Inuyasha Manga: 084 The Bow's Transformation

What bow is that? Kagome's has been conspicuously absent throughout the whole arc, which is funny, because you'd think she'd want to keep it around her at all times at this point. It is, after all, her only advantage in a fight, especially without Inuyasha being fully capable of protecting her, a possibility she was well aware of when she, Miroku and Shippou went up the cliff to join him. It seems to me that a bow and arrows would be essential to going and assisting him anyway.

Uh-oh, did RT forget about Kagome's bow until now? Naughty naughty.

The Peach Man should really consider growing a sweet mustache to twirl with lines like that.

He mockingly states that Inuyasha has made his choice, preferring death over drinking the human-life-juice. Inuyasha glares and retorts with a question about who said anything about him dying. He won't drink the human juice, but he sure as hell won't be dying in a fight with that bastard Peach Man either, thereby debunking THAT false dichotomy. To back up his point, Inuyasha fearlessly leaps at the Peach Man, but the Peach Man doesn't think Inuyasha-logic sounds so much convincing as fun, waving his staff and sending more spiny vines at Inuyasha easily. Inuyasha holds his forearm up to protect his head, the vines grazing it instead. He lets out a groan, but manages to get close enough to the Peach man to grab hold of the staff, pushing back against the Peach Man with it.

Unfortunately, the Peach Man has a free hand and smacks straight down on Inuyasha's head with it. He goes down with a stunned look while Kagome shouts his name and mini!Shippou despairs that there's no way Inuyasha can do this as a human. He turns to mini!Miroku to suggest the Kazaana, but it turns out that Miroku has already had it open for a time, holding out his palm in the direction of the Peach Man hopelessly. Miroku says the best he can do right now is drag over the Peach Man, but Shippou observes that all Miroku is really doing is sucking up bits of dust. Well at least the Peach Man's place will be a little cleaner. Around the skulls anyway.

Sweating, Kagome desperately looks around for a weapon she could use.

Fresh out the box and everything! How fortuitous! Almost TOO fortuitous!

Kagome climbs over the thorned vines, shouting at Inuyasha to wait for her, but I doubt he's paying much attention. The Peach Man's big stony hand is at his throat and chest, constricting his air while the owner of it asks what Inuyasha's problem is. The Peach Man complains that after all that blustering, Inuyasha appears to be all talk, Inuyasha cursing silently.

While picking up the bow, Kagome is addressed by the old hermit, whose flower pot was upset in the scuffle. He tells her not to bother with the bow and arrow, because something so simple won't defeat the Peach Man now. Kagome shouts back at him that she will defeat the Peach Man, most definitely, then stands up to draw that Peach Man's attention straight toward her nocked and drawn arrow like a boss-ass bitch.

For reals, guys.

The old hermit realizes that a purifying power is coming from Kagome's arrow, and just as he's about to realize what that means, a splatter of blood causes Kagome a wide-eyed expression.

What a cheap piece of shit! Right out the box and everything!

Inuyasha thinks Kagome's name as he looks in her direction out of the corner of his eye, probably not clear on what exactly is happening right now. The once astounded Peach Man giggles and apologizes, because he never bothered to take care of that bow, so it's no wonder it broke. Tears fill Kagome's eyes as they stare at the busted edge of the bow, Kagome herself consumed with disbelief and disheartened. The Peach Man says she couldn't have shot through his body anyway, of course, and tells Kagome to wait a while so he can torture Inuyasha until he's dead. After that he'll be able to snack on her to his heart's content.

Inuyasha groans again, reaching up to grab hold of one of the thorns on the vines next to him. He breaks it off the vine and stabs it into the Peach Man's eye, yelling at him not to be so full of himself. The Peach Man screams, recoiling from Inuyasha at first, then lunging back down at him with an enraged curse as he lays his fist into Inuyasha's arm. Inuyasha hovers his other hand over the arm the Peach Man snapped, noting with astonishment that it's broken. Kagome cries his name, horrified.

Her attention is brought back over to the overturned flower pot when the old hermit requests that she please bring down his former student. After Kagome utters a bewildered sound, the old hermit repeats his request, begging her to somehow do it for him and all those who were eaten. I don't know how he expects her to be motivated by the suffering of HIM, considering in the short time she's known him, he's admitted to being an unwitting agent of power for her current foe, but there you go. The old hermit's petals start to shed and his roots begin to morph before Kagome's astonished gaze.

The Peach Man better not live to realize that or he'll be PISSED.

Speak of the devil, Kagome glares over to where the Peach Man has lifted a fatigued Inuyasha by the collar, threatening to tear him apart. She sees the glow of the Shikon no Tama through his back and nocks that arrow with the delicate vine coiling round the shaft. You'd think something like that would interfere with the accuracy of the shot, but I guess the old guy had to go out looking good. She fires and the arrow speeds right for the light she's looking to hit, so it didn't make any difference anyway. It makes contact, a big sphere of light marking impact, which Inuyasha's wide eyes have spotted over the Peach Man's shoulder. The Peach Man himself doesn't appear to be affected painfully by this, not uttering a sound as he glares out f his ruined periphery toward Kagome, whose arrow burned a hole through the back of his vest.

It also managed to create enough of an impact to make the jewel fragment the Peach Man shoved into his navel pop right out, which Inuyasha notes with some amazement. Kagome stares at the bow in her hands as it disintegrates, because the old bastard's power was apparently only enough to make it viable for a single shot. What kind of mystical magical hermit WAS this guy??

Couldn't just pick back up the jewel and shove it back where you had it huh? Just HAD to fly into an irrational rage over something you could EASILY have fixed?

What was I saying about neuro-degenerative diseases in the last one?

Inuyasha shouts at Kagome to get down as he rams his shoulder straight in between the Peach Man's shoulder blades, using his own momentum to shove him out the open lattice window behind Kagome and over the railing. Unfortunately, Inuyasha's own momentum has done the same to him, and he's right behind the Peach Man in running straight over that cliff. Kagome sits back up, looking confused for a split second, but quickly realizes there's something more missing than Inuyasha meant to get rid of.

A completely sober Peach Man tells Inuyasha that it's too bad for him, because he'll die, and Inuyasha looks resigned when he says that may be. Still, he doesn't really care as long as Kagome is alive. You know who DOES care, though? KAGOME, who screams over the cliff after until he disappears from sight.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? While I am rather miffed by how obvious it was that RT made a whoopsie-daisy in forgetting Kagome's bow in the beginning of the arc, I'm also kind of impressed with how she didn't try to cover it up by going down a road that would have ultimately made less sense than Kagome stepping in. Literally all the other characters were handicapped in some way, so she was the only viable option when it came to bringing down the power level of the villain. It came down to shoehorning in her preferred weapon that everyone would know she should have brought with her to begin with, or trying to make one of the other characters inexplicably more able than her despite their disadvantages, and I think she made the right choice.

It's also comforting to know that she at least TRIED to make the task difficult. Kagome could have just used the plot convenience bow without a problem, but RT decided to kick up the tension of the moment by making the plot convenience bow break before it can fulfill its convenience, thereby making the audience think that there's no other way for her to shoot arrows AND giving the old hermit a reason to believe that Kagome is capable of defeating the Peach Man. It was a risk, but I think it paid off.

And it didn't even defeat the Peach Man, but distracted him and brought down his strength enough to give Inuyasha the opportunity to make that final push. There's an altogether different tragedy that comes with the fact that in spite of their working in tandem as they have learned to do, Inuyasha has chosen to sacrifice himself in order to ensure that Kagome comes out of the situation alive. He's not thinking of what she'll do without him from that point on, but only of her life at the moment, an in-the-present attitude he has expressed before, though this time to a new extreme.

I find it kind of satisfying that the last time his momentary perspective was employed, he also made a remark about how foolish humans were for thinking they'll die in every little difficulty, and he's essentially doing the same thing here with his own dramatic "death" scene. A little ironic, yeah?