Shinobu Kocho

Shinobu wears a warm, easygoing smile no matter the circumstances, often teasing her colleagues, especially Giyu Tomioka. That cheer is largely a mask. After her sister Kanae was killed, she deliberately remodeled her own manner to resemble her, choosing to keep showing the smile her sister had loved while a constant rage burned underneath.

Her hatred of demons runs so deep that Tanjiro Kamado sensed anger on her even as she beamed at him. She lost her parents, her sister, and nearly all of her successors, and she devoted herself entirely to vengeance rather than the ordinary life Kanae had hoped she might lead. Even so, she is sincerely tender toward humans, raising the orphaned girls of the Butterfly Mansion as if they were her own siblings and growing close to her adoptive sister Kanao.

Although she lacks the arm strength to sever a demon's head, Shinobu climbed to the highest rank in the Corps by replacing decapitation with poison. She wields a modified katana ending in a needle-like point that injects a wisteria-based toxin deadly to demons. She is remarkably fast and agile, ranked among the swiftest of the Hashira, and pairs that speed with a brilliant analytical mind and deep pharmaceutical knowledge.

Over the course of a year she saturated her own body with concentrated wisteria poison, turning herself into a dose hundreds of times stronger than what is needed to kill a typical demon. After Doma consumed her, that poison dissolved him from within. She also helped Tamayo develop the drug used to weaken Muzan Kibutsuji in the final battle.

Shinobu created Insect Breathing herself, designing it to compensate for her inability to behead demons. Its forms favor rapid thrusts and stinging strikes that deliver poison rather than landing a single killing cut. Her signature techniques mimic the movements of insects, and her fastest, the Hundred-Legged Zigzag, lets her weave at blinding speed to open a path to her opponent's neck.

During the Mount Natagumo mission she slew the Spider Demon known as Daughter. Her life ended in the Infinity Castle during her clash with Doma, the second strongest of the Upper Ranks, where she sacrificed herself so that her body's poison would ensure his downfall, a plan completed by Kanao and Inosuke.