Izumo



Gyu-oh was a half-human, half-demon born to a human man named Izumo and an unnamed female bull demon. He is voiced in the original Japanese version by Hiroshi Matsumoto and in the English version by Lee Tockar.

While traveling the lands in order to find a way to become a full-fledged human, he learned of the Shikon no Tama, a jewel that had the rumored power to grant any demon's desire. But the Jewel was shattered into many shards and it would take a lifetime to search for them. But he made an alliance with a number of demons desiring its power. He made imitation Jewels, that couldn't temporarily empower demons but is poisonous to humans. But Izumo found a way to create a true Shikon Jewel, which required souls of courage, knowledge, love and friendship, which he found in Inuyasha, Miroku, Sango and Shippo respectively. He captured Kagome, to use her spiritual powers to create the new Jewel. But as Gyu-oh, he tried to defeat Inuyasha by swallowing a number of imitation Jewels, but the sun rose and he turned back to human, dying of his own poisoned creations.

Gyu-oh was unique among half-demons. Instead of maintaining a half-human, half-demon appearance all the time as all other half-demons in the series are shown to do, he was fully human during the day and fully demonic at night. It was probably this trait that drove him into madness and fueled his desperation for the Shinkon Jewel (and also explains his "unusual" obsession with the sun). While in human form, Izumo was pure--more so than normal humans to the extent that wild birds would land and rest on him. As a bull demon, Gyu-oh was quite formidable, capable of intimidating other full demons into doing his bidding and proved to be a worthy opponent to Inuyasha (albeit with the help of multiple faux Shikon Jewels).

It should noted that in the English-dubbed version, the character is portrayed as more of a villain, whereas the Japanese rendition made it clear that though the antagonist, Izumo/Gyu-oh had been driven mad by his condition and mixed heritage.