I took a holiday for the first half of August to refresh myself (part of the reason I took so long to get my last blog post out), and coming back into the swing of things made me realize just how tightly-wound I was. Before I took my PTO and took some time to relax, I was ripping my hair out over the smallest things and my job was giving me undue stress in SOME manner every single day. Not to mention I had a bunch of other things I wanted to get done during the day that put even more pressure on me to be busy every second. And then I logged back in after my staycation and had about 400 unread emails from the previous week, plus a multitude of tasks I was not going to get through in one or two days, and all the regular chores I'd neglected over my reclining time, and I WASN'T hyperventilating at knowing for a fact that I probably wouldn't be fully caught up until the end of the week.
I guess what I'm saying is that maybe we should put these oni-ladies into a warm tub with a pina colada and a few of those cool bath bombs so they can chill out a little.
Wherever she is, you probably shouldn't be screaming for her, Kagome. This was supposed to be a stealth operation, but I guess that's blown now.
Inuyasha is pondering if the fact that Sango's scent vanished right here means that she went down into the water, JUST as the normally easy and calm water below starts sloshing and roiling.
Sango had SOME company down there, didn't she?
The women touch down lightly on the rock, obeying gravity once more, with blank expressions that refuse to acknowledge how cool they looked for a second there. Kagome recoils and hugs Shippou to her, identifying these as the women from the community. Inuyasha skips over stating the obvious himself and asks these bastards what they did to Sango, demanding to be told where they've hidden her, and cracking his knuckles in a trailing threat.
A light mist rises from their unimpressed slack jaws in response, and Kagome says that it looks like evil energy coming out of their mouths. Inuyasha scoffs over the fact that they managed to find the community of oni-women they were looking for all along.
In the cave, Sango's wrists still hang from the wall while the village headwoman kneels at the edge of a grotto, sticking her arm into the water. She pulls out a thick tube that has a like of spheres down the center, leaving Sango wondering what the hell it is. Her first impression is some sort of egg-sack, from which the village headwoman has taken an egg and has begun approaching with. The headwoman asks politely for Sango to swallow it, confirming that it IS indeed an egg that will hatch in her stomach and will make Sango into one of them. Sango gives the woman a look of utter disgust when she grabs her chin and raises the egg to her lips to try and force it in her mouth. So much for all that politeness she was trotting out before. Sango turns her head, silently cursing, another question about just who the hell this weirdo is crossing her mind too.
I don't know about that lady lurking back there...
Miroku says that the rumors say the WOMEN have been the ones flaying people (or, rather, the ONE rumor they heard, anyway), but he accuses this watery bastard of being the one REALLY doing the deed. Fluid-Face over here confirms that this is indeed the case, informing Miroku that the skin of men is necessary for it to return to its normal form. It says it was the youkai lord that once ruled this valley, but I'm not sure if this means it's male or if there's just a weird translation deal going on here. Either way, it tells Miroku about how a high-ranked priest exorcised it and sealed it in the scroll. Question: are priests ranked? Is this a reference to a hierarchy of priests similar to Catholicism? Because all I'm thinking of is leader boards right now. THAT is what popped into my dipshit brain.
Anyway, the humans then SKINNED this youkai and sealed its movements by painting Kannon over it. That skinning bit seems somewhat... malicious, if I'm being generous. Because Fluid-Face's soul wouldn't die regardless, it sat and waited for a chance to be resurrected. Getting some heavy Uncle Frank from Hellraiser vibes in here. Fluid-Face lunges at Miroku, declaring he'll become a part of it, in response to which Miroku produces one of his paper sticky charms. But, just as expected, the village woman latches onto the arm holding the charm to prevent him using it, and Miroku has to dive to the floor and pull the woman with him to avoid Fluid-Face's charge.
Having crashed into the window on the other side of the room, Fluid-Face gets a peek out of it and notices Shinosuke and Wakana strolling up the walk to the little temple. Shinosuke is asking where they're going, and Wakana hesitantly says they're headed for the Kannon temple. She's not lying, but it's pretty clear she's withholding some valuable info. Fluid-Face chuckles that Wakana has done well to bring her man with her, a name Miroku is quick to recognize as the missing fiance of their new acquaintance, despite struggling to sit up from under the still listless woman lying on him. He yells for Shinosuke not to come inside the ramshackle temple.
A clueless Shinosuke makes a confused noise as the doors are opened before him.
You ever imagine some of these panels as album covers for metal bands? I do.
Miroku yells at them to run away, the distant and blank Wakana starting to become aware of the position she and her long-lost fiance are now in herself. She has to croak out her first rebellious syllable, and then...
Fluid-Face is missing out on ALL the flesh meals today.
Miroku jumps between the shocked Shinosuke with Wakana and Fluid-Face, yelling over his shoulder for the humans to get out of there. Shinosuke stutters at him in alarm as Miroku starts to remove the string of beads on his right hand, cursing what a pain this has become. He's begun to plan out using the Kanaana, but the nameless village woman who took him up here staggers to the defense of Fluid-Face, standing in front of it with a, um...
Hang on.
So, I had to do a tiny little search to confirm what the little stand with the spindle on the top she's holding is, because I remember seeing it on the altar in front of the scroll before. Turns out it's a candle stand, typically of the Buddhist variety, and the candle goes on the spindle. I think it's interesting, because I don't think candles were widely used in this time and place, the little oil pans seem to be a more common thing, but they probably don't make as handy of an on-the-fly weapon. Very stabby.
Anyway, she holds this up over her head, creepy steam issuing from her mouth, and Miroku has to wind those beads back around his hand in a hurry, knowing he can't suck up his enemy when it's using someone as a shield like that. Instead he uses the woman as a push off point when she lunges forward ineptly to stab him and leaps off her back to launch himself at Fluid-Face.
Right in the eyeball!
Miroku skids around and is fully prepared to run after Fluid-Face, even declaring he's not about to let the youkai run (floating head that it is aside), when the village woman once again stumbles at him with the damn candle-holder raised and ready to stab. After claiming this will shame him, Miroku PUNCHES her right in the gut while pleading with her to go to sleep. Apparently it's a bit of a common thing in anime/manga to punch someone (usually women) in the "solar plexus" area to render them unconscious, which is... odd.
Before she passes out from the shock to her torso, the woman coughs something up and it splats onto the floor - what looks like a weird salamander/lizard creature. Miroku is alarmed by this creature, and spares nothing more than an incomplete identification on it before grinding it under the end of his staff. It wriggles and sizzles in agony.
Miroku announces that THIS is what's been controlling the women of the community, and leaps at the perpetually shocked Shinosuke, demanding his forgiveness for what he's about to do.
These three panels gave me cancer.
And we've returned to the narrow sky transition panels! By the river, Inuyasha has calmly caught the jab from a woman wielding an ordinary staff in his hand, another woman who popped out of the water earlier standing by for her turn to take a whack at him. from behind him, Kagome calls to Inuyasha not to hurt them, once again stating the obvious that something appears to be controlling them. Inuyasha snaps at her that he knows this, because duh.
He sweeps the woman's staff into her legs, and she flips back into the water, only to crawl back out again with... her arms squeezing her breasts together to produce unnecessary cleavage? This is a pretty small panel, so I don't know why RT even bothered, but whatevz. Inuyasha complains about how this shit ain't getting them anywhere, and I don't know if he's talking about ineffectively fending off the women or the random cleavage, but either way...
A big sweeping sound in the sky behind Kagome causes her to look up and over her shoulder, but before she can get a read on whatever's up there, it crashes down into the water in front of them like a small meteor. At the ripples where it did its cannonball, the scroll from the temple floats, Inuyasha and Kagome looking critically and quizzically at it, respectively, the latter identifying it as a hanging scroll without the experience with this one in particular to know how gross shit is about to get.
Fluid-Face has a more solid form after all! The eggs and little stomach salamanders make a little more sense now, except I'm even more confused about the sex of this thing now. Do salamanders have sexes?
Don't answer that.
Kagome sweatdrops and makes a confused sound, but from her arms, Shippou identifies it as a salamander monster. Inuyasha just kind of glares at it while the water from its re-emergence patters down over his head. The artist formerly known as Fluid-Face chuckles, thanking... someone for the opportunity to eat a hanyou's hide, despite that painful-looking wound on its head from Miroku's staff (I presume. It could also be what little is left for the salamander to regenerate? Not certain.). Inuyasha hams up his offense, demanding that the salamander repeat them fighting words.
Meanwhile...
NO SANGO! YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO SWALLOW IT!
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I'm side-eyeing the salamander/Fluid-Face's account of how it got into this predicament with the scroll. It seems so weirdly discordant that I found myself questioning just which of it happened when. I could assume it was telling the tale chronologically, but why would the humans skin the thing AFTER it was already sealed in the scroll? Why skin it at all? It seems like they could have burned the youkai's body to more effect if they wanted to make sure it didn't have a functioning body to return to. The skinning part was just so out of place within the sequence of events that the only way I can explain it is that RT just threw it in there to help provide a reason for why the salamander youkai would be collecting men's skins to regenerate at all.
And can we talk a moment about this solar plexus punch we see played out in this specific scenario? I did a brief search about this and it appears that this often happens in manga and anime when a protagonist wants to neutralize someone without it being lethal, usually a weaker-ish teammate turned evil for a moment. That would explain why it often happens to women and children in these stories. But there's more to the particular manifestation of this already pretty questionable trope in this chapter that bumps it up to... problematic. Namely, the male characters in this arc are now downright OBLIGATED to punch all the village women AND Sango into submission because they're possessed and this is the only way to purge them of their demons, so to speak. This scenario was specifically written to make the abuse of women heroic, because it's being done "for their own good". This coming from the lady who didn't want to make Jakotsu female because she didn't want Inuyasha to have to beat up a woman. But THIS arc was perfectly above board for her. Somehow.
Clearly no one gave RT a heads-up that portraying her male characters as abusers with abuser logic wasn't the greatest of looks, and more's the pity. Here's some advice for anyone else that may be contemplating a questionable plotline like this in the future: if you find yourself writing male protagonists into a situation that REQUIRES them to physically abuse female characters, led entirely by the common excuses abusers use in order to justify their shitty actions, it's time to go back and rewrite.
Or, maybe just scrap the whole thing altogether.
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