The Warring States Of Love And Hate (Inuyasha)

Right, then. Let's get back on the same page, shall we? So, to recap: I found this improbability in late February while cleaning out the basement:

The rediscovery of my long-lost off-air recording of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was a terrifying enough bit of synchronicity, which I talked about last May. I briefly mentioned also watching the last bit of that tape, the spare 90 minutes for taping. What was on there filled me with a pure sense of nostalgia, a longing for a long ago time. Now that Twin Peaks is done and dusted, I can go back and tell you exactly what those 90 minutes were. They were three episodes of anime that I recorded on VHS in the year 2005, specifically off of Bionix, the Canadian youth channel YTV's weekend programming block for older youth and teens. (The astute among you may recall that a chance encounter with YTV two years prior to this taping, in 2003, was my reintroduction to Sailor Moon.) 

There were three shows on this tape: an episode of Naruto, an episode of .hack//SIGN, and leading them all was an episode of Inuyasha. Running through these ghosts of 2005, trapped on analog tape, my sense of self plunged back to that time as well. 2005. Half a lifetime ago. It was Inuyasha I resonated with most in this trip down memory lane, as I remembered those long ago days. How one of my best friends introduced me to the show while we were staying over at another friend's place one Friday night, and we watched the newest episode. How I began watching the weekly reruns before the new episodes aired on Friday nights on the Bionix block. The misty memory of those times, which were in retrospect the last moments before seismic turning points in my own life. There was a sense of joy, of carefree summer weekends spent hanging around a tiny seaside town in Newfoundland before going home and making sure that those cool dubbed anime shows on TV were being taped onto VHS for watching in the morning.

I remember how this carefree past eroded away. Not even the seismic shifts in my personal life, but the fact that I soon discovered subtitled anime. I remember 2007, in Grand Bank on a weekend, and me turning on the Bionix block to watch some Bleach. Some essential magic had faded away. I had the Internet and its infinity of anime at my disposal. I did not need broadcast airing dubbed anime any more. In time, too, I forgot about Inuyasha, save for some mild surprise when I heard that the manga ended. I saw the ending. It was a nice bit of closure. It worked out for our protagonists, and they lived happily ever after. With Inuyasha and Bionix and 2005 behind me, I moved onward into the future, and grew into the me writing these words right now... only for a chance encounter with an old video tape in my basement to plunge me right back into that world and make me realize that I missed it.

God, did I miss it. As mature as I like to think I am about nostalgia and resisting its retrograde tug, I'll admit it. I missed 2005, when my life was simpler. I thought of all those places and people from half a lifetime ago that had either grown up, moved on, or left me entirely, and felt a distant sorrow in my heart for what I had lost. All of it had eroded away into the dust of time, and here I was weeping over a pile of entropic rubble. It wasn't all gone, though, and one thing remained. Inuyasha. The show wasn't lost to time, and was in fact still readily available. Its protagonists kept bubbling forth into my imagination, ghosts called forth from my nostalgic pining. Something had to be done to quell it, and so my decision was made.

I would watch Inuyasha again, and this time watch all of it. I only caught a small slice of it in 2005, and only for a few months. When I went back to college that fall, I had no access to broadcast TV and thus no way to watch Inuyasha. The taped episode I'd found was from the winter of 2005, near the end of the arc I was forced to cut short due to my studies. I would watch it all now. I would go back... but I had to do so with purpose. I had to keep the lesson of The Return with me, which I was watching all while I was grappling with these feelings. You can't go back again. I can't fish 2005 out of Inuyasha by watching all of it. Those times were what they were, and then they died as all time must, and it was beautiful but also sad. No, I had a different purpose. I would use the power of what I'd learned in that half a lifetime to get new meaning and purpose out of Inuyasha. What I loved about it in 2005 would, for the most part, be left to the rubble of time. I would find a new resonance with the show, and go forward with that as my solemn memorial to 2005.

So. Here, then, is what I found.

Let's talk about Rumiko Takahashi for a bit. She's the manga artist with a career spanning over 40 years, and she's created quite a few iconic series. Inuyasha, yes, but also other recognizable bangers. Urusei Yatsura. Maison Ikkoku. Ranma 1/2. All of these are interesting in their own rights (I have a friend who adores Urusei Yatsura and she keeps wishing for me to watch the new adaptation of it. One day. One day.) and all three share a bit of genre DNA. Now, I'm overgeneralizing to make a point, but those three series I all mentioned of Takahashi's fall under the umbrella of "romantic comedy". Twisty little love triangles and put-upon protagonists and lots and lots of gags. When we get to Inuyasha, however, things take a bit of a different turn.

The romantic comedy DNA of Takahashi's prior work is absolutely present. You have a male and female lead bickering like an old married couple to humorous results, but they actually grow a fond bond for each other over the series. Several other characters get tied into this twisted and tangled little web of relationships and affections, and it's all right there and charming at times. There's a whole other side to this show, though. Inuyasha is actually a genre fusion, where the other genre being smashed into a Takahashi romantic comedy is a blood-splattered action show. The world of feudal Japan which our protagonist Kagome finds herself stuck in is teeming with various deadly demons who want to rip and tear our heroes apart, and just about every episode has the titular Inuyasha tear them to shreds. He's most known for doing this with his massive two-handed sword, the Tetsaiga, but before he gets that he literally uses his claws to rip and tear the demons first. 

Even this is still just talking about the anime adaptation: I actually purchased the first three volumes of the manga as an omnibus in the spring, and seeing these early parts of the story through Takahashi's unfiltered vision only drives the point home further: Kagome is often drawn in this very soft, almost shoujo manga style, whereas the level of violence is often heightened in these early bits. Beheadings, dismemberment, and fountains of gushing blood will pop up from time to time, and with more intensity than the anime adaptation. I did enjoy my read of those volumes, but we are here to talk about that anime adaptation. Still, it had to be said: the manga itself only backs up my claim.

Okay, so it's a romantic comedy show and an bloody action show with demons and swords combined. What's the big deal here? Is that why the show was such a success? Certainly, there's something to be said for this approach. It makes me think of James Cameron's Titanic, which combined a grand traditional romantic story with the biggest disaster movie that the late 90's could muster, and made billions doing it. Successful as it was, that's not why I'm here. This is the realization that I fished out of watching this old show again to quench my ennui for the lost days of 2005. From then on, I was analyzing the show through that lens, and I found some incredible things over this massive journey. As it was something like 190 episodes of anime, there's no way in fuck I could plot summary the whole thing. Nor would I want to do it like that.

Instead we need a different approach, and a fascinating one which comes from this genre fusion: what sort of antagonist does a show like this have? The question is straightforward and frankly uninteresting to me if taken on terms of a straight action show. Most episodes will have some sort of minor antagonist demon which needs to be straightforwardly defeated over the course of an exciting 22 minutes. As a weekly dose back in 2005, this is what kept me going. Here in 2023, it's not enough. There are major antagonists who crop up to be not so easily defeated, and a well-defined Big Bad of the show... but this approach is not one that will work. Not this time. Take it as given that the big action show about the half-demon dog boy swinging his huge sword satisfies on that level. We have a simple question, and a simple answer which will open the floodgates to a new level of analysis.

Question: What is the antagonist force working against the romance half of the show?

Answer: The antagonist of romance is misunderstanding.

Enter, then, the perfect fusion of an action show antagonist and a romantic show antagonist. Enter... Naraku. On paper he may seem one-note; an evil son of a bitch who desires power above all else and thus seeks to collect the entirety of the shattered Shikon Jewel (the Macguffin of the series) to become the most powerful evil motherfucker the feudal era has ever seen. In action show terms, he is a nigh-invincible and unkillable monster who always escapes his scraps with Inuyasha and his found family to regroup and try again next time. Naraku's modus operandi, however, has always been an insidious spread of misunderstanding from the shadows. With his schemes, he loves nothing more than to mislead people about his intentions while also planting seeds of doubt in his targets. The type of man who will kill someone's whole family and then make it seem like Inuyasha was the one to do it, in order to have two of his enemies kill each other rather than step out of the shadows and do it himself. This is malevolent and evil in an action show, but how does it fare in a romantic context?

That comes from what truly drives Naraku. For all he tries to deny it, this monster is driven by his human heart and its wants and desires. He was a common bandit named Onigumo who got burned to shit during one of his backstabbing escapades, but was nursed back to help by a kind priestess named Kikyo. Onigumo desired Kikyo for his own, but Kikyo fell for another: Inuyasha. Onigumo allowed himself to merge with demons, becoming half-demon himself and taking on the mantle of Naraku. His first desire in this new form, then, was to rip Inuyasha and Kikyo apart. He made them believe that the other had betrayed them, and delivered a fatal blow to Kikyo. Kikyo died with hatred for Inuyasha in her heart, putting him in statis with a sacred arrow before dying. Inuyasha would come out of it 50 years later, but believe that Kikyo betrayed him as well. 

These are not the actions of a top dog "alpha male" who's a Machiavellian master of turning people against each other. For all that Naraku wants to play at being a god, he's a sad little man. A sad little man named Onigumo who wanted a woman, couldn't have her, and went scorched earth. A "Nice Guy", hundreds of years early. This is only proven further in the series when, through some necromancy, Kikyo is revived from the dead, a lonely and bitter zombie who still harbors some hate in her heart for Inuyasha. She fascinates me, and I'll talk about her more later... but Naraku also wants her dead. The problem is, he can't do it. Something physically prevents him from killing Kikyo again, and it's his desire for her. I will not call it love, as love implies affection for the other. The human heart of Onigumo within the monstrous Naraku desires Kikyo, and so Naraku cannot kill her.

This brings us to two entire story arcs worth of show in which Naraku vanishes from the show for a bit, hiding away in a sacred mountain and undergoing a transformation to separate his weak human half from himself in order to gain a new more powerful body. He can tell himself that it's all for the sake of his own power, but I know the truth. He did it so he can kill Kikyo and prove that he's not owned by his human desires... but the very fact that he went to all this trouble over killing one thorn in his side proves that he's a slave to those very desires, and is owned by them. He may be threatening over the course of those 190-odd episodes, but Naraku is a sad little man who still can't get over the fact that the girl he wanted didn't want him back.

Speaking of that girl, we should talk about her for a bit. Kikyo, on this rewatch, was an utterly fascinating character for me. A lost soul wandering the world on the wind of hate and tragedy, whose first action in coming back is to try and kill her supposed betrayer, Inuyasha. Kikyo brought out in me this strange level of self-introspection about me and my personal tastes, as her character archetype is a type I've been drawn to before. A strong woman with an internal landscape rife with pain and heartbreak, who can do things both noble and terrible for her own complex reasons. I've talked about characters like this before. Clara Oswald. Homura Akemi. Laura Palmer. Now Kikyo enters that mix. The question of what draws me to this type of character and why is far too large and introspective for me to look at here. I'd have to lay myself bare to do that, and I'm not doing that here.

Instead we can talk about how Kikyo, herself a battleground for the warring states of love and hate, learns to love and trust in the world again. She is one point in one of the many complex webs of relationships in this show, and her growth while tangling in that web is something to behold. Kikyo and Inuyasha, for all that they were fucked up by Naraku's scheming, still hold some affection for each other. Kagome, our protagonist, has the beginnings of love and affection for Inuyasha, but her own heart contains warring states as she feels some jealousy for Kikyo. She still travels with him, still works to stop Naraku... but it hurts all the same. Kagome, you see, is part and parcel of Kikyo's complex battleground. Kagome is Kikyo's reincarnation from the future.

The interactions between Kagome and Kikyo are brief, but interesting. Kagome, despite the natural jealousy in her heart, is still a good person. If Kikyo is in need of help and Kagome can give it, she will give it. Despite Kikyo being her romantic rival for Inuyasha's affections, Kagome saves her multiple times from near-death scrapes. Because it's the right thing to do. I admire this about Kagome, and it must be said that for as much as I vibed with Kikyo, Kagome ended up being my favorite character on this watchthrough. She wasn't in 2005, but an assertive woman who takes no shit from anyone and fights bravely on is admirable to me here and now. To put it another way, Kagome is a shining example of ideals from the future coming back to influence the past. This is the lesson I took from a little show I watched in 2019 called Enterprise, a show which has been on my mind again lately. I will not relitigate all of that, but I think it's lovely that I found that beacon of utopic possiblity here in this old show from half a lifetime ago.

Kagome, in the end, is the key to all of this. She is assertive and pushes back against the stoic tsundere bullshit that Inuyasha tries to pull (Yes, he is a rare example of a male tsundere), but she also contains multitudes of empathy and kindness. Were I writing this like I used to, I'd have started with her like those old paragraphs about an Usagi or Hibiki. What the hell, once more for old time's sakes. Kagome Higurashi, 15 years old, ordinary Japanese student in the Japan of the mid-1990s and drawn into a world of demons and magic. Kagome, who will call a spade a spade whether she's telling stubborn Inuyasha to sit or staring down the very heart of misunderstanding and malfeasance in Naraku and telling him how utterly vile he is. Kagome, who unites a disparate group of lonely people who have loved and lost and binds them together as a travelling family, moving from place to place to stop demons and make things right. She's lovely, and I adore her.

Because of her, bitter people learn to quench the hate in their hearts and unite the warring states. These people learn how to love again. This represents itself in different ways, of course. Obviously, Inuyasha becomes less of a dipshit and ends up together with Kagome at the end. Kikyo, though, ends up with a bit more melancholy and tragedy. It's here that I feel I should mention the split between shows. As much as I lament "losing" Inuyasha in 2005, time proves that it wouldn't have mattered anyway. The Inuyasha as I knew it, the hallmark of YTV's Bionix block, only had one year of life left to it. In December 2006 the original run of the show ended with the story incomplete, the anime in Japan taking a break to give Takahashi and her manga time to craft more of the story for them to adapt. Beyond the Inuyasha movies, no new Inuyasha would air on YTV again. Some years later the anime returned with a 26-episode series called The Final Act, to wrap up the story and give a proper televised conclusion.

The Final Act, to be blunt, goes fucking hard. With a purpose and end goal in sight, things happen rapidly. Characters lose their jewel shards to Naraku as he amasses his power, and other characters get killed as tension rapidly begins to build. Kikyo is not spared this, but it's how she goes out that is key. Her final death is a tragic loss, one which Inuyasha and the others lament, but it is not a fridging meant purely to motivate them. Kikyo's last moments embody everything I've been saying, about love winning over hate. Kikyo has had a plot of her own, to fill the final shards of the jewel with purifying light so that Naraku's possession of them will obliterate his darkness. One of the final shards rests in the body of Kohaku, the younger brother of Sango (one of Inuyasha and Kagome's travelling pals, and another great character who I wish I could talk more about) who was a part of Naraku's manipulative schemes to sow mistrust and misunderstanding. Removing the shard will kill Kohaku, but in a show like this you know that Naraku will gain all the shards in the final act such to add more tension to be defeated.

Kikyo, then, chooses love over hate. Rather than use the energy imbued in Kohaku's shard to kill Naraku, she chooses to use it to sustain Kohaku's life after its inevitable removal. Her last act in this world as a living being was wishing death upon Inuyasha. Her last act in this world in this form is wishing life upon Kohaku. She has an agency in her final choice, and with that agency she chooses kindness over malice. She chooses love over hate, and there's something beautiful in that tragedy. She was a tragic figure, but in her very last breaths she denied another person that same tragedy. So, too, in her last act does she inspire everyone else around her who bore witness to her choice. The final act draws upon them, Naraku gaining the complete jewel and the power he so desired, trying one last time to manipulate them and spread his misunderstanding... but they stand tall regardless.

Kagome gets a wonderful speech near the end psychoanalyzing Naraku, saying that he could never spread such feelings of loss and sorrow without knowing what that felt like. She sees past the tough exterior into the sad and bitter man that is Onigumo, and how he'll never have what he truly desired. She's right, too. Naraku will be defeated by the very power he sought, loneliness and bitterness consuming him. Kagome will break the cycle of hate and end up wishing the powerful jewel away from the world. The world will become a better place because she, too, chooses love over hate. It's a wonderful sentiment, and one that I hold dear in my very own heart.

I could pour my own heart out and gush about all sorts of things about this show. Equally, I could condemn it for its many missteps and pitfalls. Let's not go there today. I could drag out those unseemly and poorly aged elements to the sunlight of 2023... but I don't have the energy this time. Am I forgiving it those missteps? No. I just want to end on a positive note. What did I learn from fishing Inuyasha out of that distant past, from a time long gone? I learned about a fun fusion of action and romance. I learned more about these characters who I remembered from that past, but didn't have the tools to analyze that I do now. Now that I have, my nostalgic memory is blessed with a richness and depth. I know these characters. I love these characters. They can dance together in melodious harmony within the hallowed halls of my internal landscape, crossing the bridge between 2005 and 2023. As I look across that bridge, I can see a younger me there. A me that's a lot like the me of today, but lacking a lot as well.

One day, that me will be me. To that me, I simply say hold on tight. One day you'll learn the deep richness of this action show you watch on Friday nights. One day you'll discover so many new worlds and so many ways their messages can resonate with you and make you better, and you'll have even more strange new worlds on the horizon for you to broaden your mind. Live well in your world that has not yet eroded, your world of flip phones and the Nintendo Gamecube and Inuyasha. Enjoy it while it lasts, and look back on it with fondness when you become me. I promise you, the journey will be worth the wait. You'll understand.

That's all the fuzzy analog tape has for us. So long, Inuyasha. So long, 2005. Live on, in the magical lands of memory.