Inuyasha Kanketsu-hen Ep. 13
犬夜叉 完結編 Episode 13 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Sesshoumaru’s group meets a strange looking humanoid kid who says he has information about Tenseiga. Sesshoumaru follows even though Jaken believes this to be a trap. Waiting for them is the youkai Shishinki, who claims that Sesshoumaru’s father stole the Meidou Zangetsuha attack from him. To prove this, Shishinki uses his staff to create a Meidou Zangetsuha, but only smaller. Shishinki’s words anger Sesshoumaru but his Meidou Zangetsuha, despite being larger, are absorbed by the perfected Meidou Zangetsuha of Shishinki.

Inuyasha and company arrive to see the fight, leading Inuyasha to launch a Kaze no Kizu after being attacked and then another one to save Sesshoumaru. Sesshoumaru is not interested in being saved by Inuyasha and decides to go against Shishinki with his normal attacks. Sesshoumaru manages to land a blow on Shishinki as Shishinki had launched multiple attacks on Sesshoumaru and told the daiyoukai that Tenseiga is actually a cast off bit of Tessaiga.

Myouga has words for Sesshoumaru as well, but Sesshoumaru is not interested in hearing. Inuyasha rejoins the fight with a Kongousouha attack, which Tenseiga reacts to even though the attack failed. Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru dodge a new attack from Shishinki as the brother feel their swords reacting to each other. Sesshoumaru realizes Tenseiga wants to save Inuyasha and draws the sword once again, releasing a massive, perfected Meidou Zangetsuha that defeats Shishinki’s attacks in addition to drawing Shishinki into the giant sphere to hell.

Shishinki gone, Inuyasha believes Sesshoumaru has perfected the Meidou Zangetsuha and tries to compliment Sesshoumaru in his own way. However, Sesshoumaru realizes that the only reason it worked was because of Tessaiga’s presence. Thus, Sesshoumaru tells Inuyasha that they are destined to fight to the death as he and his group leave, including Kohaku.

Thoughts/Review:

I always enjoy Sesshoumaru stories for some reason. I suppose it is because of all of Takahashi-sensei’s villain characters, he had a certain level of maturity that the other characters never had. Yeah, his buttons can be pushed and he can be baited into a fight, but even then, he usually keeps his wits about him and he tends to learn from his mistakes. He’s just always been an interesting character who while claiming to not really care, in fact does care a great deal about those in his group, even Jaken.

Regardless, despite remembering this story vividly from the manga, I still laughed at Sesshoumaru not being impressed with Shishinki’s story or Shishinki’s missing part of his fact thanks to Sesshoumaru’s father. I liked how Takahashi-sensei worked the story to nudge Sesshoumaru into doing what he didn’t want to do — accept Inuyasha.

Now that I think of it, one thing that was always sadly missing from the Inuyasha story is a really good flashback story of Inu no Taishou, the daiyoukai father of both Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha. We always were shown Inu no Taishou as a giant skeleton but it would have been nice if Takahashi-sensei had shown his life when he met Sesshoumaru’s mother as well as Inuyasha’s mother. Oh well.

Speaking of flashbacks, I did chuckle as this episode used bits from the first Inuyasha series from when Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru first met and fought. It is kind of funny seeing how things have progressed with anime production in about ten years.

I don’t know if this will come into play next episode, but the continuation of the Tenseiga/Tessaiga pairing story is something I look forward to seeing animated.