Who is Tamayo?
Tamayo is a skilled doctor and close ally of Tanjiro Kamado. Muzan Kibutsuji turned her into a Demon.
Voice actor of Tamayo
In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Laura Post provides the English dub voice for Tamayo, while Maaya Sakamoto provides the Japanese voice.
Appearance
Tamayo appears as a lovely woman with long, dark brown hair that is parted in the middle and braided back into a large, low bun held in place by a floral hairpin. She has large, gentle eyes with no pupils and a haze of lavender that fades to dark purple as it rises, as well as bright red lips that contrast with her pale skin.
Tamayo wore a dark purple furisode kimono with wavy pale purple tree branches and red flowers, as well as plain white socks and violet zori sandals, and a cream-colored obi to secure it around her waist.
Tamayo used to have her hair tied in a low ponytail and her pupils were stilted.
Personality
Personality She was one of the most knowledgeable people in the series on the subject, having spent most of her life researching the science behind Demons and Demon Transformation. Despite the generally tumultuous relationship between humans and Demons, she was exceptionally kind to them. She made it her mission to help injured or sick people with her vast medical knowledge, and Tanjiro Kamado was one of them.
Tamayo disliked violence and instead of killing humans for their blood, she chose to buy blood from willing donors in order to survive. She was adamant about teaching her assistant, Yushiro, about the dangers of violence, and she chastised him frequently for his habit of hitting others. She was one of the few Demons who was able to regain and retain some of her human emotions in her later Demon life.
When confronted with Muzan, Tamayo, despite her usual kind, caring, and considerate demeanor and personality, has taken on a more cruel and vicious character. This was evident when she gleefully boasted to him that she’d created a human-transforming drug and successfully injected it into him, and later, when he was devoured and eaten, reduced to mere cells inside his body,
Tamayo revealed the true effects of her drugs. Muzan hinted that this ruthless personality was Tamayo’s original personality from her Demon days. As time passed, she gradually evolved into the wise and considerate woman she is today.
Despite this, Tamayo was shown to have a more docile personality in the flashbacks hundreds of years before Muzan’s meeting and battle with Yoriichi Tsugikuni, a likely result of her realizing how impossible it was to defeat Muzan with her power to avenge her family. However, Tamayo’s resolve to avenge her family was reignited after witnessing Yoriichi’s strength and how close he came to killing Muzan, as Yoriichi noted that he saw a glint of hope in her once-deadpan eyes as she realized he’d almost killed her former master, demonstrating that Tamayo’s resolve to avenge her family was reignited after witnessing Yoriichi’s power.
Power and Abilities
Though little of Tamayo’s abilities are revealed, the fact that she was Muzan Kibutsuji’s personal assistant before the Twelve Kizuki were even formed, and that he spared her after she attempted to kill him (which he considers anathema), indicates that she is both old and powerful.
Medical Skills: Tamayo had demonstrated impressive medical and pharmaceutical skills, including the ability to alter her own body so that she could survive on only a small amount of human blood. She was also able to turn the terminally ill Yushiro into a Demon without the use of Muzan’s blood, which she was later able to reverse when treating the man they met during the Asakusa Arc. To further demonstrate her pharmaceutical abilities, Tamayo assisted Shinobu Kocho in saturating her body with deadly Wisteria poison without even causing her the slightest illness; a tactic the Hashira would later employ against Upper Rank 2, Doma.
Anti-Blood Demon Coagulant: Tamayo created the Anti-Blood Demon Coagulant to stop a Demon’s Blood Demon Art from progressing. After his fight with Kaigaku, Yushiro used this medicine to heal Zenitsu Agatsuma.
Anti-Kibutsuji Drug: It was later revealed that upon teaming up with Yushiro and Insect Hashira, Shinobu Kocho, Tamayo had successfully created a powerful, four-stage drug that could gravely weaken Muzan Kibutsuji. Despite his immense physical resistances and abilities, the effects of the drug would be strong enough to cause him significant harm if given to him. The drug’s first stage was the same human-conversion stage as the one given to Nezuko Kamado.
Aging Stage: The aging stage was the second stage of the drug’s effects, and it was included as a backup plan in case the drug’s human-conversion stage failed, an idea proposed by Shinobu. The drug was designed by Tamayo to age its user at a rate of fifty years per minute. Muzan’s body was forced to divide its power to fend off the drug’s effects while also fighting the Demon Slayers for three hours, severely deterring him in his battle.
Division Prevention Stage: The drug’s third stage, which activates after the aging stage, is the Division Prevention Stage. After seeing Muzan break free from Yoriichi Tsugikuni’s grasp by slicing his body into 1,800 pieces and fleeing separately to reform later, Tamayo decided to include a drug that would prevent him from splitting. His attempts to dissect his body into pieces were unsuccessful, leaving him unable to flee.
Cellular Destruction Stage: After the first three stages of Tamayo’s drug had taken effect, the fourth and final stage was to be activated. Due to the incredibly potent effect of the first three stages of the drug, which severely weakened Muzan’s normally near-indestructible body, this stage began to destroy his body on a cellular level.
Muzan begins to cough blood as a result of the final drug’s internal damage. The effects of this stage also completely and utterly weakened Muzan to the point where his entire body felt heavy and unmovable, rendering him unable to move one of his arms and weakened him to the point where he was unable to activate another technique, let it be his psionics.
Human Conversion Stage: Tamayo, with the help of Shinobu and Yushiro, was finally able to create a drug that converts a Demon into a human, something that the Demon Slayer Corps and Muzan Kibutsuji, the creator of the Demon race, had thought impossible. Muzan, Nezuko, and Tanjiro were all given the drug, but only Nezuko and Tanjiro were able to return to human form, while Muzan remained in his Demon form.
Supernatural Blood: Tamayo’s main ability is to draw her blood and use it to cast spells that have various effects on her targets.
Flesh Seed: This is a technique used by the man who was turned into a demon by Muzan in Asakusa. Tamayo surrounds her intended target with multiple minuscule flesh seeds made from that man’s own flesh and blood. The seeds then burst and grow into massive flesh trees with numerous pointed/spiked branches that pierce and restrain Muzan; the strength of this technique was sufficient to stop Muzan, even if only for a brief moment.
Quotes
- (To Tanjiro Kamado) “You still use… the term “person”… to refer to even a transformed demon. And you’re trying to save him. Allow me, then, to lend you a hand.”
- (To Muzan Kibutsuji) “Today… is… the day… you… will fall… into… hell…”
- (To Muzan Kibutsuji) “The drug… I used… turns you into a human… and… I’m not telling you. Why don’t you try using all those useless brain cells you now have?”
- (To Muzan Kibutsuji) “Well, well. It looks like the death you’ve hated for so long is right before your eyes now.”
- (To Muzan Kibutsuji) “I don’t need to be stronger than you to kill you. I can just make you weaker. Just as you’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive, I… No, we will do whatever it takes to kill you.
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