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In a lot of fanfics I've read, authors have portrayed Inuyasha as being decades, even centuries older than his human companions, even without his 50-year sleep on the God-Tree. However, I have been a dedicated reader of Rumiko Takahashi's IY manga for a long time now, and I just can't see him that way! None of Inuyasha's actions display the level of strength, maturity, and wisdom that he should posess if he were of that age, even as uncouth as he is. Instead, he behaves as though he were very young: He is extremely insecure, both about himself and the people around him; he's self-conscious rather than self-aware. He is thoughtless in word and deed in a way an older being simply is not. He lacks that element of knowledge and experience that one would expect in someone who's seen a century or even fifty years of life. He displays a marked immaturity throughout the entire manga series, when dealing with his friends, enemies, and former love.
Take Shirokiba for example. (I know, I know, he's an invented character! But I was very careful in designing him!) Shirokiba is a little younger than 200. That may be young for a demon, and he does act young, but he has almost two centuries of experience under his belt that give him a knowlege and poise that younger creatures don't have. He may be youthful, active, and even playful at times, but he also knows and understands a lot about the world around him, carrying himself with an air of confidence and wisdom that he wouldn't have if he were much younger.
Even Ginnezu, who has not quite seen a century, has that element of maturity that Inuyasha does not. She may be more immature than Shirokiba, and she's conniving and twisted, but she has a poise and self-confidence that Inuyasha lacks. She has vast knowlege as well, though she doesn't use it constructively. She is wise in her own way, even though she's selfish and even childish at times. Her petulance doesn't run too deep; she is agelessly clever, as we have seen and will continue to see.
Inuyasha does know a lot about the world around him, but it's a superficial knowlege born of being thrust into a rather hellish life very early on. He knows fighting and violence, and he knows survival. He has the type of knowlege that only sees one side of the world--he hasn't lived long enough to learn anything else. He is more selfish and childish than Ginnezu in his own way.
When I first started TWD, I tried portraying Inuyasha the way those other authors had. However, I lost the feel of Takahashi's Inuyasha, the same thing that had happened when I read those "old IY" fics. As I wrote, Inuyasha became a fiercer, ruder version of Shirokiba--and way too different from the original dog-demon. (Plus it made Shirokiba useless and obsolete as a character.) So I went back to the manga (and the manga translation webpage) and read through a whole bunch again.
That's how I came up with the characterization of Inuyasha that I use in TWD, and I gave him a past I thought fit the character he displays in Takahashi's manga. He's a young, dangerous, insecure teenager who's been through a whole lot of hell in his short life; it's made him frightened and mistrustful of everyone and everything. From everything I can see, Takahashi's Inuyasha acts like a young boy caught up in events he doesn't understand and doesn't know how to deal with, unlike the older demons around him. He has power, yet too little experience to go with it.
Go take a look at Takahashi's original concepts! I can see in the manga how afraid of contact he is, yet how he yearns for it. I can see how lonely he is, yet how scared he is to be near others. I can tell how gentle his heart is on the inside, yet how strongly he shields that heart from possible hurt. Like an insecure youngster, he tries so hard to be invincible, but he longs for the kindness and warmth that were stripped away from him as a child.
The Shikon Jewel is nothing to him but an attempt to be free of pain and rejection. He's found in Kagome someone who didn't have the preconceived notions about demons that everyone else in his era had. She treated him like a human being, a person, and was kind to him even while he pushed her away. He could just leave and escape her and the Sits, but he doesn't want to lose the one person who cares about him like that. He wants desperately to be close to her--to her warm, cheerful, kind heart--but he's so scared he'll be hurt again that he stays away. Away outside the shadowed circle of firelight, like a wild creature yearning for the warmth of hearth and home yet afraid to approach the fire for fear of being burned.
Just about everything important in his life has been ripped away from him repeatedly--his mother, his home, his concept of family, his sense of self-worth, his ability to trust, his first love--and Kagome's kindness is so precious to him that he doesn't dare show that he cares. He's tearing himself up inside trying to keep that balance; he's crying out within for human warmth and contact. Inside that dangerous dog-demon is a boy who wants so badly to be loved!
And I got all that just reading the manga! I could tell right away, from Vol. 1, that there was much more to Inuyasha than just a snarly dog-demon--I just ate up the story, staying up late to read volume after volume. When I started writing TWD, I was determined to open up the inside of Inuyasha and flesh out a character whose heart and soul aren't given much detail in the manga. It seems I'm successful; a lot of people are enjoying TWD immensely and I've gotten a lot of raves on it. I hope I can continue to provide the depth, insight, and understanding that my readers have come to expect.
(The upcoming revelations about his past experiences will also clear up some other things about his behavior, but I'm not going to spoil it--not yet!)
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