With over 60 hours of PTO I need to spend before the new year, and our main construction contractors taking the Friday following Thanksgiving off, it's time to kick back and relax for old Writch! I've a lot of loafing planned, along with some writing, blogging, reading, and NOT buying anything. As you might expect, I've never been one to participate in the nightmare tradition of Black Friday, but this year I am making a conscious effort not to spend a single red cent, especially on anything from Amazon. Mr. Wannabe-Space-Cowboy can suck it, I'm not giving him MY dollars unless he's ever planning on giving me something back in the form of fucking taxes and treating his employees with respect.
That goes for all the other rich bastards out there as well. Let the people unionize, pay a fair share, and no more tricking people into fighting over garbage products that aren't even worth the "discount" they're offered under.
A retail worker's Black Friday nightmare?
Inuyasha continues by saying that this guy doesn't smell like a regular human, but a corpse/burial soil. Jakotsu just tilts his head and makes a mocking noise, because he doesn't need to argue, it's all true. Miroku begins to suggest what Inuyasha might mean with a significant tone, and Inuyasha cuts him off with confirmation, then addresses Jakotsu again. He cites the rumor going around the area about a nasty zombie coming up from the grave, Miroku following up by mentioning the group of mercenaries who were cornered by the army and beheaded. He demands to know if Jakotsu is one of the Shichinin-tai, but Jakostu remains silent, staring.
Patience stretched thin, Miroku tells Jakotsu to answer. Instead, Jakotsu grins and gushes about how in addition to Inuyasha being super cute, the priest is too, and he would LOVE to see his agonized face.
Hey Miroku, how's it feel? You know, being the RECIPIENT of creepy sexual comments? You uh, feel uncomfortable? Just a little?
Miroku begins to unwind the beads from around his cursed hand, asking Inuyasha if he's okay with Jakotsu being sucked up, and Inuyasha gives his blessing. Kagome tells them to hold their horses, though, alerting them to the fact that this guy has a Shikon shard, hypothesizing that the power of the fragment resurrected him. Miroku and Inuyasha give her a critical glance before Inuyasha turns back to Jakotsu, demanding to know who gave him the Shikon shard. Jakotsu, one-track mind that he has, observes that Inuyasha's angry face is even cuter.
Inuyasha draws Tessaiga, shouting at the pervert to shut up, and promising to force the truth out of him. Jakotsu says that Inuyasha's sword is really interesting, and refers to his in competition with it -
And the phallic symbolism is back in FULL FORCE in this comic.
Miroku swings his arm out to protect the girls, warning them it's a concealed sword and to get back. Despite its prominent display before and after whatever its little trick is retracts and locks back onto the blade clutched in Jakotsu's hand. He chuckles about it.
Sango says she had thought the way in which the soldiers were killed, as if they were quickly wiped out and didn't even have time to cross swords with him. Can't IMAGINE why this would raise alarm bells. Inuyasha thinks that Jakotsu seemed to be whipping something long, but it also doesn't appear that simple to him either. His pondering on the guy's sword are cut off, almost literally.
The ring of dead men around Jakotsu just does not compare in the least with the severity of a nick on Inuyasha's shoulder, for sure. The source of Miroku and Sango's shock seems to be the bendy nature of Jakotsu's sword, though, by Miroku's exclamation on the next panel. As he winds up for another downward slash, Jakotsu asks if they like it, calling this sword the "attack captain" of the Shichinin-tai. When he swings the sword, he gives them the full name of the thing: "Jakotsu-sama's Jakotsu-tou". Thankfully he doesn't refer to it that way for the rest of his time in this manga, because it's a nightmare mouthful.
... Not gonna lie, that looks utterly ridiculous.
Jakotsu never really seems to care much about how he looks to others, though, so that checks out. He scoffs and swings his arm again, creating a wave of interconnected blades that Inuyasha barely blocks with a grunt. Or, at least, he tries. The whip-sword bends upwards rapidly again and slices what looks like his thigh, or something? It's not clear. All as the earth breaks up at his feet from the rebound of Jakotsu's sword. Miroku frets about how this weapon bounced back, even after it was deflected, and Kagome yelps that it almost behaves like a snake, Shippou clinging to her side once more.
Meanwhile, Jakotsu is having a bit too much fun. He's swinging his arm around, commanding Inuyasha to jump around some more. Inuyasha has no choice but to obey, leaping to the side to avoid another encounter with the sword. But the tip whips around the back of his head and nicks his cheek despite his evasive maneuvers. Jakotsu chuckles viciously, yanking the interconnected blades back, while Inuyasha gapes and silently curses about how he can't tell where the blades will come from.
Really excited, Jakotsu gushes about Inuyasha's great expression, how thrilling it is to him. As he swings again, he shouts that he wants more, but this is followed by a cry of "Hiraikotsu" from the sidelines. Jakotsu finds his chain of blades tangled in Sango's giant boomerang, her frozen in the stance in which she just threw it. At first he quietly seethes about the female presence in the fight now, but it doesn't last long.
Especially when he rushes at Jakotsu's flank while the sadist is distracted with his lecture to Sango.
Noooooo, what could possibly be creepy about attaching sexual undertones to slicing into a guy while throwing a tantrum over a woman trying to intervene in the violence?
When Jakotsu skids to a stop on one knee, having been propelled a distance by the force of Inuyasha's punch, he massages the bruise on his cheek and whines that Inuyasha is really cold. Is it because he's not fawning over how cute you look when you're in pain, or do you just not like it when YOU'RE the one who has to suffer injury? It's perfectly fair that Inuyasha doesn't try to clarify this point when he tells Jakotsu to shut up, though. He asks where Jakotsu got the Shikon fragment in his body from, barking that he had better answer soon.
Nearby...
Can't say I'd expect it - being dead and in the ground doesn't leave room for a lot of personality growth. Just decay.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? Man, I'm really feeling how poorly Jakotsu's character has aged over the years during a more critical reading. The literal sadism during the fight that really shoves in your face how he's getting off to hurting Inuyasha, his lack of consideration or a sense of reciprocity when he thinks it's not fair when HE'S the one getting hit, the obvious abject HATRED of women in how he responds to Sango's interference in the battle; all of it reads as the most horrible stereotype of predatory gay possible, and it's really cringe-worthy. Not really the kind of bigoted skew you can ignore in our current year of 2021, much less the very end.
The one saving grace of all this is the moment where Miroku gets a little taste of his own medicine, having to endure some sexual harassment from someone he's not attracted to for a change. It gives me a little bit of catharsis seeing the guy who just CANNOT keep his fucking hands and comments to himself get a little comeuppance, even though I know there will be NO reflection on this point for him later, despite how much he could stand a little of that. I'm also going to be a tad charitable here and not interpret Jakotsu's focus on how cute the boys are over there as an obsession with his sexual gratification, or at least not JUST that. He comes across as a little ditzy, someone childish who doesn't really consider anything outside of his current interest. He doesn't answer questions, doesn't engage in conversation, just pursues the part of the interaction that he's anticipating and that's all he really wants. While that CAN play into a stereotype of hedonism, it also isn't exclusively negative or aimed at gay men, so I can give that one just a smidge of room. But not more than that.
As usual, there are rumors that have been flying around the internet for YEARS regarding RT's intentions for Jakotsu, the most prominent being that she only made him a man because she didn't want Inuyasha to beat up on a woman. Personally, I think that's a poor excuse for perpetuating hateful stereotypes about gay people in an extremely popular comic in its day, and sounds to me like she just thought responding to the criticism at the time with "well it would be much worse if I were making my hero commit violence against a woman right?" would give her a pass. I don't know how much thought she gave to the issue when she wrote it (after all, I am well aware of the time crunch she had to have been under in making these decisions for her weekly serialization, as any long-time reader of this blog knows), but it seems like it wasn't a lot because she's had female villains before. It's not like she couldn't have made a female Jakotsu square off against our strong heroines in order to avoid such a problem.
But hey, far be it from me to encourage some creative problem-solving from an author I KNOW is capable of it.
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