Inuyasha Manga: 032 Eating Spiritual Power

Sounds like the newest celebrity dieting fad. Delicious, but not fattening! Spiritual power is totally devoid of carbs, as well as everything else nourishing to the body, so you can eat and eat and the pounds fall right off! That may be because you are literally starving to death, but hey, at least you'll have cool spiritual powers before you die! Sounds like a great deal, right?

Such fun! It's like one of their demon safaris, except this prey actually fights back!

Kagome rasps as Manten continues to squeeze her neck and gloats about how nice the face of a dying woman looks. Clearly he has never seen ANY iteration of Les Miserables. Shippou grunts as he pushes himself up from where he was kicked earlier. He throws himself back at Manten with a command to stop, but Manten smacks him away again, and he sits up once more, teary-eyed and rubbing his injured cheek.

Manten laughs at Shippou's presumed mortification and tells him he's next after Kagome is good and dead. He pats his hip, where Shippou's dad's fur is tied, and says he'll skin him for his pelt too. Maybe make him into a hood or something. Shippou's fangs are showing as well as his tears now, and he glares right before he shouts that Manten is unforgivable and launches at him. He closes his jaws around a chunk of Manten's neck flesh, but Manten looks like he's just annoyed by the action instead of hurt.

Inuyasha scoffs while hunched on the ground, saying that though he's not a nice guy himself, these other dudes are really disgusting. He covers his claws in his own blood and whips some Blades of Blood at Hiten, causing him to retreat backward and look in surprise over his staff crossed defensively over his chest.

Inuyasha jumps for Tessaiga and Hiten is grinning again, urging Inuyasha to resist harder because resistance is FUN!

See? How freaking fun is that??

Hiten immediately asks Inuyasha what he was throwing at, assuming he's a fool with poor aim. It's true, but in this case Inuyasha shouts that he was throwing at exactly what he was aiming for. Hiten is confused by this, while Manten chuckles about how Shippou is going unconscious because of the pressure he's applying to his head and Kagome chokes out Shippou's name, reaching out a shaking hand toward him.

Suddenly, Tessaiga's blade goes flying in front of her face.

Maybe Inuyasha's aim DID get better after the black pearl came out of his eye...

Manten collapses face-first into the dirt, sliding that sword around in his body in a probably very painful way and knocking a passed-out Shippou off his neck in the process. Tessaiga transforms back into its idle junk state, and Kagome jumps into action, grabbing it as well as Shippou. She thinks she has to get the sword back to Inuyasha when Shippou mutters about his father in his unconsciousness. This brings to Kagome's mind Shippou's father's pelt, still tied around Manten's waist.

She doesn't have much time to grab that too, though. Hiten charges a them, screaming his brother's name. Inuyasha urges Kagome to get her idiot self out of there, before Hiten swings his lightning spear at Kagome as she turns to flee with her arms full.

Tessaiga rattles off to the side as Hiten crouches next to Manten and yells his name. Kagome tumbles over a hill of rocks near Inuyasha, who kneels beside her and asks if she's alive. Kagome opens her eyes and apologizes, puzzling Inuyasha until she pushes herself into a sitting position and explains that she failed to get Tessaiga for him. He looks exasperated as he realizes THAT was the reason she was taking her sweet time.

Kagome apologizes again, this time for how much trouble he went through to save her and she didn't manage to repay the favor. Inuyasha scoffs, telling Kagome to stop her useless worrying, because he'll be able to get Hiten even without the sword.

Hiten isn't around to try and prove Inuyasha wrong - he's still next to Manten, cradling him.

It never fails to amaze me that I actually feel BAD for Hiten in this moment. This is actually heartbreaking, and I don't like either Manten OR Hiten.

Inuyasha and Kagome stare, amazed that Hiten is crying. Hiten continues to hiccup as he cracks open Manten's armor and mutter about how pitiful this is. He rips into his deceased brother's flesh and digs out his heart, an action that Kagome gapes at with horror. Inuyasha seems more wary than upset by this.

Hiten holds the heart close to him as he mumbles that he's going to let Manten stay with his beloved brother forever.

Looks like SOMEONE has been watching too much Game of Thrones.

Kagome looks sick and clutches at her throat in disbelief that Hiten is actually eating Manten's heart. Myouga hops up into view to inform Kagome that Hiten is trying to devour Manten's spiritual power. He also warns Inuyasha to be careful, because this means that Hiten will have all of Manten's powers when he's finished his meal.

Inuyasha glares, because Myouga giving him advice is all well and good, but he wonders where Myouga has been up until now. Myouga makes a non-committal noise, while Kagome surmises that he was running off to a safe place. Inuyasha proceeds to accuse Myouga of only showing his face when the chances are good that he won't be hurt, having been meaning to point that out for a while at this point. Myouga thinks that this is yet another in a string of MINOR things Inuyasha grumbles about.

Suddenly, a gigantic ball of fire launches at them, and Inuyasha has to grab Shippou and Kagome and leap out of its way. The fire dissolves into a steaming track in the rock, on the other end of which is Hiten's imposing form.

I don't think anyone is asking for forgiveness, dude.

Inuyasha notes that Hiten has indeed gotten more powerful, and it seems that info Myouga dropped is absolutely true. He tells Kagome to run away with Shippou as far as she can, and Kagome stutters out his name. She does what he says, twisting to look at him over her shoulder and silently beg him not to die.

Hiten sends another giant ball of fire at Inuyasha, shouting that he'll waste him, and it's dead-on course.

Say what?

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It takes some real talent to make a villain relateable and humanize them in a single scene, which is exactly the kind of talent RT shows here. Again, I'm always absolutely floored by how this one scene overrides my dislike for the antagonists to sympathize with them just a little. They are still awful, don't get me wrong: Hiten killed his lover in a moment of rage and didn't mourn her at all, which alone made Hiten seem like the least likely to show any care or love for anything.

And yet he just has, and it makes sense within the context of what we know about his character. This isn't coming out of nowhere, because in that very scene he killed his lover, he was mad at MANTEN, not her. Manten, however, didn't get so much as a punch from Hiten for losing the shards he found, because Hiten values Manten and his company a lot more. He makes fun of Inuyasha for worrying about and trying to save Kagome because to him, women aren't worth much - they're just entertainment. Manten was his blood, his family, and someone he went on "hunts" with. He loved and respected Manten, which was why his death meant so much and he wanted to keep him close in a personal way.

Yes, I do believe that Hiten's purpose was also to gain Manten's powers, but I also believe that was a SECONDARY purpose. The primary purpose was to make sure Manten stayed a part of him. This is actually a real-life thing; there are plenty of indigenous practices the world over where the family of a deceased person will eat that person in ritual cannibalism, because it is unthinkable to them to bury their loved ones in the cold earth. This practice is a way to gain a deceased person's essence and keep a part of them with their living relatives. So, Hiten eating Manten's heart was something akin to this in that he wanted to absorb his brother's essence, gaining power a secondary and ultimately lesser interest.

The end of the chapter, though abrupt, had me rolling. Myouga is trying TOO HARD to pretend to stick by Inuyasha in the midst of danger. Nobody buys that junk, Myouga.