Layered Memories

The thirty-ninth anime episode, the thirteenth of season two, escalates the duel as Daki's severed belts return to her body and restore her full power. Her assault soon spills into the streets, striking down ordinary townspeople who emerge at the commotion. Pushed past his limit, Tanjiro keeps fighting until his body gives out and Nezuko intervenes.

Tanjiro presses Daki with Hinokami Kagura forms, but the obi he had cut free escape the underground chamber and reattach to her, and her hair turns white as she awakens her full strength. When civilians wander into the fight, Daki unleashes a long-ranged obi attack that levels buildings and kills many bystanders, wounding Tanjiro's shoulder and severing a man's hand. The carnage and her cruel taunts ignite Tanjiro's fury, his eyes turning bloodshot.

A flashback presents a letter from Shinjuro apologizing to Tanjiro, praising Kyojuro, and suggesting Tanjiro must be a Sun Breathing user born with a mark. Tanjiro reflects that his own forehead scar came from an accident and his Final Selection, not from birth. Renewed, he grabs Daki's leg, tears off her foot, and demands to know why demons kill the weak. The words trigger a vision in Daki of someone else asking the same thing, and she realizes she carries fragments of Muzan's memories through his cells.

Daki claims she has forgotten her human past and that demons can do as they please. Tanjiro answers with Burning Bones, Summer Sun, searing wounds that she cannot quickly heal, and as he overwhelms her sashes she senses Muzan's own terror through her. He nearly decapitates her, but a vision of his sister Hanako urging him to breathe, and the strain of his wounds, drop him gasping to the ground. As Daki moves to finish him, Nezuko kicks her head off. Enraged by the threat to her brother, Nezuko endures Daki's strikes, regenerates at an Upper Rank's level, and transforms with vine-like markings and a horn, leaving Daki visibly shaken as the tide of the battle turns.

The episode shares its name with a manga chapter, and its eyecatchers loosely recreate a chapter cover. In the English dub, Shinjuro mispronounces his late wife Ruka's name as Luka, likely a translation slip. The installment marks a major turn for Nezuko, whose regeneration and demonic transformation push her power to a new height during the confrontation with Upper Rank Six.