Muzan Kibutsuji

Muzan Kibutsuji is the main antagonist of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. He is the Demon King, the first of his kind, and the progenitor of all other demons in existence. Muzan is also the leader of the Twelve Kizuki, an organization of the twelve strongest demons in existence that serve directly under him.

A millennium ago, during the Heian Era, Muzan was turned into a demon during an experimental treatment trying to cure his terminal illness, and his goal since then was to live without the fear of death and become truly eternal. He plans to accomplish this in two ways: finding the Blue Spider Lily or creating more demons in hopes that one day one would be able to conquer their weakness of sunlight.

As the Demon King, Muzan can control all those who have assimilated his blood to become demons, with Nezuko Kamado, Tamayo, Yushiro, and Chachamaru being the only exceptions. It is later revealed that Muzan is of the same bloodline as the Ubuyashiki Family.

Appearance
Muzan is a tall and muscular man, with an unnaturally pale skin complexion that can be easily confused as being unhealthy and sickly. He has curly black hair, and sharp, almond-shaped eyes. His irises are cat-like in appearance and colored plum red. He also possesses sharp, blue nails on his hands. He appears to be in his twenties.

In his first appearance, Muzan was shown wearing a white fedora with a red ribbon and a somewhat extravagant outfit. The outfit consisted of an embroidered black tuxedo and a white tie over a black dress shirt and white dress pants. He also wore black loafers. As seen in Rui's flashbacks of meeting Muzan, the Demon King sported a slightly different hairstyle and outfit in the past than he did in his first appearance. When he met Rui, Muzan's hair was straighter and parted down the middle. He also wore a loose-fitting tuxedo and a white half-cloak over it.

During his meeting with the Lower Rank demons, he arrived disguised as an elegant woman wearing a long black yukata, causing the Lower Ranks to not initially recognize him. Later, he transforms himself into his latest cover identity - the adopted sickly son to an old couple - taking the form of a young child with pale, white skin and black, silky smooth, neatly combed black hair. His main outfit in this disguise is a plain white button-up shirt and black cargo shorts with long tube socks and loafers.

After he neutralizes Tamayo's poison and emerges from his flesh cocoon, Muzan's hair grows in length and turns white due to Shinobu's poison accelerating his age. He also grows numerous mouths all over his limbs, each one lined with a set of incredibly sharp fangs. His skin also appears to have a dark-red mass growing from the ends of his limbs and branching onto his body. It is later revealed that Muzan has an array of scars across all his body from the wounds inflicted during his first battle against Yoriichi, which had burned down into him to a cellular level and never fully healed despite hundreds of years. These wounds are not visible in plain sight and come to light as he weakens.

During his final struggle, and as a way to slow down the effects of the sunlight, Muzan adopts an enlarged demonic infant form, approximately as tall as a 3 story building when standing up. In this form he has very pronounced blood vessels across his body, small claws in his hands and fanged teeth in his mouth.

Personality
Muzan is cold-hearted, ruthless, intimidating, and exceptionally intelligent. He sees no value in any humans he has encountered and shows little value in his own subordinates. Rarely ever visually upset or happy, he appears completely monotone and detached on most occasions, even when he callously murders his own subordinates. The only times he ever shows emotion are when his vision of perfection is moving forward or when he has subordinates completely submit to his will. The manga shows him to be more expressive, particularly when enraged and his facial features are exaggerated to demonstrate as such (possibly as a way to display his normally unreadable emotions). In the anime, his expressions change slightly and his tone of voice tends to be consistent at nearly all times, accentuating his monotonous demeanor. His cruel and imposing nature has gained him the great admiration and fear of many demons.

His inflated ego and delusional sense of self worth are so large that he cannot stand being mocked or corrected in any fashion, believing that others only exist to serve him. It also means he rarely ever takes any opponent or threat seriously. He brutally killed a drunk man simply for being rude to him, and killed the man's brother and a female companion when they had done nothing, all while proclaiming his own perfection and superiority over them, displaying his pettiness as he won't settle for any mockery and will do anything he pleases until the humiliation is remedied. This event also hints that Muzan has unpleasant memories of his weaker, human past, and is very self-conscious of his unnaturally sickly appearance, immediately following with a lengthy denial that he is unhealthy, sick and much less on the verge of death, in all likelihood a bitter reminder that he is still imperfect. When he confronts Kagaya Ubuyashiki, the man responded to Muzan in a tone of pity and sadness for the life he had led. However, Muzan only interpreted it as insults and threats, which further accentuates his hatred for humanity and the Demon Slayers. He also believes that Heaven has let him off the hook for murdering thousands as he has never seen a God or Buddha.

The most prominent trait Muzan possesses is extreme narcissism, pettiness and an obsession with becoming the perfect being. As he has had over 1000 years to live and observe, along with hardly any real challenges, his extreme egocentrism is almost expected. He considers almost nothing to be his concern except overcoming his inability to walk in the sun, which is his primary drive. His long life and obsessions have caused him to want every plan he concocts to be absolutely perfect, and his god complex prevents him from seeing his own failures. His belief that he is the closest thing to a perfect being causes him to have zero tolerance for any failure, brutally punishing those who fail him or those he considers weak, even if the failures are minor.

Furthermore, his delusional sense of omnipotence is such that he compares himself to natural disasters, namely something that is far beyond what humans can compare to and fight against. As a result of this, he believes the Demon Slayers to be a group of deviants who cannot accept the natural order of things and resume their lives as normal when other people simply move ahead following a tragedy. His analogy evidences his complete inability to feel sympathy or remorse for his actions, given none of the murders he ever committed (directly or indirectly) were the result of an accident but carefully orchestrated acts of pure evil.

Being the obsessive perfectionist he is, Muzan loathes the very concept of change; be it change of circumstances, physical, emotional or change of any kind. He equates change to decay, and thus evidence of imperfection. In his own words, he loves things that remain unchanging, constant and in a state of permanence. At the same time he views one's own humanity as a sign of weakness, believing Gyutaro had lost because he was still attached to his sister Daki, even deriding the Upper Moons, stating they were now ranked in order of how much humanity they had left. Gyutaro's defeat at the hand of the Demon Slayers deeply angered Muzan, as they had undone a status quo that lasted for 113 years, causing him to lash and demand more self-sacrifice out of the remaining Upper Moons. This could also help explain his brutal execution of the Lower Moons as their membership was in a constant state of change, and he grew tired of managing them. Conversely he is pleased whenever he sees progress, being joyful over Nakime's growth after being turned into the Upper Moon Four Demon.

Behind the myriad of façades Muzan displays, and completely offsetting his insatiable ego and lust for perfection, Muzan is unbelievably cowardly. He always avoids conflict whenever possible as evident in his encounter with Giyu Tomioka and Tanjiro Kamado. He states that the duo managing to survive should already be sufficient and that they should just live to earn their wages and put a halt to the cycle of revenge. This trait also complements his manipulative nature, bending many demons to his will to do his bidding while he doesn't get his hands dirty. In the final confrontation between him and the Demon Slayers, Muzan attempted numerous times to escape, either by splitting himself or merely running away, even demanding multiple times for the remaining Demon Slayers to just die and give up fighting, once again cementing his cowardly nature.

He has shown to be very manipulative and cunning, being able to blend in human society normally, even having a family of his own to add. A long life and continued practice has allowed him to take on many roles in society and play them capably, including children and women should he choose to. This life has also given him great intelligence and ability to think tactically. Muzan is a quick-thinker and strategist who is able to deal with unfavorable situations rapidly and quite well, though this may also be because the loss of his subordinates means nothing to him in the long run.

Because of his perceived superiority and his double-faced nature, he feels little attachment to his henchmen, using them and discarding them as disposable pawns whenever he sees fit. He does not allow his subordinates to question him, regularly enacting brutal and ruthless punishments should they do so. Many of his subordinates, in turn, are deeply afraid of him, and measure their words and thoughts carefully for fear of saying anything to displease him. He is able to sway many demons to his side with promises of power, revenge, and grandeur so long as they serve him. His intelligence and manipulation shine here, since many find the promises appealing, as he encounters many of his subordinates at their lowest point, when their emotions are easy fodder for him. Alas, all of these promises are ultimately false, given that Muzan only cares about himself and has no qualms about killing his own subordinates to protect his own safety.

When not hiding behind a façade, his sheer malice and overflowing violent intent are so incredibly malignant, they can be perceived by others. Most notably, Yoriichi Tsugikuni described him as being like boiling magma erupting from a volcano, ready to consume everything. In the anime, the extent of his rage is visible during the Upper Moon meeting, where the many glasses and flasks he was working with, all broke apart and exploded in thousands of pieces in reaction to Muzan's boiling frustration over being unable to achieve his goals, his fury greatly intimidating the Upper Moons.

Beyond his egocentric demeanor lies a sense of self-preservation that easily overrides his megalomania, most notably shown by his act of cursing his subordinates in a terrifying manner so that none of them would even utter his name, or else be killed instantly in a ruthless manner. When pushed into a corner, Muzan's typically calm, arrogant and superior stance collapses, paving the way for panic and fear to take root as he desperately fights for his life, adopting more drastic measures to protect himself. This obsession with survival could well explain Muzan's brutal homicide of three civilians after his first encounter with Tanjiro. Both times he was reminded of two major events where he nearly lost his life, namely his life coming close to ending before his treatment took effect and when Yoriichi overpowered and nearly killed him.

Regardless of Muzan's personal faults, he has repeatedly shown a very notable fondness for both high fashion and higher learning. Whenever shown outside battle, he comes in the appearance of an extremely well dressed individual. In his Tsukihiko guise he dresses in a fedora and suit. On an interesting note his 'wife' Rei is shown in a cloche hat and elegant dress, hinting that he enjoys himself living in wealth and luxury. Muzan is also well known for selling Gyokko's pots which fetch a high price. In his Toshikuni guise, he wears button up pants and a dress shirt, and is shown doing a great deal of studying. When talking to the Upper Ranks, he was casually mixing various chemicals showing he had an expertise in chemistry, more than likely to create a medicine in order to improve his demonic physiology to conquer the sun and/or not need to consume flesh and blood.

Later, upon his defeat and final moments as he was burning by the sun, Muzan showed a much more vulnerable side to his personality as he slowly disintegrated to ash and lamented on his life and choices. It is revealed that Muzan's true fear of dying and immense desire to live and survive was due to him being born "dead," where his heart would constantly stop in his mother's womb and was assumed stillborn until he fought to breathe before his cremation. Muzan's desire for "life" and his near constant struggles while human constructed his obsessive ambition to survive, and he truly felt vulnerable whenever he was reminded of his human frailty. However, even when on the brink of death, he is still utterly unrepentant of murdering and eating humans for a thousand years, stating that he could not remember a single person he had killed.

However, as Muzan reflects on his life while dying from sunlight, he came to understand and accept Kagaya Ubuyashiki's words to him on the fact that everything inevitably dies and the only true "immortal" thing in the world are someone's emotions, feelings and memories. This realization brings Muzan to tears and genuinely moves his heart, causing him to ironically adopt Yoriichi and Kagaya's belief and focus on leaving "something" behind in order to truly become "immortal".

Abilities
Overall Abilities: As the Demon King, the first and the progenitor of his kind, Muzan is the strongest demon in existence. Even after dissolving a drug that was supposed to weaken his powers and turn him back into a human, Muzan easily annihilated close to a hundred Demon Slayers in a short period of time effortlessly. In his bout with a marked Giyu Tomioka and Tanjiro Kamado, the former stated that an Upper Rank's strength is incomparable to Muzan's, while the latter was unable to even follow his attacks and could only dodge by pure instinct. After Tanjiro got close to the Demon King, Muzan nonchalantly slashed out Tanjiro's eye, and later stated that his attacks were too fast for him to detect through smell.

After unleashing his back whips, Muzan massacred dozens more Demon Slayers and was stated to be too fast for Obanai Iguro, who remarked that he couldn't continuously breathe even with the assistance of Giyu and Mitsuri Kanroji and was constantly being damaged by the Demon King's attacks. As Muzan's attacks got fiercer and faster, even a marked Gyomei was pressed back by his attacks while Mitsuri was completely unable to see his attacks in the first place, being forced to dodge based on pure luck and instinct and later getting overpowered by Muzan's whips. Obanai also remarked that to buy one second for dawn to arrive against the Demon King, the Demon Slayer Corps has to sacrifice the lives of countless Demon Slayers, further exemplifying his immense power. With the arrival of Kanao Tsuyuri, Zenitsu Agatsuma, and Inosuke Hashibira, the Demon Slayers started to gain the upper hand. However, this was short-lived when Muzan unleashed hidden whips along his thighs that were even faster, allowing him to completely overwhelm Giyu, Gyomei, Sanemi, Obanai, Zenitsu, Inosuke, and Kanao, even if the former four were marked and the latter three were initially hidden and had the element of surprise. Moreover, Gyomei's leg was slashed off and Giyu's right arm was severed, while the others were severely injured from the attack with the exception of Kanao, who was nonetheless left paralyzed with fear in the face of such ferocious strength.

When Tanjiro, who had mastered Sun Breathing after observing the movements from the strongest Demon Slayer in existence, and saved Kanao by slashing off Muzan's arm, had arrived to face him, the two were able to trade blows with each other. When the effects of the aging drug started becoming significant and Obanai arrived to assist Tanjiro, the latter stated that the Demon King is still extremely strong despite the drugs making the Demon Slayers' attacks effective and consuming his stamina trying to decompose it. After being driven into a corner, he unleashed a new technique which overwhelmed and incapacitated both Obanai and Tanjiro. Furthermore, despite his depleting stamina and the drugs weakening him, the Demon King could hold off the combined strength of Inosuke, Zenitsu, and Tanjiro together by himself. As dawn arrived and Tanjiro had pinned Muzan to a wall to prevent him from escaping, the Demon King unleashed a shockwave that blew off the Demon Slayer's arm and overpowered Sanemi, Mitsuri, and Obanai in the process. As a last ditch attempt at escape, Muzan made his flesh swell immensely, exponentially increasing his size in order to protect himself from the sunlight. In this state, it took the combined might of all the Demon Slayer Corps to keep him from escaping and bring an end to the Demon King once and for all. However, Gyomei, Mitsuri, Obanai, and Tanjiro were killed in the confrontation, while the rest of the combatants were left fatigued and heavily injured. Despite this, Muzan still managed to pass on his blood and will to the deceased Tanjiro, reviving him as the new Demon King.

Biological Absorption: Muzan has displayed the ability to absorb, assimilate and dissolve organic and inorganic objects. This was first seen when Muzan absorbed the flesh seeds that pierced his skin in order to nullify its effects. Later, he also accidentally absorbed Tamayo's arm as well as a drug that turns demons back into humans. This is also seen in how he planned to eat and assimilate Nezuko Kamado to obtain her immunity to the sun. He is also seen absorbing the bodies of Kamanue and Mukago following Rui's death.

Combat Form: When in combat, Muzan can adopt a more monstrous and battle-esque form, with a dark-red scale-like mass covering most of his body (prominently on his limbs, his forehead, and the entirety of his lower body), featuring sharp-toothed wide mouths all over of his body, and longer pale white hair. The sharp toothed jaws located all over his body in this form not only serve as his main form of offense in battle, but also have the purpose of helping him recover faster since he can use the jaws to tear apart his opponents and eat their flesh, simultaneously killing his opponents and regaining his strength at the same time.


 * Arm Whips: Muzan can drastically elongate both his arms, growing spiky red or white coverings around his extended limbs and shapeshifting his hands into bladed protrusions, which he swings like whips to slash apart his targets. Each of these whips range from 90 centimeters (35.4 inches) to 10 meters (32.8 feet) long. When swung with the intent to kill, they were extremely fast, precise, and accurate, with even Yoriichi Tsugikuni stating that seeing them nearly hit him was the first time he had ever felt fear, and that even a single scrape could kill him. He can also rotate his arm whips at immense speeds to slice up anyone caught in its area of attack. Due to their extreme range and lack of set shape and length, it is very difficult for his opponents to discern how he will attack. Muzan can also increase their width and size even further, even growing jaws all over his arm whips to bite his targets in combination with slashing at them.
 * Mouth Suction: Muzan's arm whips also possess numerous mouths full of sharp fangs all throughout them. Muzan mainly uses these mouths to inhale with immense suction strength, causing anyone near it to be sucked into its sharp jaws and be slashed apart. This also further increases his attack range. These abnormal mouths will prove severely impeding for his targets as avoiding them will consume a lot more stamina.
 * Back Whips: Upon arriving outside the Infinity Castle, Muzan grew nine thin extensions, each of four meters in length, akin to spine-like protrusions from his back that extend into bladed whips. With them, Muzan is able to increase the number of attacks he can unleash in a single moment, allowing him to massacre dozens of Demon Slayers in an instant and hold back 5 Hashira. Furthermore, they are fast and getting read on their trajectory is difficult, making it fairly unpredictable.
 * Thigh Whips: After the Demon Slayers started to gain the upper-hand, Muzan unleashed eight new whips, four on each side of his thigh, each of them seven meters in length, to easily overpower them. Muzan was able to accomplish this since unlike his back whips, they are much quicker and can be projected from his body and retracted. This also allows him to attack from his target's blind spots, making it extremely difficult to counter. These thigh whips alone were able to overpower four marked Hashira and three Hashira-level Demon Slayers in a single attack.

Demonic Blood: After the experimental treatment gave him a new body and physiology, Muzan's blood develops special mutagenic properties that can transform humans into creatures known as demons. His special blood also seems to give rise to a plethora of special abilities to those that assimilated his blood such as powerful and quick regeneration, the power to control the flesh, immortality, an accelerated growth rate, enhanced physical prowess and even supernatural abilities called Blood Demon Arts.

Muzan can also further empower a demon by giving more of his blood, enhancing their pre-existing abilities. However, this is limited to how much blood the recipient can withstand and adapt to. If a human were to take in too much blood from Muzan, their body would mutate faster than they can withstand, causing them to self-destruct into one giant mass of flesh before disintegrating into ash. The same would also presumably happen to a demon if they couldn't withstand the blood's effects, as implied by Muzan.

Later, it was revealed that Muzan has learned to weaponize this particular trait of his blood. By coating his whips with his blood, he can inject an opponent with his blood when they get damaged.The blood's high potency means that even small dosages would be too much to handle and instead act like a poison to destroy the human body's cells shortly after they enter. It is later implied by Kokushibo that users of Total Concentration Breathing resist the effects of Muzan's blood more than normal humans. Those that have awakened the Demon Slayer Mark resist the blood's cellular destruction effects even more, though it was stated by Muzan himself that it won't take more than five minutes for their bodies to disintegrate.
 * Blood Memory Transfer: In his final struggle for survival, Muzan is able to transfer the remainder of his blood along with his memories into a suitable body, turning his new host into a demon and exerting his influence. He successfully did this with Tanjiro when he was on the verge of death, reviving him after his death. Furthermore, this technique also allows the host to transfer their abilities, as seen when Tanjiro makes use of Muzan's whips and regeneration. This transfer, however, is not perfect as Tanjiro was reduced to a feral state, only attacking based on Muzan's desire to kill the Demon Slayers. This ability is also known to have been unknowingly used by Muzan whenever he created another demon or shared his blood with them, as seen when the Upper Ranks, Daki and Hantengu were able to catch glimpses of Muzan's memories of Yoriichi Tsugikuni during their battles against Tanjiro Kamado.
 * Consciousness Implantation: Muzan can implant a part of his consciousness into a demon he creates using his blood, provided that he injected them with gigantic amounts of his blood during their creation. As seen where a sliver of his mind was still present inside Tanjiro's mind despite having already been killed by sunlight, and later attempted to sway, control, and coax Tanjiro into "inheriting" his will and stay as a demon. However, a clear difference between his power to "control" a demon and to "possess" him is the fact that he could no longer forcibly take control of a demon and force them to do as he wills and instead he must convince them to do his bidding, giving his victims the chance to resist him and escape from his grasp.
 * Demon Manipulation: Muzan can control demons to a certain extent, as seen when he was able to take control of Nakime's body in order to try to force an absorption of Yushiro's cells in order to stop his interference when he attempted to usurp control of the Infinity Castle. However, this ability requires extensive concentration as Muzan immediately lost control of her the moment he lost focus due to needing to defend himself while in the middle of battle. Other demons can also wrestle control back from him.Kibutsuji's curse affects Susamaru.png
 * Kibutsuji's Curse: Muzan places a curse on all demons that have assimilated his blood. If any demon divulges his last name "Kibutsuji" out loud, the curse activates, which causes their bodies to stop regenerating and allowing Muzan's cells inside the demon to take over and kill them, regardless of their original intent. This was seen with Susamaru, who had accidentally said his name despite having no malice or ill intent towards him and was still destroyed by the curse, implying that the curse is automatic. However the curse can also be intentionally triggered by Muzan. This was seen when he killed Nakime, who was manipulated by Yushiro. Because of this, many demons regard Muzan with great fear and respect, simply referring to him as "that Man" or "Him" in order to not trigger the curse, while demons within the Twelve Kizuki refer to him as "Lord" or "Master". However, it has been proven that if Muzan is weakened or someone has sufficient willpower, demons can break free from the curse which has been seen with Tamayo, Yushiro, and Nezuko.
 * Demon Memory Access: Muzan can "see" the memories of demons he absorbed, as seen when he was able to "ask" Tamayo's cells that he had obtained upon absorbing her for information on what kind of drug she had injected into him. Upon being denied and insulted by Tamayo's surviving consciousness, he also showcased the ability to forcibly reveal the desired information by "watching" her memories, as seen when he was able to see her memories of her developing the drug together with Shinobu Kocho and Yushiro.
 * Demon Power Nullification: As explained by Tamayo, as the creator and progenitor of the demon race, Muzan is the only known demon capable of inflicting life threatening wounds capable of completely destroying the cells of other demons without the need of Nichirin Swords or sunlight. This was shown when he punished Akaza by causing his cells to decay all throughout his body without the Upper Rank being able to regenerate from it like he would with any other injury.
 * Telepathy: Muzan has the ability to read the thoughts of those that he has shared his blood with by looking at them. Later, it was shown that he could also send telepathic messages and have full conversations with other demons as well, as seen when he appeared in Akaza's mind to convince him to continue fighting as well as communicating with Kokushibo to check how many Hashira he had defeated and to order him to keep them at bay until he finished recovering from Tamayo's poison. Muzan has also stated he can sense the location of all demons. However, the further away they are from him, the harder it will be for him to interact and track them. Muzan is also able to see through the senses of other demons. However this ability is limited strictly to what is in their perception, so if a demon's senses are fooled, Muzan is unable to discern the difference as well.

Extrasensory Perception: Muzan possesses extremely acute senses that even allow him to perceive things outside the normal range of perception, which he displayed by easily discerning the presence of humans instantly even when they were scattered all around a mountain and detecting the wounded Demon Slayers regaining consciousness despite being far away from them. This was also shown when Muzan was able to discern the locations of Zenitsu, Kanao and Inosuke with great accuracy solely by the dust clouds rising and the sounds that they produced.

Genius Intellect: Having lived for over a millennia and gained further experience from the telepathic link with demons he control, Muzan is extremely clever and erudite. Since he has five fully functioning brains, it would most likely boost his intelligence and other mental capabilities such as memory and cognitive processing. He was also able to evade the Demon Slayer Corps for nearly a thousand years despite the leaders of the Corps, the Ubuyashiki Family possessing great foresight and intuition, and has also used demons to create distractions somewhere far away when he wants to hide something from the Corps. As a human he was skilled at reading the negative emotions of others and was able to manipulate his five wives to commit suicide.

As a demon, Muzan was shown to manipulate them to do his bidding without them realizing at all, like compelling Susamaru to fight by convincing her she was a member of the Twelve Kizuki or encouraging Daki to kill Nezuko Kamado by swaying her with words. Muzan is also a master at multiple fields of science, like chemistry and possibly biology, experimenting with chemicals to try to find a cure to conquer to sun. He also enjoys importing goods, learning foreign languages, and studying newly invented machines. Finally, Muzan was able to impersonate rich and influential individuals regardless of gender or age and blend in with human society to create networks for information gathering and to secure funding using the different identities he assumed, without the humans he commands and manipulates being aware he is a demon at all.

He was also shown to possess great intellect in battle. Initially, he utilizes his shapeshifting ability to create numerous mouths on his arm whips in order to drag his targets towards him or drain his targets of stamina. Tanjiro also states that Muzan is a creature that is constantly changing, allowing him strike in an unexpected way. This was shown when he suddenly changes his attack pattern and unleash whips on his thighs to attack his opponents from their blind-spots and instantly overpower him. When being driven into a corner by Tamayo's drugs, Muzan utilizes a completely new attack to instantly incapacitate Obanai and Tanjiro. Lastly, when Tanjiro pins Muzan to a wall with his arms slashed off by Sanemi and Mitsuri, Muzan contorts his facial features, causing his mouth to gape in an attempt to bit Tanjiro's head off.

Immeasurable Speed & Reflexes: Muzan is tremendously fast, possessing movement speed and reflexes that surpass the Upper Ranks of the Twelve Kizuki. His immense speed was first displayed in the Lower Rank meeting, where Muzan decapitated a fleeing Wakuraba who travelled a far distance, and even returned to his original position before Wakuraba even processed what had happened. Later, he decapitated his pretend mother when he was in his child form without the maid beside her even realizing what had happened. After awakening from his flesh cocoon, Muzan instantly annihilated dozens of Demon Slayers before they had the chance to react. Additionally, Muzan was so fast that Tanjiro Kamado, who could keep up with Akaza, and Mitsuri Kanroji, who could keep up with Zohakuten, couldn't even perceive his attacks and could only rely on pure luck and instinct to evade them. He was also able to constantly damage and out-speed Giyu, Obanai, and Mitsuri, and later Gyomei, Sanemi, who both kept up with Kokushibo, Zenitsu, who blitzed Kaigaku, Inosuke, and Kanao, who both battled Doma. After being driven into a corner, Muzan unleashed his thigh whips so fast that all the aforementioned Demon Slayers, with the exception of an already injured Mitsuri, were completely unable to react in time and were easily overpowered and injured.

Immeasurable Strength: As the Demon King, Muzan's physical strength is superior to that of all demons in existence. He is stronger than Akaza, who can tear through buildings with his bare fists and punch a Nichirin sword to pieces, Doma, who could form veritable blizzards by waving his fans at high speed, and Kokushibo, who wields an immense katana at a rate imperceptible to even marked Demon Slayers. This was shown when he killed a grown man with a single punch to the face, causing him to fly back, hitting a building and causing cracks in it. He also managed to kill a bigger man by simply kicking him. Even after being significantly weakened by the Anti-Kibutsuji Drugs, he still possessed enough physical strength to destroy huge sections of buildings, create massive craters in the ground and lift the debris of buildings that trapped him with relative ease. In his infant form, he could crush vehicles and could only be held down by the combined efforts of Gyomei Himejima, the Hashira with the greatest physical strength, and dozens of other Kakushi, and still had trouble keeping him from moving. The force he exerted was also able to break Gyomei's chain which even Kokushibo's katana could not sever.

Nigh-Absolute Regeneration: As the Demon King, Muzan possesses the fastest and most advanced regeneration out of all demons, recovering so fast that it seemed like the attacks phased through him and he was never injured in the first place. He displayed his flawless regenerative ability on multiple occasions. Most prominently, Muzan has overcome the weakness of decapitation by Nichirin Swords, as shown when he completely regrew his head moments after it was pulverized by Gyomei's spiked flail. After being caught in a huge explosion orchestrated by Kagaya Ubuyashiki, Muzan was able to instantly regenerate his body after having it been damaged extensively and also manages to circumvent the metal spikes added into the explosion meant to slow down his healing speed.

Later, in his battle against Obanai, Mitsuri and Giyu, they landed multiple slashes on the Demon King, but to seemingly no avail as Muzan had regenerated the moment his body was sliced, making it seem like their attacks did not land in the first place. Additionally, his regenerative power was still functional even when he got cut by the Hashira with their Bright Red Nichirin Swords, albeit the recovery process was slower than usual. Muzan's greatest regeneration feat was when he completely regrew his body from a lump of flesh the size of a human's head, even after being slashed apart by Yoriichi Tsugikuni's Bright Red Nichirin Sword that burned him at a cellular level. Furthermore, Muzan stated himself that normal Bright Red Nichirin Swords and slashing attacks wouldn't have an effect on him due to his advanced regenerative ability.

Unlimited Stamina & Endurance: Like all demons, Muzan possesses infinite stamina and endurance, never getting tired nor feeling any pain. This was shown when he didn't flinch nor show signs of pain or agony when his head was pierced by a sword. Even after getting slashed and pierced by the Bright Red Nichirin Swords of the Hashira, which was shown to cause pain to Kokushibo, Muzan didn't show any signs of pain.The only time Muzan showed any signs of exhaustion was during the latter stages of the final confrontation against him, but even then, the drug developed by Tamayo and Shinobu had been in effect for almost five hours and his body was biologically aged by over 9,000 years. Despite this, he continued to press on and hold the advantage while pushing the Demon Slayers to the brink of death.

Fighting Style
Whip Proficiency: Despite not being trained in combat like most members from the Twelve Kizuki, Muzan is nonetheless proficient in battle, having fought Demon Slayers over his thousand-year long existence. When fighting, Muzan utilizes bladed and flexible whips as his main form of attack. However, instead of using his flesh to form a weapon, Muzan instead contorts his own body to project said whips, giving him the added advantage of manipulating its shape and controlling the trajectory of his whips at will. Initially, he contorts his arms into whips and uses it strike his targets from afar while he remains stationary. He later grew a total of 9 whips from his back to increase the number of attacks he can unleash at once. Upon being cornered, Muzan further increases the amount of whips he uses by growing 8 whips in total, with 4 on each thigh, to strike his opponents in their blind-spots in addition to it being retractable. While using his whips, Muzan also employs several strategies to increase his efficiency in combat, such as rotating his arm whips at immense speeds similar to a tornado or extending his arm whip into the ground and attack his target from below.

Blood Demon Art
Biokinesis: Muzan's Blood Demon Art grants him powerful biokinetic abilities, most prominently the ability to manipulate his body at will and shapeshift instantly. Though all demons have the innate ability to manipulate their flesh, Muzan takes it to a new level, possessing the ability to change his appearance, flesh, and organs at an unparalleled level of speed and precision. This was first shown during the Lower Rank meeting where he took on the appearance and aura of an adult female which fooled the Lower Moons. He later contorted his left arm into a large, grotesque, and monstrous form with numerous mouths and eyes, which he used to kill and consume the Lower Ranks. Afterwards, Muzan uses this ability to take on the appearance of a child to attain a new disguise amongst humans, even selectively shifting the color of his eyes when talking to Akaza.

During the battle inside the Infinity Castle, Muzan turned into a gigantic flesh cocoon in order to dissolve the poison that turns him back into a human. After emerging from the cocoon, Muzan took on a more battle-esque form and grew jaws all over his body to quickly kill and consume Demon Slayers to recover strength. When in combat, Muzan utilizes extremely long and flexible distorted whip-like appendages that are as sharp as swords to attack his opponents. He was shown to be able to grow whips on his arms, back, and thighs and can freely manipulate their movements and shape at will. Additionally, he can also grow mouths on these whips and create a huge suction effect from them to drag his targets towards them to slice them apart. Muzan can also contort his torso into a giant beastly mouth to release a shockwave energy-like blast from it. Furthermore, he can distort his mouth and cause it to gape extremely widely, growing sharp teeth all over his face in an attempt to bite Tanjiro's head off.

His biokinetic abilities are advanced to the point that he can create puppets of flesh and command them. Muzan also has a very unique anatomy which he achieved by manipulating and altering his own bodily properties. Possessing the grand total of seven hearts and five brains, these extra organs seemingly are largely responsible for the majority of his abnormally powerful constitution and his resistance to decapitation by Nichirin Swords. Conversely, should many of them be destroyed simultaneously, he would be significantly weakened. He can also split himself into over a thousand pieces in order to escape and later reattach pieces of his split body to regenerate completely.

After dawn breaks and being pinned by Tanjiro, Muzan, in a panic, made his flesh swell to the point he resembled that of a gigantic infant in an attempt to protect his main body from being burned by the sun. This form was shown to possess immense physical strength and durability due to its sheer size, as seen as Muzan was not damaged by a falling bookshelf and two cars ramming straight into his body. He could also crush cars with his bare hands and withstand the force of a bus pushed by numerous Kakushi.

Techniques
Black Blood, Brambles (・) - Muzan uses his own flesh and blood to create several black spiked-barbed wires to entangle his target.
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Shockwave Energy Blast: Muzan morphs his torso into a gigantic beastly mouth, and projects a long-ranged energy-like shockwave that severely damages the nervous systems of those caught in it, causing extreme seizures and convulsions, even rendering them unable to breathe for a brief period of time due to damage inflicted to the target's lungs. This attack was so strong that when Tanjiro and Obanai were damaged by this technique, even Kiriya and his sisters, who were connected to them through the crows in the area, received a brunt of the attack.


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Trivia

 * Muzan's last name contains the Go-on'yomi reading of the kanji for "demon", the Kan-on'yomi for "dance" and the kokuji "Tsuji". His first contains the Go-on and Kan'yō-on'yomi reading for "miserable, pitiful, merciless".
 * Muzan's first name can also be a play on the words for six and three, hence, the official Kimetsu no Yaiba Twitter account refers to June 3 as "Muzan Day".
 * Muzan was both born and become a demon in the Heian Era during the early 900's.
 * Muzan was ranked in 11th place in first character popularity poll for the series, with 285 votes.
 * After becoming a demon, Muzan settled down with five different women throughout the Heian period. However, because of his lack of empathy and sensitivity as a demon, he verbally abused all five of his wives to the point it drove them all to commit suicide.
 * The Ubuyashiki family are descendants of Muzan's original blood relatives, who, due to the family having birthed the original demon, were cursed with an unknown incurable and untreatable recessive genetic disease that has killed each and every family member—both past and present—before they could reach the age of thirty.
 * Later, upon his defeat and death, it is revealed that this "curse" was successfully removed from the Ubuyashiki clan as Kagaya's son, Kiriya Ubuyashiki, had successfully lived a full life, even surviving to become the oldest living person in Japan by the time of the modern era.
 * Muzan is the only villain character who appears in the cover page of the manga volumes (2 and 22).

Quotes

 * (To a female civilian) "Does my complexion look unhealthy to you? Is my face pale? Do I look sickly to you? Do I look like I'm not long for this world? Do I look like I'm about to die? Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm a living being who's infinitely close to perfection."
 * (To Akaza) "Akaza, you seem to be under a misconception. Why even bother to tell me you killed a mere Hashira? It is only natural for a Demon to defeat a human. What I seek is the annihilation of the entire Demon Slayer Corps itself. We must kill every last one so they never sully my sight again. This isn't a complicated task yet you still failed. What is the meaning of this? You proudly report having killed a Hashira but you left three Demon Slayers alive. Why didn't you finish them off? I sent you because I trusted you'd get the job done, Akaza... [...] You disappoint me. If you took a blow from a swordsman who isn't even a Hashira... then Upper Rank 3 has indeed fallen."
 * (To Gyokko) "The one thing I hate is "change". Changes in circumstances. Changes in body. Changes in emotion. In most cases. Every change is "degradation". It is decline. The one thing I like is "permanence". If something doesn't change for an eternity. It's in a perfect state."
 * (To Kagaya Ubuyashiki) "The heavens are not punishing me. Despite the hundreds, thousands of humans I've killed, I've been let off the hook. And I have never seen a God or Buddha over these thousand years."
 * "Persistent. You're all seriously persistent. And it bores me. It sickens me from the bottom of my heart. Whenever you open your mouth, you only remember that one dumb notion about avenging your parents, kids, or siblings. You've all survived. That should be enough for you. So your family got slaughtered. What's the problem here? Think of yourself as lucky, and go back to the way you lived before. [...] Look at it this way. Being killed by me is the same as encountering a great calamity. You don't need to think hard about it. Rains, winds, volcanos, eruptions, earthquakes. Nobody tries to swear revenge on a natural disaster, no matter how many lives it takes. You can't bring dead humans back to life. Why not just fussing over the issue all the time, and live quietly to earn your daily wages. Most humans live that life. Why can't you all do that? There's only one reason. The Demon Hunters are an assembly of deviants. And I'm tired of dealing with deviants. I'm the one who really wants to put an end to all this."
 * (About Yoriichi Tsugikuni) "The first time I saw him, he looked very weak. There was no ambition, no willpower, no hatred, and no killing intent. Yet that man would decapitate and slash at me. Moreover, the wounds he gave me have continued to burn my flesh for over hundreds of years, like the sun. Not even the Gods or the Buddha could have predicted that. It only seems like a stupid fairy tale. The real monster was that man, not me!!
 * "All that lives must die. Only feelings are eternal and undying. That is true. I do not remember a single human being I have killed. Flesh dies and that is the end. However... their feelings passed on and never fell to ruin and have even defeated me. I have witnessed that fact with my own eyes and I was so moved that I trembled."
 * (To Tanjiro Kamado) "Tanjiro Kamado... You will conquer the sunlight and become the strongest demon- the king of demons! That is because you are the elder brother of Nezuko Kamado and thus share her blood. You will not die. I believe that. Make my dream come true... Tanjiro. In my place... you must destroy... the Demon Slayer Corps!"

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Muzan Kibutsuji Мудзан Кибуцуджи Muzan Kibutsuji Muzan Kibutsuji Muzan Kibutsuji Kibutsuji Muzan Muzan Kibutsuji Muzan Kibutsuji 鬼舞辻無惨 鬼舞辻無慘 pt-br:Muzan Kibutsuji