The 5 Fundamental Breathing Styles, Explained

Summary

• Different breathing styles in Demon Slayer are derived from the Sun Breathing technique, which is the most difficult but guarantees excellence.
• Slayers don’t have to focus on fundamental breathing styles to be skilled; talent and training matter more.
• Each fundamental breathing style in Demon Slayer, such as Water and Thunder, offers unique techniques and movement characteristics.

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Demon Slayer manga. Demon Slayer is now streaming on Crunchyroll.

In the world of Demon Slayer, elite swordsmen use various breathing styles to combat demons. In the beginning, there was only one breathing style, Sun Breathing, but due to its complexity, the Demon Slayer Corps developed new breathing styles derived from Sun Breathing. From it came the five fundamental Breathing Styles, which were used as the basis to create other Breathing Styles.

Just because a Slayer discovers that the breathing style that suits them is one of the five, that doesn’t mean they’ll be one of the greatest Demon Slayers ever. In fact, a lot of the Hashiras, the Demon Slayer Corps’ strongest warriors, use breathing styles that aren’t from the fundamental styles. At the end of the day, it all still comes down to individual talent and training. However, you could say that the five fundamental breathing styles are the most refined since they were developed hundreds of years ago and had plenty of time to be polished and improved by their users. The only style that would guarantee a highly skilled slayer is Sun Breathing, and the reason for that will be explained below.

The Five Fundamental Breathing Styles

Water Breathing

Water Breathing imitates the way water flows and adapts those into human movements. Its forms involve bending the user’s body and arms and swinging their weapon in fluid motions. Water Breathing is the most common Breathing Style in the Demon Slayer Corps, and multiple Slayers pick up the style because it is said to be easier to learn than the others.

But even if Water Breathing is the easiest style to learn, if a Slayer’s body isn’t suited to it, they’re still better off switching styles. It’s what happened with Tanjiro. He started with Water Breathing but eventually realized that the technique wasn’t for him. His body felt more comfortable with Sun Breathing, which he slowly but surely transitioned to.

Flame Breathing

Flame Breathing attempts to mimic the ferocity of flames. Its forms involve brazen strikes and slashes that “burn” their enemies through pure intensity. The most memorable user of Flame Breathing is, of course, the latest Flame Hashira, Kyojuro Rengoku. The position of the Flame Hashira has always belonged to someone from Kyojuro’s bloodline, ever since the conception of Flame Breathing in the Sengoku Period. However, that tradition stopped due to Kyojuro’s untimely death.

Little known fact: Mitsuri Kanroji, the Love Hashira, also knows a bit of Flame Breathing. Before developing Love Breathing, Mitsuri actually trained under Kyojuro Rengoku to learn Flame Breathing. This was shown in Kimetsu no Yaiba Extra: Kyojuro Rengoku’s Story: Part 2, a side story about Kyojuro.

Thunder Breathing

Thunder Breathing is a style that relies on mind-numbingly fast movement. Users of this style train their legs to their very limit so they can move and strike as fast as thunder. The various moves of Thunder Breathing are actually based on a real-life swordsmanship technique for quick draws known as Iaijutsu. Thunder Breathing is the only fundamental Breathing Style that doesn’t have a representing Hashira during Tanjiro’s time. A previous Thunder Hashira, Jigoro Kuwajima, taught Zenitsu everything he knows about Thunder Breathing.

While the breathing styles that Demon Slayers use don’t literally summon and manipulate the elements, objects, or concepts they’re named after, there is an exception for Kaigaku. This former Demon Slayer became a demon and received the Blood Demon Art known as Electrokinesis, which allows him to generate and control black bolts of lightning. He uses this ability in tandem with his mastery of the Thunder Breathing techniques to literally use electricity with his blade.

Stone Breathing

Stone Breathing makes its users like impenetrable rocks, unwavering in both their offense and defense. Its only known user, Gyomei Himejima, the current Stone Hashira, is the strongest Hashira during Tanjiro’s era. He welds his chained flail and axe with incredible talent, able to efficiently attack and defend in any direction.

Considering Gyomei is the only known user of Stone Breathing (apart from the unnamed Slayer who developed it during Yoriichi’s time), there’s a chance that it might be relatively difficult to learn. It’s also the only one of the five fundamental Breathing Styles that hasn’t had another Breathing Style to branch off of it, implying that there might not be a lot of people who could have even attempted to make any.

Wind Breathing

In other pieces of media that use elements in fighting, wind is often seen as the calm and soothing element, but that’s not the case in Demon Slayer. Wind Breathing specifically strives to mimic the turbulent destruction of whirlwinds in its forms. Said forms use violent spinning attacks that will slash anyone in the vicinity. Demons killed by Wind Breathing attacks often comment on how painful and hate-filled the attacks are, according to the Kimetsu no Yaiba Second Fanbook. Like Thunder Breathing, Wind Breathing mirrors a real-life swordsmanship style called Jigen-ryū. This style specializes in opening strikes and high stances.

“That’s right! And that wind… is going to wrench off your head!” – Sanemi to Kokushibo about his Wind Breathing

The Origins of The Five Fundamental Breathing Styles

Yoriichi Tsugikuni’s Sun Breathing

While all new Breathing Styles stem from one of the five fundamental Breathing Styles, those five all originate from Sun Breathing. It is a style developed by a man named Yoriichi Tsugikuni during the Sengoku Period, about 500 years before Tanjiro’s time. Yoriichi is also the strongest Demon Slayer in history, able to defeat Muzan singelhandedly in a flash. Both fortunately and unfortunately, he was a little too skilled, as the Sun Breathing style he developed required incredible skill that hardly anyone possessed. The difficulty of learning Sun Breathing was the catalyst that created the other Breathing Styles since the Demon Slayers had to alter Yoriichi’s style to better suit their limits.

A couple of people managed to learn Sun Breathing, but they were almost all killed shortly after Yoriichi’s death. Fortunately, someone who wasn’t a Demon Slayer also managed to learn the style, a man named Sumiyoshi Kamado, who passed Sun Breathing onto his descendants. Sun Breathing made its way down the Kamado family until finally reaching Tanjiro Kamado, who learned it from his father, Tanjuro.

As mentioned above, anyone who finds themselves capable of using Sun Breathing is sure to be a master swordsman. That’s because you’d need incredible skill to even attempt to study it. All the other Breathing Forms are sort of like bootleg versions of Sun Breathing. They were created because the Demon Slayers simply lacked the skills to perform Sun Breathing techniques and had to tweak them, making them weaker but more usable and teachable.

What About Kokushibo’s Moon Breathing?

It’s Also Directly Derived From Sun Breathing

Other than the five fundamental Breathing Styles, a sixth style, known as Moon Breathing was also directly derived from Sun Breathing. It was developed by Yoriichi’s older twin brother, Michikatsu, and is considered the second-strongest Breathing Style. Jealous of his brother’s talent, Michikatsu turned to Muzan and became a demon to gain more power, becoming the Upper Rank One demon, Kokushibo.

So, why didn’t Moon Breathing become one of the Corps’ fundamental Breathing Styles? Well, the Demon Slayer anime and manga don’t really explain why, but there are a couple of theories among the fanbase. The first is that maybe, like Sun Breathing, Moon Breathing is simply too difficult for most people to learn. Pair that with Michikatsu’s massive ego, and it’s hard to imagine him having the patience to mentor anyone struggling with his style. Another theory is that the Demon Slayer Corps willingly chose not to use the style due to the shame they felt for one of their own joining the demons. It could also be that there were pupils of Moon Breathing, but Kokushibo and Muzan just drove them to extinction, similar to how they almost did with Sun Breathing.

Due to Kokushibo’s longevity as a demon, he has been continually honing his skills in Moon Breathing. It’s why Moon Breathing has the largest number of forms out of all Breathing Styles, having a total of 16 known forms. However, no one really knows how a human Demon Slayer would perform the Moon Breathing forms, as the only examples of them are performed by Kokushibo, who incorporates his Blood Demon Art into the moves. His Blood Demon Art allows him to create and control blades shaped like crescent moons. He often spawns and launches these blades as he performs his Moon Breathing forms, wreaking chaos and death among his opponents.

Demon Slayer is now available to stream on Crunchyroll and Netflix. The release date for the next season of Demon Slayer, the Infinity Castle Arc, has not been announced yet.