Yoriichi Type Zero, the six-armed combat puppet

Yoriichi Type Zero holds a strange place in Demon Slayer. It is neither a character nor a demon, and yet it stands up to a Hashira.

The Demon Slayer machine dates from the Sengoku era. Three centuries of service, half its face cracked, and a mechanism today’s swordsmiths no longer know how to reproduce.

This article brings together what the series says about it: its construction, how it works, Tanjiro’s training, and what it was hiding inside.

What this puppet is

The puppet is used to train demon slayers. It reproduces a swordsman’s movements and forces its opponent to parry, dodge and look for an opening, without ever tiring.

The Demon Slayer mechanism is activated with a key. Kotetsu keeps it on him, and it is by taking it from him by force that Muichiro sets the machine off for the first time in the arc.

Its construction is beyond the village’s current know-how. Kotetsu says so himself: nobody in the village could build an equivalent piece today, and repairs are done blind.

Its place in the village is that of an heirloom. Several training puppets are kept there, but this one is the oldest and the only one modelled on a specific man.

Its use remains limited to training. The series never shows it on a mission or facing a demon, and no Demon Slayer demon slayer considers taking it into the field.

You will find its model’s sword, a black blade with a red edge, among the series’ katana replicas.

Why six arms?

The answer is in the series. The builders started with two arms, realised that Yoriichi’s speed remained out of reach, and added four.

The choice is an admission of partial failure. A wooden mechanism could not match a man, so the swordsmiths made up for it with numbers rather than speed.

The result produces a silhouette unique in Demon Slayer. Six shoulders, six blades in motion, and an opponent who has to watch six directions at once.

Readers have seen a link with the asura. This figure from Buddhist tradition is depicted with several arms and several weapons, and the position of the puppet’s shoulders comes close to it.

The link remains an interpretation. The series does not state it, but the number of arms and the number of movements both point to the same repertoire of images.

The number poses an animation problem that Demon Slayer solves in the studio. The fight sequences against the puppet require following six blades in the same shot, which produces choreography unlike anything else in the series.

The hundred and eight movements

The puppet has a hundred and eight recorded movements. They are drawn from the fighting style of Yoriichi Tsugikuni, the first swordsman to have used a breathing style.

The number is not neutral. A hundred and eight comes up often in Asian traditions, from end-of-year bells to prayer beads, and martial arts count as many vital points on the human body.

The series leaves readers to make the connection. Nothing explains the choice of number, and it remains possible that each movement targets one of these points.

The repertoire is enough to put a Hashira in difficulty. Muichiro manages to dodge, but the machine forces him to work seriously despite its wear.

Our article on Yoriichi Tsugikuni and his place in history comes back to the man these movements come from.

Wear has reduced its reach. Three centuries of cracked wood and tired parts no doubt make it far less formidable than when it left the workshop, which the series implies without putting a figure on it.

What does it look like?

The Demon Slayer puppet takes on its model’s features. Wavy black hair with red tips, tied in a ponytail, and the same earrings Yoriichi wore.

The outfit follows the same logic. A red kimono, red and gold shoulder guards, black hakama, an ecru belt: the whole reproduces the attire of a Sengoku era swordsman.

Time has done its work. Half the face is cracked, the arms show the wear of the wood, and the machine no longer has the power it had when it was built.

The face troubles Tanjiro. He recognises the man from his dreams in these features, which our article on Tanjiro Kamado and his path places within his lineage.

The earrings change the scene’s significance. They link the puppet, Tanjiro’s dreams and the mark Muzan recognises, in a single wooden object.

The man whose features it takes on has his complete Yoriichi Tsugikuni collection, right down to the plush toys of the series’ characters.

How is it set?

The machine can be configured. By turning the fingers a certain number of times and adjusting the mechanism in the head, you choose the puppet’s difficulty and behaviour.

The setting can target a weakness. The puppet can attack its opponent’s specific flaw, provided someone knows how to configure it for that.

Kotetsu uses this as leverage. He deliberately leaves these functions aside when Muichiro takes the key by force, so the session is less useful to the Hashira than it could be.

The manoeuvre says a lot about the child. Unable to defend himself physically against a Demon Slayer Hashira, he finds the only way to pay back the blow he has just received.

With Tanjiro, he does the opposite. He sets the machine to the maximum of what it can give and turns the training into an ordeal.

Muichiro and the puppet

The Mist Hashira arrives first. He wants the puppet to train, comes up against Kotetsu’s refusal, hits him, then takes the key from him by force.

The session goes badly for the machine. Muichiro dodges the series of attacks, breaks the left shoulder guard and tears off one of the right arms, which stays attached to the blade.

He goes further still. His own sword having just broken, he keeps one of the puppet’s katanas for himself, arm included, before Tanjiro and Kotetsu’s eyes.

The scene establishes the character. Muichiro comes across as cold, hurried, indifferent to others’ work, which our page about the Hashira and their rank places within the group.

His attitude will change later. After the attack on the village, he comes back to help Kotetsu repair the puppet by replaying from memory the movements he saw.

The rain finishes the job. Tanjiro and Kotetsu find the puppet soaked and even more damaged, then check with the key that it still moves before using it.

The Hashira who breaks it then helps bring it back to life has his complete Muichiro Tokito collection.

Tanjiro’s seven days

Kotetsu offers him the training. He wants to see someone beat the arrogant Hashira, and Tanjiro accepts a session that will last a week.

The conditions are harsh. The puppet is armed with wooden clubs, Tanjiro cannot touch it, and Kotetsu cuts off his water and food with every failure.

On the seventh day, his body gives out. Tanjiro faints mid-session, and it is at that moment that his sense of smell changes in nature.

He then perceives the opponent’s thread. A scent that precedes the movement, which our article on Tanjiro’s sense of smell and its limits details in full.

The first blow he lands is tiny. A nick on the puppet’s leg, after seven days, and this scratch counts as a victory in Demon Slayer.

The sword hidden inside

Tanjiro eventually beheads it in Demon Slayer. Once his strength has returned, he dodges the six blades, strikes at the neck, and the head comes off as the body collapses.

The inside holds a surprise. A katana more than three hundred years old was shut in the torso, placed there when the puppet was built.

Haganezuka takes it on at once. He sets about polishing it, spends three days and three nights on it, with a method inherited from his line that has already killed men in his trade.

The blade bears an engraved character. It appears beneath the rust, and our page about Nichirin swords and their forging sheds light on what this engraving tells.

Tanjiro will keep this weapon to the end. The sword taken from the puppet goes with him in every fight that follows, right to the last.

Kotetsu, the last one who can repair it

The child is ten. His father is dead, he had no brothers or sisters, and the knowledge of the mechanism stopped with him.

His fear is concrete. If the puppet breaks, nobody in Demon Slayer’s Swordsmith Village will know how to put it back together, and the object will disappear with its secret.

Hence his fierce protectiveness. He refuses to lend it, stands up to a Hashira, and sees the machine come back broken.

Tanjiro pushes him to carry on. He talks to him about his descendants, about what gets passed down, and the child gets back to work, as our article on the swordsmiths of the hidden village details.

The pressure returns after the attack. The chief orders the puppet thrown away if it is not repaired before the move, for lack of room in the secret transport. The deadline, we later learn, was just an invention to push the child to work.

What the puppet brings to the story

It serves first as a step up for Tanjiro. His sense of the opponent’s thread is born in front of it, and this progress weighs in all his later fights.

It also provides his weapon. The puppet’s sword replaces the blade broken in the Entertainment District and lasts until the final clash.

Finally, it extends Yoriichi’s presence. Three centuries after his death, his movements still live on in a wooden figure demon slayers come to face.

Our page on all the series’ arcs places this sequence in the order of the story.

The device works by contrast. The greatest swordsman in history does not reappear in the flesh, but as a damaged machine nobody knows how to build any more.

Why does it stay with readers?

The image counts for a lot. Six arms, six katanas, a cracked face: the silhouette sticks at first glance among all those in the series.

The paradox helps too. An opponent who does not speak, feels nothing and does not try to kill proves more demanding than most of the demons met before.

The machine brings a dead man to life. Yoriichi appears only in flashbacks, and this puppet is the only way to fight against him, which our page on all the series’ characters helps put in context.

Kotetsu’s attachment completes the picture. The object is not scenery, it belongs to a child who inherited it along with the grief of his father’s death.

Its final return confirms it. The repaired puppet stays in the village, and the arc ends on the rescue of an object as much as on a fight.

The puppet has ended up leaving the story. It appears as a playable character in a Demon Slayer game, with its own six-blade combos, which extends its career beyond the manga.