In “Demon Slayer,” Nezuko is prevented from attacking others by a kind of bamboo muzzle – a detail that a renowned environmental research team from Japan has now examined in more detail. We summarize the results.
Scientific investigation
The scientists led by Akio Inoue, himself a big “Demon Slayer” fan and professor of environmental management at the Faculty of Agriculture at Kindai University, investigated whether a working version of this muzzle could be made from real bamboo.
To do this, they analyzed the segmental structure of bamboo and compared a total of 150 frontal representations of Nezuko with 112 real specimens of the Moso and Hachiku bamboo species. These were widespread in Japan during the Taisho era – in which the story of “Demon Slayer” takes place.
The results were published in the journal Advances in Bamboo Science. In it, Inoue comes to the clear conclusion that the form depicted in the manga and anime is not scientifically feasible.
The reason for this is the structure of bamboo: the so-called internodes (the sections between the nodes) are longest in the middle of the stalk and become increasingly shorter towards both the base and the tip.
Conditions don’t fit
Based on this, the researchers calculated the ratio between the maximum internode length and the adjacent segments.
These values were then compared with the ratios determined from various “Demon Slayer” scenes. It turned out that the internode ratio in Nezuko’s muzzle is only 0.45, while it is on average 0.94 in the bamboo samples examined.
Mathematically, this means: In reality, the middle segment of a bamboo cane is always longer than a human face. While the internodes of Moso and Hachiku bamboo are on average around 35 and 25 centimeters long, the average facial length of a Japanese woman is around 18.28 centimeters.
However, Inoue emphasizes that his research should in no way be seen as a criticism of the popular franchise. Rather, his sole concern was to check whether the proportions depicted in the manga and anime can be reproduced based on real bamboo morphology – which is ultimately not the case.
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