- For the anime character, see Inuyasha (character)
Inuyasha | |
Genre | Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Historical, Romance, Shōnen |
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Created by | Rumiko Takahashi |
Manga | |
Written by | Rumiko Takahashi |
Published by | Shogakukan VIZ Media Editora JBC Kana Egmont Kustannus Glénat |
Anime | |
Directed by | Masashi Ikeda (eps 1 to 44) Yasunao Aoki (44 onwards) |
Studio | Sunrise |
Feature Movies | |
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Inuyasha (犬夜叉) is a popular shōnen manga and anime series created by Rumiko Takahashi.
The series is named after the main character, Inuyasha. The name "Inuyasha" literally means "Dog demon". Inu is a single kanji translating to "dog". "Demon" is a rough translation of the forced character "yasha", translating literally to 'demon'. Rumiko Takahashi said during an interview that "yasha" meant "forest spirit". The full title is Inuyasha, A Feudal Fairy Tale (戦国お伽草子ー犬夜叉, Sengoku Otogi Zōshi Inuyasha).
Kagome Higurashi is an ordinary girl who is somehow pulled into an old well at her family's Shinto shrine by a mysterious force, sending her back in time 500 years to the feudal era. (The time where Inuyasha lives). During the time slip, a yōkai[1] claims that Kagome possesses the Jewel of the Four Souls(四魂の玉 Shikon no Tama), and attempts to seize it. The girl fights back and when she climbs out, she finds herself in the Warring States Period of Japan, where both humans and yōkai reside.
Overview
Inuyasha is a shōjo action adventure romantic comedy, with elements from the horror genre. The story begins in Tokyo, Japan with a junior high-school girl named Kagome Higurashi, who on her way to school heads to the covered well on the family property (which happens to be a Shinto shrine). She does this to retrieve her cat, Buyo, from the well, since her brother was afraid to go inside. When she approaches the well a centipede demon (dubbed "Mistress Centipede") bursts from the well and grabs her. The demon claims that Kagome possesses the Jewel of the Four Souls and attempts to seize it. When the demon is driven off, the very confused Kagome emerges in the Sengoku period of Japan. Kagome wanders into a nearby village and meets an old miko (Shinto shrine maiden) by the name of Kaede, who recognizes that Kagome is almost a mirror likeness for Kikyo (Kikyō), her elder sister (and powerful shrine maiden) who had died and had her body burned with the Jewel of the Four Souls, taking it with her into the afterlife. Kaede relates the story of how, 50 years earlier, a han'yō named Inuyasha had tried to steal the Jewel from Kikyo, mortally wounding her in the process, but Kikyo had managed to strike him with a magical arrow, sealing him into an enchanted sleep and thus retrieving the Jewel before she finally died.
It turns out that Kagome is the reincarnation of Kikyo, and that she does possess the Jewel of the Four Souls, embedded within her body. When the centipede demon rips it from her and swallows it, granting the demon a great boost in power, Kagome is forced to release Inuyasha so he can defeat it.
Soon after they recover the Jewel, it is lost again, and Kagome accidentally shatters it into pieces with an arrow as she tries to recover it. The pieces scatter far and wide, and the story tells of Kagome and Inuyasha's adventures as they search for the shards of the Jewel. As they search, they meet new characters who either join them on their quest, or oppose them for various personal reasons. Throughout the story Kagome and Inuyasha come closer and develop feelings for each other, though the romance remains as a side plot for most of the story.
Although the given plot (a hunt for pieces) is quite simple, the story itself is played out over a great number of episodes. Her group (which initially consists of just her and Inuyasha) grows over the series, as do the groups of her enemies. It is noteworthy that Kagome appears to be a catalyst: prior to her arrival, Inuyasha was nailed to his tree indefinitely and the jewel was considered lost. She is in no way willing (at least at first); her initial experiences in the past are frightening and have her come close to death many times.
Explanation of time travel
The modern time is 'X', a period in the Sengoku period is 'Y', and 50 years before period Y 'Z'. At Z, Kikyo dies after sealing Inuyasha to the tree, where he goes into suspended animation, and she is cremated on a pyre with the Jewel, according to her wishes. At Y, the well (which exists in both ancient and modern times) drops Kagome, the 20th/21st century incarnation of Kikyo, off from the future. Here, everyone has gotten older but otherwise not much has happened. X is the 'modern' end of the well's wormhole through time.
A timeline of the initial story of Inuyasha.
Title dispute
There is a long-standing debate about the proper English spelling of the title character's name, an example of the type of dispute that often happens as a result of romanization. Variant spellings include "Inuyasha", "InuYasha", "Inu Yasha", and "Inu-Yasha". Fans of the series often use "IY" (or less rarely, "Inu"), especially on fansites, although it is usually considered to be more of an abbreviation than an actual name. Official licensors use varying spellings, so they provide little guidance in this area; the two most popular versions are "Inuyasha" and the VIZ CamelCase version. Since Japanese does not use spacing or capitalization, there is ultimately no "correct" spelling.
Popularity
Since its introduction on Cartoon Network's adult swim block, the ranks of Inuyasha fans have swelled to the point where anime.com calls the program a "cult" and its fans "rabid zealots". Some observers of the series' fandom consider the show's more passionately obsessed fans to be not unlike the fans of the American Star Trek series. On the Adult Swim message boards, these fans are referred to as RIF (Rabid Inuyasha Fan). The show is so popular that although it has been taken off the air many times in its run (to make way for shows such as Kikaider, Big O, and FLCL), it has always been reinstated due to the demands of viewers. After a while, the people who write the bumpers for Williams Street, Adult Swim's producers and programmers, became sarcastic about this, and it became something of a running joke that they were on the side of the viewers, but were at the mercy of superior departments ("Suits"). Practically speaking, the hiati are likely necessary to give Viz Media time to dub enough episodes far enough in advance to allow for a several-month-long uninterrupted run.
As time progressed, the show was moved to increasingly late viewing hours. As of October 2002, it aired at 11:00 PM. As of March 2004, it aired at 12:30 AM. In May 2005, Adult Swim resumed showing new episodes Saturday nights at 11:00 PM, although repeats of older episodes currently air Tuesday-Thursday at 12:30 AM. Presumably, the logic behind this is that the Inuyasha fans will not mind staying up later, and other shows can be put between them and their goal. However, the show has proven to be a slightly more mainstream hit in other countries such as on YTV in Canada, where it is one of the station's highest rated programs with the "newest" episode running on Fridays at 9 PM EST. Its popularity has also spread to Latin America where it runs on weekday afternoons.
There are many possible reasons for the popularity of the Inuyasha series. A likely one is that it is eclectic, including elements from many different genres. At first, the series mainly appears to be action-oriented, and it does indeed have a significant amount of action, with at least one confrontation with an enemy in most episodes. However, it also includes a great deal of comedy (frequently slapstick), many monsters that add notes of the horror genre, and occasional romance. Another probable reason that Inuyasha is so popular is that it has rather sympathetic characters who are varied enough that most people can relate to at least one of them.
Other criticisms include the sheer length of the series in both anime and manga form, dragging out certain story points past credibility. Similar to Ranma 1/2, Takahashi has sometimes been accused by fans of being unable to finish a story effectively; others cite this is merely a desire of the animators and publishers to continue a still-lucrative franchise, as is the case with many other shounen titles.
Although not technically an "adult" series, the show airs in this slot supposedly because of a scene in one episode where Inuyasha is impaled against a tree, and as a result, along with language in the English dub's dialogue considered too strong (like the use of the word "damn" as an example), this meant that the series could not be aired on CN's Toonami block. The reasoning here is vague: The Simpsons airs in the same timeframe as Toonami, and regularly uses the same lesser swearwords.
Artwork quality
Most people agree that the artwork in both the anime and manga versions of Inuyasha is quite impressive, with Akemi's Anime World, Anime News Network, and many others praising that it is "excellent". However, some viewers, such as Derrick Tucker, from THEM Anime Reviews, complain that some action scenes are often reused and that sometimes a static image moved against a background is used as a substitute for animation. He concedes, however, that the costs of producing a long anime series like Inuyasha often make such compromises unavoidable.
Yōkai in Inuyasha
While the presence of yōkai (妖怪, "bewitching apparitions") in Inuyasha is undoubtedly one of the main factors in its popularity, there has been an unfortunate side-effect to their presence in this show: namely, yōkai as mythical creatures from traditional Japanese culture have largely been misunderstood. They are portrayed, in the series, with a few exceptions, as either romantically noble, or vicious and outright evil.
In traditional Japan, yōkai (or obakemono) are portrayed as grotesque transformations of objects, animals, or humans found in everyday life; some examples are hitotsumekouzo, a young boy dressed in the clothes of a Buddhist monk, but with only one eye; or the tengu, a mountain goblin with the body of a man, but with wings and bird feet, and either a beak or a long nose. Then there are kitsune, tanuki and mujina: actual animals that exist in the real world, but were thought to have the power to shapeshift.
While there are some truly vicious yōkai (such as the ushioni, a giant, cow-headed spider living in the ocean, attacking those who wade into its beaches) most are of the mischievous, prankster sort who love nothing more than to scare humans and play practical jokes on them. Most are not downright evil, as portrayed in Inuyasha.
Nor, on the other hand, are they entirely good. Most encounters of humans with yōkai have negative results, even if those results consist only of running away frightened from a harmless scare. Yōkai are always portrayed as grotesque and bizarre in traditional art and story, and the world of yōkai is completely apart from that of humans.
There are many stories of kitsune (foxes), for example, who try to pass as human and enter the world of men; but these attempts, while sometimes partially successful, are always uncovered at last, resulting in the kitsune fleeing the scene, leaving things mostly the way they were beforehand.
Characters
The plot focuses mainly on Kagome and Inuyasha and their expanding posse of friends and followers as they seek the shards of the Jewel of the Four Souls. The television show will occasionally skip over to the lives of the antagonists, minor characters or modern-day people as a way of setting up a plot, or clarifying a point. Flashbacks are occasionally used to the same effect
Theme songs
See also
Notes
External links
- Japanese sites
- Inuyasha official website (anime)
- Yomiuri Television's official Inuyasha page (anime)
- Web Sunday's Official Inuyasha Site (manga)
- Inuyasha: Avex Mode
- English sites
- The Inuyasha Wiki, an external wiki
- Inuyasha at IMDb
- Ear Tweak - Features manga translations of recent chapters as well as manga archives of recently released Inuyasha chapters, from Shōnen Sunday among other things.
- Inuyasha Scripts & Episode Capsules - Detailed scripts of the English subtitles, trivia, and notes.
- +Lush: the Inuyasha Shrine - Features minor/major character biographies, episode summaries, voice actors, and various media
- Inuyasha stuff - Large Inuyasha online merchandise gallery site through manga, dvds, and various cards.
- InuYasha-Home.com - General InuYasha site with bios, and it contains massive amounts of downloads. Highly interactive.
- Community and Media English sites
- Fukai Mori - Features minor/major character biographies, episode summaries, voice actors, and various media, as well as a community forum.