Jeez, this man is lucky stuff grew with his body, saving his life from what you say what happened!

Indeed. Tetzuka was sometimes really cruel to his characters. Villains and heroes died durig his stories.

Well, it is natural for heroes and villains to die in more ways than one. It'll eventually happen.

Your wolf prison is getting more and more residents! I wonder how big it is.
And especially where it is located.

If you are dealing with Eternal you should be cautious. His dungeon is a fragment that also took some aspects from the castle of laughter, among countles other features. Where it is? It could be located on the other side of the world... or simply one step ahead... just as far away as your imagination. How big it is? It could appear as a humble hut or a ruin, but is inside bigger then it would be possible. It is a labyrinth, but also a cathedral, it is lofty and yet reaches deep down into the earth. to reach it´s summit, you have to search for the lowest level and vice versa as well. It can change its corridors to dead ends and cells can be located suddenly on a totally different level, bridges span over deep cliffs, water is flowing, some cells provide a view to the sea, while the neighbouring one gives you a panorama of the highest mountain´s peak, and on the opposite side of the corridor, a captive can listen to the singing of tropical birds...

True, I remember now Eternal is more of an entity than a set character. He takes different forms depending of the situation. Would the dungeons be part of his mind ? Then, would those wolves be trapped inside Eternal's mind itself ? Is it an illusion he creates ? The rat, the wolf, the dungeons... are all those forms Eternal can take but none are his true one ? Could Eternal hold two different forms at the same time ? Like creating the dungeons then manifesting another physical presence with his rat form lurking in the halls ? Contempleting his ever-increasing collection of specimens ? And how does he keep them alive ? Do the laws of time and space apply to his universe ? So many questions we might never get an answer to.
Eternal sounds like a Stephen Hawking's character, which to me is a compliment.

I would say, you are correct. Eternal, his castle, the dungeon, time and space, all of them are just illusions, and yet at the same moment real. Take reality and illusion as two opposite sides of a coin. Flip it and you will allways get one out of two possibilities. But take it bedween your fingers and and look at the coin from the side, you will see that illusion and reality can be not any different then being one.
My captives can experience a length of time being tied up in my dungeon, yet at the same moment, they never ever were kidnapped in the first place, for they existed in multible layers of realities and illusions at the very same moment. All those wolves were not my own ideas or creations. By drawing them in my style and as captives, I added some more individuals to the ever growing multiverse of coexisting fan-imaginations. All of them are here and yet not here.
Eternal´s own appearence can be shaped and changed like a costume. All of those appearences are Eternal, so to speak: me. Although they are just lines and coloured spaces on paper, they at the same moment are just as real as we are in the flesh.

And I thank you for this compliment *deepest bow possible*

Intruiging. I would love to learn more about your character. He certainly has much to teach and so many stories to tell! Would love to hear his perspective on The Castle Of Laughter in particular, ahah!

Learning to know Eternal, one would need to spend an... eternity to do so^^
The castle of laughter was an interesting dimension. Although Eternal could adapt somehow to the laws of this dimension, so it was an added grain of imagination to his unlimited cluster.

I hope foxes are next after wolves. I have an idea for some of them.

After this list it is time for me to finally finish the trades that are still undone...

But I think I can guess

Wait wait wait, go back
I've seen this guy before on your page but.... is he only a one off character in the manga?!
And the manga was cancelled soon after?

Also, WHAT THE HELL!?
That is the most insane, disturbing backstory this side of Dororo

Osamu Tetzuka worked on his manga epos Hinotori for very long time, decades even. The manga was not canceled, but the original artist died before he could draw the real final chapter, but at least the second last chapter was finished and gave a melancholic but somehow satisfieing end in my oppinion.

Inugami was featured in only one of those chapters, but there had been a "counterpart" chapter that took place a millenia in the future where the reborn Inugami transformed into a wolfman as his destiney drew closer while his past self healed from the wounds of the skinning and could at the end take of the wolfshead and the fur. Of course there was some supernatural element added because of the title giving phoenyx and the basic story about birth, life, death and rebirth, mortality and immortality.

It is true the background for Harima Inugami was among the most disturbing ones

ngl, I'm having a hard time following this based on description alone

Hinotori can be found online to read. If the story interests you, search for Hinotori - Chapter of the Sun

Harima was a young Korean soldier from the Baekje Kingdom whose head is replaced with that of a wolf by Tang Dynasty soldiers following the defeat of the joint Baekje-Yamato force at the Battle of Baekgang.

Ah yes that is the original background story in the manga. I mostly used the infos from the 2004 anime version, there it was less detailed and a little different. It´s been a long time since I rade the manga

Yes, in the anime, he was changed to full Japanese in the anime.

Also, the manga was FAR more graphic, where we actually SEE the process of him becoming this form.

With what is said here of the nature of dream and illusion and multiple realities, with our own fan-imaginations I'd imagine that for this version of Harima/Inugami that perhaps it was a less grim fate for him courtesy perhaps of Eternal's intercession.

He'd been left to contemplate his fate before he would be skinned but one of his captors had perhaps been in disagreement that he deserved a cleaner fate but with some pity had slipped a poison into his food, relatively quick and painless that he'd fall asleep and not awaken and it might be thought Harima had managed to take his life somehow.

Just barely clinging to a thread of life, his thoughts on the fate that awaited him he slipped into Eternal's realm where dream and reality are one emerging in the dungeon there, time and space, future and past intertwining and his reborn self from a millennium in the future merged with his dying, dreaming self.

In this picture it's just at the moment of his rebirth, shortly before he'd slip back out of Eternal's castle and into a timeline much like the one he'd left but a little later on at a time when he'd have healed, the wolfhead and pelt would have grown together with the raw flesh. He would be Inugami but more of a wolfman and whose fate was a strange one but not quite so gruesome.

Colour me impressed. You allmost nailed the style Osamu Tetzuka narrated his story. While Harima Inugami was dreaming, his counterpart 1000 years in the future was awake and the reader followed his adventure until it was switched again and in the original story Inugami at the end could take of the wolfhead, for it revealed that his flesh healed under the fur. At the same time his counterpart transformed into a wolfman.

From how you describe it, the manga sounds very intriguing and one I'd find enjoyable. Though I would just have to be prepared for the skinning part depending on how graphically it's depicted.

Osamu Tetzuka had a rather cartoony character design for his characters. So it hurts even more to see the cruelty they did to each other. But this I can tell you. The skinning prozess is drawn in a rather symbolic way, so that the imagination of the reader does most of the work.

Symbolic and with the imagination doing most of the work I think I can manage, so I will go ahead and look this up.

There is also an anime version of this chapter, but only the part in medieval Japan is narrated and the other part in the near future was left out.

This is the trailer for the german version of the anime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r55lV557OkI

I'll have to see if I can find an english dub or subtitle version of the anime, as it looks good from the trailer.

I stumbled across two or three different versions. Some are made in the late 1970s and one series was produced in 1985. The trailer I linked above is about 2004. Maybe this can help you find the series you prefer to watch.

I'll see if I can find the 2004 series, though if I come across any of the earlier ones I might try those as well. It'll just depend on what I can find.

Maybe it could be helpful to tell you this: Honotori had a special way of narrating the story. The first chapter took place in the late stoneage, while chapter two was set 8000 years in the future. Chapter 3 played during the time of first settlement of Japan, chapter 4 was located somewhere 5000 years in the future and so on. The time jumped back and forth until Tezuka eventually would have reached with the final chapter a time that was the present (1980s to be precise) to bring all the threads of his story together, but he died before he could finish his story. Each chapter tells an independent story in itself, but all of them are connected through the character of the phoenyx and the characters in the stories looks similar due to the "superstar" system, meaning Tezuka though of his drawn characters as actors who performed different roles in his stories

Thank you for the information. The more you've told me of this the more I'm intrigued to read it.

Time was meaningless here and reality was what you made of it, an infinite number of worlds and timelines accessible and memory and dream interweaving with one another. He'd been here before or perhaps he would be here, captured and instead of facing a relatively merciful execution being subjected to a most macabre and gruesome form of punishment.

It was only the vaguest recollection now, a sense of deja vu and indeed Harima or Inugami was never sure if he'd once been a human or if he'd always been a wolfman of sorts. It was all rather bemusing and just added to that strange sense of ennui and subtle melancholy he felt in this place. It was certain that the furred skin felt entirely natural, blending seamlessly with the bare skin of upper arms and down to his torso, and that his lupine head felt entirely comfortable.

Only once did he see the mysterious robed captor, an anthro rat with night black fur and glowing red eyes, sinister in appearance though not at all in manner. For a few seconds the rat gazed at him, almost like one would admire a painting and stroked him briefly under the chin, tracing across his shoulders and the top of his chest, like he was inspecting his handiwork and appeared satisfied.

Soon after Inugami left this place, the vague memory of it fading altogether as he knew he'd always had the head of a wolf, and that he was at peace with himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EBL_2WS6kc&list=PLx0--XtZSCUjVkpPVktCxezH2GizT--RO&index=1

Would fit in to your scenario perfectly.