Shinobu Kocho– Biography, Facts & Life Story
Shinobu Kocho is one of the major characters of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. She is a Demon Slayer of the Demon Slayer Corps and the current Insect Hashira.
Shinobu had a happy childhood with her family, which included her older sister, Kanae Kocho. A Demon attacked their home one day and killed her parents, but she was saved by Gyomei Himejima and vowed to join the Demon Slayer Corps to prevent others from suffering the same fate.
Voice Actor of Shinobu Kocho
In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Erika Harlacher provides the English dub voice for Shinobu Kocho, while Saori Hayami provides the Japanese voice.
Appearance
Shinobu is a petite young woman with pale skin and large, compound-looking eyes that lack pupils and instead have a haze of gradient purple, giving her eyes an insect-like appearance.
She has shoulder-length wavy hair that fades from black to dark purple and is usually styled into a “Sakai-maki” bun with a white and purple butterfly ornament at the back of her head. She has two chin-length strands below her split ear-length bangs that rise a little away from her head before falling down to frame her face.
Shinobu is short in stature and has been described as having a small, frail-looking build, which she later confirms by stating that she lacks the physical strength to cut a Demon’s head off like the other Hashira. Shinobu is so cute, according to Zenitsu Agatsuma, that she could easily make a living off of her looks alone.
Shinobu is dressed in the standard Demon Slayer unifohich includes a dark-purple tinted straight-lined black jacket and hakama pants tucked into butterfly pattern tabi socks around her lower legs.
She also wears a white haori with a butterfly wing pattern that fades into a turquoise then pink color on the sleeves and bottom edges, which are cuffed with a black and white dotted trim that belonged to her older sister. Her footwear is white sandals with purple straps.
Sdark-purple-tintede had changed slightly by the time she was fourteen. Her chin-length strands of hair were tucked in, and she wore a Demon Slayer uniform with silver buttons and a darker purple shade. She wore it with a plain white haori as well.
Personality
Shinobu has a cheerful demeanor and always has a smile on her face, no matter what situation she is in. This, however, is quickly revealed to be a facade, as evidenced by her enjoyment of teasing others, to the point of being sadistic about it, with a particular fondness for picking on Giyu Tomioka.
Despite her laid-back demeanor and initial claims of wanting to get along with Demons, she can be cruel to them, as evidenced by her killing the
Daughter Spider Demon after falsely promising to help her and her unreserved attempt to kill Nezuko Kamado. After hearing Tanjiro Kamado’s full story, she is shown to have a more compassionate side towards him and his sister.
Shinobu’s outwardly calm and serene demeanor is a mask, as she harbors a deep hatred for Demons as a result of the death of her younger sister, Kanae Kocho, as well as the deaths of her parents, almost all of her Tsuguko, and the families of her Butterfly Mansion apprentices.
This hatred is so strong that she is in a near-constant state of rage, which Tanjiro Kamado detects when the two speak. Her desire for vengeance prevented her from living the normal life her sister had wished for her, and she instead focused all of her energy on defeating Demons.
Shinobu reveals that she has an inferiority complex due to her inferior physical abilities compared to her fellow Hashira, having been jealous of them for having taller or more muscular bodies than her and cursing her own for not developing further to make her more effective in combat during her battle against Doma.
Power and Abilities
Shinobu is an extremely powerful swordsman as a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps. Shinobu is just as dangerous and deadly as the rest of them, despite not having the physical strength to cut off a Demon’s head like an average Demon Slayer or even the superhuman abilities of her fellow Hashira. Shinobu uses an insect-based combat style as the Insect Hashira.
Enhanced Strength: Shinobu has enhanced thrust and stab strength, despite being the smallest member of the Demon Slayer Corps and thus having the weakest swing strength due to her small arms.
The other Hashira notes that a single thrust from her sword could easily pierce a stone boulder in half. Her thrusting speed is also the fastest among her Hashira colleagues.
Tactical Intelligence: Shinobu is an expert in the use of poison in combat. She was able to determine the amount of poison and the poison mix that would be most effective against Doma during her battle with him. She was able to use what little information Kanae Kocho gave her after her sister’s death to devise a strategy that eventually led to Doma’s defeat.
Immense Speed & Reflexes: Shinobu has incredible speed and reflexes, making him one of the series’ fastest humans. He can easily evade and outrun Demons, catching them off guard. Doma, the Upper Rank 2, claimed she was the fastest Hashira he had ever encountered.
Immense Stamina & Endurance: Shinobu died in her fight with Doma after inhaling his ice powder, which destroyed one of her lungs and caused her to slowly die from blood loss. Shinobu, on the other hand, remained strong and continued to fight, surprising Doma.
Indomitable Will: Shinobu, like all Demon Slayers who joined to exact vengeance on Demons, has an unwavering will and spirit in her fight against Demons. This was demonstrated in her battle with Doma, where she was on the verge of death but remained unflappable, surprising Doma.
Poisonous Body: Shinobu heavily altered Doma’s body over a year to defeat the Upper Rank 2 by absorbing and altering her physiology with highly concentrated Wisteria-based poison.
She succeeds in infusing her body with an undetectable poison that has completely merged with her body’s cell structures, including those of her blood and internal organs—right down to the tips of her fingernails.
Shinobu’s body contains the equivalent of 37 kilograms of poison, roughly seven hundred times the lethal amount required to kill an average Demon, and the poison is powerful enough to melt Doma, the Upper Rank 2, to his very bones.
Medical Expertise: Shinobu displays immense skill and mastery over medical and pharmaceutical fields to compensate for her lack of natural-born combat ability, being highly knowledgeable about how to create various poisons and venoms using Wisteria flowers, despite not being as combat-talented as the rest of her fellow Hashira.
She can kill opponents in a matter of seconds and has even managed to concoct a poison powerful enough to significantly weaken Doma, the second most powerful Demon of the Twelve Kizuki.
She has the medical skills to counteract the venoms and poisons created by Demons, as well as the ability to slowly saturate her body with poison without jeopardizing her health.
This is demonstrated when she successfully reverses the poison that is slowly turning Zenitsu into a spider and restores him to his former human form.
Fighting Style and Weapon, Swordsmanship
Nichirin Blade: Shinobu’s primary weapon is a heavily modified Nichirin Blade forged by Tecchin Tecchikawahara. From the handle to just above the hilt, it looks like any other katana, but above that, the weapon loses its blade and is replaced by a rod. It has a needle-like tip that looks and functions like a stinger on an insect.
Shinobu uses her medical expertise to overcome her relative lack of strength and inability to cut off heads with the “stinger,” which is designed to inject Wisteria poisons into Demons.
She’s also altered the weapon’s sheath, which she now uses as a portable poison mixer and loader. Shinobu’s katana has a flower-shaped hilt with four petals; each petal has an aqua-colored core with an orange border, and her katana is lavender-blue, with the words Demons engraved on the right side and Destruction engraved on the left side due to the structure of her sword.
Master Swordswoman: As a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps, Shinobu is one of the organization’s most powerful and skilled swordswomen.
Insect Breathing: Insect Breathing is a Breathing Style that evolved from Flower Breathing, which evolved from Water Breathing.
The Insect Breathing imitates the lethal stings and movements of various insects while also incorporating a variety of sword techniques such as stabbing, thrusting, and making shallow cuts with a specially coated/made sword to inflict multiple wounds on the intended target in order to inject various lethal Wisteria-based poisons.
Shinobu Kocho created this style to compensate for her lack of physical strength in cutting off a Demon’s head. As a result, she can only use this sword style and only with a special katana with a needle-like tip that looks and functions like an insect’s stinger. Wisteria poisons are injected into Demons using the “stinger.”
Trivia
- Shinobu’s tor uniform’s jacket was originally designed to leave the center of the chest area open, similar to Mitsuri Kanroji’s, but she despised this feature and burned the original uniform in front of the Kakushi who had just given it to her, instead requesting a fully buttoned version.
- Shinobu and Mitsuri get along quite well due to them having been the only two female Hashira after Kanae’s death. Mitsuri also teaches her western cooking.
- Shinobu’s parents worked in compounding medicine, which explains why she is so skilled with drugs.
- In the magazine version, the amount of Wisteria poison in Shinobu’s body was originally stated to be seventy times the lethal amount to kill a Demon, but Koyoharu Gotge later corrected it to be seven hundred times in the volume edition.
QUOTES
- “I once believed that the road of happiness continued forever and ever into the distance. When it was destroyed, I realized for the first time that it lies upon a thin sheet of glass. And just as we were saved, there were those whose happiness that hasn’t yet been destroyed.”
- (To herself, responding to a question Tanjiro Kamado asked in the past) “Yes, I’m angry, Tanjiro. I’ve always been angry. My parents were killed. My older sister was killed. And except for Kanao, all my Tsuguko were killed. If demons hadn’t murdered those girls’ families, they’d be living happily with them right now. It makes me furious!”
Also Read Angel Adoree, Ava Michelle Cota, Kaitlin Sharkey, Melanie Olmstead