#There's a huge chance this is the last Yashahime related ask I'll ever answer

[shinidamachu]

It’s seems like director is aware of how pathetic sesshomaru is during yashamine. I remember way back when the show first started and the director stated we were going to see sesshomaru suffer in yashamine and have to make tough decisions. Sesshomaru literally does nothing through yashamine. He just walks around and then stares at rin during her time in the fish bowl. All of his “tough decisions” were made selfishly and could have been talked about with inukag. He wasn’t a great father, husband, or brother. Yet the director is trying to use two of the fan favorite characters (kagome and moroha) to gaslight everyone into think sesshomaru was a great father that was misunderstood. Shipper might be stupid enough to buy the director is excuse (and yes they are now using moroha words to say sesshomaru was indeed a great father) but regular fans can see it’s completely bullshit. I know sesshomaru had a small character development in inuyasha but damn they truly did assassinated his character yashamine.

Oh, he is aware of it. No doubt about it. Social media has made it possible for the producers to know the audience's reaction to certain aspects of a show in real time. They know our expectations, our complaints, what worked and what didn't. Then they take this information and to the best of their abilities, try to adapt the show to addres those concerns in an attempt to please and cultivate the viewers.

Just look at how Moroha was treated in season one – not only in the story itself, but also advertising wise – and how she was treated in season two. The same with Inuyasha and Kagome, who at first had very scarce content but recently got promotional art after promotional art. It's clear they tried to focus on the Sessrin family initially but it didn't wake the audience's interest the way they hoped it would so they recalculated the route.

And if you ask me, this is probably one of the many reasons why Sessrin didn't get any real romantic interaction. From the beginning, people already feared this couple was gonna happen and the reaction against it when it was confirmed was even more visceral than Sunrise expected so they got reticent about making it worse by going full disgusting – which I think they were going to do, considering how the second opening juxtaposed a child Rin and Sesshomaru scene with a romantic Inukag one.

Another example is the cursed manga, which fixed pretty much everything we've been complaining about with the notable exception of the biggest, most obvious one. But it didn't mean they weren't aware of it. So much that at least Rin was drawn like an actual adult woman on it. Even the anime went out of its way to make Jaken soothe our worries by explicitly saying that Rin was most definitly 18 years old, he thinks, probably, if he can remember correcly.

And that's exactly what happened with Sesshomaru's characterization as a father. During Inuyasha, we've literally seen him in action as someone who has a child under his protection. We've seen how caring, helpful and present he was. So when they dropped this "rite of courage and cowardice" on us and made him act like the worst father in the history of fathers, of course we took just a little bit of issue with the complete horseshit, character assassination, absolute fucking nonsense that this is.

But instead of backing down, Sunrise doubled down. They could try and write themselves out of this mess. Personally, I thought Sesshomaru was acting that cold because his plan involved using the Windmill of Time to reboot the timeline they were in so in the end of the day his actions wouldn't matter because everything would be erased anyway and that's what Sunrise was going for. It's still shady and incredibly risky, yes, but it would have been way easier for me to accept. Or literally any other similar solution.

But be it because they thought it was too late (I recognize it's a huge change that would take too much work, especially in such a short period of time) or because there was an actual plot reason (mind you, I stopped watching it after episode four and the few things I know come from screenshots, especific clips and general commentary), the fact remais that they stood by it. But they still had to address the problem. And they did it by indirectly spoon feeding their case to the audience.

Imagine the twins are the viewers. We doubt that Sesshomaru worried or even cared about the girls because of the selfish, illogical and heartless choices he has made, especially concerning them.

We questioned the fact that he sat around and did nothing as his children faced mortal danger time and time again when he could easily have helped the out.

We pointed out how it wasn't fair or reasonable to dump so many responsibilities on the shoulders of these 14 years old kids, especially when it was his mess to clean up, the consequences of his decisions that were his mistakes to fix and his alone.

We compared the type of father he was to what we knew Inuyasha was gonna be, which was later confirmed: loving, responsible, caring, protective, reliable, helpful and so on...

But Sunrise, just like you said, used the characters to manipulate us into thinking that we got it all backwards. They tried to make it seem like the difference is because Inuyasha is a simple, "easy to undestand" character while Sesshomaru is this very complex man who is being wronged by everybody. We just aren't enlightened enough to understand the poor thing.

Because, after all, he's a strong demon who collected countless enemies through the years. Enemies that would not hesitate to attack his daughters if they got the chance, so it's better to tough them up.

So what if the training was way too cruel? So what if he never explained his reasons to the girls? So what if they couldn't understand why their father, the person who was supposed to help and protect them, made them go through it on purpose when he had the option not to? So what if they hated him for it? So what if they thought he was far too unforgiving?

Everything is fine because in the end of the day he put them through all of this so they wouldn't lose to any bully. It was a lesson that makes total sense and that they should actually be grateful for.

Except that they were literal babies. And I'm not even exaggerating. They were literal babies when he abandoned them to their own luck. One of them spent 10 years in a different dimension because of it. They were killed and brought back to life in the process. And most importantly: he could have taught them how to fight and protect themselves from anything without leaving them behind.

That being said, the choice of making Kagome saying to a rightfully pissed off Inuyasha that Sesshomaru had his reasons to act the way he did, then Rin and Moroha explaining said reasons to the confused twins is a deliberate tactic of manipulation. They're using characters they know we love to say what they want us to believe because it's easier for us to agree with them.

It's also easier to make characters tell things than to show those things to us. And that's what it all comes down to: the "show, don't tell" rule. They might tell us Rin was 18 years old, but they showed us that she was still pretty much a child. They might tell us Sesshomaru had his reasons to treat his children like crap: he wanted them to be strong enough to protect themselves. But what they showed us is that he was a shitty ass father.

That being said, I think it's naive to think shippers were stupid enough to buy it. For my own sanity, I have to believe no one over the age of 12 would fall for that bullshit. No. Deep down they know it makes no sense. What happens is that they choose to pretend they don't because it fits the narrative where their bias lies. That's it.

Rin looks like a child, sounds like a child, acts like a child, but Jaken expressly said she was 18 years old and that's something they can actually use against our narrative so they do it even though they know it's not true. Now the same thing is happening to Sesshomaru questionable parenting skills and Kagome, Rin and Moroha's lines. It doesn't matter the tell "contradicts" the "show" as long as the can throw the "tell" on our faces to try and convince us (and themselves) that they're right.

As for what the directors stated before the show, well... we're well past that. Yes, they lied about the mom being a mystery, they lied about Inuyasha getting a role in the story, they lied about every detail being a clue, they lied about Sesshomaru suffering and making tough decisions. And they did it all for money. Simple as that.

Now they're lying to manipulate us into thinking that we just don't get Sesshomaru at all.

But we do.

They are the ones who never did.