Episode 73

Shiori's Family and Inuyasha's feelings is the seventy-third episode of the InuYasha anime.

Synopsis

 * 1) Myōga tells Inuyasha he can make Tessaiga strong enough to break through Naraku's barrier if he destroys the bat demon who guards their powerful barrier, allowing Tessaiga to absorb its power.
 * 2) It turns out that the new guardian of the barrier is a young hanyō named Shiori; Inuyasha has major reservations about having to destroy her.
 * 3) Taigokumaru, Shiori's grandfather, decides to go out, along with all of the other demon bats, and slaughter all of the villagers so Shiori won't ask to return.

Summary
Myōga tells Inuyasha that in order to gain the power to break barriers, he needs to kill the guardian of the barrier of the demon bat tribe, who turns out to be a girl named Shiori, a half demon bat herself. Shiori has been offered by her human mother to her grandfather the demon bat leader in exchange for peace between the bats and the villager, but the demon bats didn't honor the truce. Inuyasha and Shiori's mother go to the demon bats cave to retrieve Shiori, but Inuyasha can't break the barrier, and would anyway refuse to kill another half-demon. To keep her mother from being killed, Shiori tells her to return home, leaving her daughter as guardian of the barrier for the bats. But the grandfather demon is suspicious, he fears Shiori's love for her mother might induce her to fail in her duty and return to the village, and thus decides to kill all the villagers, including Shiori's mother, to eliminate the temptation.