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Published In:
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| Publication Date: September 25, 2021 | |
| Pages: 3 (full color) 61 (black and white) | |
| Anime Adaptation: Episode 2: The Three Princesses & Episode 3: The Dream Butterfly | |
Notes:
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Manga Summaries
Volume 1
| Chapters Originally Published in: | |
| Shonen Sunday Super 2021 Vol. 11 - 2022 Vol. 1 |
Chapter
1: 一ノ章 とわ
Ichi no sho Towa
(Journey 1: Towa)
Towa Higurashi is a popular student at an all girls school where many of her classmates obsess over her, going so far as to call her Lady Towa. She struggles to engage with her classmates, and the principal of the school calls her adopted father, Sota Higurashi, to discuss the why she has her hair dyed an unnatural color, a fact that Sota refutes. Towa's adopted sister, Mei, is equally smitten just like Towa's classmates and childishly confesses her feelings and desire to date Towa and even marry her. Another girl comes to confess her feelings for Towa and Mei becomes jealous as Towa playfully flirts with her classmate, asking if she is familiar with her family's shrine. Towa's hair gains a streak of red as she speaks to these girls, but it fades away nearly as quickly. At Higurashi Shrine Towa gives her great-grandpa a back rub while Mei looks at a photograph of Kagome and asks Big Momma (Kagome's mother, Mei and Towa's grandmother) if Kagome had special powers. As Big Momma and great-grandpa think back to Kagome leaving with Inuyasha, Big Momma mentions that Kagome got married and has gone somewhere they cannot go. They also think back to the unusual circumstances that lead Towa to appear there as a child, dressed in clothes that seemed to be from another time. That evening great-grandpa gives Towa a blade from their storehouse. The girls from school arrive and find Towa wearing boy's clothes and excitedly snap pictures of her. It seems Towa's flirtatiousness was all a ruse however, she could tell that her classmate had a demon attached to her. Towa makes short work of the creature with the knife given to her by great-grandpa. Towa makes short work of the creature as Sota happily films the battle. All seems well until the air turns ominous around the shrine and Mistress Centipede emerges from the Goshinboku Tree and begins to battle Towa. The tide of battle turns against Towa when suddenly an arrow strikes Mistress Centipede and Moroha and Setsuna appear and join the fight. Having broken her knife on Mistress Centipede, Setsuna tosses Towa a new blade, one that she instantly seems able to imbue with mystical energy. The battle rages and Towa, Setsuna and Moroha soon find themselves pursuing Mistress Centipede back through the Goshinboku Tree and into the past. After slicing off the demon's head Moroha tells Towa that Setsuna is her sister and this is Towa's first time back in her own time, the Sengoku period, where she has been missing from for ten years.
Chapter
2: 二ノ章 戦国の絆 （前編）
Ni no sho Sengoku no kizuno (zenpen)
(Journey Two: The Rift Between Worlds, Part 1)
Upon the arrival of Setsuna and Moroha at the Higurashi shrine in the present day they battled against Mistress Centipede. Just as they are about to pursue her back through time, Sota grabs Moroha's cloak and asks if she knows Inuyasha and Kagome. When she responds that they are her parents Sota screams to his mother that this is Kagome's daughter. Soon the girls are back in the Sengoku period and they go to the village to meet with "Granny Kaede" who is overjoyed to meet Towa for the first time in ages. Moroha explains that it was Kaeda who raised Setsuna and her. A feast is prepared to welcome Towa home and the modern girl hesitates as she tries the food. Kaede comments that Kagome did the same when she arrived in the past. Towa asks if her aunt is in this era and Kaede explains that Towa's aunt, Kagome, married Inuyasha and has lived in the Sengoku era for quite some time along with her mother, Rin. Towa is shocked to hear of her mother and Kaede realizes that Towa remembers nothing of her brief time in the Sengoku era before she was swept away to the future. Setsuna and Moroha explain that neither of them recall how they met and so Towa begs Kaede to tell her about her Aunt Kagome so she can tell Papa Sota and Grandmother Higurashi what happened to her. Kaede explains the history of the two brothers, Inuyasha and Sesshomaru, how they battled one another and how Sesshomaru could not understand his father and his half-brother's love for humans. Kaede explains that it was after he met Rin that he began to understand how Inuyasha's love of Kagome made him stronger. Kaede explains that time passed quickly and Rin grew up and spent more and more time with Sesshomaru. Kagome teased Inuyasha that she could use a little romance in her life like what Sesshomaru and Rin. More time passed and soon Rin had Towa and Setsuna after Kagome gave birth to baby Moroha. Towa is shocked to learn that she is a half-demon and recalls her unusual abilities growing up. Moroha and Towa talk about how the children they grew up around teased and bullied them because they were different too. Setsuna explains that though there are good and kind demons like Shippo, she feels alive when she is in battle against powerful demons. Towa agrees that she feels this way too and an unseen voice says this is because they share the blood of his lord, the great dog demon. Looking around Towa is shocked to see the tiny flea demon, Myoga sitting on her hand. Kaede brings the conversation back to what happened the last time she saw Inuyasha and the others. He came to her in the middle of a rainy night to say that he had to leave and Kagome, Moroha, Rin and the twins were all coming with him. He was accompanied by a mysterious figure holding an umbrella and in the sky a covered cart with flaming wheels hovered waiting to take them all away. Inuyasha tells Kaede they will not be gone for longer than a month when the mysterious figure tells them they must go now. Inuyasha tells Kaede that the mystery figure is an old friend of his father's but he can say no more; the less Kaede knows the safer she will be. Inuyasha shouts for Kaede to tell Miroku and Sango what has happened and with that they carriage and Inuyasha are swept away into the stormy night's sky. Kaede tells the girls that something must have gone wrong because she never heard anything for three years. After years have passed, in her lonliness and isolation Kaede finds herself speaking to Kikyo aloud, wishing that she could join her soon and speaking of how hard it is to be alone. Suddenly a miko with her face covered appears and speaks to Kaede in the voice of Kikyo. Kaede can tell this is not a demon or a ghost, but something else and she knows it is not really Kikyo. The priestess announces it is the Tree of Ages embodied in the form of Kikyo. The spirit of the Tree of Ages tells Kaede that two of the children will soon return, but the third will not arrive for another ten years. She goes on to say that when the girls have gotten older they will have to solve the mystery of what happened to their parents and she assures Kaede that this is what Kikyo would have wanted as well. Myoga explains that the Tree of Ages is a spirit that lives within trees that are over a thousand years old and monitors the timeline to correct distortions. It is suggested that because that tree is the one that Inuyasha was pinned to with Kikyo's arrow, the tree took the form of Kikyo when it visited Kaede over a decade ago. Suddenly the girls sense a demon outside and leave to go investigate. Setsuna insists Towa remain behind or risk getting in her way again. As they track the presence Moroha says she can smell five demons which surprises Setsuna who can only smell at least three. Setsuna talks to Moroha about her curse, the butterfly that absorbs her emotions and then Moroha relates some things she did in the present with Kagome's family. She explains how distressed they were when they learned Kagome had been lost for many years. Moroha was stunned to learn this is where Kagome came from and yet she was not there, as she had assumed she had returned to her home in the future. The Higurashis ask her to stay and talk more but Moroha confesses the portal to the past may not remain open long and she hurries away. For a moment Sota stares at the portal thinking about trying to go through, but realizes he is not a child and cannot run away to other worlds, he has a family of his own to look after. He asks Moroha to take care of Towa for him. As Moroha finishes her story about her time with the Higurashi family, she and Setsuna are attacked by three-eyed crows stuffed into the corpses of dead bandits. Back at Kaede's home, she finishes telling Towa of how she found Moroha and Setsuna inside the smoking, burned wreckage of the flying cart she saw them carried away in years earlier. Kaede said it looked as if they had escaped from a war and she wonders aloud if there is war between the demons just as humans war against each other.
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Published In:
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| Publication Date: October 25, 2021 | |
| Pages: 1 (full color) 56 (black and white) | |
| Anime Adaptation: None | |
Notes:
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Chapter
3: 三ノ章 戦国の絆 （後編）
San no sho Sengoku no kizuno (zenpen)
(Journey Three: The Rift Between Worlds, Part 2)
After years away, the Setsuna and Moroha were found in the wreckage of the wagon they were carried away in. Miroku and Sango ask them where they had been all this time, but the girls cannot explain in a sensible way with Moroha mentioning being surrounded by a number of copies of her mother that were not really her and suggesting they were at a palace somewhere. When Miroku asks where Towa is the girls cry and cannot give a coherent response. Kaede tells Towa all of this but she says she also remembers very little about how she was separated from her sister and cousin as she was in shock when Sota found her. Then comment about a palace jogs part of Towa's memory and she recalls a burning palace and holding someone's hand. The undead soldiers suddenly burst into Kaede's cottage while far away in the forest Moroha and Setsuna do battle against the three-eyed crow. Moroha can smell the other attacks in the distance and she and Setsuna realize they were lured away so that Towa could be attacked without them being present. The corpses attack Kaede, but Towa struggles with the idea of attacking someone, even if they are a corpse. From a nearby tree, Yotsume the four-eyed owl, watches. Towa decides to lead the undead corpses away from Kaede and soon encouters a wall of flames. When she calls out to Kaede, the old priestess realizes that Towa is seeing illusions that are not real. The flames remind Towa of the burning palace where she lived. Suddenly she recalls an attack on the palace after being told that someone breeched the barrier that was keeping them hidden. Duplicates of Rin and Kagome carry the children away as they flee the attack, though when one is decapitated she is revealed as a Nothing Woman who had copied Rin's face. Suddenly an elderly man leaps in to protect them, the watchman, and he faces off against Konton and Homura. Konton sneers that the watchman is merely a servant of Sesshomaru's and the old man removes his disguise revealing he is actually Jaken. As they flee, Towa dropped her beanbag ball and turned to grab it, letting go of Setsuna's hand in that moment. Rin/The Nothing Woman turns to protect Towa as they are surrounded by demons when suddenly the spirit of the Tree of Ages appears and opens a portal. The spirit of the tree beckons Towa to pass through and cross the bridge of time where she will be safe. Towa remembers everything about how she became separated from Moroha and Setsuna in the past when suddenly Yotsume swoops in and attacks her. The four-eyed demon demands she surrender her rainbow pearl to him and promises to kill her quickly. Suddenly a nothing woman appears and attacks Yotsume, wrenching him off of Towa. Enraged, Towa begins to violently attack Yotsume and the corpses. Yotsume momentarily sees Towa as Sesshomaru as she unleashes her untapped power causing him to take flight. When Moroha and Setsuna arrive they find Towa cradling the dying Nothing Woman. As she dies the Nothing Woman gives Towa her beanbag back, revealing that she had never stopped searching for her lost charge. Moroha tells Setsuna to say something to comfort Towa but Setsuna can only awkwardly try to reassure her that everything is all right. Behind her the phantom of the dream butterfly flutters. Suddenly the spirit of the Tree of Ages appears and tells the girls that they must go west and find the source of the time disruption as the shadowy figures of Zero and Kirinmaru loom in the background. The girls decide to follow the Tree of Age's command and find their parents in the process. Returning to Kaede's village Moroha massages the old lady before demanding payment. Setsuna cooks for everyone and Towa uses some seasoning packets that Sota gave her, explaining that her adopted father used to write down facts that he thought might be helpful one day and he used to research seemingly pointless topics as a child. The girls then set off on their quest as they bid farewell to Kaede. Elsewhere Sesshomaru speaks to an unconscious Rin who sleeps inside the Tree of Ages and tells her that the girls are beginning their quest as he wonders what they will accomplish.
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Published In:
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| Publication Date: November 25, 2021 | |
| Pages: 1 (full color) 60 (black and white) | |
| Anime Adaptation: None | |
Notes:
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