Character · Inuyasha
Naraku
A dying bandit made a deal with hundreds of demons, and what stood up afterwards has been arranging everyone's grief ever since.
In Otakana the clue reads: Shapeshifting villain made of many demons
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Inuyasha
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Naraku began as Onigumo, a burned and paralysed thief who wanted Kikyo and could not move. He offered his body to any demon that would take it, hundreds accepted at once, and the result can split apart, regrow, and wear whichever face suits the errand. The human heart at the centre of him is still in there, which is the thing he most resents about himself.
He almost never fights directly. His method is to arrange grudges: fake a betrayal here, plant a corpse there, and let people who ought to be allies spend fifty years hating each other instead. Nearly every wound in the main cast traces back to one of his setups, including the arrow that sealed Inuyasha and the massacre of Sango's village.
He also grows his own subordinates, detaching pieces of himself into separate beings such as Kagura, who works for him and would very much prefer not to. Rumiko Takahashi keeps him at a distance for years at a time, which makes him unusual for a shonen villain: the series runs fifty six volumes and he spends most of them declining to be present.
Spelling NARAKU
NARAKU is six letters and reads in three clean beats, na-ra-ku, with no doubled letters and no long vowel to lose. The word itself earns the trip: 奈落 means hell or the abyss, and in kabuki it is the technical name for the space beneath the stage where the trapdoor machinery sits. A villain who works from under the floor is well named.