Inuyasha Manga: 106 Kohaku

What's a Kohaku? I recall hearing that word SOMEWHERE, but I can't quite remember where. RT doesn't mince words with her chapter titles, so you know it's got to be important, whatever it is. Man, this happens ALL THE TIME to me! I'll have the knowledge stored somewhere in my brain but it becomes temporarily inaccessible up until the moment it's not needed anymore! Now I'm going to look like a moron because I couldn't deliver a snappy derisive line about something in the title until it's too late!

Oh, oh no, wait! I know now! It's this guy!

Right?

No... No that's not it either...

But hey, look on the bright side. At least your counter-efforts were made a lot easier by the fact that Naraku's stupid bees led your ally straight to help. And you thought that the saimyoushou could only POISON you.

Inuyasha lowers his eyes, admitting that the youkai did fail to kill him, but recalls that Mushin restricted Miroku from using his Kazaana for at least a month. He tells Miroku that it was because he forced him to close the Kazaana before that the surgery was successful. Miroku gazes at the covered palm of his right hand contemplatively, speechless until he looks up again and says that Naraku will probably use this window of vulnerability for Miroku to set more traps.

Elsewhere, Shippou whispers to Kagome and Sango that the two young men appear to be having a conversation. Kagome fiddles with the front of her blouse (though it has no buttons or anything...?) while saying that she and Sango should take this opportunity to step into the nearby hot spring then. While removing a glove, Sango says she knows Miroku would jump to spy on them in the bath, but asks Kagome if Inuyasha would. Kagome is already wading chest-deep into the spring by the next panel flipping her hair and looking exasperated when she answers that Inuyasha wouldn't look because he likes to act like he doesn't give a shit. Sango peers over her shoulder at Kagome, wondering if she WANTS Inuyasha to look.

Because Sango has probably realized she already knows the answer to that question, so she doesn't ask out loud. Instead, she drops her kimono from her shoulders.

Sango notices the atmosphere under Kagome's speechless gaze and correctly guesses that it's about the scar she seems disappointed is still there. I don't know how you could expect otherwise of a wound created by a sickle to the damn spine, girl. Kagome haltingly asks if it was from a youkai, but Sango pauses again, remembering stumbling from the force of the blade thrown into her back. She tells Kagome that it was her younger brother who did the deed, right before he died. Over an image of his shadowed face while he wields a blood-spattered sickle, Sango tells Kagome that he was controlled by a youkai at Naraku's castle, killing their father and friends. She trails off of a description of the next image, an unpossessed little brother stumbling backward with several arrows in his chest and looking terrified.

Kagome meekly makes a noise like she's sorry she asked, as Sango looks blankly at the water between them. Sango describes him as a timid and kind child, and it's how she remembers his last admission of being scared to her just before he died. This must be why she has the slightest smile on her face when she says that he returned to being her regular old brother, Kohaku.

THAT'S who that is! Yeah, NOW I remember! #neverforgot

Another awkward moment of silence follows where Kagome stares at Sango staring at the water, until Kagome apologizes for bringing up such a painful memory for her. Sango's eyes are wide when she insists it's alright, because everyone else around her has a similarly painful story around their motivations for wanting Naraku to eat shit and die. She then narrows her eyes and glares in her periphery, whipping around to throw a rock into the nearby foliage and accuse it of coming to peep at her.

Sango and Kagome both crawl out of the spring to examine Sango's handiwork, which was knocking out a poor, defenseless monkey. They seem surprised that what was rustling in the bushes happened to be local wildlife, for some reason. When they look up from the unconscious monkey, who should they happen to see but Miroku and Inuyasha, the latter of which asks what all the commotion is about.

Ugh. These damn kids can just get off my lawn.

The following morning sees the group wide-eyed and curious as a scuffed man stumbles toward them. He mumbles about "villager" and "save" before collapsing onto his front so a fountain of blood can squirt from his back, making Kagome cringe and scream. Inuyasha and Miroku approach, Miroku kneeling at the man's head and determining that his heart has stopped. Somehow. Inuyasha suddenly picks up the scent of the blood of a lot more than just this poor villager; QUITE a lot more. He leaps off in the direction of the man's origin.

Hey now, I know the bed and breakfast was subpar, but that's no reason to get all homicidal!

Sango observes that everyone has been killed, and Kagome mutters into her palm about how cruel this is. Miroku is again kneeling at the head of a body, making another assumption about it and its fellows states by just looking. He claims they were all felled by one blow. What, like the one Inuyasha just accomplished last chapter? Sango is acting similar, though only thinking that the wounds aren't from a sword instead of voicing this assertion. Though, she might know a bit more about the look of wounds than the self-proclaimed hater of violence.

Inuyasha and Kagome simultaneously wonder aloud who would do such a thing, then Inuyasha angrily lunges for a guy he guesses should know the answer while drawing Tessaiga. He slices the roof of a nearby building clean off, because I suppose he thinks houses look like "guys" now. The shadow of a head and shoulders IS just visible behind a curtain of dust from the destruction of the roof, a shadow that Miroku and Sango only just have time to widen and narrow their eyes at respectively before a sickle and chain comes careening at them from it.

Sango glares and looks like she's doing some heavy thinking about that sickle on a chain as Inuyasha knocks it away with Tessaiga. Inuyasha starts to say that the weapon will never be good enough to leave a scratch or some similar trash talk, while sickle slaps back into its wielder's less-shadowed hand.

Dammit Kohaku! You been doing the sex, drugs and rock n' roll, haven't you! Now the devil's gotcha!

Inuyasha sweats, alarmed by the fact that his really short opponent was a child after all. Kagome gapes at his clothes, saying that they resemble Sango's exterminating outfit. Meanwhile, Kohaku turns tail to placidly run, and Inuyasha shouts at him to stop. Sango starts running after Kohaku, calling to Kirara running beside her. After Kirara transforms into her giant sabre-cat form, Sango hops on Kirara's back, all the while focusing on Kohaku, the boy running away from her.

Kagome, meanwhile, notices that there is a glowing Shikon shard in the boy's back as he's retreating. Inuyasha lunges forward, expressing his angry disbelief that such a little brat was the one who killed everyone in the village. Before he can even catch up to Sango, though, she and Kirara pass through a shimmering transparent field, disappearing from sighed. Inuyasha is perplexed, then shocked when he bumps up against the field and it repels him. He stares at the empty-looking forest beyond the barrier, mouth hanging open.

Sango continues flying through the trees at breakneck speed, yet not caught up to a small boy on foot at this point? How does THAT work? Anyway, she is in utter disbelief that Kohaku is still alive. So much so that she's managed to ignore all those dead people back there he must have murdered. Ain't sibling love grand?

It's about damn time. And he doesn't even look like he broke a sweat outrunning the massive cat-beast. Kirara must be WICKED out of shape.

Sango dismounts Kirara and takes a step or two toward Kohaku, before tentatively telling him to show her his face. He complies, fiddling with the strap holding on the gas mask. Once he's lowered it, Sango can see that it's him, freckles and all, if not a little listless. Tears fill her eyes and she realizes that he really did survive, unlike those poor people he killed.

A nearby voice asks Sango if she's happy to see her brother. Does a bear shit in the woods?

I guess Naraku's just planning on cycling through all the members of the group in trying to take them down instead of, you know, getting the one he's already weakened? Yeah, okay, let me know how that goes for you.

Moron.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? First and foremost, I think it's important to note that some of the bigger problems I had with the pacing in the chapter were not entirely avoidable. While I would have liked to get a little more lead-in into the scene where the man shambles up to them instead of just having it thrust at me, I do acknowledge that the scene before it with Kagome and Sango discussing her scar couldn't really have been cut any shorter. It was necessary to show the scar, show the discussion, and show the awkwardness in these two women getting to know each other. Even the silly part at the end showcasing the paranoia that Sango lives in now that she's traveling with two male acquaintances (barely) was a really good way of giving us a little bit more information on Sango's way of handling her emotions. She's understated, quietly determined, and doesn't like to overplay her own tragedy. Her hackles are up when her guard has been tripped though. It's pretty fascinating.

Also, even if I would liked to have seen a bit more detail in the scenes where she and Miroku were drawing conclusions based on looking, I know that's not always possible either. RT's art style doesn't lend to that kind of detailing to begin with, and it would just look inconsistent. I'm also not certain that Miroku would necessarily know how to take a pulse in the modern sense, so it's possible that an image of him doing so would take me out of the story a little. Not that this story is historically accurate in many other senses, but it at least doesn't break my immersion in any overt ways. I like that RT is trying to remain a bit on the ambiguous side of things she may not be able to depict with 100% accuracy.

With that done, I think I've blatantly pretended to be uninterested in Kohaku long enough. It'll be a while before he's the character I really ADMIRE later in the series, but I will say that his transformation is a testament to RT's character-building skills. Even when she's set a character down to be a brainless puppet in the beginning of the series, it's almost like she can't HELP but make them a fleshed-out badass by the end. Kohaku illustrates just how much she cares about making characters relatable PEOPLE rather than TOOLS to carry out her plot.

If you haven't gotten far in this manga before and hadn't had the pleasure of seeing Kohaku's transformation yet, boy are YOU in for a treat.