InuYasha, also known as InuYasha, a Feudal Fairy Tale ( Sengoku Otogizōshi InuYasha), is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi. It premiered in Weekly Shōnen Sunday on November 13, 1996 and concluded on June 18, 2008. The series follows Kagome Higurashi, a teenager from Tokyo, who is transported to the Sengoku period, where she meets the half demon, InuYasha. When a monster from that era tries to take the magical Jewel of Four Souls embodied in Kagome, she accidentally splits the Jewel into various shards, which are dispersed across Japan. Kagome and InuYasha start travelling to recover it, gaining allies and enemies throughout the journey. In contrast to her previous works, InuYasha is the first manga by Takahashi with a dark storyline, and thus used the setting of the Sengoku period to easily display the violent content.
Anime and Manga
The manga was published in North America by Viz Media with all of its 56 tankōbon volumes having already been released. The manga was adapted into two anime television series produced by Sunrise. The first, broadcast for 167 episodes on Yomiuri TV in Japan from October 16, 2000 until September 13, 2004, was directed by Masashi Ikeda for the first forty-four episodes and by Yasunao Aoki for the remainder. The second series, called InuYasha: The Final Act ( InuYasha Kanketsu-hen), began airing October 3, 2009 to cover the rest of the manga series and ended on March 29, 2010. Viz Media licensed the two anime series, having released the former in DVD volumes and aired most of its episodes. A total of four feature films and an original video animation have also been released.PLOT
The series' plot follows a middle school girl Kagome Higurashi who lives on the grounds of her family's hereditary Shinto shrine. When she goes into the well house to retrieve her cat, a centipede demon bursts out of the enshrined Bone Eater's Well and pulls her through it. As she leaves the well, Kagome appears in the Sengoku period of Japan. During the demon's previous attack, a magical jewel known as the Sacred Jewel of Four Souls was embodied from Kagome. She then becomes the demon's target and it tries to consume the jewel and kill Kagome. In desperation, Kagome unseals the half-demon InuYasha who was placed on a tree fifty years ago by Kagome's incarnation Kikyo, the young miko of the village in charge of the sacred jewel who had, upon her death, requested that the jewel be burned in her funeral pyre. Although InuYasha destroys the centipede, the Sacred Jewel is later shattered into numerous shards that disperse across Japan. Even the individual shards are capable of granting great power, and are eagerly sought by humans and demons alike. Kagome and InuYasha set out to collect the shards to avoid disasters caused by Sacred Jewel of Four Souls.
Along the way, they join forces with Shippo, a small fox demon, Miroku, a monk who suffers from a curse his ancestors were given by a powerful demon, and Sango, a demon-slayer whose clan was killed by a group of demons. They are mainly opposed by Naraku, a devious and powerful collective half-demon who manipulated the initial conflict between Kikyo and InuYasha, Sango's clan's destruction and was responsible for Miroku's curse. Naraku collects the shards for himself and continues setting up traps on the protagonists to take Kagome's jewels. Other people they find are InuYasha's older half-brother Sesshomaru, who wishes to kill Naraku after he tried to manipulate him, Kikyo, now partially resurrected with a fragment of Kagome's soul, and a wolf demon named Koga, most of whose comrades were killed by Naraku's forces.
Eventually, Naraku collects all of the shards and reassembles the Jewel of Four Souls. Although InuYasha and his allies defeat him, Naraku uses his power as the Jewel's owner to wish for Kagome's soul to be trapped inside it with his own, which would allow Naraku to survive within it in eternal conflict with her. Kagome wishes for the Jewel to disappear forever. She is thrown back into her own time and loses contact with InuYasha for three years. In those three years without Kagome, Sango and Miroku have three children together and Shippo attains rank seven for fox demons. Kagome graduates high school and comes to a realization which allows the well to work again. Kagome returns to the Sengoku period, where she stays with InuYasha.