Hey, I was just wondering, we had this on another forum, but how do you think demons age? I know that some people say. perhaps every 5 human years, a demon gains a demon year. If thats true... and Shippou is 8 or so, would that mean he was older than Kagome?

There was another theory that maybe youkai age as to how they feel how old they are. Like Inuyasha is somewhat still immature, so he's still a teen.

anyway, just wondering what you guys might think....

I was also thinking about that.

When you see Sesshoumaru in the episode where he was going to ask Inuyasha to help with the fight against the cats (and later found out that was when Inuyasha was pinned to the tree), and now after Inuyasha was released Sesshoumaru still looks the same age, but that was what 50 years?

heh well i think it would have been funny to see sesshomaru look younger in the first place.
but i think its closer to every 10 years equals a human year.
humans dont look much different after 5 years of aging so if 10 years does equels 1 demon year. Then that means Sesshomaru is only 5 years older since the first battle with the cat demons. Which would explain why he doesnt look much different or any at all.

that would be funny. Then wouldn't that mean that Shippou was 80 or so?

hehe yeah that would be funny. i doubt that all demons age the same way though

Don't use the Hyounekozoku thing,
that was only a filler so we don't know.
Sesshoumaru-sama may have been looking younger.
But I think Inuyasha stopped aging while being sealed.

I have a question about trees aging (yep).
Something I didn't think of before reading the manga.

550 years ago when Inuyasha were sealed,
he was sealed against the tree, and his feets touched the ground.
50 years later when Kagome finds him,
the tree have obviously grown and carried Inuyasha along.
But the Goshinboku from 500 years ago,
and Goshinboku how it looks today are the same!
It didn't age at all after Inuyasha got released?
Or is this just a tiny little mistake on Takahashi's side?

Shippo doesn't act like he's 80. If there is any system to the aging, I'd guess they grow up normally, and after reaching adulthood, they pretty much stop aging. BTW, if you wanna see a younger Seshoumaru, read the manga. He looks much younger (and more feminine) there.

I suppose it could do with it being a 'Time Tree'?

actually, what i was thinking was the aging would go like with a dog: relatively short childhood (you know, like 2 years out of 17 childhood for a dog and say, 12 years out of like 400 or whatever for a demon) and then the aging process would slow considerably at the teens.

My theory is pretty much what Bificommander said. There's no way Shippou is more than half a century old! I see it more like demons aging normally until they hit a certain age, at which point the process slows down greatly. It doesn't make sense any other way. Youkai may be more powerful and resilent than humans, but even most demons are fairly weak during childhood (as proved by Shippou's less than stellar youkai abilities, and what we've seen of Inuyasha's struggles during his childhood). If they were like that for decades, odds are that not many youkai would ever make it to adulthood. They'd be picked off by enemies at some point--their parents couldn't watch them forever.

So from a logical standpoint alone, it makes more sense for youkai to age at about the same rate as humans during their childhood.

I'd have to agree. I cant help but be reminded of Genkai from Yu Yu Hakusho. When in the Dark Tourny she kept looking younger. And later on she tells Yusuke that it's because she goes back to her most powerful physical self. So maybe once demons hit their most powerful physical self they kind of stay there...for a really really long time.

I have heard bakadeshi say that Takahasi explained to an interviewer once that demons age extremely slowly. Inuyasha's father, I have no doubt, was probably hundreds of years old.

Both Inuyasha and Ryuukossei had been sealed for many years, and neither looked to have aged, so perhaps sealing a demon puts them into stasis where they don't age at all. 50 years still isn't that much, though. Bokusenou and Sesshoumaru both look the same they did now than they did back then.

And just because something is filler doesn't mean Takahashi didn't have a hand in it. They should probably discuss things with her first, anyway, or else she might write something extremely contradicting.

Also, Inuyasha's mother had him probably when she was young. When Kagome first asks about her, he says that she died "a long time ago." So who knows if Inuyasha's mother was able to stay alive long enough to see him to his *virtual* age of 15. She might have died when he looked to be about 10 but was actually 40 years old. (You'd think he'd act more grown-up, though.) But, maybe it's different for hanyou. Maybe they don't get the added benefit of slow aging. Or maybe it's not as slow but slower than humans.





The Chibi Has Spoken

I think it's generally agreed upon that youkai in the IY universe do age very slowly--the question is how it happens and at what age the process first slows down, etc. But are youkai really so different from humans that a 40-year-old could act like a 10-year-old child? If Shippou was 60 or 70 years old, you'd think he'd act even just a little more mature than he does. Even if youkai development was different from humans, a lot of the growing up process is just the experiences along the way, right? I just can't see someone with decades of life experience snuggling up in a teenage girl's arms like a little child, or innocently wondering why Inuyasha and Kagome don't bathe together. Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't add up.

And even if Inuyasha were only about 17 right now, his saying that his mother died a long time ago would still be perfectly accurate. We can assume that he was fairly young when she died, maybe as young as five or six. The anime once showed a flashback of him running away from youkai at a very young age, and I'd guess his mother had died by that point. So she would have been dead at least ten years by the time he was sealed to the tree for another fifty. That's definitely a long time.



But it doesn't mean she did, either. And while I agree that they should probably consult her for things like this, it doesn't mean they necessarily did. It could easily have been a leap of faith on the anime's part for all we know.

I'm speculating here... no need to jump down my throat.

Sorry if it came off like that--didn't mean anything by it. I generally dislike it when people ignore one of my arguments in a debate, so I try to address most of everyone else's arguments in my own posts, however I can. Sometimes to a fault, I'll admit.

Maybe a youkai decides when to slow down the aging?
Maybe when they reach a mature age... um, yeah. ^^
I think Inuyasha was 17 when he got sealed up,
even though he said that he searched for a long time
(for a place he could stay) that could have been...
from like, when his mother died when he was very young.
So he may have wandered for like 10 years or something.

I still think his mother died at a young age,
since we got to see her in episode 5.
And since Inuyasha recognised her as his mother,
and Kikyou came back in the form she died,
I hardly think that Inuyasha's mother died of age.

What episode is that where Sessho asks Inuyasha to help fight the cats?

You mean Hyounekozoku?
When they say Shippou is over 50?
Maybe around... um...
50 or 60? After Tsubaki...?
I actually don't know,
maybe you should check an ep. guide.
They're everywhere on the interent,
just go off searching on google.