In-depth on Tasuki
Tasuki is sooooooooooooo awesome!!!! (Sorry. Can't stress that enough.) He grew up, as I mentioned before, with five older sis who LUVED to torture their dear little brother Shun'u. Especially Aidou, his oldest sister, who's got a talent with throwing logs with deadly accuracy...But that's another story... Therefore, Tasuki has this thing against women, but women can still get him to do anything they want... (Even the not-so-bright Miaka can.) He grew up in a village near Mt. Leikaku. Later, he joined the group of bandits who lived on Mt. Leikaku. When Miaka visited the place, Tasuki, (or Gen-rou as he was called then,) wasn't there and off on some mission thingy, and the bandit leader had just died and this really REALLY ugly dude name Eiken (wanna see a pic of his ugly face?) had taken over. (Hmmm... Wonder why Kouji let him be the leader...) The leader, before he died, had requested Gen-rou to be the new leader, but he wasn't there, so Eiken somehow resumed control. Miaka goes over there looking for "Tasuki," but Eiken tries to rape her. Then, Gen-rou appears (finished with his mission, I guess) and says something about Eiken being SO butt-ugly (which is 100% true, of course,) and says who put him in charge. Then, he thinks that Eiken got himself a wife (Miaka) and steals Miaka away in like, a blink of an eye.
Miaka protests that she most certainly does not belong to Eiken and explains her story and all that, and she agrees to help him get the leader position back. Trouble is, Eiken's got the iron fan, but Gen-rou has these nifty cool papers given to him by a buddhist monk on one of his journeys or something. Whatever you write on the papers will appear (but only for a while.) So, they go back to the bandit's place and managed to kick some @$$ over there, with fire wolves being summoned by Gen-rou (not to mention a lot of food summoned by Miaka... She also summoned Tamahome who managed to help beat everyone up, but later faded into paper...) Then, when Gen-rou has his position back as Gen-rou, he tells Miaka that Tasuki was the former leader and he's dead. Miaka's really determined to get all her seishi (cuz she promised Tamahome and all...), so she goes to the next village because she heard that there was a person there who could raise people from the dead. On the way, she, Hotohori, and Nuriko get attacked by zombies. Nuriko's strength isn't really helpful against zombies, and Hotohori can't chop up too many zombies with his sword, so they're in a bit of a sticky situation.
But Miaka, being ever oh-so-lucky, gets rescued by Gen-rou. He arrives with his iron fan and completely demolishes all the zombies. Then, he explained that they've worked it out back at Mt. Leikaku and that his best bud Kouji wuz gonna be leader. The ever oh-so-gullible Miaka was tricked into believing Tasuki was really dead, when in truth Gen-rou was Tasuki.
Thus, Tasuki was a really big help to Miaka. He saved her from Tamahome and a whole buncha other stuff. And he did NOT die at the end. In fact, he played a major part in Part Two of the OVA, too, protecting Miaka and Taka because they were utterly powerless. Even when he was under the spell of Hikou, he could not bring himself to kill Taka... (Confused? Read Kristi and Priya's explaination of the "Tasuki Madness" here.)
Tasuki's an awesome character. Believe me.
Back (to the Tasuki Mini-Shrine.)!