About Inuyasha
Inuyasha is a manga by Rumiko Takahashi, the creator of Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½. It ran in Shogakukan's Weekly Shōnen Sunday from November 1996 to June 2008, 558 chapters collected in 56 volumes, and Viz Media published it in English. Sunrise adapted it as a TV anime that ran for 167 episodes on Yomiuri TV and Nippon TV from October 2000 to September 2004, directed first by Masashi Ikeda and then by Yasunao Aoki, with series composition by Katsuyuki Sumisawa, character designs by Yoshihito Hishinuma and music by Kaoru Wada. The first series ended before the manga did, so the same cast and crew returned for Inuyasha: The Final Act, 26 episodes from October 2009 to March 2010 that adapt the last volumes and finish the story. Four feature films with original stories came out each December from 2001 to 2004, and an anime-original sequel series, Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon, followed in 2020.
Kagome Higurashi is a schoolgirl who lives at her family's Shinto shrine in Tokyo. On her fifteenth birthday a centipede demon drags her into the shrine's Bone Eater's Well, and she climbs out in the Sengoku (Warring States) period, centuries in the past, near the village of the old priestess Kaede. There she finds Inuyasha, a half-demon pinned to a tree by a sacred arrow fifty years earlier by Kaede's sister Kikyo, the priestess who guarded the Shikon Jewel. Kagome turns out to be Kikyo's reincarnation, and the jewel comes out of her own body. She frees Inuyasha, Kaede puts the Beads of Subjugation around his neck so that Kagome can bring him down with a single word, and when Kagome shatters the jewel with an arrow, the pair set out to gather its scattered shards before demons can use them. Along the way they are joined by the young fox demon Shippo, the monk Miroku, whose right hand holds the cursed Wind Tunnel, and the demon slayer Sango with her two-tailed cat Kirara, and they find that each of them has been wronged by the same enemy: Naraku, the half-demon who tricked Inuyasha and Kikyo into betraying each other.
Takahashi wanted something darker than her earlier comedies, closer in tone to her Mermaid Saga stories, and chose the Sengoku period, an age of constant war, as a setting where violence could be shown softly without losing her humour. The result mixes monster-of-the-week adventures and slapstick with a long, bittersweet love triangle between Inuyasha, Kagome and Kikyo and a slowly building war against Naraku, as Inuyasha's sword Tetsusaiga gains new powers and his half-brother Sesshomaru moves from enemy to uneasy ally. It was a major hit. The manga won the Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen manga and had more than 50 million copies in circulation by September 2020; the anime ranked 20th in a 2006 TV Asahi poll of the 100 best anime and was ICv2's Property of the Year in 2004 and 2005; Viz Media's English DVDs sold more than a million copies between March 2003 and November 2004; and in a 2019 NHK poll of more than 210,000 people, Inuyasha was voted Takahashi's best animated work.
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What the Inuyasha Quiz Tests
Our Inuyasha quiz covers the 193 episodes of the Sunrise anime: the original series and Inuyasha: The Final Act. It does not ask about the four films, the OVA Black Tessaiga or Yashahime. Easy levels cover the basics: who made the series, the Bone Eater's Well and the Sengoku period, the Shikon Jewel and how it shatters, the Beads of Subjugation, the new moon, and the main cast and their weapons. The middle levels follow the story in order, from the tomb of Inuyasha's father and the Thunder Brothers through Kikyo's return, Naraku's origin, Sango's village, Rin and Tenseiga, Koga's wolf tribe, the Wind Scar and the Backlash Wave, the dark priestess Tsubaki, the Band of Seven and Mount Hakurei. The hard levels are for people who watched closely: Takahashi's one request for the anime, the band behind two of its theme songs, Inuyasha's gift to Kikyo, who named A-Un, a line from episode 31, Meido Zangetsuha and how the story ends.
Key Characters
Inuyasha is a hard-edged lead: a half-demon shunned by humans and demons alike as a child, proud, rude and quick to fight, who starts the series wanting the Shikon Jewel only to become a full demon. Kagome is his opposite and his match, warm, honest and outspoken, the one person who can pull him up short, and she grows from a schoolgirl juggling exams and a war into a priestess with real spiritual power. Between them stands Kikyo, the priestess Inuyasha loved fifty years earlier, brought back in a body of clay and grave soil and walking her own lonely path against Naraku. The group around them is a found family of people Naraku has hurt: Miroku, a clever, easygoing monk and a flirt, whose Wind Tunnel is a curse Naraku placed on his grandfather; Sango, a level-headed demon slayer whose village was destroyed and whose younger brother Kohaku is under Naraku's control; and Shippo, a small orphaned fox demon whose father was killed by the Thunder Brothers. Outside it are Sesshomaru, Inuyasha's cold, proud half-brother, whose bond with the orphan Rin slowly changes him; Koga, the wolf-demon leader who is Inuyasha's rival for Kagome; and Naraku himself, a patient schemer born from a bandit's desire for Kikyo, who fights through puppets, barriers and incarnations such as the wind sorceress Kagura.
Available Quizzes
Inuyasha Trivia
50 hand-crafted questions across 5 categories. 10 levels of increasing difficulty.
Which Inuyasha Character Are You?
Answer 10 questions to discover which Inuyasha character matches your personality!
Random Mix
Questions from all 59 anime including Inuyasha. The ultimate challenge.
Characters
Inuyasha
Kagome Higurashi
Sesshomaru
Miroku
Sango
Inuyasha Fun Facts
- Takahashi wrote Inuyasha after finishing Ranma ½ and wanted a darker story than her comedies. She set it in the Sengoku period because wars were common then, which let her show violence softly, and she said she did no particular research into samurai or castles because she considered them common knowledge.
- When Takahashi started the series, her only ideas were that Inuyasha had been sealed by Kikyo and that his sword was a relic of his father; the rest was worked out week by week. As late as June 2001 she still had not decided how Inuyasha and Kagome's relationship would end.
- Asked which chapters she most enjoyed drawing, Takahashi picked the ones with Inuyasha in his black-haired human form on the night of the new moon, because they were new and fun, and the ones where he visits the present day, which gave her a break from drawing battles.
- Episode 98, "Kikyo and Kagome: Alone in the Cave", was the last to use hand-drawn cel animation. From episode 99 onwards the series was animated digitally.
- Kagome's school cultural festival in episode 128 has some famous faces in the crowd: festival-goers dressed as Lum from Takahashi's own Urusei Yatsura, Doraemon, One Piece's Luffy, and Case Closed's Jimmy Kudo and Rachel Moore.
- In a 2019 NHK poll of 210,061 people, Inuyasha was voted the best anime of all Rumiko Takahashi's works, and in the characters category Inuyasha came first and Sesshomaru third.
Inuyasha Quiz — Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes of Inuyasha are there?
193 in all. The original series has 167 episodes, which aired in Japan from 16 October 2000 to 13 September 2004, and its direct sequel, Inuyasha: The Final Act, has 26, which aired from 4 October 2009 to 30 March 2010. The four feature films (2001–2004) and the 30-minute OVA Black Tessaiga (2008) are not part of the count.
Is Inuyasha finished?
Yes. The manga ended in June 2008 after 56 volumes. The first anime ended in 2004 before the manga did, and The Final Act, made by the same cast and crew, adapts the remaining volumes and brings the story to its conclusion in its last episode, "Toward Tomorrow", in March 2010. Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon (2020–2022, 48 episodes in two seasons) is a separate, anime-original sequel series that follows a new generation of half-demon girls; it is not needed to finish Inuyasha.
What order should I watch Inuyasha in?
Watch the original series (episodes 1–167) and then Inuyasha: The Final Act (26 episodes), which picks up the story where the first series left off. The four films, Affections Touching Across Time (2001), The Castle Beyond the Looking Glass (2002), Swords of an Honorable Ruler (2003) and Fire on the Mystic Island (2004), are self-contained stories written by the series' writer, Katsuyuki Sumisawa, and can be watched alongside the first series; they are not needed for the main plot. Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon comes after The Final Act.
Where can I watch Inuyasha?
Viz Media licensed the manga, both series and the four films for North America. The English dub of the original series first aired on Adult Swim from 2002, The Final Act was streamed with English subtitles on Hulu while it aired in Japan, and Viz has released both series on DVD and Blu-ray. Availability differs by country and changes over time, so check your local services.
What is Inuyasha about?
Kagome, a schoolgirl from modern Tokyo, falls through the old well at her family's shrine into Japan's Sengoku period, where she frees Inuyasha, a half-demon who had been pinned to a tree for fifty years. When she accidentally shatters the Shikon Jewel, a jewel said to grant any wish, the two set out with a monk, a demon slayer and a young fox demon to recover its shards before the scheming half-demon Naraku can gather them. It mixes demon-fighting adventure, comedy and romance, and the bond between the two leads grows over the course of the journey.
