okay so I'm up this late watching AdultSwim, and IY's on, or... going off, anyway, its the Noh Mask episode.

Now i'm aware this episode is not Canon but one has to wonder: The mask in the end had a jewel shard in it, that lasted through the 500 year gap between her having been born with said jewel and breaking it fifteen years later in the past.

Do you think Rumiko T knew this when she OK'd this filler, b/c if your really thinking about it, it implies that they never finished the jewel in the feudal era. making one wonder if Naraku's really dead in the anime version of this fairy tale.

What are your thoughts on this?

I think it gives credence to the idea that until the jewel is finished by Kagome back in time, it will continue to be shattered in the present form. In other words, when the jewel shattered in the past, events transpired to take place in the present with the Noh Mask having the jewel shard.

JoshuaK wrote:
I think it gives credence to the idea that until the jewel is finished by Kagome back in time, it will continue to be shattered in the present form. In other words, when the jewel shattered in the past, events transpired to take place in the present with the Noh Mask having the jewel shard.
Hmm that brings about more thought that as she travels back in time, the futures changes with every change she makes there, butterfly effect so to speak. as though when she comes back it might be her last time going back, like the well could break at any time. and the jewel would still be shattered and spread across the world possibly, here in the modern times.


offhandedly that might be an interesting fic to make. Sess and Kags globe trotting to find the jewel now, in modern times.

sugar0o wrote:
okay so I'm up this late watching AdultSwim, and IY's on, or... going off, anyway, its the Noh Mask episode.

Now i'm aware this episode is not Canon but one has to wonder: The mask in the end had a jewel shard in it, that lasted through the 500 year gap between her having been born with said jewel and breaking it fifteen years later in the past.

Do you think Rumiko T knew this when she OK'd this filler, b/c if your really thinking about it, it implies that they never finished the jewel in the feudal era. making one wonder if Naraku's really dead in the anime version of this fairy tale.

What are your thoughts on this?

Actually, the Noh Mask *is* canon:

www.onemanga.com/Inuyasha/23/01/

And, I don't think you can read too much into it...it became rather painfully obvious near the end of the manga that RT was making it up as she went along, LOL

LuxKen27 wrote:
sugar0o wrote:
Do you think Rumiko T knew this when she OK'd this filler, b/c if your really thinking about it, it implies that they never finished the jewel in the feudal era. making one wonder if Naraku's really dead in the anime version of this fairy tale.

What are your thoughts on this?

Actually, the Noh Mask *is* canon:

www.onemanga.com/Inuyasha/23/01/

And, I don't think you can read too much into it...it became rather painfully obvious near the end of the manga that RT was making it up as she went along, LOL

well holy crap! i never bothered to read the canon before the anime ended! i have to say the noh mask via manga was a lot c0oler then the anime one! i tihnk we got gipped! still i think your right that Rumiko T was just winging it after a bit. B/c seriously even via Canon the mask still had a jewel shard in it. According to the anime at least her jiji's great grandfather placed the seals on the mask, meaning at least 120 - 150 before his birth, that places jewel fragments still out and about as late as 1800 - 1830ish!

see this is why i love talking this stuff out! so it is canon but its still mess up, plot holes, r0o hates them!

sugar0o wrote:
sugar0o wrote:

well holy crap! i never bothered to read the canon before the anime ended! i have to say the noh mask via manga was a lot c0oler then the anime one! i tihnk we got gipped! still i think your right that Rumiko T was just winging it after a bit. B/c seriously even via Canon the mask still had a jewel shard in it. According to the anime at least her jiji's great grandfather placed the seals on the mask, meaning at least 120 - 150 before his birth, that places jewel fragments still out and about as late as 1800 - 1830ish!

see this is why i love talking this stuff out! so it is canon but its still mess up, plot holes, r0o hates them!

If you read the manga closely, you can see where her ideas slowly start to evolve. This was before Naraku was introduced as the main villain of the piece - Sesshoumaru occupied that role at the very beginning. Also, her idea in this arc was eventually recycled in the Naraku storyline (changing his body as he gathers the shards in order to gain more power). I think this was also a thread of an idea about whether or not youkai still existed in the modern era. Obviously, she didn't take it anywhere after this.

Considering how long the story meandered and how many different arcs it encompassed, there's pretty much no way she had it completely planned out from start to finish when she started it back in '97. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it does make for some WTF moments

I agree, she was doing a lot of exploring in this early phase, and I always found myself disappointed that she didn't explore the idea of modern youkai any further--she did a couple of things early on (noh mask, children ghosts), and then as far as I can recall it was mostly dropped. The noh mask also struck me as interesting...was there some alternate timeline once where the shard hunters failed, and the jewel was never recovered? A timeline then erased when Kagome continued going back to the past? But then, the shard she recovered in the future should still have existed in the past, so at the end she should have either made paradox, or ended up with one shard extra, etc...in the end, yeah, you can tell she made it up as she went.

The Noh mask and the soul piper are two of my favorite early chapters, actually I can kinda see why she didn't pursue the second one further - that was more in the realm of spirits and ghosts, instead of the youkai dynamic she started with.

As for the Noh mask, I think of it like this: they would've had to recover the shard in the modern era anyway. How is that any different from traveling to the border between the realm of the living and the afterworld? It was an interesting arc, a difficult challenge to pose, and left the question...had more shards survived to her era? Would they, if the group didn't collect them all in a timely fashion?

It's a bit convoluted, admittedly, and my opinion was borne of a curious personal quirk about time paradoxes and the like, but there you go.

Honestly, I have a harder time trying to believe the entire quest took place in the space of less than a year

Here here! Less then a year... yeah right! LOL

And I agree with whoever said that because the jewel was broken and scattered in the past, a fragment at that time could have survived in the future, because the jewel was not yet whole in the past, that had not been decided. As soon as the jewel becomes whole, then the option of having more jewel shards in the future becomes moot. As long as all the shards were not collected, then there was no gaurantee that they would be.

But the confusing thing is, if they successfully collect all the ones in the past, then that one that survived into the future should be erased--it was in the present because she hadn't yet found it in the past, but once she finds it in the past, she can't have also found it in the present. Kind of paradoxical. But, yeah, I adore Takahashi but she skims over things like that. A year, lol. 500+ chapters, each one spanning at least a day (and many spanning more than one day), equals more than a year no matter how you look at it. But, she did the same thing in her last series too--there were multiple summer and winter vacations, yet everybody was always in the same year of school.

I've never really thought about that before... now you have me wondering!

I'm not an expert on time travel, but when Kagome got that jewel shard in the present, it doesn't really count, does it? Because the Shikon Jewel was shattered in the past, and even though that one shard did make it to the future, wouldn't it still exist in the past?

Assuming that either Kagome and Inuyasha or Naraku picked up the shard that landed in the tree from which the Noh mask was made, then the Noh mask would never have existed in the first place, right?

Which also means everyone killed by it should still be alive (never having been killed in the first place), and the shard Kagome collected should disappear. However, if that's the case, would Kagome remember it happening if it never happened at all?

I love time travel, it gives my brain exercise.

Nefret wrote:
Assuming that either Kagome and Inuyasha or Naraku picked up the shard that landed in the tree from which the Noh mask was made, then the Noh mask would never have existed in the first place, right?

Which also means everyone killed by it should still be alive (never having been killed in the first place), and the shard Kagome collected should disappear. However, if that's the case, would Kagome remember it happening if it never happened at all?

I love time travel, it gives my brain exercise.

See i dunno! the thing is, the Noh Mask had the jewel shard, made from a tree or not, the things had it in some fashion or another for 500 years, only abotu 120 years before Kagome's jiji was the mask contained.

Now if you really think about it, if the mask had the shard then she was always fated to go back to the past and break the jewel. b/c if she wasnt then the mask never would have gotten the jewel shard to begin with. Also and along those lines Inuyasha was never meant to stay pent to the tree.

Beyond this, i dont think that RT was thinking clearly in this one. I mean i read the manga for this, and i have to say that really it would have been cool to see youkai in the future. Its hard to think that these powerful beings would just vanish out. I think she didnt want to continue this path b/c she would have to explane how it was that no youkai ever came after Kagome for the shards, seeing as how the Noh mask was able to be on the shrine grounds.

a part of me even to this day kinda holds out that she would have had Sess find/protector Kags in the feature from this kinda crazy. but yanno r0o's dream....

sugar0o wrote:
t it, if the mask had the shard then she was always fated to go back to the past and break the jewel. b/c if she wasnt then the mask never would have gotten the jewel shard to begin with.

I just figured that the Noh mask would have been made either way, but it only contained the jewel shard because Kagome travelled to the past.