In the Demon Slayer anime, Tanjiro and Nezuko serve as the story’s center as the latter gets turned into a demon against her will, and the former assumes the role of a Demon Slayer who hunts the demons while looking for a cure to turn his sister back into a human.
Tanjiro Kamado and Nezuko Kamado lived peacefully with their other siblings and mother. Despite their father being dead long before the story started, the family was able to survive and get by on their daily necessities. Tanjiro, being the eldest sibling, took on the responsibility of looking after his family. So, he started selling coal to earn money. His job often required him to go on trips to the nearby village.
During one of Tanjiro’s trips to the village to sell coal, he got a bit late and decided to spend the night at an acquaintance’s house. When he returned home the next morning, he discovered that his family had been attacked by a demon, and everyone was killed.
His mother and all his siblings were dead except Nezuko. However, her fate was even worse; she had been transformed into a demon.
Although Tanjiro had a sense of hope upon seeing his sister alive, he was slowly falling into despair because she was no longer human. She was now a demon who hungered for human flesh and blood. But, his hope returned when he saw Nezuko still had humanity left in her as she protected him from an attack and didn’t attack any humans.
So, Tanjiro sets on a path to try and cure his sister while also trying to protect her from harm from anyone, regardless if they are demons or humans.
Although she survives the initial demon attack that annihilated her family, did Nezuko die later in the story? Will Nezuko die or live by the end of the anime & manga? Let’s find out!
What Happens to Nezuko at the End of Demon Slayer?
Much of the Demon Slayer’s story has Nezuko remain a demon accompanying her brother, Tanjiro, in his missions. As a demon, Nezuko is considerably strong and even has a unique Blood Demon Arts that only hurts demons and does nothing to humans.
Despite this, however, she wasn’t like other demons and showed an immense level of control over her hunger for human flesh, and she was even able to resist Muzan’s control over her. She also displayed excellent regenerative properties during her fight against Daki in the Entertainment District Arc, where she could easily reattach and regrow any limbs she lost.
All this despite never having consumed any human flesh or blood, and it’s typically assumed that the more a demon feasts on humans, the stronger they grow. However, Nezuko is an outlier because she is strong enough to absolutely overwhelm one of the Upper Demon Moons without experiencing any difficulties.
This makes Nezuko a particularly hard individual to kill as she not only has the offensive skills to keep herself safe, which she uses to great advantage, especially when helping Tanjiro fight off other demons, but she also displays great endurance and recovery prowess.
In the later parts of the story, Nezuko is also able to overcome the biggest weakness that all demons share towards sunlight. She gained immunity towards the sun, a feat that not even Muzan, the Demon Progenitor, is capable of.
This immediately attracts Muzan’s interest, who wants to acquire this resistance towards the sun, as it would benefit all of demonkind and further his goal to dominate the world. Fortunately, before Muzan could gain the same immunity Nezuko had over sunlight, she was turned back into a human, making it impossible for Muzan to take it for himself.
Conversely, as a result of turning back into a human, she lost everything that made her strong as a demon and particularly hard to kill.
In the fight between the remnants of the Demon Slayer Corps and a demon-turned-Tanjiro, Nezuko, as a human, threw herself at Tanjiro in an attempt to bring him back to his senses. As a human, Nezuko couldn’t accomplish the same feats in battle she had as a demon which means that while trying to stop her brother, she could barely hold her own, let alone survive.
Despite Tanjiro going berserk, similar to the very first chapter where Nezuko went berserk, Tanjiro could hold off from trying to kill Nezuko as he fought with himself from landing a killing blow. Nezuko sustained heavy injuries from the encounter as she damaged her arm trying to stop Tanjiro from killing the other demon slayers in the area.
By the time Tanjiro regained his humanity, thanks to Kanao injecting him with the same medicine that was used to turn Nezuko back into a human, both siblings hugged each other and were happy that everything was over.
After the final battle against Muzan, Tanjiro, Nezuko, Inosuke, and Zenitsu returned to the Kamado house, where the group started living together.
So, Does Nezuko Die At The End?
Technically, no, and technically, also, yes!
See, if we are talking about the ultimate battle between our heroes and the demons, Nezuko doesn’t die during or after the battle. In fact, she is cured and is no longer a demon. She is back to being a human and can live her life as a normal human would.
However, by the time the manga concludes, she is dead. In the last chapter of the manga, we jump forward in time and see the great-great-grandchildren, reincarnations, and descendants of all the story’s main characters.
You see, Nezuko would marry Zenitsu and have children with him, and then they would have grandchildren too, having great-great-grandchildren that bear a similar appearance to both of them. So, Nezuko did die at the end of Demon Slayer manga, but she lived a long, happy life and had her happy ending!