“In the innermost depths of my soul, there's a hatred that I can't fight. I'm sure the other Hashira feel something similar.”
Shinobu Kocho Quotes
2 quotes from Demon Slayer, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.
“It isn't about whether we can or cannot. There are things we have to do.”
Resolve is what this sounds like. It is closer to arithmetic. The sentences this was cut from are a calculation: one demon killed saves dozens, an Upper Rank saves hundreds, and the corps is undermanned. She is not steeling herself, she is showing her working. When she says it is what makes that matter. Her lungs are already necrotic from Doma's blood art, she knows she cannot take his head, and she has spent years loading her body with wisteria poison for precisely this transaction. It is usually taken as courage against impossible odds. It is a woman confirming that the odds were never the variable, and then completing a trade she priced a long time ago.
Read Shinobu Kocho's story from the start
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She says it in front of the assembled Hashira, at the meeting where Nezuko is on trial, which is the worst room available for it. Shinobu's public manner is a smile she does not take off, and the smile is not a coping mechanism but a policy: her sister Kanae wanted her to be kind to demons, and she has been carrying out that instruction with her face for years. Saying the hatred out loud here commits her to a course she has already chosen in private, since she is physically too slight to behead a demon and has spent that time converting her own body into a poison instead. The second sentence is the ugly one. She is not confessing. She is counting allies, and she has read the room correctly.