Sun Breathing (2024)

Info

Sun Breathing or Hinokami Kagura (日 (ひ) の呼 (こ) 吸 (きゅう) Hi no kokyū^?) is the original breathing style in the series and a Breathing Style meant for experienced people. The technique revolves around close-ranged and very powerful delayed attacks. Due to having many block breakers, the user should always play more aggressively. This also relies on good timing to land all the combos. A Sun Breathing user should have Total Concentration Breathing Constant to pull off combos easier. This breathing is good for PVE and 1v1 fights as it's moves are perfect for dealing damage and will destroy most 1v1's easily if paired with Kanroji or Agatsuma clans.

How to Obtain

To obtain this breathing style, you must talk to Tanjiro, who is located in the Coast Forest, near the border of the Frosty Forest. He can be seen overlooking a beach.

Requirements for Sun Breathing:

• Prestige 1 or above.
• Be level 50 or above.

Slayers can get Sun Breathing without doing any further quests. Completing the breathing skill tree costs 43 Skill Points, making maxing out all skill trees with Sun Breathing hard and costly with a cost of 99 Skill Points, or 91 Skill Points with Kamado family, requiring Prestige 10 or Prestige 9 with Kamado family.

Breathing Style Relationship Chart

Breathing Skills

Note: Using Sun moves as a non-Kamado player will lose 10 HP, losing 80 HP in total if the player has used all moves.

• Passive - When breathing, your Nichirin Sword starts to ignite with fire, which sets opponents ablaze on hit, dealing burn damage over time.

(Deals same damage as Flame's Passive; doubled against Demons.)

• Dance of the Fire God (火 (ヒ) ノ神 (カミ) 神楽 (かぐら) Hinokami Kagura^?) - The user does a series of 3 slashes, start with one forward slash, followed with another slash that slightly nudges the user forward a bit, then finish up with another forward slash that knocks down the opponent. This move is automatically obtained if the player have the Kamado family.

Deals 23 damage per slash with a 40-second cooldown and consumes 60% of the breath bar. [Hyperarmor] [Blockable]

• Sun Counter (日 (ひ) の反 (はん) 撃 (げき) Hi no Hangeki^?) - The user enters a stance. If the user is attacked in this stance, the user will create a fire tornado which knocks opponents back. This move is similar to Flame Breathing's Blooming Flame Undulation combined with Water Breathing's Whirlpool.

Deals 36 damage with a 50-second cooldown and consumes 5% of the breath bar. [Counter]

• Flash Dance (円 (えん) 舞 (ぶ) 一 (いっ) 閃 (せん) Enbu Issen^?) - After a short delay, the user performs a powerful slash which launches opponents up to the sky. This move teleports the user in the direction their facing, this move is similar to Thunder Breathing's thunderclap and flash.

Deals 35 + 20 (DMG + Fall DMG w/o Featherfall) with a 25-second cooldown and consumes 40% breathing bar. [Guard Break]

• Burning Bones, Summer Sun (灼 (しゃっ) 骨 (こつ) 炎 (えん) 陽 (よう) Shakkotsu En'yō^?) - The user swings their blade in a circular motion around them, creating a horizontal ring of fire that lasts around 4 seconds. Anyone in this ring of fire will be stunned and take damage over time. This move is a good combo starter.

Deals 25 total damage with a 50-second cooldown and consumes 60% breath bar. [Guard Break]

• Clear Blue Sky (碧 (へき) 羅 (ら) の天 (てん) Heki-ra no Ten^?) - The user swings their blade in a circular motion, creating a vertical ring of fire. This move is similar to Water Breathing's Water Wheel,

Deals 30 damage with a 30-second cooldown and consumes 50% of the breath bar. [Guard Break] [Auto-Execute]

• Fake Rainbow (幻 (げん) 日 (にち) 虹 (こう) Gen'nichi Kō^?) - The user removes stun and disappears into a rainbow-colored mist providing I-frames. This move is similar to Dance of the Centipede and Scattering Mist Splash, thus it is useful for escaping combos.

1-minute cooldown and consumes 10% of the breath bar. [I-frames]

• Beneficent Radiance (輝 (き) 輝 (き) 恩 (おん) 光 (こう) Kiki Onkō^?) - The user launches forward, while performing a series of slashes. This move is similar to Mist Breathing's Shifting Flow Slash, This move is a great combo extender/ender.

Deals around 70 damage if all slashes are hit with a 40-second cooldown and consumes 90% of the breath bar. [Blockable]

• Sun Halo Dragon Head Dance (日 (にち) 暈 (うん) の龍 (りゅう) ・頭 (かぶり) 舞 (ま) い Nichiun no Ryū Kaburimai^?) - The user launches themselves and their target high into the air in a twirling motion and then delivers an overhead strike to the opponent, sending them down on the ground similar to Shockwave Art's Flying Planet Thousand Wheels. This move can be used as combo ender and great at punishing opponents using Rush.

Deals 60 damage with a 1-minute cooldown and consumes 90% of the breath bar. [Hyperarmor] [Guard Break]

Demonstrations

Pros

• High damage, especially against demons.
• Has many guard breakers.
• Has an extremely reliable I-frame move to escape combos.
• Deadly combos that are easy to pull off.
• Has many deadly combo extenders and enders.
• No need to reset breathing to get.
• Burning Bones Summer Sun Is one of the MOST reliable combo starters or extenders.
• Has an auto-execute move.
• Has a counter move which takes very little of the breath bar.

Cons

• Most of the moves drain a large portion of your breath bar.
• Requires an intense grinding.
• Its one of two breathing styles you cannot have as a Hybrid (The other one being Wind Breathing)
• Most moves have delays or high-end lag.
• Most moves have mid-high cooldowns.
• Non-Kamado players with Sun now lose 5 HP per move. (40 in total)
• Its more reliable when having Level 10 breathing.
• The counter is one of the worst counters in game.

Notes

• You can use Flash Dance to bypass the demon hideout barrier
• Despite being very powerful it can't be used properly until way later in the game
• It's more reliable and helpful with Kendo Mastery
• Dance of The Fire God can be subject to glitches, causing it to fail to do damage. In addition to a bad connection, it can also prevent you from completing your combos due to it launching you far forward.
• The reason behind Sun's nerf (-5 HP per one skill) is that the team is making the terrain ready for a Sun/Moon and Kamado rework.
  • It is said that two of Sun Breathing's skills, as well as some as moon breathing skills, will be reworked.
• At any level of prestige, you must be level 50 to be able to interact with Tanjiro.
• If you have the Kamado family, you may have to rejoin to refrain from spend the 8 required skill points.
• If you have a breathing that automatically comes with a custom nichirin (Sound, Love, Insect, Beast) and do not use a breath indict while getting sun you will keep the nichirin (you only keep one nichirin if do this with sound/beast).

Combos

If you have kendo mastery, add an extra M1 to each M1 combo. If you have lunge, use it before M1 combos if possible.

• M1x3, Dance of the Fire God, Burning Bones on the opponents, breath, M1x3, Dragon Sun Head Halo Dance.

• M1x3, Burning Bones, breath, M1x3, Beneficent Radiance, rush, M1x3, shotgun/M2.

• M1x3, Burning Bones, breath, M1x3, Dance of the Fire God, breath, M1x3, Beneficent Radiance, rush, M1x3, shotgun/M2.

• M1x3, Burning Bones, step back, Flash Dance.

• M1x3, Burning Bones, breath, M1x3, Dance of The Fire God, M1x3, M2, Clear Blue Sky.

• M1x3, Burning Bones, breath, M1x3, Dragon Sun Halo Head Dance, breath, Clear Blue Sky.

Trivia

• In the manga and anime, Clear Blue Sky isn't a vertical spinning slash rather a 360° slash with the user, spinning their body in a horizontal manner.
• Flash Dance's real name is Dancing Flash; a modification of its real counterpart, "Dance", where the user infuses Thunderclap and Flash's technique with it by inhaling huge amounts of oxygen, increasing the pumping of blood through the entire body, focusing it on the legs, and releasing it all to assault the target with a slash.
• Every single known Breathing Styles are derivatives of Sun Breathing, including Moon Breathing.
• The blade color of Sun Breathing users is always black, and a black-colored Nichirin Sword is considered to be a bad omen that the Demon Slayer will never go very far (due to dying before much can be learned about the blade).
• The passing of Sun Breathing as a Kagura draws heavily from Shintō mythology. In Japanese folklore, famous tales in the "Nihon Shoki" and "Kojiki/Furukotofumi" explain that the Kagura ritual originates when Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun, retreated into a cave, plunging the world into darkness. In response, Ame-no-Uzume, the goddess of revelry and dawn, danced outside the cave to entice the sun goddess out. From these events, the Kagura was born, a ritualistic dance that honors Kami (Gods and ancestral spirits). Likewise, Sun Breathing was disguised as a Kagura and passed down as the Hinokami Kagura.
• It is implied that the reason Flame Breathing should never be referred to as Fire Breathing is because its pronunciation is exactly the same as Sun Breathing in Japanese, as the kanji for "sun" (日 hi^?) has the same pronunciation as the kanji for "fire" (火 hi^?).
• Another god of fire in Japanese mythology is the Sanbō-Kōjin, sometimes referred to as the "Kamado-gami". Sanbō-Kōjin is sometimes identified as an incarnation of the demon-slaying Acala, and thus related to Vairocana (also called Dainichi Nyorai) whose worship is related to sun-worship.
• Sun Breathing is also known as Hinokami Kagura. (ヒノカミ神楽 (かぐら) Hinokami Kagura^?, lit. Dance of the Fire God)
• Sun Breathing has 12 forms in the source material, with the 13th Form, which is a combination of all 12 forms, being its perfected format.
• Dragon Sun Halo Head Dance is nowhere near as similar from its original counterpart, but its animation does match the description for (canon) Beneficent Radiance.
• Best paired with Kamado or Kanroji families.[1]