Inuyasha & Yashahime: A Complete Retrospective Analysis (Anime & Manga Review)

[Music] when i was a kid i loved cartoons but anime was never something that was super available yeah we'd have a couple episodes of pokemon digimon or yu-gi-oh if we woke up early enough on saturday or sunday mornings and if you could somehow sneak past your mom you might be able to stay up late enough to watch dragon ball z or gundam seed but even if you did manage to stay up that late there was one anime that just stood out being so different from everything else [Music] [Music] [Applause] okay yeah to be fair i'm sure there were a ton of other anime that fit that bill in this era but at the time finding anime in general was a small miracle let alone something that was meant for adults filled with hyper violence romance mature themes and sexuality this is the kind of show that was almost non-existent and it was a whole new world of content that i'd never seen before which led me to find shows like fullmetal alchemist elfin leed and death note really anything i could get my hands on that would actually get me thinking or excited in a way that normal tv shows like pokemon never could this is the series that inspired my love of anime it made me countless friends and even gave me a career it's one of the most important pieces of media in my life and because of that it's something that i wanted to take one last chance to celebrate in its entirety when yashihime ended i didn't quite give the franchise the send-off that it deserved and as such we're making this a complete retrospective of rumiko takahashi's inuyasha before we get into the series itself though we should probably talk about its author rimiko takahashi is easily one of the most influential female mangaka to ever make it into shonen jump releasing titles like urusayatsura mermaid saga and rama one half between 1978 and 1996 and while most of her works do have an emphasis on both romance and comedy she does tend to jump from genre to genre outside of that for example between the three we just mentioned we have sci-fi horror and martial arts being added into the mix respectively once remake was done with ranma 1996's inuyasha would be no different again holding on to that heavy emphasis of both romance and comedy but this time being placed squarely in the fantasy genre however inuyasha marked a bit of a change within rumiko's style of writing famously both urusayasura and ranma are more or less episodic but inuyasha was instead a story which focused on one major plot thread throughout its entirety yes there were smaller arcs within the overarching one but the through line was much more relevant than just about anything rumigo had created in the past regardless of the setting or genre though rumiko always holds on to a very strong sense of character writing which allows the ensembles that she creates to shine in a way that very few other manga are able to do and it's this focus on character-based storytelling which has granted her success in the anime and manga sphere for nearly half a century pumping out almost exclusively classics and deeply loved series she is almost single-handedly given credit for establishing the romantic comedy genre especially in shonen jump and is so beloved that she's even called the princess of manga the gist of it is that rumiko is a master when it comes to creating stories and inuyasha is no exception now i don't want to spend too much time talking about roomiko herself because i do want to focus more on inuyasha for this video so instead i'm going to leave a link in the description to my friends over at bonsai pop who released a phenomenal video all about rumiko's earlier years seriously this is a very cool video and if you're interested in her at all you're probably gonna love it hell even if you aren't it's still one that you should definitely check out but for now let's talk about inuyasha a feudal fairy tale on november 13 1996 issue 50 of shoguaku khan's weekly shonen sunday was released and a new era would begin having within it the first release of inuyasha a feudal fairy tale a series which would go on for over a decade until june 18th of 2008 and spanning more than 550 chapters over 56 volumes selling over 50 million copies worldwide while being released in shonen sunday in japan in north america the series would instead be licensed for english release by viz media and given a fancy hyphen between inu and yasha which would later be removed the english release began in april of 1997 and would be released in chunks of two or three chapters at a time until february of 2003 when they reached the 14th japanese volume and interestingly enough this might have been some real world foreshadowing for some of the issues that the anime would face in the future regardless up until volume 37 the manga would also be flipped to be read left to right to match western style comic releases but viz would eventually choose to opt for the right to left unflipped version beginning in the 38th volume in july of 2009 and this would continue until the series was finished with its english release on january 11th of 2011 and just like with many of rumiko's works inuyasha would quickly get an opportunity to become an animated series the show would be picked up by sunrise inc a studio founded in the early 70s and specifically it would be produced by their studio one a studio famous for several installments of the mobile suit gundam franchise which is just about as much of a drastic change for setting as could be possible in contrast to inuyasha you know futuristic space robot battles versus feudal era demon combat not exactly the most related of topics that said sunrise as a whole would create series like escaflone bebop ultraman and interestingly enough studio 6 would even go on to make batman the animated series the studio has and continues to make some of the most impactful and iconic anime of all time and inuyasha is no exception to that the series began airing on yomiuri tv in japan on october 16th of 2000 and it came out beautifully from backdrops and scenery which can be genuinely stunning to character designs that are absolutely classic an animation which is fluid exciting and dynamic the series has both a rugged sharpness to a lot of its actions while also offering this general nostalgic softness and warmth to it despite being released in 2000 there are very few anime that i can think of which are more emblematic of what 90s anime looked like taking the best of shows like yuyu hawk show and card captors and rolling them into one very finely polished product and interestingly enough this combination of very hard and soft design choices allowed inuyasha to fit into a pretty unique niche for the time growing up there was always shows that were clearly targeted at boys like dragon ball z and shows which were clearly targeted at girls like sailor moon yes a lot of us dipped our toes in the other categories but it wasn't exactly like i'd be going to school the next day talking about how i just watched the dopest episode of sailor moon you know at least not if i didn't want to get beat up the 90s was a fun time but inuyasha was different it had hyper violence action and gore that easily exceeded some of the shows that were targeted directly towards boys but at the same time it had this strong sense of romance these cutesy marketable animals an emotional value that might have normally been targeted towards girls iniasha sat in the exact center of this venn diagram between shoujo and shonen demographics while also offering adult themes and generally mature content this was a show that everyone could watch and as a result it was a gateway into the world of anime for countless people beyond that the series has some of the best music in any anime as a result of the incredibly talented kawaruwata you might have heard wada's works if you've seen shows like ninja scroll princess tutu samurai 7 or d greyman but i think inuyasha is probably some of his best work at least in my opinion specifically the use of music to create atmosphere is masterful you have songs like nuraku's theme which is so creepy slow and unsettling kagome and inyasha's theme is this kind of music box song that is peaceful hopeful but also kind of has this deep sadness to it kikio's theme is elegant and tragic and rinsing has this playful and fun feeling which is simple and almost childlike longing end of memory and so many other songs just have this power to change the air of the room that you're in when you play them now i'm an absolute sucker for music and anime i think when it's used properly it can elevate a moment from just okay to something really great or even from something great to being a scene that you will never forget i mean look at some of my favorite series angel beats your lion april kill a kill and hell even naruto in one piece these are all shows that are masters of using music to elevate their stories and the inuyasha anime is filled with so many of these powerful songs that they really can sway the viewer into feeling just about anything they want at any time on top of that specifically the instruments being used in the main soundtrack all helped to bolster that japanese feudal fantasy setting wada primarily used instruments like the taiko drum shanisin biwa koto nokon shinobui and had an especially heavy emphasis on the shakuhachi by using these more traditional japanese instruments wada manages to create a perfect atmosphere that felt completely natural and at home within the series and all that is before even considering opening and ending themes which the series is famous for from artists like do as infinity v6 and boa just to name a few with fukai mori being the song so important to me that i even got an iconic shot tattooed onto my arm and with all these factors combined you begin to get this image of a series that has almost unlimited potential a story and characters created by one of the most talented women to ever be a mangaka animation and illustration by some of the most experienced experts that the late 90s had to offer music that can only be described as masterful all while being accessible to just about any and all viewers i'm not saying that the series is perfect trust me there are plenty of problems with it and we will talk about them but the show has just about everything that it could ask for going for it from the get-go the only thing that could have made this anime better would be if the manga had been complete when it started airing or at least if it had a more significant lead on the anime but again we can talk about that issue as it arises for now let's take a look at each season what they do well what they do poorly and how characters change in the story i think this is the best way to talk about the show as a whole because we have over 200 episodes in this franchise and talking about it generally just doesn't really make sense so instead breaking it up into these seasons should help us understand what the show was doing well and where it was failing as it went along and of course we gotta start with the first season as i mentioned early on i am currently re-watching the series with a friend and there's something really great about the intro to the show it's often time the case now that in modern anime people will give it one episode to kind of feel things out and maybe if they're feeling generous they might go for the three episode rule and as a result the industry has kind of picked up this habit of really cramming in as much as possible in the first 20 minutes in an attempt to hook as many people as possible but let's be real in most cases that kinda backfires a pace is set that doesn't fit the rest of the series or worse it forces the rest of the series to adjust and match the pace of the first episode and in the worst case scenario it has to skip things which the manga had time to actually flush out inuyasha on the other hand goes the opposite route having two episodes dedicated to its introduction and giving time for everything to breathe right away it jumps into action with inuyasha trying to steal the shikon jewel saying he'll use it to become a full demon which is great because it establishes the main character's motives within the first three seconds of the show we then see hikio using the last of her life to pin him to the sacred tree before being cremated with the jewel herself this scene is easily one of the most iconic moments in the show and while it is a great scene in its own right it isn't until coming back to the series that i really appreciated it for all that it's worth both kikio and inuyasha have been betrayed lied to and tricked by each other at this point or at least so they think and we obviously don't know about naraku yet we don't know about his role in what's happening and we don't know why these two seem to hate each other so much at this moment but even as kikio attacks inuyasha even as inuyasha is pinned to the tree the way they talk isn't just angry there's this sadness to it you can tell that neither of them want to be in the situation and to some degree they both can't really believe it's happening now i won't go into every moment of the show like this of course but i think that this scene this first one that the show gives us is pretty emblematic of rumiko's writing in inuyasha there is always more depth to a scene if you're willing to look for it things build on previous moments to give characters real depth and emotion but more importantly everything from the first minute of the show points back to two things nuraku and the shikhon jul and as we meet other members of our core cast throughout the season all of them have direct ties to these things in very deep personal and meaningful ways which acts as a central point to the series it's a powerful anchor that makes it so that no matter where the story takes us there's still a clear goal and destination in mind well except with shippo and kirara is a cat so she doesn't really need motivation for the most part and those two are more or less mascots anyways plus if you've been with the channel for a while you know i'd consider shippo to be shippo but regardless the first episode continues as we meet kagome and she's pulled into the well by mistress centipede kagome of course uses the sacred jewel to fend off the demon and when she emerges from the well she finds herself 500 years in the past as she looks for her way home she comes face to face with the half demon inuyasha for the first time and again this moment i think it's safe to say it lives rent free in a lot of people's heads but what's nice about it is that despite that very quick action scene that we started with that more shonen like moment we followed up with this more shoujo inspired romance scene like i said the show has a bit of something for everyone and it starts as early as the first few scenes in the series kagome is then taken back to kai day's village when the villagers find her with inuyasha and here we get the quick fill-in for some of these slower viewers that we are in fact in the past and people slowly start talking about how kagome looks like kikio i'm going to kind of rapid fire here so we don't spend too much time on the first episodes but mr centipede shows up again kagome is chased out of the village inuyasha wakes up confusing kagome for kikio all before mr centipede rips the jewel out of kagome in order to save herself from mr centipede kagome is forced to release inuyasha he splits the demon into a hundred pieces very very quickly and we learned that kagome is able to see the sacred jewel as a glowing light but when she manages to get her hands on the jewel again inuyasha turns his attacks to her and tries to take it away and all of this kind of comes to a close when kaede puts the beads of subjugation on inyasha which of course starts the famous trend of kagome yelling sit boy a million times in the series i am going to take a quick moment here to just talk about the beads of subjugation if you've been on the channel for a bit you know i kind of lump this sit boy stuff in with miroku's pervinus both kinda cringey but they are a product of the time that the anime was produced so i'm not going to hold it against the series too much early on the beads of subjugation are even functional for the story as well they place inyosh in a position where he has to work with kagome on decent terms long enough for them to actually build a relationship together of course the beads do way overstay their welcome but it is what it is can't you do something about these beads of subjugation i don't know how much longer i can take those sick commands of yours oh come on i didn't say sit that arm speaking of with the beads now on inuyasha returns to the village where he learns that 50 years had passed from the day that he was pinned to the sacred tree and kikio had died and while publicly he blows this off as something that doesn't really matter to him the first moment we see him alone he is clearly expressing feelings of guilt and hurt about what had happened again while he continues to try and say that he doesn't care it's very apparent very early on that he actually did care and very deeply about kikio which only leads us to wonder more about what actually happened to them how could someone who cares this much have ended up in the position we just saw him in and finally we have the moment that acts as a catalyst for the rest of the series a demon crow manages to get a hold of the shikon jewel transforms into a massive version of itself and begins flying away as kagome fires an arrow at it and while she does manage to stop the bird she accidentally hits the jewel itself shattering it and sending it across the country in countless shards so now with inuyasha wanting to use the jewel to become a full demon and kagome being the only one who's able to sense the shards and also being responsible for breaking it in the first place we have our goal set in place and together they have to try and gather the shards of the shikon jewel so while inuyasha does take extra time with its introduction to the series it uses this time amazingly well we are introduced to our main characters we learned about inuyasha's wish that he had some kind of regret about his past and that there's some kind of stigma against half demons as well we learn about kikiyo her death and that something happened between her and inyasha the jewel gets shattered we have kagome being flung into the past where she is out of place plopped into the center of all of this chaos and we find out that she is the reincarnation of kikio this is a huge amount of groundwork to be laid out that opens us up for countless possibilities within the story while setting up three characters with mystery and depth almost immediately and i can't help but think that if this was a modern series all of that would have been squeezed into the first episode there is no way that a show like this in 2022 wouldn't have ended the first episode with the jewel being shattered now there is one thing i need to bring up here it's the single biggest complaint that i have for the series and it's the idea of an endless macguffin i'm gonna be using the loosest definition of macguffin here but basically that's an item that drives the plot and isn't really useful outside of that so while the shikon jewel shards do empower other demons and the collective jewel can be used to grant a wish we don't really see the protagonists using it so it doesn't serve them as a direct purpose yes i know inuyasha used jewelshards in one fight against naraku and yes i know they aren't technically a macguffin but i don't know man just [ __ ] deal with it there are tons of shows which have this idea of collecting something as a core plot point for example these seven dragon balls seven millennium items or the three god cards in yu-gi-oh and so on and so on but with most series this is a set number and like they don't have to have an exact number but we don't know how many joule shards there are and more so we don't even have a rough estimate are there 10 100 1 000 i mentioned earlier that inuyasha was rumiko's first real attempt at a long form story rather than episodic short ones but by creating a seemingly endless amount of jewel shards it also allowed her to kind of have her cake and eat it too unfortunately not always for the benefit of the story basically whenever she wanted to she could just turn the story into a monster or demon of the week by including a new jewel shard and then having naraku take it away at the end of the episode which kind of becomes a bit of a sloppy tradition throughout the series and as a result we do get that monster of the weak feeling where despite the number of episodes adding up the story doesn't really progress at all like in dragon ball when they get a dragon ball that's one of seven down it's a tangible amount and it means something but in inuyasha the difference between having 11 out of blank jewel shards and 12 out of blank jewel shards is kind of meaningless but we're gonna move on from this idea i think i've hammered it home pretty hard and we'll get into the phenomenal thing that is in the asha season one coming out of those first two episodes which i've already talked about we have yura being introduced and she kind of demonstrates what the power of a single jewel shard can do on top of that god she's attractive but then we move on to the tangential story arc of inuyasha's brother sushomuru and his search for the tess saga this section not only gives inyasha his famous sword but it also teaches us about enyash's human mother and a bit about his childhood then we have the shippo and thunderbrother arc and while i'm not a big fan of shippo god damn do i love the thunderbrothers we have the phenomenal soul piper episode which is one of the best in the series easily inuyasha's weakness of turning into a human on the night of the new moon kikio's resurrection the introduction of miroku and his wind tunnel seshomuru working with and becoming hateful towards nuraku the extermination of the demon slayer clan leaving only sango alive and finally the origin of the shikon jewel and all of that is within the first season which as a result by the time we do reach the end of this season we not only have our entire group established but also powerful ties from each of these characters to the main villain naraku that said a lot of these early episodes are spent building the characters of inuyasha and kagome specifically as well as the dynamic between them as early as the fight with euro we see enyash and kagome being put into a position where they need to understand the value that the other brings to the table and the whole time there's this strange kind of romantic tension between them as well sure they bicker they insult each other they yell but at the same time they blush they get flustered and they're embarrassed around each other and at the core of all of that is the fact that kagome is kikio's reincarnation we don't have all of the puzzle pieces at first but we do learn that inuyasha and kikio were in love with each other but from his perspective suddenly he was betrayed with no explanation then he was bound to the tree for 50 years and by the time that he wakes up the girl he loved was already dead and there's this new girl who kind of looks like her and houses her soul and to him that is very confusing which is pretty fair i mean what are you supposed to feel in that situation in some ways kikio is still there but is he supposed to be with her now that she's a different person on top of that what do you do with those feelings of guilt and betrayal that don't really apply to kagome but do apply to hikio's soul and the answer to that starts kind of peaking its head around the time we get the night of the new moon inuyasha loses his demon energy and becomes fully human and as a result his emotions rise to the surface while he's like this he can't protect himself he can't protect his friends and when he tries to he becomes poisoned he sees kagome crying for him and decides to open up explaining that whenever he insulted her he was just lying and that he really did want her around yes he often lashed out at her but he was just slow to accept someone new into his life based on what had happened with kikio and speaking of kikio the very moment that he begins to open up with kagome kikio is resurrected and in this new body she is filled with hate and a desire for revenge towards enyash's betrayal but this puts inuyasha in an interesting position as far as he's concerned he and kikio were together less than a month ago and as soon as he finally starts to move on i mean sort of as much as moving on from one girl to her reincarnation counts as moving on anyways kikio is brought back from the dead and placed in front of him it starts this famous love triangle that the series is known for and while it's often considered to be dragged out too long and many people do see inuyasha as the squeezeball for not being able to choose a lot of those people don't really consider the impossible position that he's placed in i have a whole video discussing this but i do consider this to be one of the greatest pieces of character development in the entire series albeit it does go on for a [ __ ] minute though but this links kikio inuyasha and kagome with a very unique shared experience kagome is a girl from another time inuyasha to quote himself is not really one or another not human or demon and as a result there is no place for him and kikio is a vengeful wraith who should have long since passed and even when she was alive was forced to forgo living her own life when she was charged with protecting the shikkon jewel all of these characters share the same core truth of not belonging and needing to create their own place in the world but while their struggles produce these same realities they don't stem from the same situations at all it's a very clever trick by rumiko to create a powerful thematic tie between these characters while at the same time building their own unique stories that make them distinct it's the same thing that she does with tying the main cast to naraku he fooled inuyasha and kikio and if he hadn't kagome would have never journeyed to the past as kikios reincarnation he cursed miroku's family with the wind tunnel he massacred the demon slayers and holds kohaku captive he tries to manipulate sushomuru and later kidnaps rin while all these characters share a justifiable hatred and resentment for nuraku none of their stories are really the exact same it's a very interesting writing style that she employs throughout the series which allows her to build on an entire group of characters through an individual's actions it means that every time naraku does something terrible the entire group resonates with that and grows as a result it means that whenever inuyasha talks about growing up as an outcast between worlds we as viewers also understand more about what it means to not belong and as a result we understand kikio and kagome more it's like a system where every layer overlaps each other and it really does result in some of the best character writing in all of anime and speaking of the characters let's just take a moment to generally talk about the core cast here before moving on through the story inuyasha as i mentioned struggles finding a place where he belongs and often rejects or lashes out at things when they start getting too comfortable he's brash quick to anger and to action and he can kind of be an idiot from time to time but despite his very rough exterior he's probably one of the most caring characters in the show even if he shows it in a very unconventional way he's not so good with words and he's easily embarrassed so rather than saying that he cares he'll instead go out of his way to show that he cares and that's not just for kagome that stands for miroku sango shippo and even sashomeru on occasions but the ultimate sign of inyasha's respect or care for someone is him choosing to rely on them opening up and trusting them to support him and to be there when he needs them for example he and niroku often find themselves [ __ ] around with each other but at the same time whenever inuyasha needs support or whenever he needs someone to protect kagome he knows that miroku will be there and it's like that with all of the friends that he makes along the way by far the most in-depth relationships that he builds though are with hikio and kagome since they do have that love triangle thing going on but honestly a vast majority of these relationships are filled with guilt self-doubt indecision and it literally takes one of them dying for him to be able to choose he also has a fairly unique set of relationships with his brother and koga koga forms a secondary love triangle with kagome but we'll touch on that in the next season and sushomuru has this obsession with getting the tess saga the sword that their father left behind and which was inherited by inuyasha while he and inuyasha aren't on great terms for the majority of the series they do at least begin to align their goals as nuraku continues to piss off sushomeru more and more even in that case though they ultimately do earn each other's respects and rely on and have faith in each other for example while sushomeru would never say that inuyasha is strong he also expects him not to be defeated by anyone other than himself and the same is true the other way it's a very interesting rivalry where they both look down and also up to each other throughout the entirety of it kagome for much of the early bits of the series deals with being a fish out of water obviously struggling to fit in with the new era that she finds herself in unfortunately until kagome learns how to use a bow and sacred arrows we see quite a few arcs where the plot is oh no kagome has been kidnapped by ex-demon and now we have to save her and absolutely she is very important at several points for resolving different issues unsealing the tess saga crushing euro's skull etc but that's often a mid to late arc thing and it's kind of unfortunate how often she feels that damsel in distress role especially early on in each individual arc kagome often acts as the heart of the group though when she sees trouble it's usually her who convinces inyasha to help out in terms of the group as a whole kagome tends to have the purest relationship with each member being genuine friends with both sango and miroku acting as a big sister or caretaker for shippo and developing a romantic relationship with inuyasha i think out of all of her relationships throughout the show though she has the most interesting dynamic with kikio it's not super common that they find themselves together throughout the series but just as inyasha has put an interesting spot between kikio and kagome they each share that inverse circumstance with him kikio died believing that she was betrayed by the man she loved and bound him to a tree but when she revived she learned that naraku was the real culprit so if he never interfered they would likely be together that didn't happen though and now there's another girl in the picture and that other girl is also kind of her so where does that leave them is it right to interfere with the lives of the living kikio is technically undead now but kagome herself is from another time so neither of them belong and if kagome wants to be with inyasha it would mean leaving her family behind i'll be honest i'm not the biggest fan of kagome but that's mostly because she tends to be kind of loud and immature it's the same reason i don't like koga but that said in terms of her story and her character arc i love just about everything about it and kikio herself is a pretty interesting case too i often hear a lot of people talking about how they really dislike her but in most cases i would say that comes down to the same thing many fans watched in the asha when they were very young to then kikio is just this angry woman who shows up and hates everyone and the nuance can easily be lost when younger people watch a show that's meant for a bit of an older audience i mean that's definitely why i hated kikio when i first watched how could a nine-year-old really understand anything about this character with inuyasha i can understand the idea of not fitting in with kagome i had moved before and could understand that being in a new place could be scary with sango and miroku and even shippo i had lost friends and families in my life and i could understand their sadness but it wasn't until i grew up i fell in love i learned how easy it is for misunderstandings to ruin something and i felt what it was like for someone to come between your relationship and not find out until much later kikio isn't really a character that you can just understand she's one you need to be able to empathize with and watching through inuyasha again having experienced all of those things for myself she easily went from one of the characters that i liked the least to probably my second favorite in the series and throughout my experience making this channel i think that she's the character who my opinion of has changed the most by far chippo on the other hand is a character who my opinion of has not shifted an inch he's the first addition that inuyasha and kagome pick up and i'm generally not the biggest fan of him this is for a couple reasons firstly he is super whiny and secondly he's not quite connected to the overarching plot in the same way that the other characters are and yes i know he's whiny because he's a kid but i also find kids very annoying so at least i'm consistent as for him being disconnected shippo joins the group after the thunder brothers kill his dad by using the power given to them by the shikon jewel and as a result when inyasha kills the thunder brothers he kind of avenges shibo's dad now you could say that the evil of the shikon jewel does become a major antagonist throughout the series at the very end but that's kind of a stretch shippo doesn't know that at the time he is not really tied to naraku outside the idea of naraku hurting his friends and honestly that is enough reason on its own but it's just less personal than the relationships other characters have with nuraku in general shippo tends to act as more like a mascot or secondary comic relief character constantly butting heads with inuyasha insulting miroku and getting along pretty well with both kagome and sango shippo does offer some utility through his abilities to transform into different odds and ends which actually can come in clutch sometimes but 9 out of 10 times he's just not being super relevant in most situations miroku is kind of another comic relief character albeit the joke probably doesn't hold up super well in the modern climate he's a womanizer who tends to rub up on sango every chance he gets all the while asking every girl he meets to bear his children and i do mean every girl shout out to koharu i guess now rumiko is kind of famous for putting sexual jokes throughout her series so this isn't like an oddity in her writing but rather i consider miroku an example of how to do this trope correctly yes miroku is a sleazeball but that's never something that's glorified on top of that he's given motivation that almost justifies that action and no not the action of rubbing up on random women specifically the idea of being a little bit more assertive when looking for someone to be with miroku's grandfather was cursed by nuraku to have a wind tunnel in his right hand essentially an ever expanding black hole that would consume anything it's pointed at until eventually the black hole grows to the point where it consumes its user and while the answer suck the bad guy into the black hole might have popped into your head nuraku has these poisonous insects that will basically knock miroku on his ass for even trying it's a very serious problem and if i'm being honest it's a very overused method of keeping miroku in check from being a more or less all-powerful character in the series but the real issue with the wind tunnel is that it's hereditary as a result until naraku is killed every member of his family would hold the wind tunnel and most likely die before they turned 30. it puts miroku's life on a serious clock and if he wants to avenge his father and grandfather if he wants to stop the curse he needs to defeat naraku but since his own time is actively running out he looks for women to have his child so that even if he fails someone can take up the mantle of killing that demon and freeing his family so while miroku is for sure a huge pervert it's very easy to understand where his actions come from and i think that's a testament to rumiko's writing what's also important for his character though is that it doesn't stop there miroku tends to ironically enough kind of be a moral compass for the group he's a monk who's well read and who easily has the most emotional maturity out of our core cast he kind of reminds me of the idea of having a big brother who's a [ __ ] boy but at the same time if you go to him for advice he'll be very serious and heartfelt what i like about morocco is that he isn't just a flat character where pervinus for comedic effect is his only trait which is something you see a lot more in modern anime characters like mineta but instead he has depth he has value he offers his found family something of worth and balancing all of that is just one of the many examples of how talented rumiko really is as a writer and songo is our last addition to the group and let me just get this out of the way [Music] [Laughter] [Music] perfect sango is the best character in the series easily even in her first appearance you just have this badass demon slayer walking up and with one throw of her giant boomerang she destroys this enormous centipede demon and retrieves its jewel shard then immediately swapping out of her armor and revealing this elegant and fun girl much like miroku sango is all about the balance on the one hand you have this demon slayer side a walking encyclopedia on how to deal with just about any demon they might find as well as things like poisons or just general survival skills on top of that she basically holds her own against any demon in the series that is inuyasha's strength or below unless the character is like sushomeru or naraku or the leader of some group she probably has a good chance against them while on average i wouldn't say she's as strong as inyasha and she definitely can't just suck people into a black hole like miroku does but sango never feels like she doesn't belong in a fight she never weighs the team down she is powerful in her own right and is far from being a damsel in distress and like i mentioned earlier that is definitely a problem early on with kagome so the contrast is huge we see sango take the stereotype of women being weak or frail and literally beats demons to death with that stereotype and like she doesn't have any demon powers she doesn't have any spiritual powers there is nothing special about sango she is a normal human standing up to demons and dominating them which is so [ __ ] cool she is basically the batman of the group fighting alongside superman and the flash no powers no problem unlike batman though songo isn't emotionally closed off don't get me wrong she definitely has something she needs to work out and you know what having your entire family slaughtered in front of you having your village reduced to rubble and then your brother being brainwashed and forced to fight you that will mess with you that's totally fair as a result she's often slow to trust she tends to hate herself and there are several moments throughout the series where she even considers taking her own life along with her brothers but when she does get close to people she is the single most kind-hearted and sweet person in the show the way she goes from this absolute monster on the battlefield to being soft and vulnerable is flawless most importantly though is the way that she completes the group with inuyasha and kagome you kinda have these emotional children running wild miroku just needs one cute girl to go astray and sango acts as the center that balances things she thinks every action through and for the most part between her and miroku the group has this level head that gets them through any situation and speaking of the group as a whole we gotta talk about the dialogue in the series once you get past them [Music] has some of the most natural and realistic dialogue between characters in any anime they have this very genuine and casual way of talking to each other and while they can be goofy or silly it's more just like people messing around with their friends even the character that has the least natural way of talking kaede has this rapport with inuyasha like they're both just old friends hanging out most of the time the characters in this show have such a believable dynamic that's just really rare to find in other series especially in dubbed anime and when you combine well-defined and well-developed characters into a group that interacts with each other in a very human and natural way it makes for a cast that feels tangible and relatable and it's a big part of what makes this series such a lovable one for so many people and that's the third tenet of rumiko's writing characters that share thematic cores characters who share a common goal and characters who interact realistically those three pillars of character writing are honestly what i believe to be the key of making enosha such an explosively successful series on the other hand of the spectrum we have sushomuru who is not exactly the most open and talkative i've mentioned layering characters several times but sushomuru and inyasha have this super interesting dynamic together and i guess you could kind of fit nuraku into this category as well while inuyasha has this feeling of never belonging and is often unsure of himself at least privately publicly he acts like he's king of the world in contrast to his true feelings you have sushomuru and naraku characters who are overflowing with pride there is never a situation that sashomaru is in that he doesn't feel like he belongs in because he goes where he pleases and in raku's case he wants to destroy the world because no one belongs and it's pretty interesting to see how the three of them interact with the world to sushomur though strength is everything and as he sees himself as the strongest it isn't so much about him belonging or not belonging it's more a matter of who is worthy to be in his presence he wouldn't ever want to be accepted by others because to him everyone else is below him and not worth a second thought the only people that he seeks some kind of affirmation from are his parents and more specifically it tends to be from his father toga who he even set as a personal target that he wanted to overcome it's kind of hard to tell exactly how he feels about his mom because neither of them are very expressive but they do obviously care about each other on some level even if she [ __ ] talks the entire time she's on screen back to his dad though toga would go on to leave sashomeru's mother and meet iza yohi who was seen yasha's mother he fell in love and would eventually give his life to protect her and their newborn son inuyasha this would leave sushomuru without closure and confused as to why his father would sacrifice himself for a human and a half demon and this became even worse when sashomeru was given the healing sword ten sega as opposed to the devastatingly powerful test saga which was left for inuyasha sushomuru would feel slighted by this decision and for much of his early arc he is trying to get the tessaga despite not even being able to use it due to the seal that had been placed on it this anger towards inuyasha would lead him to working with nuraku for a short time until he realized that nuraku was just trying to manipulate him and if there's one thing that someone filled with pride hates more than their dad giving away a sword it's probably being made a fool of and this ties the shomuru into the role of both rival to inyasha and someone who shares a common enemy with him and we'll come back to sushumu later once we get introduced to rin but for now let's talk about the big bad himself naraku naraku was originally a thief named onigumo the kind of evil guy that other evil guys stop and say oh dang that's an evil guy we find out much later that he had hired a group of bandits to try and steal the shikon jewel from kikio but inuyasha got in the way and killed most of that group a survivor named rasetsu wanted revenge on onigumo for having his men walk into a death trap so he found the place that onigumo was staying at and blew it up this severely burned donigumo and sent him flying down a cliff where he was eventually found by the priestess kikio however he was in such rough condition that he was unable to move or even speak but after some time of being cared for by akikio he eventually did regain his ability to speak allowing him to say such charming lines as for once i should like to see her apprehensive and frightened that would bring me true pleasure [Laughter] so i guess you could say he was a bit of a romantic onigumo wanted two things firstly he wanted the shikon jewel but more specifically he wanted to taint it turn it black and fill it with evil and secondly he wanted kikio but with a body that was unable to move and with kikio already being involved with inuyasha he was facing an uphill battle at best so he made a deal onigumo would feed his body to a massive swarm of demons and fuse with them but in exchange for his body he would gain a new half demon form which he could use to get with kikio on top of that the demons also wanted the jewel so it seemed like a win-win but as one of the core philosophies in the series wishes and deals with the devil will never go unpunished and i'll be talking a lot about the philosophy stuff later in the series but i do have an entire video on this specific topic if you're interested in it after this video so onigumo sells his body and together he and the demons form the half demon noraku where the body itself is primarily composed of the demons but within it you could still find onigumo's heart and soul and we see it pretty often in the series where onigumo's heart actually manages to stop naraku from taking action against kikio despite making up a minority of this new form he holds quite a bit of power over it and as such the demons took control quickly after fusing locking onigumo deep within themselves and attacking kikio so that this heart would never have a motivation to take control or restrict them and i love this for a lot of reasons firstly even if onigumo was an evil bastard it is still very tragic giving everything you have for a chance at your wish only to be tricked and held captive for 50 years is quite a lot and secondly sealed for 50 years hey i think i've heard that one before his actions lead to both inuyasha and himself being sealed away neither being able to be with kikio and god do i love it when powerful reflected parallels are set up between the hero and the villain another example of this is how we see both of them being half demons with inuyasha having a set knight of weakness whereas nuraku gets to choose his again both of them love kikio both of them want to make a wish on the jewel to become a full demon the comparisons between these two characters go on and on and i love that it's set up that way finally noraku's role in the story is not one where he's a powerful fighter yes he is decently strong but without jewel shards i probably wouldn't say that he's any stronger than inuyasha i mean even later when he has dual shards you could see him fighting sushomuru and despite swallowing sushomeru hole the lad just doesn't flinch and he's completely unworried not to mention while he does have the jewel shards he almost never wins a fight if he actually sticks it out naraku isn't a fighter and his abilities like miasma making puppets creating incarnations setting up barriers they are all built to keep people away from himself while he manipulates things from the shadows he is a machiavellian puppeteer and how fitting is it that his birth into the world was pulling the strings of onigumo not just that but later we find out that he himself was being manipulated by the shikon jewel naraku might actually be one of my favorite villains in fiction and while i acknowledge that battling him does drag on quite a bit too long and that's more of a complaint for the series in general i wouldn't really hold that against the character he's just this savagely twisted person who wants to control and destroy everything he can he himself is a miasma that poisons every life that he touches and [ __ ] is that good now early on naraku also dresses up as a baboon and this is something that never gets explained throughout the entire series which might stand out as strange to many viewers especially since he just later drops it all together and while i don't have a 100 sure this is why kind of reason to supply you i do think i know why at least while in the west we typically associate cats and dogs as rivals in japan dogs are also believed to feud with monkeys so it wouldn't really need to be explained in the series as where it was created it would be a cultural norm for a dog like inuyasha to rival a man dressed as a baboon again not a confirmed thing as far as i know but based on how characters in the series are created as well as the mythology and history that goes into them in general i think this is pretty likely and finally the last character that i want to talk about that we meet in season 1 is the most important one in the series kirara we love kirara in this house she's a good girl but seriously she does kind of segue into what i consider to be one of the coolest parts of enyasha and that is the yokai and mythological inspirations in general this show is a celebration of japanese history which is pretty fitting for the feudal era setting now obviously there are no time traveling girls in feudal japan obviously there are no actual demons but the people of this era did believe in things like spirits and yokai and all that good stuff and just in the first season we see inuyasha and inugami yura who is based on an old folk tale about a golden comb shippo the kitsune kirara the nekomata mr centipede who's an omukade the unmother and later musso are both based on the noperobo the thunderbrothers are heavily inspired by fujin and raijan shibugarasu comes from the yada garasu and so on and so on i have videos on all of these but i love that there's so much history and myth sewn into the fabric of the series from the very beginning now overall i think the first season of inuyasha is a masterpiece but if i had to give one complaint it would be that it goes on exactly one episode too long we end season one on may 21st of 2001 with episode 27 or chapter 100. this episode is all about the gang looking for naraku's castle but instead stopping to fight off a water demon who has stolen a trident belonging to the true water deity and yeah the episode is fun it has decent action sango officially joins the group which is why it ends on this episode and it has one of the best lines in the entire series you're so beautiful but so tiny it would be a first for me but i'm certainly willing to give it a try try what nothing but the episode previous is one of my favorite episodes that inuyasha has to offer in general and i think that it's one of the most important episodes and sango really could have joined then and there if they needed to end on that note episode 26 opens with everyone giving proper burials to sango's village and as a thank you and show of respect she takes them to midoriko's cave mother [ __ ] midoriko the strongest priestess to ever live the woman who created the chicone jewel and the true origin point for everything that happens in this series we learn about how a man loved her and sold his soul to an amalgamation of demons to be with her how they fused and that demon attacked midoriko they would even fight for seven days and nights before the demon finally pierced her with its fangs and as a last resort she pulled the demon's soul into her own and this action of merging their souls created the shikon jewel and as a result they would each be trapped inside of the jewel forced to fight for eternity this is it this is the moment where the jewel came into being the jewel that caused kikio to lose her chance at a normal life this is what inspired demons to fuse with onigumo that caused the desire for nuraku to kill inuyasha and kikio this is why inuyasha was bound to the tree how kagome got sent to the past why miroku's grandfather was cursed with the wind tunnel why sango lost her village why kohaku was held as prisoner and why shippo lost his father it all comes back to this and on top of that there is an obvious parallel between naraku and the man who love midoriko between the two origins of all the pain the series has to offer between midoriko herself and kikio it's more layering more thematic tie-ins and it really is one of the best episodes in inuyasha in my opinion because of this this episode doesn't stop there though we go back to the village with the gang and everyone begins talking about how the shikon jewel has this tremendous power it can do great things and it can do terrible things but it's never been used for good and isn't that strange any time someone has used its power anytime someone has yearned for it or sought after it anytime that someone made a wish on it things would become twisted distorted and dark and so the obvious question is raised does inuyasha really want to become a full demon knowing this he originally wanted to become a demon because he didn't fit in with humans and demons were always hunting after him because he was a hanyo right but that wasn't the case anymore he probably didn't even realize it yet but as of this day the moment where he sat together with kagome shippo miroku sango and kirara he had a place where he belonged this village wasn't just the origin of the shikon jewel it's the origin place of inuyasha's new family and that's why i think that the first season should have ended on this episode it doesn't make a big difference in the scheme of things but it's a little thing that i really would have appreciated now before we move on i do want to touch on this idea of the jewel never having been used for good or of no one ever truly getting what they want from it many people might jump to kikio she wished to see inuyasha again she wished to live an ordinary life and she wished for the jewel to follow her into the afterlife and well she was reincarnated as kagome getting to live a normal life kagome was brought into the past because the jewel followed the soul and then had reappeared within her and because of that kikio gets to be with inuyasha again through kagome and all of that seems perfect the jewel essentially gave her what she wanted but kikio was brought back to life and while the jewel itself didn't do that hikio's wishes were still destroyed and tattered when she was resurrected and as such it seems clear that there is no escape from the costs of making a wish on the shikon jewel okay with the introduction of the main cast our villain and the story of the shikon jewel we can finally move on to the second season which is just as much a banger as the first the season goes from episodes 28 to 54 ending on december 10 2001 and covering up to chapter 192 in the manga this section adds um what's the most politically correct way to say this a lot of really [ __ ] dope [ __ ] one of the most popular episodes in the series episode 31 jinnenji kind yet sad has inuyasha and kagome crossing past with a half demon who is tormented by villagers because he looks like a monster despite how he looks though jenenji is an absolute jelly bean he wouldn't hurt a fly but eventually when a demon attacks he needs to protect both his mother and the rest of the villagers inuyasha is there and could help but interestingly he refuses instead leaving janenji to find his own strength to protect what matters to him to inyasha this is something that half demons need to be able to do the world will always be unfair to them people will always judge them demons will always target them and as a result they always need to be able to stand up for themselves and it's very clear from the outset that janenji is the mirror of inuyasha the inuyasha we know is very rough on the surface but he wasn't always like this instead when we see him as a child he was coddled by his mother he loved her he was vulnerable he was open and he was kind janenji never lost his mother and as a result he is kind he is friendly he continued to be what inuyasha was when he was a child what's interesting here though is that neither of them are painted in a wholly positive way we know that janenji is a good person but the inability to stand up for himself and to protect himself is undoubtedly a flaw in his character just as inyasha always protects himself and has the inability to let his walls down it's only after inuyasha and kagome leave that he mentions how growing up he realized that he was different and the world didn't have a place for him so instead he would create a place where he belonged even if he would have to be alone in it it is a really heartbreaking episode and i think it's one that tends to stay with anyone who watches it but it is far from the only emotional moment in this part of the story kohaku sango's brother is also brought back into the picture under noraku's control and while he is a good character on his own early on he is more of a catalyst for developing sango's character we see kohaku being brainwashed by noraku and only being kept alive by the jewel shard that naraku planted in his neck what's worse is that he's sent to fight sango regularly putting her in a pretty [ __ ] up spot does she fight against her brother and if naraku gives her an order using kohaku as a bargaining chip what is she supposed to do early on she opts to try and kill him and then take her own life with conviction but she's ultimately stopped by her friends who promised to find another way he makes a great tool for sango's development while also demonstrating the lengths which naraku will go to in order to procure and maintain control over others and again because the characters are so interconnected every time kohaku is used against sango the group as a whole becomes more unified in their anger against nuraku and we do need to talk about naraku here as a few things happen firstly he crosses paths with kikio which is a little surprising to him and on top of that he gets a new body he manages to capture a bunch of demons inside of a mountain and performs a makeshift kodoku forcing them all to fight to the death and fuse together only for him to absorb the winner and from here he manages to capture kikio and in this position kikio makes what is probably the cockiest and stupidest decision in the entire series believing that she would always be able to take nuraku down after she realizes that he still has onigumo's heart hikio steals kagome's massive chunk of the shikon jewel and then gives it to naraku the idea being that he would never be able to hurt her because of onigumo within himself but she wouldn't hesitate to kill him so once he finished collecting the rest of the jewel she can just kill him and take it back which in theory sure but even best case scenario this is a incredibly risky plan and as we see almost immediately it turns out that giving a big chunk of a cursed wishing stone that allows him to become more powerful and gain new abilities is a pretty bad idea go figure and with this new chunk of the shikon jewel in his possession naraku is now able to create incarnations a blight against the rest of the group for the majority of the series going forward so yeah i guess we can blame kikio on that one before nuraku gets time to actually explore this new power fully though we have one of the most important rematches between inuyasha and sashomru so sushomuru gets this dragon arm the two of them fight over proper ownership of the sword and in this fight inuyasha manages to pull off the windscar and this would have absolutely devastated sushomuru but at the last second his quote useless sword reacts and instead the ten sega whisks him away to a nearby forest where he can heal saving his life in the process and while he's healing he begins to be visited by a girl who takes an interest in the resting demon she starts bringing him food and water and tries to help him out as best as she can but sushomeru rejects all of it saying that a demon has no need for human food and even so she keeps putting the effort in and tries to help him one day she visits covered in scrapes and bruises from the villagers beating her up for taking food and for the first time sashomaru takes a small interest and asks what happened but obviously not because he cares or anything baca it's just because he's a bit curious and for the first time since she appears we get this incredibly wholesome and cute smile from the girl named rin when sushomeru finally looks at her anyways some time passes and he finally is more or less ready to leave but he catches the smell of blood and chases after it finding that rin had been killed by a pack of koga's wolves and while sushomeru might not have been super interested in her at this point she was a human who showed him kindness despite him being a demon this child had no fear of him even when he tried to scare her off and to some degree he at least had a small amount of pity or sympathy for her this causes the tensega to start pulsing asking to be used by him and when he grabs it he begins to see the minions of the underworld preparing to take the girl who had cared for him so he swings the sword and learns that while the ten sega is unable to actually damage the living it can destroy those of the underworld and what that means in this situation is that this is a sword that can resurrect the dead we'll continue with that in a second but first we gotta talk about sushomeru's father toga for some reason who never makes an appearance in the anime except for the third movie as well as in inuyasha's sequel yoshihime is on par with midoriko for the influence that he has on the series interestingly both leave behind items for future generations which would sway the morality of those who inherit them in the case of toga he leaves behind the tessaga and the ten sega as we've discussed tessaga would be given to inuyasha as a sword which could kill 100 demons in a single swing for inuyasha who needed to learn to defend himself against the demons who would target him this was toga's way of protecting his son even after he was gone on top of this as we do learn in this season the tess saga also acts as a seal on inuyasha's demonic blood stopping him from going into a rampage and allowing him to live a fairly normal life tencega on the other hand was a sword capable of saving 100 lives with one slice in hopes of him learning empathy and kindness and we'll see this developed throughout the series but meeting rin being shown kindness himself and making the active decision to show kindness in return is where all of this development starts for the first time and for reference again this is the dude who was introduced by bringing inuyasha a fake version of his dead mother holding them hostage and using her as bait to trap him which like not exactly the most empathetic and kind-hearted thing you can do but all the same here he was saving rin and once she's back on her feet she decides to join sushomuru as the fourth member of her group along with the imp jokin and the two-headed dragon aou i'm probably not going to talk about jokin or aoon too much in this video but jokin is more or less a shomerous shippo very high pitch very annoying too much energy but because he takes such a beating from sushomeru and is still dedicated it's kind of lovable in a horrible way aoun on the other hand is just a couple good boys and we love him for that now aside from rin we also do get another mainstay character in this segment as well with koga the wolf demon he originally kidnaps kagome and becomes infatuated with her as she's both able to see the jewel shards and is let's say a very assertive girl which he's not too used to as i mentioned earlier koga in general is a character i'm not crazy about like kagome he's pretty loud a lot of the time his rivalry with inuyasha can be kind of fun and he's by far not the worst character in the series i'm just not crazy about him you know the trade-off in kagome's case is that she has a lot more emotional growth throughout the series and has an interesting and dynamic tie to the other characters for a lot of the story koga's whole thing is i am alpha dog alpha wolf and his main dialogue revolves around picking fights with inuyasha and saying that kagome is his woman and he needs to claim her it's kind of like miroku's pervineness where you feel the joke is a little bit of a product of its time and that's totally fine that kind of stuff exists it is what it is but just the hyper aggro factor of koga to me has always pushed the joke a little bit too far to the point where it became annoying but all the same i do acknowledge that koga is a fan favorite character much like sushomuru he shows up a few times per season and while he himself bothers me i can definitely acknowledge that most of the episodes and action that he takes part in are pretty hype koga also comes with two sidekick-like characters ginta and hakaku these two don't get too much time to shine but i always really liked them they were level-headed but a little bit ditzy and in general just kind of funny of all the backseat characters these tend to be the ones that i like the most actually not because they offer a lot to the story but because they pretty seamlessly fit into any scene that they find themselves in as just fun good guys who are used to lighten the mood and while we are on the topic of koga i do want to bring up something that just never really gets brought to the forefront and it's always been a bit of a complaint of mine about his character in regards with sushomuru and that's that koga's wolves are the ones who killed rin and sushomeru has never had a conversation or altercation about this with him we do get an episode later where the whole point of the episode is this altercation's about to happen and then they meet up and just kind of like go their own way like there's no issue and i mean sushomuru is a pretty proud guy he cares for rin a lot why wouldn't he be angry with koga for killing her he wouldn't even have to like try and kill koga but i would want him to be kind of disgusted with him in the same way he is with inuyasha you know i don't know i just think that this is a dynamic that could have been explored a little bit more and that would have been really interesting for people who like these two characters quite a bit either way koga is now in the picture and we need him to be tied to naraku so naturally that's the purpose of his mini arc specifically through the introduction of the wind sorceress kagura the first of noraku's incarnations that we meet and the literal embodiment of his desire to control the world around him the desire to take freedom and hold it in the palm of his hand having been gifted a bigger piece of the shikon jewel from kikio raku is now able to rip off parts of himself and grow incarnations and while they all have a will of their own naraku tends to have the ability to kill or reabsorb them at any point for kagura he literally holds her heart and he later shows that he can make kana just [ __ ] explode and muso gets taken back into himself as well while we don't see him showing this sort of option for most of the other incarnations i would say that it's pretty safe to say that in every case he had some kind of contingency that would allow him to control them anyways back to the action kagura shows up uses the wind to grab a bunch of wolf demon corpses and control them like puppets to which koga's like yo that's not very cash money of you to use my dead friends to attack me and somewhere in the background song goes like i know right can we stop doing this but either way koga's hatred from nuraku begins in this moment while he doesn't join the main group and he never really gets on good terms with inuyasha he does act as a pretty valuable ally whenever he comes up and while we're here we might as well talk about kagura as well kagura is a fan favorite character and definitely one of my own favorites firstly wind magic is just pretty sweet on its own merit she has this really cool feather earring thing that she can fly away on and she has a character design that is chocked full of references to japanese myth and culture and actually even more so than most other characters kagura is fairly proud as a character but struggles as she yearns for freedom she is the win the embodiment of what it means to be free but at the same time she is trapped under nuraku's control this puts her in a unique spot where while she works for nuraku she is secretly wishing for his downfall the entire time and finally while she's not a permanent issue she does pose a pretty big problem for inuyasha as she controls the wind and his main attack the wind scar is more or less negated while she's around functionally this means that naraku can both turn off miroku's wind tunnel using the signmeal show and inuyasha's windscar using kagura he's more or less picking up and creating pieces that slowly improve his own position while they limit the actions of his enemies and that is a testament to his strategic thinking now soon after this we're introduced to kana a purely white designed girl holding a mirror she is the oldest incarnation and she is the embodiment of the void of nothingness she has no detectable aura no scent and she's almost untraceable for inuyasha again limiting their abilities to deal with nuraku and let me just say there are plenty of incarnations that are great in their own right but oh good lord do i love kana blank characters are always a theming structure that i adore as well as mirrors and soul manipulations being tools and powers that are usually among my favorites and on top of having all these things i love she just has this sad eeriness about her character that is really great she's not the most exciting but she is incredibly unsettling in this very strange way that i like as i mentioned kana uses a mirror that can absorb and manipulate souls she can reflect attacks spy through the samyosho and later can even manifest a mirror demon but what's most important about khanna though is her apparent lack of self-will or personality because she is void and doesn't desire anything for herself uraku believes that she is completely trustworthy and often relies on her more so than her siblings khanna to him is just a blank slate that will always follow his orders and would never betray him because there is no benefit to her doing so and i don't know if you've been keeping track of the idea of nuraku having someone that he can control fully is probably something he enjoyed quite a bit but something that i enjoyed quite a bit is the next incarnation that we're introduced to this is one of the scariest incarnations of the entire set and he's the first that's going to be set up in a more monster of the week fashion in total there will be 10 incarnations and while kana kagura hakudoshi the infant and bialcia all last a pretty considerable amount of time goshinki jeromeru kageromuru and muso along with the manga ones that are unnamed are all very short-term characters that tend to be dealt with within two or three episodes goshenki while being the first of these short-lived characters is also my favorite all of the first three incarnations are just phenomenally strong characters in my opinion and it's a shame that some of the later ones don't follow suit goshenki's thing is fear he is the incarnation that most embodies what demons might look like in your head he has this giant purple body these massive horns and razor sharp teeth and while his appearance is scary enough on its own what makes him really dangerous is his incredible speed and his ability to read your mind he becomes this character that seems to play with his food toying with his opponents because he knows what they're going to do before they do and he can move fast enough to react before they can even move if kagura represents naraku's desire to control those who are free then goshenki is a representation of nuraku's sadistic side willing to play with and hurt whoever he can ultimately he easily overpowers inuyasha and even breaks the tess saga in his teeth in the process however here we find out the tessaga was more than just a sword it is a seal for inuyasha's demonic power with the sword broken and inuyasha backed into a corner his demonic blood takes over and he starts lashing out violently this is purely him acting on impulse and not thinking at all and as such goshinki is unable to read his mind or predict what he might do in a fight where inuyasha had been completely dominated from the moment it began things turn around and he kills goshinki in an instant which is great but he doesn't just fade out of this form right away and on top of that he's unable to tell friend from foe until kagome tells him to sit activating the beads of subjugation and bringing him back to his senses this is the only argument that i'm okay with for the beads of subjugation by the way at from this point on using them to make sure that he doesn't go on a rampage is pretty fair but later once he has the [ __ ] together i still do find them kind of weird regardless though this is the continuation of a thread that we started back in season one specifically in the episode with midoriko there we saw inyasha questioning what it really meant to make a wish on the shikon jewel and wondering if becoming a full demon is really what should happen and now he finally got a taste of what it's like to be a demon he isn't the prey anymore and he's strong like really strong but just like turning human makes him more vulnerable and open becoming fully demon takes away his rationality and his morality he doesn't get to stay who he is we're gonna come back to this at the end of the season but first we do need to round out goshenki's story goshenki isn't just a marker for inuyasha's personal growth he's also a shift for sushomuru as well as the shomuru learns about a demon who broke the tess saiga he seeks the demon out reviving goshinki's head with the ten sega and then looking for the blacksmith kaijimbo so that he can use goshenki's fangs to create a new sword which might be able to overpower his brothers i didn't really mention totosai earlier but he's the blacksmith who turned toga's fang into the tess saga and the ten sega he is a phenomenal comic relief character who is selfish senile and cowardly but he's also a vast well of wisdom when it comes to the sword that he created as well he acts as a pseudo-mentor for both inuyasha and sushomeru at different points of the story he recognizes what toga wanted for each of them and what they need to do to grow both in terms of strength and as people and most importantly he has a flying ox named momo and we love him now you're probably wondering at this point axel do you just love every flying animal in this series and no shippo can fly but the rest of them yes i might as well also bring up myoga here as well this is a flea who serves toga similar to todosai and again he's more of a comic relief character who also offers wisdom and information whenever he's around yoga and totosai are honestly essentially the same character with very small twists on their quirks however milga doesn't have a pet ox and obviously loses some points for that back to kaijimbo though toto-sai's former apprentice kajimbo picked up a habit of making evil weapons through rituals like killing a bunch of kids to make a sword and turtle sai might be a bit of a bastard sometimes but believe it or not not a huge fan of killing kids so he exiles kaijimbo as such when sushomuru approaches him asking him to make a cursed sword to kill someone using toto-sai's weapon he's pretty excited about the idea of showing his superiority so he makes this new sword from goshinki's fang the tokigen it is so filled with evil energy that as soon as the sword is completed just touching it completely possesses kaijimbo he goes on a rampage and hunts down inuyasha and once he dies the sword is just left in the ground and the cursed energy around it is so strong that anything that gets remotely close to it is vaporized immediately this is a more badass version of the sword in the stone it is the demon excalibur and much like king arthur sushomeru shows up sticks his hand into the energy field and pulls out the sword completely dispelling the aura and gaining mastery of it and now that i got those points down i think i might be misremembering the king arthur story tokijin though is a pretty badass sword in its own right it shoots energy needles its slashes launch waves that cut through things and in general it's just real strong once this fight is resolved though we can move away from goshenki's plot thread forever and we're introduced to the final two incarnations of the season with jeromeru and kageromeru now the first three incarnations phenomenal i love them these two are easily the worst in the entire group jeromeru is this kind of blank void like kana but takes a much more active and aggressive role which to me is less interesting what makes kana so cool is that she is both present and not present it's this cold and empty trait that's extremely unique and portrayed with this uneasy purity but with jeromeru it's just anger and unga bunga and kageromuru is no different he is this gross parasite that lives inside of his brother as a total sadist and the longer that these two are on screen you just see the difference between kana's one note emptiness and their one note rage there is no creepiness there is no mystery it's just a desire to kill and that makes them no different than every other nameless demon we've seen so far that said something of note here is that both jeromeru and kageromeru seem to be independent and able to act against nuraku's will even attacking his puppet it's never really diverged if this is just nuraku letting them do their thing while they attack inuyasha and possibly he still has a way to gain control of them from afar we see him doing something similar to this with hakudoshi and the infant later on lets them run amok until they become a nuisance to him and then he flips a switch that allows them to die soon after this kagome again finds kikio and inuyasha doing the old smoochie smooch gets real upset and heads back home and i'm so glad she does because this is one of the best episodes in the series because while she's home kagome takes time to think about her feelings towards and has an extremely heartfelt conversation with her mother that makes it one of the most genuine and emotionally impactful episodes that the series has to offer i cannot say enough good things about this episode but it's one that really acts to ground the character at least for a while and ultimately leads her to the very melancholic decision that even if inuyasha chose that he didn't want to be with her she still wanted to at least be around him and just after kagome returns back to the past we actually have my favorite episode of the entire show inuyasha and miroku get caught and gotten maru's acidic cocoon and the tassaga is out of reach meaning that at any moment inuyasha is about to go full demon while trapped in a confined space with miroku and it is incredibly tense but once he actually does transform it's a bloodbath one of the most brutal moments in the series as he kills goten maru and slaughters every single one of his men even chasing them down until he's stopped by sushomeru and we actually get a pretty unique fight between sushomuru and inuyasha here by all means inyasha should be stronger than normal he's transformed after all but this time is probably the easiest win that sushomuru ever takes on him he describes inuyasha as being a wild animal and that there would be no point in even killing him in this form here inuyasha is just like jeromeru and kageromuru he's bloodthirsty violent and that's about it for his character while not thinking and acting on impulse had allowed him to kill goshinki here it's proving to remove anything of value to who he is when he comes to and realizes what he had done he is sickened and he goes full lady macbeth trying to wash the blood off his hands but the smell won't go away it is a pretty hard scene to watch he is emotionally devastated and he knows that if sashomaru hadn't stopped him he might have killed every one of his friends too but at the same time this is exactly what he had been searching for his entire life he wanted to be a full demon he wanted to be strong enough to kill those who had hunted him like gatan maru and he wanted to not feel bad about being excluded from humanity this is that dream brought to life and he hates it it wasn't anything like he had hoped for and now he's lost it is a phenomenal episode an absolute banger and it hits you like a ton of bricks from here he goes on to fight ryukotse the demon his father had fought who left him with the wounds that he would die from the fight is pretty damn cool but its real purpose is teaching inuyasha the backlash wave as well as giving him access to using the windscar whenever he wants which both allow him to challenge and even defeat demons who completely outrank him the backlash wave specifically uses the enemy's energy against them which meant that just about any demon was now fair game for the most part and with that we come to the end of season 2. we learned that naraku was a hanyo we see him get a new body and half the jewel we meet five incarnations kill three of them huge character growth for inuyasha through his demon form as well as bringing in the question of what he really wants kagome is faced with the reality of inuyasha's heart sango has to fight her brother sashomuru meets rin and gets the tokijin and there's just a [ __ ] load of stuff that happens in a very short bit of episodes yes there are a ton of really great things that happen later in the series we get bon kozu in the band of seven the tess saiga evolutions more incarnations yadda yadda yadda but if i'm being honest when i think of why i love this series the first two seasons are inuyasha to me the emotional weight character growth the close ties to nuraku great action kikio's revival and its implications the early sushomuru rivalry and the fact that almost everything we do has to do with the main plot there is so much to love in this section of the anime and there are so many of the best and most iconic episodes that the show has to offer with very few bad or wasted episodes like just in the first 50 episodes we had inuyasha vs sushomuru at his father's tomb the soul piper kikio's resurrection kikio trying to live a peaceful life and failing her and inuyasha kissing as kagomi watches all of the banger character introductions the thunder brothers demon inuyasha versus goshinki inuyasha's regrets and moral quandary midoriko yura janenji human inuyasha rin's introduction kagura khanna the kodoku the tokijin kagome's talks with her mom like holy [ __ ] there are so many top tier episodes and when you compare them to the bad ones or at least the ones that i'm not excited to watch you have like the toad prince episode and the water god episode and that's actually it scrubbing through the first two seasons those are the only two episodes i don't like and i think that's insane do you know how rare it is to have 52 high quality episodes out of 54 like that the entirety of these two seasons is just so pure and tight and top tier that it's no wonder so many people latched onto the series now unfortunately i do think that this is about as good as the series gets though it doesn't become bad at any point but it definitely falls off from this high standard that it set for itself yes it's still enjoyable but a problem slowly starts to creep into the series that dilutes it and you definitely feel it starting here season 2 like i mentioned ended on december 10th of 2001 it covered up to the first 192 chapters of the manga so we are keeping up at about the pace of four chapters per episode on average but the anime was released four years after the manga had started and it was moving four times as fast and an entire year had passed so for those bad at math by the end of that first year of anime they had caught up to where the manga was when it started leaving only about 50 chapters left unanimated when season 3 began airing by the end of season 3 rather than moving another 100 chapters like they had in the first two seasons they only moved 30 and by the end of episode 82 we would reach only chapter 224 and slower pacing wasn't the only effect of narrowing the gap of the manga we also started seeing filler popping up more and more throughout the entirety of the first two seasons there is next to no filler content and the only episode that really has any is episode 26 which focused on midoriko's backstory and even in that episode it's mostly canon but on the other hand season 3 would see nine fully filler episodes three mixed filler and two episodes which were canon to the anime but not to the manga making 14 of the 28 episodes in the season being anime only in some way or another we went from almost no filler to half of the season being filler the worst that this problem would ever become would be in season 4 with it simmering down in season 6 and the final act having a whole other cluster [ __ ] to deal with but we will touch on that as we get there things weren't all doom and gloom for the series though as five days after the end of season two ended we had inuyasha the movie affections touching across time this was directed by toshiya shinohara produced through sunrise and had a screenplay from katsuyuki sumisawa the movie saw a decent amount of success making just over 10 million dollars at the box office and it's actually the inuyasha movie that would perform best the plot of the movie saw a shard of the shikon jewel animating a descendant of one of toga's rivals making inuyasha and the gang try and defeat them it had a few really cool aspects to it the villain is interesting and feels powerful though i do think his giant t-posing form is a little bit silly meanwhile the two girls working under him are phenomenal one of them stealing miroku's wind tunnel and the other taking control of kirara meanwhile kagome is put under mind control and is put in the same position that kikiyo was as she aims an arrow at inuyasha i think one of the coolest moments in this movie though is when ruri uses the wind tunnel and expands it hazardously like miroku had feared his entire life and yes it does give her a lot more power but it gets to the point where she spreads it too far and the wind tunnel consumes her this is a really cool moment because it both contextualizes miroku's fears and shows us that is something that is very possible to happen to him the movie as a whole is just very solid i think it's something that any inuyasha fan will enjoy and it's a great place to start with inuyasha movies i will point out that all of the inuyasha movies do have specific spots where they slot into the story which i think is very cool and they don't contradict or go against anything that is part of the story so while none of these are considered to be fully canon you could also just consider them as anime canon as well and it wouldn't really get in the way of anything but we're on to season 3 and finally after all that build up the crux of this season is that noraku can make hella strong barriers and we need to find a way through them but first we start with some episodes about shippo's love life about miroku and sango stuff a bit about that fat dude with a tree and sango visits home for a bit none of these episodes are bad per se some of them are actually pretty good but you're immediately hit with this lack of progression feeling once we start this season we then get to tsubaki's arc though which [ __ ] yeah we stan tsubaki in this house she was a priestess who rivaled kikio and became jealous when kikio was charged with the shikon jewel instead of her which is kind of ironic since kikio hated that she had to watch the jewel long story short though kikio gets cursed to become weaker when she falls in love which is ultimately what leads her to becoming weak enough for naraku to mortally wound her and as much as i love tsubaki for being a petty queen who is just generally kind of hot that's pretty much all that actually matters in this arc unfortunately we do get some really interesting development for kagura though we've always seen her struggling to work with raku but starting here it becomes a lot more tangible we see kagura finding out about enyash's night of weakness and rather than telling raraku she instead thinks about how inuyasha and sushomuru might be her path to freedom so she keeps it secret this is reinforced when she returns to naraku and he threatens her saying that he can kill her whenever he wants basically this is nuraku trying to show off his control and ensure that kagura knows she can never betray him she is trapped which works pretty terribly because she immediately gets her hand on some jewel shards and offers them to sushomeru to hunt down and kill nuraku to which sushomuru just shoots her down and says she should deal with it herself this is also the beginning of kagura and sushomuru's dynamic we see this growing over time a lot of people are very big fans of it but she does see him as this ultimate potential savior recognizing that sushomuru is probably the baddest demon around and if anyone's going to kill nuraku it will be him for much of the show she has almost this hero complex towards him but at almost every chance he gets he turns her down and doesn't actually go after nuraku so it's the strange push and pull dynamic between them as the series progresses they do get a little bit closer but that obviously doesn't flourish into anything too serious because the whole death thing but that is a story for later when she does eventually return back to naraku after being shot down khanna leads her to the basement where she finds nuraku completely separated into hundreds of these gloopy demon parts connected to his head it is terrifying it is disgusting and it's as close to a horror as inuyasha ever gets and it's all made worse when he grabs her with these tendrils and reminds her that she is no different than these clumps of himself spread around the room and that at any time he can reabsorb her which is just horrifying to kagura this is worse than death and again her mind wanders to inuyasha and sushomeru hoping that one of them will eventually free her and while that episode was particularly dark we do lighten things up as we get a fan favorite filler episode being one of the many that are dedicated to shippo's love life this time focusing on the younger sister of the thunder brothers soten and i know a lot of people love these episodes but i genuinely just could not give a single [ __ ] about a child's love life so moving on to muso unlike kagura who was threatened to be reabsorbed into naraku uso was actually ejected from him raku realized that his human heart or more specifically the remnants of onigumo's heart were still present and that it was stopping him from being able to take action against kikio which is not great considering her ultimate plan is to kill him so he decides to basically just kick onigumo out of himself through the incarnation musso uso's episodes are honestly pretty solid he suffers from amnesia and basically only remembers that he loves to kill people but now with the new trick of stealing faces which is fun kagura takes an interest in him as he's able to act freely from naraku's control and she's hoping to learn how he can do it not realizing that it's more about noraku not wanting him around than it is him doing something to actively make himself free however naraku's mind is changed pretty quickly as he finds out that his half demon body is deteriorating and mutating out of control onigumo acted as a kind of core that glued all of his parts together and without him his body wouldn't hold up this leads him to hunt musso down and reabsorb him being forced to acknowledge and consider the human part of himself again amuso himself didn't have long-term ramifications for the series he does act as a warning or an example of what is in store for kagura there's this idea of him having everything that she wants and i hope that she can attain it through him again she's making someone else her own salvation if she can get help from ex-person then she can be free but in the end raku still absorbs him and it's like kagura's dreams were crushed right in front of her which when we skip to the final act is pretty much exactly how she dies raku puts everything that she wants in front of her she gets her freedom only to be killed moments later and speaking of nuraku's pesky patterns we still have that issue of him being able to create barriers that stop inuyasha and the gang from reaching him so we get to one of my favorite mini arcs as we see inuyasha learning to cut through barriers and acquiring the red to saga this arc reaffirms that all half demon dads are in fact dilfs as we meet shiori who is a character a lot of people really like and we have inuyasha standing up for a half demon who is weaker than he is which is something that i always really appreciate seeing the discrimination that inuyasha faces because he's a hanio are pretty core issues for his character so episodes like this one or the one with jinji are always super impactful because it's always incredibly clear that he sees himself in these other hanyo and he's trying his best to help them in ways which will genuinely be good for them for example he doesn't just slay the demon who shows up at jennenji's place he helps junenji learn to stand up for himself instead because ahanio needs to be able to do that or they will quickly become food for bigger demons all the same though enyasha gets his red tessaga which is the first real upgrade for the weapon after its reforging and this kinda acts as a launching point for all the new abilities the sword will pick up in the future this one specifically will allow him to shred through just about any barrier making naraku an open target and just like we have the constant progression of inuyasha and sushomuru getting stronger back and forth we also kind of get this back and forth between inuyasha and raku going forward where nuraku gets a new body becomes unstoppable and then inuyasha gets a new tessaga form to counter it and so on and so on and so on but for now inuyasha has the upper hand and naturally that leads us to the climax of this season by which i mean a bunch of filler episodes and again when i say that this bogs down the progression of the series pretty heavily around this point i'm not kidding especially considering that once we do get back into things it's a pretty hype section of the story and it just kind of feels strange that the panther demon section which is again a fan favorite would be placed at the climax of the season and not somewhere where it might not have impacted the story progression as much either way the filler arc ends and raku has captured rin and is using her as bait to trap and absorb sushomuru and i've always loved this fight for a specific moment nuraku coils himself around sushomuru is about to absorb him and sushomeru just does not care he doesn't even react to being swallowed and he just kind of goes i guess this is my life now he does the same thing against magatsuhi later and really any other time he's in danger he just shrugs and goes dang guess we're here now but at the last second inuyasha shows up and manages to cut through naraku's barrier pretty significantly injuring him the shomeru manages to get free and together they beat nuraku pretty easily but as always naraku does manage to get away despite being almost torn to shreds at this point this section of the story also connects rin and kohaku as he is essentially the guard for her once she's captured they begin a bit of a friendship here but all the same to sushomuru he seems kind of responsible for rin's confinement so after nuraku is gone sushomuru actually gets a chance to kill kohaku but chooses not to something which is pretty out of character for this supposedly heartless demon again showing how far he's grown and how rin is affecting his view on the world around him with the last episode of the season we get a chunk of review kagome spending some time in the modern era and of course inuyasha walking around her house with no clothes on in seriousness it's not a terrible episode there's a lot of memes that come from it but again it's just this trend of ending seasons on very strange notes that inuyasha tends to have the season in general fits that vibe pretty well though there's a lot of great and iconic moments but they're spread out around so so much filler and the positioning of those filler episodes causes the actual plot to feel like it's moving at a snail's pace it's almost like in a video game if you were to have a final mission to kill the big bad but right before you go fight him you decide to go fishing or do some side quests instead it leads into these sections that should feel like climaxes but instead are just very disjointed as a result season 4 starts off on a very similar note we have a focus on koga and ayame and then an episode where kikio meets rasetsu the bandit who naraku had told to steal the shikon jewel 50 years ago these episodes are technically filler but like the panther demons these are episodes that really benefit the character development and build the world so while they do interrupt the main plot i usually find these episodes to be fairly good ones at least in comparison to the shippo love style episodes but after the few episode introduction to this season we get an insane stretch of filler from episodes 89 to 101 is completely filler and of those 12 episodes there is like one good one and almost insultingly after introducing ayame as someone who would be a core character to koga going forward we cap these filler episodes with one last appearance for her until the last episode of the show where she barely plays a role this character was introduced to be forgotten and that's kinda lame we do have a really solid episode where kikio and kagome are trapped in a priestess eating cave and kagome has to go out of her way to help kikio because dinoyasha would be sad if she died again and it's a very strong episode for kagome's growth where it shows how far her maturity has come since she first came to the feudal era this girl had a near existential crisis after seeing them kiss and here she is actively saving her life and in the midst of all this filler we do get the release of the second movie inuyasha beyond the looking glass and this movie is a banger the art is a little bit weird but the villain kaguya is so goddamn cool it has a lot of the same good and bad parts as the first movie which makes a lot of sense most of the crew involved is the exact same but that said despite the movie being better than the first one in my opinion the box office was actually quite a bit lower only earning 7.5 million dollars beyond the looking glass has a lot of cool things going for it but one of the most interesting things to happen in this movie is the death of naraku in the first few minutes of the film the gang manages to actually defeat and kill him and we see immediate effects as a result kagura is freed miroku's wind tunnel vanishes and it's this feeling that the series doesn't get to experience again for like another 120 episodes but of course by the end of the movie we do see naraku pulling the strings from beyond the grave and returning to life and if you haven't seen this movie you absolutely should because it's a really really great one back to the main story though we come back from the movie and the filler and enter one of the most popular arcs in the franchise the [ __ ] band of seven [Music] and when i say that this is a popular arc i mostly mean that people will cream their pants over bon kotsu jakkotsu and suikotsu the basic plot for this arc is that naraku needs time to build himself a new body so he revives these seven mercenaries who rivaled entire armies each of them being extremely interesting and unique characters that add a lot to the plot well five out of seven anyways but let's talk about these guys from worst to best just so we get a good feeling for the arc first off is mukotsu the poison master and his personality fulan rapist you know basically he poisons kagome so that she can't move and plans to marry her and a bit more and there's not really any redeemable qualities for this guy and like don't get me wrong you can have a well-written character who is purely evil you can even make them do some really gross or terrible things and i could still like them as a character if there's enough thought put into the rest of who they are and they offer some kind of dichotomy that makes them interesting for the series look at characters like light father hisoka or even just naraku all of these characters are [ __ ] up but they have arranged them they offer philosophical or moral dilemmas that make them unique or offer something very distinct for their stories but mukotsu is just a weird poisony in-cell luckily sushomeru shows up pretty quickly fukutsu tries to poison him and sashomaru basically says you know poison is my whole thing right and immediately kills him kyokozu kind of suffers from the same flaws he's not nearly as bad as a character but he is similarly flat he's just a big dude who likes to eat people and that's kind of it and like mukotsu he's killed pretty quickly ginkotsu is like a sengoku era cyborg i guess he turned into a tank midway through the ark and while i'm not the biggest fan of him he definitely stands out as unique basically if you're looking for inuyasha to fight someone with saw blades flamethrowers missiles and more kinkotsu has you covered but characters who don't talk tend not to stand out very much so while inoffensive he doesn't bring a ton of personality to the table the top four are all much more dynamic and valuable to the story renkotsu is like if naraku was bad at scheming he's always making plans and he's willing to betray his friends for their jewel shards renkotsu is supposed to be the smart member of the group and he's also their pseudo-engineer making ginkotsu's tank body and using pyrotechnics and cannons interestingly though renkosu was the only member to not trust nuraku so he at least has a somewhat good judge of character what i like about renkotsu though is his role with bon kotsu we see renkosu taking his friend's jewel shards and planning to use them to kill bon kotsu for his he even has this plan to keep bon kotsu from using his weapon bonriyu to even the odds but as he approaches bon kozu just jabs his fingers into renkotsu's neck without even looking and pulls the shards from him he then scolds renkotsu for betraying his friends but renkotsu rebuts saying that bon kozu is just doing the same thing going on to say that the jewel shards make you stronger and that's all that matters and then we have one of the biggest displays of balls in the entire series as bongkotsu says sure let's test that theory giving him his jewel shards back and saying don't worry i won't even use bonryu so renkotsu armed with his cannon starts firing but can't land a hit and bonkotsu makes it right in front of him scaring him and making him fall over then saying get onto your feet so i can kill you properly he allows renkos to get back up and kotsu even lights him on fire and through the flames bonkosu throws a needle into renkotsu knocking him down once again so that he can explain the difference between them saying that he would never betray his friends the idea being that renkotsu actively killed his teammates for their shards while bonkosu was using their shards to carry on their legacy so while renkotsu is kind of a bastard and definitely falls short on all of his goals he does allow for some of the better moments in the arc and he enables other members of the band of seven to shine next up suikotsu a kind-hearted doctor who at the sight of blood turns into wolverine this is basically the jekyll and hyde bit but it's done pretty effectively with both sides of the character being distinct and bringing a very powerful sense of identity to the table dr suikotsu is a likable and genuinely caring person while his dark counterpart is a terrifying bloodthirsty savage i also really like that the doctor would have nightmares and hallucinations remembering what he had done as it's a really solid addition to his character his doctor's side even asked kikio to kill him by removing his shard but before she could jakotsu arrives to cut him open and steals it and speaking of jakotsu what a phenomenally fun character he is a perfect mix of ditzy lighthearted and flirty all while being sadistic and crazy we often see him flirting with inuyasha miroku and sashomru which to jakotsu flirting also includes trying to kill the person there's a conversation he has with bon kotsu at some point that totally describes his character to a tea bonkozu asks them how many men they should get for their group and jakotsu says it doesn't matter as long as he has some hot ones bonkotsu then explains that they should probably focus more on strength over looks and jakotsu just laughs it off saying yeah i guess you're right if we recruited good looking warriors i just want to cut them up what was i thinking it's just this casualness that goes along with his brutality that always made him stand out to me as a really great character to have on screen now we've talked about him a few times before here but the last member is their leader bon kotsu he values loyalty practicality and action but what makes him so cool as a character is the casual confidence that he carries himself with he's kind of like if sashomeru had a real personality he both always assumes he'll win a fight while also hoping his opponents will challenge him on top of that he's just kind of a funny dude i always think of this moment where he storms the castle to get bonriyu back after being revived and the samurais are just shocked asking what happened to all their guards we get the shot of a big group of soldiers all having their heads stuck in the ceiling and bonkozo just says ah i think they're a bit hung up right now and it's just this perfect example of one how strong he is two the big dick energy that he has and three his general sense of humor and honestly between him and jakotsu they carry the ark super hard now something to mention is the structure of this arc though i talked about the filler problem that arises but let's imagine that someone is watching inyasha by buying the dvds of each season back in the early 2000s the band of seven ark is about 20 episodes long but despite that he would only get about halfway through with the fourth season because there is so much filler in this season they had to split the arc between seasons four and five which it absolutely could have been done in one season if they had just flown directly into it rather than wasting so much time on filler that said of course if you're watching it weekly or binge watching the show you probably wouldn't notice although because different seasons of enyasha tend to be streamed on different places as a pretty common problem you might only have access to half of this arc depending on where you live which is still kinda crazy on top of that just from my own sense of organization and liking things to be lined up cleanly this [ __ ] drives me insane which i can totally recognize is my own problem and no one else's but it's still there anyways season four would continue until bonkotsu gets bonriyu back in episode 110 and season 5 would begin on may 19 2003 with episode 111 running until episode 138 the first 11 episodes of which would be dedicated to closing the band of seven ark culminating in a fight between inuyasha and pankotsu this fight is dope as hell inuyasha like claws out the jewel shards as the fight continues bonriyu evolves into this demonic weapon and it's that very power that allows inyoshi to trigger the backlash wave and win the fight it is tense it has great hand-to-hand combat and sword fighting plenty of witty quips and it just has everything that you might want from an inuyasha fight the arc itself also has a chunk of stuff to do with kikio and sashomeru both being more active characters than they have been in the past but more importantly niroku has just been chilling in the background hidden behind a spiritual barrier that sealed off mount hakurei well chillin might be a bit of an understatement he's actually been setting up his next evolution separating his heart from his body and leaving him effectively immortal with no weaknesses not only that he's now free from onigumo's limitation and manages to kill kikio i mean at least he does what he believes kilhikyo but it's more about him taking the action and actually being able to follow it through and finally his removed heart becomes the infant and kagura is charged with taking care of it and all that covers up to episode 125. we then get a short look at what the infant can do as it controls kagome for a few episodes and then with the exception of mimi senri and miroku's confession we enter filler hell again we have kagome's cultural festival more of shippo dating sarah arsenal the return of madame exorcist hojo's ancestor kagome and we get into the hoshiyomi arc and while these are filler they tend to be episodes that people really like sarah asuno is incredibly heartfelt hoshiomi is a badass madame exorcist and the cultural festival are just generally fun and they're just good episodes my only gripe is that we're again stepping away from the main plots and it cuts into the progression of the story making it feel so much longer than it needs to be like this chunk of episodes are great but they don't really have anything to do with the progression of the plot also i know i really haven't talked too much about miroku and songo at this point despite them being two of my favorite characters but that's mostly because they tend to go through more small but frequent shifts in character that are a bit more difficult to point at and say this is the moment where something changed for them whereas when we look at inuyasha kagome hiki or naraku you can see specific moments that were very impactful for their character however by the time that miroku's confession comes around they are pretty openly into each other despite muroku still being a little bit of a letter and in this episode specifically we even see miroku asking sango to be with him and have a family when they've managed to kill naraku which is a really sweet moment and on top of that just before the end of the season after episode 136 we have the third inuyasha movie inuyasha sword of the honorable ruler which would release on december 20th 2003. despite the trend of these movies performing worse and worse over time with this movie only making about 6.6 million at the box office this is easily and pretty without contention the best movie that enyasha has to offer it really is a competition for second place between the other three because this one is just so phenomenal iniash's father has always been such an interesting mystery and this movie opens with how he died we see him and sushomuru talking after toga had just fought ryukotse and shishinki and tsushomuru gets on with his whole i will defeat you and take the tessaga and yada yada speech but toga leaves him to go save inuyasha and izuoy izayoi had been discovered for having been with a demon and because she was going to give birth to a hanyo her samurai takamaru decides to kill her and like we can be real it's because he wanted to sleep with her and she didn't want to toga arrives wounded from his previous fight blows through all the guards and uses ten sega to revive izayoi now an interesting note here is it's not really clear if inuyasha had been revived as well or if takamaru had just killed izayoi but if he had been it would mean that he can't be revived with the ten sega in the future which could be a very unique arc regardless izuoy pops back up toga gives her the robe of the fire rat names inuyasha and tells them to run as he holds off takamaru in the burning mansion ultimately leading to both him and takamaru dying there the movie then picks up when souunga toga's other sword manages to find its way to the underworld where it latches onto takamaru and it's up to inuyasha and sushomuru to work together to defeat the man who killed their father all while that man is using their father's greatest weapon it's a great movie it has a lot of cool inyasha and sushomeru moments the fights are hype soowunga is actually insane it is so badass and it's just all around a really good time but that leads us to episode 139 and the final season of the original run of inuyasha starting on january 26 2004. clearly they were aware that things were going to be coming to a close because this season has a lot crammed into it and outside of the first little bit it's almost entirely canon they weren't trying to waste any time with it despite that this has always been what i consider to be one of the weaker parts of the story and there just generally isn't a ton to talk about even though they were forcing their way to closing this arc of the story by jamming in as much as possible the season opens up with hakudoshi entei and the search for the gate to the world between the living and the dead and let me just be upfront with you when i say i couldn't really be [ __ ] to care about hakudoshi there are several characters in the show that i'm not crazy about but hakudoshi just doesn't pique my interest at all i know a lot of people do like him he just it's kind of lame to me i don't know what it is i just never resonated with him at all he's like a total bastard but like not in a fun way and it just comes off as annoying arrogance and especially after he splits between hakadoshi and the infant it just now we do meet someone here whose arrogance is totally fine and that is princess abby and if you're asking if i just like this character because she's attractive anyways abby gets fooled into working for naraku and she basically becomes a second kagura while kagura is on the run with hakudoshi we also get episodes 147 and 8 which are a full look back at inuyasha and kikio's backstory easily one of my favorite things the series has ever done it is beautiful it has tons of emotion it has great use of music throughout the entire thing and while it's a jump away from the main plot it definitely offers enough character development to more than justify it honestly these episodes really felt like they were something special for the series and i've always really appreciated them for that shortly after this we have kikio's revival by kagome and this is just another instance of me actually really liking kagome by this point in the story she is much more likable and just a better character all around she's actively making the choice to save hikia with no hesitation she gets the chance to look into kikio's mind and see what happened between her inuyasha and uraku 50 years ago getting a full understanding of how trapped kikia was in that moment which is probably why after kikio leaves kagome even tells inyash to go after her even if he does turn the idea down on a less wholesome side we catch up with kohaku who is guarding over the infant raku orders him to kill everyone in the village and it effectively makes him relive killing his own family and fellow demon slayers it's a little bit [ __ ] but it's par for the course for naraku speaking of which naturally naraku betrays abby and her mother killing both of them and opening a path to the world between the living and the dead and everyone travels there in search for the last jewel shard that hosenki has sushomuru finds his own way there through the access that tensega gives him punches inuyasha and begins his fight with nuraku and finally inuyashi learns the adamant barrage and injures nuraku forcing him to flee through hakadoshi's barrier now going into the last few episodes of the show there is the super ballsy choice to just throw in two filler episodes and as is tradition one is a banger while the other is fine forever with lord sushomeru probably the most beloved filler episode in the entire series sees rin being taken away from sushomuru and winding up with a bunch of human monks they want to bring her back to living with humanity so she can have a normal life and when sushomeru finds them rather than charging in and killing them he waits and listens to see what rin wants to do and once she says that she wants to stay with him he emerges scares the hell out of the monks and leaves them without causing any casualties this is a very different character than who we were first introduced to and it's an episode that really makes that point shine there's also a moment in this episode where joking confronts rin with the idea that she will likely be dead long before sushomeru does and even so she chooses to stay with him given that choice we later see her asking sushomuru if he's going to remember her after she dies and he tells her not to talk about silly things his own way of saying that he does care without having to actually acknowledge it vocally written to this point has really opened sashomu up as a character he is far from as heartless as he started out and it's entirely thanks to her as for rin herself sashomuru and jokin help her change from a girl with no voice to one who is happy and speaks her mind and who is almost always a bright spot on the story i find it just difficult to dislike rin as a character she is so pure and joyful she makes joking's life miserable and honestly what more could you really want and aside from that we're basically at the end of the original series we get the fuyuhaki oriomoru gets brought into the picture and there's one final fight with nuraku now i do love that in this final fight the tessaga gets tainted by the jewel for a moment and forces inuyasha to transform but when kagome charges into literal acid she can purify the jewel and bring inuyasha back to his senses it is an excellent moment with the jewel enforced tessaga and kagome's support inuyasha manages to scare off naraku and things are left inconclusive and while the story with nuraku might not have ended properly or really at all we do get this heartfelt moment between inyasha and kagome at the end and for a story with no ending they at least closed it on a very emotionally charged note that left it somewhat satisfying with that though the cast would thank the viewers for watching say the adventure was far from over and on september 23rd 2004 fans would be left with no resolution left in sight we couldn't have done it without you we'll see you again soon both in the inuyasha movies and in the graphic novels and hey thanks again speaking of which there was a movie coming out only three months after the series ended on december 3rd we had a movie with a great chance for a final battle with nuraku to wrap things up to which i mean we did something entirely different with inuyasha fire on the mystic island barely making over 6 million dollars at the box office and being my personal least favorite of the movies it focuses on an island full of half demons who are being terrorized by four war gods there's a kikio clone there's a really cool leader to the group of villains who unites the team and makes a really lame final form sushomuru does the craziest sword you ha in the series but outside of that the movie is just kind of meh in my opinion not terrible but it feels more like an episode than a movie if that makes sense like in the first movie we fought against the descendant of one of toga's rivals the second we kill naraku a goddess is revived and naraku is brought back to life and in the third movie we learn about toga's death and a legendary sword in this movie it just kind of feels disconnected from the story as a whole especially considering where the anime left off and it wouldn't be until another five years later that the show would return for inuyasha the final act starting on october 3rd 2009 and there are a lot of things to talk about here while the final act has a lot of phenomenal moments it suffers from a pretty massive issue as i said the original series would cover the first 350 chapters of the manga and this would be done over 167 episode run the final act though would be required to cover the rest of the series up to chapter 558 that's another 200 chapters in only 26 episodes basically double the speed of the first season the idea for taking a hiatus was so that the manga could get far enough ahead or finish up so that the anime wouldn't keep having this issue of fillers popping up over and over again well that's great in theory but when you only get called back for a single season 26 episodes to cover 200 chapters you get the opposite problem you need to cut out so much content and squeeze in as much as you can to fit that and as a result the season feels super rushed and can feel a bit confusing which to be fair when you're jumping around as much as they are that's completely reasonable just as an example of what i mean here episode 1 of the final act has references to chapters 359-362 367-373-375-370 392 411 and 417. and like that's just a lot for one episode to cover and it's a problem that consists through much of the final act to be fair though as a result of so much being crammed into a small space you kind of get a greatest hits section of those 200 chapters and almost every episode has something very solid to offer especially early on we see a lot happening very quick the first two episodes have some of the greatest moments in the series in the first episode we see hakadoshi [ __ ] talking naraku and plotting against him while he is safe within his barrier to which nuraku just flips a switch turns off the barrier and hakuroshi gets sucked into the wind tunnel which is always so goddamn satisfying to watch especially because of just how confident he was that he had a chance and it was just taken away in a moment and then of course the second episode is kagura's death naraku gives her her freedom and then immediately attacks her and fills her with miasma leading sushomuru to break the tokugen on moriomoru before bolting to her when he smells her blood finally resulting in a very heartfelt moment between the two it's super sad super beautiful and easily one of the best moments that the show has to offer soon after kagura is killed nuraku will create yakuya to sort of fill in the gaps that she left behind and biakia will remain until the end of the series but basically he's just artsy fun kagura he's always willing to follow noraku's orders but at the same time he just doesn't seem to care that much basically as soon as things start going poorly he just says oh well guess i'm gonna leave and as a result you have this character who doesn't take himself seriously but has a very serious job and it's a very nice counterbalance especially when you're comparing him to the infant and hakudoshi who were just so damn dry and serious the entire time speaking of the infant he chills inside moriomuru for a bit until he tries to absorb naraku naraku hits him with the old uno reverse card and absorbs him back and still just not very interested in that story arc as a whole so let's move on to something that is interesting to me powerups we get a badass addition to sushomuru's arsenal as he replaces the tokigin by learning about the mato in general this is incredibly cool it allows him to finally cut the living and send them directly to the underworld meanwhile inuyasha gets another upgrade with the dragon scale ted saga which can absorb demonic energy and cut through demonic vortexes basically they each get abilities which allow them to one shot enemies and while those are definitely hype moments for the final act we quickly jump to two of the most emotionally heavy episodes in the series these being kikio and rin's death kikio's death is definitely much more impactful as it's permanent but also you just have this heartbreaking scene leading up to it we first see her spirit communicating with kaede and apologizing for making her sister suffer and like i never want to see kaede crying she's such a good person but then it hits again as we see her dying in inuyasha's arms and they're talking about the life they could have lived if it wasn't for naraku and inyasha explains how she was the first person that he loved and how much regret he feels for failing to save her but she tells him that just showing up was enough they kiss and her soul leaves her body passing through the entire group and giving light to kohaku before ascending to the sky this episode is brutally sad it really is just a bittersweet moment where kikio finally is allowed to rest and inuyasha gets a closure that he didn't get 50 years ago and with that their story together finally comes to an end in a genuinely beautiful moment on the much more casual side of character deaths though we have rin final act really does a good job of presenting growth with both inuyasha and sushomuru at the same pace as when one grows with either power or character the other will always follow suit so sashomaru sees his mom flying around in her dog form and for the second time in the series nearly 170 episodes later we finally see him transforming into the dog form as well it's always crazy to think about how sparingly they use this form versus how iconic it is in our minds regardless he visits his mom asks her about the mato and she opens a gate to the underworld which a beast comes out of grabs rin and jumps back into without thinking sushomuru dives in after her and we see him choosing to follow her even after being told there would be no chance for escape if he continued putting someone else's life well ahead of his own but when he does finally reach her she is already dead consumed by the netherworld and for the first time we see sashomeru stop as he acknowledges that there is more to life than the questing for power and that being strong wasn't worth losing wren at this point his character has come full circle from judging his father for giving up his own life to protect a human woman to completely understanding the value of a human woman's life as an act of kindness sashomaru purifies all the trapped souls within the netherworld and then manages to open a perfect maido so that he can escape seeing that he is so upset his mother offers to use her maido stone to bring rin back to life but warns him that this is the last time this can happen she reminds the shomeru that he isn't a god and even the ten sega can't skirt around death forever but with that sushomeru rin and jacon take their leave and keep in mind all of these big moments are only in the first nine episodes of the final act we are flying through the plot at this point and it doesn't really slow down there we have khanna's realization that she both has emotions and hope just for a moment before naraku forces her to self-destruct the eye codes gets repaired and upgraded inuyasha and sushomuru have a final fight before sashomuru gives up the maido from his ten sega to give inuyasha the maido test saga and kagoma gets her power released making her essentially spiritual energy jesus keeping up no good naraku teams up with the embodiment of evil from within the shikon jul magasuhi and together they try and take the last shard from kohaku who is able to remain alive due to kikio's light but not before we see magatsuhi challenging sushomuru and absolutely dominating him with no tokijin nomado a dog form with only three legs he is definitely outgunned agatsuhi manages to completely overwhelm him and then this green light starts emerging and with a burst of energy sushomuru ascends to becoming a dai yokai suddenly regrowing his arm and holding a new sword the bach saiga if the tessaga could kill a hundred demons in one slash the bach saga would kill a thousand but more importantly its destructive energy spreads from person to person and cell to cell meaning that even if nuraku has a crazy ability to heal the sword will just keep disintegrating him it is insanely badass we even get this moment soon after where bialkia shows up with an army of demons and sushomuru clears them out with one swing and we just have biaku there face full of confusion and it's just crystal clear that he doesn't get paid enough to deal with this but with that we're ready for the final battle raku has the completed shikon juul inuyasha has the maid of zangetsuha kagome is a spiritual nuke sango's hiraikos and sashomaru's box saga are more or less able to melt demons hiroku's wind tunnel is about ready to burst and absorb himself and shippo is also there sorry i had to get one more in naraku turns himself into a giant spider and everyone is forced inside of him to start fighting and here they fall into his traps raku casts illusions and forces them to come face to face with their greatest fear showing miroku his father's wind tunnel swallowing him whole and while he is used to that sango sees it and becomes terrified of what will happen meanwhile inuyasha gets possessed by magasuhi however he is definitely struggling to keep control nagasu he gets so frustrated that he's about to jump to a different body but as soon as he tries he gets caught in inuyasha's demon vortex and sushomuru uses the opportunity to kill him and while all of that is happening sango and miroku wander into even more illusions naraku is holding rin hostage and sango is forced to choose she can either kill nuraku and rin or watch miroku use his wind tunnel and have it consume him she decides that she'll choose miroku's life over rin's and throws the hiraikos but at the last second inuyasha and kagome arrive to dissolve the illusion revealing that this naraku was a fake and she would be killing rin for no reason a lot of people get on sango's back for wanting to kill rin but this is just the trolley problem do you let the train kill a child or the person you love and honestly i'm choosing my loved ones every single time sorry fam that's just the reality of it not to mention it isn't just some kid and the man she loves it's a kid and demon hitler versus the man she loves so yeah rin you already had three shots at life get over it you're gone and with the illusions finally out of the way everyone can converge on raku for the final fight kagome questions soraku's real desires and argues that the jewel never granted his wish and it hadn't onigumo had never got the chance to be with kikio like he originally wanted eventually through a big group effort they do manage to defeat him but with the last of biakuya's strength he uses a stolen maido to imprison kagome within the shikon jewel we pick up with the battle between midoriko and all the demons still rampaging as we learned that just as nuraku had been manipulating those around him for the last 50 years magitsuhi the evil within the jewel was also controlling raku inuyasha follows kagome with the tess saga and once they're together kagome makes the final wish to banish the shikon jewel forever they do the kissy kissy naraku midoriko and the demons fade away forever and this story meets its end with this kagome returns to the modern era but after three years she finally finds a way back where she is reunited with inuyasha shippo as well as miroku sango and their three children kohaku becomes the leader of the demon slayers sushomeru chills around the village and rin lives with kaede and finally the inuyasha anime has its ending on march 29 of 2010. the manga itself would also get one more chapter chapter 559 entitled inuyasha since then this was sort of a bonus epilogue chapter released after the tohoku triple disaster in japan to raise money for repair efforts the chapter would later be adapted into the first episode of yoshihime but we'll talk about that shortly first i want to give some just general thoughts on the series as a whole i think inuyasha is a story that anyone can really enjoy or fall in love with there is a lot of great action an engaging cast of characters that you genuinely care for phenomenal development in characters like sushomuru naraku kagura kikio inuyasha and sango that grow tremendously throughout the story there's comedy there's romance there's blood gore violence and historical references sewn into the fabric of the series the show has something for everyone and while the first two seasons are probably my favorite by far and are easily the most consistent every season has iconic moments that hit super hard or just get you very hyped and while yes there is a major problem with filler towards the middle of the series the decision to make the vast majority of that filler into episodes which are focused on exploring character dynamics and building relationships for the world or the lore that we're working with makes most of those episodes have intrinsic value that benefits inuyasha rather than being a detriment for it i'm not saying there are no bad fillers there's a lot of bad filler but even those tend to be used for growth or are at least funny enough that most people like them the only time these really get in the way of the series is when they pop up at really strange or inopportune times or when they go on for an excessive amount of episodes in a row which really drag out the story and again we specifically see this happening at both ends of the band of seven arc what really made inyasha special though was the way that rumiko managed to tie her characters together through purposeful and tangible goals and aspirations everyone knew what each character should be doing at all times and because of this the series always felt like it made sense regardless of what was happening in the story not only that but there were powerful and intentional themes and motifs that acted as through lines in the story and as a result it always feels like inuyasha among these themes there are four that tend to be at the core of most situations firstly wishes within the series itself every instance of making a wish either acts as a faustian bargain or a monkey poll wish but the end is always the same you ask for something to change and don't appreciate the life that you currently have and as a result you get nothing or worse the wish backfires that's why the quote unquote correct wish is to banish the jewel to wish for no more wishes and accept the natural order of the world secondly rumiko has a huge focus on gender themes within the series overtly she represents this in characters like kagome fitting gender norms while sango might oppose them and there's always a diversity and a spectrum of how people express gender in the series however on a more subtextual level rumiko focuses on the idea of femininity through inuyasha kikiyo sango kagura and kagome while masculinity is seen in sushomuru miroku raku and koga and in general these are also depicted through the difference between humanity and demons with many of the characters in the feminine list we have people specifically demonstrating difficulties or adversities that women face kikio is forced to live a life that she doesn't want to sango demonstrates women can be powerful and stand up for themselves but because of this she can struggle to feel vulnerable because she thinks she needs to be strong all the time kagome is just a very stereotypical view on what adolescence is like for girls love triangles feeling out of place etc tagura is directly oppressed and trapped by a man in her life where she can't escape his reach and with inuyasha it's a little bit more on the nose but once every 28 days we see him experiencing a time of vulnerability agitation shame high emotions and openness on the other side though we have the masculine characters each of which are presented as rough or lacking in one part of their character that needs to be fixed sashomaru is a stoic who is out of touch with his emotions miroku is a pervert who has trouble staying with one person nuraku is manipulative controlling and awful all while himself dealing with being manipulated and controlled toga is an absolute fuckboy who is way too aggressive and sees women as objects for much of the series and inuyasha in his demon form is the embodiment of lack of control of anger and of violence the more you look into it the more you see gender being expressed throughout the show in its characters our third theme is not belonging we've talked about this already but kagome is in the wrong time inuyasha is a hanyo kikio is the walking dead it's a smaller core of characters but it has a heavier emphasis throughout the entirety of the story and finally the last theme is manipulation and abuse nuraku is the common thread that ties so many characters together these are the people that he abuses and then leaves in a web for him to consume later it's only through working together opening up to friends and challenging that abuser which our cast are able to attain closure freedom new love and in some cases a second chance at life these aren't all the themes that are present in the series but these are the big four in my opinion and every part of the show comes back to at least one of these themes in some way or another in most cases this is also the difference between a good and bad filler as well good filler like the sara asuno episodes will explore these themes of wishing and wanting to belong with someone and unrequited love femininity and manipulation it hits all the bases and that's why it's such a good damn arc the episodes and filler that i tend to dislike are the ones that barely touch on these themes and to me at least that was always the big difference maker but on the note of stories which don't meet the core themes of inuyasha i guess it's time that we touch on yoshihime this brings us to october 3rd 2020 the release of the first episode of hanyo no yoshihime and before we get into it let me be clear i had fun watching yashihime it was an okay time does that mean that the show is great no i am not blind or ignorant to all the massive glaring issues that it has and there are plenty of issues in honesty the reason i enjoyed the series as much as i did is because of the sense of community that came with it my channel was growing i got to meet a ton of new people made a lot of new friends and that's what made the series fun sharing it with them the show itself is super flawed and part of loving a series is acknowledging its problems so i'm just gonna be straightforward and blunt with it yashahime is a sequel series focusing on the children of the inu gang while rumiko would be in charge of character design and would often be a resource for the writers she was far from as involved as she was with inuyasha likely the result of her working on the mao manga at the same time that yashihime was being released and not being able to balance those needs instead teruo sato would be the director and katsuyuni sumisawa would work on the screenplay sato had been involved with storyboarding on the original enyasha as well as directing a few episodes for the final act and even rhonda one half so he had a pretty decent history with the material and with rumiko as a whole sumisawa had worked on the inuyasha movies the final act sailor moon and naruto so between the two of them they had a lot going for them in terms of being rumiko's successors on top of that because of the clamor for a sashomeru spin-off series after inuyasha ended this series would have a focus on his daughters with toa playing the main lead with her twin setsuna and inuyasha's daughter moroha playing a more do-it-aragonist or secondary protagonist role while those two definitely were important to the series it more often felt like they were the moroku and sango of the group where the story would follow toa primarily and the other characters just got significantly less screen time and attention when it was announced we were also kind of teased that sango and miroku's son heisui as well as kohaku and a shippo clone named takachiyo would be forming our core cast along with the girls however things didn't really shake out that way on top of that they very intentionally kept the twins mother a secret for a very long time sparking some of the most annoying and angry fan debates i've ever seen with half the viewers thinking that it would be rin and the other half thinking it would be the already deceased kagura [Music] no and then claiming the series was inherently pedophilic as a result of sushomuru and rin creating a family and i get that take but i also gotta say that people need to calm the [ __ ] down because the inuyasha series as a whole is one where you need to concede that demons are nearly unaging and immortal meaning any relationship between characters like toga and izayoi or inuyasha and kagome all inherently have the same problem but generally i just don't give enough of a [ __ ] to dedicate even a second more of my life around this debate and i'm probably not going to be addressing it anymore in this video more importantly is the actual story of yashahime around 20 years after nuraku's defeat toa and setsuna were living on their own as children until a forest fire separated them with toa being pulled into a portal to the future where she was adopted by kagome's brother sota and you immediately get a bunch of questions here why were they living on their own what happened to sushomeru what happened to rin and that's kind of the goal of the series in fact as we find out later rin kagome and inuyasha have all been sealed away in some form or another and supposedly the girls are aiming to free them but that idea really never starts to come to the forefront until much later in the show on top of that miroku is doing a kai hogiyo or a thousand day training shippo is doing fox school or some [ __ ] like that sango is mostly written out of the show and this is the only shot that we see of koga and this is the biggest gripe with yoshihime as a sequel to inuyasha the characters that we grew to know and love were almost entirely taken out of the series and we're left with a strange limbo where everything feels kind of familiar but the people that connected us to that world are gone and it's not like all of those characters needed to play a heavy or active role in the sequel hell the idea of a few of them being sealed away and people needing to go find them is actually a very good one if it's being addressed actively but it just wasn't instead it seemed like they were going out of their way to avoid including any of the old cast which just felt crazy let's be real the pull towards yashahime was nostalgia at the same time they were holding that nostalgia hostage from their fans they were quite literally putting up a sign saying hey you love dino yasha and we have inuyasha so come check it out but when you actually checked out the show instead they'd be saying sorry we don't have inuyasha here i don't know why you thought we did and speaking of things that didn't exactly hold up to what we thought might happen heisui and kohaku were used super sparingly and rarely made appearances and in heisu's case when he did show up he was almost never useful of the three support cast members that we were supposed to get takachio became the more mainstay and consistent member to join them on any journeys but he never really played a more active role he was almost more similar to miyoga than a real member of the group he'd show up make fun of moroho and then send her on a quest and all that just kind of left us with a series that was being marketed as something different than what we received and that's for better or for worse the girls themselves were also very let's say divisive characters toa is this tomboy raised in the modern era who struggles with the morality involved with survival in the past she's idealistic she's naive and of the three girls she is easily the one that people have the biggest problem with which might not be an issue if she wasn't the main protagonist the biggest complaints about her were that she was a mary sue and that she would have to be given the same lesson to relearn over and over again well i don't think she's exactly a mary sue i definitely do see the argument for me the biggest problem with toa though is that she just wasn't really funny charismatic or engaging there are a lot of people who like her but i think that most people can acknowledge that her character doesn't get the development or writing that she needed to shine properly what made inuyasha and kagome fantastic leads for their story is that both of them have a lot to offer in terms of personality there is clear development they're both very funny they are strong characters on their own but they also supplement those around them and with toa it feels like you're really struggling to get any of that and it's not just toa her sister setsuna is a writing disaster early on but she is a lot more interesting later as she becomes a character that i really ended up liking at the start of the show though she has amnesia and doesn't remember her early childhood mix that in with the stoicness and seriousness of sushomuru and you have all the personality of a bag of sand i made the argument before and i'll make it again sushomuru is an exceptionally badass character who is stoic and mysterious but the biggest thing that he has going for him is that he's not a main character so shomeru works so well because we only see him a few times a season it's small doses of this guy that we don't know anything about that makes us want to know more however setsuna is always present there's nothing in her character that lets us get attached or build a connection early on we aren't saying i wondered about this part of setsu's character we're saying i wonder why the writers haven't explained who setsuna is yet it's a small difference that makes a huge shift in quality and it's a core issue with yoshihime as a whole they raise a lot of questions that we don't want the answers to but that we need the answers to and we very rarely get those answers until much further into the story setsuna begins becoming a really engaging and interesting character around episode 20 when she finally gets some of her memory back and the show finally gives us a look into her backstory and tells us who she is as a character which crazy go figure but like i said beyond here she does begin to become very interesting and by the end of it she's just an all-around decent character and finally we have morocha this is the one that most people really enjoy she's very funny she's dynamic she brings a lot of energy that the show is missing and especially early on muraha genuinely feels like all of the personality that the cast has to offer which is a problem in itself but at the same time they're also using her as the butt for every joke for the beginning half the series and it almost feels malicious like the writers are actively trying to bully their most likable character for example she is constantly trying to use her rouge to transform into beniosha only for it to be swatted out of her hands at the last second and for her to become more or less useless for the rest of the fight or whenever she kills a bounty the body fades away to dust leaving nothing behind and nothing for her to be rewarded for and it just kind of feels like they're punching down most of the time beyond this because morocco shines so brightly as a character who has this strong sense of identity and personality she kind of eclipses both of the twins and things just feel off balance very quickly we have a show where the main two characters are less interesting than their main supporting character and that just feels like an odd choice and as for the actual plot of the story we basically get put on three tracks all of which are fairly interesting in their own right but don't get the consistent development that they need or the focus given to them at any point in the story firstly we have the sacred tree who takes the form of kikio which is a whole thing people got very mad but i promise it does not [ __ ] matter if you got upset about this and you're still feeling upset about this grow up trichio tells the girls that shoshomuru is working with kirin mataru the main big bad to bring about the degenerate age and they will have to kill both kiramaru and their father if they want to stop him we don't really know much about kiramaru other than he's toga's old rival and we know nothing about the degenerate age until the last five or six episodes of the story of course if you do know your buddhist mythology might have like an inkling of what it might be but even then it's not exactly a one-to-one translation and while this is sort of a unifying goal stopping the end of the world or whatever it isn't exactly a personal thing like the original anime had with nuraku neither toa nor setsuna have a personal connection with sushomuru because they've been separated their whole life and no one in this group is really connected to kiramaru so you kind of have these disjointed factors bringing about the end of the world that none of them are personally being drawn towards the shared goal is present in our second story track though finding parents but even in this it's not really a unified thing moraha is looking for inuyasha and kagome sometimes and the twins are looking for rin they have similar goals but they aren't the same goal and they aren't mutually exclusive moraha could very easily find her parents without rin ever being saved and vice versa and while this is a focus for the story it tends to not come up until much later we really don't pursue this idea at all until the second season and by the time we actually rescue these characters we're too far into the story for them to feel like they've impacted the story in any way shape or form even after enyash and kagome escape being trapped in the world between the living and the dead they aren't really helpful we have like a 30 second fight between inuyasha and kirin maru but that's really it they don't really help with the development of the girls or with the finale of the show and finally we have these seven rainbow pearls that we don't really know anything about but it is clear that they give a big power boost main cast start off with three of them and the big bad kiramaru also has three in his employ finally riku someone will meet a little bit later also has the last one we don't know what happens when they're collected but despite them being brought up constantly it is only riku who actively seeks out and collects them which is pretty strange essentially we have jewel shards that the main cast doesn't really care about collecting and at that point why are they even in the show in fact the rainbow pearls only play a development in one of the antagonists zero and her own role is fairly short-lived on its own which just makes this feel like a bit of an odd choice as well and by now you're probably picking up on a lot of things that are different from what inuyasha was the goals of the characters are scattered we have rough destinations but no real motivations to get to those points even in terms of the parents none of the girls knew their parents and typically don't really show an interest in finding them until they're pretty close to being able to do so the villain often feels like he's without purpose because we don't know what his goal means he wants to bring about the degenerate age but what is that is he going to be king of the world is he going to destroy the world what is the goal here on top of that he often seems like he's being guided by zero early on which doesn't really play out through the entirety of the story we knew the shikon jewel boosted demons and granted wishes but what were the pearls really capable of when collected and why don't our cast care about them in yashahime the original cast was missing or more or less irrelevant if they were around and this new cast lacked personality and had a lot of people feeling disinterested and even foundational parts of the franchise were missing remember those four core themes that were integral to inuyasha being gender wishes lack of belonging and manipulation none of those are really represented here and as a result the show can often feel like a mismanaged filler episode on top of that inuyasha is as rumiko as stories can get and that means that it heavily dived into both romance and comedy and aside from a later developing romance between toa and riku that barely gets explored there's just no romance to be seen in this series which is super strange not to mention plot points which were very heavily focused on in inuyasha are just missing in yoshihime like we never see kohaku and sango speak together in the entire series when the majority of the original inuyasha was spent with sango trying to get her brother back why would they not interact in this follow-up show it just doesn't make sense but at other times yoshihime was too much like inuyasha by which i mean they literally just took chapters from the manga that were skipped over in the original run or the final act and turned them into episodes for yoshihime and this inherently has a lot of problems but the biggest of them is that these stories weren't meant for these characters they were in the original series because they were suited to the cast of that story and facilitated the themes that were being explored at the time which just didn't follow through here yoshihime also tries to pay homage to the original story for example episode 13 of enyasha was the mystery of the new moon and the black haired inuyasha while episode 12 of yashahime was the knight of the new moon and the black-haired toa and these plots are essentially the same but without the emotional growth that enyasha and kagome showed and on this point of the new moon they made a couple strange decisions in regards to the new moon period as well toa never turned human in the modern era because she was out of her time setsuna never turned human because she didn't sleep and moraha is a quarter demon so she never has any change and you kind of just have to shrug and say sure why not because in terms of toa this feels like they made the mistake of saying hey wouldn't toa have known this in the present oops we didn't think about that or hey shouldn't setsuna have noticed this in the past oops we didn't think about that it feels like they're retconning their own series and they're only 12 episodes in honestly i'm not going to spend too much time on yashahime because at the end of the day i feel like i'd just be repeating myself forever the series is just filled with strange choices of which i think the most emblematic examples can be found in the finales of each season at the end of the first season setsuna is killed by kiramaru and the blood of toga where they were fighting both toa and moroha create these spiritual energy beasts they fight kiramatu with these monsters in a space-like environment they're crushing planets there's energy beams it is a [ __ ] wild time and it does not belong in this series at all this is a naruto or dragon ball fight with a splash of grin logon nothing like this has ever been seen in inuyasha it has never been seen in yoshihime up to this point and nothing like it would ever be seen again they brought it up and they never mentioned this crazy thing that just happened and when it is time to fight kiramaru at the end of the series proper the end of season 2 it isn't the girls joining together to defeat him it's sushomuru they weren't even the ones to beat the main villain in their own story and that just feels very wrong on a lot of levels now before i move on from yashahime i do want to cover some stuff i do like about the series because i feel like i got pretty negative for a bit and maybe i was a bit too harsh there are several new characters introduced who i really like riku and ryon are fantastic riku is hilarious he's flirty he's fun and he has a really cool set of abilities he has an interesting dynamic with both the villains and the heroes and in general every scene with him in it tends to be a great one he kind of reminds me of this middle point of like bonkotsu jakotsu and biakuya lots of confidence lots of energy very open and extremely casual rion on the other hand is this character struggling to come to terms with her feelings for her father kiran maru both hating him for wanting to destroy the world and still loving him for the time they spent together they don't always do her character right and they definitely make some weird [ __ ] choices at the end but as a whole i do like her quite a bit kiramaru for a lot of the series feels lost and without direction but he carries this very strong sense of justice and honor which i love seeing in a villain it's a cool dynamic after zero died that all just disappears though it's like a switch was flipped and they never really addressed the core reason why there's never like a monologue where kiramaru explains his feelings or his thoughts ever takes place and because of this it just suddenly feels like he's a different character and he quickly falls off we also have miroku's twins kinu and gyokuto which might be the best characters in the entire franchise they are chaos embodied and i love them both the reunion between moroha and her parents as well as with rin and the twins both are done really really well they're super wholesome they're very cute they have great emotional weight and i'm really happy with those scenes in general although it is kind of strange that rin promises a hug between sashomaru and the girls and then we never get that moment and finally i loved how much they dove into toga's character in this series as well and how he was tied together with the antagonist zero there are plenty of great individual moments scattered throughout the series but at the same time it's just kind of a jumbled mess i'm honestly not sure if i would recommend this to people who loved enyasha because i'm not sure it adds anything to the story they knew i wouldn't tell them not to watch it but i don't really think it's a necessary viewing if you enjoyed the first series yashahime felt like a property created with the intention of bringing in new fans to a series but only using nostalgia to pull those fans in it's at odds with itself from the very beginning and it really is unfortunate because it had a lot of potential luckily despite the anime being finished at this time that potential isn't entirely lost the manga being written by takashi shina is fantastic i finally caught up to it and this is what the anime should have been all the girls have really likable personalities they make them stand out and they feel like protagonists leading the story it's funny it has a clear goal and through line people actually go through the effort of explaining the situation to the girls and not just let them wander aimlessly they tell them where they come from and explain things instead of just never bringing it up and the manga just all around is a story i wish we had so far and i'm hoping that they continue with this pace but only time will tell finally i think i just want to talk about the standing legacy of inuyasha rumiko takahashi herself has inspired countless mangaka however she was also instrumental in opening the doors for women to enter the scene even now despite over 20 years passing since the original was released it's clear to see the impact that inuyasha had on the anime sphere as a whole and the most recent example of this was probably demon slayer the anime that took the world by storm over the past few years and it's almost hard not to compare it to inuyasha it's a historical piece where the main character and every new friend he makes is deeply affected by the actions of a sick human who needed to become a shape-shifting demon to survive eventually turning into a mastermind who hides himself away and sends his demon followers that he created to do his bidding as he pulls the strings in the shadows and i mean i've seen that story before somewhere i'm of course in no way saying that demon slayer is a carbon copy of inuyasha nor am i saying that enyasha is the only anime that inspired demon slayer i just think that it's extremely cool to see that the themes and styles of the story are being passed on through the years even if its own sequel didn't quite get the message and i think that's going to be it that's where the story of inuyasha ends for now and genuinely i can't express how much i love this series enough but it isn't without its flaws in a lot of ways the anime is almost like the chicone jewel itself it's something really incredible but it gets shattered fragmented and scattered it finds its way into several people's hands and they each do what they can with it it isn't always done in a positive way but when everything is put back in place and looked at in its entirety it really is something beautiful that can often feel like a dream come true it's filled with both great and terrible things but capable of being what anyone needs at any given time and that's why i think that while it's not perfect inuyasha will forever be considered one of the great classic anime that touched a generation of people and inspired many more to come thank you all so much for watching and until next time i hope you all stay excellent

Channel: AxelBeats!

Views: 153,404

Keywords: yashahime, Inuyasha, AxelBeats, Hanyo No Yashahime, HnY, Inuyasha & Yashahime: A Complete Retrospective Analysis, Inuyasha Anime Analysis, Inuyasha Anime Review, Inuyasha Manga Review, Yashahime Manga Review, Yashahime Anime Review, Inuyasha Sequel, Kagome, Moroha, Shippo, Miroku, Sango, Sesshomaru, Naraku, Shikon Jewel, Kagura, Rin, Band Of Seven, Inuyasha Dub, Yashahime Dub, Moroha meets inuyasha, anime review, setsuna, towa, inuyasha funny moments, inuyasha ost, Yashahime Season 3

Id: K3YmHC6N2YM

Length: 156min 43sec (9403 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 30 2022