Site Index | Blog What's New? Review List Stuff Review Outline Why Hate Anime? Wheat RoD: The TV Haibane Renmei Teen Titans Chaff Akira Legend of the Overfiend Black Heaven When they first started airing Inuyasha on Adult Swim and running ads for it during regular Cartoon Network programming, I brushed it off as a "justanother". You know, "justanother" macho guy with a sword, "justanother" Japanese school girl, "justanother" ancient fantasy setting, "justanother" anime in general. Ho hum. And, in a lot of ways, Inuyasha is "justanother". But I'm proud to report that Inuyasha proves there's a distinction between using cliches because the writers couldn't think of anything new, and using cliches because they've proven to work well in the past. Plus, everything old that Inuyasha does, it does right. Warning to other non-fans: Inuyasha is right about the line in the sand of how anime-ish an anime can be and still turn out to be wheat. If you've read some of the stuff on AA and decided you're less of a fan than I am, you probably won't dig this story about demon-hunting and swordfighting and magic spells. But, if you're more of a fan than I am, Inuyasha is probably right up your alley. Characters: "Look, I'll stop staring at your breasts if you stop making fun of my ears." (Note: the character names in Inuyasha are really Japanese. I've done my best to spell them by ear, so forgive me if any are misspelled!) Inuyasha is proof positive that the modern RPG cast has its roots in anime. Seriously, you could swap the entire series into polygons and experience levels and you wouldn't tell the difference. The main characters, Kagome and Inuyasha, are your traditional anime odd couple. He's a big bad half-demon with a mystical sword and a chip on his shoulder. She's a Japanese high school student who was (un)lucky enough to find a time warp that shuttled her hundreds of years into the past. Kagome is always friendly and helpful, while Inuyasha always acts stubborn and mean. Emphasis on acts there, since his human nature always betrays him, and he ends up acting friendly and helpful too. But don't you dare tell anyone! As our dynamic duo wanders the land having adventures, they inadvertantly attract the obligatory ragtag band of companions. There's Miroku the amarous monk, Shippo the fun-loving fox-boy, Myouga the flea-sized wise man (yes, you read that right), and Sango the vengeful ninja girl. Seriously, all these guys need is a night at the inn and a PHS and they're ready for their river rafting minigame. If you think this is weird, you should see what he has on his butt. The cool thing about Inuyasha's cast is that they come right up to the little white line marked "hyper-obnoxious" but never cross it. Shippo, for example, manages to be energetic and excitable without making you want to scramble for the mute button, while Kagome and Inuyasha always cut their childish arguments off before they burn out their entertainment value. A well deserved five hamhams for our bungling heroes. (It would have been six, but the down-on-his-luck bard is mysteriously missing from the lineup. Can't win 'em all I guess.) Story: As all Japanese schoolgirls do when they reach a certain age, our heroine Kagome stumbles through a time travel gate that leads her back into a past to a time when the world was at war with demons. Soon after her arrival, she manages to inadvertantly revive the ill-mannered half-demon Inuyasha, who has long been stuck to a tree with an enchanted arrow, but only after playing with his cute doggie ears for several minutes. As can be expected, everyone mistakes Kagome for the reincarnation of a demon-slaughtering sorceress named Kikyo. She is told that she is (apparently) the keeper of a mystical jewel and given the ability to make Inuyasha fall flat on his face any time she wants. "Hey, can you unhook my boomerang for me? ...no, see, that's my bra." That sounds like the kind of thing that would wear thin pretty quickly, but trust me: it only gets better every time she does it. In any case, Inuyasha and Kagome eventually decide to team up and seek out the shards of said mystical jewel. Pretty standard plot, really, and all the overplayed tried-and-true story elements are here: Inuyasha's impossibly powerful sword, and his * evil twin brother *, the two-girls-and-a-guy love triangle, the wild combat scenes where one character or another single-handedly takes down a monster eight times their size... you know the drill. As a series, Inuyasha is nice and episodic. Each episode not only serves the big uber-plot but also acts as a stand-alone adventure for Kagome and company. I didn't start in on the series until about episode ten or so, and was hooked almost right away - though I didn't know what was going on in the grand scheme, I knew exactly what was going down in this episode. And that's gravy. Animation: In a word, Inuyasha is just downright purty. In more than one word, Inuyasha has about the best quality of animation you're likely to find in a long-ish animated series. Not only are the characters drawn beautifully and animated fluidly, but they all just look cool. I'll never get tired of seeing Shippo hop around in one of his caffeine fits, or Sango flinging her gorilla-sized boomerang across a battlefield. Anyone who watches Inuyasha and comes away not wanting the full set of action figures obviously is blind and can't see the TV. "I found some unscented perfume! It comes in this little empty bottle!" And how does the series stack up in the area of actually animating its action sequences rather than faking them? Quite nicely, actually. You have at least one good fight scene per episode (usually against the trademark Monster That's Bigger Than The Last One), where everyone takes out their weapons and takes turns whacking the bad guy. I think it's fun to hold a Playstation controller while watching Inuyasha . It's like Xenogears, only with more gameplay. Culture Shock: Mentioned briefly earlier, all the characters in Inuyasha (especially Inuyasha himself, whose name I'm told means "doggie warrior") have very Japaense-y names. Only after repeated viewing (and the asking of some stump-dumb questions in #rm2k) have I been able to keep all the characters straight in my head. I'm to the point now where I can talk about someone without refering to them as "guy with the hole in his hand" and "ghostly zombie chick", but it took quite a bit of mental excersize to get there. "Dig my sword; my buddy Cloud let me borrow it." On top of that, the entire series is mired in mythology that I don't know anything about. It's a sure bet that people more learned on the culture of the far East (more specifically, the ancient demons therein) will enjoy Inuyasha far more than I. Or, maybe they'd like it less since the series butchers said mythology beyond reason, in which case ignorance is bliss. Bliss or not, however, ignorance is worth a couple of hamhams off the top, so down the Culture Shock rating goes. Inuyasha manages to hold on to its last half-a-ham simply because the chief female character is able to win any argument with a single word. This is a universal concept that transcends culture. I guess in the end a lot of my love for Inuyasha is due to a decade of playing RPGs and being conditioned into liking quirky characters that wouldn't be able to survive in any other form of media. Either that, or it just manages to be a solid anime that withstands the torrential Links Access Inuyasha The Otaku: Inuyasha Animenation Listing IMDB Listing bludgeonings of my taste all by itself. Either way, Inuyasha is worth a look-see by even the most venomous of anti-anime viewers. After all, if I like it, there's hope for anyone. By the way, I hear there are people out there who are so in love with the fansub of Inuyasha that they refuse to enjoy the masterful dub job on the Adult Swim version. I have just one word for these individuals: "SIT!!" Overall Rating:

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