Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon, the sequel to the popular Inuyasha series, premiered over the weekend. The first episode not only gave fans a peek as to what this new anime will be about, it also introduced them to a new cast of characters.
The first episode, surprisingly, gave a lot of screen time to Inuyasha, Kagome and the rest of the original crew and what they were up to since the end of the previous series.
Episode 1, titled "Inuyasha: Since Then," starts with Towa Higurashi, one of the twin daughters of Sesshomaru, tied up by a feudal lord. He and his assistant want to question Towa's origins as they found a history book from the future.
While she's tied up, the assistant regales Towa with a tale of Inuyasha and Kagome from the past, which is when the episode mostly takes place. Through this framing, we learn a lot about the series and the characters since the end of the first Inuyasha series.
WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT THE ORIGINAL CAST
The story of Inuyasha and Kagome in the first episode takes place around six months after the end of the first series, and 10 years before the start of Yashahime.
Kagome, Inuyasha, Sango, Miroku and the rest of the gang live in a village as the men hunt demons to make ends meet.
Sango and Miroku's three kids are getting a little older and Shippo helps her care for them, especially when Miroku is out demon hunting. Inuyasha and Miroku are investigating a demon called Root Head that feeds on humans to grow larger.
The duo eventually find out that Kikyo, Inuyasha's former lover, was tasked with hunting it, but instead of killing it she sealed it into a cave. Kikyo's sister explains this was around the time her sister began to not want to kill demons anymore. We learn that the cave holding Root Head collapsed, releasing it.
Root Head is looking for Kikyo and the Shikon Crystals, which were destroyed with Naraku in the original series, but is unaware of this because it's been imprisoned for years. The demon mistakes Kagome for Kikyo and goes after her throughout the episode.
Inuyasha and the gang keep cutting it down, but it gets away and regrows somewhere else. Eventually, Kagome, Inuyasha, Sango and Miroku take down the demon and seemingly destroy it.
However, we see that a part of Root Head remains and it becomes a part of a large tree. We don't see this tree again until we go back to the present.
Shippo, Rin, Kohaku, Jaken and Sesshomaru are also shown, but don't have big roles in this episode. Really, they're there to inform their fans that they are still around.
WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT THE NEW CHARACTERS?
So what about the new characters? While the bulk of the episode takes place in the past, when the story ends we return to Towa, who is freed from captivity by her twin sister, Setsuna, and Moroha, the daughter of Inuyasha and Kagome.
Moroha realizes that the feudal lord's assistant is actually a demon and they attack them, but the demon transforms into a four-eyed owl—which was shown spying on Kagome and Inuyasha in the past—and flies away. This owl is also shown to have a connection to the tree that Root Head becomes a part of.
The three young demon hunters run off after it as the episode ends.
While the first episode doesn't give us much about our new cast, the preview for episode 2 does promise some information on their backstory and what their goals are. We even see an adult Kohaku, so there's plenty for fans to speculate and talk about.
New episodes of Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon premiere every Saturday on Crunchyroll, Funimation and Hulu.
What did you think of the first episode of Yashahime? Let us know in the comments section.
