The story of InuYasha starts off with Kagome, a normal fifteen year old high school student, who lives in an ancient shrine, filled with old artifacts. One day she is suddenly taken by force into the Boneeater's Well by a monster, and finds a demon sealed to a tree. Upon being taken to a village, she discovers he is an evil demon called InuYasha, who was sealed by a Miko named Kikyou fifty years ago at the cost of her life. However when she gets close to him while running away from the monster, he awakens, mistaking her for Kikyou as they look a like. She is attacked and ends up having the ancient powerful object in her body called the Shikon no Tama (Jewel of Four Souls), an object than can make demons stronger, the same one InuYasha was after, but Kikyou sealed him and took it with her to the afterlife. To save her own life, she frees InuYasha to kill the demon, but InuYasha immediately goes after the Shikon no Tama. Kaede, Kikyou's younger sister from the village, seals a necklace object onto InuYasha which gives Kagome the ability to command him, causing him to be unable to steal the Jewel. However when another Demon tries to steal it, it is easily stolen, and they have to work together to get it back. It ends up getting broken and scattering to little pieces around the world, and now InuYasha and Kagome have to work together to find it.
That's just the start of a plot, that soon winds itself into a much greater plot of why Kikyou killed InuYasha, and as such we get greater villains, a wider cast, and greater ambitions on the part's of the characters, that still tie into everything of the beginning perfectly. As I said before, the length both helps and ruins the plot, as at times Takahashi pulls of great twists to the story, and introduces even more characters, and pulls of many great scenes throught the story. However at times you can also get 50 chapters where the same thing seems to happen over and over. It would help if it was interesting the first time, but painfully it wasn't, and the plot can jump from great, to boring. I'll give it an eight because it provides some interesting scenes, especially in Romance, but at times it's just completely mediocre.
From the few Mangas I've read (just started reading them), the art in InuYasha is fairly average. Compared to the other Manga I'm currently reading ("20th Century Boy"), it even can get rather ugly at times, but at times it can look fairly good. Nothing much to say here, the art in InuYasha is just average artwork and never really goes far beyond being average. That said it certainly isn't bad, it's rather good, just nothing special. You'll probably never take a moment just to look at how good it looks or anything like that.
The characters in InuYasha is the best part of the story, as we get all types of characters. Well the "good guys" are fairly typical people, angry lead fighter, sexual harassing guy on the side, innocent girl, etc. the "bad guys" have variety ranging from "bad ass" fighter to homosexual. I'm not sure on whether that is widely considered a good thing or bad thing, but it can be rather entertaining at times, and my favorite parts of the story come from the interaction between the characters. Once again mainly the love triangle which presents one of the best I've seen yet. The women you fell in love with first, who showed you a different style of life, and followed you in death or the women who came after and helped to change your life. If you had to choice, which one would it be? Certainly the best concept presented I've read (well, yet) presented in love triangles, and really can make you question which choice would be better. I haven't even come up with an answer to that myself.
I'm sure mostly everyone who's decently involved in the world of Anime and Manga have heard of InuYasha and Rumiko Takahashi, and I've read as much love as I have read as hate. Well most the hate I've read is for the Anime and how it falls into being repetitive, but remember that even though it fells into that, it also comes out of that (only to fall back in), but it certainly has some great moments, and the best is in the later half of the story (the conclusion of the love triangle). If you are looking for a Manga with a merge of great characters and a greatly established Fantasy world, than InuYasha is certainly a great book to pick up, as long as you have patience. There are times I was in love with it and started the next chapter right away, and there were times when I forced myself to read through it, always trying to look at the brightside of what's ahead. InuYasha may have it's disappointments, which I've certainly voiced in this review, but it also has it's great moments to, and is a great read. End of the first review, please put whether it was helpful or unhelpful.
