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Naraku

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Naraku (奈落, な らく, "underworld") is the major villain in the manga and anime series InuYasha, although not always a major focus in every episode. Extremely effective, he has had a remarkable (some say excessive) staying power through the course of the series, which has occasionally drawn criticism from fans.

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Contents

History of Naraku

Onigumo

Naraku is a han'yō ("half-demon" — yō is derived from yōkai, which means "demon"), although he differs from most han'yō.

There was a man named Onigumo (鬼蜘蛛, おにぐも, "demon-spider"), who was full of deceit and hatred for others. In the anime (but not in the manga) he tricked his bandit leader, Rasetsu into approaching Kikyō and attempt to obtain the Shikon no Tama, or Jewel of Four Souls; however, Onigumo did not warn him that with Kikyō, there was a han'yō named InuYasha. Rasetsu survived the encounter with InuYasha, lost an eye, and returns to camp annoyed to find that Onigumo has made off with his troops. Rasetsu finds Onigumo and his troops at an inn down the road celebrating their change in leadership. Rasetsu blows up the inn, but the charred body of Onigumo somehow manages to survive the blast. Rasetsu throws the barely-living Onigumo off a cliff. (This, however, does not explain the spider scar, as Onigumo had the scar before he met Rasetsu).

By either chance or fate, Onigumo barely survived and was found by Kikyō who slowly nursed him back to the point of being able to speak. Onigumo developed feelings for Kikyō, but knowing that he could not move for the rest of his life, he summoned countless male yōkai using his corrupted soul. He then had them devour his body in exchange for giving him a new body with which he could claim Kikyō and the Shikon no Tama. Thus the countless yōkai were bound together in a form with Onigumo serving as a connector. (In an anime filler special, it is implied that a spider-yōkai, which looked like a small replica of Naraku's spider form in the second movie, was the de facto leader of these yōkai.) This resulted in the part-human, part-yōkai Naraku.

Naraku, an evolution of Onigumo

In the meantime, he did not forget about his ultimate goal of obtaining the corrupted Shikon no Tama. He disguised himself as both InuYasha and Kikyō and tricked them into hating each other, as he describes that "the Shikon Jewel is the most beautiful when it's tainted by the hatred Kikyō and InuYasha have toward each other".

He mortally wounded Kikyō while disguised as InuYasha, took the Shikon no Tama and returned it to the village, then disguised himself as Kikyō and attacked InuYasha. InuYasha, sensing something was wrong, instinctively went back to the village to retrieve the Jewel. However, disguised as Kikyō, Naraku told the villagers that InuYasha would come for the Shikon no Tama at any cost, thereby forcing InuYasha to use force to obtain the Jewel. As he was getting away with the Jewel, Kikyō, with her remaining strength, sealed InuYasha to the Time Tree. Naraku, who desired both the Shikon no Tama and Kikyō thought that she would use the Jewel to heal herself but instead she requested Kaede to cremate the Jewel along with her dying body, so that it would be taken to the afterlife with her.

For 50 years after Kikyō's death, Naraku secretly plotted and waited for the Shikon no Tama to appear again. After the appearance of Kagome as the present-day reincarnation of Kikyō and InuYasha's awakening, he moved forward with his plan of gathering the shattered shards of the Jewel. Knowing his weakness as a han'yō, he relied mostly on dirty tricks and traps while gathering information on his potential enemies that would stand before his insidious plot.

Being a han'yō like InuYasha, Naraku also sometimes experiences a period of weakness. During those times, he loses all his yōkai powers and reverts to his human "form". While in this form, he is composed of his head attached to countless random yōkai parts. Naraku has the freedom of choosing this time, unlike InuYasha, and since he is made up of thousands of yōkai, each time he "experiments" and "reconstructs" his body, he gets rid of weak and useless parts while keeping the vital ones to get stronger. It is possible that during each of these periods he expelled more and more of his humanity. This process ultimately led to the creation of his stronger form.

The disposal of his human heart

After InuYasha was able to defeat his barrier with the red Tessaiga, Naraku retreated to Hakurei-Zan for a long time, resurrecting the Shichi'nintai in the meantime to keep his enemies busy. To better protect himself from powerful yōkai enemies like InuYasha, Sesshōmaru, and Kōga, he deceived a living Buddha into creating a barrier so holy, that it would purify and cleanse any yōkai that came close to it, depending on the power of yōkai. The closer Naraku's enemies came to the core of the barrier, the stronger it was. This was also the most powerful barrier in the series as its reach extended over the parameter of an entire mountain and much of the land around it. The stronger a yokai, the deeper into the barrier they could go until they got to a specific sort of critical point where anything with even the slightest bit of yokai energy would be utterly purified. For any creature with yokai as it's spirit, they would die at this point no matter how powerful. For example, Koga could not even pass the perimeter of the barrier due to the fact that he is a lesser yokai. Sesshōmaru however was able to penetrate the barrier's perimeter and travel deeper into it, albiet weakened, during his battles with Suikotsu and Jakotsu. Inuyasha was able to pass this final point, but his yokai was purified so completely that he transformed into his human form while inside the barrier. 
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Naraku separates himself from his heart, rendering it in two pieces. The physical heart (心臓, shinzō) he imparts to Akago, rendering Naraku effectively immortal unless Akago is destroyed. The spiritual heart, or soul (心, kokoro), which he inherited from the human Onigumo, is discarded inside Hakurei-Zan. This allows Naraku to become stronger, much like a full yōkai. (Comments later made by Abi-Hime and Tekkei revealed that Naraku was still technically a han'yō.) Furthermore, he now possessed an even stronger barrier, which proved impenetrable to anything except for the Tessaiga's Kongōsōha ("diamond shard blast").

As soon as Kikyō gives the man who created the barrier the ability to find peace, he departs for the afterlife, the barrier disolves. Naraku then reveals his new, powerful form and strikes down Kikyō. His powers increased dramatically as he challenged Sesshōmaru and proclaimed that "I cannot die". In order to find the final Shikon shard located at the border between this world and the afterlife, Naraku made a deal with Abi-Hime, the princess of the bird yōkai. However, Abi-Hime and her mother, Tekkei, never did trust Naraku because he was "merely" a han'yō. Both being full yōkai with utter contempt for han'yō, Abi-Hime and Tekkei plotted against Naraku and later attacked him. Naraku proceded to behead Tekkei, the river of her blood producing a gateway to the world between this and the next.

Throughout the series Naraku is always constantly absorbing yōkai. Even though he is now completely as powerful as a full yōkai, he is still able to carry on the process of expelling the weak components of his victims and retaining the stronger ones. Thus he is able to constantly increase his strength.

The re-absorption of Naraku's heart

Following the death of Kagura in the manga, Naraku becomes largely absent from the series, and the focus shifts to Akago's and Mōryōmaru's quest to absorb yōkai and Shikon shards. Naraku finally reappears, reviving a tree yōkai known as Yōmeiju, a tree which devoured humans and yōkai alike. But this time, as InuYasha and his group watched, as Naraku devoured the tree. Shortly thereafter, he and Mōryōmaru squared off for the first time in an open battle. Naraku then reveals that the reason he created Akago as an infant and purposely made him so weak, while providing him with a powerful barrier that he had the power to disable, was because he always knew his heart would turn against him. Taunting Mōryōmaru about his shell, referring to it as a castle and to Akago as a king who has grown fat in said castle, Naraku at first appeared to be trying to reabsorb him. But this clash ended with a shocking twist: Mōryōmaru absorbed his maker, supposedly defeating him for good. Naraku soon revealed that he was in fact alive, having allowed Mōryōmaru to absorb him in a Trojan Horse-style ploy in order to then devour Mōryōmaru from the inside. He then used the Yōmeiju's barrier-dissolving abilities to reclaim Akago and then fully assimilated Mōryōmaru into his being.

In Chapter 452 of the manga, "Spider Web", Naraku also returned to Hakurei-Zan to reabsorb the heart of Onigumo which he discarded there. Onigumo speaks to him, gloating that Naraku still needs this discarded human heart to avoid being purified by Kikyō, because of Onigumo's intense negative feelings. The human heart says it possesses more intense negative feelings than Naraku's yōkai heart, and these can prevent purification by bringing darkness to the Shikon jewel. Naraku seems to confirm this analysis. He intends to exploit the emotional connection between the hearts of Onigumo, Kikyō and Inuyasha to destroy both Kikyō and Inuyasha. The re-absorptions may mean that Naraku has lost the invulnerability he obtained from keeping his heart outside his body. However, the Shikon no Tama also allows yōkai and humans to survive otherwise fatal injuries. But it's quite possible that the [diamonds] on Naraku's new body might add some extra protection (Due to it being the hardest substance on the planet).

The Nearly Complete Shikon Jewel

In chapter 463 in battle with Inuyasha, Naraku takes Koga's shikon shards because he placed his jewel shard inside Kikyo. After he placed it in Kikyo Kagome shot Kikyo with her last sacred arrow to purify her, then Naraku used Koga's shards to corrupt the jewel as Kikyo plans to purify the jewel. But Naraku's evil overpowered Kikyo's holy aura and allowed him to reclaim the jewel, leaving only Kohaku's shard. Once the jewel is completed, Naraku's true power will be revealed.

Potential for unlimited growth

One of Naraku trademarks is that he is constantly absorbing other yōkai into his body and then getting rid of the weak components. Thus his power only keeps on growing. It is assumed then that each time one of Naraku's opponents face him, they are fighting a stronger version of him than the last.

Attacks and abilities

Naraku has seemingly countless abilities, many of which may be unknown. Those that he has revealed so far are as follows:

Naraku's appearance

Because of his nature, Naraku's true form is somewhat a mystery. He is usually seen hidden inside his white baboon pelt, which hides all but his mouth and eyes. He is later seen with a human form usually in a dark blue kimono and a small purple jacket that matches the color of his shōki, but this may not be Naraku's true form, but rather the form of a human daimyō that Naraku possibly has killed or created, which he uses as his form all the time. Humans familiar with the daimyō could not distinguish between them.

In the second movie, Naraku is briefly seen in the opening credits as a large spider yōkai, which has been called his true form. This could indeed be possible, as his origins as Onigumo (which translates to "demon-spider"), as well as the spider scar on his back, have led many to believe Naraku to be a spider-yōkai / han'yō. This is concurrent with an anime filler special in which an identical (but smaller) spider-yōkai acted as the leader of the yōkai who consumed Onigumo. The "giant spider" form was likely a temporary form though, or a diversion, as he later regenerates in a form resembling the one he would take in episodes 80–81. During this battle, he creates a form of the top half of his body surrounded in gigantic green tentacles and centipede bodies, along with dozens of smaller gray tentacles and four spiky red claws growing out of his back. Since at this time Naraku had still not perfected his body as it still had components of Onigumo in it, he told Sesshōmaru that this was his body in its intermediate stage of reaching its full yōkai transformation.

Following the battles at Hakurei-Zan, Naraku is seen in the same "human form". However, this form was composed only of yōkai as he had disposed of Onigumo from his body and become a full yōkai. This form has an armor of blades rising over the shoulders, and also features blades along the chest and wrists, with horns on the top of his back. He also wears the same dark blue kimono, now with a huge light blue jacket with a high collar, and a yellow belt. He now also has a monstrous eye in the center of his chest, two red eyes on each of his hands, and three tails that seem to belong to a dragon. In the manga the tails were purple and around three to four times the size on Naraku, but in the anime they are green and much shorter. In this form he usually extends his fingers and makes them attack as in the form of glowing purple tentacles or extends the bones of his wrist in a zigzag purple beam like motion and infects people with his shōki.

Many fans believe that Naraku's true form is a human form identical to Onigumo or Hitomi Kagewaki (the young daimyō). However, this judgment is not all that helpful in discovering Naraku's true form, as even less is known about Onigumo than Naraku. Onigumo, whenever seen, has his face in shadows or is bandaged around his face. But Onigumo's hair is seen, and Kagewaki's face when Naraku is having periods of weaknesses (like InuYasha's) — which is remarkably similar to his current appearance (described above). Also, in "Spider Web" (manga Chapter 452), when Naraku went back to Hakurei-Zan in order to reabsorb Onigumo's heart, the heart appears at first in the form of a human head, looking indistinguishable from Naraku's favorite face with different colored hair. After Naraku touches it, the heart takes the form of a spider.

Some hold that Naraku has no true form. Since he has shown the ability to change shape for his entire existence as Naraku, the argument goes, and since he distinguishes himself sharply from Onigumo, it seems unclear what the phrase "true form" means in this case. He never had a childhood form. He does assume a special shape when he loses his powers, but this composite form presumably changes with time as he absorbs and expels yōkai to strengthen himself. And as a full yōkai, he would no longer need to assume that shape. Before obtaining his full yōkai form, Naraku hated his one known consistent physical trait — the spider-shaped scar that revealed his part-human origin — and worked to remove the human heart associated with it. When Musō left Naraku's body, the scar on Musō's back showed the location of his heart. In one episode of the anime, Naraku cuts the scar from his back with a sword, but it immediately grows back.

After the absorption of Mouryomaru and Akago, Naraku's appearance really changes. First of all his right arm is overed in diamond armor and the rest of it is HUGE diamond tenticles similar (but bigger) than Mouryomaru's. The exo-skeleton covering his front where his eye is is now diamond but without the spikes and the high collar was replaced from cloth to diamonds. He has no dragon tails in his back and the armor that is similar to Sesshomaru's is gone.

Naraku's detachments

To get rid of unnecessary parts as well as keeping a better eye on his surrounding situations, Naraku was constantly releasing detachments of himself to carry out his bidding. Only a few of the detachments truly live up to their purposes as most betrayed him or were quickly disposed of by the people going after him:

  1. Kan'na — She is a yōkai of mu, "void". Old word meaning "godless world". Although she appears younger than Kagura, she is in fact Naraku's first detachment, and remains utterly loyal to him while knowing that they are just used as tools in his schemes.
  2. Kagura — She is a wind sorceress (Japanese: "wind user"; also refers to the sacred dances of miko) and appears first in the anime and manga, though she is his second detachment. Because she doesn't like taking orders from anyone, she wanted freedom from Naraku's control but is eventually tricked and poisoned to her death.
  3. Goshinki — The third detachment of Naraku, Goshinki was a large horned ogre with the ability to read minds. He was extremely agile, very powerful, and had teeth so strong they ultimately broke the Tessaiga, which ended up being his own undoing. Once defeated Sesshōmaru contracted Kaijinbo to create Tōkijin from the fangs of Goshinki's head once the head was resurrected.
  4. Jūrōmaru — He was a feral detachment and brother of Kagerōmaru, who lived in his stomach.
  5. Kagerōmaru — He was a small, fast and intelligent detachment from Naraku. Lived inside Jūrōmaru. Not particularly loyal to Naraku.
  6. [unnamed 1] — Its only appearance (and death) was in Chapter 174 of the manga, "The Barrier of Earth". It had a serpentine lower body and a (seemingly male) humanoid torso, with white hair, blank eyes, and tendrils surrounding its mouth. It was killed immediately after its emergence by Kikyō.
  7. Musō — He was born as "the man with no face", a reincarnated Onigumo. He was reabsorbed after a while of independence.
  8. [unnamed 2] — While in Hakurei-Zan, Naraku discarded his human heart, the heart of Onigumo, in the form of blobs of flesh, as well as expelling his new heart in a new body. When Naraku returned in Chapter 452, the pieces merged into a disembodied head which looked exactly like a white-haired Naraku, and then changed into a spider, which Naraku reabsorbed to gain the "psionic spider web" ability.
  9. Akago — He is a child that has the ability to corrupt the hearts of people into doing his bidding. He was cut in half by a priest, which led to the creation of Hakudōshi. He later is placed inside the haku (life force) puppet, Mōryōmaru. In Chapter 446, Mōryōmaru is taken over by Naraku. In Chapter 448, Naraku disappears with Akago, and by his next appearance in Chapter 452, has reabsorbed him. NOTE: The status of Akago as this character's actual name is contested, since akago is standard modern Japanese for baby (whereas all the other characters' names have obscure and / or archaic meanings). In the official English translation, he is called "the infant".
  10. Hakudōshi — He is a detachment from Akago. Taking the form of a young child, he was able to tame the yōba (horse-yōkai) Entei. He continues Akago's quest to get the last Shikon shard. After Naraku is nearly destroyed at the boundary of the afterlife, Hakudōshi is charged with flushing out Kikyō. He eventually is found out as a traitor to Naraku and is sucked in by Miroku's Kazāna.
  11. Byakuya — Naraku's most recent surviving detachment that appeared in Chapter 397. He told the Dokumizuchi who had eaten Mōryōmaru's flesh the location of InuYasha. He was created to replace Kagura, serving the purpose of tracking down Mōryōmaru while keeping tabs on the full-extent of InuYasha's Tessaiga. Byakuya uses origami as his primary weapon and seem to be able to create illusions, but not much else is known about him yet.
  12. [unnamed 3] — The last detachment Naraku has spawned so far. He was a large yōkai somewhat similar to Goshinki in appearance: A hulking biped with claws and a toothy maw. Like Byakuya, he had no spider scar on his back since he was born after the incident at Hakurei-Zan. He used an assortment blades attached to chains. He first appeared in Chapter 432 of the manga, "Kai", terrorising a group of Yōrō-Zoku related to Kōga's in a plot to acquire Kōga's Shikon shards. He was destroyed in Chapter 434 by Kōga's Goraishi.

Naraku's enemies

Voice actors

Despite the fact that their voice acting styles for Naraku are quite different, Toshiyuki Morikawa and Paul Dobson both tend to voice similar roles: Either sinister masterminds (like Naraku), or "tough guy" villains.

Music

InuYasha Ongaku Hen InuYasha Ongaku Hen Ni Eiga InuYasha: Kagami no Naka no Mugenjō Ongaku Hen Naraku's Japanese seiyū, Toshiyuki Morikawa, sang vocals for and delivered a monologue and message on Naraku's image song single, InuYasha Character Songs: Rakujitsu. The last track includes bonus messages from Satsuki Yukino (as Kagome Higurashi), Takeshi Kusao (as Bankotsu), and Ai Orikasa (as Jakotsu).
  1. "Rakujitsu" (「落日」 "Sunset")
  2. "Rakujitsu (Remix)"
  3. "Rakujitsu (Original Karaoke)"
  4. "Monorōgu & Messāju" (「モノローグ&メッセージ」 "Monologue & Message")
  5. "Ekusutora Messāju" (「エクストラメッセージ」 "Extra Message")
In turn, a bonus message from Naraku was also included in the last tracks of Kagome's and Bankotsu and Jakotsu's singles.

Trivia


InuYasha characters [Edit]
Listed in approximate order of appearance.
InuYasha's group InuYasha | Kagome | Myoga | Shippo | Miroku | Sango | Kirara
Sesshoumaru's group Sesshoumaru | Jaken | Rin | Ah-Un
Naraku's group Naraku | Kanna | Kagura | Goshinki | Juromaru | Kageromaru | Musō | Akago | Hakudoshi | Mōryōmaru | Byakuya | Entei
Misc. (recurring) Kikyo | Kaede | Hachiemon | Koga | Totosai | Kohaku
Misc. (non-recurring) Tatarimokke | Midoriko | Kaijinbo | Tsubaki | Shichi'nintai | Gatenmaru | Gakusanjin | Goryomaru | Shiori | Taigokumaru
Inu no Taishou's group and enemies Inu no Taishou | Izayoi | Saya | Bokusen'on |
Ryukossei | Setsuna no Takemaru | Menomaru
Modern-day characters Mama | Grandpa | Sota | Hojo | Yuka, Eri, Ayumi

 

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