#tessaiga
i think it says a lot when the only time sesshomaru has ever been explicitly manipulative instead of going straight on for the kill was when he faked a demon to take the form of inuyasha’s mother just so he could get the black pearl from him. if you’re going to be manipulative, you need to understand emotions, something sesshomaru obviously has a difficult time doing, considering his whole character arc has to do with learning empathy. so the fact that he did that to inuyasha means he knew how inuyasha felt at the time
sesshomaru felt that inuyasha was responsible for his father’s death, and he’s obviously bitter about it, because he then kills the unmother. it’s as if “you killed my father so i’ll kill your mother for what you’ve done”. he was upset about inu no taisho’s death, blamed it on inuyasha, and then pulled the same on him as retribution. & then claimed that inuyasha only felt upset about the unmother’s death even tho she wasn’t actually his moth because he was too empathetic and had a human heart, which is wild because obviously sesshomaru knew how he would feel hence why he did it, though it was jaken’s idea.
he’s actually so childish; if this is how he deals with his father’s death.
And this is why i headcanon that sesshomaru was also a kid when their father died - and he died shortly after “leaving” sesshomaru and his mother and having inuyasha. Idk, it makes a lot more sense to me that he’d have all this resentment bottled up if that had happened when he was just a boy, so he never had the emotional tools to deal with this properly.
Also this mentality that the manga characters have about the differences between a “human heart” and a “yokai heart”, meaning that yokais have no feelings is so funny to me, because boy, they feel a lot lol. I wish this was more discussed in the manga.
I think Sesshomaru’s mother’s behavior says a lot too. I posted onc about how I headcanon Sesshomaru’s mother is incredibly puckish because she is clearly teasing him, in the one appearance she makes. You can’t tease him the way she does and not understand the emotions you’re poking at to some extent, I feel. But she’s also kind of an (utterly hilarious) ass about it…which…is also similar to her son.
I think we also have to examine Sesshomaru’s motives for wanting Tessaiga: he wanted it not just because it was powerful, but because it was his father’s, and the fact that the younger son, Inuyasha, inherited it – in a culture where priority in inheritance is normally given to elder sons – must have been an extra-bitter pill to swallow. He feltliterally entitled to it, and like Inuyasha did not deserve it.
I do wish I could recall what terms they use for “human heart” and “youkai heart” though because I already know that they do use at least two different terms that got translated in English to “heart” (one of which referred to the literal heart, i.e. the muscle/organ that pumps blood in the body, vs another term referring to an “emotional” heart, i.e. what we use “heart” as a metaphor for).
I get the feeling there is a more subtle distinction or nuance in the original Japanese that we’re missing due to translations. @fast-moon you still around to chime in?
-v
