Long after I wrote my first analysis ofan INU-YASHA narrative, I formulated my CATEGORIES OF STRUCTURALLENGTH in 2018. With those formulations in mind, I’ll now label Rumiko Takahashi’s “feudal fantasy” as a “basic serial,” in that the finished narrative consists of interpolated “stand-alone” stories, short arcs, and long arcs. The arc considered here, identified as SECRET OF THE TRANSFORMATION after one of the chapter-titles, is an extra-long arc that encompasses five other long arcs.
In my earlier summary of the series, I related only the factors that bore directly upon the arc under consideration, THE BLACK PEARL. Some of the things I omitted become more important in the TRANSFORMATION sequence, such as the fact that the two-person ensemble of half-demon Inu-Yasha and modern mortal girl Kagome expands to five principals. Thus for the balance of the narrative, the ensemble also includes demon-hunters Miroku and Sango, both roughly the same ages as the first two heroes, and a juvenile fox-demon, Shippo, who provides substantial comedy relief.
The quintet’s members are united by the desire to gather all the scattered shards of the Shikon Jewel and to keep the powerful shards out of the hands of both meddlesome mortals and rapacious demons. Many of the demons who menace the heroes are just one-off marauders, but there are also continuing opponents, In addition to the two ambivalent figures I mentioned in BLACK PEARL—Kikyo, a revenant version of a mortal woman Inu-Yasha once loved, and Sesshomaru, the half-demon’s hostile half-brother—there is also the series’ “big bad,” Naraku. Long before Kagome travels back to Sengoku Japan to meet Inu-Yasha and the others, the medieval bandit Naraku suffered injuries which brought him under the ministrations of the shrine-maiden Kikyo, then pledged to Inu-Yasha. Naraku lusted after Kikyo, and when he could not have her, he gave his injured body up to being consumed by demons, who molded him into a mortal-demon hybrid. In this form Naraku caused the death of Kikyo and the imprisonment of Inu-Yasha, until Kagome travels in time and releases the demon-youth from his magical confinement. From then on, Naraku continually hectors the jewel-hunters with dozens of plots, so that for its entire run INU-YASHA strongly resembles the scenarios of a RPG fantasy, with the heroes sussing out each new threat to their lives and managing to counter it.
TRANSFORMATION actually concerns two major changes at this point in the series. I mentioned in the BLACK PEARL summary that Inu-Yasha inherited from his late demon-father a magical sword, Tetsusaiga, and that throughout the series the demon-hero must learn all the ways in which the sword can transform itself through its occult powers. I left out the fact that when he first appears, Inu-Yasha is alienated from his mortal side and that he yearns to become a full demon—but that when he undergoes this “transformation,” it finds it’s not all its cracked up to be.
Some lesser transformations have already taken place: as mentioned before, Kikyo has returned as a revenant, pursuing her own obscure purposes. Sesshomaru, though as passionless as ever, allows a little human girl, Rin, to accompany him in his travels, possibly showing the demon’s potential for human growth, though he may be on some level imitating his half-brother’s penchant for acquiring human beings as allies. As for Naraku, he has just begun to unveil his most formidable talent. The villain, created from a congeries of demons, displays the ability to “split off” new entities from himself. Prior to TRANSFORMATION, he’s already used this process to create two other demon-allies, Kagura and Kanna, and the story that launches the long arc under consideration is entitled “The Third Demon.”
The ogre Goshinki, the newest of Naraku’s self-spawned servants, attacks Inu-Yasha and his allies. But when the hero wields Tetsusaiga, the ogre catches the huge blade in his teeth and snaps the metal to pieces. This not only deprives Inu-Yasha of his weapon, it breaks a preventive spell laid upon him by his late father; a spell to reign in Inu-Yasha’s demon-half. Inu-Yasha goes berserk with demon-rage and slaughters Goshinki, but now he presents a danger to his friends, even after he temporarily reverts to normal.
The swordsmith Toto-sai intervenes with some much-needed advice. He can fix Tetsusaiga—a blade carved from a fang taken from Inu-Yasha’s dead father—but only by pulling out one of Inu-Yasha’s own fangs to use in the sword’s re-construction. The smith fixes the sword, but he relates that Tetsusaiga is no longer powered by the magic of the hero’s dead sire, but by Inu-Yasha’s own resources—and thus the hero finds it much harder to wield the huge weapon. Meanwhile, Sesshomaru comes up with his own deviltry. He finds the dismembered head of Goshinki and forces a rogue smith to make a new sword from one of the ogre’s fangs—thus producing a new weapon, Tokijin. Sesshomaru uses the weapon to duel Inu-Yasha, only to be shocked when he senses his half-brother’s new demonic potential.
The fraternal conflict is put on hold when Inu-Yasha’s company is forced to deal with a new threat from Naraku. This plot comprises another long arc of stories, starting with the winsomely titled “The Fourth One,” and none of these developments directly relate to TRANSFORMATION’s master-thread. Somewhat more germane is an arc beginning with “Kikyo’s Crisis,” in which Kagome is tormented by seeing Inu-Yasha’s feelings for his former lover, though this arc largely exists to set up more developments down the road. An arc starting with “The Castle’s Ghost” then follows up on a plotline involving Sango’s brother having been suborned by Naraku.
Then we at last get to the story entitled “Secret of the Transformation,” wherein Inu-Yasha crosses paths with a minor marauding demon. After getting separated from his sword, Inu-Yasha again transforms into his full-demon form and mangles the marauder—but once more, he poses a threat to his own people. Sesshomaru chooses this moment to intrude on his brother’s life once more—and this time, there’s no question that Sesshomaru is capable of slaying the bestial version of Inu-Yasha. Yet the full demon spares his sibling, with the excuse that “there’s no virtue in killing a beast that doesn’t know who or even what it is.” Once Sesshomaru has departed, Kagome puzzles over his motives: “It’s as if he came to stop Inu-Yasha’s rampage.”
The puzzle of Inu-Yasha’s brother must wait for a future story, but Toto-sai finally reves what the hero needs to gain mastery of Tetsusaiga’s powers and thus of his own demon-nature. Inu-Yasha’s new quest is to journey to the place where his late father imprisoned a huge dragon-demon, Ryukotsusei, and slay said dragon. While in combat with this demon, Inu-Yasha is belatedly informed that his sire perished of wounds he took in the process of jailing the dragon. Thus, even though Inu-Yasha professes no goal beyond mastering his own abilities—a thing possible only if he can “surpass my old man”—the narrative of TRANSFORMATION inverts the conclusion of BLACK PEARL. In PEARL, Inu-Yasha accepted the last bequest of Tetsusaiga from the father he never knew. Here, despite claiming that “I wouldn’t waste even a drop of sweat avenging [my sire],” the hero performs the ultimate act of filial piety by slaying his father’s killer. And he does so after facing a “last temptation,” for he briefly casts his sword aside and becomes a pure-demon again to fight the dragon-thing. But he regains his purpose, reclaims the sword, and instinctively taps a new power from the sword, with which he obliterates Ryukotsusei. From then on, the accounts between the hero and his late father are squared, and Takahashi makes few if any references to either of Inu-Yasha’s parents in the rest of the continuity. Future stories continue to show Inu-Yasha finding new methods to employ his father’s bequest against his many enemies. But only once he’s discharged his last duty to his demon-father can Inu-Yasha pursue his own human destiny.
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