Fandom Trash and Monster Lover.

Irene outfits for a very specific point in time after she returns to the Feudal Era!

Extreme fanfic spoilers and extremely spoilery drawing below- you hath been warned.

Irene fell first, but Sesshomaru fell harder. XD

Specific scenes these are for:

Movie Four (top) where the spell allowing Irene to speak the language has her calling Sesshomaru, "Anata," without her knowledge due to her feelings for him and the fact that she left her era to stay in Feudal Japan to be by his side. It doesn't always happen, but the spell will switch up the pronouns she's using depending on the situation and her intent. Everyone is very confused why Sesshomaru lets Irene do so, Inuyasha is horrified by the implications of it and Kagome has to calm him down, but Roh knows.

Movie Three (bottom) is after So'unga is defeated, and Sesshomaru snatches Irene off of her Fenghuang Shikigami because he literally thought she was dead, like, ten minutes ago because of Takemaru, lol. He's in protective doggo mode.

Inspired by this post:

This feels much more "her" lol.

HUZZAH!!!!!!!!!!! I FINALLY GOT IT OUTLINED!!!!!!! T-T

Wasn't sleeping so I made myself try to finish the outline and T'IS COMPLETE. IS A FREAKIN' MIRACLE. Now to color it... ooof.... stay strong, my hand. Riddle is going to be the hardest out of them all, I can feel it. BUT IT'S FINE. I WELCOME THE CHALLENGE.

Just... maybe for AFTER I actually managed to get some sleep. O.o

OKAY. Getting the basis for the coloring process started.

I WILL get this one done before I work on the Forest Deep fic drawing. T'is a promise! But for now... sleep! Or an attempt to, anyways.

Honestly, I want to get inside your head to see what other characters, designs, and color combinations you're capable of creating! Seriously, I love all your OCs, so much.

Have a good timezone! And I hope I haven't bothered you with this message!

Honestly, I just have fun with them, lol. It helps to pull from actual yokai lore when designing demon characters, though- Rumiko actually does that a lot for her series, and she doesn’t really stick TO their lore all that much either. She takes a lot of creative liberties, which is honestly the way to go when coming up with characters.

Naraku, for instance, was based off a Tsuchigumo! And Mistress Centipede from the first episode? I think she was based off an Okiku mushi, which is a woman with the lower body of a caterpillar. She just changed the caterpillar bit to a centipede for extra creepy factor. Also, in Mao (I binged all the available episodes with the sibling yesterday out of curiosity and because Nanoka looks so much like Irene) they actually have a Jorōgumo as an early enemy!

She leaned more into the actual lore there, since Jorōgumo can hide in bustling cities for a very long time, but something interesting I found is that we see a lady with a super long neck often visiting Mao for medical help. This was def based off the Rokurokubi yokai, but I think Rumiko took creative liberties with it since Rokurokubi are usually SLEEPING women. These women tend to be cursed because of some crime their father/brother/husband did as a means of punishing that relative, and while they sleep their necks stretch and their heads roam around causing mischief. The woman is totally unaware of this since she’s back to normal in the daytime. But in Mao, the lady appears wide awake- so either she’s sleep walking, or the yokai curse is in full control of the woman’s body even during the day.

So really you just gotta have fun with them, lol.

But as for kimono designs, I actually talked about them a bit here:

Yokai.com | The Illustrated Database of Japanese Folklore This is a website I've shared with Avion, so this should be really helpful.

Gaijin Goombah on YouTube is a really helpful source as well. This is a link to a video on what yokai are, but he does go over a bunch of different kinds of yokai in anime and games: https://youtu.be/5IK_OORCK80?si=fOV1ZrhhifOPPRJc

You can also look up the several Yokai Emaki (Yokai Picture scrolls) because sometimes a yokai doesn't have myths attached to it, but are just drawn in one of the many emaki that have been done.

Some games off the top of my head that can help are like the mobile game Onmyoji, Nioh and Nioh 2, Pokemon is very inspired by Onmyodo and yokai, looking up the Japanese names of Yokai in Yokai Watch will give you ideas on what to be looking for. But seriously, yokai are in a TON of games. These few were just what was off the top of my head.

A really good anime series would be the Bakeneko story of the Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, the spin off Mononoke series and movies (The Mononoke series and movies are on Netflix but I would not suggest the dub of Mononoke series, but the dub of the movies is VERY good. Crispin Freeman as Kusuriuri is really good). Heads up though, these are horror. I just really like these because Mononoke is exceedingly creative with how the yokai are depicted, but also it is very VERY dark.

If you don't want the horror aspect, there's so many anime to look over for yokai, ayakashi, bakemono, tsukumogami, etc. Obviously, Avion mentioned Inuyasha and Mao, but there's like Yu Yu Hakusho, GeGeGe no Kitaro, In/Spectre, Inu X Boku SS, and so many others. You just need to find what works for you.

One good resource is Storied over on YouTube. The channel is ran by PBS. While it doesn't centre around those specifically, they have touched on a few of them like the Kappa along with other supernatural creatures before.

Another one is Jon Solo. He goes over folklore, fairytales and supernatural creatures as well. He did some videos about yokai, including some more obscure ones.