If you are familiar with Rumic World, you should know that her works are, indubitably, a classic: formulaic, repetitious concepts, and a masterful concoction of romance, comedy and fantasy. With all that being said, I’ll always love Inuyasha for its core themes of grief, identity, finding a sense of belonging, the slow and very human process of facing, embracing, and eventually growing around pain, and of course, quite obviously: a love that transcends time.

P.S. This review contains spoiler and character studies between the main dynamic Inuyasha, Kagome, and Kikyo.

There’s a ‘love triangle’, although their dynamic is heavily integrated to map out grief and healing through Inuyasha: processing it, accepting that it’ll always be around, and realising that his happiness shouldn’t have to be conditional on his past because he can grow around it & he did through Kagome. Inuyasha has always had the awareness of having to settle his own pain first so he could finally face his love for Kagome… from “I am not supposed to be happy and have fun” to Kagome taught me to live around it & learn I can be loved & I can love in so many ways and forms by & with the people I hold dear and Kagome held his hand through it all. Kagome loves him selflessly & Inuyasha loves her in return and shows it in his language.

Rumiko had a sequence of deliberate authorial inference on Inuyasha’s progression in one of the earlier arcs; when Inuyasha was saying Kikyo’s scent brings a lot of memories but also death vs. Inuyasha saying Kagome is her own person, she has a gentle scent. Juxtaposing both of the dialogues, it was both Inuyasha’s initial step in accepting Kikyo will always be the cog in the wheel of his identity, his past - and it was also Inuyasha’s beautiful & unhurried process of finally recognising his blossoming love for Kagome. It was to show the dismantling of Kagome’s torment of feeling like he was weighing his love between Kikyo and her. It was to imply that Inuyasha was already deviating from his past (Kikyo) despite not forgetting about it, that this time he is facing his love for Kagome as he affirms Kagome’s steady significance in his life.

There was a convergence on not being able to forget about Kikyo AND wanting Kagome to be by his side. And I would have to reiterate: it does NOT mean he’s two-timing (and I vehemently disagree whenever there’s a line about him being disloyal because they don’t take time to fully grasp how Inuyasha feels before reacting, although it’s understandable). Inuyasha’s feelings, especially in the earlier chapters of the manga, are often misconstrued; Inuyasha just meant that Kikyo is a past that will always be a part of him much as it brought him despair, but it does NOT and should NOT have any bearing on his love for Kagome!

Inuyasha might not fully realise yet the weight of “Kagome is Kagome” to Kagome who had always believed she was but a shadow of Kikyo, that she couldn’t supersede Kikyo’s place in Inuyasha’s life (and she took time to also understand that she needed not to!) What better ways could he have professed his love for Kagome to but to directly tell Kagome that he sees her for her, completely unfettered by Kikyo. That Inuyasha affirms and accentuates Kagome’s steady significance in his life: “to me, you are only you.”

Now, I have always admired Kagome for being so patient and so kind. She will always be my favourite character for many reasons. I love how we see Kagome’s process of also accepting ALL of Inuyasha, ALL including Kikyo’s influence on him. It’s human to be jealous, to be confused, to be hurt. It is also human to recognise and embrace everything that you do not feel secure with. When Inuyasha in chapter 176 told her he couldn’t believe how strong she is, she rebutted that she is not strong at all- that amidst understanding Inuyasha’s pain and staying with him through it all, she also suffers, she also hurts. Kagome never tried to sever Inuyasha's past from him, even when it pained her, because she knew how important it was for him. Instead, she held his hand to bear it with her, which was what he needed the most. It was a slow course of acceptance and a huge amount of courage and patience for Kagome to fully embrace her pain and still choose to hold Inuyasha’s hand, to share it with him and vice versa through it all.

Lastly, I am also fond of Kikyo and the intricacies of her character. She was foisted into reliving everything because she was revived without her own agency. The soul she had lived carried everything that she resented until she finally found peace... where Kagome also had an essential role in. Through Kikyo, we have seen how unforgiving the system was, especially to women, during Sengoku period. How she felt suffocated and burdened by her duties as a priestess that led her to resort to wishing on Shikon to be an ordinary girl who had freedom (and how we can better juxtapose this to Kagome, who had better autonomy in her life). How lonely she felt and how that mirrored Inuyasha’s experiences and how they both, even for a little, felt a sense of belonging in each other’s presence but was caught in Naraku’s deceit. It’s all so tragic.

I think the dynamic of Inuyasha, Kagome and Kikyo are not just black and white. It's interweaved and multifaceted, it needs a lot of dissection to comprehend without reservations. This manga will always hold a special place in my heart.