Inuyasha began serialization in 1996. Throughout the 90's and into the 00's sales of weekly manga magazines fell in Japan, Weekly Shonen Sunday often found itself falling into third place among shonen manga magazines, behind the dominant Weekly Shonen Jump and sometimes Shonen Magazine.

1. Weekly Serializations
in Shonen Sunday

Rumiko Takahashi has published her work in Shonen Sunday since the beginning of her career in the late 1970s. Inuyasha was first published in Shonen Sunday 1996 Vol. 50. Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½ both ran in this weekly magazine during the 1980s and 1990s. Takahashi also regularly publishes her work in other Shogakukan owned magazines such as Big Comic Spirits (Maison Ikkoku) and Young Sunday (One-Pound Gospel). Each week, approximately 18 pages are published each week per Inuyasha chapter. Up to 21 other manga stories are published each week alongside Inuyasha, some of the most notable that ran concurrently were Detective Conan by Aoyama Gosho, Katsu by Mitsuru Adachi, Midori no Hibi by Kazurou Inoue and Cheeky Angel by Hiroyuki Nishimori.


Each week a different artist is commissioned to do the cover and the first few pages which are done in color. With the exception of artbooks, these color pages are usually never reprinted unfortunately. These days many artists use computers to color their work, but Rumiko Takahashi has stated she doesn't own a computer. She primarily uses watercolor for her coloring work.



2. Tankobon

A few months after a title has been published in Shonen Sunday, they are collected into a small graphic novel called a tankoban. As a series gets older it is sometimes collected into other formats such as wideban, bunkoban, or shinsoban formats. Because Inuyasha is a new series it is still years away from being published in other formats such as these.



3. Art Books

Inuyasha has had three artbooks released so far in Japan and one in America, which goes to show the immense popularity of this series. The books collect the color artwork of Rumiko Takahashi without the titles and other writing the is layed overthem when they are published in Shonen Sunday.

The second artbook primarily features character designs from the anime series and voice actor interviews as well. It features an illustration of the villans from the first movie done by Rumiko Takahashi herself, as well as more of her color manga illustrations. It also features set designs from the first film and many screen shots as well.

The third book is almost completely black and white and deals with the characters of the manga series. It ranks their various stats and covers the basic storyline, characters, and demons appearing up to approximately volume 30 of the manga series.






4. Anime Books

Extremely popular manga series get turned into anime, and extremely popular anime get turn back into manga. The anime book series is 30 volumes long and takes still images from episodes of the television series and captions them with speech balloons like a traditional comic book. Takahashi's only previous work to get this treatment was Urusei Yatsura, although Ranma ½ did recieve one volume like this.



5. English Language Editions

Outside of Japan Rumiko Takahashi has a very large following as well. Her biggest publisher outside of Japan is Viz Comics, which is owned by Shogakukan, Takahashi's Japanese publisher. Her works are also published in Latin America, throughout Asia, and are extremely popular in Western Europe.



6. Light Novel

In Japan light novels are a popular form of popular literature. This novelization of the Inuyasha series contains new illustrations by Rumiko Takahashi and was written by Tomoko Konparu, who has also written novelizations of Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura and Mermaid Saga.