Inuyasha: Season 2
Monday, March 28, 2011
Due to the long running nature of this show, there WILL be some spoilers in this review and the reviews to follow related to subsequent seasons. Read at your own risk, you have been warned.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, welcome back for the review of the second season of Inuyasha. Since we already did introductions in the previous review you can access it by either clicking on this link here, or going down to the list of reviewed anime and clicking on the label marked "Inuyasha." In case you forgot, Inuyasha was produced by Sunrise based on the manga by Rumiko Takahashi, and is licensed in the U.S. by Viz Media. Now that we've taken care of attributions, let's head back down the well. That scattered McGuffin... ahem... I mean, those sacred jewel shards... aren't gonna wait around forever.
When we last left our heroes (sure Inuyasha pretends he's a villain but he should really stop kidding himself), Sango had finally joined the party, and the Inu-nakama was continuing its search for the Jewel of Four Souls, and the real villain of the piece Naraku. Almost immediately things get ugly. What's the first thing that happens in this season's first episode? Why Miroku succumbs to lechery and ends up getting attacked and making his wind tunnel bigger, which is very BAD, because the more that thing widens, the sooner he's going to bite it. So he has to deal with that. What happens in the next episode? They find a slaughtered village (refer to my quip in the first review about Japan's feudal population) and how did this tragedy come about? Naraku's revived Sango's dead brother with a jewel shard and had him kill everyone, giving Sango even more to angst about. What happens in the next few story arcs? Well, it is safe to say things get progressively worse. (But let's face it, that's part of the fun.) When Naraku shows up he forces Sango to make a choice between sparing Kohaku's life by stealing Inuyasha's Tetsusaiga, or allowing him to die because he'll take the sacred jewel shard out of his back. Things get progressively tougher as Kikyo shows up after Naraku tries to corrupt her and use her to steal the jewel shards, which she ends up doing, giving Naraku even more evil powers, though it turns out she's just trying to enact her own ploy to destroy him along with the jewel, killing two birds with one stone. Naturally, this ploy causes a lot of friction between Inuyasha and Kagome because neither of them want to think ill of Kikyo but they are really distressed that Naraku's getting some new powers, and some of them are potentially very nasty as a result of his having more shards.
As the first season spent so much time introducing the main characters, we get a lot of emphasis in this season on many of the supporting characters, rivals and antagonists that live around the area. Surprisingly, filler is actually quite minimal, with the episode about Jinenji the half demon that runs a nearby herb garden being the only true distraction. But there are a whole bunch of other characters who make their first appearances as well. Naturally, there's Kohaku, Sango's younger brother who made a very brief and tragic appearance at the end of season one, who is little more than Naraku's pawn at this point, as the trauma of killing all the other slayers and dying shortly after has left him begging to forget everything. Naraku has obliged, perhaps a bit too well. But we also get the introduction of Rin, a young human girl whom Sesshoumaru allows to travel with him and Jaken after the introduction of his sword Tenseiga, which can only revive the dead, making it useless to him (which is why he's so obsessed with Tetsusaiga). Rin finds him while he recovers after one of his fights with Inuyasha but she is killed by wolves, which leads Tenseiga to prompt Sesshoumaru to revive her when he comes across her later. Out of that same fight, we also get introduced to Totosai, an old fire-breathing friend of Myoga's who happens to also have been the one who forged Tetsusaiga and Tenseiga in the first place, from the fangs of Inuyasha's father.
We also get the introduction of a number of new antagonists following Kikyo's handing the nakama's jewel shards over to Naraku. Following Rin's introduction to Sesshoumaru's nakama, we soon meet the wolf demon Koga, who initially possesses three jewel shards but loses one in the course of the arc that introduces him. I can't say I care too much for how they handled Koga from a moral perspective. Maybe it's just me, but I think it's a little too easygoing to forgive someone for slaughtering a whole village and maybe other villages off-screen, just because he's sworn off eating humans lately because he's fallen for Kagome. All this situation seems to have accomplished is to make the love triangle between Inuyasha, Kagome, and Kikyo, into a trapezoid with dotted lines on one angle. Koga thinks he's in the running but all I see him doing is fighting with Inuyasha and causing conflict. I don't see it happening. To make things worse, Naraku decided manipulating him was an excellent excuse to introduce some of his spiffy new minions which he can now create out of his flesh thanks to those jewel shards and spending an episode or two making himself a new body (we'll look at that later). The first of these, a demon wind-sorceress called Kagura, promptly slaughters most of Koga's wolves giving Naraku yet another plaything to torment... um I mean another enemy whose out to kill him. After the introduction of Kanna, an aura-less demon who represents the void, most of his other incarnations or minions are totally temporary. Though, Goshinki the mind reading giant lizard... ogre... thing... did have some interestingly unforeseen things happen because of his intervention.
As if the main plot was not crazy enough, we've got a number of sub-plots developing at this point. Among them we have hints of a little romance between Miroku and Sango (his lechery notwithstanding), and the interplay between Inuyasha and Kagome as they try to negotiate their relationship and how it relates to Kikyo. For those who prefer war to love, there's some more interesting stuff going on in relation to Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru's swords. With the introduction of Totosai, Inuyasha learns about and gains to ability to use a special attack with his Tetsusaiga called the Kaze no Kizu, or the Windscar in the English version. This leads to the introduction of Sesshoumaru's sword as mentioned above. Sometime later in the series this comes back with the introduction and subsequent death of Goshinki. See, during the fight, he bit the sword and it broke. (Inuyasha really needs to take better care of his heirlooms.) Although apparently the sword was bequeathed to him for a reason because apparently it keeps him from going on homicidal rampages when backed into a corner. Needless to say, after that Goshinki was toast. Even though Tetsusaiga get's repaired later, Sesshoumaru takes Goshinki's fangs and makes an evil sword of his own called Tokijin. For the remainder of the season, Inuyasha has trouble using his sword because Totosai used one of his fangs to fix it, until he faces Ryukotsusei in the final story arc and learns another spiffy new move called the Bakuryuha, or the Backlash Wave. However, in the meantime, because he hasn't relearned how to use the sword yet, the transformations into a demonic ax-crazy maniac persist, much to his concern as well as the concern of those around him.
There were a number of things I really liked about this season. I like that it stuck to the plot for the most part and wasn't taking so many non-pivotal side-trips as in the first season. It was also nice to see a bit more of the character development and the interplay between the different groups as they developed. Having lots of space to get into that sort of thing really helps. Among the little things are Kagome's interactions with her schoolmates in the present. By the end of the season they are almost all convinced that Inuyasha is some kind of juvenile delinquent which really works for comedy. But perhaps my favorite thing about this season was the individual character arcs for Sango, Kagome, and Inuyasha. Sango has this ongoing story about trying to find her brother and her inner conflict about the horrible things he's done while under Naraku's control. Kagome has her plot with trying to deal with her feelings about Inuyasha and Kikyo that is continuously bubbling just below the surface, and her own confusion about what's going on gives her a lot of personal conflict. Inuyasha doesn't just have that to deal with. He also has to deal with the shock of turning into a monster that he can't control. At first he's really cavalier about it but eventually he realizes that he can no longer stay in denial. He has to learn to use Testsusaiga again, because there are no other alternatives. This in itself is an important growing point for his character and very satisfying to watch. Not to mention, it is pretty awesome to be able to see him take on Ryukotsusei, his father's old enemy, and kill him when you know that even Daddy had a little trouble with that one.
This being said, there are an equal number of things about this series that were still kind of annoying. For one thing Kagome is still into the inner monologues. (Come on girl, we're not 5 years old, you don't have to spell it out for us!) The whole group still likes to use each other's names when talking to each other all the time, so we still get that "Inuyasha!" "Kagome!" stuff for which the series is infamous. (It was funny at first, but it's starting to get old.) There was the Koga thing I talked about before, and then there were a number of times where the characters were standing around talking while the villain of the week was just watching, almost like he was trying to be polite and let them finish. I don't know, maybe Naraku was just being chivalrous? Perhaps the worst thing about this season though, was how little Kagome told Inuyasha to sit. Now I know that sounds weird, so let me explain. This has nothing to do with the comedic stuff. I'm talking about plot related points where the face-plant necklace Inuyasha wears wouldn't just have come in handy, but where it could have saved lives. Like for instance, the third time Inuyasha turns into a demonic harbinger of death, he neatly ripped the demon who brought him to that point to shreds and then promptly starts tearing the human bandits that had been following the demon apart like a dog goes after a new pair of shoes,(sorry, couldn't resist) in front of a bunch of helpless women and children no-less who were likely to be traumatized for life by the horrible slaughter of a bunch of men who had no fight left in them to begin with. The worst of it couldn't be seen on screen thanks to TV editing, but the rest of the Inu-nakama just stands there in horror and watches. And I'm thinking "Any time now Kagome, you can still stop this!" I mean, telling him to sit worked the first time it happened, and the second time, so why didn't she use it here? Same thing happens in the fight with Ryukotsusei. Sure if she said the word then, one could argue that it would take time away from him that he could use to not get crushed, but at least it would get him back out of murder mode and back on track. (In all fairness he eventually did. It wasn't the plot that bothered me it was just the methodology of it, that's all)
I don't have much more to say in terms of style and animation though I did notice a couple of poorly constructed sequences where some of the characters looked like paper cutouts on a screen (not that anime is particularly high budget filming to begin with so I'm just being snarky ^^;). Otherwise, the show is still solid and it's progressing nicely. There's also a new intro and ending introduced. "I Am" by Hitomi and "Dearest" by Ayumi Hamasaki are both very nice pieces, the second of which may actually be one of my personal favorites out of the themes connected the series. Many of the Japanese voice actors for some of the new characters don't necessarily have huge resumes, but if you're interested in a real time capsule actor Totosai's seiyuu, Jouji Yanami has a rep sheet going back as far as 1963, playing characters like Dr. Gilmore in the Cyborg 009 anime from 1968 and Dr. Briefs in Dragonball which was made during the 1980's. (What can I say? Stuff like that interests me. ^^) The English dub continues to do it's job well, though after having seen the Japanese dub all the way through I'm actually starting to like it better. I'm still having fun, and that's what counts. See you guys next month when we get into season 3.
Images taken from Inuyasha.
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| Kagome: Inuyasha... Inuyasha: Kagome... Kagome: Stop it with this Kikyo obsession, you do know she's dead right? It's creeping me out! |
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| Sorry Sango, but from now on, any future interaction with your brother will automatically be labeled "trap." |
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| As if Naraku wasn't bad enough, now he not only has his own goon squad, but he made it out of himself!... Eww... |
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| Miroku: Sango, did you just ask me to ask you to bear my children? The Tiger: Oh boy, this can only end badly. |
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| Epic heirloom sword: One eyeball being excruciatingly ripped open and opening a warp to the underworld. Destroying an enemy even Daddy couldn't kill: Priceless. |
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| Uh... Kagome... the demon's dead, it's time to tell him to sit now... he's going after those fleeing bandits, why aren't you saying it?... FOR THE LOVE OF GOD KAGOME! SAY THE WORD, BEFORE HE SLAUGHTERS EVERYONE! |
I don't have much more to say in terms of style and animation though I did notice a couple of poorly constructed sequences where some of the characters looked like paper cutouts on a screen (not that anime is particularly high budget filming to begin with so I'm just being snarky ^^;). Otherwise, the show is still solid and it's progressing nicely. There's also a new intro and ending introduced. "I Am" by Hitomi and "Dearest" by Ayumi Hamasaki are both very nice pieces, the second of which may actually be one of my personal favorites out of the themes connected the series. Many of the Japanese voice actors for some of the new characters don't necessarily have huge resumes, but if you're interested in a real time capsule actor Totosai's seiyuu, Jouji Yanami has a rep sheet going back as far as 1963, playing characters like Dr. Gilmore in the Cyborg 009 anime from 1968 and Dr. Briefs in Dragonball which was made during the 1980's. (What can I say? Stuff like that interests me. ^^) The English dub continues to do it's job well, though after having seen the Japanese dub all the way through I'm actually starting to like it better. I'm still having fun, and that's what counts. See you guys next month when we get into season 3.
Images taken from Inuyasha.