Inu-Yasha 1 (Big ed.)

Rumiko Takahashi – Viz – 2009 – 56 volumes
This omnibus contains volumes 1-3 of the series.

Incredibly, I haven’t read any of the Inu-Yasha manga, despite the fact I’ve read at least parts of all of Takahashi’s other series.  It’s probably her most famous, at least in the US.  I know the plot pretty well, and I knew I would like it since I like pretty much all of Takahashi’s other work, but I just never started buying the series.  There’s a lot of it, and starting from the beginning is a daunting task.  Luckily, we’ve got the Big editions now, and it’s the perfect time to jump in.  Notably, the Big editions are unflipped, which isn’t that important to me, but it’s there if that’s what you were waiting for all these years.

It’s… well, it’s Inu-Yasha.  It is what it is.  Reading it was a little strange, because it wastes no time jumping right into the plot I was expecting.  Kagome falls into the well, she finds Inu-Yasha, they start fighting demons, the Shikon Jewel shatters, then they start gathering the pieces.  There wasn’t a lot of exposition accompanying any of that, and most of the background and details come as things move along.  It doesn’t feel rushed at all, just very fast-paced, and it was interesting to see the details dealt with in progress rather than as a wall of text or explanation from one person.

Explaining things as the story moves also helps to keep things very simple.  You don’t know about Inu-Yasha’s father until Myoga and Sesshoumaru show up, and even then, it’s only that his father was a dog-demon and that Sesshoumaru is his brother.  They fight.  That’s really all there is to it, and the story moves on to the next demon, but all the same, the fight is interesting, as is the simple links between characters.  There’s no elaborate backstory (as of yet), and not a lot to remember about Sesshoumaru except that he’s a demon and that the two brothers do not get along.  I know he’ll be around a lot in the future.  As far as the demons go, there’s similarly no metaphysical explanation offered for their existence or powers.  They all take different shapes and do different things, but that’s just the way things are, and no explanation is necessary.  I liked it since it kept the battles very interesting and, again, very simple since there wasn’t a whole lot to know aside from the fact that they are fighting a frog demon that possessed a lord.  Myoga offers some color commentary to the fights later, but it’s never more than “Oh, that’s a frog demon!  It’s super-old and more dangerous than it looks!  Be careful!”

The bigger question to me was how I would like it, since I’d read Rin-ne first.  I liked Rin-ne all right, but the problem was that both the main characters are pretty vanilla in the first volume.  Both series deal with the supernatural, but in Rin-ne it’s exorcising ghosts with quirky stories in the present, whereas Inu-Yasha fights surprisingly gory fights in the distant past.  On the whole, Inu-Yasha seems to be quite a bit better, at least based on the single volume of Rin-ne that I’ve read.  Kagome is still a pretty vanilla character, but Inu-Yasha at least has an entertaining evil streak to him, and it’s fun to watch Kagome and Inu-Yasha work together.  By the end of this big volume, romance is beginning to be vaguely implied between the two, but they play off each other a lot more than Rin-ne and Sakura do, and Kagome has a reason to accompany Inu-Yasha (she can see the jewels, he can’t), something that Sakura doesn’t really have in regards to Rin-ne.

One thing I got a really big kick out of is the fact that the present still plays a role in the story.  I didn’t realize that time passed the same through both worlds, and that Kagome could go between the two at will.  I love it when Inu-Yasha just shows up in the present since he’s so… well, anachronistic as well as a demon, and I like that Kagome still has to worry about her exams.  I’m sure this is downplayed quite a bit as things progress, but all the same, I love the contrast and the nonchalant way that Kagome deals with it.

I have to admit, the simple formula had me addicted by the end of the Big volume.  I’m really looking forward to the next.  Takahashi just has a way of writing that’s super-easy to fall into and enjoy.  There’s not much more to it than that.  I would say that it’s also good because of the familiarity with her type of story, but other than the way the characters act, Inu-Yasha really is quite different than everything she’s written before.  It’s like a bizarre mix of Mermaid Saga (my favorite of her series) and… I don’t know, Ranma 1/2, with the way Akane and Ranma were always at each other.  I’m sad to see the series is on a quarterly release, I was hoping for bimonthly due to the length.  Well… there’s always 40 volumes of the regular size available if I get too desperate.

Also, I don’t think there’s a hyphen in the title of Inu-Yasha, but I prefer it that way, so… you know.  My site and all.