were very poisonous to demons, Shinobu hoped that if Doma did kill her and eat her corpse, he'd ingest enough wisteria to either be killed or be weakened enough to end up slain. And that's what happened: Shinobu was defeated, killed and consumed by Doma, but the poison within her body brought him down and he was soon defeated by Kanao (who, as Shinobu's adoptive sister and apprentice, was among the very few who knew about her plan) and Inosuke (whose mother Kotoha was also a victim of Doma, and was FURIOUS when Doma himself nonchalantly revealed it and even mocked her tragic life). The fact that Doma grabbed a gigantic Villain Ball and started Just Toying with Them really didn't help his case.)
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: The demon hunters apply this policy to humans. Giyu doesn't lethally attack Tanjiro even if the boy was helping some demon clearly hungry for prey, which saves both young men's lives.
• The Three Faces of Eve: Tengen's wives: Suma (Child - ditzy, insecure, emotional), Hinatsuru (Wife - a reliable Yamato Nadeshiko) and Makio (Seductress - headstrong Tsundere)
  • Also the three Kocho sisters, adopted or not: Kanao Tsuyuri (Child - the youngest of the trio, very dependent on others' words due to her past), Kanae Kocho (mix of Wife and Seductress - gentle and sweet All-Loving Heroine, who's also impulsive and flighty when off-duty) and Shinobu Kocho (Wife - the Responsible to Kanae's Foolish, deliberately takes some of her sister's gentler traits after she's murdered but still has inner demons to deal with)
  • Plus Nezuko Kamado (Child - has the mindset of a very young kid [especially at the start], acts almost kitten-like until it's time to spring into action), Shinobu Kocho (remains as Wife for the reasons mentioned above) and Mitsuri Kanroji (mix of Child and Seductress - has the looks of a sexy Ms. Fanservice, but personality-wise is a sweet Genki Girl)
• The Unreveal: When he is interrogated by Tanjirō regarding Muzan Kibutsuji. the Swamp Demon withholds all information regarding his master. Lampshaded when Tanjirō notes his failure to get any information from the Demon.
• The Virus: Muzan can turn regular humans into the titular monsters with his blood. Downplayed in that it has to be Muzan's blood directly, he cannot do it through simple touch; ie, Nezuko became a demon when Muzan's blood fell on the wounds he inflicted to her, and to transform a random man from Asakusa into a demon he had to use his claws to scratch and then inject him.
• This Cannot Be!: The Older Spider Brother Demon declares his death to be ridiculous since Zenitsu "could hardly move his limbs."

Did I get slashed!? Me!? It can't be!! This is ridiculous! I was beaten by someone who could hardly move their limbs!?

• This Was His True Form: When a demon is slain and his or her soul is shown about to go to Hell, their looks often reverse to how they looked like when they were humans. This is seen in the cases of Teoni the Hand Demon, Rui, the siblings Daki/Ume and Gyutaro (though he only does it at the very end of his and Ume's journey to Hell, probably to underline how he was the one who decided to take the Deal with the Devil that made them demons) and Akaza/Hakuji.
• Too Dumb to Live: A rookie Demon Slayer tries to kill Rui to get a raise to his salary (likely believing that due to his child-like appearance, he is harmless), flaunting Tanjirō's warnings in the process. Rui mutilates him with his super-sharp spider webs which causes the hapless jerkwad to instead get the embarrassing fanmade nickname "Sliced Steak Senpai."
• Tragic Keepsake: Tanjiro Kamado's earrings are a family heirloom, and were last worn by his Disappeared Dad Tanjuro. They were a gift from Yoriichi to their ancestor, Sumiyoshi Kamado.
  • Giyu Tomioka's haori robe is made half from his late older sister Tsutako's kimono, half from his also dead best friend Sabito's robe.
  • Shinobu Kocho's butterfly-themed haori is the same one worn in the past by her murdered older sister Kanae. Her adoptive younger sister and apprentice Kanao Tsuyuri wears one of Kanae's hairpins. After Shinobu dies in battle and Kanao's hairpin is broken as she and Inosuke kill her and Kanae's murderer Doma, Kanao claims Shinobu's own butterfly-shaped hairpin for herself.
  • The aforementioned Inosuke Hashibira was raised by boars after his human mother Kotoha was murdered and his infamous boar mask is implied to be the head of his "boar mom", which he adapted as a mask via hollowing it out and tampering with its eyes.
  • When Kokushibo was still a human boy named Michikatsu, his younger brother Yoriichi gave him a flute. After he's defeated in the last arc and his body disappears, it's seen that he still has the flute with him.
  • Almost at the end, the still-living Yushiro cherishes and carries his beloved Lady Tamayo's hairpin.
• Tragic Monster: Generally demons that the cast fight are this, being normal humans who were corrupted when they were transformed into them:
  • Teoni once was a child demon who wanted to hug his still human brother, but ate him after he was infected by Muzan. Upon defeat, the demon gets his own hand held by Tanjirou, who prays that Teoni would not be turned into a demon should he be reborn - and Teoni remembers the incident with his brother, and sheds Tears of Remorse as he dies.
  • The Lower 6 Kizuki, Kyogai, got his Start of Darkness from his desire to be a poet clashing with a Caustic Critic who couldn't bring himself to find Kyogai's work as anything other than So Bad It's Horrible. Tanjiro praises his powerful Blood Demon Arts, finally giving him something similar to the recognition he desired, and after Tanjiro leaves Kyogai dissolves away... while crying Tears of Joy.
  • Lower 5 Rui and many of his fake family members turn out to be this. Rui himself was bedridden and was turned into a Demon to counteract it, resulting in his humanitarian spree. One of the "Sisters" ended up this way when she was sold out by one of her "Sisters." The Mother was a little girl demon who could barely handle her "Mother" position, and was horribly punished whenever she slipped out of character-
  • Akaza wanted to protect his girlfriend, but a rival dojo took her life and that of her father, and he murdered all 67 members of said rival dojo with his bare hands.
  • Downplayed as he was no innocent man, but Hairo and his comrades were honorable swordsmen who followed the Bushido code, but this bit their butts in the form of soldiers who use rifles and guns. These gunslinging soldiers managed to kill Hairo's companions, but not him.
• Training from Hell: To start Tanjiro's training on demon-slaying, Sakonji makes him climb down a mountain while trying to escape from painful traps, so Tanjiro learns how track him by scent. And that's just the beginning.
  • Later, the Hashira Training arc is dedicated to the Hashira themselves giving this to the younger Slayers to see which ones will develop Marks.
• Tranquil Fury: Despite constantly seething with rage, Zōhakuten tends to have a calm look on his face.
• Twenty Bear Asses: Nezuko was turned into a demon very early in the series, and Tanjiro made it one of his life's goal to Find the Cure. Giyu said from the get go that there might not be a cure, and if there is, then only demons would know the answer; his and Tanjiro's master, Urokodaki, share similar beliefs but is less harsh. Tanjiro finds a doctor, Tamayo (a demon herself) who wants to make the cure, but can't yet. But she said she could if given both some of Nezuko's blood (a demon that has been one for about 2 years and still hasn't eaten a human is basically unheard of, and the girl went farther than that and straight up hasn't eaten anything after turning, spending her time sleeping instead), and the blood of multiple powerful demons. In principle he could get the blood without killing them, but it's not like they are going to give it up freely and they are man-eating monsters he is supposed to kill anyways, as by this point Tanjiro is an official member of the demon hunting organization known as the Demon Slayer Corps. Seriously, Nezuko aside, eating people is how demons level up, so they need to go. Tamayo did not give him a finite quota either; the blood she asked for was more for the research needed to figure out how to make the elixir than the actual ingredients of the elixir. Presumably she could make one eventually without the blood, but the time it would take to finish the research in that case would likely go well past a human lifetime. . . Eventually, Tamayo does manage to make the medicine with a bit of help from Shinobu, and Nezuko is saved.
• Underestimating Badassery: Rui ends up on both ends. He was mistaken to be a weak demon by a hapless jerkwad (whom he mutiliates in response), and then later finds out (the hard way) that Tanjirō is a good fighter; Rui nearly got his head severed despite the fact that Tanjirō broke his sword on one of Rui's webs! And even when Rui managed to recover from that, it still was enough to stall him until Giyu arrived and killed him.
• Undignified Death: Hantengu is immediately destroyed by the Sun following his decapitation. It does not stop him from relaying his report to Muzan that Nezuko managed to develop an immunity to the Sun, however.
• Undying Loyalty: Despite his immense fear of Muzan Kibutsuji, Hantengu has always been extremely loyal to the Demon King, having been rescued from the magistrate by him. His last actions after he is destroyed is to deliver a report (presumably via the Psychic Link that demons share with Muzan) about how Nezuko has developed an immunity to the Sun, which Muzan finds VERY much to his pleasure.
• Villainous Breakdown: Gyokko, the Upper 5 Kizuki, gets hit with this when he ends up beheaded by Muichiro. His breakdown enrages Muichiro into turning the demonic djinn's head into chopper slaw.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Karaku and Urogi are topless, though whether Urogi has trousers or that is part of his actual body still remains up in the air. Gyokko is completely naked, at least during his time as a Demon.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Tanjiro's default outfit include earrings that look a LOT like the Rising Sun, the naval flag of Japan. They acvtually belonged to Yoruichi, so they're older than the official Rising Sun flag. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese and South Korean broadcasts apply some censorship to the earrings due to the very bitter memories of Imperial Japan's colonization.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Some characters died without mention of their past. Some others were given pasts in the second Fanbook, however.
• Whip It Good: The Lower 5 of the Twelve Kizuki, Rui, combines this trope with the Absurdly Sharp Blade trope. Rui can slice things up with his webs, hence his high danger level, and Tanjirō learns not to underestimate him when he sees a hapless jerkwad try to kill Rui for a pay raise of all things only for Lower 5 to reduce the jerk to chopper slaw.
• Winged Humanoid: Urogi has wings that he can fly around with.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Tanjiro and Nezuko's mother, Kie Kamado, fitted in fairly well until her murder. She was a beautiful, kind, gentle woman in a purple kimono, who was always a serene and humble figure and example for her children. Only once she showed a scarier side - and it was to protect a toddler Tanjiro and a baby Nezuko, via headbutting a boar to defend them.
  • Nezuko herself was on her way to be one... then demon shit happened, but even then she kept some traits like the will of iron, the devotion to her family, and her desire to protect people. And when she's back to humanity at the very end, she still is one to boot.
  • Tamayo, the demon doctor allied with the Demon Slayer Corps, is pretty much the perfect one.
  • Shinobu Kocho seems to be one at first sight, and she's voiced by a seiyuu who sometimes plays such roles, but she's actually a Stepford Smiler who hides severe rage issues and swears by the Creepy Good trope. Her late older sister, Kanae Kocho, is closer to the archetype and especially in the light novels (though not without her silly moments).
  • Amane, the wife of the Demon Slayer Corps' leader Kagaya Ubuyashiki, has white hair but personality-wise is very much one.
    • Out of their four daughters, the eldest twins (Nichika and Hinaki) are already this at age nine as their Blind Seer father's guides and caretakers, whereas their third daughter Kanata is one in training.
  • The flashbacks to Kyoujuro Rengoku's early years show that his Missing Mom, Ruka, fitted here perfectly.
  • The TV version of the Mugen Train arc has an old woman named Tomie who fits here quite well, what with her being a soft-spoken Cool Old Lady who's very devoted to her bento making business and to her Meganekko granddaughter Fuku, whom she tells that she'd give her life for her if she was attacked by demons. As a bonus, she's voiced by Kikuko Inoue alias one of the most famous seiyuu for YN characters.
  • Out of Tengen's wives, Hinatsuru qualifies perfectly. She has the looks down to a T (even if she's more fanservicy than the standard), is the most mature of the ladies, acts like a Team Mom, etc.
  • Genya & Sanemi's mother, Shizu Shinazugawa, was one during her time as a human. When Kyōgo unleashed his wrath on the brothers and their siblings, Shizu went Mama Bear and willingly took Kyōgo's attacks. Then, some time after his death, she was forced to take several levels in Jerkass and become even worse than Kyōgo himself when someone (most likely Muzan) turned her into a Demon, and she had to be put down by Sanemi, who himself was horrified. Considering that Shizu greatly cared for her kids before her passing, Genya was outraged.
• You Are Worth Hell: If a tragic enough demon has dead loved ones, there's a chance their souls will invoke this and willingly choose to go to Hell with him or her. This happens with Rui and his parents (though given that Rui did not know that Muzan was going to transform him into a demon, they might not be staying for too long), Hakuji/Akaza and his girlfriend Koyuki, and Gyutarou and Daki.
• You Have Failed Me: Inverted when Hantengu delivers his report that Nezuko has become immune to the Sun, as he is praised by Muzan after doing so.
• You Killed My Father: Tanjirō goes after Muzan to get revenge for the death of his family, including his mom Kie.
  • Genya is outraged to find that his and Sanemi's mother Shizu bit the bullet at Sanemi's hands, considering how good of a parent she was; as such, he and Sanemi had their chemistry worsen. Genya latter regretted it when he realised that Shizu was turned into a Demon, and became a Slayer to confront Sanemi and apologize.
• You Say Tomato: Zōhakuten has his name pronounced as "Zoh-hahk-ten" in Japanese and "Zoh-hah-koo-ten" in English.
• Your Worst Nightmare: Tanjirō loves his family and has been raised well by them, so Enmu has him be berated by projections. All Enmu gets is a bite to his a** (or rather, a Nichirin blade to his neck).