Summary
- Mastering one Breathing Style is a huge challenge, requiring intense dedication and muscle memory.
- Focusing on one Breathing Style is more efficient for a Hashira, allowing full mastery and maximum power.
- Only a few characters in Demon Slayer have been known to use multiple Breathing Styles, like Tanjiro and Kokushibo.
In the world of Demon Slayer, Breathing Styles are a must-know technique among all Hashiras or Demon Slayers. Breathing Styles, in a nutshell, are specialized swordsmanship techniques which increase the user’s oxygen intake and boost their physical strength, reflexes, focus and speed.
The Hashira, who are the higher ranking Demon Slayer members, are able to master and control their Breathing Styles to the fullest extent, allowing them to fight demons at their own level. This means Breathing Styles gives humans the edge, speed and reflexes they need to successfully defeat a powerful demon. Since a demon’s abilities out-class a human, Breathing Styles are essential for Hashiras. But what if a Hashira could master more than one Breathing Style?
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What It Takes To Learn A Breathing Style
Learning Just One Breathing Style Is No Easy Task
When it comes to Breathing Styles, each of them is deeply specialized, meaning that Hashiras need to endure years of intense training and discipline for Breathing Styles to become one with the user’s body. For example, the Water Breathing technique solely focuses on fluidity and how well the user can copy the natural movement of water. Whereas Thunder Breathing focuses more towards precision and speed. Breathing Techniques not only focus on sword techniques but also how well the user’s body is able to be conditioned. This means every fiber of their body such as their muscles and breathing patterns will need to align with their chosen Breathing Style.
Set your heart ablaze, surpass your limits.
The process of mastering one Breathing Style alone is a huge challenge for a Hashira. The sheer amount of dedication required is intense, as well as the muscle memory required to remember what they need to do to execute a certain form of attack. If a Hashira were to try to master more than one style, they would need to recondition their mind in a way they are able to switch between the two, and this requires a very high level of mental concentration, which could in turn possibly cause strain on the user. This could lead to inefficiencies in battle and cause burn out. Practically, it would make more sense for a Hashira to focus on one sole Breathing Style than multiple, as this way they are able to develop one Breathing Style and master it fully, making it as powerful as it can be.
The Known User Of More Than One Breathing Style
Understanding The Difference Between Multiple Techniques and Derived Techniques
Not many characters in the Demon Slayer series are known to have been able to use two Breathing Styles, the only exception being Tanjiro. In the series, he is seen to initially train in Water Breathing before he was able to discover his abilities in Sun Breathing. While Tanjiro is able to somewhat use both Breathing Styles, he later focuses more on Sun Breathing as it aligns more with his natural abilities.
The human turned upper moon demon, Kokushibo is also an example of someone who eventually chose to focus on his own technique. He was initially trained by his brother, Yoriichi, in Sun Breathing but because he was unable to master it, he switched to Moon Breathing, which aligned more with his fighting style.
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Which Demon Slayer Breathing Style is Your Favorite?
Thunder Breathing is probably my favorite out of the bunch, due to how flashy and unpredictable the speed of attacks can be from a trained individual. Zenitsu’s power is a prime example of this, and that’s only with Thunder Breathing First Form – Thunderclap and Flash. Plus, Thunder Breathing always looks phenomenal, bright, and eye-catching when animated on-screen, which is a bonus.
A few other notable examples are Tengen and his use of Sound Breathing, which was derived from Thunder Breathing. Mitsuri Kanroji also derived her Love Breathing Technique from Flame Breathing. These adaptations, however, are not the same as mastering two techniques but simply personalized evolutions of an existing Breathing Style, as mastering two Breathing Techniques can prove to be extremely difficult even for these high-ranking Hashira.
While modifications of Breathing Styles have been shown in the series, true mastery of two or more Breathing Techniques is extremely rare. While the chances of future Hashiras manifesting and perfecting two Breathing Styles is not impossible, it is yet to be seen.