Demon Slayer has quickly secured a spot among the new "big three" shonen anime, with two movies and three seasons currently available to watch. While the show delivers its promise and keeps viewers on the edge of their seats with amazing action sequences, it also features some of the darkest backstories in all of anime.
Although Demon Slayer fans are more involved with Tanjiro and Nezuko's tragic story, the supporting characters and even some demons have extremely dark backstories -- including and especially Inosuke Hashibara.
Inosuke's Unusual Upbringing Defines His Character
It is a fact that the Kamado family has suffered a lot in Demon Slayer. However, Inosuke, one of Tanjiro and Nezuko's traveling companions, also a pretty rough history. Under the hollowed-out boar’s head mask he wears -- which is revealed to belong to his late adoptive boar mother -- there is much more than a short-tempered beautiful young man.
Inosuke has always had a weird relationship with humanity. Because he was raised by boars, he does not have much understanding of normal human interaction. Although this changes in the succeeding episodes and chapters of Demon Slayer, he initially thinks anyone who approaches him has the intention to attack. Inosuke claims not to have a human mother on multiple occasions. However --surprise, surprise -- it turns out he does.
In Chapter #160 of the Demon Slayer manga, titled “Similar Features, Returning Memories”, Doma, a powerful Upper Rank Two Demon, recognizes Inosuke’s face during a battle. To remember him exactly, he pierces his own skull and swirls his finger around his brain. Apparently, he knew Inosuke’s mother Kotoha as Doma’s cult once took her in.
Inosuke’s Father Was Abusive
It turns out that Kotoha was in an abusive relationship with Inosuke’s father. One day she could not take it anymore and escaped with her son. The two were taken in by Doma and his Paradise Faith cult. Doma tells Inosuke that his mother was singing a lot, particularly a lullaby called “pinky promise.” It seemed as if mother and child were safe and happy at last; however, when Kotoha soon found out that Doma was a Demon and eating some of the worshippers, their happiness crashed.
She flew out of Doma’s temple with Inosuke and ran to try and find a human village, but eventually got lost and ended up at the edge of a cliff. Seeing no escape route and nothing else to do, she desperately threw baby Inosuke into the river down the cliff in an attempt to save his life -- after which Inosuke would be discovered and raised by boars. Kotoha was then brutally murdered by Doma. As Doma tells the tragic story, Inosuke remembers the song his mother used to sing and memories begin to come back.
In addition to the powerful battle scenes, it is no lie that Demon Slayer has an extremely emotional layer as well. Kotoha and Inosuke’s story not only presents one of the most heartbreaking backstories of anime but also shows the power of a mother’s endless love. Doma claims that Kotoha didn't have a single happy moment in her life. However, it’s impossible for a demon who is unable to feel any kind of emotion, to understand how overjoyed she was just because of Inosuke’s existence.
Her desire to see her child live on made her sure of the decision to drop Inosuke down the river. Between the choices of certain death and most likely death, with a maternal instinct and no hesitation, Kotoha chose the smallest possibility where her little boy could live -- and she succeeded.