The Spring 2022 Manga Guide

Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon

What's It About? 

Living in the present day isn't easy for Sesshomaru's daughter Towa. She can't remember where she came from, must conceal her mysterious powers, and is either worshipped or feared by girls she just wants to be friends with. But she has no way of returning to her own time until one day…a demon attacks and she is transported to feudal-era Japan.

There Towa, her twin sister Setsuma, and her cousin Moroha—Inuyasha's daughter—have a mission bestowed upon them by the mystical Tree of Ages. With only vague memories of their past to guide them, the three young women set out to find their parents, heal a rift in time, and fulfill their royal destiny....

Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon (Hanyō no Yashahime) is a manga adaptation of the anime of the same name. The manga is drawn by Takashi Shiina with English translation by Junko Goda and adaptation by Shaennon K. Garrity. Viz will release its first volume both digitally and physically on June 21.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

In some ways, I think Yashahime is more palatable in manga form. That may simply be because it's the work of two impressive creators, Rumiko Takahashi and Takashi Shiina. While Takahashi isn't involved in drawing the story, Yashahime is very much informed by Inu Yasha to the point where it's easier to point out the ways in which they run similarly than to find the divergences. Given that Yashahime stars a more or less different cast of characters (albeit with a lot of overlap early in the series), that's both important and impressive, and this first volume of manga really does feel like a fairly natural continuation of the original series. Inu Yasha and Kagome would keep running headlong into danger if they felt it was the best way to keep the family (and the world) safe, and they also wouldn't think that not coming back was even a possibility. I also have exactly zero doubts that Kagome's family back in the modern world would hesitate at all to take in a child they found, even if she wasn't Kagome's niece.

That grounding really helps this first volume of the manga. We don't spend a ton of time with Towa while she's living with the Higurashi family, but there's enough to establish who they are and the love with which they've raised her – Sota transferring her from one school to another in quick succession because she's being discriminated against by the administration absolutely sounds like something he (and his sister) would do, and Towa's mixed feelings about the whole thing set her up to be a conflicted character from the start. She's a fish out of water no matter where she is, and that makes her relatably awkward – she doesn't want to be picked on, but she still wants friends, and her adoptive dad's good intentions make that tricky; while in the Feudal era she's reeling from meeting her sister and cousin but at the same time pretty darn prepared thanks to stories about Aunt Kagome. She's the sort of contradiction a lot of us are, and that really works, especially since Setsuna and Moroha initially come off as much more one-note.

There's a lot of action in this volume, and the art is mostly up to the task. It's not great at showing us how Towa's eyes are “fierce” or with body language in general, but the monsters look good (and Takahashi-esque) and the action is appropriately dynamic. The book very much feels like a first volume in that not much happens that isn't in service of setting up what's upcoming, but if you enjoyed the anime, it's worth reading the manga – and if you were intrigued by the anime and didn't love how it played out, it may be worth giving this a look, because the pacing feels better and this may well turn out to be the more enjoyable format for the story.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

As a sequel to a beloved classic, Yashahime quickly went from being one of the more anticipated anime of the past couple of years …to a rather disappointing and drawn-out fantasy series. Suffice to say I wasn't super looking forward to reading the manga adaptation of the story, but I was surprised to find this to be the superior version of that story's beginning. This manga definitely has a strong sense of focus on the titular character rather than trying to jumble a bunch of storylines to converge into one. I still think Yashahime is more rewarding for franchise fans, but the pacing and more personal focus of this volume definitely makes things far easier to digest for newcomers. The art style can be a little bit messy, especially when it comes to certain action sequences, but if you weren't a fan of the Yashahime anime then I definitely think that this manga would at least be worth having a look-over—if only to make those comparisons yourself.