Inuyasha

Inuyasha

犬夜叉
2000 -2004 Sunrise Yomiuri TV / NTV 167 episodes Completed
Action Adventure Romance Historical Supernatural
Details & Synopsis
In 1996, Rumiko Takahashi, the architect of Ranma ½, Maison Ikkoku, and Urusei Yatsura, the most successful female manga artist in the world, began a new series in Weekly Shōnen Sunday. It would run for twelve years and 558 chapters. The anime adaptation began in 2000 and did not stop until 2010.

Kagome Higurashi is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives at a Shinto shrine and falls into the old well in the storehouse. She emerges five hundred years in the past, in the Sengoku period, in a Japan populated by demons, monks, priestesses, and things considerably worse than any of them. She also awakens Inuyasha, a half-demon pinned to a sacred tree with an arrow for fifty years, and accidentally shatters the Shikon Jewel, a jewel of immense power, into hundreds of shards that scatter across feudal Japan.

They have to get the shards back. Naraku is trying to get them first. This is the arrangement.

Produced by Sunrise and directed by Yasunori Ide, Inuyasha aired on Yomiuri TV from 2000 to 2004. One hundred and sixty-seven episodes of the original run, followed by Inuyasha: The Final Act in 2009, twenty-six episodes that complete the story the manga had finally finished. Adult Swim carried it for years. The fansub community carried it before that, and the uncut versions circulated heavily alongside the broadcast dub for viewers who wanted the story without the edits.

The cast is Takahashi at her most generous: Miroku, a lecherous monk with a wind tunnel in his hand and a death sentence ticking down; Sango, a demon slayer hunting the creature that destroyed her village; Shippo, a small fox demon who contributes mostly by panicking; and Sesshomaru, Inuyasha's full-demon elder brother, so comprehensively cold the show essentially had to invent a separate arc just to give him a reason to exist near the main cast. It works.

The love triangle between Inuyasha, Kagome, and the resurrected priestess Kikyo is the emotional center. It is messy in the way Takahashi's best work is always messy, not because the writing is confused but because the feelings are.

Start with the original run. Watch The Final Act immediately after. Do not stop in the middle.
Alt Title 犬夜叉
Studio Sunrise
Network Yomiuri TV / NTV
Aired 2000 - 2004
Episodes 167
Genre Action, Adventure, Romance, Historical, Supernatural
Status Completed
← All lore

Fansub & Scanlation History

2000–2004: Yomiuri TV Broadcasts & IRC Distribution

Anime-Keep and the Weekly InuYasha Marathon

2000–2004 Broadcast-Era Digital Fansubs

InuYasha's 167-episode original television run became a long-term test of early digital fansubbing. Anime-Keep was one of the groups circulating episodes during that run through the IRC and downloadable-file ecosystem of the period. The release history stretched across years rather than a single season, with competing groups picking up different portions of a series that kept airing week after week.
[A-K]

Anime-Kraze Stayed With InuYasha Deep Into the Run

Contemporary Record: Around Episode 124 in 2003

Anime-Kraze was another major English release name attached to InuYasha during the original broadcast. A contemporary 2003 account describes Japanese raw releases reaching episode 127 while Anime-Kraze had reached episode 124, direct evidence that the group was still following the series deep into its enormous television run. Later fans continued to remember Anime-Kraze's InuYasha subtitles specifically, making this one of the group's better-documented long-running projects.
[Anime-Kraze]

Translating Sengoku Yokai Lore & Feudal Dialects

Shinto/Buddhist Terms · Feudal Japanese vs. Modern Slang
Subtitling InuYasha required navigating the contrast between Kagome's modern 1990s high-school dialogue and the archaic Sengoku period speech of Sengoku warriors and Yokai. Fansubbers provided detailed screen notes explaining Shinto purification rites, sacred sutra scrolls, and the spiritual lore behind the Shikon Jewel (Jewel of Four Souls).

Shōnen Sunday Raws & The Web Shrine Scanlation Explosion

Weekly Shōnen Sunday Leaks · Forum Scanlation Networks

On the manga side, Rumiko Takahashi's chapters were translated weekly from raw Weekly Shōnen Sunday magazine issues. Dedicated InuYasha web shrines and IRC scanlation collectives digitized chapters years before Viz Media's official graphic novel localizations, building an unprecedented online community surrounding the series.

The Show Had Two Different Directors

Masashi Ikeda (Eps 1-44) · Yasunao Aoki (Eps 45-167)

Masashi Ikeda directed the first 44 episodes, with Yasunao Aoki taking over for the remaining 123, a real mid-series production handoff not commonly noted.

1996-2007: Wot-Club, Its Slow Decline, and a Fan Group That Helped Viz Instead of Fighting It

Wot-Club Was the Original, and It Didn't Die From a License

Founded 1997 by Chris Rijk · Site Down by 2007

Chris Rijk's Wot-Club, founded in 1997, was the original Inuyasha translation project, providing chapters as they released in Japan, occasionally with magazine scans. Unlike most entries on this site, it wasn't a license that ended it: newer, faster scanlation groups, most notably Ear-Tweak, outcompeted it for readership, Rijk burned out and stopped translating in 2006, and the site went dark for good in 2007.
[Wot-Club]

Freelance-Manga Tried to Fix Viz's Translation, Not Replace It

In 2007, a group called Freelance-Manga contacted Viz Media directly to improve the official Inuyasha translation, cataloging specific errors and sending formal recommendations. Member Eric Appleman corresponded directly with Viz Supervising Editor Ian Robertson, who engaged with the feedback, a rare case of a fan community working to improve the licensed release instead of competing with it.
[Freelance-Manga]

2001-2006: Four Films, One Real Localization Gap

The First Film Took Nearly Three Years to Reach the US

Japan: December 15, 2001 · US: September 7, 2004

The first film, correctly titled Affections Touching Across Time (not the garbled version sometimes seen), released in Japan on December 15, 2001, slotted directly between TV episodes 54 and 55. It didn't reach US theaters until September 7, 2004, nearly a three-year gap, with Richard Ian Cox and Moneca Stori reprising their TV roles as Inuyasha and Kagome under Ocean Group, both confirmed accurate here.

The Real Four Titles

The four films are Affections Touching Across Time, The Castle Beyond the Looking Glass, Swords of an Honorable Ruler, and Fire on the Mystic Island, correcting the garbled titling in the earlier draft.