Talk:Jinenji

A Horse! A Horse! My Shakespearean Reference for a Horse!
I naturally assumed that this was correct information since this is Inuyasha WIKI and it is the Internet, what more do we need.

Searching comes up, naturally, numerous links to this very article. However, I found one that explains that: From the the article on inu-fanon:
 * 1) His father's type of yōkai is never specified.
 * 2) The common "fan theory" comes from mistranslation.


 * And here’s where I’m going to need some help.  I know exactly where this misconception came from: a mistranslation in the original fansub of the episode.  I remember watching it.  I remember seeing a line that said his father was a horse.  I remember then watching the English version when it came on television a couple years later and wondering why it didn’t have that line.  Then I learned Japanese and understood why.

A commentor to that article gives a longer explanation:


 * I kept all my fansubs from the 1990s and 2000s.  My copy of Episode 31 has the subbed line, at 8:11, where Jinenji’s says Inuyasha has “a good looking face for a hanyou, but you really look like one from a half horse family.”

I’m pretty sure the “half horse” is a particularly surreal translation of her term, “han-bake,” which (I’m rather sure) is just “half monster” with perhaps some additional meaning with her dropping off the “-mono.” Kagome repeats the same term and tweaks his ear, “You mean this, right?”

In the context of the conversation, Jinenji’s mom is pointing out that Inuyasha’s hanyou nature is very subtle, his only mark of being not exactly human is his ears, and otherwise he easily passes as human. She doesn’t say this explicitly, at least not in this scene. This is reinforced by Inuyasha being surprised she pegged him as a hanyou from the get-go.

Throwing “hanbake” into my Japanese dictionary tells me that hanba (斑馬) is an archaic term for a speckled horse, but I cannot fathom how a translator who got so much else right in this episode could make this completely off-the-wall misreading. Even with that weird-ass choice of word, the “ke” just dangles (the line is　はんばけだけだな？) and without the “han” she’s not calling him half-anything.

As he concludes:

NONE of this is about Jinenji, in this weird-ass translation the woman is saying that INUYASHA is half horse.

Sooooooo. . . mayhaps change his status to "inknown?" It makes sense because when Jinenji's Mum reminisces about her husband, he does not appear as a horse and then transform or anything like that.

TheDoctorX (talk) 04:20, March 16, 2017 (UTC)

UPDATE: further searching has found no evidence that his father was a horse demon. Given that, I removed this from his character page particularly since most of the links to this come from this page! I left his facial description since. . . really. . . what the [CENSORED--Ed.] else does he look like? Fruitbat? Breakfast cereal? Carp?

If anyone thinks otherwise, kindly discuss it here. ^^,

TheDoctorX (talk) 15:43, March 16, 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that this is fine, though there's no reason to put "unknown"; if it's not known, we just leave it blank. I remember being really confused when I rewatched the Jinenji episode about a year and a half ago, but this was a small detail and he does look like a horse, so I just left it. I think that it is fair to say, given his appearance, that he is a horse half-demon, but of course that would require a very flexible interpretation of what little facts we are given. But until I reach a place where I'm prepared to give the matter more thought, I'm happy to leave it blank for now. XD Byakuya also has a very good case to be made for him that he is a moth demon, but again, that was a place where I just wasn't willing to take the leap. So for now, putting something in the Trivia section that says something to the effect of "while it is not known what kind of demon Jinenji's father was, his overall appearance and fan speculation points towards him being a half-horse demon". Pointing out that nothing explicit in canon says he is a horse, but also leaving the matter open to reasonable speculation. Thanks for catching this. 01:13, March 23, 2017 (UTC)