InuYasha Review

at being said, I'm very pleased with the way Inuyasha has turned out. Unlike Ranma ½, this series follows the manga almost to the letter, with only some minor changes so as better to suit an animated medium. And good animation at that.

Inuyasha is colorful, has nice character design, and taken into account that it is a TV series, the animation is more than adequate. Perhaps not quite up to the level of Fruits Basket or Happy Lesson, but it works and works well too.

I am, however, less pleased with the music. The in-series music is okay. Mostly ambient, and mostly very good. The opening and ending themes are starting to grate on me, however, even though they tend to change over a period of twenty to thirty episodes. They are more fitting a pure action show and while Inuyasha does have its fair share of action scenes, the series does run a little deeper than that.

The Japanese VAs deserve nothing but praise. They do their roles and they do them well. The English ones are more of a mixed bag, with Sesshoumaru's and Sango's voices being excellent but Kagome's and Kaede's being not quite as good. Kagome starts out being voiced rather badly, but improves a lot as the series progresses and Kaede is suffering from bad and unfitting accent syndrome. I have no idea why they have her talking like ye olde pirate, but they did. (Hell, even Kikyo doesn't talk like that, and she was Kaede's big sister.)

Anyway, that leaves only the story.

Before we start with that, let me just get this straight; Inuyasha is mainly rather lighthearted stuff, but the Takahashi magic does show its presence rather heavily here -- after all, it's her stories that are being animated -- and she does have a knack for writing intricate person to person interaction scenes, not to mention the way she puts these characters up against each other. And while some characters might share similar appearance traits -- like Kagome and Kikyo, but for rather obvious reasons -- their personalities is a far cry from being copies of each other. And as the series progresses, more and more stuff about each characters past is discovered, and how they crossed -- well, mainly Inuyasha's and Kikyo's pasts in that. And while it was, like I said, mainly lighthearted stuff, it does get rather serious and dark-ish at times. I'll tell you this, though; not everything is as it first seems.

Now, with well past a hundred episodes made, it's blindingly obvious that there will be filler material that I don't know for sure whether they are from the manga as it hasn't been released in English this far yet. This being said, the series does descend into the "villain of the week" syndrome from time to time, but the way a lot of these are handled saves it from becoming tedious. Let me just say this, though; not all of them are defeated in fights, but leaves the story with some parting thoughts for you to ponder. Not incredibly deep Zen stuff, but certainly not something to be dismissed as unworthy or simple-minded either.

So what we have is a rather good popular TV show built on what makes Takahashi Rumiko's stories and characterizations work, and work well at that. I personally recommend this series for your collection and, given Viz's slow release pacing, it shouldn't ruin your budget much either. And if you do possess some semblance of patience, I'm sure Viz will release season packages of Inu Yasha like they have with Ranma ½, which might be much better value for your money.

Either way, it's a good choice.