Muzan Kibutsuji

The first demon and the source of every other, he murdered the Kamado family on a whim. Posing as an ordinary husband and father in the city, he kills anyone who threatens to expose him and commands lesser demons through his blood. Obsessed with escaping sunlight and with destroying the blue spider lily's secret, he fears only the hunters who have slain his kind for centuries.

When Tanjiro first crosses his path in Asakusa, he passes for a refined gentleman in a pale Western suit and brimmed hat, strolling arm in arm with a woman and child. Beneath the tailoring he is bloodlessly pale, with wavy black hair, a sharp jawline and red eyes whose pupils narrow like a predator's. Because he remakes his own flesh at will, his build, voice and bearing shift between appearances, and he is later seen in sombre formal dress. Anger brings dark, branching veins to the surface of his face and reddens his nails.

Outwardly he is polished, soft-spoken and almost courteous, a mask he wears so completely that he can hold a conversation in a crowded street while planning murder. Underneath sits an enormous, brittle ego ruled by one thing: terror of his own death. He regards demons as disposable tools and humans as livestock, discarding both without a flicker of feeling, and he punishes failure or even the mention of his name with instant execution. Insults to his pride enrage him far more than physical injury. He equates power with perfection and resents anything that suggests a limit to him, which is why a demon who defies his control or a swordsman who meets his gaze lingers in his thoughts.

Born in the Heian era so frail that he was not expected to live, he was treated by a physician with an experimental medicine derived from a rare flower that blooms only in daylight hours. Convinced the treatment was useless, he killed the doctor before it was finished, then found himself transformed: his illness gone, his body regenerating without limit, his hunger turned to human flesh, and the sun lethal to him. The flower he needed to complete the cure was never found again. Over the following thousand years he spread his blood through the population, created demons, organised the strongest of them into the Twelve Kizuki, and pursued two goals above all others, the lost flower and a demon who could walk in sunlight. One night he slaughtered the Kamado household in passing.

1. Asakusa Arc

   Tanjiro recognises the scent of his family's killer in a crowded Asakusa street and sees a smiling man in a white suit walking with a wife and child. Confronted, he murders a bystander with a touch, turning the man into a rampaging demon to cover his escape, and leaves Tanjiro to choose between pursuit and saving lives.

2. Asakusa Arc: The Temari and Arrow Demons

   Rather than return himself, he sends two servants bearing fragments of his blood to kill Tanjiro and recover the demon doctor who escaped him. When one of them speaks his name aloud, the curse he seeded in her flesh destroys her from within, a demonstration that he hears everything his demons see and tolerates nothing.

3. Mount Natagumo Arc

   He never appears on the mountain, yet his grip is everywhere. The spider demons obey a Lower Rank Kizuki who speaks of the master's blood with reverence and fear, and the privilege of that blood is what binds the whole false family together. News of the mountain's outcome reaches him and sharpens his interest in the boy with the horned demon sister.

4. Rehabilitation Training Arc

   At the close of the season he receives one of his Lower Rank servants in a shifting fortress and rewards obedience with a generous share of his own blood, raising the demon's strength and setting him loose on a mission involving a railway. The scene closes the first season by aiming a new threat directly at Tanjiro.

Tanjiro Kamado

The boy whose family he destroyed

He does not recognise Tanjiro at first, treating him as an irritating stray, but the boy's hanafuda earrings and his refusal to look away mark him out. The encounter turns a casual atrocity into a personal hunt on both sides.

Nezuko Kamado

Demon of his own making

She was created the night he attacked the Kamado home and then failed to behave as his blood intends, neither obeying him nor devouring humans. A demon outside his control is exactly the kind of flaw he cannot leave alone.

Tamayo

Escaped subordinate

Centuries earlier he turned her and then lost her when she found a way to break his hold. Her survival is a standing insult to his claim of absolute control, and he sends demons to retrieve or destroy her rather than risk exposure himself.

Enmu

Favoured servant

A Lower Rank member of the Twelve Kizuki whose devotion amuses him enough to earn an unusually generous gift of blood. The reward is less affection than investment, buying a stronger tool aimed at the slayers who have begun to interest him.

• He strolls through a crowded Asakusa street in a white suit with a woman and child, the picture of a respectable family man.
• He kills a passer-by with a single touch and turns the corpse into a demon purely to delay his pursuer.
• His curse destroys one of his own servants the instant she speaks his name aloud.
• He grants a share of his blood to a Lower Rank demon at the end of the season, setting the next campaign in motion.

• His scent, not his face, is what allows Tanjiro to identify him as the killer of the Kamado family.
• He is voiced in Japanese by Toshihiko Seki, who gives the character a gentle, unhurried speaking manner.
• The human family he appears with in Asakusa exists purely as camouflage for his daytime life.
• He is the origin of every demon in the series, so every Blood Demon Art ultimately derives from his blood.

• Tanjiro Kamado
• Nezuko Kamado
• Zenitsu Agatsuma
• Inosuke Hashibira
• Giyu Tomioka
• Sakonji Urokodaki

• Tamayo
• Yushiro
• Shinobu Kocho
• Kanao Tsuyuri
• Rui
• Sabito

Back to the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba guide