It's him, but a lot younger, when he was just a child. Not-Mom asks him to remember when he was very young while she kneels down behind him and her blank face is reflected in the water as well as his younger self. She puts her arms around him from behind and requests he remember when she used to hold him like that, as he comes to the realization that she doesn't have a face. Inuyasha needs an adult!
Kagome is has been watching the whole thing from her distance as she lies frozen and voiceless on the ground. She sweats under her immobility, and I don't know if it's through her effort or just a random thing, but the reason why suddenly becomes evident. A chain is coiled around her wrist and all the way down her body, pegged to the ground and maintained by imps like Jaken, one of them having climbed up onto her shoulder, aware of her waking now. The nearby river turns to bubbling tar as Kagome watches, and the landscape turns to a dark wasteland. She's shocked and appalled that it was all fake, the imp that was standing on her shoulder now sitting there looking up at the sky like it's high as balls.
I like him. I wish he could be MY Jaken.
Myouga hops up onto Kagome's temple, unnoticed by the Imps even when he shouts Kagome's name. He tells her to hang on, reminding her who he is, while examining the chains and lamenting about how she's been bound and can't move. He trails off and gulps with sweat pouring down his face, then plunges his cone mouth into her cheek to suck on her blood while she's not able to move. She gasps, and lifts her hand to smack her cheek at the itch. Kagome sits up, imps fleeing from her, and thanks Myouga as she holds out her hand with his smashed body stuck to it. She thanks him for somehow being able to move now, but with an exasperated expression.
Jaken jumps out of his boat and smacks Not-Mom in the head with his staff, calling her Mu-Onna and yelling at her not to suck him in and kill him yet. Mu-Onna's head is so soft that the staff put a sizable dent in her head, but she doesn't seem to mind as she identifies Jaken. Jaken asks her if she's found out the location of Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru's dad's tomb yet. Meanwhile, Kagome and Myouga are eavesdropping on the conversation through some tall grass, Kagome repeating who Jaken is and who he serves. Completely useless info, given that Mu-Onna already said his name and Jaken himself already revealed who he's working for by asking about the grave.
Inuyasha's still sinking into Mu-Onna's breast, taking an ill-timed snooze. Dude, wake the fuck up!
Here comes Writch's unnecessary obsession again. Forgive her, she knows not what she says.
Now, here's where the flip of the manga isn't just a head-scratcher of a decision, but outright unfortunate. You've doubtless already noticed that the manga pages I've posted are not in their original Japanese reading format of right to left, but in andEnglish format of left to right. If you're not going to have major plot points revolving around a right/left side of body, that's fine, but Inuyasha is going to start having those plot points, so Viz ended up being in trouble with the fans after this point.
We'll go with the translation on the flip, for now, but just be aware that when something on the RIGHT is mentioned, it was originally on the LEFT, and vice-versa. It's confusing, yes, but blame Viz, because they're the ones who assumed their English readers couldn't POSSIBLY adjust to reading backwards for a comic book. Too set in our ways.
Well, some of us, anyway.
So, Inuyasha references the RIGHT black pearl, without any context. Jaken wonders what that means.
Mu-Onna says that any further probing on her part will break Inuyasha's soul, and Jaken urges her to go ahead and break it, because otherwise Sesshoumaru will punish him. That's a good reason to break someone's soul for you, Jaken? Okay, dickbag. He's going to be punished either way, because Kagome stomps on his head from behind. She takes his staff and kicks him into the tar stream, shouting that he's a little creep.
Kagome turns to Mu-Onna, demanding that she let go of Inuyasha. Mu-Onna skitters backwards into the grass, refusing, with Inuyasha still snoozing at her breast. Kagome grabs hold of a fistful of his hair, but it's no use, as she's pulled along with him, noting that he's sinking into Mu-Onna's body even more. She wonders what she should do, and Myouga, as if he's a mind-reader, tells her she has to awaken Inuyasha's soul.
She makes a questioning noise and Myouga explains that Mu-Onna is a youkai that forms with the conglomeration of the souls of mothers grieving for their children lost to war and famine. Myouga says that if the soul of her victim is awoken, their body can escape. I don't see how the first part had anything to do with the second, but alright Myouga. Kagome asks him how she's supposed to wake up Inuyasha's soul, but gets pulled away again by Mu-Onna as Inuyasha's hair is absorbed right into Mu-Onna.
Kagome has tripped onto her knees with Mu-Onna's retreat, and is right beside the water now. Somehow I was under the impression that they were moving farther from the water... Never mind. Kagome can see the image of a child Inuyasha being cradled by Mu-Onna in the reflection on the water clearly now, and identifies the image as the true form of Mu-Onna's spell. She hacks at the water/tar in an attempt to destroy it.
Kagome runs up to Inuyasha, calling his name, while he sits in shock. She asks him if he's okay, but damn dude, would YOU be okay? Inuyasha curses repetitively, and that's about as good of an answer as Kagome's going to get. Someone says they've figured out the location of that tomb they've been looking for. Guess who!!
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It keeps up the momentum initiated in the last chapter, and the pacing was great again. I'm so used to reading stuff that's poorly paced nowadays, that it still amazes me how well RT handles the pace of her story.
Her main characters are also handled phenomenally here, because we get a little closer look at Inuyasha and his relationship to his deceased mother here. He tries to act casual and even a little callous, but a few stutters here and there tell us her death is still affecting him, no matter how long its been. These are all subtle, which is another plus, especially his curses at the end there in answer to Kagome's asking whether or not he's alright. He can't quite articulate the trauma of having someone assume his mother's identity in order to take advantage of him left, but it's summed up with his speechlessness.
The new character of Myouga is starting to develop a little too. It appears he's not just annoying people with his blood-sucking. The moment he got at Kagome's blood, she was able to swat him, suggesting that he managed to "wake" Kagome from some sort of spell that the imps used to freeze her up. The chains were loose, so those couldn't have been the only things holding her down. Myouga's other unique ability thus far is the recitation of encyclopedic information on Mu-Onna, and presumably other kinds of youkai.
I'm an anthropologist at heart, guys, and that means I'm always happy to learn a little cultural lore. I really did like the description of how Mu-Onna is formed and the context in which she manifests, because that's a really creative and creepy origin-story. It's interesting to note that her formation was from a grieving mother's sorrow, because it's a negative emotion that must have been common in the time and place.
But it's only really interesting to me as an anthropologist. As a reader, I wonder what the information was doing there, because it didn't answer the fundamental question of how to save Inuyasha. It was like Myouga was just filling a panel and talking to the audience, and not really providing anything crucial. It had no connection to the events in the scene. It was shoehorned in for nothing, and it took me out of the story a little. I would have loved for this information to have been incorporated into the NEXT chapter, when Mu-Onna's identity as a mother becomes more integral to what's going on.
How she was formed DOES raise some interesting questions though. We never got to know what Yura's story was, but I imagine that her origin would have been more centered around the suffering and deaths of others rather than internal grievances. It's very interesting to learn that youkai can be formed all these different ways. It appears that they can even be formed through regular old sexual reproduction too, given that Sesshoumaru has a father, and we later find out he has a mother too.
I wonder if the Encyclopedia of Demonology (Myouga) is going to tell us even more about them as time goes on.
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