Inuyasha Manga: 172 Onigumo's Heart

Once again, Kagome is featured on the title page, drying her hair with a towel. Not sure what this has to do with Onigumo's Heart, but I sure wish I could have as easy of a time of it as she seems to. I just got out of the shower myself and as always annoyed with how long it takes my mop to dry out, because toweling it just damages my super fine hair. Not to mention I always shed like a sheepdog, so I'm going to spend the whole damn day picking stray hair off my shirt.

Not sure if I'm more irritated by the fact that I don't have a more unrealistically easy time with personal grooming, or that Kagome doesn't have more realistic grooming woes. Either way, I feel weird being jealous of a cartoon.

Especially when these characters regularly face stuff like the above to balance out having manageable hair. Probably not worth the trouble.

The giant shinidamachuu starts to dive toward the ground, so Inuyasha tells Kikyou to hold onto him tightly. Upon looking down at her, though, he finds that she's out cold and completely limp. So he sweeps her up in both arms and leaps out of the way before the big soul bug glances off the ground where he was just standing. Inuyasha glares up at it, supposing that its job is not only to steal all of Kikyou's soul-fuel, but also to break her body.

It loops back around and dives again just to do that job, so Inuyasha rips Tessaiga from its sheath as he sets Kikyou on the ground. He says that the happenstance that he's here means this great insect is shit out of luck, jumping up to slash it in its big creepy face.

*Shiver* I might have nightmares about those flying teeth now.

All the souls this big bastard ate burst out of its corpse as it falls out of the sky, pieces of it raining around Inuyasha while he looks behind him to check up on Kikyou. She still lays there unconscious, so he calls out her name and rushes to prop her in his arms once more, watching the little shinidamachuus fly past him into the air to grab hold of all those spheres of light freed from the bigger one. Inuyasha tells Kikyou to hold on, because her insects are getting the souls back for her. She'll be back up and running again in no time.

For now, all she does stutter out his name weakly. He's surprised she can talk, but she changes the subject over to the question of why he's here as she opens her eyes. Inuyasha says that's what he should be asking HER, and begins to do just that. She begins explaining before he's finished, that while the youkai was chasing her and she was running...

She requests that Inuyasha carry her to "that place", and Inuyasha remains uncharacteristically silent about it. I guess he doesn't have to ask her to clarify.

City lights in the dark indicate that we've switched to modern Tokyo, and Kagome lays on her bead in the dress from the title page, taking a snooze. So, it was RELEVANT this time! She's discarded her blow-dryer on the floor, the careless thing, along with the first aid kit she's assembled for taking back with her to the past. She opens her eyes blearily and appears confused at first, sliding over to the edge of her bed to grasp her alarm clock on the bedside table to squint at its face.

She bolts upright, clutching the clock and looking at it like she's going to crush it between her fingers, in disbelief that it's already nighttime. Well that time does tend to keep marching on, but I can see why you'd be confused, Kagome. After all, you're used to it working a tad differently for you, after all. Souta pokes his head around her cracked door while she starts shoving shit into her backpack like a madwoman, demanding to know why no one woke her up. Souta is just surprised that she was already out cold so early.

Why not take a snooze when her past-life counterpart is having a little nap too? And rightly so; I think I'd need a whole week of sleep after what she just went through.

She's actually having a little reminiscence session over how she shot Inuyasha right through his chest, and she died soon after at this very spot. Damn, she just likes to wallow in it, doesn't she? Even Inuyasha, while outwardly affirming these details, wonders why she's bringing this up right now. She shifts the subject to Naraku's point of view on that day, asking Inuyasha why he thinks the guy trapped them and made them hate one another. After a false start, Inuyasha parrots the official reason Naraku gave - that he wanted to taint the Shikon no Tama by tainting Kikyou's heart with hatred for Inuyasha so it couldn't keep the jewel cleansed.

Kikyou scoffs, and dismisses this as just an excuse, because Naraku could have just bypassed corrupting her heart entirely and touched the damn jewel, which would have been more than enough to make it swirl with darkness. Sweatdrop at his cheek, Inuyasha wonders what exactly it is she's trying to say. He doesn't have to wait long for an answer, because Kikyou asserts that the remains of Onigumo's heart within Naraku wanted her and Inuyasha broken up. Inuyasha pictures the burned out husk of a human in the cave when he repeats "Onigumo's heart" in disbelief. Missed the prize for saying the title by a HAIR, Inuyasha! Kikyou'll be getting it in the mail.

It's a cuddly Naraku voodoo doll. Pins included. :)

Anyway, Kikyou says that the wild-thief wanted her all for himself. Poor bastard didn't know that Kikyou is just FAR too much woman for him. Inuyasha's mixed a little grimace of disgust in with his shocked expression at the news.

Inuyasha blurts in alarm that jealousy is a pretty meaningless reason to do such a thing. One of many. In fact, I'm not sure there's a single meaningFUL reason for Naraku to do what he did, so what's your point? Kikyou agrees that it's meaningless, but also very human. At first, Inuyasha remains speechless, trying to process, and then he recalls that she said Onigumo's heart remained in Naraku, and it's kind of a gross epiphany for him. He calls for a hold so he can puzzle out that NARAKU'S feelings for Kikyou are similar, but she beats him to it. Kikyou says that although he doesn't want to admit it, it seems to her that Onigumo's feelings remain in the mass of evil, and he tried to kill her of in order to rid himself of them.

TOTALLY would have worked.

Inuyasha groans and grits his teeth, clearly not comfortable with this information. Kikyou pushes him away and starts to get up, having had enough. Her body is full of souls now anyway, so she's going to go the way of Felicia. Inuyasha shouts her name in protest, and insists that her going after Naraku by herself is no good. She reminds him that she's a priestess and her holy powers can completely remove Naraku from the world, but Inuyasha snaps he's not talking about that. He's just really sick at the thought that someone like Naraku is in love with Kikyou.

I guess if you want to call the desire to defile a woman and watch her suffer because she's just another nice thing he resents and feels entitled to love. I call it the manosphere.

Inuyasha grips her by the upper arms and states that if his life is hers like she said, then it stands to reason that her life belongs to him too. After a moment of saying one another's names again, they embrace.

Aaaand it just so happens that Kagome is dropping her oversized backpack into the grass next to the well as she complains that it's gotten really late right at this very moment! She thinks that Inuyasha must have calmed down by now, though. I wouldn't count on it, girl. It's a bit too dark for her to see the big ditch that giant shinidamachuu must have carved nearby, but she notices a glow from the trees while hoisting her backpack onto her shoulder.

She unwisely goes to investigate what the light is. The poor fool.

The poor DUMB fool.

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? Manufactured drama is manufactured. I feel like if the whole point of this little episode wasn't to have Kagome catch Inuyasha and Kikyou in a compromising position, Naraku would have come up with a much HARDIER way of dealing with Kikyou. Inuyasha slicing right through the thing with one stroke of his heavy-ass sword lickety-split was unsatisfying as action. As an excuse for dredging up more emotional turmoil, it's a bit ill-timed. We just saw Inuyasha and Kagome fighting over an interaction with Kouga, and this immediate descent into a drama with the shoe on the other foot KIND OF makes Kouga seem like discount Kikyou in a way. Like, a vehicle for Inuyasha's jealousy over Kagome so it doesn't have to be just her problem.

It's just a weird side-effect of the whole deal, especially when the gravity of THIS incident is so much greater than the one preceding.

Otherwise, I do think that Naraku's feelings over Kikyou are interesting, but in a way that wasn't really explored. I wasn't kidding about the "manosphere" comparison; Naraku is a very stereotypical denizen, but in a more focused way. He hates Kikyou and is suspicious of her, but that doesn't stop him from desiring her, because the very core of his toxic masculinity demands it, as well as the manner in which he desires her. Onigumo wasn't in love with Kikyou. He wanted to possess her and degrade her because in his mind, her purity was a kind of "stuck up" rejection of the dark he indulged within himself. He saw her caring for him and keeping him alive not so much as an obligation and respect for life in general, but as snobbish power exercised over him, and he wanted to exercise some power over her instead.

Now Naraku is NOT Onigumo. They're two different people. One just happens to have grown out from the other. And because Naraku grew out from Onigumo, his twisted emotions regarding Kikyou grew out as well, and turned into something else. An obsession that disguises itself as a need to monitor a dangerous element, to ruin the life and relationships of the obsession to steer her into despair and even take her down enough pegs to consider HIM the only one who is worthy of her broken spirit. It's not love, but it resembles a lot the strategies and cries of resentment from certain corners of the internet that loathe women and the rejections that come from them.

Basically, Naraku is 4chan personified. Just in case you didn't think he could get any creepier.