Right in half! I kind of wanted to bisect my husband's old laptop, since he just got a new one and all. The old one was quite the troublemaker for a really long time. It took forever to boot up, practically ALL of its RAM would be tied up into loading a single webpage, and any video game project he was working on was liable to be corrupted for seemingly no reason. It got to the point that he was cursing the damn thing out every single day for something or other. One day I told him to just bite the bullet and order a new gaming laptop, since we luckily have the extra funds. He's been pleased as punch with the one he picked ever since it arrived, and hasn't been upset even ONCE.
He wouldn't let me cleave the old one in half, though. Seems he still has a use for it.
Inuyasha closes his bloodied claws around the Shikon shards he ripped out of Bankotsu's throat. Once again, Bankotsu looks utterly scandalized and enraged, calling Inuyasha a bastard. Inuyasha delivers a kick to Bankotsu's midsection and sends him flying against the wall opposite. Nice to see that Inuyasha can get in a shot likewise every once in a while. As Bankotsu hits the rock, Inuyasha stands, counting FIVE Shikon Fragments he's gotten so far. He announces that it'll be all over for Bankotsu when he takes the shards in his left arm.
Don't know why he didn't go for those before the ones he just took - Inuyasha's already looking quite bruised, and Bankotsu wouldn't have been able to keep punching with his NECK.
He must have updated his vision board before he came into the cave.
Inuyasha tells Bankotsu what he's saying is futile, and even if by some fluke he makes it out of the fight over Inuyasha, there would be no way Naraku would let someone else carrying Shikon fragments live. Though he DOES admit he has no idea what promise Naraku made to Bankotsu, he lets hang the implication that whatever it was, Naraku lied. Bankotsu just smiles silently, thinking back when he woke up to a voice bidding him to awaken, saying he'd been given another life. Naraku's hand withdrew from Bankotsu's neck but his form still hovered over him as he informed Bankotsu that he would work for him, and would be allowed to keep him new life for all eternity.
Wow, Naraku didn't even TRY to make that convincing, did he?
Inuyasha bets that the Shichinin-tai are just a makeshift strategy for Naraku, merely a shield for him. I don't need to repeat how much effort Naraku put into this whole plot, do I? Convoluted, sure, but certainly not "makeshift". Bankotsu smirks, generally displaying a "so what" attitude about the idea that he and his buddies are mere pawns. He tells Inuyasha that the Shichinin-tai were originally soldiers for hire, used at the leisure of warlords, and cornered/executed when they became a little too dangerous to their employers' tastes. In other words, he's kind of used to this dynamic, and it hardly surprises him.
Inuyasha looks on stoically at Bankotsu as he admits to NEVER trusting Naraku. Well, at least he's not a total nincompoop. He does think of himself as his own man now that he's alive again, though, despite the fact that he's been spending his time as "his own man" deferring to another just like he did in his former life. As Bankotsu gets to his feet, he declares that he'll murder anyone who gets in his way, including Naraku.
Yeah, not a TOTAL nincompoop, but pretty close.
Another pulse rocks the cave, and while Inuyasha is distracted a little by the falling dust from the ceiling, Bankotsu scoffs again, moving swiftly to the side. Inuyasha looks around with a sudden realization at Bankotsu's sword, that he just now remembers also has Shikon shards in it.
Too slow.
Bankotsu doesn't even bother pulling the sword out of the ground, just drags it into an upward slash bringing a bunch of loose rocks with it, directing a new attack toward his enemy. Inuyasha draws Tessaiga with difficulty again just in time to hold it up in front of him and split the blast on either side of him with the blade.
Doesn't stop him from getting slung into the wall AGAIN, though.
As he bum-rushes Inuyasha for the umpteenth time, Bankotsu yells that if he were his opponent, he would have landed the finishing blow without hesitation after taking the shards out of his neck. It really speaks to SOMETHING about Bankotsu's character that he's willing to give his enemy ideas like this - not sure if it's stupidity or overconfidence, but it's SOMETHING. Inuyasha groans, still lying against the crater he made in the stone while Bankotsu swings, declaring that soft guys like Inuyasha just don't have the right to live.
But Inuyasha is back on his feet again, running at Bankotsu, reminding him of what he said before (and demonstrated far more than was necessary): he's really strong at taking hits.
Not much of an interesting strategy, though.
Inuyasha grunts against the force of the blow pushing back his sword, and Bankotsu demands to know what's wrong, asking if he doesn't have the power anymore to bring out that Kaze no Kizu attack. I have to assume Bankotsu's prior attack has subsided, because the next couple of panels show them both holding up their weapons, preparing to swing again, and a yell-bubble between them saying that this is the end. They must have decided this simultaneously, so on the same page they are on this drawn-out stalemate of a fight.
Next, Bankotsu loses his sword, as Inuyasha's slices him through, from left armpit up to right shoulder.
Is this the bisection? Huh. I always thought that to bisect was to divide into two EQUAL parts, but maybe I'm a little fuzzy on my definition...
Bankotsu now sees that all this was so Inuyasha could finish him off for certain. How that's connected strategically to getting his ass punched into walls every five seconds is beyond me, I guess. The right hand that is no longer connected to the part of Bankotsu still housing Shikon fragments (and by extension the rest of his body) collapses into bones just like his friends did, flesh dissolving away from it like dust in the wind. Inuyasha still holds Tessaiga in the position in which he followed through on his slash, silently watching his opponent MOSTLY crumble.
Inuyasha is alarmed by yet another pulse in the caves, the fallen Bankotsu unresponsive to it. I was expecting him to "black knight" this shit, but it appears that the shock of being separated from a good majority of his body has put him out.
Suddenly, the stone under Inuyasha's feet turns... squishy, and slurps around his soles. He looks down, clenching his teeth at the ground that he perceives is a bit more active than before. It begins to bubble up around the edges of Bankotsu's blade.
Gross.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? A fittingly dull end to a dull confrontation. Honestly, it's probably for the best that RT put this fight out of its misery here, because it just felt like her heart was NOT in this until the very end. She wasn't too terribly convincing in her attempt to assure us that Inuyasha was just using his ability to take hits as a viable strategy, and I'm not sure if it's because it just on the surface doesn't make all that much sense, or if her one half-hearted attempt to portray Inuyasha as halfway competent in a while was in the midst of him getting the shit knocked out of himself. Maybe both. Either way, for a threat that took so long and so much effort to overcome, Bankotsu and the Shichinin-tai sure went out with a fizzle.
I did appreciate the slight digression regarding how Bankotsu felt about his new boss Naraku. It makes sense that Bankotsu would be more than suspicious of Naraku's intention for himself and his mercenaries, given his past experiences. It's also understandable, given his glut of confidence, he'd consider himself more than capable of taking out Naraku before he got those Shikon shards off of him and turn him back into a corpse. All the same, I have to wonder, even if Bankotsu were able to kill Inuyasha AND Naraku to preserve his new eternal life, would he really have been the "free man" he thought he was? We know the old patterns both Kikyou and Hakushin Shounin fell into, performing the same old actions of service as they did in life because as members of the "undead" community, they exist outside of time, unable to evolve and grow anymore. And he DID rather quickly take up under Naraku's orders despite not believing for a second the half-assed promise of getting to keep those fragments. I can't help but assume, even if he managed to bury his current enemies, he would have just found a NEW daimyou to kill for.
All the same, I never wondered for a second if Bankotsu trusted fully in Naraku or his promises. That was a question that had already been addressed in a somewhat minor way with at least ONE question as to whether Naraku was trustworthy. I think it was fairly obvious that Bankotsu was going to be wary of Naraku, just from the tiny tidbit we got. The one burning question I had never got answered; how in the actual fuck was Bakotsu able to wield his blade, and the other members do clearly INhuman actions despite supposedly being fully human? I guess it's just taken for granted that we would accept the unusual strength and abilities/morphology of the Shichinin-tai as quirks without thinking too hard about it.
It's no secret that I had next to no faith that RT would address this glaring issue with her supposedly "human" villains. Being burned and lacking trust in a suspicious party after the fact seems to be something Bankotsu and I have in common.
No comments:
Post a Comment