Norio Kouhata

• Demon Slayer Uniform

Biographical Information

• Kanji

  柔 河畑
• Rōmanji

  Kouhata Norio

Characteristics

• Race

  Human
• Gender

  Male
• Age

  24
• Height

  178cm (5'8")
• Weight

  80 kg (176 lb)
• Birthday

  April 4th
• Hair Color

  caramel brown
• Eye Color

  turqois blue

Professional Status

• Affiliation

  Demon Slaying Corps
• Occupation

  Demon Slayer
• Breath Style

  Breath of the Raccoon Dog
• Breath Origin

  Breath of Flame
• Current Rank

  Hinoto

Personal Status

• Status

  ALIVE
• Relatives

  Unnamed father

  Unnamed mother

  Unnamed younger brother

Norio Kouhata (河畑 [こうはた] 柔 [のりお] Kouhata Norio), is a member of the Demon Slaying Corps, who is a member of the Tanuki Estate. Norio currently has the rank Hinoto. Creator of the breath style Breath of the Raccoon Dog.

Appearance

Norio is a tall and very toned young adult. He has medium, slightly shorter than shoulder-lenght, caramel colored hair with with even lighter tips at the bottom. He has a mix of turqoise and ocean blue colored eyes. Very clearly visible are his scars all over his body. He has 4 scars in his face, of which 3 of them are on the right side of his face. It looks like he was wounded by the claws of an animal. The last scar is on the left side of this face, on his jaw bone. It appears as if something small caused it, like a fishhook, maybe. There are also 3 very large and visible scars on either side of his chest and 2 larger ones around his neck. A demons doing, maybe? Lastly, there are 2 more visible scars on his left wrist, these seem to be scars of chipping wood, rocks, glasses or metals.

Norio has a very recognizable Haori. It's a darker brown color that turns into a lighter brown at the end of it, with darker dotted spots, rounded off with some pelt, or fur. He wears the standart Demon Slayer Uniform underneath it, alltough he doesn't wear it as often. It's a dark brown tinted gakuran jacket (Which he doesn't appear to be wearing often. He roams around with an exposed chest most of the time), a white belt around his waist, which sits ontop of a caramel colored wool-belt, dark brown colored long pants that are tucked into his caramel and dark brown colored tabi-socks and brown toned zōri's.

He doesn't use a common Demon Slayer Corps weapon. Instead, he uses a Yari (槍 - Japanese Spear) with several accessoires attached to it. The Yari (槍) appears to have a red blade and red bandages wrapped around it.

Norio chose a Yari (槍) because it is easier for him to handle it, since he is used to spear-fishing. He isn't very skilled with swords and finds himself struggling to swing it properly.

Personality

Norio is generally very soft, ambitious, clever and cheerful . Yet absolutely incapable of handling compliments, he finds himself rather weirded out and blushing. This is especially the case with female attention, since he has never had a relationship before. However, he cannot handle compliments by male friends either, he will instantly blush and not know what to say or how to react to it.

Keeping a levelhead on duty and solving issues with cleverness is his biggest trait. He works according to a prevention-system rather than a head-on kind of battle. Which means he will set up traps after scouting an area thoroughly, to keep the chances of a head-on battle low, and trap the demons beforehand, if possible. Allthough he ends up triggering some of the traps himself, due to being very clumsy.

His generally positive attitude makes it very easy for new slayers to warm up to him. They will also gladly work with him, since he likes to take initiative and lead - if necessary. However, his clumsiness and helplessness seems to draw the attention of a lot of women, much to his demise. For that reason, he prefers to travel with his best friend and companion Yoichi [ Yae 's OC]

Abilities and Powers

Natural Abilities

• Enhanced Strenght: Due to all the hard daily chores that Norio does on his estate, he has adapted a natural strong body type. Hours and hours of daily training, cutting trees, carrying heavy logs through the forest, running through wild and rough waters and rivers, carrying heavy fish-nets, as well as doing heavy farm work have helped him train his body hard enough to accumulate a lot of strenght.

• Amazing observational skills: Growing up in a fishers village on a farmland near the woods, Norio learned a lot from the wildlife. He spent hours of his childhood watching animals and plants grow and tried to understand how nature itself behaves. Most of his time he spent watching Tanukis that were located deeper in the forests. He now is skilled enough to understand a situation and how to work with the surroundings available to him. Despite being very skillful in observing and coming up with clever ideas to make everything work, he still has a few set-backs and mishaps that happen to him, which gives him more of a reason to try harder.

• Great Fishing Skils: Since his father is a fisher that owns a small fishing hut in their village, Norio was bound to learn how to fish. Over the years he became better and better at it, and is now considered a skillful fisher.

• Great Survival Skills: All those years spent in the forest watching wildlife, helped him understand what's edible, whats dangerous, what to look out for, which pathways to take and which pathways to avoid. . . And also by trapping himself in dangerous and uncomfortable situations. Life is the best teacher afterall.

• Full Focus Breath Style: Learning Total Concentration wasn't as hard for Norio as it was for others in this batch of Final Selection survivors due to already growing up with hard farm work and building up great stamina. Carrying food and hayballs for farm animals, as well as showering in rivers during cold winter days, have paid off.

• Demon Slayer Mark: (Subject to change) - [Not sure if I want him to have a mark, yet]

Tanuki Estate

The Tanuki Estate: The Estate was founded by an elderly former pillar upon a wish from Yoichi [ Yae OC ] and Norio when they were quite young. The elderly man believed in the two boys' cause and reasoning and thus, the villagers and their friends have helped build the estate. It was called the Tanuki Estate due to the amount of wild tanuki living closeby. The estate is located deep within the forests with a bunch of neighbouring smaller villages. One of them being Norio's hometown, which is a fishersmans village.

The estate focuses mostly on survival techniques and trap setting, as well as scouting abilities. The main job of the estate is to teach younger slayers how to work with their surroundings, especially in the forests. So they learn how to:

• Hunt: Teaching rookie slayers how to hunt for a meal while they are on a longer mission without food supplies.

• Pathfinding: How to locate where to go, and which path to take. Which routes are dangerous, which routes are good to use. How to get back home after losing direction.

• Fishing: Incase of their missions leading them closer to riverbanks; how do you fish quick and efficient and how to skin and cook the fish the safest way.

• General Survival: How do you start a fire? What wood is best used for it? How can you tell which berries and fruits to eat? What leaves and natural remedies can you find and treat a wound? These are also general lessions that the estate tries to cover.

• Stamina Training: Having younger slayers or inexperienced slayers run through forests and riverbanks, do heavy duty work such as wood cutting or having them take icecold baths in icy waters helps them build resistancy and stamina.

Swordsmanship

Breath of The Raccoon Dog (狸 [たぬき] の呼吸 - Tanuki no kokyū): Norio didn't know what breaths were, when he started his battle-training, after learning that demons exist. As a natural response, he started immitating the wildlife around him, especially the wild tanukis in the forests. Similar to these sly and sneaky raccoon dogs, Norio adapted a rather uncontrolled and sly battle technique, by prioritizing irregular, lower suprise attacks and a serious focus on a good strong hit rather than multiple ones. He retracts his moves a lot and changes them irregularly to confuse his opponents.

There are currently 5 known Forms to this Breath Style.

• First Style: : TBA

• Second Style: TBA

• Third Style: TBA

• Fourth Style: TBA

• Fifth Style: (伍ノ型 Go no kata:) TBA

Trivia

• Norio’s surname Kouhata 河畑【こうはた】is composed of:
  • (河) - "River"
  • (畑) - "Farm, Field, Specialty"
  
  
• Norio (柔) is written with:
  • (柔) - "Tender, Weakness, Gentleness, Softness''
  
  
• I decided to name him Norio, because I wanted him to be a very soft and gentle character. Funny story, his name would have been different if I had been able to find a japanese name containing a kanji for ''clumsy'' but I couldn't find actual names, other than the kanji for clumsy itself. I then tried to find names containing the meaning ''Seed'' since he is a farm/fisher boy, but I ended up not liking the options given to me.
  
  
• Norios favorite food is grilled/smoked fish directly from the campfire. Also, he loves eating fruits and berries.
  
  
• I actually struggled quite hard with his name and design choice. He has undergone some surgery until I was satisfied enough with a design.
  
  
• His clumsiness gets him into a lot of trouble, where he ends up getting a lot of scars or ends up in awkward social situations.
  
  
• He loves fishing. He absolutely loves fishing. Seriously, he LOVES fishing.
  
• Norio's Kasugai Crow is a very kind and gentle female (Corvus Corax) named Mutsu【睦】むつ - Which translates to intimate, friendly, harmonious because she is so considerate and quiet.
  
  
• The beaded bracelets Norio is wearing are a gift from his little brother.