This oughta be good. I've heard a LOT about the intent behind various weird shit for pretty much my whole life, and have learned to regard with skepticism any third party that claims to have correctly interpreted those intentions when they're not easily ascertained. I'd need several hundred extra arms and legs to count all the bad faith actors who seek to supplant their own interpretation as the ONLY possible true understanding of the intentions of entities who, for whatever reason, cannot or will not be interviewed about these directly. These days, if someone is declaring anything other than their OWN intentions, I side-eye them real hard.
Not that intentions are much help in excusing the actual results of them, but that's another discussion altogether.
The skull sitting in the middle of its spiky nest repeats Inuyasha's claim that this is his father's remains back as a question, asking for confirmation apparently. Then the skull stretches out a long-ish neck of spikes, revealing it has a couple of short antlers on either side of it. It asks directly if Inuyasha is saying that he's the son of the leader of the dogs.
Before he can answer, Myouga hops excitedly on his shoulder, eager to present a theory as to who this could be - Housenki. He asks the possible Housenki if he doesn't recognize his old pal Myouga. Meanwhile, Sango repeats the name, while Miroku refreshes our memory that we were already told how Housenki created the black pearl for Inuyasha.
Housenki, or his skull, anyway, at last seems to acknowledge Myouga, and so identifies Inuyasha in addition.
You can almost hear the screeching sound of old dial-up internet trying to connect.
He says that it certainly is the case that he created the black pearl for Inuyasha at his father's request, but also that Inuyasha must have already used it to come here, and therefore the black pearl must have vanished. Though his face isn't exactly expressive, Housenki doesn't seem particularly happy when he says that there shouldn't be any reason that Inuyasha should be allowed to come here again, not matter who he (or his father, I guess) is.
Kagome pipes up with a polite interjection, having observed a familiar glitter deep within that extended "neck" of Housenki, identifying it as a Shikon fragment. She asks why he brought the shard of the jewel here, much to Inuyasha's shock. He makes an accusatory declaration that Housenki has one after all, and demands that he hand the fragment over before he gets hurt. He must not have ever heard the phrase "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar".
No surprise there.
Housenki explains that he's a youkai who rules over jewels, so one of his abilities is to hear the voices of them. I like that he even kind of rhymes there. He has a small flashback to when he was still living, but feeling like he probably didn't have long left, sitting in his giant clam shell, bent over a Shikon shard he came across in his palm. Housenki claims that the fragment spoke to him, telling him not to allow the Shikon no Tama to be complete again. Apparently, the shard is aware that most of the others are in the hands of an evil entity and have become corrupted, and it is certain if it gets mixed up with them it'll get corrupted as well. The company you keep and all...
Kagome and Inuyasha listen in rapt attention to this account, the latter with his hand resting on the hilt of Tessaiga. He's probably doing this out of an abundance of caution, but it's not the GREATEST look when he just got done kinda sorta threatening Houseki. Houseki is still telling them about how the Shikon fragment wished to come with him to a place where the evil entity couldn't reach, namely, the youkai graveyard. In the trailing silence after this speech, a sweating Myouga advises Inuyasha that it's best to give up on this, and to leave the Shikon shard to Housenki. Inuyasha demands to know what Myouga is talking about, reminding him (and informing Housenki at the same time) that Naraku got here the moment before they did. He asserts that Naraku is hiding SOMEWHERE, seeking that fragment.
Housenki says in his staunch, stubborn way that he's not going to give up the shard to anyone who comes.
Did he just grow some diamond arms? Bad news.
Myouga is sweating even MORE heavily now, trying to persuade Housenki to hold on, that they can all have a rational discussion about this. Not likely.
Inuyasha tells Kagome not to move from her spot on the flying skeleton, then before she can even call his name in concern, he jumps off their perch, drawing Tessaiga. As he swings the sword down, he advises Housenki to get a clue about who his friends and enemies are. Again, I'm going to re-emphasize, that whole bit about "hand it over before you get hurt" sounded an awful lot like a threat, kiddo. You haven't exactly been communicating "ally" so far.
Oooh, I felt my OWN teeth rattle with that.
Myouga shouts at Inuyasha that this kind of attack will not work, too little too late. He's hopping excitedly on Kagome's shoulder now as he points out the obvious fact that Housenki's arm is a lump of hard diamond. Kagome inquires as to when Myouga got to be on HER instead of Inuyasha, as if she doesn't know.
Out of Housenki's gaping jaw collects a bouquet of sharp diamond spikes and he practically projectile vomits them at Inuyasha, who barely dodges upward with a cry of surprise. Inuyasha manages to drop onto another of those skeleton birds just kind of drifting about. From Kirara's back at a distance, Miroku mutters that Housenki is so violent, and there's no chance to reason with him. Between him and Inuyasha, there was never going to be an option for that. Kagome has hung back next to Miroku and Sango, where Myouga whines into her ear about how he can't believe Housenki is going for Inuyasha. She doesn't reply, examining the scene in silence before she sees something shocking.
Kagome shouts a warning at Inuyasha to be careful, because the Shikon shard in Houseki's body has gone black. Inuyasha looks up at her in surprise, and Sango wonders aloud what's going on. Miroku starts to pontificate upon how the clarity of the Shikon fragment should depend on the holder's heart, and based on Housenki's earlier explanation, it doesn't seem like he brought the shard here for his own selfish purposes. Miroku trails in his conclusions, hesitating to say just exactly what this means to him. Suddenly, Kagome becomes aware of a marbled darkened atmosphere around her, and says she feels several corrupted Shikon fragments, judging them to be Naraku's based on the size of them, and I'm sure, the fact that he's the one with the biggest collection.
Sango at last vocalizes that this must be influence of Naraku's corrupted fragments, while Miroku turns to her with a slightly panicked demand to tell them where Naraku is. Kagome stays quiet for a moment, looking around her at the jagged peaks poking out of the mist in the distance.
Inuyasha turns back to Housenki, which I guess has been sitting there politely waiting for the conversation to subside in the nosebleed seats. He asks Housenki if he heard all of it, warning him that if he keeps carrying the corrupted shard, it will eat at his soul, advising him to let go of the thing right now. Housenki insists that it's nonsense for such a small amount of corruption to make him lose himself.
Something tells me you were counting on that anyway.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It's been a while since I've really liked a new character/monster design in this comic, because for a long time they all seemed to be somewhat generic. Housenki's isn't AMAZING, but it does contain some of that original creativity in design that was part of what drew me to Inuyasha in the first place. I like the fact that his body and powers are something of a transformation more toward the powers that he had in life. Through his flashback, we can see that he looks nothing like this, and resembles much more his son that we met at that clam shell way back when. So the fact that his appearance has come to reflect more closely the very jewels that he had such a close affiliation with, and even sort of resembles the Shikon shard he brought with him to the graveyard, is a fun decision.
Housenki is also somewhat hilariously SLOW. The guy takes forever to respond to Inuyasha and company, which a couple of times delays his reply through whole adjacent conversations. Myouga doesn't really speak to this quirk either - he's more concerned that Housenki would attack Inuyasha, so I'm thinking the guy has always been thus. It might be another deliberate decision, putting his response time on par with geological time, since he's so in-sync with the rocks around him. If so, VERY funny, had me giggling the whole time.
Inuyasha being so caustic and confrontational is actually how I like to see him, and was a great way to complicate the interaction with Housenki. He has come to retrieve the Shikon fragment, and is never one to be polite about it, but he's especially anxious about it because Naraku could be lurking around any corner and prepared to perform some trick to get at this last piece of jewel. Of course he's wanting to just grab the Shikon shard and get out of there, and his already underdeveloped persuasion skills are going to be truncated a bit with the frustration of dealing with a stubborn old dude who refuses to see that he's not looking to misuse the damn thing.
Meanwhile, Housenki's motivations are pretty clear, and it makes sense that he would be suspicious of Inuyasha. He's got good reason to believe that Inuyasha already used the black pearl he made, because Inuyasha already has Tessaiga on him, and that was the reason Inuyasha's father commissioned the jewel, after all. And after working so hard to use up the rest of the jewels he made to make sure he couldn't be followed, Housenki is going to be a little peeved that ANYONE found their way there at all. That's going to mix with Inuyasha's anxious impatience like oil and water. A confrontation was inevitable, even WITHOUT the added complication of a corrupted jewel shard.
And RT has managed to make me very nervous, because I am wondering where Naraku has got to. Kagome's statement that it seems like he's everywhere puts in me a strange idea that he's managed to disperse himself in the air like he's turned into the very miasma he's always spewing. The ability to do that would be insidious, but also just plain gross.
I mean, are they BREATHING HIM IN right now????
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