When we got Netflix a month ago, I was tickled to see Inuyasha listed among the recommendations. I had only seen a few episodes years ago, when it was airing on Toonami, but I had fond memories of it. When my kids happened to catch me watching the first episode nostalgically, I decided to let them join me.
Figuring out age limits on anime is tricky, and I am sure that people are going to lecture me on the fact that it’s rated Y14 and my kids are 5 and 7. But we had just watched Pirates of the Caribbean, which has a very similar dark aesthetic, with legitimately gruesome characters, sexual innuendo and romantic narratives.
Caution: Here there be incredibly helpful spoilers for parents!
And right off the bat, we are confronted by a scene where the main character, ordinary high school girl Kagome, is abducted by a nude, half woman centipede monster who does in fact lick her.
This is when it occurred to me that Inuyasha was rated by people who are reinforcing Western cultural norms against nudity, even when it is not sexual.
So I let them watch it. Because the demon doesn’t want to fuck Kagome, it literally plans on eating her.
Hi. I’m a feminist mom trying to raise feminist kids. And it is not easy. For one thing, I would argue that there is nearly no content that doesn’t reinforce incredibly unhealthy messages. They are woven into all the children’s content. I do not like the Disney princesses and their relentless emphasis on heterosexual romantic validation for female characters. I do not like Pixar’s retro-boy narratives. I am so hungry for content that helps illuminate real social justice issues and feminist thinking.
And I have been honestly delighted to find it in something written in Japan, by a woman, in the 1990s.
Now I don’t want to oversell this, because it is also deeply problematic. But as I earlier said, I cannot find any content that isn’t. The thing that I really appreciate about Inuyasha is that it touches on so many difficult subjects in a way that invites empathy and humanizes the characters. Even when they are demons or posessed tea kettles or whatever. And it also has enough violence and high fantasy to keep my son engaged. The narratives are incredibly powerful and moving, often talking explicitly about the duty owed to friends and family, and how to make difficult moral choices.
It opens with the half dog demon, half boy Inuyasha stealing a magical jewel from a temple in feudal Japan. But instead of escaping, he is pinned to a tree by a priestess, a human girl named Kikyo. Her sacred arrow puts him in some kind of suspended animation, and she collapses to the ground, mortally wounded in the battle. She asks her village to burn her body with the jewel, so that no other demons will come after it seeking its terrible power.
The narrative then shifts to present day Tokyo, where a girl named Kagome lives with her family and maintains a temple shrine: the same one Kikyo was defending from Inuyasha.
And Kagome is talking to her grandfather, who wants to sell little key chain replicas of the “Jewel of Four Souls” in the gift shop.
Shortly after this, she is looking for the family cat by the old well on the temple property, when she gets sucked into the well, through a portal in time. There, it is revealed that she is the reincarnation of Kikyo, the priestess. She has arrived 50 years after Kikyo’s death. And though she has some of Kikyo’s powers, she has no control over them or experience with the demons she now confronts pretty much daily.
That’s the other thing I find fascinating about Inuyasha and the worldbuilding it tackles. In some ways it is reminiscent of how Jordan Peterson talks about the past and religious lore. Kagome, the modern version of Kikyo, is depicted as clumsy, sensitive and often foolhardy. She wears a schoolgirl uniform most often. In contrast, Kikyo is always depicted in the program as an elegant and mature woman, dressed in priestess robes. She is a master archer and unfailingly poetic and stoic. And when we visit the present, we see Kagome’s grandfather, who knows some of the rituals and prayers from the past, but who is usually unable to craft working charms or really stand up to the demons as his ancestors are shown to do.
It would be easy to interpret Kagome as a pale imitation of Kikyo, but that is, I would argue, exactly the error Peterson makes in his symbology. Kagome is not an imitation of Kikyo, she is a modern woman with her own real life and real ideas. She struggles with that boundary and choosing what to prioritize all the time. And that, I would argue, is what makes stories like Rumiko Takahashi’s so valuable today. She is not opposed to modernism: it is relentlessly depicted as safer and protected from this wild and dangerous past that eats babies or even worse curses your baby and sends it back to eat you.
When Kagome frees Inuyasha from the tree, the first thing he does after he defeats the centipede demon, is try to kill Kagome. He is, after all, a demon and she has brought the jewel back with her to the past. It popped out of her body and rolled away during the fight. He hasn’t forgotten his goals and life either. But there is someone else there too: Kaede is an old woman, the current priestess of the village. She is also Kikyo’s younger sister, who witnessed the events of 50 years ago. She subdues Inuyasha with a necklace that allows Kagome to reinforce her boundaries by saying “Sit!”
Get it? Because he’s a dog. Men are dogs.
Haha, I kid, but that’s pretty much the recurring joke in the series.
So once Kaede domesticates him, Inuyasha and Kagome team up to get the jewel back, because it’s super powerful and evil creatures desire it.
And he is a total dick. Like, all the time. Eventually it is revealed that he loved Kikyo and he is really struggling with having woken up knowing that Kikyo has died and Kagome looks just like her and they have to work together as a team.
Now, I am certain that there are a lot of things going over my kids heads. And that’s ok. I want to lay groundwork early, before they start watching these kinds of shows and being aware of the sexual innuendoes and romantic subtext. Because I’ll be honest, it is essentially a soap opera in a high fantasy wrapper. What I am much more interested in is how it depicts problematic male behavior with a group dynamic and how the group deals with the behavior. Because Inuyasha isn’t even the biggest dick in the show.
You can also see Sesshomaru, Inuyasha’s half brother. He’s a full demon and he makes a wonderful example of what bigotry looks like: constantly making comments like, “Oh Inuyasha, how embarassing it is to let that human help you, instead of dying with honor.”
You can see Miroku, the perverted monk introduced in later episodes, who is always touching women without their consent. How do you know?
Because they are always smacking him and yelling at him for it. Miroku is the cartoon embodiment of this guy:
And what Inuyasha depicts is his friends calling him out over it every episode. Every time.
I’m writing this because I am trying to come up with new ways to talk about feminism and gender equality with my kids and I can’t really use the Bechdel test. It’s interesting but not terribly useful, because I don’t really think that the presence of women characters makes a piece of content feminist. It’s good for statistics but less instructive for parents.
But what parents can do is use pieces of problematic content to highlight real issues with inequality and sexism. No, Kagome does not put up with being grabbed. Neither does Sango and Inuyasha is always brutally judgmental. If this narrative was limited to one special episode, you lose the reality that some predators are hard to get rid of, but you still have to figure out ways to be safe around them. And that means protecting your boundaries and vocally warning all the other people around him not to trust him.
You can reinforce that this is not appropriate, that people’s bodies are their own property and that consent matters.
I don’t want to lie about what it depicts. Inuyasha and a lot of Japanese content have unhealthy tropes that sexualize young women. But they are also VERY EXPLICIT ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON. No one is confused about what Miroku does. They are by turns mortified or embarrassed or enraged. And showing that is, I think, a million times healthier than the version of the lecherous dude trope that I encounter in western media.
Because our lecherous dudes are allowed to be lecherous dudes while the women around them roll their eyes or recoil in silence instead of smacking the shit out of them.
And those very real women were also victims of real predators and they had to navigate around those guys.
Have I mentioned the scene where Inuyasha tries to keep her from going home to study for a test? (1:04)
There is something very valuable in the depiction of girls who are not waiting for boys to exist and have plans and ideas for their lives. Kagome isn’t swept off her feet by a prince: she literally splits her life between planning for a modern normal life and fighting the demons she feels responsible for unleashing in the past. Her family at home is supportive and understanding, sending her back to the past with a bicycle and a first aid kit and instant ramen. It’s adorably quaint and wholesome. And at home she is confused by her feelings for a boy who is kind and sweet, but who has also been told by her grandfather that she suffers from bunions and rheumatism, to explain all her school absences. There are so many moments.
These are conversations I want to introduce and have with my kids before they get older and have these same feelings without a map. Without those hints that tell you you don’t have to put up with being grabbed, or with being told you shouldn’t go to school or see your home. It’s ok to be tempted by romantic fantasies about the past, and to question where your own identity comes from. Those are the things that make us human beings.
I’m going to close with my favorite review from Common Sense Media about Inuyasha:
“Loved it! But. . .
NOTE: I am not a parent but can’t figure out how to change my status as a parent! I started watching this probably around the age of 10 or 11 and fell in love with it and sometimes I would let my baby sister watch episodes that I thought were okay. This being the case, and re-watching it, now it’s definitely for older kids. Most episodes have some sort of violence with the team fighting against demons but surprisingly not much bloodshed. Along with the violence though, there is much use of profanity, mostly by the male lead. Furthermore, there are scenes of nudity but of course nothing immensely provocative is shown for the most part. To add to the nudity though, there is a character which is described as a “lecher” most correctly as he chases after women and gropes their behinds from time to time. Let it also be known that the main female lead does reveal to have an infatuation with the male lead and it unfolds much like a anime middle school romance with some troubles. Now as for the positives of this show, there is a definite emphasis put on the value of teamwork and understanding. Additionally, the main female lead is a strong one that doesn’t follow the “norms” of a weak female character and there are other strong female leads as well. As for the anime quality, the artwork gradually gets better, the plot can be drawn out, the comedy is laugh-inducing, and the depth of some of the episodes are amazing. This all being said: I do love this anime, it’s just not for the youngsters.”
No content is ever really safe for people who don’t yet understand what they are seeing. Watch stuff with your kids.
