Yoriichi Type Zero is one mean machine from an era long gone, and in the present day, it serves as not just a symbol of the mightiest demon slayer to have ever lived, but also a tool and repository for a power boost.
Tanjiro’s latest adventures have taken him to a region hidden from monsters and men, full of people and mysteries that reside there for centuries. There is also a contraption that carries a silhouette very familiar to Tanjiro, as he has seen it in his dreams before.
It’s Yoriichi Type Zero, a wooden mechanical wind-up doll that carries a visage exactly the same as the one in Tanjiro’s dream.
Six-armed training machination
Tanjiro arrives at the Swordsmith Village in search for Mr. Haganezuka and get a new sword made for him. Upon his arrival, he’s awestruck at the culture that this hidden region is house to, replete with workshops where the swordsmiths have been hammering weapons into shape for generations.
Apart from good food, a remedial sauna, and the Love Hashira, Mitsuri, Tanjiro also stumbles upon Genya, and the Mist Hashira Muichiro Tokito. He eavesdrop on the Mist Hashira confronting a ten-year-old swordsmith apprentice named Kotetsu.
Tokito needs the key for a mechanical doll but Kotetsu refuses to let him use the contraption that has been in his family for centuries. A highly advanced machine, especially for the time period it was made in, this mechanical doll is called Yoriichi Type Zero.
The Hashiras use it to train, as the doll serves a great sparring partner with its six arms run by gears, offering a total of 108 moves that present quite a challenge for the trainee.
A legendary legacy
Kotetsu sheds light on the mechanical doll that he claims has been handed down to the next generations of his family from hundreds of years ago.
His ancestors made the doll and after his father’s death, and without any siblings, Kotetsu is the last surviving member of his family that has to look after the doll and ensure its upkeep.
The quandary is that he doesn’t know how to. He’s only ten years old and he’s not good with swords or dolls. Kotetsu also sheds some light on the inspiration for the doll, which was a real person that once lived.
So fierce was his strength and fighting abilities that the makers of the doll deemed it fit for the contraption to have six arms, which enabled them to more accurately replicate the fighter’s speed.
A relic and a trove
Yoriichi Type Zero was made during the Sengoku era, and when Kotetsu reveals this bit of trivia to Tanjiro, he’s shocked, since it means that the doll was made three hundred years ago.
It is also modeled after the greatest demon slayer to have ever lived. Furthermore, tue Yoriichi Type Zero is not just a technological marvel from a long-gone era, but as Tanjiro and Kotetsu come to learn by accident, is also a safe for a weapon.
At the end of his training with the doll, Tanjiro deals a blow at it after dodging all its attacks, having developed his skills and reflexes from the training. This attack makes the already hanging-by-threads face of the doll to fall down, revealing the insides of it to gawking Tanjiro and Kotetsu.
Encased within its body is an old sword, just as old as the doll itself. It’s likely to be the weapon of the legendary titular demon slayer who the Yoriichi Type Zero was modeled after. This is also likely the things Mitsuri was talking to Tanjiro about earlier on.
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