... STILL better than Ginormous Food.
"But I'm so exhausted... and REALLY thirsty."
Shippou and Miroku pop out from beneath Inuyasha's sleeve, crawling on his scratched and battered arm. Shippou comments on how Inuyasha really got beaten up, and Miroku trails off in saying that Inuyasha would be better off not moving around with all these wounds, but there's not time for rest. Then why is he sitting there not moving?
I'm glad you asked! Miroku and Shippou are startled by some approaching steps, but it turns out to just be Kagome.
She leads him to were she found their exit; a latticed door leading to a balcony over a long drop of cliff beyond. Inuyasha hangs his elbow over the railing of the balcony, looking quite exasperated as he asks Kagome if this is really what she considered their way out. When Kagome questions if that's not a VALID assumption, Inuyasha facepalms HARD. I don't know what he expected, considering he had to leap up a sheer cliff to get there in the first place.
Removing his hand from his now determined brow, Inuyasha declares that he has their plan, but Kagome immediately rejects it. When Inuyasha points out that she hasn't even heard what he's going to say yet, she states her assumption that he was going to suggest that she escape on her own and she doesn't want to, so there. They both turn to face the room again when a voice behind them asks if there's anyone there. What, they weren't talking loud enough for you? Although, I suppose it wouldn't be a surprise if they were whispering, given their "on the lam" status and everything.
Kagome kneels next to this old guy and asks if he was devoured by the Peach Man too, and he replies that it his mistake for teaching a monster like the Peach Man his wizardry, eliciting a look of shock from Inuyasha. Kagome is looking kind of concerned too, asking if this means the old dude is also a hermit. Hanging his head, the old guy shamefully admits that the Peach Man was his apprentice.
Inuyasha grabs the old guy by his stem and calls him a bastard, Kagome taken aback but stuttering at him to wait a sec before pulling the dude up by his roots. Claiming to be amazed that the old guy is a hermit (more like blinded with rage by the looks of things), Inuyasha demands to know why the old guy would ever teach his magic to a youkai like the Peach Man. The old guy doesn't look intimidated - just a bit grim and tired - as he tells Inuyasha that the Peach Man is NOT, in fact, a youkai at all, but was an ordinary human person. Inuyasha is speechless again.
Kagome notes the stonelike quality of the Peach Man's body, specifically in the belly, where the Shikon fragments he's got shoved in his navel have already started to change him. Inuyasha scoffs disbelievingly at the notion that the Peach Man was once human, though tiny!Miroku clings to his shoulder and claims he's heard that humans can turn into youkai. Pics or it didn't happen, Miroku.
He says that in this case, the evil of the Peach Man's mind was extraordinary, but the Peach Man don't wanna hear NONE of that crap. He tells tiny!Miroku to shut his trap, and as he waves his staff at Inuyasha and company, he yells that he just wanted to be strong.
Inuyasha shields Kagome from the conjuring of more of the barbed vines he's so familiar with by now by wrapping an arm around her and jumping out of the way, shouting to look out. He's not fast enough, and his back is grazed by them, Kagome alarmed by his gritted teeth and pained expression. He lands heavily in her lap, groaning and squeezing his eyes shut, while she calls his name. The Peach Man says that humans are super weak, small and cunning, that last one not really unique to humans in this universe. Again, Naraku is a prime example.
Anyway, the Peach Man continues to blather on about how humans spend their lives toiling in mud from dawn to dusk, growing old and dying, his parents among those numbers. The Peach Man decided he was too good for that kind of pathetic death, so he became an apprentice to a stupid hermit. Said hermit doesn't protest the insult, probably because he's pretty convinced of the same by this point.
The Peach Man keeps monologuing away, explaining that after he had trained for a couple of years and mastered a couple spells, he studied his masters scrolls a bit when that master was away. Hey, remember when there were some folks you had to kill right in front of you and you let them live while you were telling your life story, Peach Man? You should, because it's happening right now.
"Wow, that story was totally unnecessary. No need to kill me with the staff; I'm starting to die of just BOREDOM."
Although it IS interesting to note that skinny waif in the picture is how the Peach Man used to be. I guess the abuse of eating came with his first taste of human flesh.
The Peach Man STILL isn't done, stating that the recipe for the elixir of eternal youth was still locked up in the hermit's head, so that's why the old guy was allowed to keep living on like a houseplant. I don't remember anyone ever asking you why that was, man, but okay. This does spark some recognition in Kagome, however, because she recalls that the man's head they were talking to at the bottom of the cliff said that the heads growing from the tree were ninmenka, or the medicine of eternal life for the Peach Man.
Disgusted, Kagome expresses some indignation that the Peach Man killed and ate all those people just for eternal youth, though he was human as well. The Peach Man asks what could possibly be wrong with the strong eating the weak, comparing his cannibalism to a snake eating a frog. Well, snakes aren't generally subject to severe irreversible neuro-degenerative disorders when they eat frogs, so there's that.
Kagome begins to get all kinds of flustered by this, intending to retort, but Inuyasha sits up, telling her to stop. He says that the Peach Man will never come around to her way of thinking, likely because if he can overcome the nearly universal taboo of eating people, those walls are probably already pretty high. Inuyasha pushes himself into a kneeling position while he says that since he's a hanyou, he sympathizes with having a disgust with the human body's weakness, and the want to be strong. Kagome's heart pounds as she stares at Inuyasha, making a noise that I'm not sure is altogether approving at the beginning of this speech. I'd be kind of disturbed if the guy I liked started empathizing with a cannibal too.
However, Inuyasha comes back around to shout that bastards like the Peach Man make him sick. The Peach Man asks if Inuyasha is really trying to lecture him right now, even though he can barely stand. Inuyasha groans, pushing to his feet by leaning on the lip of a big jar filled with human bones, because there's an overabundance of those around. He grips the lip harder when he says that for a bastard like the Peach Man...
Kagome protests this idea with horror on her face, but the Peach Man chuckles, echoing the old guy's suggestion. The Peach Man says the fight will be more interesting if Inuyasha is livelier, to which Inuyasha scoffs. He stands again, asking who would drink such a disgusting thing.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It's kind of fascinating to me that the Peach Man objects so much to being called evil. He's so offended that he launches into a long exposition-fest to explain just what his motivations really are, which I'm both amused by and kind of amazed by as well. He's gone to a lot of trouble to rationalize all that he's doing, because he couldn't possibly be bad for breaking the cycle. He got out of the hopeless situation his parents lived and died in, didn't he? He beat the system. And every step he takes to gain and maintain power is all justified, because it's just natural that a big fish would eat all the little fish in the pond, right?
The Peach Man is probably the best villain this series has seen so far. Maybe he's the best one PERIOD. His motivation is to escape the human condition, what he sees as an endless cycle of wallowing and pain. But rationalizing is in itself a very HUMAN quality. You won't ever see that snake in his analogy rationalizing eating a frog, or even another snake, because they just DO that. It's obvious that the Peach Man really had to CONVINCE himself that he has the right to do what he does, and that's his tragedy. As much as he wants to be the biggest baddest predator instead of a meek worm chewing dirt, there's no escaping the fact that he's had to make himself believe that worms taste better than dirt. Not to mention to ignore the fact that the other humans he thinks are so weak are building and sustaining the power he wanted so much. Where does that power come from if not from his sustenance? Devouring the hermit should have taught him that.
But his rationalizations will have kept him from realizing that HE'S the weak one feeding off human flesh that somehow has the miraculous power of keeping him young and strong, as well as the magic flesh of the hermit. It will probably have also kept him from realizing that there's undoubtedly a REASON the hermit never actually USED the youth elixir he presumably knows.
Oh well.
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