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Some Inuyasha Fan art by Sarah The story begins when schoolgirl Kagome Higurashi falls down a cursed well in her family's shrine and finds herself 400 years in the past. There she stumbles upon the enchanted half demon dog Inuyasha pinned to a tree by an arrow. Too bad for Kagome she happens to look almost exactly like the priestess Kikyou who enchanted Our Hero 75 years before, so the first thing he does when the enchantment breaks is try to kill her. Nevermind that there's a gigantic centipede demon attacking her, him and the group of villagers who have come along to watch the excitement. While this is going on, Kagome discovers she has a magical jewel hidden inside her body and the powers of the dead priestess who ensorcelled Inuyasha. The jewel is the legendary Shikon no Tama, or Jewel of Four Souls as the English version has it, and Inuyasha wants it. At last, Inuyasha kills the centipede demon, then returns his attention to killing Kagome so he can get the Jewel from her. Kagome can't believe he's really trying to kill her, and he would have succeeded if it wasn't for the resourceful village priestess Kaede, who throws a prayer bead necklace over his neck and has Kagome cast the binding spell on it. The spell becomes the running gag of the series (not to mention 99% of Inuyasha fanfics). The magic word that slams Inuyasha flat on his belly in the dust is "Sit!" Having reclaimed the Jewel, saved the village and subjugated the formerly-enchanted dog demon, Kagome figures she can just hop back through the well, go home and get back to her regularly scheduled, non-magical life. She would be wrong.

En route to the well, Kagome gets nabbed by a band of brigands with nice, healthy libidos, forcing Inuyasha to come rescue her--er, the Jewel. The bandit leader is posessed by a crow demon, which flies off with the Jewel before Inuyasha or Kagome can reclaim it. While fighting the crow demon, Kagome accidentally shatters the Jewel, scattering the shards all over the landscape. This means she and Inuyasha have to find them all and put the magic jewel back together. Inuyasha wants to use it to become a full demon, Kagome's job is to keep it out of his demonic clutches. Fortunately, Kagome can sense the Jewel shards. Unfortunately, so can every demon in Japan. Let the games begin.

Inu Yasha in anime form "Inuyasha" is a departure for Rumiko Takahashi in several ways. First and foremost, it's an ongoing story, not just a series of short, comedic episodes. The characters have depth to them along with complex backstories that have nothing silly about them. Every main character (save, perhaps the little fox demon Shippou and the flea demon Myouga) has far more to them than is immediately apparent. The reader can't really say with conviction "this character is totally loathsome" or "this character is totally pure". Well, alright, maybe Kagome and Shippou can sit in the Pure Camp. Even Inuyasha's full-demon brother Sesshoumaru isn't an entirely unsympathetic character; and our chief bad guy Naraku, while almost entirely evil, has a sad facet to him (read the manga to find out what it is). But the difference that really stood out with me at first was that Kagome and Inuyasha actually begin to show unapologetic affection for one another as the story progresses. Anybody who's familiar with Takahashi's work, especially "Ranma ½" , knows how squeamish the author is about open displays of affection between her characters. However Kagome's and Inuyasha's destiny as a couple isn't as cut and dry as Ranma's and Akane's, as we discover when the late Kikyou is brought back from the dead, revealing the most critical and tragic part of the whole story.