The Final Selection on Mount Fujikasane

The demon slayers’ entrance exam is one of the most brutal ideas in Demon Slayer, and it comes very early in the story. No competition, no regulated fight before a jury: you climb a mountain, stay there seven nights, and those who come back down are in.

The trial serves as a hinge for the whole first part of the series, since it kills two important characters, spares five who will carry the plot, and explains the Water Hashira’s complex. This article details the place, the rules, the demons, the known sessions and what the Corps gives the survivors. Our page about the Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps presents the institution that organises it all.

What is the Final Selection?

The Japanese name already conveys the spirit of the thing. The two words used refer to sorting, an operation that separates what passes from what does not, and the story uses this vocabulary without ever softening it.

The principle is simple to state. The Demon Slayer Corps has no way of checking that a candidate will hold out against a demon, so it puts them in front of demons and watches what happens.

Most candidates train for at least a year before presenting themselves, often with a dedicated trainer such as the former Water Hashira of Mount Sagiri. Our article on Sakonji Urokodaki, Tanjiro’s master details this preparation.

The trial is not a symbolic rite of passage in Demon Slayer. It kills most of those who take part, and the Corps organises it anyway, because it needs swordsmen more than it needs candidates.

Mount Fujikasane and its wisteria

The location is half the set-up. Mount Fujikasane is covered in wisteria, from the foot to halfway up, and these flowers grow there in every season, which happens nowhere else in the series.

Wisteria is poison to the demons of Demon Slayer. A demon will not cross a flowering area, which turns the mountain into a natural prison: the creatures released at the summit can no longer come down.

The upper part, however, has not a single flower. It is a forest above the clearing where the candidates are gathered, and that is where they spend their seven nights, inside the perimeter where the demons roam freely.

The detail has practical consequences throughout the story. Wisteria houses later serve as refuges for wounded demon slayers, and the poison derived from this plant arms the Insect Hashira’s blades and syringes.

The rules, stated on the spot

The candidates climb a long stone staircase at nightfall and gather on a clearing, where the wisteria stops. Two children of the Ubuyashiki family await them there, Kiriya and Kanata, representing the head of the Corps.

The speech takes only a few sentences. Seven nights, no outside help, and those still standing on the morning of the seventh day join the Demon Slayer Corps.

Nothing else is specified in Demon Slayer. No combat instructions, no boundaries, no ban on hiding, which leaves open a strategy several candidates use: avoiding any confrontation for a week.

The organisers do not come back up during the trial. They return on the morning of the eighth day, count the survivors, and congratulate those who present themselves, whatever their number.

The demons locked up on the mountain

The trial’s opponents are demons captured alive by active demon slayers, then left at the summit. The Corps chooses weak targets, which have killed two or three people at most, enough to put a beginner in danger without condemning them outright.

The selection has its limits. A demon deprived of food for years becomes starving and unpredictable, and several of those Tanjiro meets in Demon Slayer are no longer anything like training opponents.

The selection of demons also raises a fundamental problem the series does not hide. The Corps raises its own monsters by feeding them its candidates, and the calculation remains favourable in its eyes since each session produces swordsmen.

Our page about the demons of the series and their hierarchy places these low-level creatures in relation to the demon Moons.

The Hand Demon, the anomaly

One creature escapes all the calculations. A multi-armed demon had lived on this mountain for decades, and had devoured more than fifty candidates over the years.

His habit was targeted. He recognised the fox masks carved by the master of Mount Sagiri, and chose that man’s students, which makes him directly responsible for the deaths of almost that whole household.

Sabito and Makomo are two of his victims. Our article on Sabito and Makomo, the two masked students tells of their passage, and our article on the Hand Demon of the Final Selection details the creature.

Tanjiro comes across him in turn, and he is the one who settles the matter. The boy cuts off his head with the technique the two ghosts taught him, closing a case that had been open for forty-seven years.

The fox-masked students have their own section in the shop, the complete Sabito collection.

Tomioka and Sabito’s session

An earlier session remains famous in Demon Slayer for an abnormally high number of survivors. Giyu Tomioka, Sabito and Murata took part, and almost everyone came out alive.

The reason comes down to a single candidate. Giyu is attacked early, wounded, and drifts in and out of consciousness. Sabito saves him, leaves him with Murata, then sets off again to help the other participants in trouble.

When Tomioka comes round, the trial is over. Sabito has killed every demon on the mountain by himself and saved all the candidates, before dying against the Hand Demon, the only death of his year.

This session explains Giyu’s character throughout the story. He considers himself an impostor, because he killed no demon and was asleep while his friend died for him, and our article on Giyu Tomioka, the Water Hashira follows this wound to its resolution.

You will find the sword of the candidate who saved his intake among all the shop’s katanas, and his friend has his own section in the complete Giyu Tomioka collection.

Tanjiro’s session, five survivors

Tanjiro’s session brings together about twenty young swordsmen, and five come back down. The detail matters for what follows, since these five names carry a large part of Demon Slayer.

Tanjiro Kamado arrives having split a boulder with a stroke of his blade. Zenitsu Agatsuma survives crying and sleeping on his feet. Inosuke Hashibira goes through the week as if it were a stroll. Kanao Tsuyuri passes unharmed. Genya Shinazugawa makes it out too.

The group forms the core of the story. Our article on the Demon Slayer trio and its dynamic tells what follows for three of them, and our article on Tanjiro Kamado, the hero of the series goes back over his full journey.

The proportion gives the measure of the trial. About fifteen teenagers die in a week on this mountain, and in the morning no one comments on the figure.

Four of the five survivors have their own sections, from the complete Tanjiro Kamado collection to the complete Kanao Tsuyuri collection, by way of the complete Zenitsu Agatsuma collection and the complete Inosuke Hashibira collection.

What the candidates say about those seven nights

The series gives few details about daily life during the trial, and this silence is deliberate. We almost never see the candidates sleep, eat or talk to each other, which leaves seven nights only sketched out in Demon Slayer.

The fragments that exist come from the survivors. Zenitsu describes a week spent crying and hiding, Inosuke says practically nothing about it, and Aoi Kanzaki says she survived only by luck, avoiding every fight.

Tanjiro’s case is the best documented, because he is the only one the series follows hour by hour. The boy fights several times, helps other candidates, finds himself isolated, and ends up running into the creature that was waiting at the summit.

One point stands out from all these accounts: no one leaves the mountain unscathed. Those who fought carry wounds, and those who hid carry shame, so much so that Aoi Kanzaki gives up on missions as soon as she joins the Corps.

What does the Corps give the survivors?

On the morning of the eighth day, the survivors gather on the clearing and receive their status. The Demon Slayer Corps takes charge of them immediately, with a series of formalities that resemble joining a barracks.

First their measurements are taken for the uniform, cut from a fibre that resists tearing and fire. Then their rank is engraved on their hand, a mark that appears when they clench their fist, and everyone starts at the bottom of the ladder, the tenth and lowest rank.

Each recruit then chooses the ore for their Nichirin blade. A swordsmith from the village works it, and delivers the weapon in person about fifteen days later, as explained on our page about Nichirin swords and their colours.

A messenger crow completes the kit. The bird relays mission orders, repeats its instructions, and stays attached to its demon slayer, and our article on how to become a Hashira in the series details the rest of the career.

The special cases

Several Demon Slayer characters have an unusual Final Selection, and the story mentions them in passing.

Mitsuri Kanroji passed the trial after only six months of training, whereas most candidates do at least a year, as told in our article on Mitsuri Kanroji, the Love Hashira.

Muichiro Tokito passed his at the same time as Aoi Kanzaki, then became a Hashira in two months, which remains the record in the series. Our article on Muichiro Tokito, the Mist Hashira comes back to this rise.

Aoi Kanzaki, for her part, survived by avoiding all combat, and calls herself a coward for that reason. She chose to stay at the Butterfly Mansion to care for the wounded rather than go on missions, which is one of the rare career exits the series shows.