Term · Demon Slayer
Nichirin
Swords forged from ore that sat in sunlight for a year, and they change colour to tell you what their owner is.
In Otakana the clue reads: Blades that change colour for their owner
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Demon Slayer
- Letters
- 8 · Hard
A nichirin blade is the only thing in the series besides direct sunlight and wisteria that can kill a demon, and it works because of where the metal comes from. Scarlet crimson iron sand and scarlet crimson ore are mined from mountains that stand in sun year-round, closer to the light than anywhere else in Japan, and the swordsmiths of the hidden village forge the absorbed sunlight into the steel.
The colour arrives when a new slayer takes the blade in hand. It runs black for Tanjiro, gold for Zenitsu, pink for Kanao, grey-blue for Inosuke, and nobody in the corps can predict which it will be. Black is considered a bad sign, mostly because the swordsmiths have never seen one of its owners live long enough to reach Hashira rank.
The word is 日輪刀, sun wheel sword, and the corps treats a broken blade as roughly the worst thing a recruit can report. Hotaru Haganezuka, who forges Tanjiro's, spends several arcs furious about exactly that, and the running joke is funny only because the sword takes months of work to replace.
Spelling NICHIRIN
NICHIRIN is eight letters carrying four kana, since CHI writes ち with three. Three I's sit at positions two, five and seven, so one confirmed I gives you the skeleton of the row. Otakana asks for the ore name alone rather than the full compound nichirinto. The IN at the end is a single sound, not two.