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Nope, I Still Don't Think It's Canon
Jun. 17th, 2020 01:36 pmSo, the symbolism of a phallic object creating life, and the owner of that object now being responsible for maintaining and protecting that life ISN'T subtle, but no, keep telling me how unreasonable it is for me to interpret Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship as father-daughter rather than romantic.
Sesshoumaru's high regard for his father implies that his only semi-functional relationship was the one with his dad, and therefore he's most likely to best understand and mimic the relationship between a parent and their child, but sure, it's absolutely stupid for me to interpret Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship as father-daughter rather than romantic.
Oh, and this one is the best, check this out - an author likes to choose the best tool for the character development that they're going for, and among those tools are character relationships. Romance is a good tool to use for trust and intimacy issues, but while that's INUYASHA'S issue, it's not SESSHOUMARU'S. Sesshoumaru's issue is that he's a bit of a cold, snobbish and spoiled jerk, and in order for him to develop compassion, the priority is to stop him viewing others in terms of how strong they are and update his notion of a person worthy of respect. The best tool for that is to give him a relationship that exemplifies UNCONDITIONAL love, in which the other person can't contribute anything back to it. He has all the obligations and responsibilities, and they get all the benefits. A parent-child relationship is the perfect tool to foster a responsible and compassionate use of power and the valuing of people who are weak and otherwise incapable.
But okay, keep insisting that I'm wrong to interpret Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship as father-daughter rather than romantic.
Please don't misunderstand; I'm not saying here that a romantic interpretation is WRONG either. This is Japan we're talking about after all. Their stories tend to feature sexualized little girls put into very abusive, horrible situations that everybody in-universe and outside like to pretend are perfectly fine. There's a chance that BOTH interpretations are right here, as gross as I find that notion. My purpose in pointing these things out is merely to demonstrate that the filial interpretation of Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship doesn't come from nowhere. There are STRUCTURAL storytelling elements here that can't just be hand-waved away.
But you know what CAN be hand-waved away? A next-generation series that follows an established pattern of media companies taking their already successful properties and squeezing every last drop of profitability from them so the cowards making the money at the top of the heap don't have to take any creative risks. From what I understand of the premise that has been released, this story is not only nonsensical (a girl who dresses as a boy so it's easier to fight in the MODERN ERA? Fight WHOM????) but also as divorced as they can make it from the Inuyasha series by making sure these kids' parents are as removed from the picture as humanly possible. They're invoking Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru's names just enough to get old fans interested and their wallets lubricated with sweet, sweet nostalgia, but not enough for them to be much of a presence, if any, in the actual series.
Which has a few implications - the first of which is that someone pitched this idea as an original story, but the studio decided to adapt it to fit into the Inuyasha universe so that they could avoid that whole RISK thing I was talking about earlier. The second of which is that the producers of the anime (distinct from Rumiko Takahashi, I must remind you) are still so thirsty for Sesshoumaru and Rin being a romantic pair that they are pushing this pairing more than a DECADE later. I don't know if they just see that a good majority of fans like the pairing and are capitalizing off of it, or if there is somebody in the production company that has a very SPECIFIC fetish and has been demanding that all the Inuyasha fandom entertain it with them for literal YEARS. Either way, it's getting a little weird for me how desperately the anime folks want me to believe Sesshoumaru bones Rin when she grows up. I mean, DESPERATELY. There's more to unpack here than I'm comfortable with, if I'm being honest.
In contrast, Rumiko Takahashi herself was very vague about the nature of the relationship for as long as possible. She danced around the subject in interviews and didn't list Rin as a romantic interest of Sesshoumaru's in the profiles book. Since most of the fanbase was all for them as a ship, she could have fully endorsed the two as romantic at any point during the run of the manga and lost the support of very few of us. Hell, she had the opportunity to skip a little time in her Heroes Come Back contribution chapter to disaster relief after Fukushima. But she kept the bonus chapter VERY close to the actual end of the manga and didn't make any implications about Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship at all, save for "status quo" vibes. All of this gives me the impression that maybe SHE'S not so into the pairing either, and she's trying to keep from alienating the majority of her fans by letting them believe Sesshoumaru and Rin are gonna get together.
Now, this is just my impression, and I'm not going to sit here and say that I'm the only one who's cracked the code on her thoughts on the series - I don't live in her head, and thank goodness for that. I'm rather attached to the feel of my own mind palace. And after all, there is the little matter of her having done the character designs of Sesshoumaru's daughters, which some have said is an endorsement in itself. But she also did the character design of Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru's father for the 3rd movie, and I don't consider THAT canon. I don't know what contractual obligations, if any, she has to pump these things out to the studio regardless of her wishes, just as much as I don't know what her personal interpretation of her own work is. All I know is Rumiko Takahashi didn't write the story for Swords of an Honorable Ruler, and she didn't write the story for the new series either, and that makes all the difference in how the tone and feel of it meshes with the original. Hell, even the anime itself had enough of a creative diversion from the manga RT wrote that it's always been rather hard for me to reconcile the two, since they just aren't harmonious in their messages and themes.
But no matter what she has done and implied, willingly or not, Rumiko Takahashi herself isn't ACTUALLY a bigger authority on her work than me. Not me, or you, or the fangirl squealing in her parents' basement. Once her work is out there, she has to be satisfied with whatever anyone else takes from it, and it isn't just hers anymore. It's all of ours, and a product of several million different outlooks and perspectives. If she wants to update how she interprets this story based on a new attitude of hers, she's entitled, but I don't have to change MY mind. She doesn't live in MY head either. The story is done, it's been done for years, and if she wanted me to interpret it differently than I did, she wouldn't have included the above reasons I listed in the story to begin with.
Rumiko Takahashi might have WRITTEN Inuyasha, but once it's in our minds, and colored by our own experiences, we get to KEEP it, and no one should be able to tell us any differently. Not even her. Not even an animation studio that probably has zero interest in telling a compelling story so much as making lots of money from an eager existing audience that is hungry for more Inuyasha content, regardless of the fact that it doesn't seem to be much more than tangentially related to the original series at all.
See: why we're all thoroughly annoyed with JK Rowling at this point, aside from all her blatant transphobia.
Yet, if you still want to hold onto Rumiko Takahashi as the ultimate authority whose endorsement through character design you see as the final word that Sesshoumaru getting with Rin is the CORRECT way to think about the relationship, I submit this final suggestion for your consideration: did you happen to notice that Sesshoumaru's twins don't have the "half-transformed" look that she designed Inuyasha with? Or even Shiori or Jinenji? That they just look like HUMANS, and don't even have his pointy ears?
The resistance is subtle, but it's there.
Sesshoumaru's high regard for his father implies that his only semi-functional relationship was the one with his dad, and therefore he's most likely to best understand and mimic the relationship between a parent and their child, but sure, it's absolutely stupid for me to interpret Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship as father-daughter rather than romantic.
Oh, and this one is the best, check this out - an author likes to choose the best tool for the character development that they're going for, and among those tools are character relationships. Romance is a good tool to use for trust and intimacy issues, but while that's INUYASHA'S issue, it's not SESSHOUMARU'S. Sesshoumaru's issue is that he's a bit of a cold, snobbish and spoiled jerk, and in order for him to develop compassion, the priority is to stop him viewing others in terms of how strong they are and update his notion of a person worthy of respect. The best tool for that is to give him a relationship that exemplifies UNCONDITIONAL love, in which the other person can't contribute anything back to it. He has all the obligations and responsibilities, and they get all the benefits. A parent-child relationship is the perfect tool to foster a responsible and compassionate use of power and the valuing of people who are weak and otherwise incapable.
But okay, keep insisting that I'm wrong to interpret Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship as father-daughter rather than romantic.
Please don't misunderstand; I'm not saying here that a romantic interpretation is WRONG either. This is Japan we're talking about after all. Their stories tend to feature sexualized little girls put into very abusive, horrible situations that everybody in-universe and outside like to pretend are perfectly fine. There's a chance that BOTH interpretations are right here, as gross as I find that notion. My purpose in pointing these things out is merely to demonstrate that the filial interpretation of Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship doesn't come from nowhere. There are STRUCTURAL storytelling elements here that can't just be hand-waved away.
But you know what CAN be hand-waved away? A next-generation series that follows an established pattern of media companies taking their already successful properties and squeezing every last drop of profitability from them so the cowards making the money at the top of the heap don't have to take any creative risks. From what I understand of the premise that has been released, this story is not only nonsensical (a girl who dresses as a boy so it's easier to fight in the MODERN ERA? Fight WHOM????) but also as divorced as they can make it from the Inuyasha series by making sure these kids' parents are as removed from the picture as humanly possible. They're invoking Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru's names just enough to get old fans interested and their wallets lubricated with sweet, sweet nostalgia, but not enough for them to be much of a presence, if any, in the actual series.
Which has a few implications - the first of which is that someone pitched this idea as an original story, but the studio decided to adapt it to fit into the Inuyasha universe so that they could avoid that whole RISK thing I was talking about earlier. The second of which is that the producers of the anime (distinct from Rumiko Takahashi, I must remind you) are still so thirsty for Sesshoumaru and Rin being a romantic pair that they are pushing this pairing more than a DECADE later. I don't know if they just see that a good majority of fans like the pairing and are capitalizing off of it, or if there is somebody in the production company that has a very SPECIFIC fetish and has been demanding that all the Inuyasha fandom entertain it with them for literal YEARS. Either way, it's getting a little weird for me how desperately the anime folks want me to believe Sesshoumaru bones Rin when she grows up. I mean, DESPERATELY. There's more to unpack here than I'm comfortable with, if I'm being honest.
In contrast, Rumiko Takahashi herself was very vague about the nature of the relationship for as long as possible. She danced around the subject in interviews and didn't list Rin as a romantic interest of Sesshoumaru's in the profiles book. Since most of the fanbase was all for them as a ship, she could have fully endorsed the two as romantic at any point during the run of the manga and lost the support of very few of us. Hell, she had the opportunity to skip a little time in her Heroes Come Back contribution chapter to disaster relief after Fukushima. But she kept the bonus chapter VERY close to the actual end of the manga and didn't make any implications about Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship at all, save for "status quo" vibes. All of this gives me the impression that maybe SHE'S not so into the pairing either, and she's trying to keep from alienating the majority of her fans by letting them believe Sesshoumaru and Rin are gonna get together.
Now, this is just my impression, and I'm not going to sit here and say that I'm the only one who's cracked the code on her thoughts on the series - I don't live in her head, and thank goodness for that. I'm rather attached to the feel of my own mind palace. And after all, there is the little matter of her having done the character designs of Sesshoumaru's daughters, which some have said is an endorsement in itself. But she also did the character design of Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru's father for the 3rd movie, and I don't consider THAT canon. I don't know what contractual obligations, if any, she has to pump these things out to the studio regardless of her wishes, just as much as I don't know what her personal interpretation of her own work is. All I know is Rumiko Takahashi didn't write the story for Swords of an Honorable Ruler, and she didn't write the story for the new series either, and that makes all the difference in how the tone and feel of it meshes with the original. Hell, even the anime itself had enough of a creative diversion from the manga RT wrote that it's always been rather hard for me to reconcile the two, since they just aren't harmonious in their messages and themes.
But no matter what she has done and implied, willingly or not, Rumiko Takahashi herself isn't ACTUALLY a bigger authority on her work than me. Not me, or you, or the fangirl squealing in her parents' basement. Once her work is out there, she has to be satisfied with whatever anyone else takes from it, and it isn't just hers anymore. It's all of ours, and a product of several million different outlooks and perspectives. If she wants to update how she interprets this story based on a new attitude of hers, she's entitled, but I don't have to change MY mind. She doesn't live in MY head either. The story is done, it's been done for years, and if she wanted me to interpret it differently than I did, she wouldn't have included the above reasons I listed in the story to begin with.
Rumiko Takahashi might have WRITTEN Inuyasha, but once it's in our minds, and colored by our own experiences, we get to KEEP it, and no one should be able to tell us any differently. Not even her. Not even an animation studio that probably has zero interest in telling a compelling story so much as making lots of money from an eager existing audience that is hungry for more Inuyasha content, regardless of the fact that it doesn't seem to be much more than tangentially related to the original series at all.
See: why we're all thoroughly annoyed with JK Rowling at this point, aside from all her blatant transphobia.
Yet, if you still want to hold onto Rumiko Takahashi as the ultimate authority whose endorsement through character design you see as the final word that Sesshoumaru getting with Rin is the CORRECT way to think about the relationship, I submit this final suggestion for your consideration: did you happen to notice that Sesshoumaru's twins don't have the "half-transformed" look that she designed Inuyasha with? Or even Shiori or Jinenji? That they just look like HUMANS, and don't even have his pointy ears?
The resistance is subtle, but it's there.
