Obligatory spoilers for Inuyasha
The other day it was announced that a sequel to Inuyasha, an anime/manga series created by Rumiko Takahashi, was in the works. Titled ‘Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon’ it follows the daughters of the brothers Inuyasha and Sesshomaru on a new adventure.
Inuyasha has been one of my favorite manga/anime for… about half my life, since I was 14 or 15 years old. It was my first fandom, the first show I got really nerdy about. It’s the first one that drove me to read and write fanfiction. It led me to meet some of my best friends online (that I still have to this day and have crossed the world to visit!), and it was definitely a gateway anime that just threw me neck-deep into the world of all things Japanese animation. And as an almost-30-year old, I’m still there. And I know that if I wouldn’t have discovered this show when I was a teen, I wouldn’t be the same kind of anime fan I am today (who knows if I’d be one at all?).
I guess what I’m saying is, Inuyasha has been one of my all-time favorite shows throughout my life. I’ve rewatched it more times than I can count, I’ve read hours and hours and millions of words of fanfiction about it, I’ve collected merch from it, and just thinking about it, just hearing the music from it sends me back to 2004-2006 when a bunch of my childhood friends and I would stay up late on Saturdays to watch the new episode. It takes me back to my childhood. It’s nostalgic.
So hearing it had a sequel gave me so many mixed feelings.
It was announced by Viz here, and so far, this is what has been released so far of the plot:
The series focuses on twin demons Towa and Setsuna, the daughters of Inuyasha’s brother Sesshomaru.
The twins are separated from each other during a forest fire, and Towa wanders into a mysterious tunnel that takes her to present-day Japan. Towa is then raised by Kagome Higurashi’s brother Sota. Ten years later, Towa reunites with Setsuna, who has no memories of her sister and has become a demon slayer. The two are joined by Moroha, the daughter of Inuyasha and Kagome. They travel between past and present to unravel the mystery of why the tunnel has reopened, while Towa and Setsuna struggle to reconnect.
So basically, Sesshomaru has twins with… mother not revealed. And Inuyasha and Kagome have at least one kid. The latter is kind of expected but Sesshomaru having kids?? This is blowing my mind.
And apparently it’s blowing the internet’s mind too because what does the internet do when something happens?? They make memes. And there are a lot about this sequel already. And that’s how I’m gonna explain my feelings here too. Here are some of my faves:
These two in particular really grasp how it feels to be an Inuyasha fan right now. It’s something that nobody has really talked about in over a decade and then suddenly WE’RE EVERYWHERE and it’s wonderful. I’m excited and scared but I’m totally here for it.
So the internet (and me) like I said is really going wild about who the potential mom of Sesshomaru’s twins is. Long story short for those who don’t actually watch the show and are reading this for funsies, Sesshomaru is basically an ice king. He shows zero interest in anything aside from achieving power the entire show. Romance doesn’t seem like something he’s even capable of. So the fact that he’s a father – and becomes one quickly enough that his and Inuyasha’s kids can be close in age is mind-boggling. Part way through the show though, he takes in an orphaned human girl named Rin (character development!), about who’s eight years old. She is the primary suspect to a lot of fans right now – that’s where the second meme comes from.
Demons age far more slowly than humans. Sesshomaru himself during the time of Inuyasha is supposedly roughly around five hundred years old. Inuyasha is about 150 or 200ish. And the main characters Inuyasha and Kagome – who is 15 throughout most of the series and 18 at the end – have a kid. That’s why it’s not a stretch to assume Sesshomaru and Rin – who could age ten years into an adult and Sesshomaru age absolutely nothing – could also have a kid (or two, rather).
Whoever it turns out to be though, it’s gonna make the fandom explode, just you wait. We’re all gnawing at the bit to know who it is.
But as the title suggests, I don’t know how I feel about this sequel. I am excited for it, on one hand. On the other, it scares me. Inuyasha has been done and settled for a decade now. The Inuyasha fandom had become this thing that had the show… and then a million headcanons. Basically we’ve all already decided what happened next in our heads because hey, the show ended a decade ago.
So many fanfictions have been written about essentially this stage of life for the characters – what happened after the end of the show, who ends up with who, who has kids, who ends up just continuing their show-poodle ways… and this sequel basically blows all that out of the water.
And I get that my main complaint is ‘now it discounts all the fan-made stuff’, but… I feel like after having only that stuff to go on for a decade, that’s a legitimate reason to feel unease about this. It’s like breaking a Piaget schema in my head that I’ve held as true for a long time and having to reconstruct it to something new. I’ll do it, but I’m almost(?!?) grumpy about having to.
But I’m also excited, because now I get more time in the Inuyasha universe, which is something I didn’t realize I’ve been pining for, but now that I have it, I know I totally am, and was for years.
So time for more memes, these ones to show my excitement:
And that last one really, really explains it. When I was fifteen, that was me. I was obsessed. And then I kept that obsession locked inside me for the past ten or fifteen years – it was still there, as I’ve re-watched the show countless times like I said, but now it can BLOSSOM AGAIN.
I think the best thing that’s gonna come out of this (aside from more Inuyasha of course) is the merch. It’s basically impossible to find Inuyasha figures or whatnot that don’t cost $300 right now, because nobody’s making it! All the pieces on sale are old collector pieces, and while I like collecting merch, I’m not at that level…. yet. But with this new series, I’m hoping Inuyasha merch will make a come-back and I’ll finally be able to get figures of all the characters for my manga shelf.
So overall, my feelings: Mostly excited, very curious, partly annoyed for dumb reasons.
Will I watch and/or read it? Definitely. Will I like it? Probably. Will I be annoyed every time I see one of my headcanons bite the dust? Yes.
Tell me what you think. I wanna nerd about this a bit more.
Embuhleeliest 