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caithyra · 3 years

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A lot of people claim Kagura (and by extension her "siblings") was a full demon, but am I alone in thinking that she was always a half-demon/hanyo because she was an incarnation of Naraku, who was also a half-demon?

First a disclaimer: I view Naraku’s incarnations very different from the rest of fandom, like I do with most things in this manga.

Naraku’s incarnations fans might not like my interpretation... Oh, and it only pertains to the manga.

TL;DR: They are likely as yokai as Sesshomaru’s severed arm. Except Muso. (Skip to the bottom of this post if you want the elaborated, quick answer of my interpretation and then the probable canon answer, which is different. I just have an interpretation of canon that I haven’t seen anyone else suggest before that...)

Anyway, first we are going to go through what Naraku is before he creates his incarnations:

Onigumo, a human, who is devoured by a yokai horde that becomes Naraku.

Naraku is then a hanyo capable of absorbing other yokai and their power, which he presumably does a few times before he tries something as big as absorbing a daiyokai like Sesshomaru (which he fails at), given his attempt at Sesshomaru, we can presume that at least a few of these yokai were powerful even if they were not daiyokai, since going from lesser yokai to greater yokai without anyone inbetween is very foolhardy, given how weak Naraku was at the time (he also used manipulations mostly during this time).

So up to the point that the manga starts, Naraku is a mostly yokai hanyo made up of literally hundreds of yokai of various powers and strengths.

Then, before he begins creating incarnations Naraku is nearly killed by Kagome (this is an important part of my interpretation) and cannot restore himself without turning towards a dark type of magic called kodoku.

Kodoku is a magical ritual/art called “gu/ku” in Chinese in which various toxic creatures are put into an enclosed space to absorb one another until only one remains. This remaining creature (also called Gu/Ku/Kodoku) is considered supremely toxic and powerful and with various abilities such as pestilence, manipulation (Naraku/Kanna/Infant?), transformation (Naraku), and a number of other things that falls well within Naraku’s sphere of power.

Anyway, Naraku absorbs the kodoku and is restored, and also made up of even more different kinds of yokai. And he holds a large chunk of the empowering Shikon no Tama, courtesy of Kikyo.

And that’s when he begins creating incarnations (分身 - bunshin).

That word, bunshin, is a funny thing. In Naruto, it is the “clone” part in Clone Techniques (such as Kage Bunshin/Shadow Clone which Naruto uses all the time), and as a common word, has been used in many manga/anime/games.

Here’s the definition of Jisho.org for example:

ぶんしん分身 common word Noun 1. other self; alter ego; part of oneself (in someone or something else); representation of oneself 2. (Buddhist term) incarnations of Buddha

Kotobank.jp translates it into “double/doppelgänger” and has this to say:

1. One divided into two or more separate bodies. 2. (Buddhist term, similar to above.)

But basically, a bunshin is not a separate person from what they are a bunshin of most of the time in pop culture (or they are re/pre/incarnations like in Buddhism, but no one suggests Kagura is to Naraku what Kagome is to Kikyo, so... *shrugs* Lets got with the other definition!). They always exist in relation to the original (Naraku). Other translations simply call them detachments, which has the implication of parts of Naraku that he’s cut off and given life for his own purposes.

I will be skipping Muso since he is an aberration among the bunshin, and likely the most hanyo of the lot.

The first bunshin Naraku creates is Kanna, who has no will, no emotions and no drive of her own. She solely does Naraku’s bidding, no more, no less. (There is a sole exception of her death scene, but that was more to inform the heroes of Kikyo’s light, which curtails with how the story began bending to fit Kikyo as a tragic heroine... Don’t even get me started...)

Then he creates Kagura, who is the opposite extreme; freedom is her greatest aspiration and she continuously backtalks Naraku and tries to act against him, yet, in the end, everything goes as Naraku wants when it comes to Kagura (this is also important).

Lets look at these two extremes and lets pretend that these are not Naraku’s incarnations; they are toasters.

Kanna is the toaster that Naraku must put the perfect settings in every time before use and push the toast down with a lever. Then he must wait and push the eject button, because Kanna wont do it herself.

Kagura is the fancy toaster with all the bells and whistles and more settings than anyone needs, including sensors to tell when the perfect toast is done to be ejected. She even automatically lowers the toast into the toasting slots when you put them in. In theory, Naraku doesn’t need to do anything else; Kagura knows exactly what to do to make the toast Naraku wants. Except fancy gadgets like these malfunctions and are temperamental and has the wrong settings put in and, yeah, Kagura doesn’t want to make Naraku’s perfect toast, but Naraku has rigged a big, complicated Rube-Goldberg machine to push her eject button before she can irreparably burn his toast, so it doesn’t matter.

All the different incarnations are on a sliding scale of these, except for Hakudoshi, who is an even fancier version of Kagura and capable of making grilled cheese sandwiches, and what more, Naraku wants Hakudoshi to burn some of his toast, because of the risk/reward that one day, Hakudoshi will not burn Naraku’s toast, but instead will make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich for Naraku to enjoy.

Byakuya, by contrast, is the perfect blend of obedient Kanna and the ability to make tedious decisions and act on his own like Kagura.

It’s like with computer programs; some require a dozen clicks to complete a task, another, that has been further programmed (given personality and motivation), only require one.

In short, I do not see them as separate people from Naraku, which is where I diverge from most of fandom; they have no pupils, which are signs of possession/not having their own minds in many anime, which is also a yokai trait (like Koga), but is egregious when it comes to everything else. It should be noted that most of Naraku’s bunshin are obedient to Naraku, but that in order to arrive to the perfect blend of independent action plus unquestioning obedience that is Byakuya, he experimented with giving more or less free will, individual desires and so on.

And it was Kagura who led me to believe that:

First; she is given the appearance of “Sesshomaru’s ideal woman” according to Takahashi who believes that all men want Kikyo or someone like her (”Sesshomaru’s ideal type of woman” is “like Kikyo” according to her according to some interview I’ve seen quoted around, but I would like an actual source, please...), including Sesshomaru, so she makes Kagura a young woman like Kikyo named after a dance that miko, like Kikyo, dance.

Second; she is given a sympathetic motivation “freedom” but at no point do we get a clue as to how she feels about “freedom” other than something to attain. She does not daydream about it or what she will do with it, she does not envy others’ freedom overtly (nor resentfully watching them), there’s literally nothing except her nebulously wanting “freedom” being “the free wind” when she passes away.

Third; she is obviously and loudly antagonistic towards Naraku, and, indeed he, the great villain, holds her heart literally in his hand to torture her with. Don’t you want to save her? Give this pretty lady freedom?

Fourth; she really wants Sesshomaru to save her, despite the fact that Sesshomaru has never come close to killing Naraku and always refuses to save Kagura.

Fifth; but when Kagome, the only person to ever come close to killing Naraku in the entire series at this point, offers to protect Kagura, Kagura refuses and still goes to Sesshomaru. Even though Kagome is not just the person whose power Naraku fears, but also someone with a history of taking in her foes as friends (unlike Sesshomaru).

Sixth; Tenseiga did not even react to Kagura “dying”.

None of this makes sense, unless one thinks of Kagura as a part of Naraku that he has “programmed” specifically to mess with Sesshomaru. In that case, Kagura refusing Kagome’s protection while still being infatuated with Sesshomaru who refuses to do anything and has proven nothing as her supposed savior, and the lack of psychopomps at her death and Tenseiga having no reaction, makes sense if Kagura is little more than something like a living tentacle of Naraku’s, given a pretty face, personality and “programming” to go hard for Sesshomaru and then, use her final moment to upset him (by this time, everyone knows Sesshomaru’s complex with his father’s swords, so if his sword wont work when predictably would he ask it to... Cue upset Sesshomaru. Too bad Inu no Taisho did one up on Naraku on that front by ensuring Inuyasha got the Meido after Sesshomaru and Rin nearly died in front of Sesshomaru’s mother for Sesshomaru to get it... Naraku’s manipulations got nothing on InuPapa’s beyond the grave...).

It would explain her undeveloped motivation (the abstract “freedom”), why everything still goes as Naraku wishes despite a few hiccups and so on, and, of course, why she had no soul for Tenseiga to save...

Naraku might as well have told Kanna “fall in love with Sesshomaru and plead with him to give you freedom” and Kanna would do her best to obey, but because of her non-personality, the emotional manipulation would be obvious (even more so once she refused Kagome, since, after all, it is Sesshomaru who is to give her freedom). But Naraku would have to micromanage her extensively to do so as well as make her a mature body. Far easier to just create a new detachment with slightly more free will and so on with the “programming” installed.

Does Kagura know this? Maybe she suspected it by being around her “siblings” and noting how different their levels of sapience/sentience/free wills were (and she even tells Hakudoshi that his plans will come to naught because Naraku wont allow it, suggesting she believes Naraku’s will is absolute over the incarnations), but she probably felt like her own person, and would have been “programmed” to think of herself as such and dismiss any suspicions to the contrary.

It would fit very well with the body-horror aspect of early Inuyasha and Naraku’s character as a whole. But would also be a bit too much for a children’s comic magazine in an action series...

So what are Naraku’s incarnations on the human-yokai scale?

They are likely yokai, like Sesshomaru’s severed arm, with the exception of Muso who had Naraku’s most human part in him and would likely be considered hanyo on a DNA test. They were likely made from the yokai parts of the hordes that make up Naraku after the kodoku, but aren’t separate people (like, the parts of a crane yokai would have been used to create Byakuya, for example, while oni parts would have been used for Goshinki). They are just more advanced dolls made of purely yokai parts IMO.

But that’s just my extremely niche interpretation of the manga and the inconsistencies with the story.

In canon, it is much more likely that the simpler explanation; that they are separate people who are also yokai (except Muso), is the answer.

I just don’t like the inconsistencies it creates within the story and made my own interpretation and rambled on and on in this post. Sorry.

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