Hantengu

Name: Hantengu

Gender: Male

Human Name: Unknown (he changed his name so often to evade punishment that he forgot his original name)

Affiliation: Twelve Kizuki – Upper Rank Four

Height: 166 cm (can shrink)

Weight: 56 kg (can shrink)

First-Person Pronoun: “Washi” (an archaic “I,” used by old men)

Hobby: Sneaking into people’s homes and stealing things

Blood Demon Art: Emotion-based splitting ability

Voice Actor (main body): Toshio Furukawa

Hantengu is introduced as a small, hunched elderly demon with a massive forehead lump and two horns, serving directly under Muzan Kibutsuji.

Despite his “tengu” name, his appearance is closer to a classic yokai-like old man than a bird-like tengu, with red, pupil-less eyes that cannot see the Upper Rank numeral.

His forehead lump already existed in his human old age; becoming a demon mostly added horns, red eyes, and damaged-looking skin.

Visually he looks around 87 years old, with brown skin, elongated elf-like ears, long square-shaped nails, and purple discoloration on his forehead.

The main body usually rolls his eyes back so only the whites show, hiding the tiny “Upper Rank Four” inscription that can be seen only when he opens his eyes in his death scene.

His outfit is a casual kimono; in the manga it has a “rising steam with flower diamond” pattern, while the anime simplifies it to a plain rising-wave pattern.

All his bodies, including the clones, share the same basic traits: brown skin, long claws, purple forehead, and two horns.

Aside from the tiny coward form, most clones also have purple, cracked markings under their eyes.

Official heights for the emotion clones and Zohakuten are not given, but promotional silhouettes suggest the joy/anger/sorrow/pleasure clones are roughly as tall as the Shinazugawa brothers (about 180 cm), while Zohakuten is close to Tanjiro Kamado’s height (about 165 cm).

Hantengu appears extremely timid and craven, constantly shaking, crying, and screaming that everything is “terrifying.”

Underneath that, however, he possesses a colossal victim mentality and a twisted, self-justifying ego.

He always casts himself as a “good, weak victim” and anyone opposing him as “bullies of the weak” or “evil persecutors,” no matter how justified their actions are.

He bends facts and interpretations to suit his convenience, using any criticism or punishment as “proof” that others are cruel while he is innocent.

In battle he never wants to put himself at risk or take responsibility.

He spawns powerful clones to fight and hides his tiny true body at a distance, treating their efforts as disposable protection.

This mindset did not arise from becoming a demon; he was like this as a human.

He was a chronic liar with a habit of rationalizing theft and revenge killings, insisting that he was the one being wronged whenever anyone confronted him.

Even Muzan’s official evaluation calls him “normal, sometimes annoying but within tolerable range,” highlighting that even among monsters, his whining and self-pity stand out.

His true horror is not overwhelming raw power but the sheer unfairness and hassle of fighting someone who constantly splits, hides, and refuses to accept any fault.

Hantengu has the standard Upper Rank traits: powerful regeneration, enhanced physical abilities, and resistance to decapitation by Nichirin blades.

His signature ability, however, is a specialized Blood Demon Art that takes his warped emotions and turns them into separate fighting bodies.

He is described in-series as a demon who “becomes stronger the more he is cornered,” because each new crisis and strong emotion can create another clone.

The catch is that all clones draw power from his core body, so he risks exhausting himself through overuse.

He lacks a telepathic link like Muzan’s; the clones must verbally coordinate and see each other to share information.

Because each clone has its own personality and priorities, they do not always spend power in the way the main body would prefer, making the ability powerful but inefficient.

Blood Demon Art: Splitting Ability

Hantengu’s Blood Demon Art manifests his emotions as independent demons with distinct names, personalities, and powers.

Each main combat clone has a tongue engraved with a single kanji representing an emotion (Joy, Anger, Sorrow, Pleasure), and decapitating the body only causes further splitting rather than true death.

Cutting the engraved tongues slows their regeneration slightly, but it is only a minor advantage.

Decapitating them usually causes a new clone to emerge, similar to a planarian that regrows from a cut piece.

As the battle intensifies, he can also merge these clones to form Zohakuten or manifest additional specialized forms like the giant “Urami” body.

However, every new clone or power surge consumes the main body’s limited energy reserves.

Sekido – Anger

Sekido is the anger clone, carrying the kanji for “rage” on his tongue and wielding a monk’s staff with rings that channel lightning.

He wears a kimono similar to the main body’s and appears as a younger version of Hantengu.

Although constantly irritated and shouting about how “infuriating” everything is, Sekido is surprisingly calm and tactically minded.

He tends to hang back from the front line, coordinating the others and focusing on protecting the main body.

He can slam his staff to emit powerful lightning attacks over a wide area, stunning or slowing opponents more than outright killing them.

His lightning does not harm his fellow clones or the main body, suggesting selective targeting of foreign cells.

Tanjiro Kamado cleverly blocks Sekido’s lightning by using Urogi’s severed leg as an insulator, a trick that even Sekido did not anticipate.

Sekido later becomes the core personality that absorbs the other three main clones to create Zohakuten.

Voice actor: Yuichiro Umehara.

Karaku – Pleasure

Karaku embodies “pleasure” and lives to enjoy battle, laughing and treating combat as entertainment.

He wields a giant leaf-shaped fan made from fatsia leaves, which can generate devastating gusts of wind.

His fan can easily blow away humans and crush buildings with sheer air pressure, especially when enlarged.

However, if someone steals the fan, they can use it against the demons, as shown when it is turned back on them.

Karaku’s overfocus on entertainment makes him prone to underestimating opponents, even when they are clearly dangerous.

For example, he toys with Nezuko Kamado out of curiosity and loses his composure when she counters effectively, earning criticism from Sekido for his carelessness.

Voice actor: Kaito Ishikawa.

Urogi – Joy

Urogi is the “joy” clone, taking the form closest to a traditional tengu: he has large wings and talon-like limbs similar to a raptor.

He is hyperactive and ecstatic about being able to split again, constantly cackling and reveling in the chaos.

He can fly freely and dive from above with lethal speed.

His claws and beak are claimed to be strong enough to shatter diamond, and he can unleash deadly soundwave attacks from his mouth.

Like Karaku, Urogi is prone to playing with his prey instead of finishing them quickly, prolonging fights for his own amusement.

Tanjiro deduces that Urogi’s incredible speed relies on his light body weight and uses that insight to outmaneuver him.

Voice actor: Shunsuke Takeuchi.

Aizetsu – Sorrow

Aizetsu represents “sorrow” and has a gloomy, melancholic personality, frequently remarking how “sad” everything is.

He wears work clothes similar to monk work garments (visually resembling a tracksuit in the anime), and wields a cross-shaped spear.

In contrast to his depressed demeanor, Aizetsu is highly skilled in spear combat, attacking efficiently even in chaotic close-quarters battles.

He specializes in skewering enemies with precise stabs that can turn a human body into a sieve in the blink of an eye.

His named technique “Violent Tearful Thrust” fires five spear thrusts in a fan shape in front of him, easily devastating multiple targets.

Despite this, he struggles to handle Genya Shinazugawa’s bizarre resilience, as Genya survives attacks that would normally be fatal.

Voice actor: Soma Saito.

Zohakuten – Hatred

Zohakuten is the fusion of Sekido, Karaku, Urogi, and Aizetsu, created when Sekido forcibly absorbs the other three to protect the main body.

He appears as a young boy version of Hantengu, with five drums on his back bearing the kanji for “hatred” and wielding jagged drumsticks, evoking a thunder god.

Zohakuten is the manifestation of Hantengu’s concentrated hatred and warped moral perspective.

He describes the main body as a “fragile, weak victim” and the Demon Slayer swordsmen as cruel bullies, casting himself as righteous despite being clearly evil.

His aura is so oppressive that Genya Shinazugawa describes his limbs going weak just from Zohakuten’s presence.

Because he embodies four Upper Rank-class demons fused, his combat power far exceeds any individual clone.

Zohakuten can use all the Blood Demon Arts of the joy/anger/sorrow/pleasure clones in a heightened form, and he has unique techniques of his own.

Even so, he is still only a clone; cutting his neck does not kill Hantengu, though it can end that particular body.

Voice actor: Koichi Yamadera.

Zohakuten’s Techniques

Endless Fortress Trees (Mu Kengouju / “Unending Karma Tree”)

Zohakuten summons multiple wooden dragon-like constructs, which Hantengu calls “stone lizards.”

Initially, Tanjiro estimates that he can create five at once with a range of about 66 shaku (roughly 20 meters), but this limit exists only because of main-body energy conservation; in theory, the number is nearly unrestricted.

The dragons can attack from multiple angles and their mouths serve as launchers for other Blood Demon Arts.

If a target escapes their maximum length, Zohakuten can extend a dragon’s mouth like an akebi fruit pod and spawn another dragon from it, extending their effective reach.

Mad Screaming Thunder Kill

Two wooden dragons simultaneously emit Urogi’s soundwaves and Sekido’s lightning.

The combination covers a huge area and is extremely difficult to avoid or endure.

Mad Pressure Soundwave

Zohakuten fires an intensified version of Urogi’s sonic attack directly from his own mouth.

Properly hit, it should reduce a human body to pulp, but Mitsuri Kanroji survives it thanks to her special physical constitution.

He can also channel Karaku’s winds and Aizetsu’s piercing power through the wooden dragons, launching combos that mix multiple arts at once.

In power scaling, he is roughly above other Lower Upper Ranks like Gyokko and the Gyutaro–Daki pair, but below monsters like Kokushibo, Doma, and Akaza, and he is ultimately held off by a single Hashira with an awakened mark.

“Coward” Main Body – Core Hantengu

The true Hantengu is his tiny “coward” body, sometimes dubbed the “Coward Demon.”

He looks like the original old-man form but shrunk to the size of a field mouse, complete with the same horns and massive forehead lump.

He hides far away from the battlefield while the clones fight, making him extremely hard to find without advanced sensing abilities.

Even when discovered, he does not fight, instead fleeing at incredible speed.

His body is absurdly tough for its size.

His neck is barely the thickness of a little finger, yet a Nichirin sword can snap against it, and even point-blank shots from a large-caliber gun have little effect.

Not even a flaming Nichirin sword created with Nezuko Kamado’s Exploding Blood technique can immediately sever his neck.

This led Genya to realize why so many Demon Slayers had failed against Hantengu: they never discovered this tiny, ultradurable core in time.

When cornered, the main body can spawn new clones based on the intense emotions he feels in that desperate moment.

Joy, anger, sorrow, pleasure, hatred, and resentment all become separate entities, and each new creation drains his limited reserves further.

Despite his endurance, the main body has essentially no offensive fighting capability.

His entire strategy is to run, hide, and let the clones do all the killing.

Urami – Resentment Body

The “Urami” form (often called the Resentment Demon) is a huge clone that resembles a gigantic version of the main coward body.

It is used as a deceptive emergency form to mislead enemies into thinking they’ve decapitated the true Hantengu.

Urami hides the tiny true body inside its heart, protecting him from decapitation while presenting a large fake neck to be cut.

Even if Urami’s head is severed, Hantengu can have its body continue to act or move, buying time for his true self to recover or feed.

Urami can protect the main body from sunlight for a short while, allowing Hantengu to operate under the sun briefly.

Its personality is another manifestation of Hantengu’s resentment and self-pity, screaming about how others are cruel and how “pitiful” he supposedly is.

In the anime, Urami even begins to fire an ultrasonic attack similar to Urogi’s before being interrupted by Nezuko’s assault.

Genya bluntly dismisses Urami’s self-justification as “absolute garbage,” cutting through his delusions.

Voice actor: Toshio Furukawa (same as the main body).

Hantengu’s human name, real background, and exact age became so muddled that even he no longer remembers them.

He constantly fabricated new names, ages, and histories to escape consequences for his crimes, living under a series of false identities.

From the beginning he was weak-willed, deceitful, and terrified of confrontation, yet also prone to violent, petty revenge.

If someone scolded or punished him, he would secretly plot revenge in a way that left no obvious connection to himself, showing a calculating side.

He formed families multiple times, marrying and having children.

When these wives or children criticized his lies and irresponsibility, he interpreted it as persecution and responded by murdering them, repeatedly.

As he aged, he discovered that pretending to be a blind old man could get him sympathy.

He would roll his eyes back to show only the whites, hunch over, and feign blindness to elicit kindness, then rob and sometimes kill those who took him in.

This habit explains why his demon form als