InuYasha: Describing Characters.

InuYasha (犬夜叉) is the male protagonist of the series, aged sixteen in appearance and mindset, and is Sesshomaru's younger half-brother. Born to a dog demon father and human mother, InuYasha is a half-dog demon who initially wants to use the power of the Sacred Shikon Jewel to become a full-blooded demon like his older half-brother, Sesshomaru. Fifty years prior to the main era of the storyline, though, InuYasha fell in love with the priestess Kikyo, who guarded the jewel. InuYasha changed his mind about the jewel, and wanted to use it to become human so he could live with her, but Naraku (An evil Half demon, not like InuYasha, Naraku was once a human bandit named Onigumo) manipulated both of them into believing they had been betrayed by one another. A shapeshifter, he used Kikyo's form to attack and taunt InuYasha, and InuYasha's form to mortally wound Kikyo. Before she died, however, she shot the real InuYasha with a sacred arrow to seal him to a sacred tree. InuYasha remained in suspended animation for fifty years, until Kagome Higurashi, Kikyo's reincarnation, pulled out the arrow and broke the seal. Later, Kagome shot a sacred arrow at a demon who was escaping with the jewel, which had been hidden in Kagome's body until a demon tore it out. The arrow slew the demon, but it also hit the Shikon Jewel, which shattered. InuYasha and Kagome must then travel together to retrieve its fragments. At first, he is hostile and uncooperative, but Kikyo's sister, Kaede gives Kagome a magical necklace that restrains him by hurling him to the ground whenever Kagome gives the simple command "Sit!" called the Subjugation Beads. Initially wary of Kagome's resemblance to Kikyo, InuYasha grows to trust her as a friend and useful companion. As the series progresses, InuYasha begins to develop feelings for Kagome, which are reciprocated, but strained by the resurrection of Kikyo. At the end of the Final Act, Kagome and Inuyasha share a kiss right before the Sacred Jewel is destroyed and separated for three years. InuYasha works with Miroku to exorcise demons and is reunited with Kagome, soon after Inuyasha and Kagome get married and live their lives together.

In the anime, he is voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi. In the English dub, he is voiced by Richard Ian Cox.

Kagome Higurashi (日暮 かごめ, Higurashi Kagome?), aged fifteen, is the female protagonist and narrator of the series. A middle-school student born in modern Japan, she is the reincarnation of the deceased priestess Kikyo. Kagome has the sacred Shikon Jewel unknowingly hidden inside her body until her 15th birthday on September 14th, 1997, when a demon pulls her into the Bone Eater's Well at her family's shrine and takes her five hundred years back through time. They emerge in the Feudal Era about fifty years after Kikyo's death, where the demon tears the jewel from Kagome's body. She releases InuYasha from his seal, and he defeats the demon, but the jewel's power proves to be a strong lure for evil. When another demon seizes the Sacred Jewel, Kagome attempts to stop it with a longbow and arrow, but in doing so accidentally shatters the jewel into numerous fragments that disperse throughout Japan. She agrees to help find them, as she can sense the presence of nearby shards, and InuYasha comes along as protector and companion (and, ostensibly, so he can steal the jewel from her when it's complete, though he makes no secret of this). As the series progresses, she begins to fall in love with InuYasha, and finds herself competing with the revived Kikyo for his affections. During the search for the Shikon Jewel, Kagome's own innate spiritual powers and abilities and archery skills continue to improve, and she unlocks her true powers and full potential after Sesshomaru kills Magatsuhi, the evil spirit within the Shikon na Tama that was sealing her powers. At the end of the Final Act, InuYasha and Kagome kissed right before the Sacred Jewel is destroyed and separated for three years, they are reunited. Kagome and Inuyasha marry one another living alongside InuYasha in the Sengoku period, while learning to be a miko under Kaede's guidance.

In the Japanese version of the anime, she is voiced by Satsuki Yukino. In the English dub, she is voiced by Moneca Stori in the original series and all four movies, and by Kira Tozer in InuYasha: the Final Act.

Miroku (弥勒?) is a Bhikkhu Buddhist, lecherous monk, aged nineteen, who travels the countryside performing spiritual services such as exorcisms and demon exterminations, although sometimes he deliberately falsifies these to earn comfortable rewards. Miroku can attack enemies with his holy staff and sutra scrolls, but his greatest weapon, the Wind Tunnel embedded in the palm of his right hand - which is actually a hereditary curse originally inflicted by Naraku upon Miroku's grandfather. Though the Wind Tunnel is extremely powerful because it can suck in almost anything in its path, it grows larger with increasing use and will eventually consume Miroku, as it consumed his grandfather, Miatsu, and his father. Miroku is able to seal up his wind tunnel with his sacred sutra beads that are wound around his arm, but the curse can only be broken by killing Naraku.

Miroku first meets InuYasha by stealing the Shikon Jewel, causing them to fight one another until Kagome leaps between them. After Miroku explains his situation, Kagome asks him to join her and InuYasha, given their mutual goal of wishing to destroy Naraku. He reluctantly complies, though he soon becomes one of InuYasha's most trusted companions. However, Miroku remains notorious for his recurring lechery, usually manifesting as shameless flattery, semi-surreptitious groping, and every woman he meets to bear him a child, except for Sango, who eventually does. While he learned these bad habits from the monk Mushin, who raised him, Miroku also has the more serious motive of wanting an heir to follow him if he dies without defeating Naraku.

Over time, Miroku's feelings mature and he begins focusing his affections more exclusively on Sango. However, because of his love for her, he fears that he cannot love her as an ordinary woman and hopes that if his wind tunnel consumes him, she will not die alongside him. He later proposes to her, which she accepts, though their relationship takes longer to solidify since Miroku is still prone to flirting with other girls, but expresses jealousy when other men act the same way towards Sango. When Naraku is finally killed near the end of the series, Miroku's wind tunnel disappears, freeing him from the curse. In the end of the Final Act, Miroku marries Sango and has three children with her. He supports his family financially by exorcising demons with InuYasha.

In the anime, he is voiced by Kōji Tsujitani. In the English dub, he is voiced by Kirby Morrow.

Sango (珊瑚?) Sango is a demon slayer, aged sixteen, who hails from a village of professional demon slayers. Of her broad repertoire of tools and tricks for fighting demons, Sango's most powerful weapon is the Hiraikotsu, a massive boomerang made of purified demon bones. Her other weapons include a concealed sword and poisons. She is accompanied by the demon cat Kirara, who accompanies Sango into battle.

Sango is first seen when she and her family and companions were on a mission to slay a evil demon, while another demon had actually possessed the lord of the castle. The demon possessing the lord ends up controlling Kohaku, Sango's younger brother, and causes him to slay all the demon slayers except Sango. Realizing a demon was possessing both the lord and Kohaku, Sango attempts to attack the lord, but she and Kohaku are shot by the lord's retainers and assumed to be dead and buried at the orders of the lord's son, Kagewaki Hitomi, who stops his possessed father by killing him. Sango, who has survived the attack, learns from Lord Kagewaki (now possessed by Naraku) that her village has been destroyed, supposed at the hands of InuYasha. Unaware that Naraku was responsible for her village's destruction, Sango swears vengeance and attempts to kill InuYasha. When the plot fails and Sango joins InuYasha's group, Naraku revives Kohaku, controlling him as a pawn to manipulate Sango's emotions and attack the rest of Inuyasha's group. While Sango seeks revenge against Naraku, her primary goal is to rescue Kohaku from Naraku's influence and save his life.

Sango is often the victim of Miroku's lecherous tendencies and gives him a loud slap for it, though she eventually falls in love with him. While she accepts Miroku's proposal of marriage, she requests that Miroku stop his lecherous actions and not to flirt either. He gradually acquieses to her request, focusing his attention on her exclusively. At the end of the Final Act, when Miroku loses his Wind Tunnel, Sango marries Miroku, using the next three years with Miroku and form a family with a pair of twin girls and a baby boy. The two move into a larger home in Kaede's village and InuYasha and Kagome are usually with them.

In the anime, she is voiced by Hōko Kuwashima. In the English dub, she is voiced by Kelly Sheridan.

Shippo (七宝, Shippō?) is an orphaned young fox demon, aged seven, who attempts to steal the Shikon Jewel from Kagome and InuYasha, wanting to become stronger and avenge his father's death. Though his plan fails, Kagome and InuYasha aid him after hearing his story, and he becomes their companion for the rest of the series.

Shippo normally appears to be a young boy with certain fox-like features: his legs, feet, ears, and tail. He can shape-shift, but his other forms (such as a large pink flying balloon) are temporary and often ineffective, usually given away by his lingering fox tail. He can also create illusory duplicates of himself, as well as weak fox-fire magic and toy-based tricks such as his giant spinning top attack. Naively observant, he often directs cheeky comments to InuYasha, earning a smack on the head. InuYasha and Kagome serve as older sibling figures to Shippo. Because of his small size, Shippo often rides on Kirara or the shoulders of others. His actual age is never stated in the series; according to the official InuYasha guide by Rumiko Takahashi, his appearance is equivalent to that of a seven year old boy.[1] He often bears crushes toward the little girls in the village and strives to protect and impress them, and usually works. Though he is the weakest member of InuYasha's group, Shippo gradually becomes braver during the series and is dedicated to his friends. Despite InuYasha's attempt to stop Shippo from joining their final battle against Naraku, Shippo goes anyway in hopes of helping his friends in the ways that he can. At the end of the Final Act, Shippo resides in Kaede's village, but often leaves to train and take the kitsune demon examination.

In the anime, he is voiced by Kumiko Watanabe. In the English dub, he is voiced by Jillian Michaels.

Kikyo (桔梗 Kikyo?) is the one who was given the task of guarding and purifying the Shikon no Tama. She falls in love with InuYasha and considers using the Shikon no Tama to turn him from a half-dog demon into a full human; this would cause the Shikon no Tama to vanish, allowing her to live as an ordinary woman by his side. However, Naraku disguises himself as Inuyasha to attack her village, leaving her seriously wounded. Fooled by Naraku, Kikyo believes InuYasha has betrayed her and uses her remaining strength to seal InuYasha to the Sacred Tree, leaving him in a sleeping state for fifty years. Shortly before she dies, she orders that the Shikon no Tama be burned along with her remains on her funeral pyre. The Shikon Jewel disappears and is apparently destroyed, but is reborn five hundred years later in the body of fifteen-year-old Kagome Higurashi, her reincarnation.

After Kagome travels back through time and reappears fifty years after Kikyo's death, an evil demon sorceress named Urasue tries to pull her reincarnated soul into a clay body made with graveyard soil and Kikyo's bones and ashes. Kagome appears to suffer no permanent harm, but a small part of her soul detaches and reanimates the new body with Kikyo's memories, personality, and human appearance. Although Kikyo retains some of her original spiritual powers in this form, she remains "undead" and must absorb the souls of dead women in order to move. At first, she wants to vengefully drag InuYasha into Hell. However, Kikyo gradually returns to her former compassionate nature and when she learns that Naraku caused the real circumstances of her death. Her old feelings for InuYasha is still true throughout the series, which strains Kagome's relationship with InuYasha, since InuYasha reciprocates Kikyo's lingering feelings. Naraku regards Kikyo as a threatening presence throughout the series, not only because of Kikyo's spiritual powers and knowledge, but also because he still retains the human heart of Onigumo at his core and Onigumo still desires Kikyo above all else.

When Kikyo is attacked by Naraku at Mount Hakurei after he transforms his body and cast out Onigumo's human heart, she falls into a river of miasma, thinking of InuYasha as she falls in. InuYasha arrives shortly after and finds her broken bow and believes that she has perished. However, Kikyo actually survived the attack and is inflicted with miasma wounds, which are healed by Kagome, though the miasma wounds continue to have a lingering affect on Kikyo. When Naraku realizes that Kikyo intends to use Kohaku's purified jewel shard to destroy him once the Shikon Jewel is complete, Naraku attempts to kill her again. Kikyo's wounds begin to spread throughout her body, obliging Kagome to go to Mount Azusa to retrieve a special bow to heal Kikyo. However, Kikyo conceals the fact that she sent Kagome to Mount Azusa so that Kagome could rid herself of the miasma Naraku had tainted her with and that she knows that the purifying arrow Kikyo instructs Kagome to shoot her with will end her own life. Kikyo shares her last moments and a final kiss with InuYasha and finally dies in his arms peacefully. Her will is then transferred into Naraku's shard showing a tiny speck of purity in the darkness.

In the anime, she is voiced by Noriko Hidaka. In the English dub, she is voiced
Willow Johnson.