InuYasha the Movie: Affections Touching Across Time

InuYasha the Movie: Affections Touching Across Time is the first InuYasha movie. It was released on December 15, 2001 in Japan (between episodes 54 & 55).

It features Menōmaru, a demon from the continent whose father was sealed by Inuyasha's father, as the primary antagonist.

Summary
InuYasha 's father defeated a powerful Chinese moth yokai named Hyōga 200 years ago. Now a Shikon Jewel fragment has freed Menōmaru, Hyōga's son. He seeks revenge for his father's destruction and to free the power of his father sealed away with him. Menōmaru and his minions Ruri and Hari begin battling with InuYasha. Sango and Miroku have their hands full dealing with the duo, Ruri having copied Miroku's Wind Tunnel and Hari having stolen Sango's faithful companion, Kirara. Menōmaru then abducts Kagome and puts her under mind control so she turns against InuYasha.

When Menōmaru is finally able to access the power of his predecessors, sealed away by InuYasha's father, he becomes the new Hyōga and exponentially more powerful as each generation gains the power of all the preceding generations. Hyōga soon begins to change the essence of time and space as he's absorbing the souls of countless people in order to fully merge himself with his family's power. This causes the mind control that he put on Kagome to awaken and he forces her to injure Kaede and search for InuYasha. As he's crossing a bridge, InuYasha thinks he sees Kikyō but instead it's Kagome who is wearing clothes similar to Kikyō's. InuYasha greets her on the bridge while Kagome is trying to tell him to run, but unfortunately she cannot be heard. Kagome then walks over to InuYasha and puts her head on his shoulder. He embraces her after which Kagome says "InuYasha... get away," warning him of her attack. He looks in amazement but is then stabbed by magical "claws" that come from Kagome's hands; afterwards, he realizes that Menōmaru has put Kagome under a spell. He then is chased throughout the forrest by the controlled Kagome to the tree that he was once sealed to. Regaining control of herself for a moment, Kagome insists for InuYasha to run. After hearing that from everyone, InuYasha gets angry and says that he's "sick of everyone telling him to run," when in danger and refuses to leave without her, surprising Kagome by the intensity of his voice when he refuses to leave without her. However, it is then that Kagome loses complete control of her body altogether and shoots InuYasha, pinning him to the tree (similar to what happened between him and Kikyō fifty years earlier) sending Kagome into so much heartbreak and despair that she breaks free of her mind control and screams out in pain for InuYasha and runs over to him, holding him in her arms sobbing. Kikyō then appears and says how ironic it was for that to happen again. Then she begins to tell Kagome that this happened because Kagome did not belong in the past in the Feudal Era and that she needs to take the Jewel Shards and return to her own time. Kikyō then forces Kagome down the Bone Eater's Well to remove her once and for all from the past since through Menōmaru's manipulation of time, she thinks that Kagome will be forever trapped in the future.

After returning to her own time, Kagome walks out to a snowy Tokyo. When she is walking towards the tree that InuYasha was sealed to and where he sits now, she sees him there, unconscious due to her shooting him with an arrow while she was controlled by Menōmaru. As she walks towards him, a snow flake floats by and erases the image. It is then that she realizes that without a way back to Feudal Japan, that she can never see InuYasha again and that she collapses and begins to cry.

Once she gets back up, she heads over to the tree and places her hand on it. Kagome and InuYasha are then connected to each other through the tree and begin to talk through their thoughts. He asks where she is and Kagome tells him that she is in her own time. He replies by saying, "Oh, didja get scared?" Angry at first, Kagome says that was not the reason, but then recalls her encounter with Kikyō and admits to being afraid. It is then that Kagome sees InuYasha as if he were awake, and with her at that moment. She tells him that she feels helpless and since she hurt him that "maybe it's better if [she] wasn't around at all." With that InuYasha stands up and tells her to stop saying such things. Kagome begins to tell him not to move because he will open his wounds, but InuYasha walks over to Kagome and embraces her tightly to him (thus the name "Affections Touching Across Time") saying to her, "I need you with me Kagome.... Haven't you realized that yet?" Kagome then begins to cry again and lets her head fall into his shoulder saying, "Thank you... InuYasha."

The scene cuts back to Kagome standing by herself, she then tries to go back to the well, but sees that it has roots coming out of it. She then runs back to the tree and touches it again and tells InuYasha that she cannot get back (confusing her grandpa and brother who think she has lost it). InuYasha then replies that she can use a sacred arrow. Kagome begins to say that she doesn't have any sacred arrows in the present day era, but then realizes where she can get one. She then gets a stick and bow from her grandfather and jabs the stick into the hole of the tree where she had injured herself earlier in the film and where InuYasha was pinned to, pulling out a tip of an arrow. Before running back to the Bone Eaters Well, her mother gives Kagome her school uniform telling her to "do what she had to do."

After changing clothes, Kagome shoots the arrow into the well just as a reawakened InuYasha is determined to slash away the roots despite the protests of Kaede and Shippō due to his wounded condition. However before he can do so, the blast from the arrow that Kagome shoots causes InuYasha to get burnt and fall back into the rubble. Kagome emerges from the well and is happily welcomed back by Shippō and Kaede before getting into a fight with InuYasha for the explosion who asks why she had to make "such a noisy entrance", verifying things are officially back to normal between them. Myōga then interrupts their fight and tells them that they have to defeat Menōmaru before it's too late.

Sesshōmaru appears, realizing that his father's ancient enemy is fighting with his half brother, but chooses not to interfere. For the first time in the series he has a conversation with Kikyō. Kikyō somehow knew he was InuYasha's older brother, and Sesshōmaru knew about her relationship with InuYasha as he told Jaken and Rin that she was nothing but a dead miko. He leaves warning her that only he will kill InuYasha.

Miroku and Sango manage to defeat Hari and Ruri and join InuYasha, Kagome, and Shippō in a stand against Menōmaru. However, he emerges from his cocoon as the new Lord Hyōga, a moth god with far more power than his father ever had. Only with the power of Kagome's sacred arrow and InuYasha's Backlash Wave attack do they manage to find a way to destroy Hyōga for good.

After the credits end, Kagome and InuYasha are sitting together in modern day Tokyo by the Tree on either side talking about their conversation through their thoughts and the tree. Kagome then says that she wants to make everyone some more lunch and InuYasha ends up insulting Kagome's cooking by saying that he only liked the pre-made stuff, causing her to give him and angry sit command and the film comes to a close.

Trivia

 * The movie stands far enough in the series that Rin is already with Sesshōmaru, and InuYasha masters the Backlash Wave of his Tessaiga (so after episode 54) but not far enough for Kikyō to have lost her bitterness over her death, which cut her from the flow of time. Sesshōmaru also doesn't have Tokijin, despite Inuyasha having mastered the Backlash Wave.
 * Miroku sucks several scorpions summoned by Hari during the movie, but doesn't suffer the effects of poison, even from the jumbo-sized demonic scorpion.