Aoi’s Story

Aoi doesn’t draw a lot of attention to herself, though her presence is felt throughout so many other characters’ stories. Anything something needs to get cooked or cleaned or fixed, she’s there, but she also is a common placeholder in the story, like serving as a more verbose mouthpiece to explain Functional Recovery, or like being someone who needs rescue so as to set Tanjiro off on his next big arc, or like… marrying Inosuke???

The fact that Aoi doesn’t get much character focus on her own and is instead involved in so many others’ makes her background one of the most difficult to pinpoint, making her one of the most complicated characters to work with. I’ve tried my own interpretation of her history in a couple of fics (anAoi-centric, Aoi-limited POV one-shot, and the pre-canon Butterfly Mansion one with Shinobu’s Tsuguko serving as outsider perspective), but here’s a collection of my thoughts on her character and what gaps I’ve found have to be filled in.

First, timeline.
A lot details are fuzzy, and have to be figured out in relation to other characters. I already touched on Aoi a lot in an attempted timeline of Shinobu’s history, and to keep working with Aoi, we need to bring in other Pillar timelines too. While we don’t know how old Kanao was when she was brought into the Butterfly Mansion, we know it had to have been at least four years prior, because Kanae was killed when Shinobu was 14 (Taisho Secret, Chapter 162). Aoi was already there when Kanao was brought home.

We don’t know how old Aoi is, or at least the fanbooks don’t state this. The Japanese on this Taisho secret (also right before Chapter 162) indicated that Aoi always wanted sisters, but the word used is 姉妹 (shimai), comprised of both ‘older sister’ and ‘younger sister,’ so this doesn’t indicate any seniority between her and Kanao. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume they’re around the same age, so when Tanjiro meets her this would put Aoi at age 16 (or so—no one knows Kanao’s birthday, after all, they just picked out the day she met the Kochou sisters). So Aoi, orphaned by demons (as stated in the Taisho Secret prior to Chapter 164), had wanted a sister, and was already taken in by the Kochou sisters… but Kanao is grouped in Kanae and Shinobu’s sister, whereas Aoi is not.
…Interesting.

As a reminder, this all took place at least four years prior to canon, and Kiyo, Sumi, and Naho all came into the Butterfly Mansion fold by then too, for they are present at Kanae’s grave when Kanao thinks back to “when she died” and how she couldn’t cry. And what might that be that Aoi is wearing? A Corp uniform?

If this takes place shortly after Kanae’s death (and since Shinobu always worked on to put on a smile for her girls since then, I find it unlikely that this was a later gathering on the anniversary of Kanae’s death), then Aoi wouldnot had been in the Corp yet. She took part in the same Final Selection as Muichiro (as stated in Fanbook #2), and he still would had been out in the woods with Yuichiro at this time, maybe even with his parents.

Here is where things get murkier.
Wedon’t actually know when Muichiro’s Final Selection was.

We do know he was 11 when he was orphaned, (and since he has a summer birthday, if he counted his age change on his birthdate as opposed to New Years, it’s possibly he had just turned 11), and then he “become a Pillar two months after holding a sword [for the first time]” (Uzui, Chapter 87). What we don’t know is how long it took Muichiro to go from severely injured to using a sword for the first time, very likely right before heading off to his Final Selection. While we do see a flashback panel of Muichiro covered in bandages while training with a blade in Chapter 121, we don’t know when this took place. Since his swordsmith could tell from the blade he actively used as a Corp member that he worked that hard to strengthen himself, I’m inclined to say this isnot a flashback from when he first recovered from that event that made him lose his memories. After all, he hasn’t been in the Corp that long, certainly not even close to three years. A footnote in Fanbook #2 states his impressions of the other Pillars as animals is not only because of his memory damage, but also because he hasn’t been a Pillar very long.

Ergo, Aoi hasn’t been an official Corp member long either, despite how long she’s been involved at the Butterfly Mansion.

If we tried to nail it down further, Mitsuri started training at age 17, and if we go by the Rengoku Gaiden, she passed the Final Selection six months later, when Rengoku became a Pillar (so perhaps 18 months-iiiish before meeting Tanjiro?). Rengoku was a Pillar before Muichiro, and by the Fanbook footnote, presumably Mitsuri was too. While it’s implied the Final Selection takes place once a year, that’s hard to stomach by a strict reading of canon and I like to assume it’s at least twice a year for more flexibility, but if it’s indeed only once a year, then that leaves only the year prior to Tanjiro’s participation.

So, that gives us about a year-ish since Aoi joined and quit fighting.

Let’s work backwards. Fanbook #2 also tells us that Aoi learned Water Breathing, not something she’d had learned from Kochou sisters. Aoi had her own cultivator, but that leaves all sorts of questions about when and where and how long her training was.

My personal headcanon to make sense of this: she had a Water Cultivator but the cultivator didn’t have a place for a girl to stay (too many boy students around), so the Kochou girls agreed to take her in. Due to the commute, it took Aoi a longer time to accomplish what others could accomplish in a year.

But, it could just as well be that Aoi was merely the first orphan taken in, and after Kanae’s death, she decided to learn Breath Technique, but Shinobu wouldn’t teach her, like how Shinobu wouldn’t teach Kanao either (thus, Kanao watched and learned and snuck out the Final Selection without permission). In Aoi’s case, perhaps it was that Shinobu knew she couldn’t stop her, but introduced her to a Water Breath cultivator, as Aoi might be more suited to that Breath. If she learned in the normal span of a year, then she’d have started training around age 14 (roughly two years after Kanae’s death), and entered the Final Selection about age 15. There’s of course plenty of flexibility in those numbers.

Anyway, she enters, and then quits right afterward, and presumably feels ashamed of it, despite all the good she does in the Butterfly Mansion. If we dive into her manner of speech and how she addresses other people… well, actually, I have. Here’s a snippet of interpretation I put into my list of terms of address used throughout the cast:

Food for thought: Using “-sama” for Shinobu implies some distance, or at least not the closeness Kanao takes advantage of by using “-neesan,” even though Aoi has been in the Butterfly Mansion longer than Kanao has is an orphan. Likewise, Aoi keeps some formal distance by addressing the Kamaboko boys (whom she lives with for the greater part of a year) in polite language and “-san,” even though she entered the Corp before they did. While it could just be in Aoi’s personality to speak this way, my personal interpretation is that she, having quit as a swordsman, feels she is both imposing on Shinobu’s kindness and that doesn’t have the right to consider herself a colleague to active swordmen, however inexperienced or younger than her they may be.

Some time ago, I also had to wonder about her potentially complicated feelings toward Zenitsu, who makes no secret of his cowardice and whines and screams about going on missions, but unlike Aoi, he actuallydoes.

I want to pause here to wonder a bit more about her other skills, for Gotouge tells us almost as soon as Aoi joins the story how wonderfully talented she is.

Aoi is probably the sort of person who identifies a problem (i.e., broken box), investigates what needs to be done to fix it (block the holes where light can get through, specifically, where the lacquer coating has been permeated), and then either does it (due to having worked with it or something similar to it before), or figures out how to do it (gathers supplies and learns basic lacquer technique). Also, she’s effective. She doesn’t just save Tanjiro’s ass by letting him in when she’s out of Haganezuka’s line of sight, she follows up with swiftly dispelling Haganezuka’s hours and hours of rage. Aoi!! Stopped!! HAGANEZUKA!!! Inosuke’s right, this girl really is super, super strong!!!! (At least I assume it was Aoi who gave him the dango, Kiyo and the other girls don’t seem brave enough for that.)

What makes me curious from a character perspective is how long she’s been like this. Was this always simply part of her personality, or did she focus her efforts on things like this so as to earn her keep in the Butterfly Mansion, and perhaps distract herself from the shame of having quit the sword? I think it may be a mix. Since we know nothing about her background from before she was orphaned, it’s hard to say when it all started, and what she might had come in already knowing.

That got me thinking, because it was very, very common for poor girls to quit school to go work far away from home in domestic labor or farming to earn money for their families (not quite like getting sold and paying off a debt), then perhaps Aoi had already been doing this very kind of work for many years already… and maybe she was far, far away when her family was killed, so she never actually saw a demon until the Final Selection.

So that gives us a lot to think about with Aoi’s past, but the future leaves just as many questions.

First, like… InoAoi. So much of my InoAoi tag is a matter of me wrapping my head around how this came about, for both of them. As blindsided as I was by this ship, I don’t dislike it, I think it’s really cute that Inosuke likes being treated special by her and wants to treat her special back, and it’s also cute that Inosuke makes her smile. Or at least, Fanbook #2 tells us that, even though that runs contrary to everything in serialized canon and we only saw those smiles in material printed later, perhaps after fans reacted with surprise to Chapters 204 and 205.

(Sure, other people may get acorns, but does anyone else get pine cones?)

…what this means, then, is that Aoi found it easier and easier to smile around someone like Inosuke. I love that Ufotable added her giving Inosuke a little smile when he was being rude but sort of endearing for having made progress in, like, sitting at the table like a reasonable human, using chopsticks (sort of), and only eating off his own plate… nevermind.

Inosuke seems so far from what a straight-laced person like Aoi would want in a partner, but it’s an age-old romantic trope that straight-laced people need someone to loosen them up. I’d like to think that Inosuke showed himself to be more of a dependable man around her, and that he finds her pretty and stuff, you know, couple-y things besides just ‘pair the spares.’ It still baffles me how Aoi could find him attractive, though—unless—well—unless she found his chiseled features on display sexy, I suppose. And that face? Maybe she always had a thing for pretty boys. Maybe these were features she liked enough in the first place that when he started showing interest in her, she thought, “I can fix him. At least enough to make him a proper himbo” and then was pleased with her lot in life?

It does beg the question, though, did she have a flame for Tanjiro? If so, how long did it last? Did it hurt to see him with Kanao? My thought is that, given how she linguistically places herself at a distance from others, she might had made Tanjiro off-limits long before recognizing how Kanao was so much more drastically impacted by him.

Maybe that stung a bit too, for Aoi had been with Kanao for so many years, but never got to see how much of an impact she had on Kanao. It’s totally there, though, Aoi! Man, I hope Kanao got really good at expressing all her appreciation for her, and I hope Aoi accepted it.

The two of them become the masters of the Butterfly Mansion after that. Since Kanao became a doctor, I have to assume Aoi is the one who taught her how. Also, who even taught Kanao how to read and write?? Was this Aoi?? And perhaps the little girls… oh no, it’s cute, cute thoughts, oh no, oh no, moving on—

–Movingway on, actually. Once all the spares were paired, who got the mansion?

This is a legit question. If we go back to how Aoi might had seen Kanao as more fully a sister to Shinobu and Kanae than she was, Aoi might feel it was more Kanao’s right to inherit it (though Kanao would disagree). It’s also easy to assume that it will fall to Aoi (and Inosuke will move in), for Kanao is off to go be the matriarch of the Kamado family home.

………….orisshe?

To borrow from this post about post-canon TanKana headcanons:

—
Tanjiro wasn’t really in good shape to continue making charcoal. Inosuke took to it really well.

Kanao worked as a doctor and had reason to feel attached to the Butterfly Mansion.

At some point later generations of the Kamado clan lost contact with the Hashibira clan, until Aoba and Sumihiko met up and became friends while dealing with being in their respective amounts of big trouble. Aoba seems attached to the mountains. Sumihiko, little parkour boy, lives the middle of a city and presumably has never made charcoal.

While Japan does try to keep family trades going on for generation after generation, it’s not always feasible to go father to son, and there’s always been flexibility, including entrusting some traditions to unrelated craftsman who may or may not be formally adopted into the family. Name changes may or may not happen.

What if Tanjiro entrusted the Kamado family home and charcoal trade to Inosuke?

Aoi, who might had always felt the Butterfly Mansion belonged just a little more to Kanao, might had been fine with this and offered her services to the new community, while Kanao continued running the hospital with equipment that helped her get around her vision impairment, as well as take extra care of Tanjiro’s health.

I would prefer that Tanjiro stays in his family home, but the more I think about this someone sad alternative, the more I think it could make a lot of sense.
—

If we look at it from the Aoi/InoAoi perspective, Aoi might have understood her husband’s need for mountains, as well as Kanao’s need for more equipment. Aoi, who has undergone Breath training, and who is no stranger to grueling labor and lots of chores, wouldn’t have a lot of difficulty adjusting to rural life, even if it wasn’t her personal choice (which we have no idea about, maybe she likes the quiet of it). She might even find a lot of purpose how there in the mountains, knowing that by this time, the girls of the Butterfly Mansion are all fine without her (a huge turning point in Aoi’s life, for sure). While Inosuke would have his own serious understanding of what it means to inherit the Kamado home and charcoal furnace, Aoi would care just as much, and perhaps in some way, this would be like paying Tanjiro back for how he fought in her stead on the battlefield. The more I think on this theory, especially given the potential impact of Tanjiro’s mark, the more I find I like the Kamado->Hashibira property handoff idea, especially since everyone else in their squad would still be over there frequently, it wouldn’t be like totally letting go. But would Tanjiro and Nezuko trust Aoi to value their home? Absolutely, they absolutely would.

Again, that’s just a pet theory, and all we really know is that Inosuke makes her smile. It’s up to our imaginations how she gets to the point of smiling this wide.

Maybe this happily adventurous—as well as strong and talented!!—girl was there all along, before she knew of demons.