Inuyasha/YMMV

• Accidental Innuendo: The Tessaiga. See Freud Was Right.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Kikyo. Many haters bawled when she bit it.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Onigumo/Mouso, Kagura, Jakotsu, Kanna, even Naraku.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Would it be a stretch to say that Miroku is more desperate than lecherous? After all, if he doesn't have an heir before the Wind Tunnel consumes him, well...
• Arc Fatigue: Most agree that the series was much longer than it needed to be.
• Awesome McCoolname: Sesshoumaru's name means 'complete destruction of life', 'perfect killer', and 'totally barbaric' - all with the same three kanji.
• Base Breaker: Kikyou and Kagome.
  • Let's not forget the protagonist himself. He's either a Badass Anti-Hero or a whiny, abusive, androgynous Designated Hero.
• Complete Monster: There's a reason for Naraku's 0% Approval Rating. He both crossed the Moral Event Horizon and stabbed its' crossing guard, well before he even was mentioned by name. It's essentially easier to name the characters who he has not personally sleighted at some point in the course of the story. Shippo is the only one that comes to mind.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The first opening title sequence.
• Crowning Music of Awesome:
  • Look no further.
  • The music was done by Kaoru Wada. Pretty much EVERY track in the series is CMOA.
  • Special mention has to be made for Inuyasha and Kagome's theme and To Love's End, two of the most beautiful love themes ever written, with the first featuring a mesmerizing One-Woman Wail.
  • Kikyou's theme is my personal favorite, an understated and haunting song that epitomizes traditional Japanese culture and aesthetics.
• Die for Our Ship: Oh, boooooooooooy.
  • If you ship Inuyasha with Kikyo, it's apparently a requirement to bash Kagome.
  • You ship Inuyasha/Kagome? You can't like Kikyo, PERIOD.
  • Kouga: Inuyasha/Kagome fans hate him.
  • If you like to pair Sesshomaru with anyone else, you MUST bash Kagura.
  • Face it: The shippers for this series would kill each other, given the chance and means to do it.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Sesshomaru. Though his Character Development turned him into a Good Is Not Nice Anti-Hero, even before that fans would frequently cast him as a sympathetic with a Sugar and Ice Personality. In reality Sesshomaru is a mass murderer who frequently tried to kill Inuyasha and his friends in earlier episodes before he softened up.
  • Naraku big time. Sesshomaru as mentioned went through Character Development to make him one of the heroes. Naraku had no such development, and whatever sympathetic traits he might have are overshadowed the fact he's a Complete Monster who tortures, manipulates, and tries to kill every member of the main cast several times over.
• Ear Worm: A good deal of the openings and endings.
• Ending Fatigue: Many complain that around the third or fourth season the anime begins to drag, pace-wise. This is a notable complaint of many of Takahashi's work - namely that they're good, but tend to go nowhere fast. However, this doesn't happen in the manga, since the aforementioned seasons of the anime are filler-heavy.
  • Oddly, the second series has the reverse problem. Well over 100 chapters are condensed into a single season of 26 episodes.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Sesshoumaru.
• Estrogen Brigade: With this many bishonen, it was inevitable.
• Fanon: Sesshomaru is the Lord of the West, and he has a manor home or castle somewhere with servants and subjects. In the actual series he's a nomad with no home ever shown, he's not the ruler of any land anyway, though he is a youkai lord, and his only servants are the ones you see with him all the time.
  • If fanfiction ever deals with Kagome growing older, she'll likely become some sort of doctor due to her experience patching up her friends.
• Foe Yay
• Freud Was Right:
  • The sword Tessaiga is remarkably astonishingly phallic. It even throbs with warmth when "awakened" and grows hair on its hilt.
  • Notable is that the sword is "awakened" by "protecting" a WOMAN. Not to mention powerful energies being "released" from it.
  • This is even more "phallic"...
• Iron Woobie: Inuyasha, Miroku, Sango, Kohaku…
• Jerkass Woobie: Kagura, Inuyasha.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships
  • Kagome is Type B: Because she is the easiest character for a girl to relate to, she is paired up with tons of characters while the author projects themselves onto her.
  • For his part, Sesshoumaru is Type A: He is the most lusted-after male character, so girls usually pair him with a female character that they can relate to (usually Kagome) and project themselves onto the female as a sort of Wish Fulfillment fantasy of putting themselves with him.
• Les Yay: Episode 98. "Kikyo and Kagome: Alone in a Cave".
• Like You Would Really Do It: To no one's surprse, our heroes were able to get the Sacred Jewel shard out of Kohaku's body without killing him.
• Magnificent Bastard: Naraku manages to be this and a Complete Monster simultaneously.
• Memetic Mutation / Never Live It Down:
  • SIT! In actuality, Kagome uses the control collar less and less over the series, not every time he says something off. It's also more played up in the anime than the manga, as she mostly stops using it the way she did earlier on around volume 7 or so.
  • Sango slapping Miroku for groping her. She actually stops slapping him after he proposes, which happens almost halfway through the story.
• Misaimed Fandom: Sesshomaru was adored and praised by fans long before he started petting the dog
• Motive Decay: Naraku.
  • He himself admits once he has the complete jewel, he's not sure what to do with it, largely because all the things he wanted it for, he either already has now or doesn't need or want them anymore. He decides to just use the jewel's power to kill Inuyasha, and since he's spent so long fighting Inuyasha, he admits outright he's not sure what he's gonna do after that. It says something of how long the series runs that the Big Bad loses track of exactly why he's the Big Bad.
  • Kagome confronting Naraku near the end and making the unusually astute guess that The Shikon no Tama did not grant Naraku's wish is really one of the best moments of the series. Naraku states more explicitly at the moment of his death, that his wish was for Kikyou's love, and the possibility of being with her in the afterlife, which the Shikon no Tama could not give him. Failing this, he instead planned to replace Magatsuhi and Midoriko with himself and Kagome, by wishing to become part of the Shikon no Tama and by using the stolen Meidou to trap Kagome with the Shikon no Tama. (This of course was really the wish of the Shikon no Tama itself.) The (uncertain) implication is that Kagome could not be trapped in the Shikon no Tama unless she made a wish on it, and any wish would do except for the wish for the Shikon no Tama to be destroyed.
• Narm: Lots of it. The English dub especially.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Quite a few of the demons the gang faced were a tad unsettling, even some of the ones that were allies.
  • Everything Naraku did, ever. The guy couldn't even make dinner without corrupting an innocent soul into slaughtering a few hundred people in front of their loved ones and converting the malice ridden corpses into a sandwich, or something.
    • Naraku's true body during his weakened phase, which consist in a loathsome blob of Youkai body parts and flesh
  • Goshinki is quite something by himself, but rest assured that his Italian voice is pure, deep, nightmare fuel.
  • The Cursed Noh Mask. Full Stop. There's a good reason why it's called the Flesh-Eating Mask.
• Ron the Death Eater: Both Kagome and Kikyo. See Die for Our Ship.
• The Scrappy:
  • Simply searching up Kagome in a search engine can lead to forums, websites, and video's dedicated to how much they truly hate this character, personality and all.
  • While half of the fanbase seems to hold this position for Kagome, there is equally as much hate for Kikyo as well for entirely different reasons, with media dedicated to the hate fans feel for this character.
  • Shippo and Kouga.
  • Hojo, for his inability to catch a hint that Kagome isn't interested in him.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Kikyou/Inuyasha vs. Kagome/Inuyasha vs. Sesshoumaru/Inuyasha vs. Koga/Kagome. Rin/Kohaku vs. Sesshoumaru/Rin vs. Sesshoumaru/Kagura vs. Sesshoumaru/Kagome.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: In-universe for Sesshoumaru: 1) Compassion is a good thing. 2) You don't need your brother's sword. 3) You are NOT infallible. 4) No, really. YOU DON'T NEED YOUR BROTHER'S SWORD.
• Stoic Woobie: Sesshoumaru, believe it or not (See Page for full detail). His entire journey through the manga takes him from being Inuyasha's enemy to a reconciled brother via a series of increasingly dark tests of character designed to bring him first to emotional breaking point and then to within an inch of his life. He overcomes this status towards the end of the manga. In style.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "I am the wind... the free... wind."
  • "I have finally... become an ordinary woman."
  • "Houshi-sama... please... take me with you."
  • Ane-ue... what have I done... ANE-UE, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!"
• Toy Ship: Rin and Kohaku, Shippo and many random village girls he comes across, notably Mujina, but she turns out to be a badger demon in disguise.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Inuyasha.
• The Untwist: "Goryomaru is Moryomaru?!" Honestly, guys? Having the same face and names differing by one letter aren't enough, apparently!
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Jakotsu.
• Villain Sue: Naraku.
• Wangst: Kagome. Sometimes very justifiable, sometimes... well, not. It should be noted that, despite that she complains a lot, if she goes overboard, she stops herself.
  • Another case could be made for Sesshomaru's dwelling of his dad not giving him the sword he wanted when most of the other characters have problems much worse.
• What Measure Is a Non-Badass?: Fans throwing a fit because Sango dared to get married and have kids, and calling Kagome "weak" because being physically weak somehow makes you a weak person overall, even though she was just a regular schoolgirl thrust in the feudal world and she STILL gets a lot stronger as time goes on.
  • Subverted in the actual series though. Sango is a feminine, everygirl Yamato Nadeshiko family girl who is a demon slayer, and Kagura is a Lady of War that fights in a pretty kimono, her weapon is a pretty folding fan, and her attacks are all dances.