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Inu Yasha: An Overview
I'm Elke, and I'm driving for Inu Yasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale this month, a fandom devoted to the manga and anime series created by Rumiko Takahashi (if this sounds familiar, it's because she's also the creator of Ranma 1/2).
Inu Yasha is a half-demon living in feudal Japan, during the warring states era, about 500 years ago. Kagome is a modern schoolgirl and the reincarnation of Kikyo, a powerful priestess from Inu Yasha's time. This is their story.
About Inu Yasha Fandom
In contrast to Ranma fandom, IY fandom is really rather large, and newer. The first appearance of Inu Yasha was printed in Shonen Sunday Issue during December 1996, nine months after Ranma 1/2 ended in Japan. The most die-hard English-language fans put quite a bit of effort into obtaining and translating the manga from Japanese back then, and then fansubbing the anime when it began airing in Japan. The web was really getting huge at that point, so the fandom didn't seem to be centering on any one list or site from early on.
Then Viz Communications began offering English manga and subtitled-and-dubbed anime, and the fandom blossomed. Then Cartoon Network began airing IY as part of Adult Swim sometime in 2002, and the fandom grew and grew and grew. And then there were a few movies released in Japan, and the first had its debut in American theaters in a limited release this past month. The first movie will be available on US DVD on 9/7/2004. There was also a live-action stage show of IY in Japan.
I'm less of an expert on the Japanese side of the fandom, but as far as I know, the TV series began in 2000 and has continued up to this year. Each season of the TV show as released by Viz seems to have about 27 episodes. The latest DVDs available in stores in the US were the first few episodes of third season, and a boxed set of the entire first season becomes available in the US this month, and more than a hundred episodes have aired in Japan. I believe Viz has released up to volume 18 of the manga in English. There are also a number of soundtrack CDs from the TV show and the movies.
My own participation in IY fandom was at the very, very beginning, back in 1997 or so, and then I drifted away from anime fandom for a while, but then I delved back into it during the summer of 2003 and have been reading and writing sporadically ever since. I'm still finding my feet in this fandom, and don't know it as well as I know Ranma... and there are a huge number of fics posted in various places.
Character Descriptions
There are a lot of characters in this fandom, though not as many as there are in Ranma. I'm hoping to cover the more common ones, to give new fans enough information to enjoy the fics I'll be recommending without being familiar with the entire storyline, or knowing every character who appears in either the manga or the anime. All of these characters appear during the first season of the anime, but I've tried to leave out spoilers for later plot developments.
Summary of the first few episodes
Feudal Japan is filled with warlords and demons, a chaotic place far more dangerous than our own time. The priestess Kikyo, possessing strong spiritual powers, has as her duty the protection of the sacred Shikon Jewel, a mystic artifact which in the wrong hands can be the source of incredible evil power. The half-demon Inu Yasha wants the Jewel, as its power could make him a full-fledged demon. His father was a mighty dog-demon, lord of the Western lands, but his mother was a beautiful human woman. He does not wish to kill humans, Kikyo especially, but only seeks to steal the Jewel. Kikyo, weary of her unending battles to kill the demons seeking the Jewel for themselves, and longing for a normal life, sympathizes with the half-breed and does not kill him when he attempts to steal the Jewel. After many unsuccessful attempts to steal the Jewel, he asks her why she will not kill him, and they eventually simply sit and talk. They find common ground in their experiences as outsiders to human society, and she tells him that he could use the Jewel to become human, which would purify the Jewel and likely cause it to cease to exist. He promises her that he is willing to become human, to be with her, to live with her... and they arrange a secret meeting to which Kikyo will bring the Jewel.
It is at this point that things go horribly wrong. At the end of that terrible day, Inu Yasha is in an ensorcelled slumber, pinned to an ancient tree in the forest outside Kikyo's village by her enchanted arrow through his chest. Unbeknownst to the half-demon, Kikyo lies dead of her wounds, and has instructed her younger sister Kaede to burn the Shikon Jewel with her body so that she may take it with her into the other world, the afterlife, where it cannot fall into the wrong hands and be used for evil.
Fifty years later, Kaede is a priestess in her own right and, still pinned to the ancient tree in the forest now named for him, Inu Yasha slumbers on.
In modern-day Tokyo, the fifteen-year-old Kagome has grown up at her family's shrine, beneath the shade of that same tree. Most places within the shrine have their own stories to tell, including the so-called Bone Eaters Well. It is that well which provides the portal from modern Tokyo to feudal times, and Kagome is drawn into the well and back in time by a centipede-demon seeking the Shikon Jewel. The demon sensed what Kagome herself does not know... that the Shikon Jewel is within her body.
During her struggle with the centipede demon, her discovery of Inu Yasha in the forest, and her introduction to Kaede's village, it becomes clear that Kagome is Kikyo reborn, the reincarnation of the mighty priestess, though she does not know her own powers and is completely untrained. In a violent struggle with the centipede, Kagome is injured and the Jewel is freed from her body. Kagome's cry for help wakes Inu Yasha, and in the heat of battle she decides to try to break the arrow's spell which traps him. He is freed, and kills the centipede demon, but then demands the Jewel for himself. Kaede places a special necklace of prayer beads around his neck, giving Kagome the power of subjugation over him... whenever she says the word "Sit!" he immediately crashes to the ground, usually face-first. He decides to stay only because he is waiting for Kagome and Kaede to lower their guard so that he may steal the Jewel, but the first few times a demon attacks trying to get the Jewel, he ends up teaming up with Kagome to vanquish them. She has the spiritual sight to sense the Jewel and the fortitude to stand up against demons, and he has the strength to battle the demons and win. There's only one problem... during their first confrontation with a carrion crow demon, the Jewel is stolen, and in attempting to slay the demon with an arrow, the inexperienced Kagome accidentally hits the Jewel itself, fracturing it into an unknown number of fragments, each of which can hold terrible power if used for evil. The shards are spread far and wide, and each one of them is a disaster in wait for the human population.
The combination of Kaede's advice and a few attacks by demons, including one demon making its presence known through the well into Kagome's own time after she attempted to go home and forget everything she experienced in the past, convinces Kagome and Inu Yasha to work together to recover the shards of the Shikon Jewel. It is a strange partnership, with Inu Yasha maintaining that he only wants the Jewel for himself, and Kagome learning to survive and use her spiritual gifts in a strange time. Inu Yasha is also obviously uncomfortable with the fact that Kagome looks much like the priestess Kikyo, and sometimes struggles with the idea that she could be the reincarnation of the woman whose ensorcelled arrow struck him so brutally so many years before. In spite of that, they become a more or less workable team, gradually collecting the tiny Jewel shards in a small vial which Kagome carries. They make friends with Shippo, a young orphaned fox-demon, who joins them on their journey, hoping to avenge his own father's death by teaming up with Inu Yasha to fight his father's killers.
The demon Urasue appears, and steals Kikyo's remains and some graveside soil from the shrine in Kaede's village. She hopes to resurrect Kikyo, and manages to raise her body, but without her soul. Kaede, Shippo, Kagome and Inu Yasha attempt to recover the remains, but Urasue captures Kagome and causes her soul to flow out and into Kikyo's resurrected form. Kikyo, unwilling to be Urasue's puppet, kills her, and confronts Inu Yasha, demanding to know why he betrayed her. She accuses him of a brutal and ultimately murderous attack while she was on her way to meet him to give him the Jewel, though he had promised to be with her as a human. He is shocked, for his own memory tells him that she is the one who betrayed him, attacking him that day and attempting to kill him. After that confrontation all those years ago, when he dodged her arrows, he broke into the temple to steal the Shikon Jewel, hoping to then leave her village forever, but was pinned to the tree instead by her arrow. He maintains that he meant every word of his promises to her!
She does not believe him, believing instead that he is still trying to trick her, and attacks him. Kagome's still form calls her soul back to herself, and most of her soul does return, leaving Kikyo a mere shadow of her former self, a hollow husk motivated only by the hatred infused in her dying breath, the vengeance she seeks to visit upon Inu Yasha for his betrayal. Kikyo stumbles away, falling into a deep chasm, to become a near-demon herself, requiring the souls of others to continue her quest for revenge. Inu Yasha is left grieving, believing that she is likely dead, and wondering how their devotion to each other could have gone so wrong, but continues his quest for the Jewel shards with Kagome and Shippo.
During the course of their journeys, they make some friends and allies, including the monk Miroku and the demon-exterminator Sango, but also some enemies, including Inu Yasha's half-brother Sesshomaru, a full-blooded demon who contests Inu Yasha's right to a magical sword made from their father's fang, the Tetsusaiga. It turns out that the Tetsusaiga only transforms into a mighty blade when it is wielded by someone with demon blood who is also defending a human, which makes it uniquely suited to Inu Yasha and Kagome's quest. Over time, Kagome gradually becomes more proficient with the bow. They also learn that the swords left to Inu Yasha and Sesshomaru by their father have secrets of their own: Tetsusaiga acts as a lock on Inu Yasha's demon blood, which might otherwise consume his human soul, and Sesshomaru's sword Tenseiga can raise the dead but cannot be used to kill. They also learn that the mysterious shapechanging demon Naraku almost stole the Shikon Jewel fifty years before, and is thus implicated in the misunderstandings and betrayal between Inu Yasha and Kikyo's spirit...
Fandom Resources: Major Fic Archives and Links Collections
There are a number of excellent overview fan sites, resource sites, fanfiction archives, and discussion communities about Inu Yasha.
If I've missed any significant resources in this fandom, please accept my apologies... and please enlighten me in the comments here!
If anyone is looking for specific genres or pairings or themes in IY stories, please drop me a comment or an email, and I'll keep my eyes open for them as I search out more stories to rec this month. Thanks!
Inu Yasha is a half-demon living in feudal Japan, during the warring states era, about 500 years ago. Kagome is a modern schoolgirl and the reincarnation of Kikyo, a powerful priestess from Inu Yasha's time. This is their story.
About Inu Yasha Fandom
In contrast to Ranma fandom, IY fandom is really rather large, and newer. The first appearance of Inu Yasha was printed in Shonen Sunday Issue during December 1996, nine months after Ranma 1/2 ended in Japan. The most die-hard English-language fans put quite a bit of effort into obtaining and translating the manga from Japanese back then, and then fansubbing the anime when it began airing in Japan. The web was really getting huge at that point, so the fandom didn't seem to be centering on any one list or site from early on.
Then Viz Communications began offering English manga and subtitled-and-dubbed anime, and the fandom blossomed. Then Cartoon Network began airing IY as part of Adult Swim sometime in 2002, and the fandom grew and grew and grew. And then there were a few movies released in Japan, and the first had its debut in American theaters in a limited release this past month. The first movie will be available on US DVD on 9/7/2004. There was also a live-action stage show of IY in Japan.
I'm less of an expert on the Japanese side of the fandom, but as far as I know, the TV series began in 2000 and has continued up to this year. Each season of the TV show as released by Viz seems to have about 27 episodes. The latest DVDs available in stores in the US were the first few episodes of third season, and a boxed set of the entire first season becomes available in the US this month, and more than a hundred episodes have aired in Japan. I believe Viz has released up to volume 18 of the manga in English. There are also a number of soundtrack CDs from the TV show and the movies.
My own participation in IY fandom was at the very, very beginning, back in 1997 or so, and then I drifted away from anime fandom for a while, but then I delved back into it during the summer of 2003 and have been reading and writing sporadically ever since. I'm still finding my feet in this fandom, and don't know it as well as I know Ranma... and there are a huge number of fics posted in various places.
Character Descriptions
There are a lot of characters in this fandom, though not as many as there are in Ranma. I'm hoping to cover the more common ones, to give new fans enough information to enjoy the fics I'll be recommending without being familiar with the entire storyline, or knowing every character who appears in either the manga or the anime. All of these characters appear during the first season of the anime, but I've tried to leave out spoilers for later plot developments.
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| Inu Yasha the half-demon | Sesshomaru the full-demon half-brother | Miroku the amorous monk | Inu Yasha's human form | Sesshomaru's demon form |
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| Kagome the modern girl | Kikyo the tragic priestess | Sango the demon-exterminator, with Kirara perched on her shoulder | Shippo the young orphaned fox-demon | one of the shapeshifter Naraku's disguises |
Summary of the first few episodes
Feudal Japan is filled with warlords and demons, a chaotic place far more dangerous than our own time. The priestess Kikyo, possessing strong spiritual powers, has as her duty the protection of the sacred Shikon Jewel, a mystic artifact which in the wrong hands can be the source of incredible evil power. The half-demon Inu Yasha wants the Jewel, as its power could make him a full-fledged demon. His father was a mighty dog-demon, lord of the Western lands, but his mother was a beautiful human woman. He does not wish to kill humans, Kikyo especially, but only seeks to steal the Jewel. Kikyo, weary of her unending battles to kill the demons seeking the Jewel for themselves, and longing for a normal life, sympathizes with the half-breed and does not kill him when he attempts to steal the Jewel. After many unsuccessful attempts to steal the Jewel, he asks her why she will not kill him, and they eventually simply sit and talk. They find common ground in their experiences as outsiders to human society, and she tells him that he could use the Jewel to become human, which would purify the Jewel and likely cause it to cease to exist. He promises her that he is willing to become human, to be with her, to live with her... and they arrange a secret meeting to which Kikyo will bring the Jewel.
It is at this point that things go horribly wrong. At the end of that terrible day, Inu Yasha is in an ensorcelled slumber, pinned to an ancient tree in the forest outside Kikyo's village by her enchanted arrow through his chest. Unbeknownst to the half-demon, Kikyo lies dead of her wounds, and has instructed her younger sister Kaede to burn the Shikon Jewel with her body so that she may take it with her into the other world, the afterlife, where it cannot fall into the wrong hands and be used for evil.
Fifty years later, Kaede is a priestess in her own right and, still pinned to the ancient tree in the forest now named for him, Inu Yasha slumbers on.
In modern-day Tokyo, the fifteen-year-old Kagome has grown up at her family's shrine, beneath the shade of that same tree. Most places within the shrine have their own stories to tell, including the so-called Bone Eaters Well. It is that well which provides the portal from modern Tokyo to feudal times, and Kagome is drawn into the well and back in time by a centipede-demon seeking the Shikon Jewel. The demon sensed what Kagome herself does not know... that the Shikon Jewel is within her body.
During her struggle with the centipede demon, her discovery of Inu Yasha in the forest, and her introduction to Kaede's village, it becomes clear that Kagome is Kikyo reborn, the reincarnation of the mighty priestess, though she does not know her own powers and is completely untrained. In a violent struggle with the centipede, Kagome is injured and the Jewel is freed from her body. Kagome's cry for help wakes Inu Yasha, and in the heat of battle she decides to try to break the arrow's spell which traps him. He is freed, and kills the centipede demon, but then demands the Jewel for himself. Kaede places a special necklace of prayer beads around his neck, giving Kagome the power of subjugation over him... whenever she says the word "Sit!" he immediately crashes to the ground, usually face-first. He decides to stay only because he is waiting for Kagome and Kaede to lower their guard so that he may steal the Jewel, but the first few times a demon attacks trying to get the Jewel, he ends up teaming up with Kagome to vanquish them. She has the spiritual sight to sense the Jewel and the fortitude to stand up against demons, and he has the strength to battle the demons and win. There's only one problem... during their first confrontation with a carrion crow demon, the Jewel is stolen, and in attempting to slay the demon with an arrow, the inexperienced Kagome accidentally hits the Jewel itself, fracturing it into an unknown number of fragments, each of which can hold terrible power if used for evil. The shards are spread far and wide, and each one of them is a disaster in wait for the human population.
The combination of Kaede's advice and a few attacks by demons, including one demon making its presence known through the well into Kagome's own time after she attempted to go home and forget everything she experienced in the past, convinces Kagome and Inu Yasha to work together to recover the shards of the Shikon Jewel. It is a strange partnership, with Inu Yasha maintaining that he only wants the Jewel for himself, and Kagome learning to survive and use her spiritual gifts in a strange time. Inu Yasha is also obviously uncomfortable with the fact that Kagome looks much like the priestess Kikyo, and sometimes struggles with the idea that she could be the reincarnation of the woman whose ensorcelled arrow struck him so brutally so many years before. In spite of that, they become a more or less workable team, gradually collecting the tiny Jewel shards in a small vial which Kagome carries. They make friends with Shippo, a young orphaned fox-demon, who joins them on their journey, hoping to avenge his own father's death by teaming up with Inu Yasha to fight his father's killers.
The demon Urasue appears, and steals Kikyo's remains and some graveside soil from the shrine in Kaede's village. She hopes to resurrect Kikyo, and manages to raise her body, but without her soul. Kaede, Shippo, Kagome and Inu Yasha attempt to recover the remains, but Urasue captures Kagome and causes her soul to flow out and into Kikyo's resurrected form. Kikyo, unwilling to be Urasue's puppet, kills her, and confronts Inu Yasha, demanding to know why he betrayed her. She accuses him of a brutal and ultimately murderous attack while she was on her way to meet him to give him the Jewel, though he had promised to be with her as a human. He is shocked, for his own memory tells him that she is the one who betrayed him, attacking him that day and attempting to kill him. After that confrontation all those years ago, when he dodged her arrows, he broke into the temple to steal the Shikon Jewel, hoping to then leave her village forever, but was pinned to the tree instead by her arrow. He maintains that he meant every word of his promises to her!
She does not believe him, believing instead that he is still trying to trick her, and attacks him. Kagome's still form calls her soul back to herself, and most of her soul does return, leaving Kikyo a mere shadow of her former self, a hollow husk motivated only by the hatred infused in her dying breath, the vengeance she seeks to visit upon Inu Yasha for his betrayal. Kikyo stumbles away, falling into a deep chasm, to become a near-demon herself, requiring the souls of others to continue her quest for revenge. Inu Yasha is left grieving, believing that she is likely dead, and wondering how their devotion to each other could have gone so wrong, but continues his quest for the Jewel shards with Kagome and Shippo.
During the course of their journeys, they make some friends and allies, including the monk Miroku and the demon-exterminator Sango, but also some enemies, including Inu Yasha's half-brother Sesshomaru, a full-blooded demon who contests Inu Yasha's right to a magical sword made from their father's fang, the Tetsusaiga. It turns out that the Tetsusaiga only transforms into a mighty blade when it is wielded by someone with demon blood who is also defending a human, which makes it uniquely suited to Inu Yasha and Kagome's quest. Over time, Kagome gradually becomes more proficient with the bow. They also learn that the swords left to Inu Yasha and Sesshomaru by their father have secrets of their own: Tetsusaiga acts as a lock on Inu Yasha's demon blood, which might otherwise consume his human soul, and Sesshomaru's sword Tenseiga can raise the dead but cannot be used to kill. They also learn that the mysterious shapechanging demon Naraku almost stole the Shikon Jewel fifty years before, and is thus implicated in the misunderstandings and betrayal between Inu Yasha and Kikyo's spirit...
Fandom Resources: Major Fic Archives and Links Collections
There are a number of excellent overview fan sites, resource sites, fanfiction archives, and discussion communities about Inu Yasha.
- TheOtaku.com's Inu Yasha section is fun to dive into.
- Sengoku Jidai is a wonderful site.
- Sengoku o-Togi Zoushi has scans from the manga and a great list of links.
- Here's a good launch point at anime web turnpike for finding more IY sites. (down for maintenance until September 5th)
- Playtime: Inu Yasha has all sorts of stuff.
- Round the Campfire has a great links page.
- Shingetsu, the night of the New Moon, is a tribute site to human Inuyasha, with all sorts of goodies.
- This is a huge anime links collection's IY section.
- Eien no Tobira is a smaller multiauthor fiction archive.
- Hero21: Inuyasha Fanfiction is a multiauthor fiction section, many fics intended for adult readers.
- There is an IY fanguild in two parts, one for general stories and one for adult, which gives awards for excellence in IY fanfic.
- The Fanfic Revolution has all sorts of anime fanfic and erotica.
- Inuyasha World has all sorts of things, but I'm still finding my way around in it.
- The Sakura Lemon Archive is exclusively erotic anime fanfic.
- Fanfiction.net has nearly thirty-two thousand IY stories, but there's a lot of chaff.
- The inu_fic_recs community on Blurty.
- The inuyasha_fanfic community on LJ.
- The inuyasha community on LJ.
- The ramenwhore community on Blurty.
- The inuyasha_yaoi community on LJ.
If I've missed any significant resources in this fandom, please accept my apologies... and please enlighten me in the comments here!
If anyone is looking for specific genres or pairings or themes in IY stories, please drop me a comment or an email, and I'll keep my eyes open for them as I search out more stories to rec this month. Thanks!
no subject
I'd also like to see some decently written smut, without all the fanon cliches and out-of-charichter behavior (not to mention poor grasp of anatomy - those claws are sharp, people) that seem to plague this fandom. I haven't had the patience to look.
Oh, and I'd love to see some stories exploring the non-romantic relationships between charichters, if you know of any good ones. *grin* Good luck with your recs!
no subject
Mmm, good smut. I adore good smut. That won't be a problem. However... I haven't figured out what the cliches are in IY, so I can't promise to avoid them. And sharp claws should only be hurtful when it is intentional. Heh.
Relationship exploration. Gotcha.
Whee!
no subject
Anyways, dude, they're your recs, and the Inuyasha fandom is diverse enough that I'm sure there are people out there who like just the things I mentioned. Rec whichever stories you think are the most rec-worthy.