Why does Doma feel nothing?

In Demon Slayer, Doma is the friendliest demon on the surface. He smiles constantly, speaks gently to everyone and calls himself everybody’s friend. He is also one of the cruellest, able to devour a woman who trusted him without changing expression.

This contrast has a simple and chilling explanation: Doma feels nothing. This article goes over his childhood as a guru, what this emptiness changes in the way he kills, the victims who paid the price, and the final scene where he believes he finally feels something. Our page on the demons of Demon Slayer and the Moons places him in Muzan’s hierarchy.

What Doma does not feel

This table sums up the character. Doma is not cold in the usual sense: he has no emotions he would be hiding. He has none at all. Everything he shows is an imitation, learned by watching others.

The author of Demon Slayer gives him no excuse. Almost all the other Moons have a tragic past that explains their fall: Akaza lost his fiancée, Gyutaro and Daki grew up in poverty, Kokushibo suffered from his jealousy. Doma lived through nothing of the sort.

The emptiness was there from birth. The story attributes it neither to trauma nor to Muzan’s blood, which he received only much later. Our page on all the characters of Demon Slayer lets you compare his path with that of the other demons.

A child raised up as a god

Doma is born with almost white blond hair and rainbow eyes, which change colour with the light. His parents see a divine sign in this. They found a cult around him and present him to the followers as a child able to hear the voice of the gods.

The little boy spends his days listening to the troubles of the adults who come to consult him. He finds them pitiful, without understanding why they suffer so much over things that seem unimportant to him. Yet he learns to cry with them and to tell them what they want to hear.

His family life has nothing sacred about it. His father has affair after affair with the followers, his mother sinks into jealousy. One day, she kills her husband, then poisons herself. Doma, who discovers the scene, thinks of only one thing: the smell of blood in the room, which ought to be aired out.

Our article on religion in Demon Slayer comes back to the place of beliefs in the series, from Gyomei the monk to Doma’s cult.

Why does he accept Muzan’s blood?

At twenty, Doma crosses paths with Muzan, who gives him his blood. He does not resist, sets no conditions, seeks no revenge. He accepts the way one accepts an invitation, out of curiosity more than desire.

His transformation changes almost nothing in his life. He remains at the head of the cult, still receives the followers, and simply starts eating them. He climbs the ranks of the Moons at remarkable speed and becomes Upper Moon Two, just behind Kokushibo.

Muzan himself does not like him much. He finds him too flippant, too talkative, and distrusts this demon who seems to want nothing. Our article on Doma, Upper Moon Two details his powers and his path.

The rank he carries in his rainbow eyes does not make him any prouder. Doma does not seek glory; he seeks nothing. That may be what makes him so dangerous.

His two golden fans, which he wields like blades, are found on a figure from the demon figures collection.

Killing to “save”

Doma has a justification for his killings, and it flows directly from his emptiness. Since he does not understand human suffering, he concludes that it has no meaning. People suffer for nothing, and dying frees them from it.

So he eats his followers, convincing himself that he is saving them. Once devoured, they live in him forever, never again knowing sorrow. He prefers women, whom he considers more nourishing, and he has devoured an immense number of them over the centuries.

This reasoning makes Doma very different from Akaza, who on the contrary refuses to kill women. Our article on why Akaza does not kill women explains this rule, which Doma finds absurd.

The two demons often cross paths. Doma calls himself Akaza’s best friend, puts a hand on his shoulder, teases him. Akaza, for his part, cannot stand him.

Ice in his own image

Doma’s power resembles his character. He wields ice, which he draws from his own blood: frozen statues, crystal lotuses, clouds of icy powder he scatters with a flick of his fan. Our article on the demons’ Blood Demon Arts presents his techniques among those of the other Moons.

This powder is his most treacherous weapon. It is almost invisible, and breathing it in damages the lungs from the inside. For demon slayers whose whole strength lies in their breathing, it is a fearsome poison: a fight against him is sometimes lost without a single blow landing.

Demon Slayer fans often see a symbol in it. A demon who feels nothing fights with cold, and freezes what he touches the way he has always looked at others, from a distance and without warmth.

Kanae and Kotoha, two victims who matter

Among Doma’s hundreds of victims, two change the course of Demon Slayer. The first is Kanae Kocho, the Flower Hashira. She faces him, loses the fight and dies in the arms of her sister Shinobu, after asking her to give up fighting.

Shinobu does no such thing. She devotes the rest of her life to preparing her revenge against the demon with rainbow eyes. Our article on Kanae Kocho, the Flower Hashira tells of this older sister.

The second victim is Kotoha, a young mother fleeing a violent husband with her baby who finds refuge in the cult. Doma keeps her alive because he finds her pretty and sincere. The day she catches him eating followers, she runs away. He catches up with her at the edge of a cliff, and she throws her child into the river to save him.

That baby is Inosuke. Doma killed his mother without ever understanding why she was afraid of him. Our article on Kotoha Hashibira, Inosuke’s mother traces her story.

The fight against Shinobu

In the Infinity Castle, Shinobu comes across Doma, whom she recognises at once from her sister’s descriptions. She attacks him with all her rage and injects her wisteria poison, in vain: Doma absorbs it every time, joking about her small size and her weakness.

Shinobu dies in his arms, absorbed by the demon. But that was her plan: for a long time, she has been poisoning herself with wisteria. Her whole body has become a poison, which Doma devours without knowing it. Our article on Doma and Shinobu details this trap.

The poison works slowly. Kanao, Shinobu’s disciple, and Inosuke, Kotoha’s son, carry on the fight. Weakened, Doma ends up losing his head to their swords.

Even then, he does not panic. He watches his own end with the same detached curiosity as everything else, wondering what he is supposed to feel.

His crown-like headdress, his kimono and his golden fan are reproduced for cosplay, in the demon cosplay collection.

The only feeling of his life

As his body comes apart, Doma finds himself facing Shinobu’s spirit. She reproaches him for everything he has done, and he listens, as always, without feeling anything. Then something changes.

He feels his heart race for the first time in his existence. He concludes that he has fallen in love with her, and asks her to come with him to hell. Shinobu rejects him without a moment’s hesitation, with a smile.

Demon Slayer readers still debate this scene. For some, Doma finally feels something real. For others, he is wrong one last time and mistakes love for the fear of dying, or for the simple surprise of being defeated.

The series leaves the question open. It only shows that a being who has never felt anything dies at the very moment he believes he finally feels something.

Akaza’s hatred

Doma calls himself Akaza’s friend, but Akaza hates him more than all the other demons. The reason lies partly in this emptiness: Akaza, who keeps deep inside him the memory of his fiancée, senses that Doma feels nothing and despises this way of playing at feelings.

He also reproaches him for eating women, something he refuses to do himself without knowing why. Doma, for his part, does not understand this anger and finds it amusing. Our article on the story of Akaza and Hakuji explains what Akaza has forgotten.

The contrast between the two demons is one of the most telling in Demon Slayer. Akaza felt too much, to the point of forgetting everything. Doma never felt anything, and remembers everything without any of it mattering.

Doma in the shop

Demon Slayer fans love Doma for what is unsettling about him. His smile, his rainbow eyes and his golden fans make him one of the most recognisable demons, and one of the most elegant to collect.

In cosplay, his pale hair, the bloodstain on the top of his head and the crown-like headdress take a little care. The fans are the accessory that makes the look, especially held open, as he does in combat.

You will find all his products in the collection dedicated to Doma, and his rivals on our page on the Hashira of Demon Slayer, where Shinobu has her place.

His rainbow eyes even come in a soft version, among the shop’s plushes.