The Smell of Enchanting Blood

Episode 8 adapts Chapters 14 and 15 and introduces two demons who oppose Muzan rather than serve him. After the transformed man in Asakusa attacks his wife, Tamayo and Yushiro shield Tanjiro from the crowd and lead him to a hidden home. There Tamayo explains how she has reshaped her own body to need almost no blood, and she lays out the research that could one day cure a demon. The episode also reveals the demons Muzan dispatches to retrieve Tanjiro's head.

Tamayo and Yushiro

While Tanjiro restrains the new demon and the police try to pull him off, flower petals and flowing patterns blind the officers. This is Tamayo's Blood Demon Art. She presents herself as both a demon and a doctor who wants Muzan gone, and her assistant Yushiro guides Tanjiro and Nezuko through a wall into a concealed house.

Muzan's cruelty

Sending his human family away, Muzan kills a drunk man and his companions for insulting his pale appearance, then floods a woman's body with so much of his blood that she dissolves entirely. He summons two demons and orders them to bring back the slayer with hanafuda earrings, then is unsettled by a memory of a feared swordsman wearing the same earrings.

A request and an ambush

Tamayo explains that she turned Yushiro into a demon and that she only changes the dying who consent. She asks Tanjiro for blood samples from Nezuko and from demons close to Muzan to develop a cure. As he agrees, the Temari Demon Susamaru and the Arrow Demon Yahaba smash into the house to begin their attack.

The episode is partly named after Chapter 14. The first eyecatcher recreates that chapter's cover and the second recreates the title page of Volume 2. This installment shows a Bright Red Nichirin Sword on screen for the first time. The anime also reorders Muzan's flashback of the swordsman, placing it after he orders the hunt and depicting the meeting in an alley rather than the bamboo-lined path later shown in Chapter 186.