Inuyasha/Wall Banger

Wall Bangers in Inuyasha include:

Inuyasha probably has others, but the most prominent Wall Banger is a "They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot" complaint. During the first season, Inuyasha's former lover Kikyo, previous incarnation of Kagome, is resurrected as a kind of golem/undead thing. Though the evil witch who created her failed to steal Kagome's soul and thus truly revive Kikyo, a spark of Kikyo's hatred and rage lingers within the shell; thus, she continues to "exist". To sustain herself, she must eat parts of human souls; otherwise, she reverts back to true death. It's uncertain how she's getting what she's eating, but whatever the method, it's gotta hurt someone. Despite the fact that soul eating is generally used to show that the Villain of the Week or Monster of the Week is truly evil, she is still able to use all of her old holy powers, and none of the main characters have any gripes towards her beyond her being the third point in the Inuyasha/Kagome Love Triangle. Inuyasha and Kagome's attitudes can be explained, somewhat - Inuyasha is a half-demon and doesn't think too highly of either race, and Kagome is Kikyo's reincarnation. (Though perhaps that should make Kagome more horrified at Kikyo.) But neither Sango, a fully fledged Demon Slayer, nor Miroku, a somewhat shady but still skilled Buddhist monk, find anything the least reprehensible about Kikyo's eating habits.
- Since it's The Warring States Era, there's so many battles and diseases and so much infant mortality rates that Kikyo never kills people for her "food". She just waits until their souls ascend to heaven and plucks them from midair. And it's not like she, y'know, absorbs people alive and tortures her own subordinates For the Evulz.
  - Points taken, but getting part of one's soul yanked away heaven into The Nothing After Death via her digestive-tract equivalent still has to hurt the lunch involved. Or does Our Souls Are Different apply?
  - Wasn't she just retaining them inside her rather than digesting them?
  - If she was retaining them, then she should not need to keep collecting them. Either they are escaping, or she is consuming them. Or maybe she's developing a tolerance.
- The Moryoumaru arc explained that souls in Inuyasha are divided into two parts; one that grants motion and the other that grants will. Moryoumaru (and probably Kikyo) are powered by the part that grants motion; the baby/Naraku's heart and the portion of Kikyo's soul that she got from Kagome are from the part that granted will. Mouryoumaru probably didn't need to steal souls because he's a superior construct built out of youkai bodies by detachments of friggin' Naraku, while Kikyo was made of dirt and ash by a low level youkai. Or maybe he killed people and stole the requisite soul fragments off screen.
  - Does that mean that Kagome has less than a full soul for most of the series? It would explain a lot of what's listed below...
    - Yes, and we don't know if Kikyou's soul returned to Kagome after her death, since everyone was engulfed in it and it seemed to float to the sky, and her will was still active Kohaku's shard until he lost it. But it seems to be the part of her soul that held a grudge against Inu Yasha for her death (which is why she was so Yandere towards Inu Yasha and Kagome at the start). And even incomplete, Kagome's soul is shown to be mindbogglingly huge.
Kagome rescued Kouga, a guy who kidnapped her, threatened to eat Shippou, and led the slaughter of at least one village for no particular reason. Even she realized that she was at fault, and that Inu Yasha was justified in doubting her fidelity from her actions. At least it worked out in the end.
Any time Inuyasha is called out for being stupid because he isn't able to read other people's behaviours well enough to know their emotions (such as in the case of romance). True, sometimes the cues he misses are obvious; but it's as if no one In-Universe ever paid attention. Inuyasha has reasons not to notice these things. Just look at what we know of his history:
1. Both of his parents died when he was young. Most children get their first human interaction from their parents and learn to read emotions from them. Unfortunately, Inuyasha was orphaned, so he missed out on that.
2. He was despised by both humans and demons and suffered discrimination for it for his whole life. After his parents died, no one ever showed him kindness; he had never been exposed to the gentler or friendlier emotions. He's only just now seeing them with his True Companions, and so he's only now getting the chance to learn the meaning of those signals.
3. He was isolated from human society and grew up alone in the forest. He had no human interaction. It's hard to learn the meaning of social expressions you haven't seen yet!
4. He was outright at odds with demon society. The interactions he had with demonkind were filled with intimidation, bigotry, malice, hatred, and anger. No positive or gentle emotions there...
5. Most demons don't seem to have kind impulses. Be honest here! In the series, most demons showed no kindness or caring; those who did showed it only to people close to them. Even for these, the gentler emotions are harsh by human terms. And most of Inuyasha's pre-series emotional education came from demon society by default.
6. The only being who was always in Inuyasha's life, his most personal influence, is his Aloof Big Brother Sesshoumaru, who always attacks and degrades him for being a Half-Human Hybrid.
7. The first person to show him kindness other than his mother was Kikyou, who was always reserved. Also, they weren't together for that long -- possibly only a few months. That was all the time he had, pre-series, to learn of the gentler human emotions.
8. Because of Naraku's trickery, Inuyasha's memories of Kikyou's kindness were tainted with betrayal. Even though he knows the truth now, it doesn't change that they could be easily turned against each other again. Betrayal hurts. Any progress Inuyasha had made in learning how to empathise with others was slowed down significantly because of one horrible incident that hurt not only him, but also Kikyou.
9. This is the Sengoku Era. When Inuyasha was raising himself in the forest, he had no TV, no internet, and no reading material. He had no way to learn positive human emotions second-hand.
- Even though his friends all know this much, none of them seem to realise that he cannot be expected to understand the subtle hints they give him about how they feel; nor do they get that he cannot be sure what the proper reaction is if he does get the hints. Instead, they just tell him how stupid he is for not knowing these things. It's only worse considering how emotional they can get (mainly Kagome). And when he gets something wrong, rather than tell him what he did or said wrong, he gets scolded for being rude or inconsiderate; his confusion about why is brushed off. He cannot learn what he's doing wrong because no one is teaching him. True, he is constantly wrong when it comes to positive emotional issues (negative ones, he's got down pat), so it can look like that Inuyasha does wrong because he is stupid. But the writers go out of their way to show that Inuyasha had a horrible life so that Kagome can try to mend his heart, and to make sure she knows it; and yet, no one realizes that, in this case, mending his heart includes teaching him how to show affection and love like a human. And they call him out for not being perceptive and understanding...
Koga being treated as anything other than a black-hearted villain. Other characters in this series have crossed the Moral Event Horizon and been called Complete Monsters for far less than what he did. He let a pack of man-eating wolves loose on at least two human settlements (with one of the attacks leaving Rin an orphan), kidnapped Kagome, forced her to help him by threatening Shippo (he originally intended to just feed him to his wolves), and sat and let the tribe he eventually would spend all his time trying to avenge raid a human settlement with the explicit intent to kill anyone who tried to keep them from robbing the place. Even taking into account that Kagome only knew of the one raid (though she shouldn't be so stupid as to think this hasn't happened before), all the evil things he's done are glossed over without so much as a scolding.
- Not to mention, despite being Played for Laughs, he insists that Kagome is his woman and that he will marry her, and Kagome not telling him off doesn't help things. And he gets sympathy because he was used by Naraku and a majority of his comrades were killed by Kagura. Considering they probably viewed humans as simply food themselves, I feel real sorry for ya, Koga. The only logical reason he even stops his old habits is because Kagome wouldn't approve.
In one of the last episodes of the first series, the heroes meet a mountain spirit who gives them a crystal powered by his life force that could help them track down Naraku's heart. Not five minutes after getting this item, Hakudoushi offs the spirit, making the crystal completely useless. Even with the show's reputation for Arc Fatigue, this plot point was a total waste of time.

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