Yokai Cats and Time Travel: Twenty-One Volumes of Rumiko Takahashi's Mao

I always try to admit when I'm wrong. Mao, Rumiko Takahashi's current long-running manga series, didn't wow me with its first volume. I uncharitably compared it to earlier Takahashi works in both look and plot, and I admit to feeling like maybe the great mangaka had fallen off somewhat. But despite that initial ambivalence, I've kept reading, and while Mao hasn't yet achieved the heights of some of her best-known works, it's certainly not “But we have Inu Yasha at home.” Taking a more aggressive horror angle, Mao bridges time from the Heian Era to the Taishō Era to today, telling a story about insatiable greed for power and those who try to stop it.

Heroine Nanoka, despite her Akane Tendo hair, owes a lot more to RIN-NE's Sakura than to Kagome – or Akane. While she's not as laid back as her direct predecessor, Nanoka is more willing and able to take things in stride than you might expect – she's a fifteen-year-old from the Reiwa Era who travels back to the Taishō Era, where she regularly interacts with people who have been alive since the Heian Era. Even Kagome would have had some trouble parsing that historical mess, but Nanoka adjusts remarkably quickly. In part, that may be because of her inciting incident, which is different from the rest of the cast's. For Nanoka, things began in the not-so-distant year of 2011, when the car she and her parents were riding in was caught up in a freak sinkhole accident. Nanoka was somehow pulled back into the Taishō period, where she encountered Byoki, an ayakashi cat. After surviving that encounter, she was returned to 2011.

Nanoka's meeting with Byoki poses many more questions than it answers. Since she wasn't breathing when rescuers found her, it's up for debate as to whether or not she died as well, and Byoki's powers are simply keeping her going, although she does grow and age as time passes. But unlike Kagome, Nanoka's original trip back in time doesn't occur because she has some relic of the past on or in her body; it seems pretty random. But because of her encounter with the ayakashi, she now bears some of his blood, which ties her to Mao, the male protagonist. This almost certainly explains why she can continue to travel through time using a shuttered shopping arcade (which exists precisely where one did in the 1920s as well), but it raises serious questions about why she went back in 2011.

The easiest answer, that she's somehow involved with the Goko Clan, doesn't seem to apply here. Most of the members of that onmyo group have survived into the Taishō era, frozen in time for the most part, and no real mention is made of any of them having (or being able to) reproduce. That doesn't negate the possibility that Nanoka is somehow one of their descendants, but it also doesn't feel quite right. Also interesting is that, despite her encounter with Byoki and the possibility of having defied death, she doesn't have any white streaks in her hair, unlike each surviving member of the Goko Clan, who do so to show their immortality. While there are plenty of mysteries in the series, Nanoka herself just may be the greatest.

It's not entirely clear whether Mao thinks that, too, although he's certainly always thinking about her. Mao was born roughly 900 years ago during the Heian Era, and after he was orphaned, he was taken in by the Goko Clan to be trained as an onmyoji (exorcist in this context). What he didn't know was the evil nature of the group, which practiced dark arts and utilized human (and animal) sacrifices. In fact, Byoki himself is a kodoku, a type of yokai created by putting many creatures (preferably poisonous) in a small container until they are all dead but one. Byoki's resemblance to Haimaru, the beloved pet cat of Goko Clan daughter Sana, has some terrible implications, and both Haimaru and Sana form part of Mao's motivation for stopping the Goko Clan from rising again. Again, some of the parallels between this series and Inu Yasha are obvious, but Sana is no Kikyo, and Mao is much more even-tempered and mature than Inu Yasha, so those similarities really are superficial.

During the Taishō Era, Mao works as an exorcist/doctor. After his initial meeting with Nanoka, he ensures her safety back in the Reiwa Era, and by volume twenty-one, it's clear that Nanoka, at least, has warm feelings for him. Mao isn't still hung up on Sana, although he still does feel sad about what happened to her nine centuries ago. Still, it's also not quite clear whether or not he's romantically attracted to Nanoka…and frankly, that's the least of the story's worries, although in Colors: The Art of Rumiko Takahashi 1978-2024 Takahashi notes that if she didn't include lighter, more romantic moments, the story would be unbearably grim. At this point in the series, I'd say that if you think you see it, it's probably there, even if it's just in the background.

The main drive of the story across all twenty-one volumes released in English as of this writing is the strange doings of the Goko Clan. Many of the group's disciples have somehow survived into the Taishō period, and the fact that Nanoka hasn't encountered any of them in Reiwa seems to indicate that whatever's happening in the 1920s is the final say on the matter. The group is composed of original disciples, such as Mao, and new students taken on by less scrupulous survivors. This split reveals a great deal about the final days of the Goko Clan that Mao was aware of: some members were horrified by what had happened and vowed to prevent it from happening again, but others remained faithful to the dark ways of the clan's leader. The two groups have been set up in opposition to each other, and it is not always clear where Byoki himself falls. However, the death of Sana (and possibly Haimaru) remains the flashpoint for the split, with Hyakka having been misled about Mao's role in the tragedy, leading to further drama before the situation is clarified.

Hyakka's belief in Mao's guilt effectively sums up the issues with the Goko Clan: even when they work together, they're all out for their own benefit. This is best seen with Hakubi and Yurako, two of the Taishōs of the Taisho Goko. Like Mao, Hakubi has made his living as a doctor over the years. He has also had a career as a soldier, most recently fighting in the Russo-Japanese War. The parallel tracks these two have chosen are perhaps a little on the nose, but important symbolically nonetheless. Mao has repudiated the Goko Clan by choosing to make healing and helping others his calling, while Hakubi, under the name of Captain Shirasu, has chosen death and war. He might have been fighting for what some would call a good cause, but that's not why he chose to be a soldier; he made that choice because it aligned most closely with the Goko Clan's mission(s). Yurako, meanwhile, embodies the crossroads that those involved with the Goko Clan in the past face. While Hakubi and Mao have made their choices, Yurako is still struggling. She loves Mao romantically, but knows that in the past, he had feelings for Sana…whom she looks exactly like. She doesn't want to attract him just because of her face, but she still holds out hope that perhaps he might care for her one day, and yet she's involved with the Goko Clan's modern incarnation, even knowing, on some level, that it's wrong. Yurako is conflicted, and in a series where there are pretty clear lines drawn between “good” and “bad,” that makes her one of the most interesting characters – and perhaps a reminder that things may not be as clear cut as others assume.

As a series, Mao leans much more into horror than adventure, and as Takahashi points out (again in Colors), Mao himself may be on the side of “good,” but that doesn't mean he's a hero of justice; in one early scene he stands by when Nanoka asks for help, unmoved. That does make sense; he's been alive for a long, long time, and that has to wear you out. In fact, some of Nanoka's role seems to be to help him find a bit more reason to live still, although he never loses that sense of world-weariness.

The horror elements of the series are a blend of authentic yokai lore and versions specifically crafted for the story. Mao and his fellow disciples are all practitioners of onmyodo. This traditional mystic art involves the five elements (fire, earth, water, wood, metal) and the creation of shikigami, or familiars. These are retained for the story, with each former Goko Clan member having a specialization (Hyakka is fire, Hakubi is metal, Nanoka becomes earth). Mao's closest companion is Otoya, a child-shaped shikigami. There are a few real-life yokai referenced, too – Byoki's name is written with the characters for nekomata, the two-tailed cat yokai, and other chapters involve yokai like the hair-cutting kamikiri. However, many of the creatures Mao and Nanoka face are inventions of Takahashi's imagination, lending the story its own unique mythology and world. Some elements are shared with our world, like the Great Kanto Earthquake, and Takahashi did conduct extensive research to come up with a believable depiction of the Taishō Era, but the horrific details are all hers. If you thought some of the monsters in Inu Yasha were unsettling, Mao is here to raise the stakes, and some of the creatures Nanoka faces are genuinely creepy, if not outright scary. Mao may be used to them, but Nanoka's definitely not, and it's to her credit that she always pulls through – even if sometimes she needs a little medical care from a Mao who's perhaps not quite as indifferent to her as his earliest actions would suggest.

Across the first twenty-one volumes, Mao continually deepens its lore and creates a story that is increasingly its own. Nanoka spends most of her time in the Taishō Era, that middle ground between Mao's origins and her own, and Takahashi uses it as a liminal space. It's not the world either of them belongs to. Still, it's become the battleground for the two halves of the old Goko Clan, a place where shikigami and yokai walk around freely. However, people also still gather for period-appropriate treats, such as “milk," at a Taisho-era café. As Nanoka grows stronger and masters the use of her supernatural sword, Akanemaru, Mao has to continually reckon with the fact that he has brought this girl into his world and endangered her. (Technically, Byoki did that, but Mao's humanity depends on his continued ability to feel emotions, of which guilt is one.) Rumiko Takahashi is the queen of the happy ending, so things will doubtless turn out just fine, although I struggle to see how they could be anything but bittersweet for some of the characters. But the only way to find out how it will end is to keep reading – and despite my lukewarm reaction to volume one, twenty books later, I find myself increasingly committed to staying the course.