Actually this was meant for collaboration fan art drawing between me and my friend in which she will draw Shanks and his twin. I came up with this idea for drawing twins and I wanted to draw the twin from Demon Slayer manga, Yoriichi and Michikatsu (later turn into Kokushibo) Tsugikuni. Perhaps, I will post it again as collaboration drawings with her later. For now, I will only explain about this twin.
As I've posted in previous article about Yoriichi and the main villain of the series, Muzan, I will discuss further about him here with his older twin brother, Michikatsu. Yoriichi was a selfless brother since his young age. Back then, having twin in the family would bring bad luck unless one of them being cast away from the family. Michikatsu was set to be the heir to their clan and was trained since their younger years of everything there was to it to set for his duty in the future including learning martial art, etc. Meanwhile, Yoriichi did not have the slightest interest but only tending her sick mother until the day she died. One fateful day suddenly came when the martial art and sword trainer found out that he was a prodigy and much more superior compare to Michikatsu and reported the truth to their dad. This reality turned Michikatsu worried for his future and felt a huge inferiority towards his younger twin brother. Yoriichi who realized this situation chose to left the house and disappear to make everything right for his older brother.
Long story short, Michikatsu actually had a good life, a clan, a perfect family with wife and kids but due to his inferior complex problem after all these years and seeing that his twin was well-respected as demon slayer, highly skilled swordsman who dedicated his life to help other, his envy arose even more. He then follow Yoriichi to be a demon slayer and trained harder although in the end he felt like he can never achieve his brother's level unless he trained harder like hell. That's when Muzan influenced his darker side to turn himself and became a powerful demon for the sake of beating his twin's level sooner and faster. Yoriichi had a bitter faith of losing his new family while he was away, failed to kill Muzan and saw his twin turned into demon. He felt that he miserably failed in everything although it wasn't his fault from the beginning but only a cruel fate he couldn't control. MIchikatsu had ignored these facts and chose to become Kokushibo the six eyed demon and 2nd powerful demon after Muzan. He just feed his ego and inferiority all these years towards Yoriichi. Therefore when one day they met again and he still couldn't beat him in a sword fight but instead only seeing him died of old age in front of him, it didn't move him or made him realized that he had lost more than what he gained for life. He only realized everything was too later hundreds years later after seeing his own reflection in his opponent's sword of how scary, ugly, pathetic monster he had turned to be.
I like how selfless, humble, sincere and helpful Yoriichi was as a character despite his prodigy nature in the story who can accept everything for himself although sometimes being so afraid of disappointing others. Although being a good and kind person didn't always return to you in a good way but at least his character showed an example of good impact in the society from his deed and he was remembered for his legacy. As for Kokushibo, had turned into nothing but a shell of demon filled with hatred and envy who denied the harsh truth about his life until he saw himself as monster without any notable achievement. Even until the end of his life after hundreds of years passed, he still can't beat his late twin brother but lost everything for nothing.
What we can learn from their characters is, although they shared the same blood but did not necessarily shared the same thought, compassion, vision and choices in life. Even brothers can turned into sworn enemies despite only one of them succumbed into darkness just for feeding their selfish inferior ego. The moral value from this story would be; don't ever stop being kind, honest and good person and don't ever feel envy on other people's achievement or talents. Everyone has their own share of fate in life.
