Horror fantasy-comedy, Japanese feudal history, animistic mythology and teen romance come together in Inu Yasha. ©2001 Rumiko Takahashi / Shogakukan Yomiuri TV Sunrise Sho-Pro NTV Toho Yomiuri-TV Enterprise. All rights reserved.

InuYasha the Movie: Affections Touching Across Time
Theatrical feature, 2001. Director: Toshiya Shinohara. 100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $24.98. Distributor: Viz Video.

Inu Yasha (Yasha the Dog), arguably Rumiko Takahashi’s most popular series (including Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku and Ranma 1/2), began as a serialized manga in 1997 (U.S. volumes since 1998). The TV series, by the Sunrise animation studio, began in Japan on Oct. 16, 2000 and has just ended with episodes #166-167 broadcast as a one-hour finale on Sept. 13. The series began in America on Cartoon Network, Aug. 31, 2002 and is one of that channel’s most popular titles.

Inu Yasha is a horror fantasy-comedy blending Japanese feudal history, animistic mythology and teen romance. Kagome Higurashi is a modern junior-high senior whose priesthood family has maintained a Shinto shrine at the foot of an ancient tree for many centuries. Kagome falls into the shrine’s dry well and emerges 500 years in the past, when peasants were beset by supernatural demons. The tree, much younger, has an unconscious handsome youth with dog ears pinned to it by an arrow. Kagome pulls out the arrow and brutally learns that she has just freed a half-demon boy imprisoned by her priestess ancestor Kikyo 50 years earlier. Inuyasha, because of his mixed parentage (human mother; dog-demon-lord father), is emotionally mixed up. He has two powerful magic artifacts; the sword Tetsusaiga, which “can slay 100 demons with one swing” and suppresses his demonic nature, and the Shikon Jewel, which amplifies the power of demons. Kagome learns that she is the 20th century reincarnation of now-dead Kikyo. The first story-arc ends with her accidentally shattering the Shikon Jewel into hundreds of shards, which fly in all directions, each powerful enough to turn some insignificant plant, animal or insect into an evil demon. Inuyasha, no longer under the direct influence of the Jewel, joins with Kagome to find all the shards and to fight the exotic demons that each shard has created. Some adventures take the two to modern Tokyo. A prickly adolescent romance develops between the teens, complicated by the fact that Inuyasha and Kikyo had a crush on each other 50 years earlier and Kikyo’s ghost is still around, creating a uniquely awkward love triangle.

By the time this first theatrical feature (Inu-Yasha: Toki o Koeru Omoi) was released on Dec. 15, 2001, the TV series had been running more than a year. Many supporting characters had joined Inuyasha and Kagome — notably the human demon-fighters Miroku (a lecherous young Buddhist priest) and Sango (a ninja girl who rides a two-tailed cat demon) and the friendly animal-demons Shippo (a child fox-demon) and Myoga (an elderly flea demon). Naturally the movie has to include everybody. Viewers unfamiliar with the TV series may want to first watch the 35-minute DVD extra “Special Edition: All About Inuyasha,” which introduces the cast and summarizes the TV adventures, before turning to the movie.

The TV episodes were all variants on Inuyasha, Kagome and their fellow questers battling a series of demons, which either tried to protect their own Shikon shard or had preemptively attacked the team to steal the shards they had collected so far. The movie introduces “their greatest menace yet.” Menomaru the moth-demon’s goal is to steal Inuyasha’s super-sword rather than a jewel shard. Menomaru cunningly studies his adversaries and sends his two femme-fatale demonic spies Ruri and Hari to steal each of the questers’ magical weapons. With virtually all of the magical artifacts at his disposal and the questers in confused disarray, Menomaru seems truly invincible by the time he attacks.

Note: The name in English has been spelled Inu Yasha, Inuyasha and every other possible variant. According to a VIZ representative, each American merchandising licensee can determine its own official spelling; there is no consistency. The movie’s subtitles spell it Inuyasha while the decorative movie title logo is InuYasha; and the manga version is Inu-Yasha.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment’s The Best of Anime music CD (1998), and was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and « first‹ previous12345