Inuyasha Manga: 271 Pulse

Mine's still going strong, despite how much I felt like I was going to die over the holiday season. Much like Inuyasha, I was a bit more vulnerable than usual and had to deal with a rapidly declining wellness over the past few weeks, but thankfully I also bounced back pretty fast once my ailment wore off. UNLIKE Inuyasha, however, I could have protected myself a bit better, and it's my own damn fault that I had to suffer so much. I thought I was too busy, and ended up taking much more time to get over the attack than I ever would have spent just boosting my defenses. 

If you haven't yet, PLEASE get your flu shots and bivalent covid vaccines, friends!

Too bad there wasn't a vaccine for this fucking barrier. All the same, Inuyasha was able to get his strength back and sends that attack straight at Jakotsu, who... doesn't seem all that bothered about it. He's forced backward by the blow, but his expression is strangely placid as it connects, teeth clenched and brows drawn down in not much more than an expression of irritation and discomfort. A few stalactites from the ceiling clatter down to the floor of the cave, struck down by Kaze no Kizu as well. 

Straight up BURIED that fucker.

Inuyasha takes a moment to appreciate how it's over - well, his weird association with Jakotsu, anyway. When he perceives a certain scent wafting by his nose, he tenses back up and looks around to where it's coming from. Acknowledging that it's Naraku's smell, which is essentially admitting that no, the biggest part of this shit is NOT actually over. But, he is at least on the right track to what he came here for in the first place, so he didn't end up being TOO sidetracked by Jakotsu's noise. 

Noticing that the smell of his enemy is coming from the direction the youkai are leisurely flying from, he starts right for it, affirming that Naraku is in the inner region of the mountain like he'd assumed before. He leaves behind the collapsed cave as it still rumbles with the surrounding activity, Jakotsu's broken interconnected blades sticking up out of the rubble. Jakotsu is conscious, and internally whining about how that darn Inuyasha left without finishing him off, calling him an "amateur" for it. I'm not touching THAT one, because phrasing is dead. Jakotsu thinks he's about to join it in oblivion. 

Seems more like a wish than a statement of concrete fact. And who can blame him? His condition looks... not great. Still, Jakotsu has a somewhat positive attitude about it all - he thinks the experience was pretty interesting overall. You can't get much more interesting than being brought back from the dead as a zombie to fight a dog-boy and his friends. 

Renkotsu walks over to where what's left of Jakotsu muses on his "goner" status, realizing that the guy is still alive with a little surprise. Unable to hope someone else will do the dirty work for him any longer, Renkotsu reaches down for Jakotsu's neck while offering a bullshit apology. He pulls out the Shikon shard with no comment from Jakotsu at all.

Before Jakotsu is even done dissolving down there, Renkotsu straightens up and starts talking to himself about how the Shikon fragment he just took is essential to him, despite it being just ONE more. He smiles at his internal resolution to survive, no matter what shitty things he has to do. 

As Renkotsu turns and walks off, a single saimyoushou buzzes in, lifts Jakotsu's hair pin out of the rubble and his remains, and flies off again. An impressive feat, given the thing is nearly as big as the insect. Props. 

After a unusually fat narrow sky transition panel, we're shown Kikyou hiking up an incline, using her bow as a walking-stick. She thinks that whatever she saw escape Mt. Hakurei is nearby, and this is confirmed when she sees a large shimmering orb sitting a distance beyond the crest of her hill. She identifies it as a barrier with a little confusion.

And boy is he a doozy of a master!

Kikyou looks up at the mountain and the crackling, rustling, failing barrier around it, noting that it's broken and some evil is leaking out of it. Naraku's evil, as she concludes in the next panel. She looks back down at the mummy-man in front of her, and after a small pause, says that he seems to have been a man of high virtue in life. He responds with an exasperated reference to the priest who confronted him just a little while ago, and now there's a miko too. He asks if she is after Naraku too, and she fires back with her own question of whether Naraku was concealed in the sacred grounds he created. These two are VERY calculated in how they talk past one another, lol.

Hakushin-Shounin comments on her sharp expression, asking if she thinks she can see through to his heart. Kikyou replies directly at last, saying that his soul is on full display without her even TRYING to look at it. Shit, fucking wrecked.

Talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve. Or your forehead. 

Hakushin-Shounin suggests that it's laughable that he became lost, suffered and died, even as a saint who forgave and saved people, only to have his own soul saved by a youkai named Naraku. Kikyou questions if it was really SAVED, thinking that there's a sadness coming through this barrier that can't really be explained if mummy-man's soul was really rescued. Hakushin-Shounin admits that he was no saint, something he realized on the verge of his death. Kikyou considers this as the moment when his soul stopped... something. Being assured in its identity as a helper, a savior, someone steadfast that others could count on? Maybe.

I agree with Kikyou - seems suspect as a genuine wish. A little TOO in line with what Naraku wants. 

She predicts that even if he keeps up the fake sacred barrier, his soul won't be savable at this rate. I don't know what keeping up a sacred barrier, much less a FAKE one, has to do with saving his own soul, but I never much understood the concept of "saving souls" to begin with, so maybe that's just my own ignorance speaking honestly. Kikyou wonders aloud if there are ANY of the currently living dead in this world that are tainted just a SMALL amount. Hakushin-Shounin agrees that he must have been tainted and that's what happened to him. Kikyou confides that she too tried to live without doubts or mistakes when she was alive, just like him, to which he scoffs and says he thought that she was also dead. She hangs her head and admits that this is why she feels like she understands his particular brand of suffering a little. Kikyou says that to doubt is to be human, which she supposes is why people want to reach "that peak", what I have to assume is a pinnacle of superhuman ability not to question themselves or their paths. 

Hakushin-Shounin states outright, at last (though still with a little hesitation at the start), that he couldn't become a Buddha. 

No notes.

Hakushin-Shounin remains silent, but his eyes are a bit wider than before, like he's contemplating this very DIFFERENT message than what Naraku had for him. Kikyou asks him to dissolve his personal barrier, and he asks what she'll do when he does. She says she wants to be able to touch his soul. A little creepy of a desire, there, Kikyou. Hakushin-Shounin mumbles about a dead miko wanting to calm his soul, drawing attention to the absurdity of this, but he does, indeed, let down his barrier for her. 

Narrow mist transition panel, with a little rumble in there! Inuyasha is leaping through the caves now, small-fry youkai flying past him in the opposite direction. A sudden powerful reverberation ripples through the stone beneath his feet, and he questions what that thud was. Another, and another pulse through the passageway, and Inuyasha notes with concern that it resembles the beat of a heart. He also realizes, sweating profusely, that every pulse brings Naraku's scent even stronger onto the scene. 

I don't think you're quite caught up to what that MEANS yet, though. 

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? There's an interesting thread of "acceptance" running through this chapter that is a lot crunchier than some of the previous themes that have presented in this comic as a whole. It rings so much clearer and looks so much sharper with its upfront representation. I won't go as far as to say that we're beat over the head with it, but it is pretty up in one's face, so there's almost no ambiguity here.

First, with Jakotsu's final thoughts before his death, he seems to find solace in his use of the opportunity of a second life. As much of Jakotsu's character that is iffy to me (conflation of "gay" with "sadism" to start), I find this aspect of him to be very positive. His attitude is a gratefulness for the experience of resurrection and the ability to do a few more things before going back to oblivion. It's such a massive contrast to Hakushin-Shounin's clinging to a life he didn't get to live, especially considering how much closer Jakotsu seems to be to that tenet of Buddhism of being present in the moment throughout his time in the story. Jakotsu's carefree and laid-back disposition, if not a bit ditzy for the most part, enabled him to go with the flow, even when he was disappointed by not getting to square-off against Inuyasha all the times he wanted to. When he finally got to scratch that itch, his gratefulness for it ended up making his death a noble one, despite how utterly fucked the way he got his kicks was. 

On the other side of this coin, we have Hakushin-Shounin, who is still struggling to reconcile his desire to "live" with his own end. He spent so much of his life before working toward this idea of perfection, as Kikyou pointed out, trying to be steadfast and firm in his dedication to his path, that it was too late when he realized that he wanted a life of his own. When Naraku came to comfort him with the revelation that it was normal for him to feel negativity toward people who didn't seem to give a shit about him or his needs, this didn't actually give him a release, because Naraku just encouraged him to hold onto that negativity. He assumes he's been "saved" from the darkness, but in reality he's just solidified it around him, and continued to feel even more deeply the anguish of a life not lived. And because it's always been his habit to serve others, through and through, he just shifted his servitude from the hated community around Mt. Hakurei to a youkai who fooled him into thinking that it was his own will to fulfill the desires of someone new. Instead of being free to pursue his own existence as it is, he's waiting on a new master. Same shit, different day.

And this is why Kikyou really SHINES here. She's able to relate to Hakushin-Shounin on a level of empathy that NO ONE else can. No matter what truths Naraku is spitting about Hakushin-Shounin's resentment being natural, he's still just like the community surrounding Mt. Hakurei; trying to get something out of Hakushin-Shounin and milk benefits from him. Kikyou on the other hand has genuinely been where Hakushin-Shounin has been, is CURRENTLY where Hakushin-Shounin is, stuck between worlds and fueled by negative emotions. The facts SHE'S spitting are so specific to the both of them and their shared situation, that their commiseration is starting to reveal to Hakushin-Shounin all the stuff that Naraku left OUT of his little speech about how okay it is to hate the people who wronged you - that clinging to anger and resentment prolongs one's suffering and makes it so much worse in the long run. It's a suffering Kikyou understands all too well, lives every day, and she has the experience to truly help Hakushin-Shounin out of his limbo for real. The conversation they have is one of two people on the same level, and while Naraku's sermon to Hakushin-Shounin was giving him PERMISSION to hate before, Kikyou's heart-to-heart with him is more a frank discussion of how they can both help him to let it GO. The feel of it is fundamentally different, like the difference between a superior at work giving advice on how you can be more productive for him and a friend at the office giving advice on how you can relax. Which is why he basically shrugs and gives Kikyou's intimate suggestion a shot. His pain can't get much worse, after all. 

Man, I kind of feel like, in a way, this arc can be boiled down to KIKYOU'S arc. She's by no means the focus for most of it, but she gets so much reflection and nuance throughout it that no other character even comes CLOSE to getting. It's magnificent, and I love it.