Akaza, Upper Moon Three of Demon Slayer

He carries no weapon, which makes him a case apart in Demon Slayer. Facing the Flame Hashira in a wrecked carriage, Akaza takes a stance like a martial artist and waits. His whole way of fighting comes down to this detail: he despises blades, he wants to measure bodies.

In Demon Slayer, Akaza is the demon who searches for something without knowing what. This portrait traces his appearance, his fighting style, his twisted relationship with the Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps and the night when a memory costs him more than a beheading. The camp he belongs to is presented on our page about the demons of Demon Slayer and the demon Moons, and his two great fights are placed on our page of every arc of the story.

Who is Akaza?

In Demon Slayer, Akaza looks like an eighteen-year-old young man, his skin almost white, bright pink hair, eyes with blue sclera and yellow irises, with the kanji of his rank engraved on them as with all the Moons of Demon Slayer.

He barely dresses: a short sleeveless haori, open over his chest, white trousers rolled up to the knee, a blue rope at his waist, and beads around his ankles. He goes barefoot, which is less a matter of style than of logic, since he also strikes with his legs.

His personality is direct, stubborn, impulsive. He loves difficult fights, openly despises those he deems weak, and unreservedly respects those who resist, humans included. When an opponent impresses him, he demands their name and does not let go until he has it.

There is nothing warm about this respect. Akaza remembers names like a collector, because they mark the stages of his progress, and he recites them later with an unsettling precision.

If you want to wear this outfit, barely more than a waistcoat, his cosplay is among the demon outfits. You will find everything bearing his name in the collection devoted to Akaza.

The blue lines and what they tell

The blue lines running across his face, neck, chest and arms are not a decorative motif in Demon Slayer. They are his criminal tattoos, the ones a magistrate marked on his forearms when he was human, and which the transformation spread to the rest of his body.

Three lines per arm, added with each of his three arrests. The magistrate had promised him mutilation at the next one, and had called him a demon child, which what follows makes almost ironic.

His human appearance was the same, only plainer: the same hair, but black, pale blue eyes, pale pink eyelashes, an already extraordinary physique and a dark blue yukata. Becoming a demon only changed the colours.

Hakuji, the man he once was

Akaza loses all his human memories on becoming a demon. He keeps only the need to grow stronger, without knowing where it comes from, and it is this void that shapes his whole character in Demon Slayer.

His human name in Demon Slayer was Hakuji. Raised in the slums by a sick father, he stole in town to pay for his remedies. After his third arrest, his father hanged himself, leaving a letter in which he refused medicine paid for that way.

Banished from Edo, Hakuji was taken in by Keizo, the master of a dojo, and given the task of looking after his daughter Koyuki. They were to be married. The rival dojo poisoned the well, Keizo and Koyuki died, and Hakuji killed sixty-seven armed kendo masters with his bare hands before Muzan found him.

The full details of this life, with the fireworks promise and the names of the techniques that stem from it, can be found in our article on Akaza’s human past.

This human past has its own piece in the shop, where Koyuki stands before him, among all the shop’s demons.

Destructive Death and the Compass Needle

His Blood Demon Art in Demon Slayer is called Technique Development. Akaza takes a Soryu school stance, knees bent, one fist closed, one palm open, and unleashes a style of shock-wave strikes he calls Destructive Death.

The Compass Needle is the technique that makes Akaza almost impossible to surprise. It detects the opponent’s will to fight, tracks it even outside his field of vision, and points out their vital points. Tanjiro notices that his fists seem magnetised towards the organs.

The disc is shaped like a snowflake, and Koyuki’s name contains the kanji for snow. Several of his techniques also bear the names of fireworks, echoing a promise he no longer remembers making. The general mechanism of these gifts is detailed in our article on demons’ Blood Demon Arts.

You will find this snowflake engraved in the base of one of his figures, among the demon figures.

The refusal to eat women

This rule is the strangest in the enemy camp, and the story sets it out very early, long before giving the reason. Doma notices it and is surprised, Muzan tolerates it, and no other demon is granted this kind of exception.

Akaza is the only member of the Twelve Moons in Demon Slayer to refuse to eat or harm women, and Muzan has granted him an exemption for it. He knows this refusal deprives him of power, and he keeps to it anyway.

The story leaves him no explanation: he does not know why he imposes this rule on himself. It is a trace of Hakuji, who could not protect Koyuki or her mother, and which the transformation did not erase.

His hatred of the weak comes from the same place, but turned around. The rival dojo never beat Keizo, so it poisoned a well. Akaza keeps the conclusion and forgets the story: the weak are contemptible.

The duel against Rengoku on the train

Akaza appears on the Mugen Train just after the defeat of Enmu, Lower Moon One. He leaps at Tanjiro on the ground, has his arm cut off by the Flame Hashira, regenerates, compliments the blade, then changes target.

The duel that follows is one of the best-known scenes in Demon Slayer. Akaza spends his time offering Kyojuro Rengoku the chance to become a demon, explaining that a human ages and fades while a demon progresses endlessly. The Hashira refuses each time, without discussion.

The balance of power is clear. Akaza regenerates everything, Rengoku bleeds, and the gap widens until dawn. The demon ends up impaled by the Hashira, who holds him to expose him to the sun, and he tears off his own arm to escape. Our portrait of Kyojuro Rengoku, the Flame Hashira tells the end of this fight.

One detail of the duel sums up the character. Akaza breaks off his attack to ask the Hashira’s name, gets it, repeats it, then resumes the fight. He keeps a mental list of everyone who has made him progress, and Rengoku joins it that night.

Akaza comes away from that night with both satisfaction and frustration. He has killed his first Flame Breathing user, and he has heard Tanjiro call him a coward, which haunts him all the way to the Infinity Castle.

What Muzan makes him pay

Akaza presents himself before his master to announce that he has killed a Demon Slayer Hashira. The welcome is icy: Muzan Kibutsuji, the first demon, reproaches him for letting three other demon slayers get away and for finding nothing about the blue spider lily.

The punishment comes through the blood. Muzan takes control of his cells and makes him bleed on the spot, reminding him that even Upper Moon Three has been brought down. Akaza says nothing and withdraws.

His relations with the other Moons are no better. He sees Doma, Upper Moon Two, as an unbearable rival, destroys his head during a meeting, and has his hand cut off by Kokushibo, Upper Moon One, whom he swears to kill one day. How this hierarchy works is detailed in our article on the Twelve Kizuki and their ranks.

The Infinity Castle, Tomioka and Tanjiro

Akaza’s last fight takes place in the Infinity Castle and its shifting rooms, against Tanjiro Kamado and Giyu Tomioka. Fifty years earlier, he had already killed a Water Hashira, and had not met that level since.

Giyu awakens his mark, gains speed and power, and Akaza keeps up without difficulty. Yet he finds the duel long and tiresome, which he openly admits, and our portrait of Giyu Tomioka, the Water Hashira details the weapons used that night.

Tanjiro shifts the balance by reaching a state of perception that lets him read the attacks, then by obtaining a red blade. He cuts off the demon’s head, which grows back, a feat only Muzan had achieved before him.

Akaza keeps fighting without a head, held together by his will to progress alone. That is when the story gives him back his memories, and his strength turns against him.

The memory that finishes him

His memory returns all at once, in one of the most discussed scenes in Demon Slayer: his hanged father, the dojo, Keizo, the well, Koyuki waiting for him. Akaza understands that he has spent two hundred years searching for a strength whose reason he no longer knew.

The scene shows Koyuki and Keizo coming to fetch him, and Hakuji bowing before them one last time. The story does not offer him redemption: it simply gives back what was taken from him when he was transformed.

He also understands that he has hated himself all this time. The weak he despised were himself, the man who was not there to protect his own. The person he had wanted to kill from the start was himself.

So he stops. He ceases to regenerate, lets his body go, and chooses this end over a fight he could still win. No other demon in Demon Slayer destroys himself voluntarily in this way.

His superior does not learn the lesson. Kokushibo, later, judges him weak for having given up, without seeing that it is the only free act of his existence. Our article on the strongest demons in the story places his real level in the hierarchy.