User blog:Officer Candy Apple/Pure Evil Proposal - Muzan Kibutsuji

Here is my second episode posted several months after the last one: Muzan Kibutsuji, the main antagonist of the ongoing anime series, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.

With the new rules about the PE Proposals, it took me a long time to consider which guy to propose next... until I'm now growing fond of Kimetsu no Yaiba anime ongoing recently and started to follow its manga. I find its story awe-inspiring and awesome, and it does have several truly nasty villains even if most of the villains are rather sympathetic.

Two more proposals of the series' villains will set out, but let's go for its Big Bad first.

What's the Work?
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is an ongoing dark fantasy themed Shounen manga by Koyoharu Gotōge, serialized on Shounen Jump and is known as currently one of the new Top Four of Shounen Jump alongside Dr. Stone, The Promised Neverland and We Never Learn, all getting animated adaptation in these two years.

Kimetsu no Yaiba is set in Taishō period of Japan (July 30th, 1912 - December 25, 1926), about a kind-hearted young boy named Tanjiro Kamado who once lived happily with his family, including his lovely younger sister Nezuko. They struggled with poverty after Tanjiro's father passed away, but still lived happily in their village selling charcoal until one day, Tanjiro discovers his family was slaughtered by a demon (or more precisely, by Oni, a kind of monster in Japanese myth, instead of demons in theology), Muzan Kibutsuji (yeah, the guy on this proposal).

Tanjiro and Nezuko are the only survivors of their family. Nezuko was infected by Muzan's blood and turned into a monster, but still had some human conciousness inside her. Tanjiro helped his sister to resist her man-eating impulse and tried to find a cure to turn his sister back into human. During the two-year progress, Tanjiro grew from a normal villiage boy into a brave demon-slaying warrior.

Who is He/What Has He Done
Being the main antagonist of the series, Muzan Kibutsuji is a former human but later transformed into the progenitor demon, first of his kind, 1,000 years before the story. He is also the master of the demons in the series and thus is responsible for their transformation into Oni.

As stated above, he is responsible for the series' major event by killing nearly every family member of Tanjiro's family except Tanjiro and Nezuko, whom he transformed her into a demon. However, this wasn't his worst crime shown on screen. He makes his first apperance in the seventh episode of the anime, pretending to be an ordinary man with a wife and a daughter, hiding in human society. However, he still secretly sending demons out to attack Tanjiro because of his hanafuda earring with sun symbol, reprensenting the user of the Breath of Sun, who defeated Muzan and vowed to kill him.

During his first confrontation with Tanjiro, Muzan played innocent and randomly chose to attack a man randomly and subtly, causing him to mutate into a demon and nearly killed his wife. Muzan then walked away nonchalently with his family after Tanjiro went to control the situation.

But that was not all. After seemingly sending his wife and daughter away, Muzan killed a drunk man for teasing him that he looked like a living dead, killed the drunk man's brother for trying to avenge the victim, and then he killed the drunk man's wife (who did nothing to him AT ALL) by injecting her an overloaded amount of his blood, causing her mutation going override and melted her into a puddle of rotten flesh. Ew...

He is also cruel towards his minions, from his executives known as the Twelve Demon Moons to lesser Onis, and only values them for their strength. He discarded the former Lower Moon Six, Kyogai, and ripped his number away simply because the latter lost his man-eating ability. After the death of the Fifth Lower Moon, Rui, Muzan killed most of the remaining Lower Moons for considering them useless, except for Enmu the Lower Moon One, who establishes himself as a cruel sadist that Muzan rather appreciated.

The demons' origin story, including the Upper Moons, are all directly or indirectly Muzan's work, when he got close to them in their most desperate moments and granted them his blood, making them his warriors at the cost of their own humanity. He forbids every one of them to speak his name directly, or they will be killed in a disgusting and morbid manner, like having hands growing from their body and ripped them apart. This shows that Muzan get close to them only to use them, and will replace them with new minions once they failed him or broke his brutal rules.

Fruedian Excuse/Mitigating Factor
Surprising enough, Muzan does have a seemingly sympathetic backstory. More than a thousand years ago in the Heian Period in the late 700's, Muzan was once a normal human who was on the dying brink due to a disease. The doctor who look after him gave him medicine made of Blue Spifer Lily (a fictional plant since there're only red and white Spider Lilies in real world) that accidentally turned him from a human being into the first demon in the era. Muzan brutally killed the doctor and started crave for human flesh, unable to get in touch with sunlights.

But does that justify his actions? Definitely not. Post-transformed Muzan is only a cruel, callous and self-absorbed egomaniac with a "healthy" God Complex, who believes he himself is a perfect being, and he will do anything to reach infinite perfection and get rid of his weakness. As a result, he turns human into Onis/Demons, making them to lose their humanity, and serve him as his tool to gain the Blue Spider Lily, the same ingredient in the medicine that turned Muzan literally demonized. He tramples on humanity and makes the Demon Slaying Corp to take form in order to stop him. His own trauma cannot justify that he kills and mutates countless humans simply for trying to become a supreme being.

His pretentious actions in Tokyo streets immediately shows him for being a completely heartless and callous psychopath who pretend to be a good man. Not only prentending to be a young man, Muzan also pretended to be a child with a human family and later butchered them after learning of Nezuko. His so-called protective attitude are all pretense to prevent himself from being uncovered as a demon.

Remember the aforementioned purge of the Lower Moon Demons? He spared Enmu, the Lower Moon One, because of Enmu's fearless attitude towards death and enjoyment of killing that made him relented. Sure, Enmu is a psychotic fiend (I'll make a proposal for Enmu because of his actions in manga) and that's why Muzan spares him. He can still use Enmu to slaughter more human in order to take down Tanjiro and the Pillars.

Heinous Standard
As a dark fantasy themed Shounen Manga, Kimetsu no Yaiba have high standards, and most of the villains have their sympathetic past or insecurity to make them away from PE. However, there are still hateful demons who shows no sympathetic quality, like Enmu, Douma, Kaigaku and Gyokko (b.t.w. I'll write two proposals for Enmu and Gyokko later respectively).

Muzan Kibutsuji, as the source of all evil in the series, with his heavy head counts and heartless tendency, is the worst one of them all. Tanjiro has a point when he states he'll never forgive Muzan and will chase him all the way to Hell, considering him as the only true demon.

Final Verdict
Yes.