Just in time for beach season! Yet another reason for him to shed all those pounds in Mt. Hakurei, I'm sure - no doubt that wouldn't go over well among others on the sandy shores, but it would probably have less to do with a lack of body positivity and more to do with the beach being ENTIRELY obscured by the literal mountainous bulk. Not that I care much for the idea of Naraku in a bathing suit either way. Seems wrong and inappropriate.
Do not link the fanart I am CERTAIN exists somewhere!!
Kikyou is already displeased enough.
Naraku observes with a nasty smile that Kikyou doesn't bleed because of her bones and soil imitation body. Way to add insult to injury, dude. Kikyou drops to the ground, what's left of her bow still under her hand as though she can't give it up, and she haltingly calls Naraku a bastard. Naraku responds with a chuckle, saying she was careless for presumably showing up there without worry since she was under the impression he couldn't kill her. When he refers to the useless human heart that had some kind of *ahem* covetous thoughts of Kikyou remaining in him as the reason WHY she would be so confident, Naraku's smile drops off his face and he looks none too pleased. Kikyou draws the conclusion that he's gotten rid of that hateful heart, and further stipulates that when she saw Kagura escaped carrying something, whatever it was had a human heart.
What about the unhealthy amount of smugness? That doesn't strike you as "a thing"?
Kikyou just glares at him, her hand clutching at the jagged wound in her shoulder, which appears to be leaking some vaporous substance. She silently asserts that these are the dead souls escaping. Again. She just can't seem to hang ON to those things, can she? Naraku tells Kikyou that he no longer has any reason to let her live, and the ground behind her proceeds to split open into a deep chasm with a river of bubbling miasma at the bottom.
Naraku states this too, just to make sure she knows how well her measly imitation form will dissolve in there (we can't have anyone possibly NOT understanding that this is basically an acid vat), all while his hand extends and twists into some more gnarled tentacles. With one more announcement that this is her grave, Naraku's hand/tentacle mass lashes out at her lightning fast.
Kikyou's last thought as she's falling head-first down into the miasma below is of Inuyasha, like she's calling for him, but her mouth's not open. Her eyes are double-wide, though. From the top of the cliff, Naraku watches Kikyou's form recede down into the chasm, probably imagining a cartoon whistling sound to accompany the visual, the sick fuck (never mind that I'M the sick fuck writing that down). He asks if she understands, not that she can ANSWER him now, of course. He asserts that this was his desire, doubling down on the notion that it was a new body, this time with the implication that it's one that would do the murder he wanted.
At Naraku's back, someone was a flower-patterned sleeve comments on how curiously cautious Naraku was just to ultimately kill a single lady.
Jaken is sweatdropping pretty frickin' hard there. Apparently it's because he's all hot under the collar about how big of an ego Naraku's gotten to be just referring to Sesshoumaru without honorific by this point. To be fair, Sesshoumaru's name is plenty long enough without tacking more syllables onto the end of it.
Naraku looks cheekily over his shoulder and says it's a surprise that Sesshoumaru would be coming after him too, suggesting that Sesshoumaru has an INTENSE interest in him. Didn't I SAY that he has no logical narrative reason to be here? So it's Sesshoumaru's own fault if people draw weird conclusions about his "interests" because of it, no matter how loudly Jaken screeches about how it's actually Naraku who was meddling with them first.
But he doesn't get to finish his defensive screed about who is responsible for their current meeting, because Sesshoumaru cuts him off to tell him to stand the fuck by. Then Sesshoumaru addresses Naraku, saying that his exit from the barrier must mean he's gotten a bit stronger. Naraku doesn't answer for a moment, then suggests that Sesshoumaru try him out. Sesshoumaru scoffs.
Don't send me THAT fanart either!!
Because this is BASICALLY just that, except with a literal sword. Naraku's giving Sesshoumaru the bedroom eyes and everything here.
Jaken can be forgiven for assuming that Sesshoumaru got Naraku, because Naraku's expression in the next panel is less flirty and more disturbed that his bony carapace is getting annihilated from Sesshoumaru's attack. But Sesshoumaru knows better, directing a critical look at where he'd just swung his sword. Although he's been blasted to bits from mid-chest down, Naraku chuckles from within his protective bubble with all his viscera contained within. He tells Sesshoumaru that he's going to bounce the attack he just endured right back to sender, the barrier emitting a jagged blast around its circumference per the promise.
Sesshoumaru holds up Tokijin in a defensive stance as his own blast crackles around him, forcing him backward a bit, which Jaken notes with disbelief and alarm. After a moment of intense concentration, Sesshoumaru stops skidding at the heel and pushes off from the ground, lunging up toward Naraku and slicing his giggling head in half. Naraku don't give a shit, chuckling that Sesshoumaru's efforts are futile.
Yeah, I think we've caught on to that irritating fact, bro.
Sesshoumaru glares up at the sky, silently pissing and moaning about Naraku's impudence in using him to test his new body. I guess his FULL AGENCY in participating in the test doesn't factor into the complaint here, nor their recent discussion about how he NEVER had to be here. I can't say I'm particularly sympathetic to him right now.
He looks over at a familiar bare-footed step, Inuyasha squaring up for... some kind of confrontation, no doubt. Sesshoumaru expresses the mildest surprise that Inuyasha's alive, but supposes that Naraku wanted to kill "that woman" more than him anyway. Inuyasha is taken aback by this offhand statement, then spots the broken bow on the ground near the chasm, which he automatically identifies as Kikyou's. He looks a bit alarmed, but mostly in disbelief by the puzzle he's putting together.
Meanwhile, in some forest somewhere, Kagura is perched on a branch up in a tree, thinking about that damn Naraku forcing this crap on her, probably referring to the bundle still hitched in the crook of her arm. A voice from that bundle asserts that Kikyou is dead, and Kagura has to ask it to repeat itself, having been deep in loathing thought about stupid Naraku and everything.
What do YOU know about it? You're just a baaaaaabyyyyyy.
So, what did I think about this chapter overall? Kikyou's presumed death (things are rarely dead in this manga unless we get to watch them dissolve, remember) is pretty good at subverting the expectations that have been built thus far. As I mentioned in the previous analysis, we don't really have any reason to believe that this interaction between Naraku and Kikyou will be any different than the previous ones, nor does Kikyou herself. She had an inkling before that Naraku had OTHER motivations for hiding himself away and rearranging his form again, but clearly she didn't think it had anything to do with getting rid of her, otherwise she would have been a lot more careful in meeting with him again. The scene reframes Kikyou's confidence in her understanding of Naraku and his limitations as arrogance and miscalculation, hubris that leads to a literal downfall. Despite the unlikelihood that Naraku would be able to literally rearrange the humanity right out of himself, Kikyou's relative certainty that he wouldn't have found SOME way to hurt/kill her just made her more vulnerable in a way that none of us really saw coming. It carries a somber, unsettling tone, because Kikyou having already died at Naraku's tricky hands probably had the most reason of any of them to seek vindication, but the fragility of her state of being almost made her the most likely not to be able to see it through.
And then there's the guy who has the LEAST reason to be there, sucking up the air right afterward. Honestly, RT drawing attention to the fact that Sesshoumaru is there chasing after Naraku like the others with very little rhyme or reason just makes me irritated. Rather than a tool for releasing the tension like her little spats between Inuyasha and Kouga, this one just feels like a joke at the audience's expense. "Well, my fans demanded more of him because he's pretty and popular - here he is, just like they wanted, even though he's basically just superfluous right now."
Good job, RT, Sesshoumaru is an annoying purposeless twat. I'm sure that is precisely how you meant this to pan out, lol.
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