Inuyasha Manga: 009 Yura's Nest

The beginning of Volume 2 commences! Every new volume is like a milestone for this blog. I stopped counting the volumes overtly with Yu-Gi-Oh, but I have been doing so discretely, and I do so enjoy checking them off in my head. It's like a little progress bar in how far I am on my journey, or how much more experience I have until I reach the next level of blogging. Because you see, I take my blogging VERY seriously.

Just about as seriously as RT takes her previous battle scene.

You think that comb is important? Yeah, me neither.

As Yura combs the hair of her favorite skull, it stretches up and out over the land. Elsewhere, Inuyasha is repeating Kagome's elaboration on Yura and how she's apparently after them. She confirms that he's got all the facts as the both of them peek out of the well, saying that it's impossible for Yura to be after the Shikon fragment anymore, since she already stole it earlier, but she's still following them around. It's news to Inuyasha that the fragment was stolen, and starts to give Kagome a piece of his mind, but Kagome exclaims in surprise that the hair is descending on them from above.

Inuyasha leaps forward while Kagome clings to his back, avoiding the attack... by a hair. I am the worst. Inuyasha keeps running, shouting at Kagome over his shoulder to follow the hair to its source, so he can kill whoever is controlling it. Kagome squints into the night, noting that some of the strands are glowing, and wondering if those are the main ones connecting the rest. Well, didn't you find one of those in the last chapter, Kagome? You tell me.

Kagome assumes that if her hypothesis is correct, Yura will be where those glowing strands come together, and urges Inuyasha in the direction she sees them converging. Off to the side, Kagome and Inuyasha see a campfire's glow, and go to investigate, since it's on the way to their playdate anyway.

Whoops, looks like those guys kind of blundered into the hair, huh? Inuyasha thinks so, anyway, as he taps on a strand of hair covered in blood and the blood flicks everywhere from the tension. Kagome covers her mouth, disturbed by how human and dead they are. True, she hasn't had the misfortune of examining a dead body yet, so the first time would probably be pretty freaky. She speculates with what I suspect to be guilt that this must have happened after she went back home.

To be fair, Kagome, you were kind of forced into the well, because you weren't going to go through with jumping in at first.

Inuyasha is contemplating one of the corpses while stroking his chin, noting what bad luck the man had and that his head is missing. All he needs is a pipe and deer-stalker cap. He turns and notices Kagome kneeling on the ground with her back to him, and immediately assumes that she's scared and wants to go home, asking her not to tell him that anyway.

The greatest thing about it is that you won't even have to return it! Those guys don't need it anymore! Amirite? High five! I am the worst.

They continue their journey to where the hair converges, Kagome on Inuyasha's back as will become par for the course. She thinks about how many more innocent people will die if they don't stop Yura soon, but her thoughts are interrupted by Inuyasha's snide remark that the bow is essentially useless since she won't hit anything anyway. Why didn't you bring this up sooner, Inuyasha? Like when Kagome was picking it up? Did you just not come up with anything assholish to say until just now?

Kagome begins to say that if she practices, she'll get better, but Inuyasha interrupts her to ask in disbelief if she's been practicing before now. Kagome snaps that she'll start after this. Inuyasha thinks that as useless and unreliable as Kagome is, she's got more guts than he first gave her credit for. Yup, she's got true grit alright.

Kagome tells him to be careful, because they're getting closer now. Giant locks of hair swoop in on them from above again and Kagome screams, claiming there's too many to tell him where they're at. She says to just use his intuition, and Inuyasha is flabbergasted at her suggestion as he jumps off to the side to avoid a blow from the hair. You know, I WAS going to defend Kagome and say that she hasn't been useless or unreliable thus far, but maybe Inuyasha's statement was a precognition about what she was ABOUT to do. Seriously, Kagome? Use your intuition? Gah...

Inuyasha shouts that she's not helping, and Kagome decides to magnanimously tell him that there's an attacking lock right in front of him. It's too late, though, because instead of his defensive claw sweeping it away, the hair wraps around his wrist and pulls him up by his arm. Kagome falls from his back and crashes to the ground with a scream, but quickly sits up to call after him in distress.

And I thought I had problems with clumps of my shed hair turning up under furniture. This is a whole other LEVEL of gross.

Yura seems more than cool with the nastiness of her living-conditions, though. Whatevz. Yura seems to know Inuyasha's name, and asks him if he's really that guy. He let's her know that he's aware of who she is too, asking her how she knows about him. Yeah, how DO you and the other villain know about him? Seems to me that if he was as insignificant and nonthreatening as you all seem to claim, he wouldn't even come up on your full-youkai radar.

Yura admits that Inuyasha has a reputation among oni like herself. Kagome is trying to keep this terminology straight in her head, though I don't know why. The distinction seems a bit arbitrary to me. Yura starts to mock Inuyasha by telling him the most insulting version of the rumor that he's helping a reincarnated priestess find and collect all the shards of the jewel. I'm surprised how fast this rumor flew around. I mean, it's been, what, a couple of days? And now ALL the oni know about Inuyasha: the lapdog to a miko?

Inuyasha is more concerned with the specifics of that terminological inexactitude, as he asserts that he is not a lapdog to that monkey-girl, thank you very much. Yura doesn't pay any attention to his protests, asking if he and the monkey-girl are going to interfere. Interfere with what? Your collection of hair? Because I happen to think that, yes, an intervention is definitely in order here.

Yura says that she'll kill both Kagome and Inuyasha, just in case, so that she can continue to collect the shards of the jewel in peace. You really think they're the only ones you'll come up against, Yura? Naive to the max. Inuyasha stares longingly at the Shikon shard as Yura holds it up and Kagome recognizes it as the shard Yura stole from her. Inuyasha says that Yura will see how easy it is to kill him, because he plans on making her regret ever coming into contact with him.

He shreds the hair bindings on one of his wrists, and swings toward Yura from the bindings on his opposite wrist, free claws drawn back to smack a bitch. Have I mentioned I'm the worst? Yura pulls herself out of the arc of his attack easily, and brings out her comb to run it through the hair running up next to her. It catches Inuyasha in its grip once again, both leg and arm. He curses about what a pain this is to him.

Uh, yeah. Didn't you figure that out the last time you tried to kill him with your hair and it didn't work? The sword does do the trick, though, and a line of blood spurts from the new wound in Inuyasha's chest. He glares down at it like he's more annoyed than in pain. Kagome watches with the concern he doesn't have, though, as she crouches on the ground. Girl, now might be kind of a good time to start practicing with that bow and arrow you pilfered.

Inuyasha mockingly compliments Yura's sword as he hangs there bleeding. Yura is relieved to see him bleed, because she didn't know what she would have done if the sword hadn't cut him, all while licking his blood from her blade. I think you should worry more about what will happen if you happen to get some blood-borne disease from the guy.

Yura tells Inuyasha the name of the sword, since he admires it so much, apparently, is "Crimson Mist". She says it can cut through flesh and bone, but not hair, which makes it uniquely valuable. She can chop him up while keeping him tied with her hair, after all, which she explains as she's raising her sword to strike. She's distracted by a couple of arrows flying some ways away, though. Looking in their direction, she sees that the hair is smoking and dissolving at their contact with the arrows, and her hair being destroyed confuses Yura.

Girl, what are you even aiming for? The only person who has more trouble hitting things than Inuyasha, ladies and gentlemen!

Yura recognizes Kagome as that one girl from that one time, or something, as Kagome fires another arrow that she shouts at Yura to eat. It heads for Inuyasha instead, and Inuyasha has to lift his knees to avoid the next arrow from hitting one of his legs and it JUST sails past him while he yells out in surprise. Inuyasha asks her what she thinks she's aiming at, as if he can talk.

The arrow embeds itself in the ball of hair on the other side of Inuyasha and Yura, a glow exploding from it as the hair dissolves.

I guess that's where those samurai heads went, huh? Sure enough, in the very next panel, some fresh heads tumble down and dangle by their hair, flesh intact. Inuyasha correctly identifies them, before Yura leans in real close and tells him that his head will be joining them very soon. He doesn't seem very convinced, giving her an exasperated look as he asks if that's so sarcastically. Yura picks up one of his silver locks and tells him what a pleasure it will be to control such lovely hair. He just glares.

Yura straightens again and holds up her comb, preparing to do something before she gets to the fun part of taking Inuyasha's luxurious head of hair. Kagome only has time to stare in shock before...

Yura asks Kagome how she likes her orge-fire-hair, which will burn her right up. This ain't no Disco Inferno, folks!

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I think I see a pattern of RT having a little bit of a problem with too narrow a focus. When I covered how the hair seemed to go after Inuyasha exclusively to Kagome's convenience in the last chapter, I considered the possibility that Yura herself wasn't so great at taking on multiple enemies at once. However, in this chapter, there's no denying that Kagome's shooting was somewhat delayed until after she watched Inuyasha get cut.

Granted, I can imagine Kagome was a little too miffed by Inuyasha's "monkey-girl" insult to help at first, but as I've said before in my Yu-Gi-Oh reviews, I'm not a fan of having to make up headcanons in an attempt to make sense of events that should be explained in the source material. When it comes down to it, this delay seemed to be accommodating Yura's exposition about how youkai have been talking about Inuyasha and Kagome behind their backs. This is interesting information, but also a little heavy-handed for how FAST the rumors spread. I think that could have waited just a few chapters while they actually DO things to gain a reputation, because that's generally how one gets a rep.

Unless, RT is trying to make a joke here about how youkai are gossipy like the Real Housewives of Feudal Japan or something.