Inuyasha

Inuyasha (犬夜叉), also known as Inuyasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale (戦国御伽草子 犬夜叉), is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi. The series begins with Kagome Higurashi, a 15-year-old schoolgirl from modern-day Tokyo who is parallelly transported to the Sengoku period universe of Japan after falling into a well in her family shrine, where she meets the half dog-demon, Inuyasha. When a monster from the era tries to take the magical Shikon Jewel embodied in Kagome, she inadvertently shatters the Jewel into many pieces and are scattered across Japan. Inuyasha and Kagome set on a quest to recover the jewel, before the half spider-demon lord Naraku binds it.

Inuyasha was serialized in Shogakukan's Weekly Shōnen Sunday from November 1996 to June 2008, with its chapters collected into 56 tankōbon volumes by Shogakukan. In contrast to the typically comedic nature of much of Takahashi's previous work, Inuyasha deals with a darker and more serious subject matter, using the setting of the Sengoku period to easily display the violent content while still retaining some comedic elements.

The manga was adapted into two anime television series produced by Sunrise. The first was broadcast for 167 episodes on ytv and NTV in Japan from October 2000 to September 2004. The second series, Inuyasha: The Final Act, ran for 26 episodes from October 2009 to March 2010, covering the rest of the manga series. Four feature films and an original video animation have also been released. Other merchandise include video games and a light novel. A spin-off anime television series titled Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon premiered in October 2020.

Viz Media licensed the manga, the two anime series, and movies for North America. Both Inuyasha and Inuyasha: The Final Act aired in the United States on Adult Swim (and later on its revived Toonami block) from 2002 until 2015.

Plot
In modern-day Tokyo, Kagome Higurashi lives on the grounds of her family's Shinto shrine with her mother, grandfather and younger brother, Sota. On her fifteenth birthday, when she goes to retrieve her cat, Kagome is dragged into the enshrined Bone Eater's Well (骨喰いの井戸, Honekui no Ido) by a centipede demon that emerged from it. But rather than hit the bottom, Kagome finds herself in another universe which is parallelly the past during Japan's Sengoku period. The demon is revealed to have originally been defeated fifty years prior by Kikyo, a warrior priestess who is the keeper of the Shikon Jewel (四魂の玉, Shikon no Tama, lit. "The Jewel of Four Souls"), an artifact created by the sacrifice of the priestess Midoriko which grants its holder's desires. As pointed out by Kikyo's younger sister, Kaede, Kagome is revealed to be the reincarnation of the now-dead Kikyo, who was the priestess in charge of looking after the sacred jewel. The Shikon Jewel was burned along with Kikyo's remains to cast it out of this world entirely, in order to keep it safe from the hands of those who would abuse it. Then Kagome comes across a boy pinned by a sacred arrow on a tree, learning he is Inuyasha, a half dog-demon (yōkai), whom Kikyo trapped as her final act when he attempted to steal the jewel. Kagome frees Inuyasha to kill the centipede demon, but Kaede subdues him with a magical beaded necklace to keep him in line with Kagome saying "sit" or "sit, boy", which causes him to violently crash to the ground. The Shikon Jewel was extracted from Kagome's body by Mistress Centipede, and then later taken by a crow demon, which Kagome destroyed with her arrow, but in doing so, shattered the jewel into many shards that flew across Japan and into the possession of those who gain the individual shards' power.

After Inuyasha gains his father's sword Tetsusaiga, placing him at odds with his older half-brother Sesshōmaru, he aids Kagome in collecting the shards and dealing with the threats they cause as they are joined by Shippo the young fox demon. Kikyo is partially revived while revealed to have been Inuyasha's lover, but her version of how their falling out occurred brings the events into question. It was when the group is joined by the perverted monk Miroku, whose hand is cursed with a wind tunnel that was passed on to him from his grandfather, that his family's curse and the events which resulted in Inuyasha's imprisonment and Kikyo's death were caused by the evil half spider-demon Naraku. The evolving Naraku is revealed to have been born from the soul of the evil bandit Onigumo inhabiting a body created by countless demons as part of a pact to acquire the Shikon Jewel for his own ends, seeking out the shard while absorbing demons to increase his power and remove any weaknesses. Inuyasha's group is soon joined after by the demon slayer Sango and her two-tailed demon-cat Kirara. Sango's clan was killed when her younger brother Kohaku fell under Naraku's control and is kept alive by a Jewel shard. Over time, Inuyasha enhances Tetsusaiga into stronger forms while contends with Naraku's minion incarnations like Kagura and Kanna, and the reanimated Band of Seven. Inuyasha's team is loosely allied by Sesshōmaru who took the orphaned girl Rin as a ward, the resurrected Kikyo, and Koga, the leader of the eastern wolf-demon tribe who seeks to avenge many of his comrades' deaths and has a one-sided crush on Kagome.

Gallery

 * Characters