Inuyasha: Season 4

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.

Welcome back to our extended Inuyasha review and now that we're on Season 4, and whew, I am so glad to know that there's only two seasons left. But on to business. As noted before, if you want to see the earlier portions of this review, you can go to these links here for seasons 1, 2, and 3 or if you like you can go to the Reviewed Shows gadget and click on the tab marked "Inuyasha" to see all of these at once. In case you forgot, Inuyasha is produced by Sunrise, based on the manga by Rumiko Takahashi, and licensed by Viz Media. Naraku's gone missing, so slip on your walking shoes, and let the search begin!...   er...   again!...

Where's an exterminator when you need one?

When we last left our heroes (and no, I'm not even bothering to consider whether this distinction is accurate anymore, this is the last you will hear from me on this point), the Inu-nakama had Naraku on the run after breaking into his castle, nearly destroying him and almost having a fight with Sesshomaru in the process. After a few days of chilling where Kagome went back home, and present day hilarity ensued as Inuyasha experienced life in the modern era, they returned to the feudal period in order to continue the search for a villain that had suddenly become very hard to locate. (So hard in fact, that he only shows up in flash back during the entirety of this season!) So what do you do when you can't find your designated despicably evil main antagonist? Well for one, you beat up on anything that comes out in his absence. That's right, the lesser demons are now active because they think that while the big bad cat Naraku represented is away, the rats are gonna play, and play they do. Enough so that the whole first half of the season is related to the characters trying to deal with various (and often annoying) demons that are coming out of the woodwork. Naturally, such things are the stuff of filler, and yes, sadly, that's what much of this part of the season is. It seems the side-quest que wasn't quite emptied during the last season after all. At least in this seasons some of it is somewhat legitimized by the fact that they are having difficulty finding Naraku, but it can wear on you a little bit after the monster of the week formula has been in effect for the last fifteen episodes or so.

All these hijinks are funny and all,
but can we please get back to the plot?

That's not to say that we don't get some character development or some interesting side characters out of it. For instance, in one two-part story arc, the nakama was introduced to this funny old lady who was working as an exorcist and even though she was an old fraud who couldn't sense spiritual energy worth anything, she was shrewd enough in other things that she could get by just fine anyway. This worked for comedy very well when she correctly guessed that Sango and Miroku liked each other in spite of Miroku's dirtier habits. We also get to explore some interesting questions, such as: "What would happen if Sesshomaru and Koga ran into each other?" and "What would happen if someone tried to create a new sacred jewel rather than look for the old one?" or "What would happen if Kirara disappeared?" These are of interest in their own right as it was an unknown quantity whether Koga and Sesshy would pick a fight or just ignore each other. The sacred jewel question could have turned out to be a very tragic story indeed as it involves the plight of a half demon who wants to create a sacred jewel because he wants his humanity. Unfortunately, he lands on the side of evil as he plans to make said jewel by using human souls, with the Inu-nakama as the spiritual base. (Yipe!) As for the Kirara question, it turns into a whodunnit as Shippo plays detective and casts blame on everyone else which is really funny. Rin, Sesshomaru's young companion also gets a little bit of character development, and we get a riff on the traditional Yuki Onna fairy tale as Miroku is lured into a trap by a snowy demon disguised as an attractive woman (big surprise).  We also get some fun antics when Kagome goes back to the future due to a cold and Inuyasha follows, helping her deal with the illness, and then subsequently seeing his first supermarket. He also ends up having to give Sota advice about love which is totally hilarious (not to mention there's bonus points for meta-references as Kagome dresses her kid brother up like Conan from Detective Conan which ran alongside Takahashi's manga in Shonen Sunday). As fun as all of this is, it's not going to matter too much in the grand scheme of things.

Hey Kohaku, where ya been all this time?

Some things do however, such as Kikyo's encounter with an old bandit who asks her to take a lock of his hair to a distant holy sight so that he may be saved (as per the Buddhist tradition) and she agrees. Not only that but in a surprising twist on an episode involving monkey spirits that would otherwise have been totally slapstick-based, the monkey god that they find at the end of the episode tells them that he felt something really evil heading in the direction of the Ox-Tiger, which is Northeast. Hmm...   I wonder what that could be...     this also happens to be the direction from which one of Koga's new satellite characters (Ayame, the daughter of a powerful wolf demon elder) happens to be from which explains her appearance in a two-part arc at the beginning of the season where she tries to bring him back to help her tribe. Once all the players know whats up (Including Sesshomaru and Koga, and their respective parties) the journey drags it's feet the whole way, as everyone encounters more loose demons that really shouldn't be out after curfew. However, once we finally get to Mount Hakurei, where everyone seems to have gathered, things finally get serious again. Koga and his group encounter a really nasty giant calling himself Kyokotsu of the Band of Seven and ends up having to kill him, which results in the discovery that the Saimyosho are around which by default, means Naraku is in on this. Meanwhile, the nakama discover's that Kohaku is around, and that he's been working with the Band of Seven as a sort of liason to regroup everybody as they've kind of scattered after Naraku resurrected them with Jewel shards. (Yes, we have more undead wandering about).

I'll buy the flintlock rifles, and I'll buy the demons and
magic swords. Hell, I'll even allow for the evil mathematically 
incorrect half demon, but I will not accept the medieval cyborg!
It is an abomination and must be destroyed!

As the name suggests, it is inevitable that we are going to encounter even more new antagonists for the Nakama to fight. (Which begs the question, should they really still be called the Band of Seven if some of them aren't around anymore?) Some of them are also quite flamboyant and they all apparently are fond of face paint. Especially the effeminate Jakotsu who even wears lipstick, is openly gay and seems to have this running obsession with being the one to fight Inuyasha, kill him, and what comes after... Well, I don't want to think about hypotheticals that far out. We also get Mukotsu who is a poison master (as well as a very nasty pervert who tried to force Kagome to "marry him"), Renkotsu who apparently likes to play with fire, especially fire breathing, Suikotsu, who's special thing is that he's got multiple personalty disorder and ninja claws, Bankotsu who carries around a really big halberd (which he reclaims from a castle near the end of the season) and Ginkotsu who is...  do I really have to say it? The rest of the group actually sounds somewhat cool aside from Jakotsu. ><; Okay...  fine...  Ginkotsu is...    a medieval cyborg. That's not a joke and apparently he was like that before he died. This is the feudal era right? There are NO CYBORGS in the feudal era. Sure it's a fairy tale, but this still totally blows my mind. I can understand him being a cyborg as an undead, there's actually some precedent that it might be possible within the rules of the universe, but before he died? In the sengoku jidai? We can barely even do stuff that comes close to this in present time with the tech we have now! This is made all the more annoying by the fact that all he seems to say in both voice tracks is "Gash!" The story behind these guys is that ten years ago (Not fifty years ago? Wow, I'm impressed.) they were mercs who were too good at their job so the local warlords got together to kill them and after they were behead they were entombed at the base of Mt Hakurei. Naraku resurrected them to run interference. As a result of their being out of the picture, time has moved on a bit, as has technology which allows for some time travel fin to occur. Some of the Samurai in this season are using flintlock rifles, which the Band finds interesting as they haven't seen them before. Granted, in some ways, this makes Ginkotsu even more ludicrous in his existence because later he's actually turned into an undead tank by Renkotsu. (These guys don't know about rifles but they know about advanced ballistics and circular saws? Takahashi-sama, why did you do this?)

What is it with these people and big weapons?

As a result of this new team of evil, we do get some more character development for Inuyasha as the first encounter with Mukotsu, Renkotsu, and Ginkotsu leaves Kagome, Miroku, and Sango apparently dead (but not quite) which really upsets him, and makes him aggressively more protective of Kagome in later episodes. When Suikotsu first showed up as one of his nicer personalities, he actually made things worse by jumping to the conclusion that the guy was automatically an enemy, understandably because of what had just happened. Meanwhile, Kikyo had also happened on Suikotsu as a kindly doctor (Ironic given what his other personality is) and had been staying with him because she couldn't get to Mount Hakurei because it was too holy and pure for her to tolerate. It seems at this point that the characters are at an impasse and have no choice but to chase the Band of Seven at this point, partly because there is no way to investigate Mount Hakurei without the demons and less pure humans in the party being hurt by the barrier, and partly because there are no leads. So the season ends with little in the way of a finale, unless you count the Band of Seven reclaiming Bankotsu's halberd Banryuu, which is supposed to be significant as he's apparently supposed to be one of the Dragons for the next season. As far as this season is concerned, it continues many of the trends that I had problems with in season 3 as well as the stuff we've seen above. To put it in more mundane terms, if the first couple of seasons were sirloin steak burgers from a nice restaurant in terms of fat to meat ratio with minimal filler, then this season was that gooey meat loaf nobody wants to eat. The plot points and character development are great, when they're there, but when there's so much stuff that doesn't matter, it overpowers the stuff that does which is enough to make even the most ardent fan a little bit fatigued. On the bright side, once we get back to the plot when we reach the Band of Seven things do get moving again, but it takes some stamina to get that far.

We get one new intro theme in this season, "Grip" by Every Little Thing, as well as a couple of new outro themes. "Shinjitsu no Uta" by Do As Infinity is an ending theme I particularly liked, but we also get "Itazura na Kiss" by Day After Tomorrow later in the series. In terms of voice actors we do get a number of new ones to voice the Band of Seven in both the Japanese and English dubs, many with impressive resumes outside of the series. Surprisingly the one with the fewest (non repeating) lines had one of the longest. Kyokotsu's Japanese voice actor, the late Daisuke Gori had a resume going back all the way to 1973 when he narrated for the original Cutie Honey series. He was also the Ox King in Dragon Ball Z and had roles in many other series. We have a few others such as Jakotsu's voice actor, Ai Orisaka who has done voice work for the Detective Conan series (including filling in for Mitsuhiko's regular voice actor at one point), and Mukotsu's voice actor, Testu Inada who is Nappa in Dragon Ball Z. We've also already met Bankotsu's voice actor, Takeshi Kusao, as Cless from Tales of Phantasia and Krad from D.N. Angel. On the English side of things, Renkotsu's voice actor Brian Drummond has had a number of notable roles including Vegeta in the Ocean Dragon Ball Z dub, and Allen Schezar in The Vision of Escaflowne, and of course, we just ran into Matt Hill, Bankotsu's voice actor as Kira Yamato in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. Things have gotten a little tedious, but I hope things will speed up in season 5. In the mean time, take care everyone. See you next time.

Images taken from Inuyasha.

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