Demon Slayer is a smash-hit shonen action series that, for all its comedy skits and colorful humor, also has its dark side. Most of this anime's major characters are scarred by personal loss or tragedies, and that includes Shinobu Kocho's friend and apprentice, the shy Kanao Tsuyuri. In fact, Kanao never even speaks.
However, Kanao is more than just a dandere with a sword. She is noted for flipping coins to make her decisions, using the random chance of a coin to overcome her timid, indecisive nature. Protagonist Tanjiro Kamado believes that this coin-flipping habit is holding Kanao back, and if a certain Batman villain is any indication, Tanjiro is right on the money.
Why Kanao & Two-Face Flip Coins
Aside from flipping coins to make decisions at random, Kanao Tsuyri and Harvey Dent/Two-Face have very little in common, but even so, their shared coin-flipping habit is deeply insightful into how both characters think. Neither of them is capable of making meaningful decisions on their own due to traumatic personal experiences, and they are afraid of making the wrong decision and thus feeling even worse about themselves in the process. For them, flipping coins is a way to avoid getting hurt, and it's also their method of avoiding the stress of decision-making. They can't own up to their actions, so they allow a coin's random outcome to lead the way.
There is a bit more to it than that for each character, but that's the basic idea of why Kanao and Two-Face need outside help to get anything done. In 2008's The Dark Knight, the movie adds another element to Harvey's coin-flipping, with Harvey using the random chance to give everyone a "fair" shot at surviving, inspired by the Joker's chaotic philosophy. Harvey doesn't want to have accountability for the murders he commits, so in his mind, it's the coin's fault any time he shoots someone dead.
Kanao, meanwhile, has more innocent reasons to flip coins, though her story is fairly dark in its own right. She was once captured and held in bondage as a child, and the sisters Kanae and Shinobu Kocho saw her being led into the city, bound with rope, to be sold as a slave. The kind Kanae objected to that and bought Kanao's freedom, empowering Kanao before meeting her own fate as a demon slayer. However, before dying, Kanae had given Kanao a coin to guide her, and Kanao came to rely heavily on that coin to make decisions for her, given her emotionally repressed mind. For the time being, Kanao simply couldn't take control of her life, with a few exceptions such as taking the demon slayer final exam on her own.
When Kanao Outgrows Her Two-Face Habit
On one level, it's vaguely amusing to see the sweet, innocent Kanao acting like a famous Batman villain, but of course, it's not actually meant to be a running joke. This is a substantial part of Kanao's character arc, representing her lingering fixation on her difficult past and apparent inability to move on from it. This is a highly sympathetic situation for Kanao to find herself in, and no one can blame her for relying heavily on a coin to function in everyday life like that.
Kanao has room to grow both as a demon slayer and as a person, and sure enough, Demon Slayer fans saw some of that growth when Kanao listened to Tanjiro's heartfelt speech and reconsidered her use of the coin. Perhaps over time, Kanao can find the mental strength to discard her coin and make her own decisions to take control of her destiny. She cannot let random chance dictate her life -- Kanao must, at her pace, realize her destiny and seize it with her own power.
This quest for self-acceptance and empowerment is echoed in other Demon Slayer characters too, especially Inosuke Hashibira. He may act totally differently than the coin-flipping Kanao, but even he has his insecurities and hangups, including his own face. He can't stand how effeminate his face looks and probably still misses his boar mother, so he solves both problems by wearing a boar's hollowed-out head as a helmet at all times. That is his 'coin,' so to speak, and Inosuke may show serious growth in the future if he can stand tall without it, facing his future with his face exposed and his eyes directly locked onto his destiny.
