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goth_is_not_emoOkay, so the first two seasons of InuYasha are on Netflix if you want to get a feel for that series, and The Final Act is on Crunchyroll, but let's say you don't wanna watch over 200 episodes of anime or read 63 volumes of manga in order to understand what's going on. That's...fair. It's a long series.
So here's the Cliffs Notes version of all the major events of InuYasha. This will get you all caught up for Yashahime, although you'll probably want to go back and watch the full series later if you have the time, because I am majorly oversimplifying most of the plot points, and leaving out most of the rest. (The entire Shichinintai arc? Skipping it. That time the Tetsusaiga broke? Skipping it. Every single demon InuYasha defeated by learning a new, awesome-to-watch sword technique? Skipping it.)
Okay, so there's a girl named Kagome Higurashi, who lives in modern-day Japan (since this is a 20-year-old series, that means around the year 2000) with her mother, younger brother Souta, and her grandfather. Her family owns a very old Shinto shrine, the main features of which are an ancient sacred tree and a dried-up old well, but Kagome doesn't much care for old legends and things. On her 15th birthday, Kagome falls down the well--and instead of hitting the bottom, as one usually does when one falls down a dried-up well, she ends up in feudal Japan about 500 years ago.
When she arrives, a centipede demon shows up (yes, this is the same Centipede Lady who gets revived again at the beginning of Yashahime) and in order to not die at Centipede Lady's hands, Kagome is forced to release a teenage half-demon boy named InuYasha, who was sealed to the sacred tree (yes, the one from the Higurashi family shrine) 50 years prior by a priestess named Kikyo.
Kagome ends up finding out from Kikyo's younger sister Kaede, who is now middle-aged, that she is, in fact, the reincarnation of Kikyo. Awkward...
Kikyo had been entrusted with the care of a sacred jewel called the Shikon (alternately referred to as Shikon no Tama/Jewel of Four Souls, depending on whether you're going by the anime or manga translation or just the original Japanese name). Youkai who get hold of the Shikon no Tama end up super-powerful and dangerous, so it's vitally important that Kikyo, and now Kagome, keep it out of the wrong hands.
Kagome accidentally shatters the Jewel in an attempt to keep it out of the hands of a nasty carrion-crow youkai, so now they have to traverse the Japanese countryside for several seasons in order to collect all the pieces. And all of that is just the first 5-6 episodes of the anime. (You can understand why, even without the filler episodes, this is a long series.)
InuYasha confronts his half-brother Sesshoumaru several times, the first of which involves their father's grave and InuYasha claiming a sword made from his father's fang, the Tetsusaiga. Only people with human blood can touch the sword, and only a hanyou (half-youkai) like InuYasha can use the sword's special powers. So InuYasha ends up cutting off Sesshoumaru's arm, and Sesshie goes off to sulk for a while.
At one point, Sesshoumaru, who is notorious for hating humans, saves an abandoned little girl named Rin from near-death, and she ends up following him around for the rest of the series. This is where all of the "OMG is Rin the mother of the twins?" drama is coming from: she really doesn't act much older than 5 or 6 in the InuYasha series, so either a LOT of time passes between the end of InuYasha and the birth of the main trio on Yashahime, or some seriously nasty shit is going on here.
Along their journey, Kagome and InuYasha gain a small adventuring party:
Shippou, a fox boy who tags along after InuYasha avenges his father's murder. Shippou can perform some pretty good illusions, but isn't very strong and mainly just sort of tags along as The Kid of the group.
Miroku, a lecherous Buddhist monk (yes, I know) who has inherited a curse that the demon Naraku put on his grandfather. He has a small black hole in his hand that sucks in anything in front of it if he uncovers said hand. There are 2 major downsides: he can't suck up venomous creatures or he'll get poisoned, and if the curse isn't broken, the hole (Kazana/Wind Tunnel) will eventually devour him, like it did his father and grandfather.
And Sango, a girl who was raised in a village of demon-hunters. Her little brother Kohaku was mind-controlled by the demon Naraku into killing the entire village, and she herself only survived because she lost consciousness and Kohaku thought he'd killed her.
Oh, and Kikyo and InuYasha used to be in love until Naraku turned them against each other, causing a mortally-wounded Kikyo to seal InuYasha and start this whole entire story in the first place.
At this point, you may notice that Naraku has basically wrecked the lives of 4 out of 5 of our happy little band of heroes, and indirectly killed Kikyo. (He brings her back to life as a sort of soul-eating zombie in order to emotionally torture InuYasha, but she dies heroically near the end of the series, thus bringing a neat little end to the Kagome/InuYasha/Kikyo love triangle that was going on for a while there.)
This is Naraku. He was made by a host of demons who fused with the wounded bandit Onigumo, who was basically mad at Kikyo for friendzoning him. (Yes, really. Don't be like Naraku, fellas; learn to take no for an answer. Women do not owe you a relationship.) He can split off new demons from his own flesh, which sounds really painful. Some of them live on for most of the series; most don't because they die in a failed attempt to kill InuYasha.
When Naraku starts stealing hard-won shards of the Shikon no Tama, things get real. By the end of the series, the heroes have a mere 2 shards of the Shikon no Tama, and Naraku has all the rest of it. Kohaku, after being mind-controlled for most of the series, finally snaps out of it and feels that the only way to redeem himself is to kill Naraku. He ends up teaming up with Team InuYasha and Team Sesshoumaru, because oh by the way, Naraku managed to piss off Sesshoumaru too, and together they all manage to finally kill Naraku and his remaining "children" just after he steals the final 2 jewel shards and has the whole Shikon no Tama.
And then we discover that Naraku isn't the only Big Bad to worry about. See, it's mentioned relatively early on that the Shikon no Tama was formed when a priestess hundreds of years before our main story was unable to kill these 4 demons, so she sealed all 5 of them together into the form of a jewel. She's still in there, fighting them. The jewel itself is conscious and evil. So to save the soul of this lost priestess and stop the cycle from starting over with a Naraku 2.0 somewhere else, Kagome is forced to destroy the Jewel utterly.
After the final battle, Kagome finds herself back in the modern era. This wasn't a problem before--she and InuYasha are basically capable of hopping back and forth between eras via the Bone-Eating Well--but now she can't get back to the feudal era, which sucks because she and InuYasha had finally pulled their heads out of their asses and realized they were in love. (Meanwhile in the feudal era, Sango and Miroku get married, which didn't come entirely out of left field if you watched the show because Sango was 100% jealous of Miroku's shameless flirting with every girl he saw.)
So for the next 3 years, she goes back to her normal life, gets into a good high school, and gets a diploma. Then suddenly not long after her graduation, she notices the Bone-Eating Well is glowing again. She goes back into the feudal era, this time permanently, marries InuYasha, and everyone lives happily ever after until the events of Yashahime.
And that's basically it, aside from the fact that InuYasha goes full human on the night of the full moon and is, while not quite defenseless, devoid of all the cool demon powers he's come to rely on for his safety.
Oh, and whenever he's separated from the Tetsusaiga and his life is in danger, he goes full youkai instead, and becomes ultra-violent and loses all semblance of self-control. I honestly don't remember if or how they finally resolved this, just that everyone's really careful not to leave InuYasha alone in combat situations so that he's less likely to go on a berserker demon rage.
So here's the Cliffs Notes version of all the major events of InuYasha. This will get you all caught up for Yashahime, although you'll probably want to go back and watch the full series later if you have the time, because I am majorly oversimplifying most of the plot points, and leaving out most of the rest. (The entire Shichinintai arc? Skipping it. That time the Tetsusaiga broke? Skipping it. Every single demon InuYasha defeated by learning a new, awesome-to-watch sword technique? Skipping it.)
Okay, so there's a girl named Kagome Higurashi, who lives in modern-day Japan (since this is a 20-year-old series, that means around the year 2000) with her mother, younger brother Souta, and her grandfather. Her family owns a very old Shinto shrine, the main features of which are an ancient sacred tree and a dried-up old well, but Kagome doesn't much care for old legends and things. On her 15th birthday, Kagome falls down the well--and instead of hitting the bottom, as one usually does when one falls down a dried-up well, she ends up in feudal Japan about 500 years ago.
When she arrives, a centipede demon shows up (yes, this is the same Centipede Lady who gets revived again at the beginning of Yashahime) and in order to not die at Centipede Lady's hands, Kagome is forced to release a teenage half-demon boy named InuYasha, who was sealed to the sacred tree (yes, the one from the Higurashi family shrine) 50 years prior by a priestess named Kikyo.
Kagome ends up finding out from Kikyo's younger sister Kaede, who is now middle-aged, that she is, in fact, the reincarnation of Kikyo. Awkward...
Kikyo had been entrusted with the care of a sacred jewel called the Shikon (alternately referred to as Shikon no Tama/Jewel of Four Souls, depending on whether you're going by the anime or manga translation or just the original Japanese name). Youkai who get hold of the Shikon no Tama end up super-powerful and dangerous, so it's vitally important that Kikyo, and now Kagome, keep it out of the wrong hands.
Kagome accidentally shatters the Jewel in an attempt to keep it out of the hands of a nasty carrion-crow youkai, so now they have to traverse the Japanese countryside for several seasons in order to collect all the pieces. And all of that is just the first 5-6 episodes of the anime. (You can understand why, even without the filler episodes, this is a long series.)
InuYasha confronts his half-brother Sesshoumaru several times, the first of which involves their father's grave and InuYasha claiming a sword made from his father's fang, the Tetsusaiga. Only people with human blood can touch the sword, and only a hanyou (half-youkai) like InuYasha can use the sword's special powers. So InuYasha ends up cutting off Sesshoumaru's arm, and Sesshie goes off to sulk for a while.
At one point, Sesshoumaru, who is notorious for hating humans, saves an abandoned little girl named Rin from near-death, and she ends up following him around for the rest of the series. This is where all of the "OMG is Rin the mother of the twins?" drama is coming from: she really doesn't act much older than 5 or 6 in the InuYasha series, so either a LOT of time passes between the end of InuYasha and the birth of the main trio on Yashahime, or some seriously nasty shit is going on here.
Along their journey, Kagome and InuYasha gain a small adventuring party:
Shippou, a fox boy who tags along after InuYasha avenges his father's murder. Shippou can perform some pretty good illusions, but isn't very strong and mainly just sort of tags along as The Kid of the group.
Miroku, a lecherous Buddhist monk (yes, I know) who has inherited a curse that the demon Naraku put on his grandfather. He has a small black hole in his hand that sucks in anything in front of it if he uncovers said hand. There are 2 major downsides: he can't suck up venomous creatures or he'll get poisoned, and if the curse isn't broken, the hole (Kazana/Wind Tunnel) will eventually devour him, like it did his father and grandfather.
And Sango, a girl who was raised in a village of demon-hunters. Her little brother Kohaku was mind-controlled by the demon Naraku into killing the entire village, and she herself only survived because she lost consciousness and Kohaku thought he'd killed her.
Oh, and Kikyo and InuYasha used to be in love until Naraku turned them against each other, causing a mortally-wounded Kikyo to seal InuYasha and start this whole entire story in the first place.
At this point, you may notice that Naraku has basically wrecked the lives of 4 out of 5 of our happy little band of heroes, and indirectly killed Kikyo. (He brings her back to life as a sort of soul-eating zombie in order to emotionally torture InuYasha, but she dies heroically near the end of the series, thus bringing a neat little end to the Kagome/InuYasha/Kikyo love triangle that was going on for a while there.)
This is Naraku. He was made by a host of demons who fused with the wounded bandit Onigumo, who was basically mad at Kikyo for friendzoning him. (Yes, really. Don't be like Naraku, fellas; learn to take no for an answer. Women do not owe you a relationship.) He can split off new demons from his own flesh, which sounds really painful. Some of them live on for most of the series; most don't because they die in a failed attempt to kill InuYasha.
When Naraku starts stealing hard-won shards of the Shikon no Tama, things get real. By the end of the series, the heroes have a mere 2 shards of the Shikon no Tama, and Naraku has all the rest of it. Kohaku, after being mind-controlled for most of the series, finally snaps out of it and feels that the only way to redeem himself is to kill Naraku. He ends up teaming up with Team InuYasha and Team Sesshoumaru, because oh by the way, Naraku managed to piss off Sesshoumaru too, and together they all manage to finally kill Naraku and his remaining "children" just after he steals the final 2 jewel shards and has the whole Shikon no Tama.
And then we discover that Naraku isn't the only Big Bad to worry about. See, it's mentioned relatively early on that the Shikon no Tama was formed when a priestess hundreds of years before our main story was unable to kill these 4 demons, so she sealed all 5 of them together into the form of a jewel. She's still in there, fighting them. The jewel itself is conscious and evil. So to save the soul of this lost priestess and stop the cycle from starting over with a Naraku 2.0 somewhere else, Kagome is forced to destroy the Jewel utterly.
After the final battle, Kagome finds herself back in the modern era. This wasn't a problem before--she and InuYasha are basically capable of hopping back and forth between eras via the Bone-Eating Well--but now she can't get back to the feudal era, which sucks because she and InuYasha had finally pulled their heads out of their asses and realized they were in love. (Meanwhile in the feudal era, Sango and Miroku get married, which didn't come entirely out of left field if you watched the show because Sango was 100% jealous of Miroku's shameless flirting with every girl he saw.)
So for the next 3 years, she goes back to her normal life, gets into a good high school, and gets a diploma. Then suddenly not long after her graduation, she notices the Bone-Eating Well is glowing again. She goes back into the feudal era, this time permanently, marries InuYasha, and everyone lives happily ever after until the events of Yashahime.
And that's basically it, aside from the fact that InuYasha goes full human on the night of the full moon and is, while not quite defenseless, devoid of all the cool demon powers he's come to rely on for his safety.
Oh, and whenever he's separated from the Tetsusaiga and his life is in danger, he goes full youkai instead, and becomes ultra-violent and loses all semblance of self-control. I honestly don't remember if or how they finally resolved this, just that everyone's really careful not to leave InuYasha alone in combat situations so that he's less likely to go on a berserker demon rage.
