Reusing chapter names might not be too far in the future, though. The chapter count is getting pretty high, after all, and there's already been some recycling of CONTENT, so I wouldn't be surprised.
Sango identifies this glittering man as that good-looking medicine seller she's heard so much about, but doesn't seem all that enchanted yet. She in fact looks wary, sweating a bit, brows drawn down. His pupilless, mirror-like eyes stare as he offers to give her his antitoxin, and in the next panel is cradling her his in arms. It would be quite romantic, if not for Sango's alarmed expression, his suggestion that she give him something in exchange, and her panicked thought that she can't MOVE. Context is everything friends.
Elsewhere, Kagome wonders if Sango is okay. Excuse me while I scream at the screen for a moment... Okay, the void is as indifferent as always. Anyway, she and Miroku are sitting outside a little hut, where he tells Kagome that he gave her the protection charm, so she shouldn't be manipulated. Kagome says she hopes that's true, casting some SAVAGE doubt on Miroku's abilities here. Ouch.
A man approaches, and I say that rather loosely, because at first I thought he was a giant duck. He has beady little eyes, and his balloon-like lips take up about half his face. The woman they'd brought back is in the background pulling a bucket from a well as this man thanks Kagome and Miroku for saving his wife. Miroku says it's no problem, and casually chats about this new information that their charge is a married woman. The man with the lips says that they get along well and have had good health, but a big fat tear drips from one of his eyes when he relays that she's been sighing whenever she looks at him since she came back. She demonstrates just that behind him, looking SEVERELY disappointed. Oh buddy, that's super rough. Kagome sweatdrops as Miroku acknowledges the sad reality for this guy.
Miroku leans over and suggests the wife's behavior might be due to the youkai's illusion, but Shippou says they can't really be sure, since the husband's face is so EXTREME. Little of column A and a little of column B?
Back to Sango being essentially assaulted, unfortunately. Her attacker is even mumbling about how she can't get away and she's his captive. I didn't think highly of this guy before, and now I'm practically INCANDESCENT with rage at him. Sango isn't completely taken in, though, and she looks like she's doing her best to lean away from the incoming razor bite to her neck, in silent disbelief. She squeezes her eyes shut at the realization that she REALLY can't move and trails in a thought of what's going to happen at this rate. Nothing GOOD, that's for sure.
A spatter of blood suddenly features in the next panel.
A narrow sky transition panel takes us back to where the recently reunited couple are bowing to Miroku and Kagome, thanking them once again for the help. When Miroku turns to repeat it's no problem at all, he sees the woman scratching at her neck where the bite mark was. He steps back up to her with a hesitant hum, asking if she's really alright. She affirms that she's fine, but her bite is just a tad itchy. Miroku's still awfully close, casting an intimate stare down at the woman as he acknowledges this reality for her and her husband stands looking between them. I can't tell if he's got a suspicion about Miroku, but Kagome sure does, and reminds Miroku that this woman is MARRIED. Seriously, the dude just CAN'T seem to help himself.
Shippou draws Kagome's attention to the sky nearby from her shoulder, pointing at a transformed Kirara hovering there. Miroku looks around in alarm at her, a serious expression overtaking him, and the next panel shows Kirara descending with Kagome, Miroku, and Shippou at the former's cry of Inuyasha's name. She kneels at his side and asks him what happened as he comes to, raising an alert face from the dirt. He doesn't answer, looking around in bewilderment, asking where Sango is. Shippou dryly says that this is exactly what their question is for HIM.
By the next panel, Kagome is on his back, Miroku and Shippou are back on Kirara, and they're on another of their brisk sprints, presumably toward Sango. Kagome is asking for confirmation that Sango went off with the medicine seller, and Inuyasha says that's indeed the case, but he tried to stop her. Miroku's silent glare says he suspects that short statement wasn't ALL there was to it. Inuyasha at LEAST admits not being able to remember much, but he does assert that Sango was acting strange.
Miroku says that she was probably affected by the illusions, and this is exactly why he told her to leave it to him. Shippou suggests from his position by Miroku's ear that this whole thing might be because the medicine seller is really good looking, and Sango might have fallen for him. Way to be tactless, kid. However, Miroku seems completely convinced that this possibility would never happen, because even if something happened so that Sango hated his guts, there's zero chance that she'd fall for a man other than him.
Narrow sky transition panel to where someone chuckles darkly that nobody will interfere now. To no one's surprise, it's the medicine seller, who has Sango sitting in front of him on a giant lily pad in the middle of a body of water. He suggests that they restart that "ceremony" that was interrupted before. Sango has her eyes closed and head lolled to one side, the button on her suit's high neck undone so it can be turned down and her neck exposed. She doesn't quite look unconscious, but she's not exactly awake either.
The medicine seller's fangs are bared once more as he asks if Sango is prepared, as if he's much concerned at all with how she feels about all this. Otherwise, why drug her with youkai magic in the first place? Sango of course doesn't answer, but a barely conscious thought occurs to her, and she raises her hand to scratch her neck because it's maddeningly itchy at the moment. Her eyes spring open as the medicine seller leans in to dig his fangs into her flesh.
He glares up at her, cursing Sango for breaking his spell. Like he has ANY room to be angry with her, after the shit he's pulled. She ignores his unwarranted indignation and asks if he did anything WEIRD to her while she was under the spell. He smirks, scoffing that he doesn't know while giving the very distinct impression that he knows EXACTLY what she's suggesting he might have done. The next panel shows that she's put MULTIPLE lumps on his head with her Hiraikotsu, and she threatens to exterminate him. Please do. It would be cathartic to see at least one man who does this kind of shit get annihilated for it.
Sadly, when he asks for forgiveness, claiming it was a joke, Sango doesn't immediately drown him in the water below. A joke. Sure. That's what they ALL say. When he looks up again, he's put on an innocent, desperate expression, asking her to at LEAST listen to his reason for doing all this. Sango questions the word "reason", as do I, because I'm curious what context could POSSIBLY justify this madness. He looks downcast while he begins to explain that this gorgeous form of his is not reality. You don't SAY.
Meanwhile, Inuyasha seems to have led the rest of the group to the edge of this lake, saying the medicine seller and Sango are close. I guess this body of water must be HUGE, because they clearly can't be seen. Inuyasha warns Miroku to be careful, testifying to the power of the medicine seller's illusions. But before he can finish, Miroku is already flying away on Kirara's back, despite Inuyasha's protests. Kagome takes this as confirmation that Miroku is worried, just like she thought.
On the lily pad Sango is reacting with what looks like empathy to the medicine seller's story, saying that he is NOT, in fact, a youkai. He's rubbing his arm nervously, saying that if he can suck the blood of his ideal woman, he'll return to his original form. At LAST, he seems to be ASKING for her permission to do so. Sango is willing to allow it, but she wants something in exchange.
In sort order, Miroku is calling out to Sango, flying at breakneck speed over the lake, Shippou barely holding onto the hem of the priest's robes as he's dragged out in the wind behind Miroku and Kirara.
Sango's eyes grow wide as she stares over the medicine seller's shoulder, recognizing Miroku's voice. The next panel shows that he has landed, come physically between the embracing "couple", and raised a whole NEW number of lumps on the top of the medicine seller's head, who lays face-down on the lily pad while Miroku holds him down with a knee on his back. Miroku asks if Sango is okay, and Shippou comments from Kirara's back that Miroku hit the medicine seller a HUNDRED times. But he's TOTALLY not insecure, guys.
Rather than answering Miroku, Sango leans down and asks if the MEDICINE SELLER is alright. If the tears streaming down his face and long-suffering expression is any indication... No. Miroku gets right in Sango's face, urging her to snap out of the throes of the illusion, but she snaps back at him that he's straight up WRONG. The medicine seller manages to sit up, still dripping pathetic tears and sporting his lumps, insisting Sango said it was okay for him to do it. Miroku accuses him of lying, and Sango once again contradicts him, saying it's NOT a lie.
At last, Miroku seems to be listening. shoulders slumped and a sweatdrop dangling from the back of his head.
Once the situation has been explained, and Kagome repeats the essential bit for reiteration's sake, Sango states that a youkai cursed the medicine seller for some reason. I'm sure there is NO behavior that he engaged in before that might have led to a youkai getting fed up with his shit and cursing him. He's been SO upstanding thus far. Sango says she was going to let him suck her blood if he gives her the antitoxin he's peddling in return.
Inuyasha seems almost disappointed to learn that all this was for Miroku's sake after all in the end, and Kagome sighs about Sango NOT actually just cheating with the pretty guy. Aren't you two supposed to be Miroku and Sango's FRIENDS?? Sango suggests that this is quite the boring turn for them, then turns to Miroku and asks if he understands where she was coming from. He's still facing the other direction, but in a blink, he's turned around again and holding her hands, claiming understanding and that he believed in her this whole time. Shippou stares innocently, knowing how much of a lie this is, but smartly not voicing this fact for once.
Grinning, the medicine seller once again asks if she'll let him suck her blood. Kagome asks if it HAS to be from her neck, suggesting Sango's arm instead. The medicine seller looks harried and a little disappointed when Miroku prods him with his staff, implying that this "option" is really the only acceptable compromise with his aggressive repetition of the question. With all due respect in his agreement, the medicine seller leans down over Sango's hand and with a burst of sparkles that momentarily mesmerize Kagome and Inuyasha as spectators, it looks for a moment as though the medicine seller has disappeared altogether.
Inuyasha murmurs that he vanished, but a little whining insect flutters into the sky above Sango's hand, Miroku identifying it as a MOSQUITO. A male mosquito. Who wants to tell RT that the males aren't the ones that drink blood? The tiny creature thanks Sango, telling her that he left the antitoxin on her hand, because he can apparently still talk. Somehow. Inuyasha hums with some incredulity, and it starts to dawn on Kagome just exactly what the medicine seller meant by "antitoxin".
That is just BLEAK, Sango.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? There's actually quite a bit that's squeezed in here, all kind of revolving around insecurity. Inuyasha's careful refusal to admit exactly WHY he lost Sango, and the strange way in which he seemed to have lost control of his faculties was the more amusing of these. Clearly he wasn't all that interested in detailing his own enchantment under the medicine seller. It's not as though he sees it as irrelevant, given the vague warning he gives Miroku about the power of the medicine seller's illusions, but he doesn't want to tell anyone about precisely how they made him behave for how goofy and embarrassing it was. And oddly primitive? Why the medicine seller's illusions made Inuyasha behave more like a dog while they made the women they were targeting surrender to his whims is pretty opaque, since we don't have another male being affected by them to compare.
Miroku's insecurity plotline was a bit LESS funny than Inuyasha's, given how uncharitable to Sango he was in expressing them. I appreciated how that wife's overt resentment for her husband after she returned from her encounter with the medicine seller showed Miroku what it could look like if Sango met up with him, and his denial that at least PART of that resentment could stem from a reason other than illusion; it WAS pretty funny to think that this woman had NEVER been in contact with a man more attractive than her husband before. But when Miroku declared (presumably to soothe his own worries) that Sango could never fall in love with anyone but him, he stepped into some nasty territory. As I said in the previous chapter's analysis, Sango is a highly competent and autonomous character, and it would be difficult to get her to do something she didn't want to do, NOT do something she did, or override her stubborn streak in any meaningful way. But here Miroku is, denying that she has any sort of autonomy at all when it comes to her affection for him, so if he should find the worst has happened, he can pretend that it's a temporary override of her programming due to those pesky illusions. All he would have to do is slay the youkai and she would go back to being in love with him again, because she can't do otherwise. He has just THAT strong of a hold over her.
As if it wouldn't take a significant amount of will and stubbornness to be in love with him in the first place, to put up with all his nonsense. She basically confirmed in the final line of the chapter that she's used to being taken for a ride by dudes of his type, who seem to seem to see her as a dispenser for what THEY want, rather than a full autonomous person. Exhausting.
While we're on the topic of autonomy, I want to talk about the medicine seller's "strategy" for returning to his original form. It's demonstrated in the finale that he had the option to just ASK for permission the entire time, rather than be coercive and manipulative in the manner of a date rapist. Since he's an insect, even a more scummy interpretation couldn't argue that this sort of underhanded behavior would come naturally to him, so that leaves a lot of questions as to why he wouldn't be more straightforward in his approach. Did he try that in the beginning and end up scandalizing a lot of people before he realized it wasn't really viable? Is that why he started offering an "antitoxin" for the privilege to suck women's blood, because he found he had to try and make it worth the risk of being involved with him? If those other women weren't his "ideal" woman, why was he targeting them? Just to feed? What was with the villainous dialog about how Sango is unable to escape? Another parallel between his and Miroku's desperate entitlement to Sango manifesting into the delusion that she has no other choice? If that's the case, it's a dangerous comparison to make, because Miroku ALREADY looked pretty bad for his poor treatment of the women he's involved with, so it's just piling dung on the fire to forge a link between his attitude and that of a would-be rapist.
And just WHAT did the medicine seller do to piss off a youkai so bad that he got turned into a pretty boy? I mean, I've been annoyed by a mosquito buzzing in my ear before, but not THAT annoyed!
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