Demon Slayer’s Time Skip Explained! Spoiler, There Are Actually Two!
Koyoharu Gotouge’s Demon Slayer manga was published between February 15, 2016 and May 18, 2020, ending its run with 205 chapters that were collected into a total of 23 volumes. The manga became a global phenomenon and the ongoing anime has quickly become one of the most popular in the history of the genre. It has been adapted into an ongoing anime series on April 6, 2019 and while we’re waiting for new episodes of Demon Slayer to come out, we have decided to talk about the show’s storyline. Namely, anime and manga fans will know that such works usually have a time skip at some point in the story, at leas those that last longer, and Demon Slayer is, we can confirm, not an exception here. In this article, we are going to explain the time skips (yes, you’ve read it correctly) in Demon Slayer for you.
Demon Slayer has a total of two time skips, which is somewhat unusual for a shōnen series but not completely unique. The first two-year time skip happened early on in the story and during that period, Tanjirō trained with Sakonji Urokodaki, who also conditioned Nezuko to not eat humans; this is just before he became a member of the Corps. The second time skip happened after the end of the main story and showed the descendants of the main characters in modern times, a century after Muzan’s death.
The rest of this article is going to give you all the details on the time skips of Demon Slayer. The two time skips, as we have said, are quite special and they actually encompassed a long training session that helped Tanjirō become a Demon Slayer and a hopeful, demon-free future. We’re going to bring you all the related details in one place so you can check them out below.
Demon Slayer‘s first time skip happened early on in the story
In order to explain the first time skip, we have to go back to the very beginning of the story. When his father died, Tanjirō took his place as the man of the house, working to support his family, which consisted of a mother and several siblings, including Nezuko. The family lived a humble, but happy life in the mountains. Until one day, an event occurred that completely marked his life. During the Taishō era, Tanjirō was a boy who made a living selling charcoal and firewood to nearby villages to support his entire family: his mother and his younger siblings.
One winter day, when Tanjirō was 13 years old, he went down to the nearest village to sell his products in preparation for the New Year festivities, and when he was about to return home, a snowstorm forced him to take refuge in a nearby cabin. There, its occupant, Saburo, tells him a strange story about creatures that attack people at night and devour them.
Tanjirō at first does not believe in the story and just falls asleep. Still, when he returns home, he notices a disturbing smell of human blood: upon entering his house, what he finds is a nightmare scenario: all his brothers and his mother were brutally murdered, and their sister Nezuko, the only survivor of such a massacre, was seriously injured so desperate. He takes her sister for someone to help them. However, during the tour, Nezuko wakes up, but unfortunately for Tanjirō, she is no longer the same: she became a Demon, and she suddenly increases in size and pounces on Tanjirō, intending to devour him.
Before Tanjirō could realize what was happening, a Demon Slayer called Giyū Tomioka arrived and told Tanjirō that he had to kill his sister since she had been turned into a demon. Nezuko had attacked Tanjiro, but Tanjito successfully rejected her attack and convinced Giyu to spare her life, promising he would take care of her.
Giyū then helped them, and Tanjirō’s and Nezuko’s adventures began. Since Nezuko was turned into a demon, she gained some additional demon powers, but also the behavioral traits of a demon, which means that she became attracted to human blood and flesh and would, as Giyū stated, turn to attack humans, just like all other demons. Tanjirō convinced Giyū that he would stop Nezuko if she ever tried to do that. Along with Sakonji, they helped her preserve her humanity and overcome her demonic urges, while Tanjirō kept searching for a cure for her; at the same time, he was training to become a Demon Slayer himself.
Now, this is where the story becomes interesting. Namely, a total of two years have passed between the Kamado siblings’ arrival at Urokodaki’s home and his passing the Demon Slayer trials. During that period, we’ve seen Tanjirō’s training, but no other details have been provided to us, which means that this two-year period constitutes a proper time skip. After that, Tanjirō completed his training and went on to become a Demon Slayer, after which the plot continued normally.
It is unusual for a manga or anime to have a time skip so early on in the story, but the time skip actually fulfilled its role in every other aspect, as it allowed the story to progress and the main character to grow properly. This is everything you need to know about the first important time skip in the series. Now, let us explain the other one.
The second time skip was one of the longest we’ve seen
As for the second time skip, it happened at the very end of the manga, and serves as a sort of epilogue that shows a hopeful, demon-free future. Let us tell you what happened. This story actually starts in the aftermath of Muzan’s initial defeat, when he used his remaining powers to turn Tanjirō into Demon King Tanjirō. Tanjirō started battling the Demon Slayer Corps in his new demonic form. He first faces off against Inosuke Hashibara and Giyu Tomioka, who are unable to overcome him. As Tanjirō’s rebuilt body is further malformed by Muzan’s demonic blood, Nezuko pushes him to resist letting Muzan take control. He attacks Zenitsu, but Giyu intervenes to protect him. Soon later, Kanao shows up with the last humanization drug and walks over to Tanjirō to administer it.
Tanjirō converses with Muzan’s remnants in his thoughts as his body is engaged in combat with the Demon Slayer Corps. Muzan Kibutsuji implores Tanjirō to give him control so that Tanjirō might become the supreme being—the most powerful, eternal, and unbreakable being—but Tanjirō rejects and fights Muzan’s influence fiercely from within. At one point, Tanjirō acknowledges the attempts to reach out to him made by the hands of his friends, family, and loved ones inside of his thoughts. Tanjirō is then brought back to reality. As his demon form disappears, we realize that Muzan Kibutsuji is finally dead. Nothing remains of the former demon lord, and with him, Demon King Tanjirō also disappears, and the saga is finally over.
It is a bit later that we actually find out what happened to all of the characters. Some of them, of course, died and it was truly sad seeing the Hashira dead after the battle, but they all died a warrior’s death. Sanemi and Tomioka are the only remaining Hashira that survived the final battle, but as Muzan was gone, so were the Demons, which is why Kiriya Ubuyashiki would disband the Demon Slayer Corps. The protagonists, of course, all survived. Inosuke Hashibara would go on to marry Aoi and have a family with her; Nezuko, after returning to her human form, ended up marrying Zen’itsu and the two of them had a family as well; finally, Tanjirō, after recovering, ended up marrying Kanao Tsuyuri, as was foreshadowed, and the two of them also had a family. All their marriages seemed to be quite happy, especially now that the world was rid of the Demons’ presence.
And while we never saw them in their old age, we saw what happened a century later. The protagonists were, of course, all dead by that time, but their descendants were seen living in a modern, peaceful, and seemingly hopeful world. We saw that many characters from the original story had descendants, basically all of them, to be honest, and although we don’t know their whole family histories, we know most of their names and they were introduced as: Kanata Kamado, Sumihiko Kamado, Yoshiteru Agatsuma, Toko Agatsuma, Tenma Uzui, Aoba Hashibira, Kiriya Ubuyashiki, Sanehiro Shinazugawa, Giichi Tomioka, Yushiro Yamamoto, Chachamaru, and Tojuro Rengoku.
Some characters that had died in the series also reappeared as reincarnated versions of themselves, and they are: Yuichiro Tokito, Muichiro Tokito, Shinobu Kocho, Kanae Kocho, Kozo Kanamori, Kotetsu, Gyomei Himejima, Mitsuri Kanroji, Obanai Iguro, Jigoro Kuwajima, Sakonji Urokodaki, Sumi Nakahara, Naho Takada, Kiyo Terauchi, Genya Shinazugawa, Sabito, Makomo, Goto, and Takeuchi. This was a criticized mode on the author’s part, but that is a different topic of discussion.
As for the time skip, this was one of the longer ones we’ve seen in the series and it actually served as an epilogue, rather than as a traditional time skip. It actually completely skipped over the main characters and showed us a future in which their descendants and reincarnations lived in peace and prosperity.