Manga Snark

So, 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.

I understand Naraku is particularly concerned about this, given how much care he's taken in hiding his face, but I'm not sure I understand WHY. How is keeping his appearance under a sleeve or baboon mask supposed to benefit him? It's likely the demon rumor mill has already associated him pretty heavily with his baboon disguise, and it's not as though he's in danger of alerting Inuyasha to his whereabouts with his face alone. What? Is he afraid he'll drop his state-issued card with picture and address written on it or something? He's probably wearing his dumb mask for his ID photo anyway.



( Onward )

Ugh, as long as it's not with those people from high school. Not that I particularly hated any of them, mind you. I went to three high schools in four years, and seeing as how I didn't get to know many people except close friends from those years, I didn't have to deal with a lot of drama. People didn't really pay much attention to the new girl, as she was quite the wallflower in most instances. And that's exactly why it's a party I wouldn't much care for; I wouldn't be able to name anyone there, and they wouldn't be able to name me.

As long as the reunion doesn't involve trying to reacquaint myself with people I never had much time to get to know in the first place, I'm down with it.



( Onward )

Oh boy, does THAT sound like a terrible description of a woman losing her virginity in a fanfiction. I had only just started reading and writing the stuff very recently, and it has already put me off of it forever for a whole host of reasons. But here I am, weeks after swearing it off for my own sanity, cursing myself for ever poking my curious nose into that cesspit. Wretched Writch's mind is forever stained and she's gagging at a perfectly non-sexual title because someone's sex-ed classes were either inadequate or didn't penetrate their thick skull.

I've no one to blame but myself.



( Onward )

Apologies to any potentially staunch Christian readers, but the title here does not, in fact, refer to the mark of the beast or the number 666. Then again, I don't know if there are any really fundamentalist Christians who would much care for this series, on account of the fact that it features and encourages empathy for demonic characters. Any Christians who are fans are probably the liberal types who aren't much interested in end-times prophecies or other such fringe interpretations of their holy text. If I'm wrong, I hope a person who IS will let me know how their cognitive dissonance is so incredibly sturdy.



( Onward )

Such sweet sorrow, as Shakespeare would say. Goodbyes aren't easy, especially when you grow so attached to things and they can't stick around, but I wonder if having more time to say it makes it more or less bearable. Like, if you had, say, two months before someone that meant so much to you and did so much for people, if only in symbol alone, stepped out of the limelight. Is that better because there's at least a little time to cling to them, or worse because you see the looming horizon on which something SO MUCH WORSE is coming?



( Onward )

Oh good, someone has FINALLY noticed that Sesshoumaru's left arm hasn't just grown back. Limbs don't really do that, so I don't know why no one wouldn't have figured he was wearing someone else's right off the bat. Although, I guess no one really knows what he's capable of, considering he rarely lets anyone get away from him alive. Maybe Inuyasha just assumed this is one of those things that ultra-powerful demons like the one he wants to become are able to do. You would think he might have learned that there was probably a trick behind it much like when Sesshoumaru brought his "mother" back from the dead.

Of course, BOTH of these parlor tricks will turn out to be perfectly within Sesshoumaru's actual abilities further down the line, but we'll ignore THAT for the time being...



( Onward )

Because that sword can't possibly just transform from a small skinny katana to a hulking boner sword complete with fur at the hilt. That's the only magical thing we've seen it do so far, and there doesn't appear to be any reason for it aside from the obviously naughty joke it tells. It's not even an original joke, either, because people have been commenting on the over-compensation represented by giant murder cocks for ages now. Let's see what this particular murder cock can REALLY do.



( Onward )

Tainted ink doesn't even begin to cover it, chapter. The ink only did the job of bringing the painter's drawings to life; everything after that is his own doing. But I mean, let's be honest, it IS a pretty tempting prospect isn't it? I'm a terrible artist, so I wouldn't be too thrilled if my drawings came to life, but if you're a good one, wouldn't you at least CONSIDER doing what it took to keep that drawing alive and produce others like it? Or if, say, RT were to come across a pen that brought her creations to life, wouldn't you be super thrilled?

... I'm imagining that world, and it isn't very nice.



( Onward )

Let me guess; candies, right? Your oni monsters get oni candies that make them stronger, and evolve them into cooler oni, right? And much like the speculation around the candies in Pokemon GO, I think the speculation here is that the candies the painter feeds his oni are probably made up of some pretty messed-up stuff. I mean, what else would he be collecting the guts of soldiers his oni kill for? Unless there's one more thing about his motivations we haven't been told about quite yet...



( Onward )