Character · Inuyasha
Kikyo
The priestess who shot the half demon into a tree, and who was already dying when she did it.
In Otakana the clue reads: Priestess who sealed the half-demon to a tree
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Inuyasha
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Kikyo guarded the Shikon Jewel, which meant she could never lower her guard, never be ordinary, and never be with anybody. Inuyasha wanted the jewel in order to become a full demon. What grew between them instead was closer to a plan to become human, and Naraku engineered the misunderstanding that ended it. She fired the sealing arrow and died of her wounds the same day.
She does not stay dead. Fifty years later a witch pulls her ashes and bone into a clay body, and Kikyo walks the series as something between a ghost and a person, kept going by souls she collects rather than by breath. She is calm, unsentimental and reliably the most dangerous archer on the page, since her arrows purify and cancel demonic power outright.
The awkwardness is deliberate. Kagome is her reincarnation, carries the jewel she died for, and travels with the man she sealed, so every scene holding all three of them holds three versions of the same history. Rumiko Takahashi keeps Kikyo mostly off screen and lets the reappearances do the damage, which is why a supporting character casts a shadow over fifty six volumes.
Spelling KIKYO
KIKYO is five letters, and the trap is a long vowel that English throws away. The Japanese is 桔梗, romanised Kikyou or Kikyo with a macron, so the extra U you may have seen in a subtitle file has nowhere to go on the board. Two K's in a five letter row. The kanji names a flower, the Chinese bellflower, one of the seven plants of autumn.