Inuyasha (犬夜叉), full title Inuyasha, a Feudal Fairy Tale (戦国御伽草子 犬夜叉, Sengoku Otogiz?shi Inuyasha, lit. "Warring-States Fairy-Tale Book: Inuyasha") (romanized as Inuyasha), is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi. It premiered in Weekly Sh?nen Sunday on November 13, 1996 and concluded on June 18, 2008. The series follows a time-traveling high school student, a half-demon, a lecherous monk, a fox demon, a demon slayer, and a nekomata during the Sengoku period as they seek to find all the fragments of the Jewel of Four Souls and to keep them out of the hands of evildoers, especially Naraku. The manga was adapted into a 167 episode anime series produced by Sunrise. Masashi Ikeda directed the first forty-four episodes, while Yasunao Aoki directed the remainder of the series. Inuyasha premiered on Yomiuri TV in Japan on October 16, 2000 and ran until September 13, 2004. The television run of the anime ceased without a conclusion to the story. In 2009, the producers announced that a second anime series was in production to animate the ending of the manga series. In 2002, the manga won the Shogakukan Manga Award for best sh?nen title of the year. Inuyasha was ranked twenty by TV Asahi of the 100 best anime series in 2006 (based on an online survey in the country.)