Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 2

Descendant of the Sun Breathers

Compared to Episode 1, Demon Slayer: Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 2 was boring. Not all that much happened. And it’s not like we got too much new information either. We did get some. But, the little we got isn’t concrete information we can do much with.

So, in this review, we’re going to be doing some theorizing based on the information we have. And the first thing I want to theorize about is Muichirou Tokitou. Tokitou is the Mist Hashira. And, if we reference our breathing technique chart, we’ll see Mist is a derivative of Wind.

But, does the breathing technique Tokitou uses matter? Maybe. According to his crow, Tokitou is a descendant of the Sun Breathing technique users. That’s a big deal considering Sun Breathing was the original breathing technique. And we may be able to partially attribute Tokitou’s status as a prodigy to this.

We know that Sun Breathing is the strongest technique. And since Mist Breathing is a derivative of a derivative of Sun Breathing, we can assume it’s a fair bit weaker. So, why is a descendant of the Sun Breathers using this lowly technique today? We don’t know.

And based on Tokitou’s personality, I don’t get the sense that he cares all that much. He seems pretty indifferent about most things. So, do you think he cares that he’s the descendant of the Sun Breathers? I don’t get the impression that he does. Some of the other Hashira might dislike Tokitou because of that, though.

Hopefully, throughout the course of this arc, we’ll get to learn a lot more about Tokitou. Like, why does he use Mist Breathing? We previously learned that Rengoku used Fire Breathing because of his father. And Uzui uses Sound Breathing because he’s flashy, or something.

A Boy and His Doll

Kotetsu is a swordsmith apprentice Tanjirou meets in the Swordsmith Village. His name means “steel,” which is a fitting name for a swordsmith. And if we read into his interaction with Haganezuka, he may be Haganezuka’s apprentice. That’s, of course, unconfirmed.

When Tanjirou first meets Kotetsu, Kotetsu is refusing to give a key to Tokitou. This key goes to a training doll called the Mechanical Doll Yoriichi Type Zero. Kotetsu’s ancestors created the doll 300 years ago and based it on a powerful swordsman. Who was that swordsman? Potentially the creator of Sun Breathing.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll discuss this swordsman more in the next section of the review. For now, let’s focus on the training doll. It has 6 arms and wields 6 swords. Allegedly, this is because it was the only way for the creators to mimic the swordsman’s abilities.

So, why does Tokitou want the key to the doll? He wants to use it to train. And since he’s so insistent on training with it, we can assume he knows it’s special. He may be wanting to test his own skills against those of a Sun Breather.

But, the doll is no match for Tokitou and he quickly breaks it. This is precisely why Kotetsu didn’t want to hand over the key. Although the doll was built with training in mind, it’s a family heirloom. He doesn’t have any family left, and he didn’t want to see Tokitou break the doll.

Additionally, Kotetsu claims that the technology used to create the doll is gone. There’s nobody left alive today who can fix it if it gets broken. But, luckily, Tokitou didn’t break the doll completely. It still functions enough for Tanjirou to train on it — until he breaks it.

Who Was Yoriichi?

So, who was Yoriichi? For starters, we can assume that was the swordsman’s name since that’s the name of the doll based on him. We also know he only had 2 arms despite the doll having 6. And we know he lived 300 years ago.

With that information in mind, it would seem that Yoriichi now goes by Kokushibo. As in the Upper One Demon Kokushibo. We know he’s at least 300 years old and he looks very similar to the Yoriichi doll. He’s a swordsman with the same color hair and a flame scar on his head.

Yoriichi/Koushibo is also likely the person we saw in Tanjirou’s dream. Before this episode, I didn’t think that was the case. But, I also forgot that Tanjirou could see memories of his ancestors. So, the baby we saw in Episode 1 wasn’t Tanjirou. It was one of his family members from 300 years ago.

So, if Yoriichi is Kokushibo, that brings up some interesting questions. For starters, how/why did Yoriichi become a demon? Was he not a demon slayer originally? Did he want to gain more power? That’s how Akaza was trying to tempt Rengoku.

Also, what does this mean for Tokitou, who’s supposedly a descendant of Yoriichi? I’m going to assume he doesn’t know that his ancestor is one of the Upper Demons. Or, it could be that he does know. And that could be exactly why he was so insistent on training on the doll.

Something else we should consider is how this may all affect Tokitou. If Yoriichi is Kokushibo, that could be why Sun Breathing never made its way down to Tokitou. Yoriichi may have only passed his technique on to Tanjirou’s ancestor. And then, he became the demon Kokushibo.

Conclusion

What do you think about Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Swordsmith Village Arc Episode 2? Do you think Tokitou cares that he’s descended from Sun Breathers? Do you think he wanted to train on the doll because he knows his ancestor is a Demon? And, why do you think Kokushibo became a demon? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of Episode 3 is available now.