Characters
Kotatsu
Kotatsu is a painter from Kyoto, who had come across a beautiful princess. Upon seeing her, the princess' men attack him and tell him never to defile the princess again by looking at her. Hurt by their words, Kotatsu sets out a plan to have the princess as his own.
Inuyasha, Kagome, and Shippo had been following the scent of human livers and ink, and it leads them to Kotatsu. Amazingly he is able to pull a large ogre out of his kimono, and escape. Kagome quickly takes note that Kotatsu seemed to be an ordinary human, but his powers would indicate otherwise.
Ultimately it is revealed that Kotatsu is a normal human who was fond of painting scenes of hell, a common motif in Japanese ink paintings of the day. He traveled to battlefields and painted the corpses he found there to gain an added sense of realism. On one such occasion, Kotatsu found a Shikon shard in a pool of blood. When Kotatsu took the shard home and mixed the shard into a vat of his ink the ogre he painted came to life and requested that he feed him liver and blood. To keep his great ability Kotatsu begins to murder people in order to continue the creation of his demonic army.
Kotatsu is barely noticeable to most of his superiors, and his lowly position allows him to avoid suspicion in the plot to kidnap the princess he lusted after. In the end, Kotatsu's lust for power proves to be his undoing. While Inuyasha tries to get the shard back from Kotatsu, his inkwell spills out and begins to devour the artist, leaving only his arm and the Shikon shard.
The Meaning Behind the Name - 紅達
Kotatsu's name is not particularly meaningful. It is written with the kanji for "crimson" and "accomplished".
Voices:
Bin Shimada
Terry Klassen