Inuyasha: the balanced diet of anime
Hasn't aged a single day, too
Say you’re a weeb, and some normie who may or may not have watched Dragon Ball or Pokémon as a kid (and that’s about it) asks you:
"I want to try anime again as an adult. What anime do you think best encapsulates the whole industry?"
My answer is, no contest:
Inuyasha was not the first anime I watched, nor the first anime that got me hooked.
But I watched it pretty early in my weeb career, and it became my favorite for as long as it ran on TV.
And not only would I recommend it to novices; I think it deserves to be watched by any anime enjoyer.
For two reasons:
1) The production quality is great.
2) It’s such a well-blended combination of genres that most people will find something to enjoy about it.
Let me show you why I’m not talking out of my ass.
The production quality is great
The anime first released in late 2000, which makes it one of the very last “90s anime philosophy” anime, and it shows.1
This means three things: hand-painted cels, saturated colors and copious use of 5-tone shading.
Even then, not all 90s anime were good. Great art direction is nothing without a bit of effort put into drawing the cels!
Combine this great art with a phenomenal OST which masterfully blends traditional Japanese into a Western-style orchestra.
In three words: the creators cared.
A combination of genres where everyone will find something to like
Inuyasha’s genre is technically Shonen, of the Adventure variety, which means it can be compared to stuff like One Piece or Hunter x Hunter.
But the author just so happens to be a woman whose main forte is romantic comedy that combines action with a nontrivial dose of ecchi.
She’s Rumiko Takahashi, also famous for Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2.
On one hand, it sounds like a recipe for a clusterfuck.
On the other, it someone is going to make this work, it must be her.
I’ll spare you the synopsis of the anime, because Wikipedia does a decent enough job.
I’ll simply enumerate the ingredients you will find in this anime.
Isekai (but good)
Unlike most modern isekai where the main character is a loser for that would never go back to the real world if he had the option, Kagome is a normal teenager with a normal life outside of the main plot, and must study for her exams between rounds of demon slaying. And she’s not even the main character, in fact!
Additionally, she has an actual personality, because she is not supposed to be a self-insert.
Adventure
Being an adventure manga where a cast of colorful characters run after the Magic McGuffin sound bland and unoriginal, and that’s because it is, and the episodic (at first) nature of said anime will put off people with full-time jobs, but even those episodes are enjoyable.
Here’s a filler list if you want to reduce your watch time.
Action
Couldn’t be a Shonen without it, right?
Horror
Rewatching the first season, I’m surprise at the large quantity of horror elements.
In the first twelve episodes, we have Mistress Centipede, the Carrion Crow, the Soul Piper, and the Flesh-eating Mask.
Comedy
Rumiko Takahashi is fond of two very Japanese types of comedy: the "physical abuse" variety and the "ecchi" variety. Inuyasha has plenty of both. Enjoy!
Romance
Last but definitely not least.
Not only does pretty much everyone get paired together by the end of the show, the slowly burning love triangle between Kikyo, Inuyasha and Kagome is the ingredient that encapsulates the whole story and makes you want to watch it.
Yes, the romance progresses at the speed of molasses. Yes, the excessive use of tsundere tropes overstay their welcome. But romance is the vehicle that makes you care about the characters.
The Yashahime Question
Hanyo no Yashahime is the sequel to Inuyasha, released 20 years after it and featuring the children of the main characters.
I watched it for a while, then quickly got bored of it and thought of it as a rehash cashgrab for nostalgics.
It's not as blatant of a rehash as, say, Dragon Ball Super, Boruto or Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card, but it is still bland enough that I can't force myself to care about it.
The new characters are uninteresting, derivative, or both.
The art is desaturated like most modern anime compared to what was present in the 90s, which already was a problem in Inuyasha: The Final Act.
The soundtrack is literally Inuyasha's, which is good, because Inuyasha's soundtrack is good, but it's bad, because it adds to the feeling of rehashing content and nostalgia pandering.
And worst of all, Inuyasha and Kagome's dynamic is lazily and painfully copy-pasted from the first series as if nothing had ever changed, down to [SPOILER ALERT] Inuyasha being tsundere-ish to his WIFE, and Kagome never having takes the slave collar off of her HUSBAND and even Osuwari-ing him from time to time still.
In a nutshell, don’t bother with it.
Final thoughts
The blending of genres is what makes Inuyasha simultaneously unique and yet a good representative of anime as a whole.
The characters are simple but relatable for their realism, which is something I sorely miss from modern anime.
Again, I recommend it to both newcomers and weebs.
Since starting a new series is overwhelming to adults with responsibilities, start with the first seven episodes to see if you're going to be into it.
Happy watching.
I can’t believe I have to say this, but THE DECADES GO FROM 1 TO 10.
THERE IS NO YEAR ZERO.
Which means that the first decade of the Christian Era goes from year 1 to year 10, and the previous decade went from year -1 to year -10, counting backwards.
Therefore, the Eighties go from 1981 to 1990, the Nineties go from 1991 to 2000, and so on.
Come on, it even fits better with the evolution of pop culture.