Demon Slayer season 3 episode 8, called “THE MU IN MUICHIRO”, starts with a tragic backstory of the mist hashira and why he joined the Demon Slayer Corps.
The Mist Hashira, despite being one of the strongest characters in the anime, hasn’t received much attention from the fans because of his reserved personality and next to no screen time. But this episode puts all that into perspective by giving him much-deserved screen time to make him more relatable and likeable to the viewers.
Demon Slayer Season 3 Episode 8 Recap Muichiro’s Tragic Backstory: Why Muichiro Became A Demon Slayer?
After the brutal battle that Tanjiro, Nezuko, and Genya were engaged in against Zohakuten, this episode takes a step back and starts off right after Muichiro is released from the water prison by Kotetus.
After that, we are immediately taken to a flashback of Muichiro’s memories.
He was born into a family of woodcutters just like Tanjiro, and from a very young age, he liked helping out his father with chopping and gathering wood.
He was a kind-hearted kid from the start and had a very loving family.
But as fate would have it, his daily life of perpetual peace and tranquilly was about to change forever.
A disaster strikes the Tokitou family when his mother suddenly falls ill during a ferocious storm in the mountains.
Her illness was rapidly getting worse, so Muichiro’s father was left with no choice but to go out in the heavy storm to find a herb that might cure his wife’s illness.
It was a desperate attempt to grasp even a speck of hope of saving his loved one. But the situation took a turn for the worse when he fell from a mountain cliff while trying to get the herb and passed away.
Back at Muichiro’s house, his mother’s illness also worsened, and she also passed away shortly after. This leaves Muichiro orphaned and completely distraught at the age of ten. But he was not alone in his misfortune. At this point, it was revealed that he also has a twin brother named Yuichiro.
Muichiro’s Twin brother (Image Credit: Netflix)However, despite being twins, the show takes a pragmatic approach to show how two people who are seemingly alike can handle grief in wildly different ways.
Muichiro is still optimistic about the future and wants to help others, while Yuichiro turns bitter at the unfortunate and unfair deaths of his parents.
He continues to blame his father for his own death because he was trying to save their mother.
Yuichiro thinks that his father shouldn’t have left home during a storm to try to save their mother and instead should have just accepted her imminent death.
Yuichiro’s desperate attempt to rationalise the unforeseeable death of his father leaves him with a twisted sense of self-preservation, and he starts seeing all good deeds done for others as weak, unreasonable, and ultimately self-destructive.
The contrasting personalities of these two characters show the amount of care and detail that the author has put into building their backstories.
Every character, no matter how minor a role they have, feels like a real human being with a dynamic personality.
After their parents’ deaths, Yuichiro becomes secluded and overly protective of his brother, but he doesn’t know how to show how much he cares about Muichiro.
In the process of trying to protect him and altering his ideologies about saving others and sacrificing himself in the process, Yuichiro starts to constantly belittle Muichiro, calling him weak, worthless, and meaningless.
Sometime after the passing of their parents. They are approached by Amane Ubuyashiki, one of Kagaya Ubuyashiki’s wives, on behalf of the demon slayer corps.
This is when it’s revealed that they belong to a lineage of swordsmen who used the “first breathing style” to fight off demons.
Her objective was to recruit them into the demon Slayer army. But Yuichiro refuses to do so and stops Muichiro from joining as well, telling him that he is just like his mother and father, who sacrificed themselves for others, and just like them, he will die in vain as well.
After this incident, the two brothers grew even more distant, and they stopped talking completely.
But their problems were far from over. It didn’t take much time for a powerful demon to suddenly appear out of nowhere in the middle of the night and attack the twins.
Yuichiro gets his hand chopped off while trying to protect Muichiro. This throws Muichiro into a fit of blind rage; he loses all sense of special awareness and attacks the demon without even thinking.
In the next scene, the demon is on the verge of death, with Muichiro standing beside him. This reveals the extreme strength that Muichiro can harness for the sake of others.
Demon Slayer Season 3 Episode 8 Ending Explained: Why Muichiro Became A Demon Slayer (Image Credit: Netflix)The most devastating part of this entire back story was definitely the final interaction between the twins, where Yuichiro finally pours his heart out into words and shows how much he cares about Muichiro. The touching conversation leaves the characters and fans alike in tears.
In the end, it is not clear whether Yuichiro survives or dies from his injuries. But from all the context clues, it is safe to deduce that he most likely passed away. Finally, Muichiro ends up joining the demon slayer army nonetheless.
Demon Slayer Season 3 Episode 8 Ending Explained
Now we are back in the present, where the upper moon five (Gyokko) is trying to distract Haganezuka’s concentration from the blade sharpening by inflicting injuries on him.
But his methods have no effect on the sheer determination of Haganezuka, who is completely engrossed in his work.
Gyokko is finally stopped by Muichiro, who is now out of the water prison and is back to destroy him.
But even now, he can barely manage to slice Gyakko with his blade, causing nothing more than shallow wounds—not enough to kill an upper moon.
I guess that just speaks of the sheer strength of an upper moon, which even hashiras have a hard time handling.
Demon Slayer season 3, episode 8, was a masterful rendition of the show’s ability to convey complex emotions through its characters and make the audience care about them.
Throughout the entire season, Muichiro has kind of been a louse to Tanjiro and all the other characters, which made him really unlikeable for a lot of people, but with the recent developments, people finally understand why he behaves in this manner.
The only criticism that I can give this episode is that they took their foot off the pedal in the intense fight between Tanjiro, Nezuko, and Genya against Zohakuten.
The conclusion to which is still not clear, and people have been anticipating the continuation of that fight in episode 8, but this was a much-needed backstory for the mist hashira, so it is understandable why Ufotable did that, and maybe we will get a continuation of the fight in the next episode.
So the hype around the upcoming episode is already massive, and people can’t wait to see how the fight concludes.
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