Inuyasha VS Kurama (Inuyasha VS Yu Yu Hakusho)

(L.A.D.)

(Kaiser)

(Strunton)

(Flip)

(Giotto)

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

‒Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Inuyasha, the silver haired Hanyo and youngest son of Tōga.

Kurama, the silver haired Yoko turned yōkai-human hybrid.

The Yōkai have terrorized and fascinated humans for millenia, and their tales would be recorded for all to see. The idea that such strange and otherworldly beasts could ever learn something like love and compassion seems ludicrous, yet these two have learned to do so. The love of a human caused these two to change their ways and gave them the motivation to protect their loved ones, becoming a change for good in the world they live in. Will Inuyasha’s unwavering heart and hard-earned strength carry him through? Or will Kurama’s cunning mind and centuries of experience secure his victory? Let’s settle this debate once and for all, and find out who would win a DEATHBATTLE!

Before We Start…

Media & Help

As you’d expect, the main focus of this blog will be both characters’ original manga and their anime adaptations. Dubiously canon content such as anime films will be included for both for the sake of soft-compositing and comprehensive analysis. For Inuyasha, both versions of its sequel, Hanyo no Yashahime are being considered valid and will be used as well.

Of course, we dedicate a special thanks again to L.A.D., Aggravating_Floor, Garf and SirusStuff for helping us with some of the images and GIFs.

Glossary

Both series use a lot of recurring terminology that you might not be familiar with, especially when it comes to Inuyasha. Here we will lay out the most important terms we will be bringing up a lot. Come back here if you get confused. Due to some compromises made in English localizations, we will prefer the usage of the original Japanese terms.

Inuyasha

Yōki: Yōki is the energy and power all Yōkai in Inuyasha use to fight, it can be used in various ways such as channeled through claws, swords, turned into shields or different elements such as fire, lightning, wind etc. Translated to Demon Energy in English localizations.

Yoketsu: Also known as Vortex of Demonic Energy, is essentially the visual manifestation of Yōki in the form of a whirlpool that appears behind Yōkai. This vortex can only be seen by a few trained enough to detect them, and if sliced it can sever a Yōkai’s life, killing them instantly.

Yōkai: Yōkai are a series of different supernatural creatures from Feudal Japan who can live for thousands of years, normally causing trouble in towns and living sometimes in determined groups hidden in the mountains. They can range from being animals, trees, stones, ogres etc. Translated to Demon in English localizations.

Daiyōkai: Translated to Great Yōkai, they’re the strongest and most respected Yōkai, whose powers are unparalleled compared to other Yokai. Normally the more human-looking, the stronger they are. Inuyasha’s father, Toga, was a Daiyokai.

Hanyo: A half-Yokai. Used to describe Inuyasha, his daughter and his nieces. It's also used to describe creatures composed of many different yōkai and a human, like Naraku.

Shikon Pearl: Also known as the Jewel of the Four Souls, is an ancient jewel created after the priestess Midoriko pulled out a Dragon Yōkai’s soul and by accident fused it with her own. So in the inside of this pearl, a never ending fight between both is happening. Depending on who has it, be it Yōkai or a Priestess, it can grant them immense power and boost their physical abilities. Either fully turning it pure or turning it into complete darkness. Also known as the Sacred Jewel or Shikon no Tama.

Sacred Power: The sacred power is used by certain humans that take the role of priestess such as Midoriko, Kikyo or Kagome or monks such as Miroku. It’s essentially used to purify and cleanse the dark influences of Jaki (Corrupted Yōki), but it requires it to be equivalent or strong enough to do so.

Miasma: Also known as Shōki, (Swamp Gas/ Bad Air), is a toxic mist/gas generated by the evilest of Yōkai, killing any creature or living thing in its vicinity and turning them into skeletons, covering large areas.

YuYu Hakusho

Reiki: It’s the series main power source used by all the human and spirit fighters in the verse such as Yusuke and Kuwabara. It can be used in combat in the form of energy blasts and protective barriers, and enhances physicality. Translated to Spirit Energy in English localizations.

Yōki: The yōkai counterpart of Spirit Energy. It’s like Spirit Energy but instead used by yōkai such as Kurama and Hiei. Translated to Demon Energy in English localizations.

Aura: The physical, visible manifestation of one’s Reiki or Yōki. Can be used offensively or defensively.

Yōkai: The term specifically used in YuYu Hakusho to describe creatures hailing from the Makai (Demon World). There are many subcategories of Yokai, representing natural elements, animals, ghosts, demons and other concepts. Translated to Demon in English localizations.

Mazoku: The strongest residents of the Makai, considered far stronger than even S-Class Yokai. Translates to “Demon Tribe”.

Folklore

Both Inuyasha and YuYu Hakusho are deeply spiritual series, steeped in the supernatural that pertains to Japanese mythology and folklore. Being part yōkai themselves, Inuyasha and Kurama perfectly embody these spiritual themes, which overlap a lot between their series, both narratively and aesthetically.

While localizations tend to translate the term to “demon”, yōkai are a vast array of supernatural beings from Japan that includes ghosts, monsters, demons, ogres and all sorts of other creatures. Both characters in this blog are based on canine yōkai and a few other figures from other mythologies, so this section is dedicated to talking a little about their origins and cultural influences.

Inuyasha

While not outright the same, Inuyasha’s Dog Yōkai draw heavily from the Inugami (犬神, dog god or dog spirit), a yōkai that takes the form of a canine spirit. It’s a possession spirit, a familiar at the service of their master that can be passed down from generation to generation. The method with which an Inugami is created varies, but the most common one goes like this: a dog must be starved and have its head cut off. The head is then buried underneath a crossroad, where the dog’s grudge against the living will build up as thousands of people will pass over it. After enough time, the dog’s soul will turn into an Onryo (怨霊, a maleficent, vengeful spirit). After that, a ritual is performed to mummify and enshrine the head, putting the spirit under the command of whoever the responsible sorcerer desires. They look like normal dogs in public in order to not raise suspicion, but their true form lies within a secret shrine inside the owner’s house: a mummified dog head dressed in ceremonial robes.

The worship and use of Inugami is mainly spread around western Japan, generally found in urban centers and places outside the sphere of influence of Kitsune (Fox Yōkai, which we’ll get into later). There are many theories about the origins of Inugami, including them being born from the four split and scattered pieces of a slain Nue (a yōkai with the head of a monkey, the body of a dog and the tail as a snake), being born from a drawing by a famous Buddhist monk to ward off boars, or being born from the fragments of a cursed stone that flew to the Shikoku prefecture when split. While the exact point in which the practice of creating Inugami started is not known, it is documented that the ritual sorcery was outlawed in the Heian period between 794 and 1185.

Given its nature as a cursed spirit, Inugami are capable of possessing victims, a possession notoriously difficult to remove and heavily detrimental to the victim. However, if connected to a human master, they can be extremely loyal and grant them great fortune, as long as their relationship is mutually beneficial and their masters are kind.  Attachment to an Inugami spirit could be carried across generations, but if their masters are cruel, they can fall to an ill fate, as Inugami are brutal killers and architects of misfortune if one wound up on their bad side.

Visually, the InuYasha parallels are fairly obvious, as the Dog Yōkai’s white hair is likely a nod to the Inugami’s often described white fur. Besides the visual similarities, there are parallels to be made. While Kagome is obviously not Inuyasha’s owner, her commands to him and his collar controlling his yōkai side can easily be interpreted as a nod to the Inugami origins of the character. His robes, stated by the mangaka to be based on priest robes of the Sengoku period, are also a nod to the religious ceremonial robes of the dog yōkai. His brother Sesshomaru has even more blatant parallels, with his ability to transform into a dog yōkai that shares several visual similarities with the Japanese Inugami.

But, surprisingly, Inuyasha’s mythology influences don’t come exclusively from Japan. In Chinese mythology, the Tiengou (天狗, heavenly dog) is a celestial beast that sometimes resembles a ball of fire in the sky, used to explain meteors and falling stars, amongst other cosmic phenomena. Ancient Chinese people believed that solar eclipses were caused by a "heavenly dog ​​eating the sun." When this phenomenon occurred, people would beat drums and firecrackers to scare the heavenly dog ​​away. In ancient China, the Heavenly Dog was also considered the name of an ominous deity in the moon. On this day, it is forbidden to pray to ghosts and gods or to ask for blessings. The ancients regarded shooting stars in the sky as very unlucky, so the Heavenly Dog also became a name for an ominous star.

The Tiangou is also known as an enemy of Zhang Xian (張仙, Taoist God of fertility). Their story recalls that the celestial dog was blocking the stars from descending to earth to be reborn. Zhang Xian drove the celestial dog away by shooting arrows at him, so that people could have children. Another legend has it that he swallowed the moon alongside Chang’e (姮娥, Taoist Goddess of the Moon), who had hidden in it after stealing an elixir of immortality from Hou Yi (后羿, a Chinese hero of archery). After the dog was captured by the Queen Mother of the West (one of the supreme deities of China) and appointed as guardian of the Southern Gate of Heaven, the moon was spat out, and it is said that Chang’e still lives there.

InuYasha’s relationship with the Tiengou is fairly interesting. Outside of the myth of the bad omens of falling stars being a clear influence to the Grim Comet in Yashahime, the Heavenly Dog is also very important to the lore of the Dog Yōkai. Sesshoumaru’s moon motif can be traced to the Tiangu swallowing it and being the cause of lunar related phenomena, and his mother living in a castle in the sky is also a clear nod to the myth of Chang’e, and of course Kaguya of Japanese mythology. Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru’s father, the Great Dog General Tōga, is also depicted being fought in the past by archers firing arrows at him in the sky.

There are, of course, many more mythological influences one could trace in the Inuyasha series, not only limited to yōkai, but also Shinto and Buddhist gods, along with other folktales. Without delaying further, let’s talk about the dog yōkai’s rival, whose setting is just as filled with rich mythological influences.

Kurama

Yoko Kurama is very directly based on the Kitsune (狐, fox), one of Japan’s most popular yōkai. Being a fox yōkai occupying the body of a young boy, when Kurama reveals his true form, you’ll see a towering silver-haired wolf man.

The Japanese Kitsune is a Fox Yōkai. It’s one of the most recognizable and media influential yōkai in Japanese folklore (There are two represented even on Death Battle!). The Kitsune are most recognized for their intelligence, ability to shapeshift, and, in conjunction with both, their capacity for deception. There are several folktales dealing with Kitsune and while their capacity for treacherousness is a recurring theme, so is their loyalty to the few they trust. This is where Kurama himself comes in.

Kurama is the cold and stoic figure in the Yu Yu Hakusho quartet. He is often the one who makes the hardest decisions in the crew and when he does so, he does so efficiently and without mercy. He can be extremely brutal to his cruelest of enemies, to the point where his own allies are shaken by his behavior. This is reflected well in his abilities too. His core power is his Poison Ivy-like control over vines he can grow and shrink to his will. He mostly uses these vines to set up traps for his enemies. By the end of the series his powers have upgraded, to the point where he can poison and trap enemies in illusions. One of his most significant feats in the series is when he traps elder Toguro in a permanent illusion while his plants sap the life out of him. This is very reminiscent of the Kitsune’s abilities to deceive people and create illusions, and how wicked they can be towards their enemies.

There is, however, another lesser-known side of the kitsune fox spirit. A commonly known sub-set of Kitsune are known as Inari foxes. They hold the same abilities as mentioned above, but are believed to be more worldly and kind than their Ninko (人狐, man fox) counterparts. And one distinct characteristic of said foxes is their loyalty. They have an impressive memory, and will often repay kindness with other kindness.

Kurama reflects this trait well. He is one of the most loyal members of team Yu Yu from the very beginning, along with being the most moral. Even when he begins the story working with Hiei, he refuses to harm Yusuke, and when Yusuke helped him save his mother’s life, it created a bond and a debt that Kurama would carry with him for the rest of the series. From that point forward, Kurama would be the most loyal ally to Yusuke, and his merry gang of detectives, risking life and limb for them.

One lesser focused trait of Kurama’s abilities as a thief, especially in his past life as Yoko Kurama. He was famous as a legendary bandit and that character trait of his is called back to when in the yōkai world during the Three Kings Arc. This is another trait that’s found in Kitsune, tied to their status as tricksters, and even associated with foxes in real life!

Character Backgrounds

Inuyasha

Through millennia, the nation of Japan has undergone major changes, a pretty divisive country whose conflicts have taken it to where it sits right nowadays, centuries of history and culture have been recorded, where tales of shogun, samurai and empires have been explored, but imagine for a second you could travel back in time, right to the exact moment where all of this happened… 500 years in the past. This was the case of Kagome Higurashi, a highschool girl from the Heisei Era, who found hidden within her house a mysterious well which allowed her to travel back in time, in the Feudal Era. Young Kagome gazed at something in this world… Cold, lonely and seemingly broken stabbed into a tree, his look was peaceful just as that serene white hair. Citizens and local priest Kaede warned her, this was someone that you didn’t want to liberate, after all in that tree was nothing but a violent, and reckless Half Yōkai, Half Human, Inuyasha.

Son of the Great Dog Tōga, who had governed over Japan for hundreds of years, Inuyasha was the key for Kagome to survive in this wild world where tales of deadly beasts and ghosts are a reality. He was freed from this mysterious arrow thanks to Kagome, and he had awakened yet again and given a new chance to follow his dreams. Inuyasha helped her with an iron claw, but ruthless as he was warned to be, he wasn’t kind to young Kagome at first, he had a clear idea of what he wanted to do, and shockingly enough she was the answer to that. As in her hands was the most desired object in all history by Yōkai and Humans alike: The Shikon Pearl, which could grant Inuyasha his biggest wish of power, a resolution born out of decades of tragedy.

200 Years ago, the Great Dog Tōga had fallen in love with the human princess Izayoi, something which for every yōkai resulted beyond insulting. And in an unfortunate turn of events, Tōga perished in the hands of the yōkai Ryūkotsusei, not without first calling his newborn baby by his right name: Inuyasha. Being raised by his mother, Inuyasha had it rough growing up as he was discriminated against by yōkai and humans alike. And as years went by and his mother passed away, Inuyasha grew lonely without any of that warmth for a long time, until his eyes were captivated by a priestess in a nearby town known as Kikyo, he only had the intention to seek after the legends of Shikon Pearl to become stronger, but approaching her on a more human way as time went by, changed something in his mind, she was too in a situation that restrained her, holding up to the expectations from people as priestess, she wanted to live happily at someone’s side and exploring other aspects, such as love. Perhaps what Inuyasha needed was that too, love, compassion, maybe becoming human was the answer.

But a dark twist of fate separated them, something that they didn’t consider was in between, crawling from the darkest sides of both humanity and yōkai, fooled them into betraying each other through the power of illusions, the Half Yōkai Naraku. With Inuyasha supposedly stealing by force the Pearl and attacking the village, causing everything to burn, Kikyo responded to her duty and with pain sealed Inuyasha into the Tree of Ages as her last doing, dying along with the Shikon Pearl.

Now, 50 years after the tragedy, things were different. Something Inuyasha didn’t want to admit how much pain it caused him for Kagome to be a reincarnation of Kikyo. But this difference wouldn’t last long, as the pearl was fragmented into pieces travelling around Japan. Whether they wanted it or not, their duty was clear and it was to gather them all, which wasn’t going to be easy. With this duo of strength and strategy, there was nothing that could stop them… outside themselves, as if two hot-headed teens could ever agree. But their adventures only grew their bond stronger. Inuyasha started to understand things that he could have never imagined, what truly meant to be human? What was the real power he needed? He’d find that in his signature weapon inherited by his father, Tessaiga, meant to protect others, to protect humans, snatching it from his arrogant pure blood brother, Sesshomaru.

Inuyasha learnt a lot from Kagome, and she learnt from him. He made even more friends along the way such as Miroku, Shippo and Sango. But there was clearly something more than friendship between both, they fell in love as chapters went by, accepting their flaws and realizing their true feelings as difficult as that could be. The problem? The ghosts from Inuyasha’s past came back to haunt him, Naraku was ready for another wave of torment to get his hands on that pearl, bringing Kikyo yet again to life, as a way to break our Dog Hanyo emotionally. And for several times he did, even losing his humanity a couple times. But even if it was difficult for her too to admit it, and to deal with things out of her reach, Kagome remained there, no matter what to snap Inuyasha into his senses when necessary. They were going to defeat Naraku at all costs, the man who had damaged their lives and for what? But pure spite and envy.

In the end, Inuyasha had everything that mattered, friends, family and somewhere he could call home, in contrast to Naraku. And gave an end to suffering, no more magic pearls which could make everyone fight for them, but he’d never do this without love, love that transcended time. Along the way, he came to understand that true strength was never in becoming a full yōkai, but in bearing the weight of his own fang as he was, neither fully yōkai nor human, and using that to protect those he cared for. He kept fighting not as one or the other, but as himself: the father of Shihanyō Moroha, whom he would swear to protect, even if it took an eternity.

Kurama

The legendary bandit Yoko Kurama was, like many yōkai of the Makai, building a reputation through countless schemes and daring heists. With various partners aiding his crimes, he quickly became a name feared throughout that realm. A robbery gone wrong eventually forced the King of Thieves to flee, and in a desperate last effort Kurama sent his soul to the Human World, where it took refuge within an unborn child who would be known as Shuichi Minamino. His original plan was simply to lay low until his strength returned, allowing him to escape once more while growing up under the care of his new human mother. However, living as a human slowly began to change the fox’s perspective. One day while returning home from school, he reached for something he needed for a project and accidentally slipped, falling toward several broken shards, but his mother rushed in and shielded him from harm. Seeing her willingly place herself in danger for his sake made Kurama reconsider abandoning her, and every time he later saw the scars left on her arms he found himself unable to leave her behind, especially after his father had already passed away before the incident. With all this in mind, he chose to remain by her side, marking the beginning of Kurama’s new life in the Human World. During this time, he became involved in an incident where his classmate Maya was kidnapped by a yōkai, which also marked his first encounter with his future ally, Hiei. The two joined forces to defeat the intruder, and from that moment their friendship began. Life seemed to return to normal afterward, until his mother suddenly fell gravely ill. Seeing her in such a fragile state only strengthened Kurama’s resolve: he had become a yōkai who truly loved his human mother.

When desperate times called for desperate measures, Kurama teamed up with Hiei and Goki. The three yōkai stole invaluable items from the Reikai, with Kurama taking the Forlorn Hope for himself. With its power, he could wish his mother well again and give her a life of happiness, but the artifact came with the price that it would take his own life, something Kurama was definitely willing to do. But his life was not meant to end there, because newly appointed Spirit Detective Yusuke Urameshi stepped forward and offered his own life to empower the artifact, extending Kurama’s life through that sacrifice so that in the end both of them were able to live, while Kurama’s mother would recover swiftly and go on to live a long and wonderful life. The yōkai was deeply grateful for Yusuke’s selfless act, and after returning the artifact and helping stop Hiei’s scheme, he became eligible for parole.

When Yusuke was assigned to stop the Saint Beasts from invading the Human World, Kurama officially joined him as an invaluable member of the team, his calm and calculating nature making him just as formidable as the others. As their battles continued against ever stronger adversaries, Kurama himself grew more powerful and gradually reconnected with his former self. During a fight in the Dark Tournament, he fully awakened the legendary silver-haired fox yōkai, Yoko Kurama, embracing that identity as an integral part of who he was. From then on, he continued to grow stronger as both the human Shuichi Minamino and the yōkai Yoko Kurama, constantly trying to balance the two sides of his existence.

At the same time, he was personally invited by Yomi, one of the Three Kings, to assist him in his ambitions. With so much at stake, Kurama struggled to determine where he truly belonged, yet as always Yusuke found his own way of helping. When Yusuke proposed a tournament among the yōkai to decide everything in a winner-take-all battle, Kurama entered alongside many others, and in the midst of that conflict he finally discovered his answer. Though he did not win the tournament, he realized he wanted to live as a human alongside his family and friends, choosing to leave his bandit past behind as he looked toward a human future: finishing school, working at his stepfather’s company, and most importantly remaining surrounded by the people who loved him very much.

Skill & Experience

Inuyasha

While Inuyasha might be seen as a brute force unga-bunga character and doesn’t exactly have a lot of proper training besides in finding Yōki Vortexes, it could lead to incorrect assumptions about his natural skill as a swordfighter. Something very consistent about his character is that he has great precision with his slashes, knowing exactly how many inches his target should be for him to properly strike his foe without causing collateral damage. It is impressive to the extent that, when he first learned the technique known as the Wind Scar (discussed further below), even while blinded and in severe pain, he demonstrated enough precision to control the extent of his attack, ensuring that he did not kill his brother. Of course, all we are mentioning are skills he already possessed since the start of the series, because his evolution was so great that not a single other character has the mastery of the Tetsaiga in the same way he does. Something that clearly helped his growth is his ability to learn things very fast, to a point he mastered techniques without even knowing them, simply by instinct, instincts so sharp he is able to defend himself while unconscious.

While Inuyasha is not the brightest tool in the shed, he’s clearly not that stupid either, showing cleverness in numerous points across the manga. This is true especially when it comes to finding weak points on his enemies, developing strategies on the fly or waiting for the right moment to strike them more effectively, and he is no stranger to even tricking opponents so he can reach them. The reason why Inuyasha may seem more simple-minded than he actually is may be related to his goal of ending fights as quickly as possible, often in a single decisive blow. This is another sign that Inuyasha isn't always purely reckless, and how his instincts optimize for efficiency too… even though he will be reckless sometimes, thinking that a cockroach really doesn't deserve to keep living and overkilling it with Scar Wind, without remotely thinking about the consequences. Our doggy boy is also very experienced when it comes to fighting enemies with spiritual shields, and that’s due to a lot of the later arcs following a pattern: enemies have aura barriers, when someone shows up that he can’t break through with his strongest attack or by exploiting a weakness, he gets a power up to deal with stronger defenses, even tougher enemies appear, one of them can’t be exploited, and the cycle just keeps going on for a while.

Kurama

As with many yōkai, Kurama’s experience dates to many centuries during his time as a legendary thief. He was as strong as an A-Class Yōkai and only a few people could keep up with him. While he did lose a lot of power upon becoming a human, he was certainly not someone to take lightly in a battle. Kurama is as calm as he is ruthless, always calculating for a strategy to give himself an upper hand. He is greatly respected by fellow yōkai, Hiei, to the point where he chose Kurama as a partner so that Hiei would never have to face him in battle. Not only would Kurama join Yusuke as part of the team, but he played an important role as the brains of the group. Kurama is a genius, consistently earning some of the highest test results in school, being the one to formulate plans, and being quickest to figure out a battle plan. This intellect not only makes him great as a strategist, but it makes him cunning as well, such as when he outplayed Kaito in his own territory while still conforming to its rules and making Amanuma realize the horrors beyond his own mortal comprehension. Kurama has been able to plot out battle strategies, point out weak spots in foes, use his own disadvantages as an advantage and even effortlessly beat someone who could read his mind. Beyond the brains, Kurama has shown some degree of knowledge in martial arts and lip reading. Soon enough, not only would Kurama reach his A-Class status again, but he would become an S-Class Yōkai, a level so strong that nothing in Spirit World could stop them. Yomi of the Three Kings would choose Kurama as his own second in hand as he believed his knowledge was extremely valuable and advantageous in the conflicts with the other kings.

Equipment

Inuyasha

Fire Rat Robe

Once belonging to his father Tōga, Inuyasha was given the Fire Rat Robe by his mother Izayoi who turned it into this iconic red kimono. While a simple piece of cloth at first glance, it’s actually a really strong armor woven with fire rat’s fur. Making it incredibly resistant to high temperatures, such as Hellfire or the Cauldron of Resonance, which can burn young Hanyo into nothingness. Inuyasha has also shown to use it to protect his friends from Naraku’s Miasma, an extremely poisonous and deadly gas as well as other corrosive substances, or to cover Kagome from sword attacks from Yura.

Tessaiga

Tetsusaiga 鉄砕牙 (Iron Fang), also known as Tessaiga, is Inuyasha’s main weapon across the series. Forged using Inu-No Taishō’s fangs, Tessaiga is a sword focused above all things on protection, representing Tōga’s most benevolent side. Hidden in his corpse in Netherworld, Tessaiga awaited for his rightful master, which by the whims of fate happened to arrive, after Sesshomaru stole the Black Pearl hidden in Inuyasha’s eye to travel to Netherworld and take it by force, but failing in the process. At first Tessaiga rejected Inuyasha, but seeing his determination to save the human girl Kagome, that rusty and old katana turned a this massive chunk of iron packing a huge destructive power and comical area of effect even under its most basic form, a thing which Sesshomaru longed for.

Tessaiga is a really special weapon, only Inuyasha and humans can use it, as it’s enchanted so no yōkai can wield it, otherwise it will reject anyone who dares to lay fingers by zapping them or creating a barrier. Unactivated Tessaiga takes the form of a simple katana, but even in this state Tessaiga can be used to spawn protective barriers by stabbing it into the ground. And after activating it by channeling Inuyasha’s yōki, it allows him to use moves like Scar Wind (which we’ll delve into later).

Despite all its power however, Tessaiga met its end in the jaws of Goshinki, an ogre yōkai which shattered it into pieces. The weapon which once acted as Inuyasha’s seal to never fall to his Inner Yōkai was gone, and there was no return… If his friends weren’t there for him to snap him back to reality. And it’s that despite this unfortunate event, Tessaiga’s real potential was only about to be achieved. As the family's personal swordsmith Lord Totosai forged it once again, this time with Inuyasha’s own fangs, he created an unbreakable connection between the two.

But as any man who dares to carry an enormous piece of iron as a weapon, Inuyasha had a hard time mastering the weight of his own resolve, his own sword, understanding it and what it meant for him. Because if it wasn’t clear enough by this point, Tessaiga has its own consciousness and can protect Inuyasha’s life from otherwise fatal blows, functioning in a manner somewhat similar to Tenseiga, as well as warning Inuyasha in situations through burning his hands, or block attacks for Inuyasha, like the countless times it has covered itself in wind. There have been attempts to copy Tessaiga’s techniques, but none of them have reached the extent of Inuyasha’s skill with it.

But if you’re familiar enough with the series, you’d know that Tessaiga is in fact known for its unique ability to assimilate and absorb powers from other yōkai after defeating them in combat. Giving him access to a lot of different abilities which we’ll elaborate soon.

There’s not a lot of weaknesses known for Tessaiga, but it’s shown that it can be vulnerable to getting placed into restraining spells, and despite being super effective against several sorts of creatures, it’s a known fact Tessaiga can’t affect spiritual entities.

Scabbard

What is a great sword without its trusty scabbard? While you may not expect it, Tessaiga’s Scabbard built from the Bokusen tree, it’s actually a really strong tool on its own. And nonetheless, to hold such an immensely powerful sword, an equally strong seal is required. This scabbard can help Inuyasha to block attacks from the likes of Sesshomaru and Kirinmaru, as well to create defensive barriers. Its connection with the sword also allows it to call Tessaiga telepathically.

Red Tessaiga

After defeating the Bat Yōkai Taigokumaru, which specialized in creating really strong shields with his yōki, Tessaiga absorbed its power and turned red. But unlike Taigokumaru, Inuyasha cannot create barriers, but instead slices and breaks through them through a disrupting effect. Being able to slice through some of Naraku’s barriers, chains which protected the gates to Netherworld or dimensional barriers to other worlds such as Kaguya’s Dream Castle.

Despite sounding impressive on paper, Inuyasha has to be stronger than his opponent in order to slice it, the most notable example being when he couldn’t break through Hakudoushi’s shield.

Diamond Tessaiga

After Inuyasha proved his resolve to protect his friends instead of simply asking for his sword to be stronger, Inuyasha succeeded in inheriting Hosenki’s power, a Diamond Yōkai which guarded Tōga’s grave at Netherworld. Being able to use a new powerful move called Kongosha (Adamant Barrage). This version of Tessaiga is powerful enough that its diamond slivers are able to pierce through Naraku’s Miasma Barrier in his 2nd Form, which withstood Scar Wind, Bakuryuuha, Red Tessaiga and attacks from Sesshomaru at the time.

Dragon Scale Tessaiga

Ryūjin was a dragon yōkai which commanded the swordsmith Tōshū to create a really powerful sword from his scales known as Dakki. Inuyasha defeated Ryūjin and Tōshū (who was possessed by Dakki), transforming Tessaiga into this version with green scales. For short, Dakki was a katana with the ability to drain opponents off their yōki, copying their techniques and abilities to use them back against them. Dragon Scale is basically just that but much better, as Tessaiga can absorb a nearly infinite amount of energy with it. With this form, Inuyasha has done the following:

• Absorb Mizuchi’s venom, which could erode a whole forest. This venom is so powerful even Mizuchi couldn’t regenerate when Inuyasha used it against him.
• Get rid of yōkai possession two times by draining their yōki.
  • Took off a Cat Yōkai from a nun’s body.
  • Removed Magatsuhi, a spiritual entity who was controlling Inuyasha.

But there was a major issue with this form, and it’s that the yōki absorption had to be moderate, as overloading it causes Inuyasha to receive a warning from Tessaiga, burning his hands if he’s reaching a limit, like with the full potential of Mizuchi’s venom, which Totosai stated he could’ve died. This happens because Inuyasha as Hanyo cannot withstand high amounts of energy… until this weakness was later resolved through absorbing Nikosen’s Holy Energy, a former monk turned yōkai as it purified the energy. Albeit even without the backlash, absorbing things like a whole Swamp Yōkai, is where things started to get difficult.

Inuyasha wasn’t happy enough with that, as he found deep within himself that this power wasn’t really achieved by effort, but rather forced power stealing planned by Naraku.  Totosai seeing this situation, sent Inuyasha to train under the guidance of an old man Holy Yōkai known as Yoreitasei to sharpen his skills in aiming at what he really needed, Yōki Vortexes, the source of power from all yōkai in the InuYasha universe (See more on: Abilities). As Dragon Scale Tessaiga with its absorbing powers, was nothing but betraying Tessaiga’s real essence as a cutting weapon.

After defeating Yoreitasei in an illusionary world, Inuyasha found out he was a yōkai this whole time, and so he cut through Yoreitasei’s vortex absorbing both his yōki AND holy energy which is vastly stronger and pure than Nikosen’s, after this Inuyasha can actually identify the vortexes anytime and slice through them, weakening his yōkai opponents massively or killing them altogether. This was a difficult process, as he needed to be sure he wasn’t being fooled with other Vortexes which happen to appear.

Fire Tessaiga

Ginka and Kinka were two yōkai which species bond them at birth. Causing their constant fights to kill each other and win control of the body, having opposing abilities of thunder and lightning. But as Moryomaru arrived and absorbed Ginka, Kinka was practically on his death bed, mourning his brother’s absorption. But as a last act of courage, Kinka fused with Tessaiga and created Fire Tessaiga to avenge his brother. As the name implies, it has really strong fire, but it was explicitly to exploit a weakness from Moryomaru absorbing Ginka, as Ginka’s lightning resonated with Fire Tessaiga.

Black Tessaiga

Kuroi Tessaiga (黒くろい鉄砕牙), is Tessaiga’s last achieved form in the series. After Tōga battled with the yōkai Shishinki, he copied a deadly space cutting technique known as Meido Zangetsuha (Dark Path of the Dawn’s Moon Wave). But after realizing how harmful to anyone it was, Tōga divided Tessaiga to create Tenseiga (Sesshomaru’s weapon), and hid the Meido technique inside it. Which only came out after Sesshomaru felt sympathy for Kagura’s death.

Despite using the technique at first and being fascinated with it, Sesshomaru in his final fight against Inuyasha discovered the truth about Tenseiga being a fraction of Tessaiga, having a dilemma with it at first, and seeking anything to defeat his brother once and for all. But as Naraku intervened, and almost got them killed off inside the Meido, Sesshomaru broke Tenseiga on purpose to give this ability to Inuyasha and get them out.

This is by far the definitive power for Inuyasha, as on a similar note to Dragon Scale, Inuyasha mastered it to its full extent, once again acknowledging Tessaiga’s nature as a cutting weapon, creating Meido Blades. Waves of this space cutting ability which were able to slice Naraku’s godly regenerating body into pieces.

Black Pearl

Hidden in Inuyasha’s right eye resides this mysterious jewel, which can lead anyone who uses it to the Border of Afterlife, a place between Netherworld and Living World that the Great Dog used as a death-bed. The place is practically impossible to escape from unless you walk to the Lake of the Staff of Two Heads, which opens itself by using Tenseiga or have really good dimensional travel artifacts such as the Meido Stone. It’s worth noting that the pearl is non-combat applicable, as Inuyasha has never used it in canon to do anything with it, unlike Sesshomaru.

Myoga The Fly

Inu-Family’s most loyal servant across all 3 known generations. Myoga is a fly yōkai, who despite being a coward for most of the time as he’d be stomped badly against any mildly powerful foe, he’s in charge to be Inuyasha’s guide, living for eons, seeing all types of yōkai, stories, and being familiar with Tōga’s weapons inherited to Inuyasha and Sesshomaru.  

And just as a good fly, Myoga can sting anyone to feed on their blood, and this has proven to be useful countless times. Snapping Kagome out of Unmother’s illusions, snapping a princess out of a sleeping spell caused by a Frog Yōkai and sucking poison out of Human Inuyasha, Kagome, Sango, Miroku and Moroha’s blood.

He’s even able to create elixirs so they can restore their blood right after.

Sō'unga (Non-Standard)

In Inuyasha Movie 3, it’s said that Tōga possessed another sword outside the already known Tessaiga (which rules over earth) and Tenseiga (which rules over heaven), known as Sō'unga, which rules over hell, forged from an evil hell dragon’s scales. 500 years in the present, Sō'unga was found by Kagome’s grandfather, and broke off its seal, seeking for the closest yōkai host it could take, finding Inuyasha in the process and controlling him for a brief period of time.

Sō'unga’s main ability is to summon 100 dead souls to control and take as zombies, through covering the dead with a mysterious red liquid similar to blood. Its main technique is the Dragon Twister, a large tornado filled with evil energy which leaves a major path of destruction.

As an evil sword, Sō'unga requires its user to have a strong will to not fall possessed by it. Inuyasha didn’t meet the qualifications for and required assistance from Kagome.  

Kurama

Seeds

Kurama carries a variety of plant seeds, all of which have different purposes depending on what he needs. He stores them in his hair.

Rose Whip

A whip that evolved from a rose. The whip has a very long reach and is covered in thorns potent enough to slash and slice any unfortunate victims, with Hiei saying that it can cut through steel like a hot knife through butter. Kurama wields this weapon with grace and speed and he doesn’t even need to utilize his hands to wield it as he can wield with his hair. The whip can also conceal seeds in it, making it very difficult for anyone to spot.

Seed of De-Incarnation

A potion made from the seed of a plant in the Makai. Drinking it would help Kurama access his Yoko transformation much easier. The potion’s effects normally last for 15 minutes, but the duration was shortened to 6 minutes after Kurama had kept practicing with it.  After the Dark Tournament, Kurama stopped using this.

Abilities

Inuyasha

Hanyo Physiology

Son of a Daiyōkai father and a human mother, Inuyasha was born a Hanyo (Half Yōkai), as we’ve mentioned. Sharing both human and yōkai traits such as his ears, his life has never been easy, suffering discrimination from yōkai as he can’t really be as powerful as Daiyōkai (too much Yōki acts as venom to them) and stains their pride, but can’t be accepted by humans either. So his original mission was to achieve becoming a full yōkai by all means necessary by Shikon Pearl granting his biggest wish.

To be more specific Inuyasha has inherited traits from his dad Tōga, the Great Dog. So he’s naturally packed with natural weapons such as superhuman strength, claws, regeneration and a really powerful smell, eyesight and senses, being able to see souls for example. Another thing he shares with yōkai is his longevity, as going by the 3rd Movie, Inuyasha stands at over 200 years old. It’s unsure how much this could span, but comparing him to his brother Sesshomaru, millennia are nothing for them. As a Hanyo however, he’s limited by things like New Moon which turn Inuyasha into a human, strapping him from his insane strength and use of yōki.

His dogginess also shows in some funny ways sometimes.

Energy

All living things, human, animal and yōkai are given life by both Kon and Haku in the InuYasha verse. Kon being the definition for Soul, and Haku for Life Force, together they form Kokoro (Heart). This has been actually played a few times in the franchise, as there’s some yōkai who have been attached to inmobile bodies, because only their Kon resides. Or in contrast, some bodies can move and walk by Haku, but are pretty much dead mentally and with no soul.

In Inuyasha’s case, he has never been directly in danger with either. But it’s worth noting that strapping him out of either would be lethal, as Sesshomaru for example was only ever stopped in combat by Kirinmaru’s attack which constantly was draining his Haku, nearly killing him for good.

Yōki

Yōki is the energy all yōkai in InuYasha use as an opposition to Priestess Sacred Energy. The yōki is vital to determine their strength and endurance, and the reason Inuyasha for example can use all of his abilities and techniques, whether natural such as Soul Stealer, or activating Tessaiga in the first place. It’s normally seen projected as this glowing energy, but it can take elemental properties, such being the case of fire yōkai like Entei and Kinka, lightning such as Sesshomaru and his Azure Dragon Wave, or even air.

But yōki is not only energy the characters use to fight, it’s later on revealed that it’s part of their very life and draining them out of it is lethal. Most notably, all yōkai have something called Yōketsu (妖穴, "Vortex of Evil Energy”), a visual manifestation of yōki in the form of a whirlpool that appears behind a yōkai and is visible to just a few. This vortex can be cut and its effect is an instant-kill upon the yōkai whose yōketsu is being cut.

Claws

As a Dog Yōkai, Inuyasha possesses claws as his natural weaponry and they’re his main method of attacking when Tessaiga isn’t around or turns Pure-Yōkai. A single scratch from them is enough to obliterate fodder yōkai into pieces, as Inuyasha actually imbues them with yōki in a move called Soul Stealer (which doesn’t actually steal souls).

But if we’re speaking claw techniques, by far the rawest has to be Blood Claws, which as you’d imagine he literally stabs himself and uses his own blood to attack as wave projectiles, this movement is so effective Inuyasha has actually gotten rid of several fodder yōkai with a single throw.

Regeneration/Endurance

Far superior to a human, Inuyasha has a really strong body and endurance as Hanyo. Having a regenerative factor, Inuyasha has healed in the span of a day or two from being stabbed or pierced across his body by Sesshomaru and a Mantis Yōkai, which even if the regeneration takes a while, it’s worth noting that this didn’t stop Inuyasha from fighting under these conditions, especially if he feels like protecting someone dear. He’s also recovered some minor things such as his teeth which can re-grow in less than a day, but perhaps the most impressive thing he has gone through is surviving Mt Hakurei’s barrier, composed of Holy/Spiritual energy which was actively hurting Inuyasha badly, but against all odds he powered through. He’s also able to keep himself awake and active way better than humans, not needing to sleep and rest for longer periods of time.

Smell

Like the good doggie boy he is, Inuyasha has an acute sense of smell which has proven to be key in many of his adventures. While it isn’t as great as his brother’s, it still has great range, as Inuyasha can identify specific organs, identify if someone is hurt, their bloodlust, and weirdly enough he’s even able to differentiate Kagome’s blood scent from others even when she was in a different time period altogether (how the fuck?). He can easily differentiate between human and yōkai blood, which helps a ton against opponents who disguise themselves by transforming.

After undergoing training by Yoreitasei, Inuyasha’s smell has actually been improved a ton, being able to identify real yōkai, as Yoreitasei casted an illusion so powerful it made humans look and smell the same as normal yōkai. Inuyasha’s smell now allows him to identify the previously mentioned Yōketsu, which is practically invisible to anyone, even regular yōkai.

It’s worth noting however that smell can be backfired given how sensitive it is, as a really potent stench from an ogre’s blood has given Inuyasha a hard time, or Sesshomaru for example was once fooled by Byakuya (the Inuyasha one, Bleach fans), who had used Magatsushi’s smell and created an illusion by that. Inuyasha’s smell was also fooled by other enemies, but it’s usually under specific circumstances and not that easy to pull off.

Scar Wind

If Ichigo has Getsuga Tensho and Yusuke has his Spirit Gun, Inuyasha has his own signature move known as Kaze no Kizu (風かぜの傷), translated to Scar Wind. This technique, inherited from his father Tōga, consists in detecting the near invisible small opening between Inuyasha’s aura and his opponent’s, to slice across it with a powerful wind beam deriving from Inuyasha. Feared by the countless yōkai who have dared to get into his path, Scar Wind has the potential to slay over a hundred yōkai in a single swing, demonstrated by Sesshomaru who mercilessly cleaned a mountain full of them. Inuyasha has used it countless times to defeat his opponents, even Sesshomaru was a victim of this attack. After Tessaiga was updated by Totosai with Inuyasha’s tooth, he took a while to adjust to the sword's new weight, but when it happened, he became able to cast his move much easier and pretty much spams it.

Backlash Wave

Also known as Bakuryuha (爆流破), the Backlash Wave is the evolution to Scar Wind, but instead of finding the rift between auras, Tessaiga coats itself in wind creating a tornado which later Inuyasha uses to envelop his opponent’s yōki into this swirling energy and sends it back, essentially pulling a Uno-Reverse card on them. This movement requires Inuyasha to have a stronger ki than his opponent (this is barely explained besides not being yōki), even if their power difference is huge, such as the case of the yōkai Ryūkotsusei, who centuries ago killed Tōga, with Backlash Wave Inuyasha tore him apart.

As powerful as it sounds, it’s worth noting that Bakuryuuha is not a guaranteed win against opponents, who somehow have managed to survive it or even overwhelm it, such as Takemaru or Naraku. Another specific requirement is the enemy to have yōki, otherwise it’d be rendered useless.

Adamant Barrage

Also known as Kongōsōha (金刚 枪 破), Adamant Barrage is a technique from Inuyasha’s Diamond Tessaiga which shoots multiple diamonds at high speeds at his opponent like an explosion. An incredibly dangerous ability with enough power to match Naraku’s second transformation. And nonetheless, considering diamond is one of the toughest materials in the natural world, surpassing even the shield from the Turtle Yōkai, Meijo . The deadliest usage of this ability comes from the 4th Movie, where he combined it with Bakuryuuha to defeat the fusion of the 4 Gods, creating a solid diamond tornado.

Meido Zangetsuha

At last but not least is Inuyasha’s most lethal move called Meido Zangetsuha (冥めい道どう残ざん月げつ破は), translated to Dark Path of the Dawn Moon's Wave. A technique from the Daiyōkai Shishinki consisting in slicing across space to open a path to the Netherworld. Originally sealed deep within Tenseiga, Sesshomaru eventually found it and started to master it. As the name suggests, it resembles a moon in some way, which goes from a small crescent slash to full perfect circle depending on the user’s skill, Sesshomaru for example was able to expand it to overshadow mountains. By Yashahime, Inuyasha is capable of expanding the portal to such absurd sizes that it eclipses a large fragment of the Grim Comet, whose description in a guidebook indicates it should be of comparable sizes to a multi-kilometer sized extinction level meteor.

What makes this technique so deadly is the fact that after the portal has opened, it starts to drag anything inside it as a black hole, as physical things such as mountain rock after making contact for a second with the portal are disintegrated. And it’s that the path to the netherworld in the manga it’s shown as a pitch black realm (in the anime it’s shown similar to outer space where several galaxies are held and destroyed by a big black and red circle), where after you get exposed to it for long your entire body and soul start to dissolve into nothingness, erasing you from existence. It’s impossible to escape it too, Inuyasha was only able to make his way thanks to Tenseiga which guided him to slice across the Meido and return to the normal world.

In the final fight against Naraku, just to remind him of his essence, Inuyasha gave the cherry top to complete Tessaiga and this movement. He turned it into a cutting ability, which translated into sending a barrage of Meido Waves, thrown at high-speeds. To understand how ridiculous this is, we have to understand Naraku at this point was fused with the Shikon Pearl, granting him an immortality that regenerated him from any physical attack or body destruction in seconds, the Meido Waves acting as a spamming move meant eventually Inuyasha was going to overwhelm him by sending every part of his being into Netherworld and erasing them from existence.

The only way a character has been able to get out of it, is breaking space directly to return to the world, such was the case of a yōkai in the Yashahime manga. Inuyasha can also use the Meido to travel between dimensions, especially one which Byakuya sent Kagome to after copying this same technique, being guided by Tessaiga’s light.

Resistances

• Extreme temperatures: Inuyasha’s Fire Rat Robes allow him to withstand the flames of his opponents, even when the fire can burn people to a crisp (760 to 982 °C). But he’s also seen doing fine enough against an ice yōkai’s cold beam that can flash freeze his surroundings (−48 °C).
• Toxins (Aura/Miasma and Poisons): Beyond the assistance of Myōga, the Fire Rat Robe and the Dragon Tessaiga, Inuyasha is no slouch against such threats himself. Despite lacking complete immunity, as shown in instances like Sesshomaru’s highly potent poisonous claws piercing Inuyasha, his Half yōkai physiology consistently grants him significant resistance to poisons and acids, as well as having great resistances against corrosion from miasma.
  • On numerous occasions, he is able to withstand powerful poisonous auras and acidic substances without being affected (sometimes even being stated to be immune to yōkai), most notably against Naraku’s poisonous corrosive miasma, which is powerful enough to destroy vegetation and turn soil infertile, as well as killing animals, in very large areas
  • On one instance, not only Inuyasha survived being really close to it, but Koga got drowned in it's miasma for a couple of time without dying 
  • Even the most fodder yōkai that produces miasma is capable of completely melting vegetation and humans away
  • The series clearly emphasizes that his human form lacks any comparable defense against it.
  • Even in cases the poison is too much and is killing him, his Full Yōkai form can kick in and protect him from the effects of poison, nullifying its effects.
• Mind Reading (Full Yōkai Only): The yōkai Goshinki was able to read minds and track his movements as Hanyo, but after turning Full Yōkai Inuyasha’s mind couldn’t be read.
• Illusions: Mind you, we are not saying he is immune, just that he can overpower them. Naraku trapped Inuyasha into an illusion, and Inuyasha (with the power of love) managed to break out of it.
  • Previously got out of Kikyo’s perception enchantment, which hid Kagome from his view and was manipulating him.
  • Broke out of Naraku’s illusion via the scent of Kagome’s blood.
  • Has a limit, as Yoreitaisei casted a spell across a whole town to fool Inuyasha’s senses and teach him to identify real yōkai scent.
  • Using the power of love again, snaps out of vines which show him a perfect reality with Kikyo.
  • Another Hanyo like him (Towa) was able to snap out of a mind controlling tree rot.
    • In a similar instance, Kagome in Movie 1 despite being mind controlled for a fair amount of time, was able to snap out of one of Meinomaru’s mind control tools after lots of mental stress.
• Life Force Draining: While not immune to it, he survived a fair bit of Nikosen's tree branches which had the intent to kill him, and over the years he could absorb an entire forest’s life force.
  • Even early on, he was also able to physically overpower Magic Beads that were sapping away his powers and strength, and would eventually kill him, so he could save Miroku.
• Possession: While not immune to it, Inuyasha was able to overcome Magatsuhi's possession with the power of love. Also while being helped by Dragon Tessaiga, who removed Magatsuhi out of his body.

Kurama

 

Yoko Abilities

Kurama’s yōkai lineage is the Yoko, which are mystical foxes. Their primary abilities included shape-shifting and casting illusions.

Enhanced Senses

Befitting of his fox nature, Kurama has an enhanced sense of smell, allowing him to detect the aura of others. When combined with some flower attacks, it makes it incredibly easy for him to pinpoint where his opponents could be hiding.

Yōki

The main source of energy utilized by many fighters. To be more precise, yōki is the yōkai’s version of Reiki, which is used by humans but regardless of this difference, the two share many of the same fundamentals. It’s the source of all sorts of attacks that come from a person. Kurama uses it in many ways and it’s also been used to create barriers, heal wounds or release an aura that can blow away anything too weak to resist the pressure of it. Kurama has also demonstrated the ability to conceal his energy to the point that it could not be detected even by Kuwabara, who possesses a strong sensitivity to such phenomena. This aligns with Genkai’s statement that an individual can refine their aura to make it imperceptible to weaker opponents. Fighters have also been shown to grow stronger mid-fight, allowing them to even out the playing field or fully dominate the battle. Yōki can run out should a lot of it be expended.

Life Energy

The last resort for any fighter in Yu Yu Hakusho. As the name suggests, the user taps into their own life for one last shot at beating the opponent down and once it runs out, the user dies. Kurama used this in his fight with Karasu but was able to survive because of his original yōkai power coming back to him and it’s unknown if this could be replicated.

Astral Projection

Kurama can separate his soul from his physical body so that it can access places he normally could not. This does not compromise his own fighting abilities as he is still perfectly capable of doing everything normally.

Plant Growth and Manipulation

Kurama’s preferred mode of attack. Kurama can use his own energy to enhance plants in a variety of ways. He can accelerate their growth in an instant and weaponize them in a variety of ways. House plants can instantly grow into a forest and he has full control of their movements and actions. Virtually any plant can become a weapon in Kurama’s hands: even simple flower petals can be sharpened into razor-like blades, while more unconventional creations include explosive cacti or sunflower-based projectile attacks. He has also demonstrated the ability to produce pollen potent enough to incapacitate an entire country, such as Japan, in under a day. He’s able to control these plants even in scenarios where he can't move his arms and legs.

Rose

A simple rose with thorns on its stem. It can be thrown as a projectile and has enough force to pierce flesh. Just call him Tuxedo Mask. Or Yashichi of Windmill if you’re Japanese.

Rose Whip Thorn Wheel

Using the Rose Whip, Kurama spins it around in a circle and this creates energy waves that can slice apart anyone in the vicinity with ease.

Leaf Blade

A leaf that has been transformed into a sword to attack foes with. It is potent enough to contend with actual swords such as Hiei’s

Mugen Flower Pollen

A special kind of pollen that can be used to erase the memories of anyone.

Death Seed

A special type of seed that Kurama can flick into opponents. The seed etches itself into the victim and while it seems to do nothing at first, it is actually sinking deeper into the victim’s body and after enough time has passed, it will completely paralyze the victim and upon Kurama’s signal, the sudden explosive growth of plants will kill the victim. More skilled opponents can actually notice the seed and remove it before it has a chance to take effect but it still leaves a hole in their body and Kurama does usually set up a distraction in combination with it in order to drive away their attention. The Death Seed can even be utilized as an impromptu blade, with Kurama using his cut wounds to sow the seed in himself though this is a risky move.

Petal Whirlwind

Kurama sends out a massive whirlwind of rose petals towards the opponent. The petals themselves are capable of cutting through other yōkai and it works for controlling a larger area or to attack from a distance. Since they are roses, Kurama has been able to use their scent to help detect foes as they usually smell different from the roses.

Bloodsucking Plant

A vampiric plant that when connected with the victim, will drink the blood of its victim until they die. This has been used in conjunction with the Death Seed.

Parrot Grass

A shrub with the head of a parrot. Parrot Grass can be used to perfectly mimic the voice of someone and much like actual parrots, they will repeat one thing over and over. Unlike actual parrots though, it doesn’t eat crackers.

Lamp Weed

Weeds that can light up dark areas. Kurama can place several of these at a time.

Ojigi Plant

A South American plant that has a more yōkai touch to it. It relentlessly chases down anything that emits excessive heat or moves and trying to attack it makes it more vicious. When it grabs ahold of its victims, it will crush them to a bloody pulp with its leaves.

Death Tree

A vicious tree that is wrapped around Kurama’s arm. It has several branches that are packing a deadly bite as its saliva is acidic, being able to melt flesh and bone without effort. The Death Tree also has an instinct to chase after anything that moves.

Powder Fungus

A fungus that Kurama can throw out so that it acts as a smokescreen, severely limiting the vision of foes.

Bamboo Forest

Kurama takes a piece of bamboo and stabs it into the ground, which results in several bamboo pikes rising up from the ground to viciously impale anyone who happens to get caught in these.

Sinning Tree

A deadly tree that traps its victim in an illusion where they are forced to live out their worst fears and nightmares. The tree is continuously draining the victim’s life force until they die and it can grow more roots to contain them if they attempt to struggle. When cast with the Powder Fungus, it helps keep the illusions contained.

Spirit-Vine Binding Fist

This move is translated in the English version as “Binding Fist of the Demonic Vine”, but we are going with a more literal translation here, given the purpose of this blog. Kurama wraps his arm with several vines and can slash enemies with this.

Floating Leaf

Kurama uses a massive leaf to let him fly or slow down his descent when carrying others.

Pseudo-Creature

A parasitic creature that merges with the victim on a cellular level. This renders the victim unable to do anything and actually lets them regenerate from injuries they sustain, so long as the brain is not destroyed.

Resistances

• Mind Control: Unaffected by Hiei’s Jagan, which mind controls anyone who looks at it
• Mind Reading: By simply being angry, Kurama blocked Elder Toguro’s ability to read his mind
• Extreme temperatures: As an S-Class Yokai, should have his Yoki comparable to Kujou’s, which can counter Toya’s ice, which was capable of freezing a lake (−48 °C). Conversely, a very early Yusuke is capable of withstanding Rando’s Yoki, which could vaporize a lake (100 °C)
• Poison: Kurama is a natural resident of Makai, which has a poisonous atmosphere
• Damaging Aura and Soul Manipulation: Could withstand to some extent being in the vicinity of Toguro’s toxic aura, which was dissolving people and frying their brains, while consuming the souls of others in the stadium when he achieved 100%
• Spatial Cutting (Limited): Hiei survived walking back into some of Mukuro’s webs that cut through space itself. Because he still had to dodge them, he clearly doesn’t have full resistance to them. At the same time, being hit without getting cut apart should show he has at least some level of resistance, as Kurama stated that the victim and the space that comes in contact with the web should be cut. Kurama should likely have that same resistance as well, since they all use Yōki. Given Yōki is very similar to Spirit Energy, this should also translate to Yusuke and Kuwabara.

Forms

Inuyasha

Human Form

One of Inuyasha’s biggest secrets is that every time the New Moon hits, Inuyasha’s Yōkai Powers fade away until dawn, causing him to be fully human during that time lapse. While this is most notably a weakness considering he cannot activate Tessaiga, Fire Rob Rat or use Toki, Inuyasha can still defend himself through Tessaiga’s Scabbard and should be far more impressive than a regular human, withstanding being smashed by a heavy yōkai and parry attacks from Tokijin, who previously destroyed Tessaiga’s original form and Sango’s Boomerang Bone.

Full Yōkai

After the ogre yōkai Goshinki shattered Tessaiga into pieces with his jaws, so did the seal that held Inuyasha’s hidden power, in contrast to his human form it’s the Full Yōkai power, a transformation where Inuyasha loses all sense of control and gets him in an often bloodlusted state to such a point which prevents his opponent from being able to read his mind. The condition for this to happen is to be in a near-death state, and after becoming Full Yōkai Inuyasha becomes way stronger, being able to tear apart Goshinki into pieces with a single scratch, or hold his own against the Daiyōkai Ryūkotsusei, who was in the same level as Tōga. And as well grants him a major endurance boost to ignore attacks which could come as deadly or target his insides, such is the case of a venomous yōkai which was boiling his body. The only way to actually stop Inuyasha’s rampage in this state is his friends, and across the story Inuyasha has proven to fight against it, imposing resistance.

Kurama

Yoko Kurama

Kurama’s yōkai form and original self. It boosts both his physical stats and his plants. Yoko Kurama is way more ruthless and does whatever it takes to get the job done. It also apparently makes him ridiculously sexy, which, yeah, we agree.

In the manga, this power boost is stated to be an 80x TP increase, while in the anime it’s about a 17x TP increase. It’s also important to note that, narratively, his base form is supposedly weaker in the manga, and it’s not that Yoko is stronger, since both reach 152,000 TP. Also, unlike Dragon Ball power levels, which are more of an estimate of a person’s physical capability, Yomi’s devices are meant to measure their special abilities as well, going beyond just physical stats.

Feats

Inuyasha

Power

• Lifts and chucks down a tree.
• Blows up a hundred yōkai with Scar Wind.
• Kills Ryūkotsusei using Bakuryuuha, an ancient yōkai the size of a mountain and skin harder than steel.
• Lifts and slams one of Naraku’s hair yōkai.
• Able to lift a huge boulder with a single hand.
• Punches a giant catfish yōkai.
• After receiving an amp from Kagome’s Shikon Shard, Inuyasha slices across a cliff-sized ogre’s belly with Adamant Barrage.
• Destroys a portion of ground which acted as a yōkai’s lair.
• Blasts a bone eating yōkai through a building with Adamant Barrage.
• Along Kagome, causes a huge impact on the Grim Comet.
• Using Sō'unga, destroys an entire village and causes a path of destruction
• After combining Bakuryuuha with Sesshomaru’s Dragon Strike, clears a massive storm created by Sō'unga.
• Using Adamant Barrage, blows apart the Cauldron of Resonance.

Speed

• Dodges lightning from Hiten.
  • The anime version of the feat confirms tandem movement - (Mach 119 - 218.36)
• Quickly reacts to Taigokomaru’s sonic screech.
  • Takes Miroku out of another attack from Taigokumaru.
• Evades a shot from a gunpowder cannon.
• Slices diamond spears from Housenki.
• Dodges light attacks from Gyoja kids, with urn cannons from Goryomaru - (3.22c, Debatable, Check Before the Verdict)
  • Dodges light attacks from Hakudōshi, who absorbed Goryomaru’s attack - (1.96c, Debatable, Check Before the Verdict)
• Dodges attacks from Meijou, a giant turtle yōkai.
• Blocks beams from Kanna's mirror yōkai.
• Catches up with a train with no issue.
• Saves Kagome from Meinomaru’s beam attack.
• Inuyasha is able to run on water.
• Blocks an arrows’ rain by part of an undead army.

Durability

• Resisted the pull of Yuna’s strings which could kill a man.
• Withstands the pull from Miroku’s Kazaana.
• Survives being impaled in the chest by Sesshomaru
• Gets smashed by a heavy yōkai in his human form. (0.068 Tons of TNT)
• Withstands an attack from the Water God.
  • The water God was stated to be able to blow up a village.
  • His power allowed him to summon rain clouds, tornadoes and was stated again to be able to destroy a village.
  • The real water Goddess splits the skies open.
• Survives several gunpowder cannon explosions and dynamite.
• Has his body pierced several times by small diamond slivers.
• Has tanked Wind Scar after someone copied it from him.
• Survives a lightning strike caused by Ryura, one of the 4 Gods.

Kurama

Power

• Sliced apart Genbu, a yōkai made out of rock
• Held up a portion of a falling ceiling, proportionate to how much pressure he can tolerate
• Sliced several trees at once
• Dennis raised a giant tree - (3.1 - 644.86 Gigatons of TNT, See Before the Verdict)
• Briefly tapped into the Power Sphere to use it as an attack - (119.32 Zettatons of TNT, see Scaling)

Speed

• Kept up evenly with Hiei in their first encounter
• Traded blows with Ura Urashima
• Can dodge Kaiki’s attacks and intercept a sneak attack from him
• Killed Gourmet in 2 seconds
• Blitzed Shachi in an instant
• Evaded Shigure’s attack at a close distance

Durability

• Took a stab from Hiei
• Took hits from other yōkai before
• Roto’s attacks had little effect on him
• Survived his own Death Seed taking effect on him
• Took several hits from Toya’s ice attacks while severely handicapped from the last fight, with restrained movement and his energy sealed off
• Survived a beatdown from Bakken after he was extremely worn out and injured
• Was hit by several explosions from Karasu
• Survived a beating from Sensui

Scaling

Inuyasha

Kagome

Both Inuyasha and Kagome have proven to be an excellent team across the story, and while Kagome’s priestess power is nothing to scoff at, in terms of destructive power or physical she’s not on Inuyasha’s level as a human.

• Kagome dodges Manten's lightning breath.
• One of her arrows breaks across a wall and Naraku’s body.
• After sending her arrows 500 years into the future, they were able to break across Osamu Kirin’s tree rots and pierce buildings.
• Survives a beam attack from Meidomaru.
  • One of Meidomaru’s beams was able to break across a huge chunk of earth

Sango

In contrast to Kagome, even as a human Sango has proven herself to be able to stand at the level of yōkai as an exterminator herself, with her weapon Boomerang Bone. But all things considered she should be under Inuyasha in terms of power, or at best comparable.

• Throws her Bone Boomerang in the right time to block Housenki’s Diamond Spears from hitting Kagome.
• Blocks Naraku's chunks of flesh falling at high speeds.
• Using Black Bone Boomerang, destroys a whole army of yōkai making them explode.
• One of her children, Hisui, blocks an attack from Meidomaru who can turn into lightning.

Sesshoumaru

While Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru have fought several times across the manga, it’s difficult to say whether Inuyasha is actually as strong as his brother due to his Hanyo physiology being consistently repeated to be under Sessh’s level, but there has been several instances where moves like Wind Scar or equipment like Tessaiga’s Scabbard have actually stood up against the Daiyōkai. At very least, Inuyasha should scale to most of the feats presented below, even if going by both Yashahime’s Anime and Manga endings it’s clear Sesshomaru remains as the strongest of the two.

• Kills the Nothing Woman.
• Slays an entire army of yōkai around a mountain while using Tessaiga.
• Kills his personal giant ogre.
• Dodges an arrow from Kagome.
• Using Bakusaiga, Sesshomaru slices across Naraku’s body sphere, which was about to destroy a village. - (223.185 Kilotons of TNT)
• Using Bakusaiga, Sesshomaru slices a fragment of the Grim Comet in half. - (346.451 Teratons of TNT; Mach 440.33)
  • The episode synopsis in the Yashahime guidebook describes Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha destroying the fragment as them “saving the world/surface”. The fragment is visible from the surface while it’s still above the planet’s atmosphere, and is stated to be “a large fragment” compared to the full Comet, which happens to be over 100 km wide, making it reasonable to assume the fragment is at least 10 km in size (comparable to the Chicxulub impactor)
• His fight with Kirinmaru causes a storm, and he can move in tandem with its lightning strikes - (Mach 22.1 - 40.54; 99.52 - 182.52)
• Resists Kirinmaru’s strongest attack physically with no issue to save Towa, Setsuna and Moroha at the expense of draining his Haku.
• As a teenager, Sesshomaru destroys a fragment from the Grim Comet.
• Reacts to Meidomaru’s attack, who can turn into real lightning. - (Mach 285.71 - 524
• Gives an end to Kirinmaru by slicing him in half.
• Causes a huge explosion in Horai Island after defeating Kyora.

Naraku

As Hanyo, both Inuyasha and Naraku should hit similar levels of power shown in their many fights across the manga. With Inuyasha being resistant to most of his Miasma or Shoki attacks, and showing to be physically superior or similar to Naraku’s different transformations and amps with the Shikon Pearl, such as Mt. Hakurei’s fusion. And by the same logic Inuyasha should scale to any feats performed by Naraku’s children/ extensions, who are just a part of him at the end without the potential to actually kill the real Naraku, and who Inuyasha has fought regardless.

• On a way to achieve a new godly form, became one with the insides of Mt Hakurei, turning into the entire mountain. Depleting all the yōkai within and collapsing the mountain moments after - (193.821 Kilotons - 21.323 Megatons of TNT)
• After receiving his new transformation Naraku beheads Tekkei, the great bird Daiyōkai with his tentacles, who was the size of a cliff.
• Hakudoshi, one of Naraku’s children reacts to a light beam from Goryomaru - (Debatable, Check Before the Verdict)
• Moryomaru dodges lightning from Ginka and blitzes both Kinka and Ginka.
• Moryomaru’s power alone blasts across a giant cliff.
• Moryomaru and Naraku’s clash causes a whole forest to melt on Miasma.
• Moryomaru melts a mountain with his Shoki spears - (1.962 Gigatons of TNT)
  • Description of the feat chapters later
• Naraku states that his remaining chunks of flesh are enough to destroy a village.
• Kagura (One of Naraku’s daughters) uses a wind technique called Dance of the Dragon, whose power is enough to break across several amounts of earth and Sango’s house.

Other Yōkai

Inuyasha has fought against several types of yōkai across the story and as Hanyo should be superior to practically all of them unless they’re specifically stated to be Daiyōkai.

• Meijou’s arrival caused a black storm. - (7.15 Kilotons of TNT)
• Chokyukai forms a rotating storm cloud and a small tornado when he appears - (21.382 Kilotons of TNT)
• Entei’s awakening caused a whole mountain to crumble. - (109.5 Kilotons of TNT)
• Ginka and Kinka appearing summons a large thunderstorm - (138.862 Kilotons of TNT)
• Entei fired an energy blast that created a giant explosion bigger than the surrounding mountains and a large crater - (70.258 Megatons of TNT)
• A-Un’s arrival forms a massive thunderstorm - (1.496 - 341.46 Megatons of TNT)
• Gyoja kids behead Gakusanjin, a mountain sized yōkai with their light beams.
• Mizuchi’s whole presence damages the trees in his surroundings.
• Kinka can casually react to his brother Ginka’s lightning.
  • Should be real, as Ginka’s spear is only a way to conduct it and not the source.
  • Kinka once again reacts to Ginka's thunder in Yashahime - (Mach 97.37 - 178.575; 231.7 - 425)
• In his fight against a 3 headed Wolf Yōkai, Koga saves his clan from a huge fire blast which devastates a portion of ground
• Homura, a Fire God, burns part of a forest in an instant.
• Hachi dodges a light beam from the Tanuki's eye guardian - (0.251c, Check Before the Verdicts)
  • On top of being directly stated to be light by Hachi, a fellow Tanuki, the beam is portrayed as an actual spotlight beam, and the same paralyzing beam is portrayed as a flash of light when coming from the Tanuki painting
• Koga is at least 3 times faster than Moroha, Setsuna and Towa. 

Yashahime Cast

As the father of Moroha (A Quarter Yōkai/Shihanyō), and a Hanyo just like Towa and Setsuna, Inuyasha should scale to all feats performed by them with no issue considering his superior experience and having fought the same opponent in the story, Kirinmaru. It’s important to mention that cross-scaling the feats could be a major problem, as the anime and manga for Yashahime are drastically different (more on Before the Verdict). But even with this in mind, the feats presented below shouldn’t be that far-fetched for Inuyasha to scale.

Anime

• Setsuna's cyclone explosion can generate huge tornadoes.
• After getting revived by Towa and gaining a new Naginata, Setsuna obliterates an army of yōkai in a single swing, causing an explosion which disperses several clouds.
• Moroha gets trashed by Kirinmaru across a forest, leaving a huge trace of wasted ground.
• Riku, using his earring power, freezes a big part from the sea’s surface - (812.725 Tons of TNT)
• Yawaragi’s power was enough to clear the clouds in the horizon - (9.2 Kilotons of TNT)
  • Moroha’s Crimson Dragon Wave can match Yawaragi’s technique.
• Towa catches Sesshomaru talking really fast and grabs Tenseiga - (Mach 291.5, Debatable, Check Before the Verdict)
• Moroha’s Crimson Dragon Wave slices a moon in half - (Either 64.38 Teratons of TNT, 15.38 Exatons of TNT, 236.957 Zettatons or 1.548 Ronnatons of TNT; Mach 9.38 to 6758, Check Before the Verdict)
• Towa dodges lightning from Ginka - (Mach 307 - 563)
• Moroha is capable of firing Purifying Arrows at the Grim Comet and clearing off its yōkai energy outside the planet’s atmosphere - (Mach 645.5 - 1701.75)
• Towa’s Shooting Star Azure Dragon Wave is capable of blasting the Grim Comet to shrink it, sending energy around it at incredible speeds - (Mach 2194.145)
• Setsuna and Towa shoot a duo energy attack at the Grim Comet, which clears the Miasma around it at very fast speeds - (Mach 5860.15)
• Setsuna reacts to the Bakusaisōha to protect Moroha, which are stated to be “spear-like beams of light” in Hanyou no Yashahime: Official Guide Book - (0.11c, Debatable, Check Before the Verdict)

Manga

• Moroha and Setsuna’s powers combined kill a yōkai, causing a massive explosion seen from another mountain.
• As a kid, Towa resisted the impact of a truck without any major issues.
• Zanseiken is a sword that came from the stars in ancient times.
• Setsuna, Moroha and Towa landed an attack on Grim Comet, which was over 400,000 kms of distance. (Inapplicable, See BtV)
  • It’s seen reaching outside the planet
• The girls finally slice apart the comet in half. (Inapplicable, See BtV)

Kirinmaru

Going by the anime, Inuyasha has fought and stalemated Kirinmaru in a fight to protect his daughter, so that should put him at a higher level than Osamu Kirin at very least, a notably weaker version of the original Kirinmaru. Going by the manga it’s more difficult to tell, but going by the fact Kirinmaru is Tōga’s equal Inuyasha should at least scale in some way, and was part of the destruction of the Grim Comet which Kirinmaru was empowered by. Again, it’s important to mention that cross-scaling the feats could be a major problem, as the Anime and Manga for Yashahime are drastically different (More on Before the Verdict).

Anime

• Kirin reacts to Towa and Moroha’s attacks, blocking them in time and causing a massive crater. - (322.48 Tons of TNT)
• Kirinmaru dodges one of Moroha's arrows.
• Osamu Kirin (one of Kirinmaru’s children), using all of his power stops the Grim Comet from falling into the Earth and minutes after casually drags it towards a portal. - (3.9 Exatons of TNT; Mach 326.1)
  • Grim Comet was stated to end humanity and is shown to be able to burn the planet.

Manga

• Kirinmaru’s fights with Inu No Taisho reshaped Japan.  - (628.165 Kilotons of TNT)
• Osamu Kirin controls tree rots spawned from Grim Comet that can mind control opponents and grow bigger than a school.
• A single attack from Osamu Kirin (who has the same strength as regular Kirin) destroyed Towa’s school.
  • Stated that he could make the city disappear. - (2.07 Gigatons of TNT)
  • Stated that he can “tear the world in twain”.
    • While this could be interpreted as a planetary statement, the original Japanese version doesn’t use any wording related to the world/planet, but a vaguer construction that could be more reasonably interpreted as affecting the ground or the landscape.
• Destroys the Windmill of Time with a sword slash.

Movie Antagonists

Inuyasha has fought and defeated all of the main antagonists from the movies through various meanings or along with someone.

• After breaking the seal from his father’s grave, Meinomaru absorbs all of Hyoga’s power causing the Tree of Ages to collapse along a massive  crater.
• Meinomaru is stated to be stronger than his father, who fought Tōga in the past, causing storms all over the zone.
• Meinomaru’s power causes the Tree of Ages to grow massively, to the point where it’s able to be seen from mountains afar.
• Meinomaru’s exponential growth of his power caused an ice age to occur on the planet 500 years into the future. (5.04 Teratons of TNT)
• Kaguya’s Mirror Dimension, sustained by her powers, holds a replica of a lake and a castle. The realm actually holds a moon too - (29.6 Exatons of TNT)
  • Inuyasha and Kagome teaming up, actually defeat her, after that the dimension starts to collapse
• After Sō'unga possessed Takemaru, it held the power to erect several spikes and rots across a mountain, as well as flood it on red liquid.
• Sō'unga’s power is enough to open to cause a tremor and open the gateways towards hell, creating a massive hole in the ground.
• Jura can break the sound barrier with full power.
• Gora’s repeated attacks with full power would have sinked all of Horai Island, causing one of the cliffs to fall.

Kurama

Team Urameshi

As a valuable member of the team, Kurama should undoubtedly scale to many of the feats performed by the fighters of Team Urameshi pretty easily.

Kazuma Kuwabara

• Kuwabara can break a tree with just his punches (GOAT, High Outerversal+++)
• Yusuke and Kuwabara can casually dodge machine gun fire
• Kuwabara can dodge sonic blasts - (Mach 4.75)

Hiei

• Hiei prepares multiple Dragons of the Darkness Flame and they later level an entire building
• Hiei gets sent flying by an enraged Mukuro
• Hiei punches a big crater - (17 Tons of TNT)
• The Dragon of the Darkness Flame obliterates a large portion of the Dark Tournament's stadium - (514 Kilotons - 4.227 Megatons of TNT)
• Hiei’s Dragon of the Darkness Flame causes several pillars of water around the island to erupt - (616.435 Gigatons of TNT)
• Hiei can leave behind afterimages
• Hiei slashed Seiryu 16 times so fast the observers couldn't even catch it
• Hiei dodges the Spirit Gun from upclose - (3.2c, Debatable, Check Before the Verdicts)

Yusuke Urameshi

• Yusuke sends Toguro and Sensui through a forest
• Yusuke creates a large crater in his first clash with Sensui in the Makai - (74.6 Kilotons of TNT)
• Yusuke blasted Toguro away with a powerful Spirit Gun that knocked him out of the Dark Tournament Arena  - (3.5 Megatons of TNT; Mach 55.7)
• Yusuke blasted Toguro with a massive Spirit Gun once again, destroying an even bigger portion of the arena - (45.455 Megatons of TNT; Mach 45.127)
• Yusuke absorbed and endured the Spirit Orb, which is stated to contain the energy equivalent to a small star - (9.15 Teratons of TNT)
• Yusuke blows apart a giant plateau with a Spirit Gun blast - (113.3 Teratons; Mach 348.81, Debatable, Check Before the Verdicts)
  • The anime version of the feat - (65 Petatons, potentially 72.3 Exatons of TNT; Mach 779.4, potentially 0.029c, Debatable, Check Before the Verdicts)
• Genkai has stated that Yusuke could blow up the world - (59.66 Zettatons of TNT)
  • While the official manga translation omits this statement, it is explicit in the original Japanese version
• Yusuke destroys the Power Sphere
  • The Power Sphere was going to be used to blow away the Human World and replace it with the Netherworld - (119.32 Zettatons of TNT)
• Yusuke can dodge, catch and destroy Sniper’s shots as well, even when they home in on him
• Yusuke briefly outran a truck chasing after him
• Yusuke launched 43 A-Class Yōkai far out of bounds of the Okunen Tree in a single barrage of punches at high speeds
  • While the manga portrays this scene in a somewhat vague way, the anime version goes into more detail with a concrete timeframe - (Mach 3.7)
• Yusuke fired a Spirit Gun into the sky above the island of the Dark Tournament at incredible speeds - (Mach 153.16 - 433.445)
  • The scene in the anime - (Mach 2.95)
• Yusuke can deflect Suzaku’s lightning arrows, which are made of real lightning infused with his own yōki - (Mach 580 - 1062.55)
• Yusuke is capable of reacting to Genkai projecting her spirit energy like a wave of light - (0.08c, Debatable, Check Before the Verdicts)
  • The manga supports the light kanji being literal by portraying this move like an omnidirectional flash, although Yusuke doesn’t react to it
• Yusuke’s final clash of punches with Yomi released an aura pillar that flew over the Okunen Tree that pierced the atmosphere at great speeds - (0.01c, Debatable for scaling, Check Before the Verdicts)

Other Yōkai/Mazoku

Kurama has defeated many foes in the past before and because of his status as an S-Class Yōkai, Kurama should also be massively upscaling many former adversaries that members of Team Urameshi fought, especially with the difference in power levels when considering the class system.

• Younger Toguro at 60% can casually level a building
• Younger Toguro could lift and carry an entire ring from an arena to another
• Shura causes a giant explosion on an Okunen Tree - (22.875 Tons)
• Younger Toguro punches an even bigger crater than Hiei - (123 Tons of TNT)
• Rando vaporized a small lake with his aura - (1 Kiloton of TNT)
• Shigure creates a massive tornado and creates a large crater - (5 Kilotons of TNT)
• Karasu blows a hole through the Dark Tournament stadium - (1.891 - 9.834 Kilotons of TNT)
• Toya freezes a lake instantly - (26.434 Kilotons)
• Toya projects a giant cold field over an Okunen Tree and freezes multiple combatants - (94.783 Kilotons of TNT)
• Toya’s Frozen Hell created a giant pillar of cold air above an Okunen Tree, which was dispersed after his defeat - (3.1 Megatons of TNT)
• Yakumo flooded the Spirit World - (299.241 Petatons of TNT)
• Yakumo was going to blow away the Human World and replace it with the Netherworld - (119.32 Zettatons of TNT)
• Jin can quickly fly over an Okunen Tree - (Mach 0.462)
• Jin can quickly fly over the Dark Tournament island - (Mach 14.12)
  • The scene in the anime - (Mach 7.356)
• Suzaku and Jin both deflect Yusuke’s Spirit Gun - (0.93c, Debatable, Check Before the Verdicts)

Other Characters

Other notable characters in the series have also performed feats in the series and with Kurama being an S-Class Yōkai, he should also be upscaling all of these feats performed by these characters.

• Genkai blows up a large rock and trees around it. Her Spirit Gun is said to have 10 times the power of Yusuke’s - (4.35 - 108.88 Tons of TNT)
  • The scene in the anime
• Musashi seemingly moves his sword in tandem with his Photons - (83.1c, Inapplicable, Check Before the Verdicts)
• King Enma has been stated to be able to cause earthquakes and natural disasters, with Koenma also saying that he predicts a shakeup more violent than the Great Kanto Earthquake and Mt. Fuji could erupt again - (208.6 Gigatons - 811 Teratons of TNT)
  • All of this is compared to just collateral damage
• King Enma destroyed the Netherworld
• Sensui releasing his energy is too much for the Human World, and he compares destroying the Human Realm to rid it of humanity to kicking an anthill - (59.66 Zettatons of TNT)
  • While this could imply surface wiping, Yusuke pretty explicitly refers to complete physical destruction in the original Japanese version, which Sensui takes seriously as something he doesn’t want to do
• Sensui overpowers Koenma’s Evil Seal Ring (which causes an earthquake) and  redirects it to blow a hole through the ceiling of an underground cavern - (515.367 - 809.364 Tons of TNT)
• Sensui wipes out a large horde of enemies in one go

Upscaling

Inuyasha

Despite being a shounen manga that has a lot of battles, Rumiko Takahashi clearly focuses more on the romance part than the mess that this series is powerscaling wise. We can still talk a bit here, but we apologize if it comes off as a bit weird, as we are trying to make sense of what the narrative points to us despite some inconsistencies.

The biggest question on the franchise for determining whether Inuyasha is on par with his father, and when he reaches this level of power, is only somewhat explained during the events of “Inuyasha the Movie 3: Swords of an Honorable Ruler”. Even though we’re fine with using filler content for this blog via rules, this one can actually be argued as soft canon, or at the very least anime-only canon. Why? Because later material goes back and builds on things introduced there. The beginning of the film covers details about Tōga’s death and the birth of his youngest son, Inuyasha. Hanyō no Yashahime expands on those same events in Episode 21, where Tōga’s death is tied to the creation of the Seven Rainbow Pearls through Zero’s tears of grief after losing him. That’s not the only example either. Sōryūha, or Azure Dragon Wave, is a technique Sesshomaru possessed that was introduced in this movie, and despite not appearing at all in the original manga, it kept showing up in the anime version of the story, introduced in episode 169. If that wasn’t all, Towa also has this move in Hanyō no Yashahime.

VS wise, the most important thing of note is that, during the events of the movie, Totosai states that Inuyasha was massively weaker than Tōga, or more precisely “a thousand times”. Is this meant to be a literal number? Unsure, but it’s all we have for the series number wise in terms of valid multipliers, and at the very least explains that Inuyasha is still meant to be orders of magnitude weaker than Tōga, which makes sense within the narrative. By the end of the movie, Inuyasha is stated to have grown strong enough to be comparable to his father’s level after defeating Takemaru by himself, mind you, the same guy possessed by So’unga. For reference, So’unga later acts independently from Takemaru, starts tanking and redirecting attacks like the Bakuryūha, and Inuyasha still survives having all of it thrown right back at him.

Given this movie happens between episodes 136 and 137 of the anime series, or chapters 292 and 293 and some filler in-between if we are going by the manga, it explains some of the earlier events of the series. So no, Inuyasha is not meant to scale to Ryūkotsusei just because he withstood energy bullet aura attacks from Ryūkotsusei, lifted him as Full Yōkai and being engulfed by his super energy bullet, as this dragon guy was who killed Inuyasha's father Tōga. Why did Inuyasha resist his yōki then, you might ask? Chalk all that up to the ki of Tessaiga, which is a concept Rumiko barely explained. Another more direct answer the series gives is that he simply doesn’t have the required yōki to fully defeat a daiyōkai at that point, as it’s stated in the Dragon Scale arc that a hanyō cannot receive or handle that much energy, giving more support to ki of his sword being something real to protect him against yōki.

It also explains why Sesshomaru stomped Inuyasha in yōkai form with Tokijin earlier in the series, which is clearly a weaker sword compared to Tōga’s level of power. Movie 3’s level of canonicity should also take priority over anything the first movie, “Affections Touching Across Time”, might imply about Inuyasha scaling to Tōga, since that film is widely considered non canon. So no, just because Inuyasha defeated Menōmaru there doesn’t automatically mean he scales to Tōga. It’s also never made clear that Hyōga, Menōmaru’s father who was absorbed by him, was actually on Tōga’s level just because the two fought each other in the past.

Of course, this also means most of the cast ends up pulling a Portgas D. Ace through backscaling from Yashahime, since Tōga would scale to beings like Osamu Kirin, and all of the events mentioned happen before things like Bakusaiga, which is supposed to be Sesshomaru’s peak of power. This might understandably seem goofy, but it’s a somewhat consistent level of power if you’re using the filler movies, as Inuyasha and Kagome defeating Kaguya would grant them similar levels of power. It also means Inuyasha would have grown at least a bit further afterward, since Sesshomaru’s attacks with Bakusaiga couldn’t pierce Naraku’s barrier in his second transformation, while the newly acquired Diamond Tessaiga could, and so on.

Kurama

As mentioned earlier, Kurama has two different multiplier values for his Yoko transformation depending on the source. The manga puts it at an 80x TP boost, while the anime has it at around 17x, and it’s worth remembering that this increase isn’t just physical, but a boost to his overall power across different metrics.

Kurama grows a lot stronger throughout the series, starting off as a humble D-Class before eventually becoming S-Class. The difference in power between the various classes in Yu Yu Hakusho is pretty astounding as it is said that a horde of B-Class Yōkai would be completely worthless against a single A-Class. This kind of power difference is backed up as well since Sensui, an S-Class fighter, completely outmatched A-Class Kuwabara, Kurama and Hiei, with the latter 2 stacking their Yoko and Dragon Absorption bonuses on top of it. The Spirit Defense Force are said to be able to tackle some of the strongest A-Class Yōkai but when compared to S-Class, the difference is described as several orders of magnitude. Later on, when Hiei had become an S-Class, he had already killed 500 A-Class Yōkai without much effort. S-Class Fighters have also been said that they are so powerful that nothing in Spirit World could stop them, including their own King Enma.

This detail is important with regards to Yakumo and the Power Sphere. Prior to the events of the movie, King Enma had fought Yakumo in the past and defeated him and destroyed the Netherworld, but was incapable of doing anything to the Power Sphere, the Netherworld’s power source. During the movie, Yakumo had planned to utilize the Power Sphere to blow away the Human World and replace it with the Netherworld. All of Team Urameshi manage to briefly tap into the sphere’s power in order to overwhelm Yakumo and then shortly after, Yusuke manages to completely destroy it on his own. With the context given, it is reasonable to assume that Yakumo would be an A-Class threat, given that Spirit World’s king had to be involved in order to stop him in the past.

In regards to Kurama, this means that as his normal self, he would already be leagues stronger and faster than any feat previously performed in the series, including Yakumo’s own feats. To paint a mental image, a horde of Yakumos and King Enmas would be incapable of doing anything to S-Class Kurama. The power difference would only grow when factoring in Yoko and any mid-fight power boosts.

Cosmologies

Inuyasha

To begin with, it is important to note that Inuyasha clearly does not scale anywhere near this full extent; this will be explained in greater detail in the section “Yashahime’s Insanity” under Before the Verdict(s). So why address it at all? Simply for the sake of completeness, as no prior analyses have attempted to explain it.To begin with, we have to address what we know from the original manga. Besides the living world, there’s immaterial realms of Heaven, Hell (only Accessible with Sō'unga) and Underworld. Between them exists the Border of the Afterlife. This realm functions like a kind of limbo, and time flows much more slowly in this space. This borderland is actually one of the first locations we see in the series, given it’s where Tōga's skeleton remains and where Inuyasha got the Tessaiga while battling Sesshomaru. We first see the characters enter via a Black Pearl, which is relevant because this section can only be accessed via special gateways. Besides the pearls, who have a limited number, another known access gate is via the Land of Fire’s Gate of Afterlife, where you need to enter it dead, and if you try bypassing the rule via breaching its portal, you will be turned to stone. The only way to pass by it alive is if you’re a user of Tenseiga, given the sword's powers or tracing a path to the Netherworld by following the flow of blood from powerful yōkai connected to it. Perhaps the roughest way to understand how far Netherworld truly is, it’s Meido Zangetsuha which acts as a path to it, a complete void of darkness where some demons are held. That can act as a black hole and hold nebulas inside it (anime version).

Another detail by the end of the series is that Shikon Pearl actually transcends space and time, shown in the realm that holds inside it with several demons and Naraku’s unconscious self that even with his soul and body killed, soon he’ll return by will of the Jewel. Being actually decently similar to Tree of Ages, which spirit has been stated to see both the past and the future of trees in Movie 1 and its insides can actually stop people in time and be not affected by anything outside it.

But where things start to get heavy is by Yashahime, specifically using the manga where it explores a time travel tool known as The Windmill of Time. The Windmill of Time has been stated to be able to rebuild the universe, changing the events of the past and creating new branches/timelines out of it, this device belongs to Kirinmaru the West Great Dog hidden in his castle, where he intends to use it to govern over time and space, bending fate to his will and fading “all other possible worlds”.

While the latter can be seen as a vague word, we have a hint of what this actually could mean and is that Setsuna (one of Sess’ daughters), has an ability that allows her to see the bonds between people (Red Strings), in the anime version of Yashahime this can only extend as much as connection of between two people, but in the manga she’s able to see the connections a single person has and it extends its branches to near infinite amounts, as it counts family, friends, past and future. Which means in simple words that any of these infinite possible variants of experiences will be destroyed as well by changes in the past.

Kurama

Plenty of foes in Yu Yu Hakusho have threatened the world with their power. While Kurama doesn’t scale to the whole cosmology, the most notable of these threats comes from Yakumo, who had planned to blow away the Human World and replace it with the Netherworld. Yoshihiro Tōgashi has also gone on to say that he sees the Ningenkai, Reikai and Makai as parallel planes of existence, comparing them to the face on a die. To get a full scope of things, each important thing will be looked over and further elaboration on these will be in the section “Realm Sizes VS Netherworld” under the Before The Verdict(s).

Ningenkai

The place where the story begins. Also known as the Human World, this is the place where all humans live out their normal lives, unaware of the supernatural ongoings of the other worlds. At the minimum, this would be the planet Earth itself.

Reikai

Known as Spirit World or the Underworld, this is the place where the recently departed go to in order to be judged. It is connected to the Ningenkai via the River Styx, and is generally much easier to access if one is a spirit. It has a strong connection with the Ningenkai. Heaven is said to be a small part of the Reikai.

Makai

Alternatively known as Demon World, this is the home for all sorts of yōkai to cause their mischievous actions. It is connected to the Ningenkai via a tunnel referred to as “Hyper-Space” which also contains a forcefield deployed by the Reikai that filters out certain levels of yōkai, preventing access. The Makai is said to be an enormous place and the Ningenkai only has control over a very small portion of it, with the more dangerous denizens lurking deeper and deeper into the realm. Hell is said to be a small part of the Makai.

Meikai

The Netherworld is a world that once existed alongside the other three worlds, with its relationship with the Makai being similar to that of the Ningenkai and Reikai. King Enma has previously destroyed this world in the past but Yakumo is trying to bring it back by also getting rid of the Ningenkai as well.

Weaknesses

Inuyasha

Despite his overwhelming power and abilities. Inuyasha has his fair amount of weaknesses. Starting with the fact he’s not really that smart, coming off as impulsive in most fights. As a Hanyo, we’ve shared the fact he’s not really as powerful as Daiyōkai, at least through normal interpretations, and New Moon is by far his biggest downfall as a human he’s vulnerable to many things he’d normally stand against, losing all his abilities, strength and endurance. Inuyasha’s smell, despite how good it is, can backfire due to being too sensitive. And even with a win against the Life-Force draining Nikosen, something that constantly eats away his Haku can be harmful for Inuyasha, such as Kirinmaru’s attack which puts Sesshoumaru in a near death state. Full Yōkai makes him a full-on brute, sacrificing his sanity and the usage of Tessaiga (albeit, this has changed over time). And Tessaiga itself can be countered hard by either draining it of its energy, or holy energies suppressing it (holy energy can turn Inuyasha into his human self). And despite his track record against illusions, he’s been mind controlled occasionally, like in Movie 3 where his power wasn’t enough to counter Sō'unga’s control. Last and definitely not least, Inuyasha is vulnerable to getting sealed as shown in the beginning of the story, but this should be taken with a grain of salt, as Kikyo’s priestess powers which allowed her to do this were huge. Being heavily related to direct power, as amps from Shikon Shards have gotten yōkai out of seals before. Oh and yeah, SIT BOY death barrage, don’t forget that.

Kurama

The main weakness shared across all fighters in Yu Yu Hakusho is that there’s only so much yōki to spend before one is completely devoid of it, leaving them with a lot less options for attack. Some enemies are even capable of absorbing yōki and Reiki from other opponents, and could have only been defeated because their absorption had limits. If someone with limitless absorption showed up, it could be their end. Kurama can always fall back on Life Energy, but this is typically a last resort and he will die as well when this runs out. While he was able to avoid death the first time during his fight with Karasu thanks to the return of his Yoko powers, it’s unknown if such a thing can be replicated again. Another weakness is that he sometimes needs time to figure out a strategy, which usually means his opponents usually can get a hit on him before he finally has something that will work.

Before the Verdict(s)

Lightspeed Arguments

Both series present various arguments for characters and techniques reaching relativistic or even faster-than-light speeds, so we will examine each case individually. Unsurprisingly, some of these arguments are stronger than others. And just because we’re pointing out the stronger parts of these arguments doesn’t mean we agree with all of them, in fact, we will be directly saying what we aren’t comfortable with pushing. We’re just putting everything on the table for comparison. Please make use of your own brain. WE ARE BOLDING THIS SO YOU DON’T ACCUSE US OF ANYTHING WE DIDN’T DIRECTLY SAY.

Inuyasha

Goryomaru’s Light

Perhaps the weakest of the three higher speed Inuyasha arguments, this one still deserves to be a bit more fleshed out. Initially, this one seems horrible: despite being called light directly, the beams bends, have force, smell, something that would be a big disqualifier without further context. And here is the catch, why is the beam of light so weird? It’s explained that these urns are filled by Goryomaru’s Yōkai Arm, containing living yōkai inside them, which accounts for the strange phenomena we see on screen.

For example, the beams having smell and force isn’t just Rumiko ignoring physics for the sake of Inuyasha’s gimmick. In the scene, Inuyasha is clearly weirded out by the beams having a smell, then realizes it comes from the living creatures inside them, and even connects that to why he’s able to interact with them.

About curving, it’s worth pointing out that the manga and anime handle the beams pretty differently. In the manga, the beams are mostly straight at a distance and only start curving when they’re retreating or getting closer to the urns. You can see that they travel in a straight line from far away, but once the urns lose power, they lose their shape and start to bend. The same can be said about Goryomaru himself, the curves are mainly shown near the orb-like structures from the yōkai arm, while at a certain distance they’re consistently straight. When Inuyasha destroys the yōkai inside the beams, they also start to decay and curl in a consistent way. In the anime, on the other hand, it is way more inconsistent, as the beams curve and get wavy much more often, without that same clear pattern tied to distance or the state of the urns. The anime already makes small changes to a lot of scenes from the manga, so it’s not really surprising this happened here too. Keep both versions in mind when we move to the next light-dodging Inuyasha argument.

The series also shows that other yōkai can transform into elements like lightning, so it lines up with what the lore establishes. Sure, this argument is obviously not on the same level as something like the Cero from Bleach, as that one has way more reasonable to be justifications by most people’s metrics, but it’s important to point out that in Inuyasha we have spirit energy as a source that can be used to create real elements, which could be used to chalk up the weirdness, they’re shown to burn things on contact and in this case it’s even directly called light multiple times on the source material. For some people this might be enough to accept it, for others it won’t be convincing. After all, something can be made of light as a construct and still not move at light speed. We are certainly not pushing for this one, but either way, these points in defense of Goryomaru’s light beams still need to be brought up, since they’ll be directly compared with other arguments in this section. If bought, an End of Series Inuyasha would be upscaling 3.22c in speed.

Harukoshi's Absorbed Light

This one is a bit better. Remember how we just went over everything the manga implies about the curves and the smell from Goryomaru’s light, and how that ties back to the living yōkai inside it? So, funny story, look what happens not long after the kids clash with Inuyasha and Goryomaru fights Kagura. Harukoshi shows up at the temple with Kagura again, and Goryomaru, along with the kids in the anime, tries to attack him, but he absorbs their light attacks with his aura barrier. Before finishing him off, he notices Inuyasha and fires the absorbed light back at him.

When he does, all the waviness and curvature from the original beams are gone, and it comes out as a straight beam of light aimed at Inuyasha. It’s actually pretty noticeable that the anime keeps this detail too, especially compared to how the beams behaved earlier. Inuyasha also doesn’t mention any smell when reacting to it. That said, it’s still unclear whether this happens because the yōkai inside the beams died when they were absorbed by the barrier or if they’re still there. On top of that, it still shows force, and the absorbed light itself comes from a source you could question, so it’s very hard to push this as legit. Still, it’s a pretty interesting moment, and you could argue that the change in properties removes a lot of the earlier issues, combined with the idea that the source being light is enough to run with it. If you do buy that, then End of Series Inuyasha would be upscaling 1.96c in speed.

Kirinmaru’s Beams of Light

This one is better, but still debatable. We know the source is confirmed to be a beam of light in a guidebook and they don’t curve, and now the source is not really questionable. The bigger problem here is basically it showing force. If you feel like that is not that big of a disqualifier, considering everything we said about spirit energy and light constructs, it’s up to you, the reader, again. The fact we have a better and unproblematic laser argument right below makes us not feel comfortable enough with this one either. If you do buy it however, End of Series Inuyasha would have at least speeds of 0.11.

Hachi’s Dodge

Perhaps the most solid light feat in the entire blog. In the 10th episode of the second season of the Yashahime anime, Hachi (while transformed in his flying form) dodges a beam of light coming from the Eye of the Full Moon Tanuki’s Spirit Guardian tower after it is fired. In the same scene, Hachi directly refers to the beam as light. It displays no contradictory properties, as it flies straight, and emits no force. In a separate scene, the beam actually lands on Moroha, paralyzing her and being portrayed exactly like a beam of light. Further on the same arc, a painting of the same Tanuki Guardian Spirit that controls the tower fires a flash of light on Moroha that paralyzes her the exact same way and has the same color, adding credence to the idea that the Eye beam is supposed to be light. With all that said, it’s easy to see why this projectile is being considered as fast as real light. Hachi was capable of dodging the beam from a moderate distance, landing the feat at 0.251c. For added consistency, Hachi performs 3 additional tandem movements while avoiding the beams in the same scene. EoS Inuyasha would vastly upscale this feat, as Hachi is almost a non-combatant character that is never treated as physically impressive. Slightly comparing with other series, this shouldn't be much different from Jube Namimaru and Ichimoku Samazu being able to perform relativistic feats in My Hero Academia:Vigilantes.

Yu Yu Hakusho

Spirit Gun

This move is shown traveling in a straight line sometimes, giving off brightness, and burning things. Hell, Yusuke even says it’s close enough to light when he uses it to reflect off a mirror, so at first glance it sounds fair, right? The issue is that it also explodes things, also bends in numerous other instances and has clear force behind it, which usually disqualifies it from being actual light. Even the mirror we mentioned broke on contact. That said, similar to Goryomaru, Yu Yu Hakusho does show characters using spirit energy to create and empower different elements, so light wouldn’t necessarily be an exception, which could explain the explosive force. Still, something can be made of light as a construct and not actually move at light speed, so this isn’t the strongest defense either.

The big difference is that Goryomaru’s case is at the very least explicitly stated multiple times to be real light, while here we don’t get that same level of confirmation. The closest thing is that the Spirit Wave’s original name is Reikōdan (霊光弾), meaning “Spirit Light Bullet”, and the Spirit Shotgun behaves similarly to it. But we don’t even know if that “light” is meant to be literal, and kanji overlap like this isn’t uncommon anyway, even the kanji for flames includes the light kanji. On top of that, the light kanji doesn’t show up in other explanations or names for Yusuke’s attacks (while showing up for the Reikō Saga-dan, which shows force and bends), which makes this easily the weakest argument overall for both series. At the same time, depending on how lenient you are, you might see this as a fair argument. We’re not here to set anyone’s standards, but you’d have to accept the other arguments along with it as a package. If you do, Kurama would be upscaling 3.2c in speed.

Genkai/Musashi

Now we move to an opposite problem. In terms of qualifiers, hooray! Both Genkai’s Wave of Light and Musashi’s Photons are, well, actually light. The problem comes from justifying tandem movement with these attacks. With Musashi, it’s not only because it would be abusing clear non-intentional tandem movements with Musashi moving his sword, any results that come from it would result in absurd outliers (note, the calc OP also agrees, don’t harass them for the outdated text). The fact is neither character ever reacts to them intentionally on the screen, and therefore we don’t have much ground to stand here. Genkai is more arguable, but we still don’t think it’s that solid. Yusuke’s “reaction” there is basically just raising his arm to cover his eyes, and we think everyone can agree that neither Tōgashi nor Studio Pierrot intended that scene to mean he was moving at sub relativistic speeds just to shield his face from a really bright light. The manga version of the scene shows no tandem movement from Yusuke in any capacity. In both instances, the light also shows force and lifts the people it hits.

Yashahime’s Insanity

Canonicity

This might seem a weird topic, but Yashahime as a whole wasn't exactly written by Rumiko Takahashi. Its existence came to be when Sunrise decided to do it for Inuyasha's anniversary. That being said, it's documented enough that Rumiko was helping in its creation, as not she designed Moroha, Setsuna and Towa, when it was adapted into manga, she gave guidance and to the mangaka, who also said he wanted to keep the same spirit as hers while writing the story. On their own, both are fine to use. The real problem starts if we try to cross scale feats between them, since the anime and manga are blatantly different in multiple areas. So while we can’t mix feats directly, like using Koga’s 3x speed multiplier from the manga to scale an anime feat, we can still treat them as separate continuities and use them for comparison or to support certain arguments within their own context. That’s exactly why we are going to separate the discussion into anime and manga versions going forward.

Anime

Kirinmaru’s Realm (+ Nebula flight feat)

In the 24th episode of the first season of Yashahime, Moroha and Towa fight Kirinmaru in a pocket dimension full of celestial bodies. The dimension is shown to have stars, planets, nebulae and even galaxies. One could infer two debatable feats performed in this sequence, which unfortunately do not check out.

First, creation. Did Kirinmaru create this realm? To be blunt, there’s zero evidence of that. Presentation indicates that he is merely teleporting the girls there, as there’s no set-up that implies creation, and the Yashahime guidebook gives no details on the matter (in fact, this segment is not mentioned at all on the guide’s page for episode 24). After Kirinmaru defeats the girls, they fade back to reality, leaving vague if the realm would collapse upon his defeat or not. In all, this is not really a feat.

Second, speed. In one of the scenes, the girls awaken their powers and fly from a point where they’re invisible to Kirinmaru. From the previous shot, it’s possible to argue that they would be coming from behind a nebula and then crossing it at high speeds to reach their target. The issue with this logic is that it implies that Kirinmaru would have teleported them lightyears away at the start of the fight for no reason when he clearly was enjoying their fight. It would also imply that this is a real sized nebula and not an arbitrarily sized fake one, which is just as substantiated as the contrary given we have 0 information on this dimension. On top of all of that, it would be an outlier too.

In conclusion, this segment is kind of a nothingburger… except for the feat in the next section.

Moroha’s Moon Slice

During the aforementioned fight, the girls awaken their true power and are capable of generating enormous energy avatars of themselves to fight, flying around the pocket dimension at high speeds. At one point, Moroha uses her avatar to slice a moon in half. Results of this feat range from country level to bordering dwarf star. Why such a huge difference? Well, it all depends on what size you buy for the moon itself.

In one of the shots we see Kirinmaru standing relative to the curvature of the moon, so by using his height we can calculate both the total circumference of the celestial body and its diameter, which is a little over 4 kilometers, matching the size of the smallest moons that orbit Saturn. By using this size, the feat ends up in the Teraton range and borders Mach 10. All said and done right? After all, you guys have a lot of scrutiny with researching characters, and are consistently having to debunk nonsensical higher arguments, Inuyasha was just another victim of this community’s gla- wait this section isn't over?

Yeah, no, the low end has a glaring issue. While Inuyasha is still a fictional setting, its version of Earth remains relatively grounded compared to many other anime and game worlds. Despite the presence of yōkai, its depiction of Japan, its cities, and overall geography closely mirrors the real world. Because of this, it’s reasonable to assume that the broader cosmology, such as other celestial bodies, follows a similar, real-world logic. And that's how we approach our problem: for celestial bodies to be spherical, they need a minimal diameter and mass, or else they will be irregularly shaped (like the smallest moons that orbit Saturn… which are all shaped like potatoes instead of spheres). The moons that match the size of the lower end are all irregular, and look nothing like the celestial body that we see onscreen, as that would be physically impossible due to their lack of mass and thus gravity. If you discount the curvature shot as inconsistent and assume the minimum size for a spherical rocky celestial body (about 600 kilometers), the feat gets in the Zettaton range and over Mach 1000.

You could also still consider the curvature shot but argue that the celestial body she slashed still needs to have enough density (and mass) to be spherical, which would give you values of a little over a dozen Exatons and bordering Mach 10 again.

You could ALSO assume this moon is the size of ours since it looks like it. If you do that, the feat gets up to low Ronnatons and almost Mach 7000.

The merits of each depend on your standards, and will be elaborated on the Verdicts.

Manga

Lady Zero’s Black Holes

Lady Zero is said to be able to make black holes, which can endanger anyone who ends up falling into these. Unfortunately, there are not many things going for it that could be argued as black holes as they are hardly explained in detail nor is there enough descriptors that could lend to the possibility of these being legit. The black hole also only ends up sending the cast to her spider webs and this technique only appears in a single chapter. Even if you wanted to argue this, a similar thing can be argued in YuYu Hakusho with it at least being said it's done by manipulating space. Basically, they aren’t real black holes and there’s no real way to argue it being similar to one.

Grim Comet Feats

The Grim Comet feats in the manga are a littleeee more different than in the anime. While in the anime the comet was thought to be this world-ending asteroid that Osamu Kirin wanted to stop and pose as the savior of mankind, later it was revealed to be a giant chrysalis that held the Grim Butterfly, full of thousands of Yōkai.

But in the manga things get a little more lore-deriving. As the Grim Comet is actually all of the evil expelled from the greatest of all 8 million Gods, Amaterasu. Going around the earth every 500 years to destroy the world. Some of its fragments actually have been destroyed by Sesshomaru while being a teenager, which held enough power to accidentally kill Rion (Kirinmaru’s daughter). Given his sentient nature as a Yōkai on its own, the Grim Comet can control and corrupt characters with his power, which included Kirinmaru and his sister Zero.

Now, surprisingly enough destroying the comet isn’t something anybody could scale, in difference of say the anime where arguing Towa and the rest scale to Osamu Kirin is fine. Because the main issue with the Grim Comet in the manga is that destroying it was a combined effort from basically the entire cast. Inuyasha, Kagome, Sesshomaru’s mother, Koga, Kohaku, and others all played a part (even Rin). The final strike was delivered by Towa, Setsuna, Moroha, and Riku, but that only happened after the comet had already been weakened and it was necessary, as the girls didn’t have enough power to do so.

Even feats related to, say, Towa and Setsuna striking it from 400,000 kilometers, which could get good results ranging from Massively Hypersonic or even Relativistic. But this has to do more with Towa’s sword, Zanseiken which in both Anime and Manga has been stated to be able to “reach the unreachable”, it literally arrived from stars by action of a mysterious God known as Amatsumikaboshi. It’s even mentioned that characters like Sesshomaru wouldn’t be able to strike it due this distance.

Another popular scan shows that the Comet was “both in past, present and future”. This has actually an interesting context, as Setsuna and the girls realized that they wouldn’t be able to weaken it enough to sever the comet’s bond with its spiritual form (as it was full of Yōkai), so Setsuna using her power to slice bonds, used it of a different way, and instead connected her voice to this red strings to ask for help in Feudal Era while she was in Reiwa, transcending time in the process. Causing everyone to detect the Grim Comet in the past, and entangling him in both past and present, being attacked from both sides and destroyed. So this isn’t something anyone could scale.

The Windmill Of Time

Everyone’s favorite argument. Let’s cut to the chase: even at a quick glance, this is a bad argument. Even if everything used to support the “feat" were true, especially the speed part, it would still be a massive outlier for the verse. If this wasn’t enough, the stubbornness from a community unwilling to engage with a feat that would challenge their preconceptions of the verse’s power unfortunately led to a lot of misinformation (can you believe that?) surrounding this feat that we need to clear up in this section.

So…. Where’s MY Universal-Multiversal Inuyasha? It’s not real? Have I been lied to by the agenda posters?..... Yeah. First of all, let’s look at the overall scans presented:

“The Windmill of Time can reconstruct the universe.”

“I can guess the builders’ fate, activating the windmill requires enormous power, far beyond anything they imagined. Not even the shards of the grim comment were sufficient fuel. To say nothing of Akuru’s messenger, how many of those shards have been shattered, so how do I procure the power I need? The answer is you, Sesshoumaru. The room is the barrier that conducts Demon Power into a vortex, when we fight here and our full powers collide the resulting combustion should feed this device.”

Reading this out of context actually seems very solid to argue that Sesshoumaru is implied to be Universal if his power is actually enough to move the windmill and rebuild the universe. Specifically since it is stated to be by Yōki, the thing everyone uses to fight. But the tragically funny thing is how it falls apart the moment you read the next page.

But what does this babble mean? What vortex is he talking about? You see, this is where we have to actually talk about the series overall: Yashahime that is.

Inuyasha as a franchise has always touched upon the themes of time hopping between the Feudal and Reiwa era. The thing here is that by the end of the original series the Bone Eater’s Well was closed entirely. But our main character in Yashahime, Towa (Daughter of Yashahime) was actually transported to the Reiwa era by action of a strange time vortex/ rift. This relation to time travel is actually super important to the overall cast of girls, as behind this strange phenomenon are involved both Tree of Ages and one particular character: Akuru. Akuru is a guardian of space and time, a dog from the strongest Goddess of the Inuyasha verse: Sun Goddess Amaterasu, who rules over space, time and the heavens.

Akuru sends the messages to the Tree of Ages to warn any mortal to take action in case time alterations are done. But the thing is, he’s actually been present in the Great Dog’s family for a good while by now. And with Towa is no exception, this is actually a lot more clear in the Anime version, where not only Great Dog’s lineage is able to see him when nobody else can, but he actively helps them in opening time rifts even if this caused his death.

In the manga this was moreso a collaboration between Tree of Ages and Akuru, as it is stated that the reason Towa was able to travel to the future was due Bone Eater’s time rift/ crack still being present even with the Bone Eater destroyed.

Okay cool and all, but how does this relate to Sesshoumaru?

It’s important to know about time rifts because it is actually what leads to this moment. When it is said that Sesshoumaru’s soul was sent in the vortex, it is because Sesshoumaru has been actually in a time-loop for the past 14 years as a trial to stop Kirinmaru’s plan and the Grim Comet. Every year, he has repeated the same events over 100 times (1400 years in summary) which actually led him to have a premonition of all events going on and find a solution: end the vortex once and for all.

Okay and why does this matter, what’s the big deal?

Because nobody is actually destroying, rebuilding or ending any universes. It’s at the end just a game of literally traveling back in time or in the future and how this causes indirect damages. When Kirinmaru states that he wants to bend fate to his will, or end with all other worlds is straight up flowerish language for him changing the past to stop Toga’s death and stop everyone from suffering his loss. He even says that in a way that is a deal to the major beings that guard space-time such as Akuru.

And this is not out of nowhere, Akuru for example or even Amaterasu herself are literally beings that have real control of the cosmology. This is supported by their forms being held in a higher dimension, Akuru could only interact with the characters by possessing Takachiyo.

Now it is worth mentioning that the actual Windmill actually activates, as you hear it. The thing activates because Towa, Setsuna and Moroha are actually there. But does this mean they’re the universal ones and therefore everyone should scale? No.

Not only that is ridiculous considering not only what has been explained to their time rift shenanigans, but also they’re all Hanyo and if you’ve read the Grim Comet feat section and know the nature of Hanyo, you’d know that their power wasn’t enough to slice the Comet. Making it even less consistent that they could destroy a universe. And the rifts aren’t even created by them, nor the Tree of Ages.

Still not convinced?

Kirinmaru actually stated that he modified the Windmill to take a glimpse of the time rifts as a change of plans when power wasn’t enough.

All of this is a lot more consistent with what we know of the Windmill in the anime, which only works as a time travel tool. And all of the affectations to cosmology aren’t something Kirinmaru can do by power alone.

But let’s pretend we ignore everything argued and still say that Sesshoumaru empowered the thing when he clearly didn’t. Did you know what Inuyasha actually does in this manga?

He literally jobs to a bullet created with a Grim Comet chunk when he tried to enter the time-loop, Sesshoumaru would be ridiculously stronger than him by so many times. It’s insane.

So…

TLDR; The Windmill was never powered by Sesshoumaru or Towa/Setsuna. It only uses pre-existing time portals, and rebuilding the universe is a metaphor for changing past events and causing indirect damages. Even if cosmic levels of power were true, the manga version of Yashahime isn't aligned with the anime in terms of power discrepancy and made Inuyasha blatantly inferior to Sesshomaru, so he wouldn't get the scaling anyway. Be thankful the anime even exists at this point.

Rap God Sesshomaru???

Talking about a weird little feat just for fun. At first glance, this scene looks like pure dramatization or some kind of hallucination. During the moment Sesshomaru gives Tenseiga to Towa, he speaks absurdly fast, and once she’s finally able to hear him, the rain appears to slow down, and so she finally can understand him and grab the sword. The most natural reading is that it’s just cinematic emphasis for an important scene.

That said, it might be more literal than it seems. In the InuYasha CD Drama “Asatte”, Sesshomaru does something very similar. He speaks so ridiculously fast when confessing his feelings to Rin that nobody can understand him until Kagome records it and slows the audio down. So there is actual precedent for Sesshomaru having this bizarre “talking insanely fast” trait. If you apply that here, the Yashahime scene could be interpreted as Towa genuinely keeping up with Sesshomaru’s speech speed while the rain is effectively frozen from her perspective. She also grabs Tenseiga during that moment, which would give her speeds of Mach 291.54. We will be honest, this entire section just exists because we wanted to draw Sesshomaru doing the Eminem pose.

Realm Sizes VS Netherworld

(and why the Power Sphere gets planetary regardless)

Recently, the Yu Yu Hakusho community has seen a surge of arguments attempting to buff the verse’s Raw Calculable Scaling™. These arguments mostly come down to how people interpret the size of the three main realms, those being the Human World (Ningenkai), the Makai and Spirit World (Reikai), as being much larger than planetary in scale, even up to universal. With this in mind, the idea is that this would directly affect how strong Yusuke was as an A Class is scaled, since he destroyed the Power Sphere in the filler movie Yu Yu Hakusho: Poltergeist Report, which contained the power of the Netherworld realm. But does it really hold up?

While we don’t wanna come off as shutting down the bigger-sized interpretations for the main realms itself or anything like that, it’s important to check what the movie actually shows first instead of combining these arguments with the Power Sphere feat. First of all, this realm comes from a filler movie and was created exclusively for this movie, not being mentioned ever again. Yeah, it’s said that the Netherworld went to war to claim the Human World, but at least for the internal logic in this filler movie, “Human World” clearly isn’t talking about the solar system or the universe, it’s just Earth. And if you look at how everything is presented, the conflict is always centered on Earth (and similar levels of planetary scale). The Spirit World flooding in the beginning of the movie, for example, is treated like a planet wide event in scope. Later on, Yakumo straight up says he wants to use the Power Sphere to restore the Netherworld by replacing the Human World entirely. But when that actually starts happening, what do we see? The “Human World” turning into the Netherworld is shown as the Earth being replaced, nothing more. And when everything goes back to normal at the end, again, it only shows the Earth being restored. There’s nothing suggesting this goes beyond that. You might be thinking: “I know Japanese, and Yakumo used the word ‘sekai (世界)’ at the 1:10:39 mark! The word could mean ‘universe’!” Which, okay, sure, but the word has 3 possible interpretations: the world; society; the universe. The literal translation for sekai is “world”, and the other meanings could be attributed depending on the context. You should get by now that it wouldn't be the “universal” usage for this word given what happens in the movie.

King Enma destroying the Netherworld also shouldn’t mean beyond a planetary scale. Even if you argue that the YYH realms are separate planets within a larger cosmos, it actually makes the "universal" claim weaker, not stronger. Enma is an administrator. His role is to manage souls and maintain order between dimensions. There is zero narrative reason for him to wipe out an entire universe if he was trying to just stop the Netherworld people from doing shit. The fact he wasn't capable of destroying the Power Sphere on itself should also tell you his powers have limits. Another great reminder is that, again, this is a filler realm that is clearly not planned out in the cosmology compared to the other realms, and there is no indication in this movie it’s meant to be a plane of existence that goes beyond planetary. 

In summary, if you want to argue breaking the Power Sphere implies AP bigger than 2X Planet Level, you really have to stretch what’s shown way past what the movie actually depicts. We want to make it clear that we are not fundamentally opposed to the idea of Yu Yu Hakusho having larger-than-planetary realms, it makes sense in a similar vein to Bleach high-ends. The problem is that there’s just zero evidence of anyone actually affecting those planes at that scale. Besides, even in the canon manga/anime, destroying a planet is treated as a major deal, which is solely backed by two very specific statements about Yusuke and Sensui's auras. And look, while we are all in for filler movies in this blog, when a series clearly struggles to justify planetary power as the peak, this turning into a universal scale feat just turns it into a textbook outlier that contradicts the weight of the threats in the source material.

The Giant Tree

Kurama had a lot of his plants listed, but one major one was left out: the Okunenju roots from the giant tree he summoned against Shigure in the Three Kings Arc. The simple reason is that a bunch of lucky circumstances had to line up for him. He fought Shigure in the exact place where he had planted it years earlier, and it was only during that battle that it was finally ready to be used. In short, it depended on a very specific location and setup, which isn’t something he can count on normally. So the question is: is that a problem for our favorite fox? Check in the Verdict(s).

How big is an Okunen Tree?

(and does Kurama scale to the infamous “Tree Feat”?)

It’s time for the big, uncomfortable conversation. You might have noticed the feats involving measurements scaled off the infamous Okunen Tree have calculations with a huge difference between low and high ends. That is due to the fact that the diameter of one of these trees has two possible sizes. In this section we’ll briefly discuss the logic behind both. Please be aware that this section is extremely important, and we advise you to read it carefully to not get the wrong impression of what is being bought in this blog.

First, we must talk about the high end, which Death Battle ended up using. Here is the original calculation in full for reference. In Jin’s fight with Souketsu in episode 107, he flies high up above the Tree on which he was fighting. We are shown this shot:

Why is that important? Well, right after, we see that Jin looks down and finds out Souketsu is gone, and we are shown this shot.

Based on the size of the ring here, this clearing should be about 1.3 kilometers in length according to the original calculation. What’s next? Well, remember the last shot?

The original calculation assumes that the circled smidge of dark green paint is supposed to represent the previously measured clearing. From there, they get the radius of the tree based on the curvature shown, and get the diameter to 135423.392 meters, or 135.423 kilometers.

There are a few issues with this. First off, the assumption that the specific circled spot is supposed to represent the clearing has a glaring issue: we are actually shown where the clearing is supposed to be located. In a previous scene, Jin goes above the Okunen for the first time and then comes back down, as we’re shown the following shots:

Yeah, that’s the ring right there, right at the center of the Tree. This alone disqualifies the previous interpretation of where the clearing is supposed to be located, as it gets arbitrarily  chosen to be a small smidge next to a mountain, way too far from the center of the tree. The original calc’s author defend his take with the following:

Fuckers might point to this sequence as a contradiction, but its clearly made that large to enable a convenience for a cool zoom in shot of shit growing closer with conventional hand drawn cells. With the regular painted backgrounds, the ratio between the clearing and the ring is far more disparate. Thus I discounted the, albeit rather impressive given it’s hand drawn, zoom in shot for scaling.

And obviously the size of their auras/attacks isn't a proper measuring stick given the size of those things for sake of visibility has always been exaggerated in this series (the Reigan isn't the size of the DT Stadium/Plateau, the DotDF isn't the size of the DT Stadium/Hanging Neck Island, the combined diameter of Raizen's friend group's aura would be ridiculous given they're well behind the horizon a country or so away in a realm the size of Makai, etc. It’s all exaggerated for visibility)

More power to you if you think to scale them off these things in particular, that's just not what I'm doing as I'm trying to consider the implications of the clearing Jin can view. As it stands, scaling off the former 2 methods wouldn't even fit the clearing we see Jin view. As that clearing is essentially invisible from our perspective, this was the only way I could figure to scale it with that in mind... maybe a high end considering 1 pixel for the clearing at the original screen resolution the image was aired at (what would that be? 480p? 360p?).

The issue, however, remains. Is the clearing really supposed to be invisible or is the painted art just inconsistent? Even ignoring that we see the ring when compared to the total diameter of the Tree, the fact that the selected shadow is off center should instantly disqualify the interpretation, as we know it is just not supposed to be there.

Using the direct comparison of the ring to the diameter of the Tree, we get a diameter of 284.92 meters. That’s a bit small, no? Maybe. We can do another attempt at the original calc’s logic by using this shadow here since it is closer to the center and matches the shape of the clearing much better.

Using similar logic, the diameter of the Tree‘s top becomes 5454.98 meters, significantly smaller than the original calculation (24.8256441x smaller, in fact). So, is that all? No, there’s more. In the same episode, Goya and Kujou fight on an Okunen as well, and their fight shows them going over the river of the Tree. If you pay attention, the rock that ends up landing on is shown in comparison to the river.

Why is that important? We see how big that rock is in the very next shot.

That’s a big deal because with the size of this rock you can measure the size of the lake, which is shown in comparison to the Okunen’s diameter in the previous establishing shot.

Measuring the lake and river based on the size of the rock, the diameter of the Okunen top comes to 835.11 meters. Honestly, the list goes on. In episode 110 we are shown that the clash of auras between Yomi and Yusuke creates a pillar of energy around the ring that extends towards the sky. We can see its width in this shot.

In the next scene, the pillar is seen from other Trees by other combatants, which prompts them to power up and create their own pillars. In a subsequent scene, we can see that they are all more or less the same size.

What does that say about the size? Well, we are actually shown a shot of Mukuro’s pillar compared to the width of the Tree from the side too.

We don’t even need to calculate this one to see that it would get way lower than one kilometer. Again, the original calc author made a defense for this, saying that auras in YYH are purposefully exaggerated in size for visibility… in a scene where the entire point is that the auras are supposed to be visible from afar to the other characters anyway, not just to us. We won’t push for this end to be the correct one, of course, but the point we’re trying to make is that all of the previous measurements technically have as much merit as each other, and all of them except one (with an admittedly flimsy justification given it’s basically choosing a shadow on the ground to be something it’s clearly not intended to be) give a value lower than even 1 kilometer. Point being? The size of the Tree is absolutely not portrayed consistently in general, but it is very much consistently WAY smaller than 135 km in diameter. So, what is the size of this damn Tree after all? Is there some statement that can help? Surprisingly, yes.

The actual dialogue in japanese is as it follows

直径数キロに及ぶ大地を支えているこの億年樹ならあの円礫刀を封じることができるやもしれん

Translating to

This ancient tree, which has supported the earth for hundreds of millions of years and spans several kilometers in diameter, might just be able to seal that circular pebble blade.

There is something notable about this. For one, Koenma uses the term “数” to refer to the number. What does it mean? It can be translated as “several”, “a few” or simply “a number of”. What’s notable? Mostly that it’s quite vague, but also damning against higher interpretations. Japanese has words to describe dozens and hundreds, which would most likely be used by Koenma if the Tree was supposed to be that size… but he didn’t use them. In English, both “several” and “a few” can be used to refer to more than 2, but not too much. What can we infer from that? About 3 kilometers is what we found to be most reasonable. Except for that one calc that got 5454.98 meters in diameter, there are zero reasonable ways to get the Tree any bigger. The calc in question being quite generous, and honestly an outlier compared to the smaller sizes that can be inferred from every other shot. Again, this particular calc also has the issue of just… being very flimsy. It’s seeing a random shadow on the ground and assuming it is a clearing, it’s ignoring the fact that there are clouds above the clearing that we cannot see. It is just way too inconsistent to be used. If you REALLY feel like it’s the correct interpretation for some reason, you can redo the calculations yourself by replacing the diameter of 3000 meters with 5454.98 meters, and multiplying speed results by 1.81832667x. For what it’s worth, it changes nothing about the verdicts.

Speaking of verdicts, this blog is about Kurama, right? Why are we talking about Yusuke’s amped feat here? Shouldn’t he be way stronger than Kurama at that point? Why, yes it is pretty difficult to prove if he should scale in strength. While Kurama is an S-Class Yōkai, it can reasonably be pieced together that he isn’t quite up to Yusuke’s level. Yomi’s Total Power(TP) stands at 1,550,000 whereas Yoko Kurama's was 152,000 (at the time) and his base would be even weaker than that. While he did manage to win against Shigure without having to rely on his Yoko transformation, Shigure is also a much weaker fighter when compared to Yomi. Even comparing him to fellow yōkai Hiei doesn’t help. Hiei had the chance to fight Mukuro, who has a higher TP than Yomi at 1,575,000 but it was agreed by many others that the real competition would be between Yomi and Mukuro. And sure enough, when the time finally came for them to fight, Mukuro dominated Hiei for a majority of the fight, even slicing apart his Dragon of the Darkness Flame in half. In Yusuke’s case, he managed to ultimately match Yomi in power and their fight even lasted for 60 hours and it left Yomi so completely worn out that he ended up losing his next fight. Kurama and Hiei ultimately just haven’t shown that kind of power to let them scale to the feat. Even factoring things like any mid-fight power boosts and transformations likely wouldn’t let them catch up. It can be inferred that they got stronger by the time the second Makai Tournament rolled around as all of Team Urameshi is present and accounted for, but by how much is unknown and it’s also unknown how far they would’ve made it.

Keywords: In strength. Arguably, you can get Kurama to downscale in speed to this feat, to which we got to at most 0.012c. There are pros and cons to this, which we’ll elaborate further.

Arguments for

Yomi (who helped perform the feat alongside Yusuke) is comparable (if inferior) to Mukuro, who Hiei was capable of evading during their fight. We are fully aware that Hiei is not as strong as Mukuro and we don't intend to argue that he is, but we feel like its fair to say that his speed should be close enough to her speed to say he's close enough. We don't think Mukuro blitzed Hiei, as she landed an attack on him when she was enraged. Even between people that are close in speed, they can still land hits on each other.  It also doesnt change that Hiei was able to dodge her attacks even after she became serious. To say her attacks were massively slower than any of her other attacks might be a bit much. Besides, Team Urameshi is essentially portrayed as being able to keep up with each other in their fight with the Spirit Defense Force, which takes place after the Demon World Tournament, giving Kurama a scaling chain to Hiei, and therefore Mukuro, who scales to Yomi.

Arguments against

While it is true that Mukuro and Yomi’s peaks should be roughly comparable, it is important to pay attention to the context surrounding the latter’s fight with Hiei. In it, we can transparently see that she’s barely trying. We think there's more than enough basis to say she is shown blitzing Hiei and sending him flying a long distance at the start of the fight, given she is effortlessly blocking and dodging every single one of his close range attacks. If you pay attention to the last scene, Mukuro even states that Hiei can’t catch her with his two eyes, suggesting he opens his Jagan. While it’s true that Hiei dodges Mukuro’s webs, she also obviously isn’t trying to murder him and using her full strength and speed, as she just had a dialogue about wanting Hiei to find himself while effortlessly avoiding all of his attacks. Moreover, their yōki attacks seem to be portrayed at similar speeds before, the moment Mukuro actually gets serious enough to overpower his Dragon of Darkness Flame, she casually rips it in half and sends a yōki wave through it, which Hiei barely sees coming and has no time to avoid or block. After the fight, Mukuro comforts and talks to Hiei, indicating that she likely was not using his full potential when using the webs, or her yōki. In episode 110, during Yomi’s fight with Yusuke, we see that their clash of yōki inspires the other fighters to go all out, including Mukuro. Mukuro instantly suggests to stop wasting time, and raises her power to create a large column of yōki alongside the others. Observing the situation, Hiei notes that Yusuke got Mukuro to go all out, indicating that it’s something he himself wasn’t able to do. All of this to say that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that Mukuro was holding back, and that Hiei should not scale to her real speed.

But what about the Spirit Defense Force? While it’s true that Team Urameshi fights them at the same time… that’s it. They are fodder goons with guns, so there’s no reason to say that Yusuke is going all out using his top speed to take them out. While the same can be said about the other members, it just makes the scaling even more nebulous. If you saw Invincible taking out weak fodder alongside Rex Splode, would you really say that they are supposed to be as fast as each other? Not to mention that Yusuke went through a massive power increase in his fight, and there is basically no evidence that the other team members underwent such a drastic stat buff.

In conclusion, we have a lot of evidence pointing that Hiei does not scale to Mukuro’s serious speed, which would be the single scaling chain that Kurama would have to the Okunen Tree feat. Taking out the Spirit Defense Force together is not something that should grant a scaling chain either as there is no reason for them to go serious in that fight, and nothing supports such a drastic speed boost for everyone.

Bonus: The Plateau Feat

This is another feat that has problems with scale. The calculation we ended up using for the manga version for the sake of generosity scales the destroyed plateau off of the size of another one, the so-called Chopping Block plateau. The issue is that the Okunen used is not fully grown and we know that they vary a lot in size before their full size. This is corroborated by the fact that Yusuke knocks Sensui into one in the anime version and we see its size. In the manga version, we outright see both in relation to the destroyed plateau, which would make it significantly smaller. The anime version of the feat uses a different method to scale its size, using the portal in the sky which is given a width of 2km. As we’re shown a shot of the plateau more or less in the same direction, the calculation for destroying it gets in the continental to moon range for AP, and MHS to sub-relativistic in speed. The problems are what you’d expect: other scenes show plateaus from afar and we know their distance from cloud level should not be that small, especially considering that if you ang size the distance between our POV and the chopping block plateau, the distance that Kurama should be flying at should logically far exceed the cloud height implied by the calculation. In fact, we are shown the chopping block plateau right next to a small Okunen too. All in all it’s easy to see once again why sizes are extremely inconsistent here and logically things should not be as big as calculations imply. There is absolutely zero reason for this random rock formation to be bigger than a fully grown Okunen Tree, and for the random Plateau that Yusuke destroys to be 2x bigger than even that. So what’s up with the gap between ends? The low end uses the time it takes for Yusuke to land as the timeframe using freefall velocity, simple as that. The high end assumes that Yusuke achieved terminal velocity in the air and is falling at 55 m/s, before stopping mid-air to shoot the Spirit Gun. Of course, you can poke holes in this logic, we see regular rock fragments fall at normal velocities in this scene instead of slow motion like the calculation would imply. Of course, it does take Yusuke a while to land, but it’s easy to see why the high end would probably be a little too generous. Between the incredibly inconsistent size portrayal and the timeframe variables, take this feat with a grain of salt.

Fanart

(Flip)

(Giotto)

Verdicts

Team Kurama

Strength

A bit straightforward of a category. Kurama ends up taking this one under most metrics. Inuyasha is no slouch in the power department, scaling to Kaguya sustaining her Mirror Dimension which we know includes a moon too, making him at least above 29.6 Exatons of TNT. That being said, Kurama’s way stronger than that, as scaling to Yakumo threatening to blow away the Ningenkai and replacing it with the Meikai is a feat way stronger, getting results of 119.32 Zettatons, and Yakumo was only an A-Class when this happened. As an S-Class, Kurama is greatly surpassing that feat by such a wide margin and that’s only counting his base self with Yoko and any mid-fight power boosts, this gap in power increases even further. To be fair, there is a higher end of the Moroha moon slice that would make Inuyasha relative to Kurama in power, with an output of 237 Zettatons, but keep in mind, Kurama’s power is a baseline and the feat was done by a much weaker character, whom he’d be greatly upscaling since then. He’d also be stronger than Sensui, whose statement can make the Yakumo feat reach up to about 1.2 Yottatons, which would only increase more factoring in other power boosts. Anyway you slice it, Kurama reliably takes power.

Abilities

Now here is where the debate gets more interesting. Both draw upon their energies to utilize the variety of moves and techniques at their disposal, and have enhanced senses of smell, so it is important to see how some of their other abilities stack up against one another. Kurama’s Death Tree might seem like an easy way to deal with anyone but Inuyasha’s Fire Rat Robe actually saves him from its deadly acid and having dealt with life energy draining and illusions before, the Sinning Tree might not amount to much either. The Diamond and Fire Tessaiga might not do too much but the Red, Dragon Scale and Black Tessaiga’s are much bigger deals. Red Tessaiga can dispel barriers, limiting some of Kurama’s options for defense. Dragon Scale Tessaiga can drain him of his energy and Black Tessaiga’s ability to suck in Kurama with its Meido Waves are also very dangerous moves that could deal with him. However, Kurama still has a few deadly tricks that could help him out. The Death Seed is capable of killing Inuyasha if it ends up going unchecked and if this fails, it sets up for the Bloodsucking Plant, drinking up all of Inuyasha’s blood until he dies. And while they are less likelier options, the Mugen Flower Pollen being able to erase memories and the Pseudo-Creature incapacitating its victim are extremely powerful tools that Inuyasha doesn’t really have a way to deal with. All of this while keeping in mind that he is in the range for these to go off.

Speed

Power and abilities aren’t all that’s required to win a fight however, as speed is just as important, if not the most crucial stat for this fight. As established earlier, Kurama’s is well within the range of power to end Inuyasha in any one hit but Inuyasha’s Black Tessaiga is something Kurama doesn’t have an answer to and he’s got no issues with opening with Meido Waves on some random stranger, so speed is key to this fight. Both are well past the range of lightning timers and have room to scale much higher. Both of them got light timing arguments via scaling to characters like Hachi and Yusuke, with both of them getting a considerable amount of upscaling to go along with it, as Hachi is a non-fighter who isn’t physically impressive and Yusuke performing it still relatively early on in the Dark Tournament. Of course, the two big ones the two have is Goryomaru’s light beam and Yusuke’s Spirit Gun, both of which fall in nearly identical speed ranges of 3.2c and both would be considerably upscaling this number. So it would seem both are relatively even in the speed department. But then there’s the Yoko transformation to consider, which also bolsters Kurama’s speed as well, which would give him an edge in speed that changes the game.

Wincons

So what are Kurama’s win conditions at a glance? Well the most simple of them all is to just hit Inuyasha once. He’s already leagues stronger to the point that any one attack would do the dog in. Rose Whip with its longer than normal reach or something like the Petal Whirlwind, which can be used to attack from a distance can enable the single hit needed. Death Seed and Bloodsucking Plant are also good alternatives to land a fatal blow, but all of this would only matter if he thinks to use it in the first place, right? You may be inclined to believe that he usually needs time to figure out a strategy, which usually does mean he gets hit in the process. Well, this actually isn’t the weakness it’s made out to be as there are several instances in which he does not hesitate to go in straight for the kill, especially against people he hardly knows, so this wouldn’t be any different.

Ultimately, while this match is pretty debatable, Kurama's win conditions seem easier to pull off. Thanks to the tremendous gap in power, Kurama simply needs one good hit to win the fight. Inuyasha needs one specific move to take Kurama out of the fight, which while it is likely for him to open with, might not be enough. Even with lightspeed Inuyasha and discounting light speed Kurama, there’s no evidence said attack itself can move at speeds Kurama can't react to. Not to mention, Inuyasha is essentially within Kurama's range at all time, making it easy to surround him and land the one good hit to take him out for good.

Summary

“Ironic that the lowest knave’s blood grows the loveliest flowers.”

Advantages:

• Stronger under most metrics
• Relative in speed at base, if the Spirit Gun argument is used
• Death Seed and Bloodsucking Plant are moves that should work, and to a lesser extent, Mugen Flower Pollen and Pseudo Creature as well
• Smarter as a whole, can strategize a plan
• Might have inspired Kenshin, a really cool character…
• “Best boy from YYH!” (Kaiser, Flip, Ed)

Disadvantages:

• Slower without the Spirit Gun argument being used
• The Death Tree and Sinning Tree are both resisted
• While still useful, his sense of smell is comparatively worse than Inuyasha’s
• Vulnerable to the effects of Red, Dragon Scale and Black Tessaigas
• Tōgashi drew up a short one-shot in which he kills Kurama, Yusuke and Hiei just to show he really is done with the series
• …which also means inspiring that author
• Not being Kuwabara makes the kill harder

Team Inuyasha

Strength

There’s not really much to sugarcoat here, Kurama does end up taking AP by most metrics. Yes, even in base, Kurama should comfortably land at least in the lower S-Class range, given that he was able to defeat members of the Spirit Defense Force, an organization explicitly equipped to handle the strongest A-Class threats, and even defeat opponents like Shigure, who is firmly within S-Class. In summary, both his base form and especially as Yoko Kurama, who's an Upper S-Class, he would logically upscale the values of 119.32 Zettatons derived from the Power Sphere, 59.66 Zettatons of TNT derived from scaling to either Sensui’s or Yusuke’s aura. As established earlier, Kurama does not scale to the Okunen Tree blast from Yusuke and Yomi’s fight in raw strength, but that feat doesn’t meaningfully raise or lower his upscaling values nor shifts the overall conclusion. We're also not gonna waste time on this section debating how much Yoko Kurama’s multipliers are accurate or reliable, given the feats he scales alone are already more than enough grounding.

Inuyasha’s AP is weaker, but surprisingly less difficult to figure out than you would imagine. While we have no confirmation of how Kirinmaru’s Realm works and/if how he sustains it, that’s not the same with Kaguya’s Mirror Dimension. Besides holding a replica of a lake and a castle, this dimension holds a freaking moon too, and the dimension starts to collapse the moment Kagome and Inuyasha beat her ass. This means Inuyasha is at the very least 29.6 Exatons of TNT, and this isn’t far off from the feats performed in Yashahime. Inuyasha would be upscaling to Moroha’s Crimson Dragon Wave, which we believe would more accurately get either 15.38 Exatons to 236.957 Zettatons. As discussed in Before the Verdict, this depends on how you interpret the moon involved in that feat, and all of us think it needs either a minimal diameter and mass for it to be a spherical celestial body, or at the very least it needs to be unusually dense for it to be a spherical celestial body. Most of us (both teams included) are more inclined to the Exatons end, in fact. However, this feat is where things get a bit shaky, because there's a higher end of 1.5 Ronnatons of TNT that would potentially triumph over Kurama. The problem is, there’s very little basis to assume that the moon is comparable to Earth’s real moon. On the flip side, you could go to the other extreme and just say “it's an anime”, ignore the necessary diameter or density for it to be spherical, and say the feat is only worth 64.38 Teratons. Regardless of this nightmare of a feat, not only Kaguya’s sustaining feat gets higher, Inuyasha would also be upscaling Osamu Kirin’s feat of dragging the Grim Comet, which sits at around 3.9 Exatons of TNT. Cool to see some consistency in the Exatons ballpark, which could probably give more support to our interpretation of Moroha’s feat also being in this ballpark. Either way, the feats Inuyasha can scale would still be generally capped way below to what Kurama consistently reaches through his own scaling chains, far outscaled by even base Kurama, by at least 4031 times.

So yeah, in terms of Raw Calculable Scaling™, Kurama quite comfortably takes the strength category.

Abilities

Let's make a quick detour from stats, because at this moment you might be thinking: “well, this is it, Kurama AP stomps, so he would ‘Reiatsu Crush' Inuyasha with his aura with no way around it.” Yeah, this is the moment where we reveal that Auntie Rumiko decided to say “screw you (you Hakusho)” to Togashi so she could keep her doggy boy in the game for a bit longer. This is also the moment we need to cover some misconceptions about how aura works in YYH as well, and how it interacts with Inuyasha. Let's divide these in 3 points:

Claim: YYH’s Aura is invisible and passively melts people away just by standing close

There’s literally no reason to assume this is either accurate or a standard interaction. The only instance where it ever resembles something close to that was in the start of Yusuke and Toguro’s fight, where Toguro powering up his 80%, it started dissolving weaker members from the audience with some not so tangible aura, being compared to some acid aura. This already disproves the idea that it’s passive, because it’s literally a result of how Toguro powers up. The anime also disproves the idea of it being invisible as the manga would potentially imply, as we can clearly see here in our little TV they show up as visible waves:

It’s worth mentioning that this type of aura damage in particular is probably a result of how specifically Toguro’s powers work. For example, we know that in his 100% form, he explicitly absorbs the souls of the audience to maintain its power. We don’t see any other character in the series being able to do something remotely close with their own aura, so it’s questionable if Kurama knows or is even able to do it. It also seems deliberately random on who it affects, as quite a number of fodder in the audience were still left after this. So how does damaging aura work in other moments in the series? Let’s take a look at the rest of Toguro vs Yusuke’s fight, as well as Sensui vs Yusuke, where we have bystanders being blasted away:

Something avoidable and visible, as we see characters being able to jump before it hits them, and an attack that has force. Something that, in theory, can be dodged. Something that needs to be consciously activated by its user, usually under relatively small enough ranges (more on this later) when characters aren’t amped.

Bonus: Speaking of fake passive effects, you might’ve seen these selected scans from chapter 51 trying to argue that YYH’s aura has some sort of fear inducing effect, similar to Ren in HxH. The problem is the clear omission of the full context within the scene: Yusuke was shitting himself since the start from seeing Toguro again, who he thought was dead and shows up threatening him in his school, and worst of all more powerful than ever, feeling even more hopeless after seeing his 60%. The anime version of this scene, in episode 26, makes it even more clear that he was afraid from seeing Toguro again from the start, and not a result of his aura while charging up.

Aura power differences: YYH vs Inuyasha

Did you notice how, in the examples we showed, the main logic under aura being a one-hit KO in YYH is related to the class having a very absurd gap in power? For example, Toguro could only do it to fodder in the audience. The same instant destruction in Yusuke’s fight against Sensui is the same, only some fodder yōkai. Despite A-Class Hiei, Kurama and Kuwabara having to stay away from their fight because they'd become “collateral damage” due to their gap in power compared to them, Sensui fights the three and it’s obvious that his aura attacks on them aren’t producing the same effects, they are just reasonably being pushed away or at worst case scenario just suffering serious hits. We even see Yoko Kurama being engulfed by an aura tornado:

This is important because it raises the question of whether, by following YYH’s own logic for classes and aura differences, the AP gap between Inuyasha and Kurama (which would be of someone more or less in A-Class against a S-Class) is even enough to justify the idea that Kurama’s aura, if he chose to use it (more on that later), would make him melt away, instead of being any differently than a serious punch in worst case scenario. Visually, this is not much different from when Yusuke launched 43 A-Class Yōkai far away. Again, this question was following exclusively YYH's own logic, because this is where the aura interaction starts flipping over to the other side.

Both Inuyasha and Yu Yu Hakusho have a lot of similarities in their power system, both of these characters use yōki, and just because something happens in one series, we shouldn’t completely disregard how aura affects the Inuyasha characters in their series. And we already are off to a bad start for Kurama, because even “minor yōkai” can melt vegetation and humans’ life forces away with their miasma, which is very similar to what Younger Toguro’s aura does while he’s transforming, something we just explained is not even the norm on YYH. In Inuyasha, these effects happen without needing enemies to be orders of magnitude stronger, showing this is just a common property of miasma. Of course, there are Yōkai who produce much more potent miasma, like Naraku, whose is so corrosive it can render vegetation infertile permanently, as well as taking all animal life in really large areas, but Inuyasha still resists it. Said resistance being attributed to his biology as a Half-Yōkai. What about life force draining? He resisted the drain of a Yōkai who could absorb the life force of an entire forest. The type of aura that actively hurts him is holy energy, something Kurama doesn’t have access to, and that instance even shows how Inuyasha can still fight with aura consistently hurting him. Basically, what we’re saying is that Kurama’s yōki shouldn’t be much different from a serious punch/piercing on Inuyasha, just giving him extended range. Sure, if a strong enough hit lands on a vital area for his physiology, it could be fatal, but Inuyasha has strong enough regeneration and endurance, especially considering how often he gets pierced throughout the series, to potentially tank a few hits instead of just vaporizing in the wind.

As a last closing thought for this section, while we don’t want to push this and keep things sane and breezy, you could potentially argue Inuyasha can survive some level of contact with his yōki due to the properties of Tessaiga. It’s somewhat consistent with some of Inuyasha’s moves, like the Backlash Wave, that he needs to come really close to enemies yōki so he can throw it back at them, and sometimes being completely engulfed by it, which was the case in his fight against Ryūkotsusei. In the anime version of the same fight, even the scabbard could absorb a bit of his yōki for himself. Inuyasha clearly shouldn’t scale to this guy narratively, as not only Inuyasha isn’t meant to be comparable to Tōga’s level of power at this point in the story as it was well explained during the Upscaling section, the whole point of this scene is about him finding a way to cheese stronger opponents by throwing their yōki back at them, was initially trying to exploit an exposed cut Tōga did in the past just so he could cut him (and failed doing that), and we have both Totosai and Myoga being sure the only way he beats Ryūkotsusei is via using the Backlash Wave. Whether you want to argue that Inuyasha can survive being splashed with yōki from opponents vaguely orders of magnitude above him, specifically around 1000x stronger, or go with the idea that he was only Large Town level at this point, which would mean tanking yōki from someone 1e13 times stronger than him (please do not seriously argue that last one), the point remains the same: Inuyasha could still be engulfed by that yōki and come out relatively fine with the help of his sword. Why is that possible? Vague reasoning, the “ki” of Tessaiga, which we know it’s not the same as yōki given a hanyō cannot receive or handle that much energy naturally, and if strong enough can overwhelm the enemy’s yōki. Anyways, given this last argument above could easily be seen as a flimsy NLF (and because we wanna argue Inuyasha wins regardless), we will act like being hit by Kurama’s aura is gonna be potentially fatal depending on how it's done, and he needs to avoid getting hit by it.

Full abilities comparison

Besides aura and his AP advantage, Kurama is mostly known for his very creative ways he uses plants as his main arsenal for battle. At first glance, you would imagine all of their abilities would work, but Inuyasha has direct answers to some of them. The Death Tree’s corrosive acid loses a lot of its threat when you remember what we just said about Inuyasha being able to resist and keep fighting through Naraku’s miasma, which is extremely corrosive. Even worse, he can protect himself even further by simply using his main set of clothes, the Fire Rat Robe. Dragon Scale Tessaiga is also shown being able to completely drain deadly venom from Mizuchi, which could not only erode a whole forest but completely stopped his regeneration when Inuyasha used it against him. Speaking of Dragon Tessaiga, it also saves his ass from the Pseudo Creature. While Inuyasha himself has no answer to it attaching to him on a cellular level, the Tessaiga does, as it has been used against yōkai that were specifically built to drain off people’s power. Perhaps the most surprising, the Sinning Tree isn’t something Inuyasha would just fold to either necessarily. He’s already dealt with both of its main gimmicks before, which are life force drain and illusions. Not only Inuyasha resisted a yōkai that could absorb the life force of an entire forest, but he also fought through Naraku’s illusions and broke out of them before, which was no joke.

All that being said, Inuyasha can’t really power through everything Kurama throws at him. For example, the Mugen Flower Pollen can erase memories, which is a huge problem in a fight. But if we’re talking about deadliness, Kurama’s most dangerous options would be the Death Seed and Bloodsucking Plant. If the Death Seed is not noticed and/or stopped, it can kill Inuyasha by itself. And despite resisting life force drains, this wouldn’t really be the case for blood loss, so the Bloodsucking Plant can still give Kurama the win by sucking out all of Inuyasha’s blood.

Since some of Inuyasha’s abilities clearly depend on raw AP, we can skip straight to the moves that either could work or definitely would work on Kurama. But before that, you might be thinking, “Oh, I know, he can just burn the plants with fire! He has the Fire Tessaiga!” Sorry, that won’t work. Not only Kurama’s Petal Whirlwind was only blown up due to Karasu’s aura and not the heat, it’s very clear his stronger plants like the Ojigi Plant can resist fire just fine. It’s also not really clear if the Yōki Vortexes are AP based or not, but if they aren’t then that’s easily a dead Kurama. The Red Tessaiga is specifically effective against aura barriers, which could make Kurama defenseless. The Backwave Slash, while not perfect as it can be reflected back, Inuyasha could exploit it to send Kurama’s yōki back at him.

But of course, the cream of the crop here would be the Dragon Scale Tessaiga and the Black Tessaiga. A very clear weakness of every YYH fighter is their limited pool of Spiritual Energy/Yōki, and the Dragon Scale’s almost unlimited absorption could easily nullify Kurama’s source of power in this fight over time, and weaken him to a point Inuyasha could easily damage him. Even worse would be the Black Tessaiga, as if Inuyasha hits Kurama with a single Meido, the fight is instantly over. Yes, Kurama could potentially survive the body and soul dissolution via surviving being a bystander in Toguro’s fight with Yusuke, and you could easily argue that it would take more than one hit from a Meido Wave for its spatial cutting properties to matter, as everyone in this blog agrees with the Hiei argument. The biggest problem that Kurama has absolutely no counter, despite being the least deadly application of the move, is that the Meido Wave will drag him inside it and leave him stranded in the Netherworld forever. Its suction powers are so powerful it can drag from mountain rock after making contact for a second with the portal, and Kurama was a victim of BFR before. Given Kurama isn’t the YYH fighter that uses the Dimension Sword it’s impossible to escape it too. What makes it worse is that Inuyasha not only can send a barrage of Meido Waves, he can do it at very high-speeds and spam this attack.

And of course, we are talking about canines, so we need to compare their smell, and boy this is just not a competition. Sure, Kurama can detect the aura of others and pinpoint where his opponents could be hiding, as well as even detecting emotions, that’s very useful for him, but Inuyasha is usually shown as the more precise of the two. It can identify specific organs, if someone is hurt, their bloodlust, if someone transformed their appearance, and as much as we hate using this word, layered to a point where when in a situation humans looked and smelled the same as normal yōkai under an illusion, he could smell even further and identify the Yōketsu so he could differentiate the two, which is invisible even to regular yōkai. Its range breaks all logic, to a point it could differentiate Kagome’s blood scent from others even when she was in a different time period altogether. Why? We don’t know, but it can and it’s consistent within both versions of the series.

Surprisingly, Inuyasha is actually the haxier of the two, has a way better smell that is instrumental for this fight and has instant one shot abilities that could shut down the foxy boy’s dreams on the spot. Kurama still brings more versatility overall, and his own resistances give him ways to somewhat deal with what Inuyasha has, but a lot of its effectiveness is mostly due to his already advantage in AP, not the abilities from his aura or plants itself. Inuyasha, on the other hand, can do things like powernulling Kurama if the fight drags on or can immediately BFR him to the Netherworld, which will work regardless of his own strength. Because of that, we’d say abilities should go to Inuyasha.

You might be thinking that, so far, this verdict sounds like it’s leaning more toward Kurama than Inuyasha, after all, only taking abilities isn't enough. But we are finally approaching the territory where the balance completely shifts. Let’s now talk about range, or as we usually call it in this community…

AOE

Besides the Okunenju Roots, which Kurama can't really have access to in a random scenario and involves a lot of time and preparation to do, he doesn't have any notable attack to gauge what would be his maximum AOE, their range is clearly inferior by comparison. At best there is this moment in the Karasu fight where he makes a very small pillar of aura around himself before unleashing his plants, measuring at most 3 meters. Note something important in this scene: he could have blasted his aura to destroy all the bombs, but he used his plants instead. Let's for the sake of argument consider he would alone recreate the pillars of energy from the fights in the Okunen Tree. Giving this type of range for Kurama is completely insane, but math wise you'll see why. In this case we can scale the size of Kurama’s aura AOE to at most 7.24 meters in radius. That’s pretty big, right? Assuming that the range of the aura is as much as the starting distance between Yomi and Yusuke here, it gets about 12.18 meters. The frame of reference we’re gonna use for Inuyasha is the Meido. In the first episode of Yashahime, we see it create a portal spanning almost 5 meters to absorb a monster. Pretty big, bigger than Kurama’s best display of range for his aura and certainly big enough to swallow his plants. But it is smaller than The Three Kings Tournament’s aura size displayed by Yusuke and Yomi. Is it Inuyasha’s limit? Absolutely not! In the 15th episode of Yashahime, Inuyasha’s Meido creates a portal large enough to dwarf a fragment of the Grim Comet and swallow all of it. To preface how insane this is, let’s talk about how big this fragment is. We are told that it is a large fragment, which is notable since the Grim Comet exceeds 100km even after shrunken down. This fragment by itself could already be seen from outside the atmosphere. In the Yashahime guidebook, we are told that Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru saved the world/surface by stopping it. All of this would suggest that this fragment is at least about the size of the meteor that extinguished the dinosaurs. Taking this into consideration, Inuyasha’s portal would be around 232.13 kilometers wide. That’s hardly inconsistent, and, since we’re scaling AOE here, his daughter’s energy is also able to affect the entire area of the Grim Comet, which we have established exceeds 100 kilometers in diameter, and cut a moon that’s at least 4 km wide in half. Moreover, his niece could also create a giant energy dragon that exceeded 800 kilometers in length. Let’s put this into perspective. The biggest Meido portal that Inuyasha has ever opened is not only unfathomably bigger than the best display of AOE that Kurama has displayed, but also bigger than an entire Okunen Tree by 77.376x. Even being lenient with range scaling, Inuyasha’s feat surpasses early Yomi fight Yusuke’s by 19058.29x. 19. Thousand. That’s the difference between the size of a normal person and 23 Burj Khalifas stacked on top of each other.

Inuyasha takes AOE by far.

Speed

Arguably THE most important category to secure Inuyasha’s win. Let’s start small. Both have direct showings of or can be scaled to lightning timing, with Inuyasha’s best scaling getting to Mach 231 - 425. Kurama, conversely, can scale to a very early Yusuke lightning timing, getting to Mach 580 - 1062. In terms of lightning, YYH clearly has the better feats, no doubt about that. Pretty notable that it’s a very early Yusuke who performed that feat, meaning EoS characters should clearly upscale this a lot. So is that it? Not really. Let’s go for something a little faster than lightning: light. As you might have noticed if you read the blog, (you do read the blog before jumping to the verdicts, right?) YYH light timing arguments have basically every problem in the book. The Spirit Gun bends, displays force and is never even directly called light. Even using Genkai’s instance, we believe that Yusuke merely shielding his eyes doesn't really qualify as a proper “reaction feat”, especially given nobody reacts to the flash in the manga and it displays force in the very same scene. Taking that into consideration, we do not consider feats related to Spirit Energy as light timing. Inuyasha, on the other hand, has much better arguments. While some light beam feats are definitely still shaky thanks to them showing force, they are at least called light beams, but we of course will not bank on them either. With one exception. Hachi’s feat is unambiguously better, with the light beam in question being directly called light and coming from a source that corroborates that by portraying the same ability as a flash of light and a focused beam in a different scene. Measuring his reaction, you can see that he moved at around 0.251c, considerably faster than anything in YuYu Hakusho, even with things that Kurama has no reason to scale to. You might be asking “what about the Plateau feat? That’s sub-rela, no? What about if you scale Kurama to the Okunen Tree feat?” and that’s an interesting discussion. As you have read in the BTV about the Okunen Tree, we strongly believe that you cannot scale Kurama to it thanks to the fact that the only semblance of a scaling chain relies on assuming Mukuro went all out against Hiei, which we believe is an assumption with a LOT of evidence against it. Regarding the Plateau feat, we have problems as well, as you have read in that section. Not only does the Plateau have similar size inconsistencies to the Tree that are directly contradicted by the manga, the high end relies on assuming Yusuke was falling at terminal velocity and applying that timeframe to the feat, instead of using the time it takes for the Spirit Gun to reach the mountain onscreen. As such, we do not think the high end of the plateau feat is usable. What’s left? Well… without both of these, the verse is stuck on upscaling triple to low quadruple digit Mach speeds. Let’s express this numerically, from the fastest to the slowest feat. Even if you think the high end of the Plateau feat is valid, that would only give Kurama baseline scaling to 0.029c. Conversely, Hachi’s feat would be 8.655x faster. Bear in mind that Inuyasha massively upscales Hachi, and Kurama does not upscale Yusuke at that point by much if at all (he is in fact in the same scene, utterly shocked at it). In fact, this feat blitzed Sensui, an S-Class, meaning any upscaling that Kurama would get from getting higher in class is vague in terms of speed. Food for thought.

Let’s go under the interpretation that Kurama scales to the Okunen Tree. That would give him baseline scaling to 0.01c. Hachi’s feat would be 25.1x faster, and Inuyasha would massively upscale this. Without that, the best Kurama would get would be massively upscaling early Yusuke’s Mach 580 - 1062 feat. Conversely, Hachi’s feat would be 206.57 to 378.244x faster. While it’s true that Kurama would upscale that a lot, there is zero guarantee that he would get even close to closing the gap, especially when the feat he’d be trying to catch up to is performed by Inuyasha’s version of Puar from Dragon Ball. At any rate, it’s not hard to see why Inuyasha is blitzing reactions here, even considering Kurama’s high end.

Let’s say you buy the Plateau feat’s high end. 8.655x is A LOT, especially in a quickdraw scenario. Rounding up the gap to 10 by virtue of Inuyasha’s upscaling (it would be way more than that but bear with us), it’s basically like Inuyasha is seeing Kurama in slow motion, like this.

“But wait” you might be thinking, “what about the multipliers? Wouldn’t they affect the speed gap?”. That’s another good question. Let’s start with the most notable one. Off the bat, Sensui’s is already odd to use, and blatantly does not apply to speed in our opinion. In the very scene he describes himself as having 10x more aura than Yusuke, he also says that Yusuke is faster and stronger than him. In a later fight, Yusuke charges a spirit gun that outright blitzes him (seriously, he’s looking at it coming like a deer in headlights). So no, Sensui’s multiplier does not help Kurama here. But what about TP? It falls under a similar problem. While it is true that Yoko has around 17x to 80x the amount of TP that base Kurama does, it’s important to remember that TP means TOTAL POWER. It is a videogame-y system that measures Hit Points, Offensive Power, Defensive Power and Special Power. It is completely unknown what fraction of this number is supposed to represent speed, and as such we’re not assuming anything substantial from it. Yoko drastically increasing Kurama’s speed is also unsubstantiated by the fact that base Kurama is able to dodge and tag Karasu, who was able to dodge and avoid Yoko’s plants just fine.

This leaves us with mobility, a category that is arguably just as important. There… really isn’t much to talk about here to be honest. Both display some form of FTE running. Yoko can fly with the plant, but Inuyasha can also jump hundreds of meters into the air. While flying is useful, it cannot save Kurama from Inuyasha’s AOE, and jumping good is certainly enough to stall Kurama’s plants. At any rate, it is much easier for Inuyasha to avoid Kurama’s AOE than the other way around. There is nothing the silver haired Fox can do to escape Meido’s portal, and he can barely even see it coming at all thanks to the projectiles being way faster than 8x times his reaction speeds with the utmost lenience to Kurama.

Inuyasha quite comfortably takes speed.

Wincons

Think of this matchup like a duel between two gunslingers. One of them is overwhelmingly stronger. He doesn’t even need the guns, he can tear the other apart with ease. He has solid range too, plus a whole arsenal of weapons, and many of them probably will kill his opponent on the spot. The other gunslinger is far less durable by comparison and has fewer tools to work with, maybe only one or two real game changers. But he makes up for that with far better speed and great accuracy, to the point his opponent is so much slower he might as well be a living statue. On top of that, one of his attacks has absurd range and is incredibly hard to avoid, even for characters who are already in his speed tier. That’s really what this comes down to: Kurama definitely has several ways he could win, but Inuyasha’s strongest advantage is having a one-shot attack he can throw out immediately before Kurama does anything, and that he is unlikely to evade, easily winning the quickdraw.

Even if you decide to scrutinize Inuyasha’s intelligence or say he could open with another move, not only he'd know Kurama is a threat frame one by his smell and noticing his bloodlust, but he has consistently used this attack whether he’s fighting some random root (in the anime version) or rock yōkai, or much bigger threats like Naraku and the Grim Comet. Hell, in the manga version of Yashahime, it’s his bread and butter, to the point of opening with it. Inuyasha might be a bit dense sometimes, but he’s not that stupid to a point he won’t use one of his main attacks knowing he needs it the moment he smells Kurama. Not only does he show cleverness during multiple moments in the series, he is a character that actively wants to end fights as fast as possible, even if it means going completely overkill when not needed. In fact, criticizing “in-characterness” for Inuyasha actually makes it worse when you look at Kurama.

He’s very smart, sure, and despite being an option, he barely uses his aura in ways it would be the most deadly to Inuyasha, if at all. Kurama mainly focuses on fighting with his plants even when he is going straight for the kill, and this severely hurts his range of attack. Hell, criticizing opening with Meido would be the same as saying Kurama wouldn’t go straight for the kill (which we are treating he would), as despite him having done that in the series a few times, it’s as equally in character for him to try figuring out enemies first. This was specifically troublesome against a character who was faster than him. Guess what? This will be a very big problem given Inuyasha simply blitzes Kurama.

Even if you argue the battle starts within a distance Kurama’s range can hit Inuyasha, Inuyasha isn’t dumb enough to not know the concepts of jumping and running away to get distance, especially considering Inuyasha has great mobility to not let Kurama’s possible aura expansion kill him. Either way, this shouldn't even matter that much, because Inuyasha is going to be sending something to kill Kurama before he has time to try anything. The Meido Waves can tag characters at the same speed ballpark as Inuyasha, so not only is it a little disingenuous to argue it’s slow enough for Kurama to dodge, we could also scrutinize the speed of countless attacks done in YYH as well. It just involves a lot of generosity to Kurama while also severely downplaying Inuyasha as a fighter to say the most likely outcome isn’t our dog boy winning a simple quickdraw. For us who are also massive fans of Kurama, it could be worse, at least he likely loses this without dying (immediately). Wincons also go to Inuyasha.

Summary

“I never thought that someone liked me... not like a yōkai, not like a half-yōkai, not even like a human... just like... just like me!"

Advantages:

• Far faster if you’re reasonable to both
• Meido is a move Inuyasha uses in character that Kurama can’t avoid or survive
• Can powernull Kurama via Dragon Scale Tessaiga
• Way better sense of smell, which would instantly tell him how dangerous Kurama is
• Has a lot of experience fighting much stronger foes, and Tessaiga could potentially protect him from Kurama’s aura
• Great mobility
• Being too straightforward and his mentality of ending things ASAP definitely helps him pulling instant wincons on the spot…

Disadvantages:

• …still dumber
• Far weaker if you’re reasonable to both
• Less versatility in terms of wincons compared to Kurama
• It really took them 559 chapters to get together for real
• "What do you mean Kuwabara beats Inuyasha?"

Conclusion

This is definitely one of our closest blogs we’ve done, and it’s been a while since we had our folk split on a match to a point it got two verdicts. But as for now, as much as you would like to change the world, this smile bomb of a sentence will still remain true today: the shipping daughter clears the powerscaling son. Considering that dogs hunt foxes, we're not surprised. The winner of this blog is the silver haired Hanyo and youngest son of Tōga, Inuyasha.

Final Tally

Inuyasha (5): Kaiser, Flip, door-kun, Giotto, Serge

Kurama (2): Ed, Strunton

Kitaro (1): Kaiser (realest vote)

Next Time

(Kinda NSFW lol)

Before We Go…

Kaiser: We’re never beating the allegations are we

Flip: We might’ve picked a bone or two with some of Rumiko’s writing decisions while delving on Inuyasha VS wise, but at the end of the day this blog is meant to be dedicated to Rumiko Takahashi and Yoshihiro Togashi, as everyone involved are fans of their works. Be it Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter X Hunter, Inuyasha, Ranma or Urusei Yatsura, their works are massively important to us and it shaped us fundamentally from our childhood to adulthood and keeps being a great influence. We hope you enjoy the blog, and if you didn’t, at least voice it in a respectful way. We know that the community isn’t too fond of speed and hax win conditions, and they are generally treated as way dumber than they actually are. The sheer abuse of speed + hax arguments for comic street tiers and certain iconically posable anime characters while ignoring important things like range, general movement speed and mobility definitely poisoned the well. Or not considering if their duraneg is resisted by the other character or even real. Inuyasha winning the blog came as an upset, as we had Kurama winning for the biggest duration of the blog. It was mostly due to new discoveries on a lot of Yu Yu Hakusho feats (absurdly lowering their results) that made the verdict swap to this, and comparatively Inuyasha didn't suffer nearly as much in terms of nerfs, as the most noticeable difference was downgrading what people pushed for Moroha's feat in AP. It also ended as a nothing burger for the rules we used for the production of this blog. Understandably, we can’t predict the reaction people will have with the verdict, which left us a bit anxious. 😅 This was also our first blog with Giotto! Which we are so happy to have here. Great individual.

Anyways. During the production of this blog, we happened to discuss a lot of MUs either we made or people pushed for the series. Given we don’t want to be (too) negative or be forced to talk about a lot of matchups we have no positive feelings for, we’re just hand picking our favorites and some few others worth discussing due to extreme popularity:

Alternate Inuyasha Matchups

Kaiser: As a fan of mythology and folklore in general (who do you think had the idea for that section?), I have become very fond of Gegege no Kitaro since I found out about it. Not only does it have a really fun setting and interesting stories about Yokai (and folkloric creatures from other countries), but it also has that old time charm that I’m very fond of. Shigeru Mizuki is considered one of the most important Mangaka of all time in Japan, and it’s easy to see why. Dude lost his arm during the war, came back to become an artist and still achieved goated status in life, standing among the greats such as Tezuka and Ishinomori. Because of that, you can probably see why I’m comparing Inuyasha to Kitaro. Both are iconic Yokai protagonists that are sons of long lineages of folkloric beings. Both of their series analyze their relationship with humans and interactions with a diverse array of other Yokai, alongside a group of unique friends. Not exactly a theme bible but I like that their structures are clearly very similar. I just find it a cute little OG vs inspired match. Funny and ironic that Kitaro also directly inspired YYH. Yato sounds great too. I don't like Inuyasha vs Yusuke too much, it's pretty boring imo.

Giotto: Hi it’s me, Giotto! Little jumpscare of mine here, but this project of researching Inuyasha was something I had planned a good while ago, after all it is both a character and a verse I felt wasn’t looked into enough, and I love Rumiko’s different works as well (previously researched Ranma for example). I mention it because part of the motivation behind doing so was Inuyasha vs Yato, one idea that called my attention due how unique it was, and after checking both series I fell in love with it. Not only does it has the whole heavy Folklore inspirations (Inuyasha being Yokai, Yato being a God), but their character evolution matches perfectly, with both seeking to achieve power and recognition at first, all due a rough past where both were looked upon as scum by them fellow Yokai/Gods given their Hanyo/Obscure God nature. Having a change of perspective and heart by a girl they met from a modern day time, and seeing the evolution in their respective sentient swords (Tessaiga and Yukine). Even ghosts of their past will seek to bring them back and haunt them to ruin their lives (Kikyo/Naraku and Nora/Father). It also has a great power interaction, with several spells and abilities being countered, the perfect idea for me. Nothing against Kurama here, I believe it is a lot of fun, just my preference. Yusuke and Kitaro? Oh yeah ig they’re fine.

Door-kun: Admittedly, I never really got Inuyasha vs Yusuke. I think Yato overall vibes the best for Inuyasha for non-Kurama options

Sesshomaru Matchups

Giotto: Sesshomaru is a fun character, but personally haven’t been too attached to his ideas, especially since none of them match what Tenseiga means to Sesshomaru’s development across the story, but regardless, Itachi sounds like it’d be a great episode, not super thematic but it vibes and would make a raw fight, even if it would be a major glazefest for Itachi in the waiting period. I feel similar with Vergil, with the sole exception that Inuyasha vs DMC is just that great of a verse pairing and would be rather unique IMO. Now with Byakuya is where personally I beat a lot more with thematics, as it touches something more than “oh brother”. Sesshomaru and Byakuya are both the respective prodigies of a highly respected noble family (Great Dog, Kuchiki), both stoic and calmed swordsmen whose life was greatly impacted by black haired girls they met and mean a lot to them (Rin and Rukia). It’s not like super wow but I dig the aesthetic a lot, cherryblossom, moon and what not.

Door-kun: I personally for Sesshomaru’s matchups think Vergil is by far the weakest. I get why it exists, but I’ve never really felt like the match exists for Sesshomaru, and feels very pushed for the epic Vergil W, and I don’t really like that vibe. I think it would be better if it wasn’t pushed the way it is, but as it stands I just can’t say I enjoy it. Itachi’s cool enough, I think the aesthetic is cool and they match in aura, but I can’t say it’s super thematic for either and while it’d be a cool fight, I do worry Sesshomaru would be a bit overlooked in the waiting period if not in the episode (admittedly, to a lesser extent then in vs. Vergil). Not a bad idea though, and if it’s what we need to get Inuyasha on the show, I’d be alright with it. Personally, I think Byakuya is the ideal for him. The aesthetics are damn near perfect and I think that it fits the attitude of both well. I also think it does a bit more with Sesshomaru’s character then vs. Itachi does, and I think it’d overall have the best choreography between the three - I think Shukei: Hakuteiken vs. Sesshomaru’s dog form would be really cool for a climax and I think the mobility of both would be showed off really well - Byakuya’s shunpo matches very well with the quick choreography of Inuyasha fights, and that’s obviously an ideal for what you’d want from an animation for both. Overall, I think this is a pretty slept on matchup that’s really cool for both. I just want Sesshomaru on though, honestly.

Strunton: I have no strong opinions on these besides like Itachi VS Sess. Being honest, the fight just vibes for me. The connections could be summarized as "antagonistic brothers" but I think the pairing just works. I think it's also easy to make this a hype animation as well.

Flip: Choosing a Sess MU is choosing his grave atp, lol. Admittedly, I’m not looking forward to an episode with him in general because, regardless of the opponent, it would have a miserable waiting period with jokes about Sesshoumaru in Yashahime. Even ignoring that, I’m not the biggest fan of Itachi as a MU. After rereading Inuyasha, I don’t really think it does much with the characters besides their aurafarming and a cool japanese aesthetic, and I think they deserve more. On Vergil, it’s a great MU conceptually, but the push is ultra-larp dishonesty so I checked out from it. Byakuya vs Sesshomaru seems fun and does a bit more with Sesshomaru’s character than Itachi, while still keeping a cool fight.

Kaiser: I kinda like Byakuya. I prefer another MU for Vergil, personally. Itachi will happen I guess, not looking forward to it.

Hiei vs Iori

(T0m)

Kaiser: Aura. Favorite for both free.

Door-kun: Sick match, I enjoy it a lot.

Ed: The long awaited second Hiei matchup. KoF and YYH is a good series pairing and this is something I see with some solid merit. You’re saying you don’t want to see a giant flaming dark dragon clash against the tainted and violent flames of the Yasakani?

Flip: Dragon of the Darkness Flame vs Shiki Yami Barai would be really metal, my favorite for both.

Sensui vs Knives

Strunton: Sensui and Knives are essentially dark reflections of the main protagonists that form a group with the intent of wiping out humanity from popular 90s anime/Manga. I know those are pretty surface level connections but these two don't have a lot to base a matchup off of either. Regardless, I think this is a fun match. Depending on your stance for Trigun, the match is pretty debatable. It also just vibes.

Kuwabara VS Ryunosuke

Ed: Two punks who grow to be some of the coolest bros you could ask for. Would be an interesting take on a Kuwabara match up. Ryunosuke doesn’t scale to nearly the same extent as other characters in Shaman King so he very well might just offer up something different, leading to a different discussion on how it plays out. It’d also be a great chance to talk about Kuwabara in a positive light without downplaying his efforts as he also has a pretty interesting moveset to consider. Also its a sword fight but involving spirits and I think the fact that Ryunosuke using a wooden sword as his main weapon while Kuwabara initially awoke his powers with the fragment of a wooden sword before being to use it on his own is something that isn’t lost on me and can make for some interesting banter, especially when involving Tokageroh. Also hey, if you weren’t convinced that Kurama beats Inuyasha, then Kuwabara sure does (even the other team admitted to it) and that’s cool I think.

Kaiser: I like this one. Delinquents and swords and stuff. Pairing is obviously great. It feels good to have a Kuwabara MU where he can actually trade hits with the opponent.

Genkai VS Avan

Flip: Togashi VS Dragon Quest is a pairing that should speak for itself. Of course, it needs to be somewhat fair, so going with the Dai’s Adventure manga instead of a character from the games is important. This one is relatively simple in terms of themes, they are basically the masters who were thought to be dead by the series first big bad, but returned later on to continue guiding their pupils. The interactions these two could have and the fight dynamic seem fun enough.

Kaiser: 

Sources

Inuyasha

Sengoku Otogizōshi InuYasha (Anime and Manga)

InuYasha: The Final Act (Anime)

Hanyo no Yashahime  (Anime and Manga)

Hanyo no Yashahime - The Second Act (Anime)

InuYasha the Movie: Affections Touching Across Time

InuYasha the Movie 2: The Castle Beyond the Looking Glass

InuYasha the Movie 3: Swords of an Honorable Ruler

InuYasha the Movie 4: Fire on the Mystic Island

Hanyo no Yashahime Anime Official Guide Book

VSBattle Wiki calculations by Apex Predator GX and KLOL506

Kurama

YuYu Hakusho (Anime and Manga)

YuYu Hakusho: The Movie

YuYu Hakusho The Movie: Poltergeist Report

YuYu Hakusho Official Character Book Reikaishinshiroku

Onelastforum calculations by ChaosTheory123 (modified)

G1 Blog: Ichigo vs Yusuke

G1² Blog: Danny vs Yusuke

Death Battle: Ichigo vs Yusuke

Special thanks

Rina Antiqua - calculation consultant

Snowy (Flip’s dog) - dog specialist