Oh, who am I kidding? There's no escaping the long haul, and there's certainly no skipping whole legs of the journey when you're the driver.
Gatenmaru holds his drink as he smirks over at his goo-sack, where he notes that the hanyou inside has gotten pretty weak. Inuyasha curses in response, but he's not the only one looking severely haggard. Miroku is also sweating up a storm as he concentrates on keeping that goo at bay with his barrier. Gatenmaru drawls that they're rather pathetic, especially when you take into account that they burst onto the scene as allies to the humans. Says the guy who rode in with a horde of HUMAN bandits. How much you wanna bet that he has no other options because other youkai think of him as that weird kid who lives down the street and regularly eats glue.
Inuyasha is in too much pain to point out Gatenmaru's hypocrisy, wincing wordlessly. One of Gatenmaru's lackeys kicks another woman toward his boss, who lets out a shriek in protest. Gatenmaru asks this woman if she's scared, and the next panel shows he's grasped her by her shoulders, pulling open her kimono a little suggestively, saying he likes her frightened expression. If I didn't know this chapter wouldn't turn into THAT gratuitous rapey chapter, I might have backed the fuck away at record speed. Being familiar with this story, however, I'm able to hang tight long enough to see the explanation as to why he's so into ladies wearing their fear; they taste better.
A couple of the human bandits gape at the scene, one of them commenting that Gatenmaru sure is a youkai. Sure is. The other guy's input is a little more valuable, because he claims to have always thought it was a little weird that the boss's women just disappeared all the time. Inuyasha musters the energy to yell haltingly that Gatenmaru is a low-life bastard, only to cough an alarming amount of blood for his exertion. Miroku says Inuyasha's name with concern, but the poor guy is slumped over in half-consciousness once more.
Gatenmaru laughs that the poison has spread throughout Inuyasha's body, grabbing another girl by her hair. He tells Inuyasha to sit and watch each and every one of these young women get eaten until he dies. You're to be congratulated, Gatenmaru; you have officially devised the absolute WORST kind of hell. The only thing missing is the champagne flute full to the brim with Elmer's. Inuyasha looks on with heavy head and eyelids, though the sound effects indicate a pulse of power.
The bandit who weaseled away with Tessaiga hangs back with it raised hovering over his shoulder, a clueless expression on his face. Someone should ask Gatenmaru how delicious that one is, on a scale of one to ten. The old man Inuyasha brought back to the village earlier stares at the sword and the man holding it, then makes a flying leap from the ground to snatch Tessaiga away from the bandit. Its thief makes a noise of confusion at the old man running away with the sword, while Miroku says its name in astonishment. The old man runs for the goo-sack, holding out Tessaiga, begging the guys inside to save the girls with it. Before he can reach Inuyasha and Miroku, a new spear embeds itself in his back, and he goes down again. Miroku and Inuyasha gape in disbelief, Inuyasha cursing in his head as he watches the old man being kicked and beaten by a couple of the bandits. One of them wonders out lout just what the old fart was thinking with that stunt, while the other just asserts that it's the end for him and his would-be saviors.
The boy calls out to the old man, having just arrived to run screaming toward his grandfather, arm outstretched. The bandits just grin down menacingly at him as he throws himself over his elder, crying. Kagome joins him, kneeling next to the old man and calling to him in concern. Gatenmaru declares Kagome a tasty-looking one, and commands his men to get her and her companions.
Kagome turns her attention back to the old man on the ground when he stutters something about the sword. He still clutches Tessaiga, and asks Kagome to give it to "that man". Kagome wastes no time in taking it, worrying over Inuyasha some more, although I'm not sure she's seen the semi-transparent goo-sack yet. If she had, she might be straight-up freaking out, because at this moment, it's starting to collapse around an increasingly desperate Miroku. He's panicking over the barrier being unable to hold any longer, while Inuyasha continues to hang his head uselessly. And yet, the sound effects indicate another pulse of power. Weird, right?
The bandits lunge at Sango, one of whom warns her not to fuck with them. She just grunts in response as she raises Hiraikostu in preparation for the fight. And this is the precise moment when the goo-sack starts expanding like someone somehow fashioned a party balloon from Silly String. The bandits all turn to stare at the phenomenon.
Never mind. Stupid question.
Miroku is discarded on the ground, flinching at all the goo raining down around him, and gaping at Inuyasha's form above. Gatenmaru glares at the hanyou in annoyed disbelief that he managed to break out of his cocoon. Inuyasha, of course, proceeds to swing his arm around and knock off a total of four bandit heads, plus another bandit's arm, with Gatenmaru standing impassive in the background. Now it's raining BLOOD, Sango looking up at the heads and plasma flying with shock. Kagome is aghast at Inuyasha, who grins maliciously around his lengthened fangs, spread wide over the new jagged stripes on his cheeks. The whites of his eyes have turned dark.
Tell me that's not a legit nightmare. I would be pinching myself if I were Kagome. She just says anti-climatically that he's transformed while Shippou does all the trembling and exclaiming about the state of Inuyasha's face. Gatenmaru is downright amused, chuckling at the brat who wasted so many of his men in one fell swoop. He starts to transform too, antenna sprouting from his temples, wings from his back, and his lips thinning and stretching into a smile that puts Inuyasha's nightmare grin to shame. He looks a bit like one of those Canadian characters from South Park.
And then he turns into this:
The biggest piece remaining of Gatenmaru, one bulging insect eye, hits the ground at the same time as Inuyasha, the coordination inspiring a cowardly squeal from the remaining bandits. They begin to flee, screaming as they turn tail.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? This one reminds me of the battle with Kaijinbou - the enemy was so disposable that he was destroyed in the blink of an eye. It would have been just as anticlimactic if we weren't already primed to expect this arc was going to be more about Inuyasha's transformations than an external battle. Gatenmaru, as we've discussed, seems to just be a stand-in for Sesshoumaru's prejudice and general disdain, and as such, also played the role of the model youkai for Inuyasha's insecurity. His struggle is internal, so Gatenmaru as a person or even his level of strength weren't really the points.
That doesn't mean the stark contrast between before and after weren't a bit jarring. What gave regular hanyou Inuyasha so much trouble before was super easy, barely an inconvenience, for transformed Inuyasha. It was like night and day, and I can't help but feel a teensy bit disappointed by the sudden lack of struggle. This is of course before I've remembered that he's STILL dying though. His body is still the same ol' hanyou body it was before, taken over by the euphoria of the intoxicating youkai "blood" of his father. He might not feel it, but he's still melting inside, and that puts the scene of him busting out of the cocoon a whole different context. His helplessness before was a function of his pain, and now that he's taken a giant hit of what is essentially SPEED, he can power through it to fuck up some dudes. So, it doesn't appear to me so much that his transformed body is much stronger than his hanyou form, at least not as much as it seems, but that his transformed body just doesn't FEEL as much, if anything. Like Bokusenou said, he'll just keep going until his body is destroyed, unable to perceive his limits anymore.
Which may be bad news for Inuyasha, but it's GOOD news for this chapter, because I was about to dismiss it as another snap change of tide with a catalyst severely disproportionate to the outcome. Now I can convince myself that it's not a hack-job.
At least until Inuyasha recovers with little to no trouble like he did the last time.
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