Love Breathing: Mitsuri’s forms

Mitsuri Kanroji blushes at the slightest thing, marvels at a dish, finds all the Hashira adorable. Then she draws, and her blade unrolls like a ribbon in the air, striking from every side at once. Love Breathing is just like her: cheerful on the surface, formidable in practice.

Here is where this breathing style comes from, its six forms, the unique blade it requires, and the story of the young woman who invented it. To place Love among the other breathing styles, our page on all the Demon Slayer breathing styles presents the fourteen known styles.

What is Love Breathing?

In Demon Slayer, Love Breathing, Koi no Kokyū in Japanese, is a derived style. It was born from Flame Breathing, one of the five basic styles that came from Sun Breathing. Mitsuri created it after being the disciple of Kyojuro Rengoku, the Flame Hashira.

From Flame, Love keeps the energy and generosity. But it completely changes its shape. Where Kyojuro moves straight ahead and strikes head-on, Mitsuri ripples, contorts herself, makes her blade whirl around her. The style relies on a flexibility and a muscular strength almost no one else possesses.

It is therefore a tailor-made style, designed for a single body. No other known demon slayer practises it, and it is hard to see who could. Our article on Flame Breathing presents the original style, and the one on the breathing tree shows the whole family.

The six forms of Love Breathing

Love Breathing has six forms, but Demon Slayer only names five. The fourth never appears. Their names speak of love, desire and cats, the animal of coquetry in the Japanese imagination.

The names make you smile, and they are meant to. The first evokes the turmoil of a first love, the second the torments that keep coming back. Cats appear twice, for their suppleness and their claws. No one else in Demon Slayer has forms so funny to name, or so dangerous to be on the receiving end of.

In combat, these forms draw all their effect from the blade. Thin and long, it whips through the air at insane speed and strikes from angles impossible to anticipate. The opponent thinks they are dodging a cut, and the blade comes back from behind.

What Love demands of the fighter

In Demon Slayer, each breathing style fits a body. Love demands two qualities that rarely go together: colossal strength and the flexibility of a contortionist. The strength is used to control the blade, which whips through the air with every form. The flexibility lets her follow its trajectories and strike from angles no one expects.

It also demands endurance. Love’s forms follow one another without a pause, in waves and whirls, and the fighter never really stops. Mitsuri can fight for a long time without weakening, thanks to her extraordinary constitution and her appetite, which provides the energy she needs.

Like all breathing styles, Love rests finally on Total Concentration Breathing, which the Hashira maintain permanently. Our article on Total Concentration Breathing explains this common foundation, and our page on the Demon Slayer Hashira presents Mitsuri among her peers.

A blade as supple as a whip

Mitsuri’s sword looks like no other in the Corps. Its blade is very thin, almost a strip of metal, so flexible that it bends and unrolls like a whip. It was forged especially for her, because no ordinary blade suited her way of fighting.

Such a weapon would be unusable in other hands. It takes enormous strength to control it, and extreme flexibility to follow its movements. Mitsuri has both. She wears it coiled at her belt, and unfurls it in one move. For a swordsmith, making a blade this thin without it breaking at the first impact is a feat, and it is probably the most singular piece in the whole Corps.

The guard of this blade, a pink and orange flower, can be found on our LED mist katana, which lights up in magenta and gives off a cold mist. It is filed in the complete Mitsuri Kanroji collection and the LED mist katanas collection.

Mitsuri Kanroji, the Love Hashira

In Demon Slayer, Mitsuri was born with a body apart: muscles several times denser than average, a strength surpassing that of grown men, and an appetite to match. As a child, she lifts impossible loads. As a teenager, she devours so many sakura mochi, those pink sticky rice cakes, that her hair turns pink and green.

This difference costs her dearly. At seventeen, a suitor breaks off their engagement, mocking her strength and her hair. Mitsuri then tries to hide: she dyes her hair black, eats less, plays the fragile young lady. She is not happy. She finally decides to be herself, and to look for a place where her strength would be useful.

That place is the Demon Slayer Corps. She also joins with a dream she admits without embarrassment: to find a husband stronger than her, who accepts her as she is. Our portrait of Mitsuri Kanroji, the Love Hashira tells her life in detail.

Mitsuri comes as a pop figure, three pink braids with green tips, pink and green striped stockings, hands open. It is filed in the pop figures collection and the Demon Slayer Corps collection.

A disciple of Kyojuro Rengoku

When Mitsuri joins the Corps, it is Kyojuro Rengoku who takes her under his wing. The Flame Hashira immediately sees what others took for a flaw: her strength, her energy, her zest for life. He teaches her Flame Breathing, with the same generosity he will later show in encouraging Tanjiro.

Mitsuri learns fast, but Flame does not quite suit her. Its straight, powerful forms restrain her flexibility. She gradually moves away from it, keeps her master’s drive and warmth, and invents her own movements. The pupil then goes beyond what she was taught, and Love Breathing is born from that departure.

The bond between the two Hashira remains strong. When Kyojuro dies facing Akaza, Mitsuri loses her former master with him. She keeps one certainty from him: strength is there to protect others. In Demon Slayer, it is the lesson Kyojuro had from his mother, and that Mitsuri carries in turn, in her own way, with a smile. Our portrait of Kyojuro Rengoku, the Flame Hashira tells her master’s life.

Love in the Swordsmith Village

The Swordsmith Village reveals Mitsuri to anime viewers. She is there on a mission when the demons attack, and she faces Zohakuten, the most powerful form of Hantengu, Upper Moon Four. While Tanjiro, Nezuko and Genya hunt down the demon’s real body, Mitsuri holds off his most terrible clone alone.

The fight shows all the power of Love. Mitsuri takes attacks that would kill anyone, protects Tanjiro and the swordsmiths, and unfurls her blade in pink whirls. She also awakens the Demon Slayer Mark, which multiplies her strength and speed.

She holds out until dawn, when Tanjiro finally beheads the real Hantengu. The next day, she laughs with him as if nothing had happened. Our article on season 3 and the Swordsmith Village tells of these fights, and the one on the Hashira’s marks explains what she awakened.

Mitsuri and Obanai

In Demon Slayer, Mitsuri has a discreet admirer: Obanai Iguro, the Serpent Hashira. He never says it, but he writes to her, gives her striped stockings, and looks at her with a gentleness he shows no one else. Mitsuri, for her part, finds in him a friend who never makes fun of her.

Their story is one of the most touching in Demon Slayer, and one of the saddest. Obanai considers himself unworthy of her because of his past, and waits for the end of the war to tell her what he feels. Our article on Serpent Breathing presents his style, and our portrait of Obanai Iguro, the Serpent Hashira tells his past.

This part of their story ends in Muzan’s castle, which the anime has not yet adapted. The two Hashira fight together to the very end, and promise to find each other again in another life. To read this ending, our article on the chapter to read after the anime tells you where to pick up, and our page on the demons and the Twelve Kizuki presents the opponents of the final assault.

Love on screen

In the Demon Slayer anime, Love Breathing can be recognised by its pink ribbons rippling around Mitsuri, its hearts and its petals. The studio ufotable gives it an almost dancing lightness, which contrasts with the violence of the blows. The blade appears as a bright line snaking through the air, impossible to follow.

The fight against Zohakuten, in season 3, is its finest demonstration. Mitsuri whirls in the middle of the demon’s wooden dragons, slices them all, takes the shock waves and goes back on the attack. For many viewers, it is the moment she stops being a comic figure and becomes one of the most impressive fighters in the series. Our article on ufotable, the studio behind the animation tells how these effects take shape.

Love in the Hashira Training

In season 4, Mitsuri leads a stage of the Hashira Training devoted to flexibility. She makes the demon slayers stretch into impossible positions, with an enthusiasm that never flags, while her pupils howl in pain. The scene is one of the funniest of the season, and Mitsuri never loses her smile.

Yet she has a real reason. Love Breathing shows that a supple body strikes from angles the opponent does not see coming. Mitsuri wants to pass on what makes her strong, even if no one else will ever be able to wield her blade. Our article on season 4 and the Hashira Training tells of each stage.

Those sakura mochi that coloured her hair are the stars of our shower curtain: Mitsuri winks as she holds one up, Nezuko holds another, and Tanjiro bursts out laughing. It is filed in the curtains collection.