Episode 92

Plot of the Walking Dead (復活した者たちの野望, lit. Ambition of the Resurrected People) is the ninety-second episode of the InuYasha anime.

Synopsis

 * 1) Inuyasha and his friends meet a young woman named Enju who, like Kikyō, was resurrected by the evil demon ogress Urasue to do her bidding.
 * 2) They learn that Enju's "brother", Kawaramaru, who was also resurrected by Urasue, has been using clay soldiers he forced Enju to make to attack and wage war against humans.
 * 3) Inuyasha's group eventually confronts Kawaramaru's army and Inuyasha ultimately destroys him with the Kaze no Kizu; Enju keeps her promise that she will give life a chance.

Summary
The episode opens with Kikyō traveling alone at night. She approaches a river bank and notices a young girl with red hair and clothes lying face down some distance away. Upon reaching some realization as to who the girl is, she sends one of her Shinidamachū to place a soul inside the young woman. The young girl's body glows and she groggily regains consciousness, noticing the soul-collectors flying through the area. As she rises to her knees, she is given another soul, to which she reacts violently, shooing them away. She suddenly notices the Kikyō, who asks if she wanted to die--or rather, if she wanted to stay dead. The young woman identifies her as Kikyō and becomes inexplicably angry. She glows a crimson red and generates a twister of fire in outward directions. Kikyō is unharmed by the fire, but closes her eyes to block out the light. When she opens them again, the young girl is mysteriously gone without a trace. Kikyō meditates on the fact that there are others like her whom Urasue revived, a fact of which she was unaware.

Somewhere else, a battle rages in a field during the stormy night. Warriors of a castle fire their arrows pointlessly at what appear to be pottery soldiers. A man rides his horse forward, producing fire from his sword, and uses it to destroy the wall of the castle. He orders his lifeless clay soldiers forward to cover the land with dead bodies and they obey him without question. The defending warriors of the castle charge forward, but their weapons prove useless against their clay opponents and they are mercilessly cut down without ceremony. The leader of the clay soldiers calls upon lightning and other forces of nature to deal damage to the surrounding area and watches on, laughing villainously as his enemies are slaughtered. He calls out to his mother to watch as he fills the lands with dead humans.

Elsewhere, Inuyasha's group sleeps around a small campfire. A scent catches Inuyasha's nose, and he sniffs it in. Miroku asks if something's wrong, and Inuyasha announces that he smells the medicinal herbs that were used by the demon sorceress Urasue. The smell is similar to Kikyō, but it is not her. He runs off alone, telling the others to stay and wait, but they follow nonetheless. Kagome expresses her confusion and recounts that Urasue was supposed to have died, so the fact that there's something out there that may have come from her is troubling.

The scene changes to the young girl whom Kikyō revived. She leaps shakily across another river and moves forward with fatigued movements. She stops to rest but suddenly finds herself surrounding by clay soldiers similar to those that were attacking the castle. She demands to know why they are there and when one leaps forward and takes her by the arm, she fights it, saying she doesn't want to go back. Inuyasha leaps into the scene and shatters the puppets with little effort; the young woman falls during the commotion and loses consciousness. He watches as human souls are freed from the fragments of the clay men, which confirms his suspicions that they were Urasue's soldiers. The rest of the group arrives, wondering where the soldiers came from. Inuyasha tells them they were after the young woman, who is lying unconscious near the riverside. While checking the girl, Kagome catches the scent of medicinal herbs from her as well. Sango asks what that means and Inuyasha says that the girl is the same as Kikyō: a dead person living in a body of bones and grave soil.

The following morning, Sango, Shippō and Kagome watch over the girl as she sleeps comfortably on Kirara's tails in an abandoned Buddhist shrine. Kagome reflects silently on the events that took place during Episode 14 and Episode 15, mainly on how Kikyō killed Urasue after being revived by her. Some distance away, Inuyasha and Miroku have backtracked on the girl's trail, bringing them to the place where Kikyō found her. Of course, Inuyasha picks up her scent, but the two are clueless as to what that means. Miroku tells Inuyasha of rumors he's been hearing recently about a strange army of soldiers crossing the land destroying castles one after the other. Inuyasha is uninterested in the stories until Miroku mentions the part where this mysterious army is headed by a demon and that the soldiers cannot be beaten with conventional weaponry. Inuyasha asks if Miroku is positing that the army is Urasue's soldiers. Miroku himself isn't sure, but he points out that someone has been resurrecting these soldiers to fight for them. Suddenly seized by the (preposterous) notion that Kikyō could be heading these soldiers, Inuyasha rushes off to find them, leaving Miroku remarking that he always loses his head when the undead priestess enters the picture.

Back at the run-down shrine, the girl wakes up as the others prepare breakfast outside. When Kagome asks her to rest, the girl mutters about all the meddlers and how they should just leave her alone. When she mentions the Shinidamachū, Kagome asks if she saw Kikyō. The girl's suspicions are confirmed--she suspected that woman was Kikyō, and she has been wondering where that woman went after she killed her mother. Hearing that Kikyō killed someone's mother, Kagome and Sango ask for clarification.

Back at the conquered castle, Inuyasha sits in a tree watching the legions of mindless clay soldiers stand in perfect formation, perfectly still and perfectly silent. Inside a nearby building, the leader of the soldiers charismatically plots upcoming attacks with his generals. They praise him and the success of their campaign, owing it all to the invincible army of clay soldiers. The leader laughs, but senses and invader in one the castle grounds. He teleports outside to confront a snooping Inuyasha, asking him what his business was. Inuyasha coldly replies that he's come looking for him, the man who's been controlling Urasue's lifeless clay soldiers and spreading war and the smell of death all over the land. The leader identifies himself as Kawaramaru: Urasue's son. Kawaramaru then recognizes Inuyasha as one of the people who was with the priestess that killed his mother and vows to kill him and use his bones to make more soldiers. He sics his soldiers on Inuyasha, but the hanyō shatters them easily...only to find that they are filled with a potent shōki. Suddenly weakened, Inuyasha uses a blast of the Kaze no Kizu to cover his escape, destroying the pursuing soldiers and a large part of the castle. When the smoke clears, Kawaramaru stands smugly over the ashes, laughing at Inuyasha's cowardice.

Back with the rest of the group, the young woman reveals her name is Enju, that she was a potter in life, and that the demon sorceress Urasue brought her back from the dead to help her build a massive army of clay soldiers so that she could take over all of feudal Japan. This means that she can use Urasue's magic and build clay servants, as can her brother Kawaramaru, who was a successful war general in life before being betrayed and killed by a vassal. That was why Urasue brought them back: to exploit the skills they had in life. She explains that when Urasue was killed, she wanted to return to the sleep of the dead, but couldn't, because Kawaramaru forced her to create more people-killing soldiers against her will. Miroku deduces that that was the reason why she ran away. He then compliments her beauty, despite having once been dead, and tells her that she should cherish this second chance at life. He refers to the Buddha, and how he smiles because he loves all life. Kagome and Sango are impressed by his words, but Shippō knows he's just angling for a date. Attention suddenly shifts to another unit of mindless soldiers who arrive to recapture Enju. Miroku, Sango and Kagome dispatch them easily, much to Enju's surprise. They then promise to help her destroy her brother's army, but in exchange, they want her to give life a second chance, and consider this second life as a gift. She accepts their terms, but seems unsure of how she'll fulfill her promise.

Kawaramaru sets out to conquer another castle, but meets with Inuyasha's interference. Inuyasha works to shatter the puppet soldiers, but is careful not to break open their chests, which contain the shōki. Miroku arrives and they go to work breaking more soldiers, but set their sights on Kawaramaru. If they defeat him, the rest of the army will cease to function. Miroku suggests using the Kazaana, but Inuyasha fills him in on the shōki in their chests, so he uses his spiritual powers to "deactivate" them. Despite the effectiveness of their attacks, the two make little headway due to the sheer mass of numbers Kawaramaru possesses. Kagome and Sango arrive and start attacking the puppet soldiers, unwittingly releasing a decent amount of their miasma.

Kirara flies Sango and Enju, and Shippō flies Kagome, over the curtain of miasma they unleashed and they join Inuyasha and Miroku on the other side. (Inuyasha makes a comment to the extent of "here I am fighting with my wits, and here you come in swinging all crazy-like", and Kagome apologizes.) They tell Inuyasha about how Enju didn't want to build anymore killing machines so she ran away, and he gets upset because he thinks it's very convenient that now, all of a sudden, she doesn't want to make any more (which is to say he thinks she's trying to weasel out of punishment by saying "it was all his idea") and threatens to kill her. Enju tells him to, because it's what she's wanted all along, but upon hearing this, Inuyasha backs down, surprised.

His surprise is further compounded when she strolls right past him without a second glance to stand in front of Kawaramaru. She tells him that's why she ran away and that they are the reborn dead, so they have no right to take the world away from the living. He denies it, saying that they weren't revived on Urasue's whim, but because it was truly their destiny to rule the world as the living dead. He asks her why she won't help. If they purge the living from the world, she would finally "find peace as a reborn dead!"

From the sidelines, a steaming mad Kagome marches up to Enju's side (and, in classic Japanese humor, the soldiers behind Kawaramaru lift their spears, preparing to fight this frightening opponent). She tries to explain to Kawaramaru that Enju wanted to die all alone because she didn't want to kill people anymore, and that him killing people made her want to "kill herself". (She was more or less expecting him to give up his crusade because of the emotional damage it was causing Enju because she incorrectly thought he really cared about her.) He shoots back that Kagome could never understand the feelings of the reborn dead. From behind them, Inuyasha offers up that it might be better to send them all back to being just "dead" again.

Kawaramaru laughs and says that as the reborn dead, he's going to do as he pleases. He then summons Urasue's most powerful puppet solder--a Demon from Hell--and, as he stands on its shoulder, orders it to kill everyone. Inuyasha dodges its first attack and buries the Tessaiga in its arm, releasing a fair amount of shōki, much to Kawaramaru's amusement. The demon grabs Inuyasha with its other arm and Kawaramaru informs Inuyasha he's about to have the very life squeezed out of him. Inuyasha yells to everyone on the ground to back away, and they do, at great speed, dragging a confused Enju with them. Up in the air, a very disgusted Inuyasha unleashes a blast of the Kaze no Kizu, obliterating the Demon from Hell, Kawaramaru, the fast approaching legions of puppet soldiers, and vaporizing all of the miasma released from all of them in a single swing. Enju looks out over the wreckage and sorrowfully murmurs her brother's name.

A piece of Kawaramaru's armor sinks into the river and Kagome and Inuyasha talk about how life's surprises are what makes it worth living. Elsewhere, Enju is seen stoking a fire, having returned to her original life as a simple potter. She turns and is pleasantly surprised to see one of Kikyō's Shinidamachū bring her a soul as a gift, which she gratefully accepts. She sends the creature back to its master with the message that she promised Kagome to give life a chance. The priestess receives this message and ponders it as she disappears into the forest alone.

Trivia

 * Miroku makes no attempt to flirt with Enju. This is most likely because she's dead and therefore being lecherous would get him nowhere with her.