Rumiko Takahashi’s InuYasha began in Weekly Shonen Sunday on 13 November 1996 and ended on 15 June 2008 at chapter 558, collected in 56 volumes over twelve years. Kagome Higurashi, a middle schooler raised at a shrine, falls into the dry well on the family grounds and comes out in the Sengoku period.
There she wakes InuYasha, a half-demon pinned to a tree. The jewel of four souls has shattered, and gathering its scattered shards gives the two of them a reason to travel while demons and humans who want the same shards keep arriving. The episodic surface sits on top of something steadier: what it costs InuYasha to be neither one thing nor the other, his history with the dead priestess Kikyo, and Kagome deciding where she stands inside that history.
Takahashi draws widely on folklore without letting the emotional line slip, which is the balance she is known for. Fifty-six volumes, complete, followed by animated series, films and a sequel.
