u/soefire_is_fire

Right off the bat, let's just make it clear that I'm not even trying to glaze Shinbou. Doma >> Shinobu. They are not relative. Regardless of that, I'm not going to pretend Shinobu didn't just blatantly outspeed Doma multiple times throughout their fight. Credit where credit is due.

Firstly, nothing ever says Shinobu has a thin blade. Yes, it isn't thick in every aspect, but the blade itself should be sharp on every single katana and not very thick. Nothing would ever imply Shinobu's blade is especially thin from a front/back facing view.

Secondly, how friggen thick do people think katana blades are? I own a basic Inosuke cosplay sword that should be somewhat accurate to an actual sword, and I don't even have to space my fingers half as much as Doma is spacing his to let it slide through my fingers.

She just outsped Doma, guys. The only thing she has is being fast, so let her have this.

Introduction

Tengen is a very heavily discussed character. Typically when he is talked about, he is either being heavily slandered or heavily glazed. Personally, I think we can find some middle ground here, as I don't think the people glazing him or slandering him are entirely right or wrong. In this quick little post, I just want to personally explain why I believe Tengen is both better than the other hashiras in some ways while also being one of the weakest hashiras.

Tengen's Strengths

Firstly, let's discuss the reasons as to why some people glaze him. (Comparing him to the others in base, of course)

- One of the physically strongest (Behind Gyomei, Third Slide)

- The fastest (Second Slide)

- Likely has one of the highest combat speeds (We know he is behind Mitsuri, Fourth Slide)

- Poison resistance

- Insane hearing (same as Gyomei)

- Shinobi training

- Explosive blades (First Slide)

- Bombs

- MST

- Access to Kunai

- Stealth

- Can stop his own heart

These are some of the things that I do believe sets him apart from the other hashiras. Some of these things are gimmicks/items that only Tengen (or a few other characters) has access too. MST is a very powerful ability we see get used, and we know his blades are naturally explosive, plus he has bombs. He has insane hearing as well as even having a poison resistance. We can pretty confidently say he fills more niches than the other hashiras whom typically have 0-2 unique traits about them. We should also go over ways these gimmicks could be effective in multiple types of battles. Things like his explosive blades would be amazing for characters who build structures like Doma. His poison resistance would be amazing for any poison based demons like Gyutaro, Muzan, and Gyokko. His Shinobi training and stealth would be perfect for characters that can move around when you get close like Gyokko and Nakime. His hearing would also be perfect for unpredictable attacks like from Gyokko or locating people like Hantengu.

Another thing I brought up is his better physical stats. I know some people may like to say he isn't actually the strongest or fastest and that the lists people use to back this weren't actually canon, but this is really more of a misinterpretation of what the author meant by "arbitrary." The thing is, even if we did ignore the strength and speed rankings, we can still easily prove he is one of the fastest and strongest. We know he is likely one of the strongest since Shinobu proves physical stature is a good way to determine physical strength, and Tengen is literally an extremely buff tall man who weilds some of the heaviest weapons as if they were made of paper. As for speed, he is constantly complimented on it while also dodging Tanjiro's headbutt while holding people when Sanemi couldn't. Not only this, but even Mitsuri is complimented on her technique speed by using Tengen as a benchmark. With this, we can easily say Tengen may be one of the stronger hashiras when it comes down to pure physical stats, and we don't really need to go over why these stats are important.

Why Tengen Still Falls Short of the Other Hashiras

Obviously, I just explained many things about him that makes him powerful, but how come he gets beat by Upper 6 when other base hashiras are capable of contending with much stronger uppermoons? Why is Tengen still typically accepted as being weak? I believe there is an answer to this that Tengen himself hints at. This reason is that Tengen lacks "talent." He directly says Muichiro and Gyomei has more talent than he does (Fifth Slide). Gyomei isn't shocking, but Muichiro is still considered a weak hashira by most, so what does talent actually mean here?

To answer what talent means, we can actually look towards another part of the manga (in the translation I read, anyways) where Genya actually calls himself talentless. (Last Slide) Typically when we think of talent, we think of just natural ability. Genya is obviously skilled in the sense that he has amazing aim and uses BDAs creatively as well as having great moves, decent speed, and high strength. What we do know is that Genya is calling himself talentless, BECAUSE he can't use breaths. This likely implies that when it comes down to demon slayers, your ability to use breathing styles is what you consider to be talent.

So, would this imply that Tengen's ability to perform breathing techniques is what's lacking? Yes, actually, and the story supports this. Typically, when a slayer gets close to a demon and starts attacking, they're often going to use many forms to do so unless they're massively stronger or doing something simple, but what about Tengen? We know Tengen has at least five forms, but we only see three actually used throughout the series. One of these moves is First Form, Roar, which we only see used to show where Daki is rather than actually being used in combat. The other two are String Performance and Constant Resounding Slashes. How many times did he use those forms? Once each. When Tengen went high dif with Gyutaro, he used a total of two forms one time each. This is in complete contrast to just about any other close fight we see in the series. Almost every Tengen feat is completely ignoring his breathing style and focusing on either something he did physically, intellectually, or with unique abilities.

We can also see that sound breathing is likely weaker narratively. All breathing styles directly from sun (other than stone) use your standard nichirin blade. When we get the furthest from sun (which is insect breathing) we see that it completely fights in a different way entirely, relying on poison rather than decapitation, which is far more of a gimmick. With this, we could possibly even make the assumption that more gimmick based breathing styles are likely further removed from sun, which would imply they're even weaker. Sound breathing is one of the most gimmick based styles, as it uses a non-traditional dual blades on a chain, bombs, and even has naturally explosive blades. The fact Tengen uses all of that as a part of his breathing style implies that the style itself fights very differently from how a more traditional demon slayer would fight, and this makes a lot of sense when you consider Tengen was raised to fight humans NOT demons. Also, this paragraph is more of a stretch than the other points, so feel free to ignore this one if you disagree with it or just take it with a grain of salt.

In Conclusion (TL;DR)

Tengen actually does have some of the best physical stats, niche abilities, and weapons. He isn't weak, and in just about any battle he would probably be able to play a supporting role even in later fights. The reason why Tengen isn't capable of being compared to the other hashira has more to do with the fact that he just isn't naturally attuned with breathing the same way the other Demon Slayers are. His breathing techniques aren't that good, and thus he would likely be unable to use other Demon Slayer abilities to their full potential as well. He's a strong fighter, but he's not a strong demon slayer, which just ends up making him weak in the verse.

To qualify as a demon minion, you have to be part of a demon's arsenal without the demon directly controlling every action you do. Every minion also had to not be their own independent demon, meaning the spider family themselves doesn't count as demon minions. We also couldn't include Enmu's left hand since it was part of his own sentience. It's not too well known if Nakime controls each of her eyes individually or if Doma's ice Buddha is directly controlled by Doma in every way, but we decided to catch them anyways.

Me and Bionix disagreed on some things, so this is more of just a compromise. Personally, I would the mother spiders and nakime's eyes below the children. I would also put Zohakuten above Doma's ice clones.

Keep in mind that all of these are assuming there is only ONE of the minions. This means we're not counting all of Hairo's wolves, rather we are only counting just one of his wolves.

https://tiermaker.com/create/demon-slayer-demon-minions-18790445

Based on what I have seen, I would say the opinions on whether Gyutaro or Kaigaku is stronger is pretty divided without one take being more popular the other. I believe a lot of the power creep we see in Demon Slayer comes from the idea that Kaigaku is on the same level as Gyutaro. For this reason, I will be explaining why I fully believe Kaigaku does not compare to Gyutaro.

Point 1: Zenitsu Power Creep and Chain Scaling
A big issue comes down to simply how strong Zenitsu could grow within the hashira training. Let's keep something in mind: Tengen and Tanjiro fought at the start of HTA. You may be wondering why this is relevant, but I can explain why. For starters, remember that Tengen was capable of going band for band with Gyutaro even with Tanjiro by his side. This means Gyutaro > Full Powered Tengen. Tengen when fighting Tanjiro in HTA, however, was lacking many things when he fought Gyutaro. He was missing one hand, one eye, his wives, his bombs, his explosive blades, his chain and two large swords, and even his poison resistance didn't come into play due to circumstance.

Tengen had many things against Gyutaro and still failed to win, but he barely had anything against Tanjiro and still beat up Tanjiro pretty well without breaking a sweat even when Tanjiro got help. I think we can all agree that Tanjiro is consistently stronger than Zenitsu throughout the series. When Zenitsu fought an unnamed tongue demon, Tanjiro was fighting an ex lowermoon. When Zenitsu was fighting one of Sid's toys from Toy Story, Tanjiro was fighting a lower moon. When Zenitsu was defending passengers with help of Nezuko and a hashira, Tanjiro was decapitating lower moon 1. Tanjiro also fought another uppermoon while Zenitsu hasn't. Given this, I think we can all agree that the Tanjiro who lost to Tengen is a good bit stronger than Zenitsu at the time.

With this all being said, we can say Gyutaro > Full Power Tengen with full arsenal > Tengen with many disadvantages without full arsenal > Start of HTA Tanjiro > Start of HTA Zenitsu. This means that Zenitsu at the start of HTA should be A GOOD BIT weaker than Gyutaro. Yes, hashira training likely made him stronger, but considering all of the tasks they had to do were things the hashiras could seemingly do easily kind of makes it seem unlikely this managed to push Zenitsu all the way to that level. I'm not saying Zenitsu isn't hashira level, but I wouldn't say he is taisho era hashira level. Even if he was, that's still not enough to get a win on Gyutaro from what we see when referring to without marks.

In conclusion: it would not make sense if he got to this level so quickly in the story based on what we see.

Point 2: Implications and Ranking System
Many people would say Kaigaku is ranked Upper 6, therefore he has to be the power of Upper 6, but I find this to be a very shallow take that isn't fully understanding the context of the situation. This isn't me trying to say, "I know the powers better than the author," but instead, I am claiming that we are just misinterpretting what the author was trying to say.

Zenitsu directly calls Kaigaku a stopgap in one translation while saying he merely filled a blank space in others. Let's take a second to really think about what this means. A stopgap is something merely filling a spot for a meantime when no better options are presented. Filling a blank space, in this context, would imply it's unimpressive he got to this rank when there was no competition. Regardless of how you look at it, this is an insult to Kaigaku saying that him achieving this rank means little.

With this, I would like to address a counter argument that I frequently hear, which is why would Zenitsu know Kaigaku's strength better than Muzan? Now, it's true that Zenitsu does not fully understand Kaigaku's strength, however, the very fact that Zenitsu said this insult means that this insult has to be able to make some sort of sense. At the very least, earning a position by being a stopgap or not having competition has to be a hypothetical that can occur. If this wasn't the case, Zenitsu would not have said the insult, as it would have meant literally nothing.

Now, let's actually discuss what Kaigaku's rank means. Many people will point towards the last image I sent, implying Kaigaku rose through the ranks. Let's fully analyze this though. How does one rank up when there are no other demons in the respective spots? The lowermoons were disbanded when Enmu died. There are no more lowermoons for Kaigaku to go through, and I find it highly illogical Kaigaku was Lower 6 one week then Lower 5 the next and then Lower 4 the next with Muzan personally ranking him up everytime. What we do know is that Kokushibo did have an "estimation" of Kaigaku's power that was directly stated to be high. An estimation is nothing more but an educated guess, and it was based on potential rather than actual ability. This is then further proved by Yushiro who stated the demon didn't fully understand how to use their own technique and abilities. Many people will say Muzan is able to know the power of all his demons, but this is not entirely true. Muzan may know the amount of blood and people they ate (which contributes to raw power), but we know what makes Kaigaku weak here is his lack of experience.. and like.. do I even need to explain why experience is important? Particular Bit already his whole thing on that. Essentially, what I'm saying is that Kaigaku's rank is likely built on potential rather than current power.

There's another thing to note when it comes to rank. How did Muzan compare him to the past demons? He didn't have full knowledge of Kaigaku's power, so we could even make the assumption he only gave him the rank above the strongest demon he was stronger than. For example, let's say Kaigaku got a little bit stronger than Enmu and had more blood. That might've been enough for him to receive the rank of Upper 6. This doesn't mean he was on Gyutaro and Daki's level, but rather he simply surpassed the average rank of Lower 1, and since there was nobody to challenge above him, he got the rank by default. I think this way of thinking would also align with Zenitsu's blank position statement. We also need to consider other possibilities as well. One theory is there was going to be an Upper 5, but it was scrapped. Another could be that he got his rank before Hantengu and Gyokko died, and Muzan never changed it. Another could be he had to have something to work towards to make sure he makes good on his potential.

In conclusion: the story points towards Kaigaku being ranked by potential, not power. He is disregarded as not being a real Upper 6 in some way, and his power is typically shown as sloppy rather than skilled and calculated like Gyutaro.

Mild verse equalization allowed

Yes, this is a witch hunt post, and I'm gonna be the one hunting.

I used Ryukendo's format, so if it looks bad, blame him.

For the mods: Cold likes men

Do foreign objects in a body go into breast milk? I don't know anything about female biology cuz I never touched one.

(Yes, this is a repost, because I cropped it wrong.)

This is made under the assumption this is a timed race they all took seperately.

Hello, guys! I have been in a lot of situations where people have used extremely specific arguments to defend their takes in power scaling, but when I bring the inconsistencies in their logic, I often hear that I'm, "making an appeal to reality," so I decided to make a little list to help anyone else with the same the problem.

For example, I was told the "light" based attacks in Demon Slayer are light speed, which is a completely valid way of scaling. However, if you point out that the light can be cut with a sword, fizzle out in the air and slow down, and produces a vapor that moves at a relative speed to the light, suddenly I'm making a huge appeal to reality, and that's my fault, because I like the Demon Slayer verse, therefore it is MFTL+.