Inuyasha Manga: 187 Blood-Stained

This title pulled an unconscious groan out of me. I wouldn't be opposed to a campaign to redefine "inconvenience" with the annoying blood stain. You can never get your stain soaking in cold water fast enough, and all those cute little tips and tricks on the internet don't work. And don't even get me started on the looks people give you when you're wearing one. Depending on the location and size, you can get some pretty nasty looks. Or wide-eyed, shifty stares, if the stain is big enough, funnily enough.

It's just a splatter of blood running down the length of my dress, what's everyone so nervous about?

These blood stains are in technicolor today! Fancy.

As Inuyasha is pushed back and ultimately launched into the sky by the mere pressure of Tokijin's remote pressure, Kagome screams his name. Inuyasha crashes to the ground and Kagome runs to him, demanding that all this stop. She flings herself over Inuyasha's chest protectively, glaring over her shoulder at Sesshoumaru seemingly unaware of the fact that Inuyasha's eyes are still as red as his crimson outfit, and WIDE OPEN. She's lucky this is one of those rare comics that DOESN'T sacrifice its female characters so that the men can have moar angst, because what an opportunity THIS would be for a hack job, in both literal and figurative senses.

Sesshoumaru approaches through the mist I'm pretty sure is just there to save RT from having to draw his weird boot-things, and abruptly, the technicolor ends. Either his interest in making this into a real fight is gone, or RT ran out of watercolor. Sesshoumaru observes that Inuyasha has finally stopped moving, and Kagome snaps at this idiot to stay back, tears spilling out out her eyes. Ooooh, girl's mouth is running away from her! Miroku and Sango sprint over, Shippou shouting from the shoulder of the former that she should watch out, figuring that Sesshoumaru could kill Kagome along with Inuyasha.

But... he doesn't.

SOMEONE has all the answers, doesn't he?

Kagome is flabbergasted that Sesshoumaru doesn't intend to kill Inuyasha while Miroku and Sango step silently between her and Sesshoumaru. Practically dripping with skepticism, Miroku points out the fact that Sesshoumaru could easily have cut Inuyasha in two earlier if he'd chosen to, but just held his brother off with the Toukijin's blade pressure. He asks the blankly staring Sesshoumaru why he held back, since it's obvious to everyone with eyes that he hates Inuyasha's guts, and it's not likely that he's suddenly grown fraternal affection.

And with that, Sesshoumaru turns around and fucks off before anyone can call him on his bullshit. Miroku and Sango stare after him speechlessly, Kagome gaping right along with them as she thinks that it's ALMOST as if Sesshoumaru came along to stop Inuyasha's rampage. Almost.

Inuyasha groans a little, eyes reverted to normal and jagged cheek markings gone. Miroku turns to him, saying his name while Kagome leans over him, exclaiming that he's awake. Inuyasha doesn't respond, staring out over the blood-soaked ground stretching out next to him, covered in human and equine corpses alike. He stands silently, against Kagome's halting advice that he shouldn't be moving, using Tessaiga now magically in its sheath again to prop his no-doubt screaming limbs as he continues to survey the scene. He's not grinning now. Not at ALL.

Inuyasha asks if he did this, and all Kagome can give him is a hesitant placeholder syllable. Miroku stares at Inuyasha's back while he returns to uncharacteristic silence with a hanging head, and notes that he doesn't seem to remember anything. Inuyasha scoffs, growing an ironic weak imitation of his smile from before, and mumbles about his claws.

I've seen that exact expression on a thousand Youtubers' faces these past two weeks. Inuyasha looks like he's preparing for some hardcore social distancing for SURE right now.

The kid they brought back to the village with his grandfather, and who stumbled back to them with an arrow in his shoulder earlier, is now shambling toward Inuyasha and company once again, among the dismembered bodies strewn on the ground. Inuyasha and Kagome stare right back at the boy as he approaches, the latter making a little noise of surprise. Two women hurry to flank the boy, restraining him on either side from going any nearer. They warn him he's walking towards a monster, and that he'll be torn apart if he gets too close. Kagome is in disbelief at their words, but Inuyasha doesn't look surprised, not the least bit inclined to make a correction.

The child shouts that he doesn't CARE if Inuyasha is a monster, because he avenged his grandfather, who must have died off-panel. Inuyasha's bloody claws twitch when the kid argues he killed the bad guys for the villagers.

Yeah well, the excuse to hang out at home and write more that I wanted didn't exactly turn out as expected either. Join the club.

Later on, Kagome somberly stands on the bank of a body of water holding a polka dotted towel as Inuyasha splashes and scrubs, fully clothed. He curses in his head that the smell of blood just won't disappear, describing it as annoying. That's not the word I would use for this kind of problem, but whatever helps get him through the night. He sloshes through the water back toward the shore where Kagome waits patiently, but sits on the grassy bank without acknowledging her. Not to be deterred by his increased surliness, she sits next to him, offering more plainly the towel. He insists that he doesn't need it, so the two sit in tense silence for a moment or two.

Inuyasha says that Kagome doesn't have to force herself to be beside him, but Kagome just looks at him with a sad expression. He spits a query about what's up with her lately, claiming that everyone's been walking on eggshells around him, and finally shouting that he's sorry that he's not sorry about it. Inuyasha starts to say something about what the bandits were, but Kagome cuts him off with a steady statement of his name. He repeats it back to her, studying her sad face, then turns his head away, scoffing in irritation. While he glares down at the ground, Kagome surmises internally that it must be painful for him.

Inuyasha confirms in his head now that he doesn't remember what happened during this last transformation, and it wasn't like when it happened before. He worries that if it happens again, he might tear even Kagome up with those stained claws that are resting over her hand at this very moment.

So, in the space of a page, we're outside of Toutousai's old fish-bone dwelling, Inuyasha barging right the fuck in without so much as a greeting, demanding to know if the old swordsmith is there. He strides up to Toutousai examining one of his newer creations and says they need to talk.

How did you guess? The only youkai that could have gossiped about it to all the others didn't make it out of there alive! Are their scuttlebutts telepathic or something??

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It doesn't pull ANY of its punches. Even as Inuyasha is attempting to pretend like he's perfectly okay with murdering the bandits because they were horrible shitty people, it's obvious how raw his emotions are. It's not just about being LABELED a monster either, though it's obvious that this claim adds insult to injury. Right after Inuyasha regained lucidity, his view of the carnage clearly all at once disturbs, devastates and depresses him. His face expresses the regret and pain of committing this slaughter long before he admits to himself that the full youkai power he wanted isn't anything like what he imagined. RT's art is ON POINT - I'm honestly amazed with how much emotion she can fit into these two-dimensional characters and how little they need to say while they're in a panel.

Talk about showing and not telling.

This, however, is the first point at which I start to see a clear distinction between the characters' attitudes about killing YOUKAI and killing HUMANS. If Inuyasha had reverted back to his normal self directly after he killed Gatenmaru, he wouldn't have been nearly as upset, and he did begin to point out how terrible the human bandits were as well. Now, in this context, the discomfort with killing the bad humans is understandable, given that they were showing signs of "not okay" when their youkai boss came out and started eating the village women. To expand upon what I said in the previous chapter analysis, there's the implication that the power differential is the real problem here, that the victimization of the villagers by the bandits was bad, but that doesn't make it right to victimize the bandits in turn.

But as we move further into this story, I fear that implication of "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" message will be muddied and get lost in a simpler message of almost "human good, youkai bad", which is pretty problematic for a clear racial allegory in the story. That fear may be unfounded; it's been a while since my last reading of this series, and I wasn't looking AS closely at the content as I am in this go-around. Still, I recall a particularly popular arc in the future in which there is a distinct advantage for the very HUMAN villains in the story going off of that base assumption of "human good, youkai bad". But I won't know if the arc is a critique or reinforcement of that assumption until I get there, so we'll just cross that bridge when we get there.

Speaking of which, I hope everyone reading this is doing alright in our current dystopian horror world, taking things one day at a time. Please stay healthy and safe, wash your hands frequently, don't touch your face, and take this time to do things that you enjoy and that relax you. This blog STARTED in a high-stress point of my life in which I could barely function for how much anxiety I had. Writing about and taking apart my favorite manga was a way for me to get out of my own head for a while and just rest in a world that wasn't my own. The blog continues to function in that fashion for me to this day, and I really encourage my readers to engage with their favorite stories in whichever way creates that effect for them. Write fanfiction, draw fanart, just read or watch all of it all over again and hang out in another world for a bit. Fiction is a magical thing, friends, and it is at your fingertips during these trying times.

Take care everyone.