Watching Yashahime’s like watching someone balance a bowling ball on their forehead. It’s impressive for a little bit, quickly becomes boring, then you realize they look like an idiot, you start dreading the inevitable moment where they’ll drop the ball, the ball drop happens and there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll wind up in physical pain because they dropped the ball on your foot.
I mentioned to GlitterInformer that I was planning on waiting until I was caught up to where the series currently is to make my decision on whether to drop it. I got done watching episode 16, which left me with two more episodes to go until I had reached that point, but…no. I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m done now.
Which is odd because episode 16, objectively, is actually one of the better episodes and definitely one of the stronger backstory episodes. However, it’s not all that odd when you consider that, even being one of the better episodes and best backstory episodes….it’s still not really ‘good.’ It’s very okay. There’s a lot of alrightness going on. It’s a big chunk of fine.
The origins of Kurikaramaru, Moroha’s sword, is fine.
Her relationship with Yamaragi is fine.
Yamaragi as a character is fine.
But the episode is still laden with a lot of problems the series has been struggling with since day one.
Let’s start with an oldie, but a goodie – It offers confusing/nonsensical explanations for numerous aspects of the story. For example, we learn that Kagome was the one who initially sealed Moroha’s demon powers, but I can’t imagine when or why she’d have reason to do this. According to Yamaragi, Moroha’s demon side only becomes a problem when she’s cornered. The demon blood is seemingly triggered as a defense mechanism, which makes sense, but Kagome was sent off to the black pearl dimension place when Moroha was a newborn. When would her demon powers have had rhyme or reason to emerge before then? Unless she was fresh out of Kagome’s hooha and Kagome was just randomly like ‘I’ll seal your demon powers now.’
The rouge was used by Yamaragi, Moroha’s master and guardian after she was handed over by the wolf demon tribe’s elder, as a means to undo the seal so she could better control herself. If she relies on Beniyasha too much, her heart will fade away and she’ll be nothing but a monstrous demon, which is very similar to Inuyasha’s situation back in the day. I still don’t know how the rouge seemingly has powers now. Let alone that the power is specifically to undo a seal on demonic powers – a seal that was created by Kagome several decades after the person who made the rouge died…Also, considering they had a half-demon child, that’s a dangerous-ass item to give to Izayoi. Unless Yamaragi did something to it, but I really don’t get how a random wolf demon would have the means to create an item that would undo a seal created by Kagome.
Moroha was sold to Jyubei for 15 Ryus (money Yamaragi needed for a reason I’ll address in a minute) which makes sense but also doesn’t because Moroha was previously sold to the demon gambling house by Yamaragi, meaning Moroha isn’t hers to sell at that moment – she even outright says this. Jyubei threatens Moroha after Yamaragi leaves by saying, if Moroha doesn’t pay back Yamaragi’s debt, she’ll go back to fight in the gambling house for the rest of her life, which also doesn’t make sense because she easily defeated the demons there, without Beniyasha even, and escaped with absolutely no problem. Jyubei doesn’t technically own her, and Moroha’s way more powerful than him – there’s no reason she should be putting up with this.
So yeah, there’s your big reveal as to why Moroha is in debt and puts up with Jyubei’s and Takechiyo’s crap. Pretty much expected it would be that disappointing and make absolutely no sense.
Yamaragi needed the money to get a key to remove her Armor of the Iron-Rat, which was created by the same blacksmith rats who made the Robe of the Fire-Rat (This episode does not show the origins of Moroha’s Robe of the Fire-Rat, though.) Unlike the robe, the armor comes with a fatal hitch. In exchange for amplifying the user’s powers and providing protection, the armor slowly shrinks to rat size and crushes the user after several years of wearing it. Why? I dunno. It just does.
She was tricked into wearing it by a demon who was trapped in it. An 8-year-old Moroha had been cornered by Birds of Paradise, so she used her rouge to turn into Beniyasha, which made her go nuts for some reason (When Inuyasha was struggling with his demon side, he started out being mostly lucid and eventually lost more and more control and sanity, but with Moroha it’s like she started out being out of control and eventually GAINED composure? The first time we saw Beniyasha in the series, she was perfectly in control of herself) and accidentally slash Yamaragi, giving her the large scars on her face.
Moroha defeated the birds before passing out, but they instantly called for backup, leaving her and Yamaragi in danger. The demon who was originally wearing the armor came right out of nowhere, tempted her with the armor and Yamaragi took the bait, even though she should be really suspicious as to why this random demon is being so nice and freely offering (if not insisting) his super cool powerful armor even though a bunch of dangerous demons are heading right towards them.
That’s understandable, though. Maybe it’s just a momentary lapse of common sense in a time of need.
Yup, I’m sure that’s it.
I’m also sure that must be the reason why Yamaragi just isn’t running away right now.
Yamaragi, you’re a wolf demon. Running’s kinda your jam, as you demonstrate later in your battle against Moroha (It was only said that the armor increases defense and power, not speed, so I’m to believe her speed there was just her own speed. Her Wiki page also lists that as a power of her wolf physiology.) and the weight of a child shouldn’t hinder you that much. If you have enough time to stand there and talk to this doofus about his clearly trap-ish armor, you have enough time to run away from the birds. Even the demon who gives her the armor is not concerned about being able to run to safety in time.
When she has the money to buy a key from the blacksmith rats, she finds them all slaughtered. The specific key for her armor is also missing. Dun dun DUNNNN Konton has it. He slaughtered all the rats because he wants to use Yamaragi to kill Moroha in exchange for the key. If the rats are all dead, she can’t get another key. Because they really want to make Konton a discount Naraku now. Also, apparently, this is just meant to be entertainment for Tokotsu, even though Tokotsu never appears in this episode and is dead. *shrug*
I do love how Konton points out how non-threatening they are by saying they’re really the Two Perils now.
May I ask how long Yamaragi has been searching for the blacksmith rats? Because she left Moroha with Jyubei when Moroha was 11 and only just now found them. And, what, was Konton just waiting until she got close to pull this little stunt?
In present day, Yamaragi and Moroha face off, with Moroha telling Towa and Setsuna to not interfere. Yamaragi’s all powerful and stuff, even easily catching and breaking one of Moroha’s sacred arrows and withstanding her Crimson Dragon Wave like it was nothing. Moroha wants to use her rouge, but Yamaragi convinces her not to because not only will she continue to lose herself if she does, but it won’t truly be her victory if she relies on that power.
I have a question: Why didn’t Myoga ever drop that exposition bomb about her demon side? Surely he had to know the true nature of the rouge and her sealed up demon powers and how, if she kept turning into Beniyasha, she’d eventually turn into a mindless killing machine. Myoga was always concerned for Inuyasha when he’d transform, was he not? Why would he see the same descent into madness on Inuyasha’s daughter and show no concern whatsoever? Instead he’s just super excited that he gets to taste Inutaisho-esque blood.
While we’re on the subject, I find it hard to believe that Moroha’s demon side has any possibility of taking her over. She has inherent spiritual powers. Would those not be constantly keeping her demon side tampered down to some degree by default? Considering Kagome was the full source of her spiritual powers and Inuyasha was only half-demon, I’d say the spiritual part would be more powerful than her demon side.
Yamaragi uses her technique, the Scattering Winds, which clashes with Moroha using a Crimson Dragon Wave, which….was….powered up…beforehand by her….spinning her sword? The attacks meet and are sent back to Yamaragi.
Oh Konton’s here now, by the way. For no other reason besides him wanting to taunt Yamaragi about the key. Yamaragi decides to grapple him to force him to get killed by the attack alongside her, but he shows off his Narakuness again and teleports away. Yamaragi’s the only one who dies in the subsequent strike.
It is sad that Yamaragi dies, but really just because Moroha’s broken up about it. I love Moroha, I don’t want to see her sad, so I’m sad she’s sad. If she had no connection to Moroha, I would probably not even register her death. She was a fine character, definitely one of the better new characters, but she barely had any emotional moments with Moroha. She was all tough love until the end. A story like theirs needs room to breathe. They needed at least a few episodes of buildup and development to properly earn any sniffles from me.
And, again, they introduce a seemingly very important character to a main character’s backstory and/or life and the writers are instantly like ‘lol, let’s kill them now. We’re done.’ I really think it would’ve been better if she sold Moroha to Jyubei for the key, but he’d only give the key once Moroha had earned it through bounties, so she’d be very determined to collect her bounties and pay off the debt in order to save Yamaragi’s life. But nope. Instead we get this convoluted malarkey and the disposal of another potentially interesting character.
You guys remember in One Piece how Nami would steal and trick pirates out of their treasure, and she came off as greedy, but then we learned it was so she could save up enough money to buy her village back from Arlong? And how it was really emotional, memorable, tragic and sweet?
Yeah….
Also, Moroha never really came off as being dependent on the rouge. We’ve only seen Beniyasha a couple of times over the course of this entire series. So the big lesson being Moroha learning to be creative with her own powers instead of relying on Beniyasha falls flat a little.
Yamaragi was originally the one who owned Kurikaramaru, but Moroha won it off of her when she defeated the demons in the gambling house without using Beniyasha. This is better than the common theme of important items owned by the main cast up until this point, which has basically been ‘I just stumbled upon it,’ BUT it’s also not all that interesting because the battle against the demon was boring and easy, and it was just a matter of Yamaragi handing over the sword. Where did the sword come from? Was it particularly sentimental to Yamaragi or just something she randomly had?
The best part of this episode was Moroha burying Yamaragi and sharing some personal thoughts and feelings with Towa and Setsuna who are FINALLY treating her like family instead of an expendable annoyance. That was sweet. A bit on the ‘too little, too late’ side but still sweet.
One of the better episodes of the series, definitely one of the better episodes that explores backstory, and it was still just fine. Nothing that good, nothing terribly bad – just fine. After 16 episodes, that really tells me that this series peaks at ‘fine.’ That explains why I’ve been so frustrated with it. Not that it’s been fine as a whole so far – that it clearly PEAKS at fine.
I don’t even much care that Moroha finally got a new power (The Crimson Backlash Wave) because it was a little underwhelming. Not to mention the fact that its reveal comes right alongside Moroha killing her teacher/surrogate parent, so it kinda got overshadowed a little. Not lying, I completely forgot to note the new attack until I reached this paragraph. Cool attack, though…….Doesn’t make A SINGLE SOLITARY LICK OF SENSE considering this is a completely random sword unrelated to her family or the Tetsusaiga, but it somehow has its own Backlash Wave technique, but whatever. Maybe the Backlash Wave was inside her all along.
Back to business, I kept giving Yashahime the benefit of the doubt because of its connection to Inuyasha. Despite my problems with it, I do hold Inuyasha dear to my heart, but I can’t ignore the signs anymore. This is going nowhere….both slowly and quickly somehow. I can’t see anything really worthwhile on the horizon. And, yes, I’m well aware that Sesshomaru’s coming into the fray for real in the next couple of episodes, and yet I fail to really care that much. Unless he drops the world’s most epic bomb onto the series with his presence, I don’t think he can coerce me into sticking around.
Let’s recap some of the more prevalent problems the series has a whole.
The Pacing Issues – Most people have pointed this out, myself included…like….a few sentences ago, but this series has pretty serious pacing issues. Not the worst I’ve seen, but pretty bad. It frequently goes back and forth from half-dead slug speed to ‘They’ve gone to plaid.’ The episodes themselves have alright pacing, but many times it’s like they’ll rush through to the end so we don’t have to continue the plot in the next episode.
Let me ask a question – What happened to pursuing the Dream Butterfly? We went from that being priority number one to “What’s the plot of the week?” I’m asking this even though I pretty much don’t care about that plot. Only a small portion of Setsuna’s past is a secret from the audience (from four years old to when she came back to Kaede’s village) so that’s the only part of her backstory that MIGHT get revealed when they kill the thing, and I can’t imagine it’s anything that important. The only part of me that really cares is the part that cares about Rin because the butterfly is apparently affecting her too.
They don’t even pursue the Perils or Kirinmaru – they pursue the girls.
There’s also absolutely no pursuing of the rainbow pearls. Even when they defeat someone who has one, they ignore it and make no effort to retrieve it. Not that the pearls even seem useful half the time. Even when they are lending some sort of useful power, it’s typically not that impressive and the user is easily felled.
And just forget Moroha clearing her debt. That’s turned into a weekly running gag – and now the entire plot thread seems flimsy and not worth any emotional investment.
But then when someone lets loose the blindfolded exposition monkey who also happens to be coming out of a haze of tranquilizers, things get broken, people get confused and it’s all upsetting in a weird way.
Towa’s Odd Power Progression – Look, I get that Towa’s half-demon. I get that she’s the almighty Sesshomaru’s daughter. I get that they kinda wanted to speed up the process of her discovering her real powers in order to move the plot along. However, what I don’t get is why she has attacks and abilities being handed to her every other episode and is almost certainly the strongest of the princess trio even though Moroha and Setsuna have been honing their fighting prowess and demon powers since they were practically born. Moroha was born and raised by Koga’s wolf demon tribe and Setsuna was raised-ish by the demon slayers. Towa was born and raised in the modern era where her only real fighting ability was practiced against random gang thugs and bullies.
Her power progression is getting so concerning that I can see her being overpowered in another dozen or so episodes if this keeps up. She’s not without her shortcomings, of course, but when she’s easily taking out an apparition single-handedly when Setsuna, Moroha and all of the demon slayers were struggling to handle it, I think it’s time to reevaluate. The fact that she, supposedly, now has the ability to absorb demon energy through attacks, meaning she’d basically be invincible to anything that isn’t immediately fatal, does not help.
Inuyasha ended up with a slue of powers too, but that took nearly 200 episodes to happen, not 14.
Moroha Isn’t Treated Well – Moroha is definitely the best new character to come out of the franchise. She has a fun and interesting personality, she’s great in battle, when they let her, she’s smart and funny, she’s also adorable. Outside of being a little reckless sometimes, which is just her Inuyasha-ness shining, she’s a great character. However, she’s also frequently mishandled in lieu of Towa and Setsuna. People keep telling me that the story is about the twins and Moroha’s not really the main focus, but the show keeps framing it like they’re a trio – and you can’t say they’re a trio when one of the characters is meant to just be off to the side.
Moroha gets sidelined a lot, Towa and Setsuna get annoyed by her and she does feel like an afterthought a lot of the time.
This problem is even worse considering….
Towa and Setsuna Aren’t Interesting Enough to be Main Characters – I can watch Towa and Setsuna and be engaged with their stories, but they’re kinda bland and I don’t sympathize with them all that much.
Setsuna doesn’t even really have a motivation throughout the series. She’s just doing her job as a demon slayer. She doesn’t seem to care about her lost memories or her inability to sleep or dream. Towa cares a lot more about that than she does – it’s her driving motivation – and, honestly, I feel like that’s more of a means for her to alleviate the guilt she feels for not being able to protect her sister during the fire than it is her legitimately wanting Setsuna’s memories and ability to sleep/dream restored. They’re fine characters on their own, but I just don’t feel like they can carry an entire series on their shoulders.
Their chemistry just isn’t there either. It’s actually kinda creepy how Towa tries to get all cuddly with Setsuna sometimes when she clearly doesn’t want it. I don’t feel the deep bonds of sisterhood they’re trying to pass off (even if it is understandable with Setsuna given that she doesn’t remember Towa is her sister.) and that’s a big problem considering they’re using that angle to replace the big romance aspect of the original series, which, criticize it as much as you want (I know I do) at least it was engaging and made you feel things.
Moroha’s motivations might not be any more compelling than Towa’s, but her personality is a lot more engaging, and she IS the daughter of the actual main characters of the original series.
They could have done something where all of them were motivated by a common goal that affected all of them equally, but nope. They’re scattered all over the place. The Perils and Kirinmaru are the only things binding them together, and they really don’t care much about that. The most caring I ever saw any of them show in battle was Towa vs. Homura, which was also the best battle of the series, and that ended with the dude killing himself on accident via his own powers because his girlfriend dumped him.
Their Cohesion as a Group is Still Pretty Flimsy – They’ve been together for 16 episodes now, and I still don’t feel like they have a strong group bond. Towa and Setsuna keep being alienated from each other because Towa keeps trying to cling to Setsuna and Setsuna gets annoyed by Towa, and both of them distance themselves from Moroha a lot. They’re getting better, admittedly, but their group cohesion is still lacking.
The Enemies are Lame, and Many of them Are Recycled from Inuyasha – Very few enemies on this show actually seem imposing, and the ones that do are usually killed immediately and typically in a lame fashion. Even the Big Bad™, Kirinmaru, seems like he’s a joke. Two of his four highest ranked followers were taken out faster than the kitchen garbage in a house owned by a garbage man, the two left behind are a gluttonous doofus and a Naraku wannabe. Kirinmaru himself is just…..I don’t even know what he is. He hates half-demons and humans a lot, kills them on sight, but he also seems very easy to manipulate and doesn’t even retaliate when he’s been tricked and betrayed. He also has the imposing presence level of a reindeer.
What happened to him wanting to destroy the space-time continuum or whatever? Is that still happening? It’s been ages since it’s been brought up.
A big problem here is that this show loves to steal enemies from Inuyasha…..even if the enemies were killed in Inuyasha. Whether manga-exclusive or featured in the anime, I’d say a third of the enemies shown on Yashahime so far, at least, are recycled from Inuyasha, and that’s just sad. Revisiting old enemies in a sequel/spin-off series is usually just a good opportunity for closure or fanservice, but not with this show. Here, it just reeks of laziness. Keep in mind that they’re not even actually reviving the enemies themselves – they’ve just taken the names and the character designs and acted like they never appeared in the original series. They’ve even used Kikyo as a visual embodiment of the Tree of Ages because they were too lazy to actually design something new.
They Don’t Understand How Time Works – I would like to educate everyone right now on a fact that the writers of Yashahime don’t seem to understand – people visibly age beyond the age of 18.
Earth-shattering information, I know, but it had to be said.
Granted, this note is probably the least important of all the notes, but it’s still enough to make me a little perturbed.
None of the characters who were 18 in the end of The Final Act have visibly changed at all since then. 18 years has passed, but not one adult has aged a day. Miroku has a couple of lines on his face and Kagome’s mother got a gray streak in her hair, other than that, nope. Granted, I haven’t seen present day Kagome yet, and the demons/half-demons get a pass because they age differently, but considering that Sango looks 100% no different than she did nearly 20 years ago, down to her outfit, and the elderly people from the original series like Kagome’s grandpa and Kaede, who should be around 80 by now, are not only still alive but also look exactly the same, again down to their clothing, I’m gonna hazard a guess that Kagome looks no different too.
This problem isn’t even contained to the humans – somehow Buyo, Kagome’s cat, is still alive too and looking the same as he did before even though he has to be around 25 years old at least by now.
They couldn’t even make Kagome look pregnant when she was supposedly very far along. I really questioned whether she even was pregnant until Sango mentioned it.
Anyone under the age of 18 before the time skip, though, they obviously get fully altered – and most of them look really great, so I don’t know why they’re so hesitant to change the adults more than the absolute bare minimum, if they do anything at all.
The Mess that is Everything to do with the Original Series – I don’t even know where to start with this, so I’ll just say to visit the masterlist of my individual Yashahime reviews at the end of this post and add….*sigh* Granted, they haven’t put a lot of focus on the original cast, which is fine, really. I get it. The new cast is the focus. Tease the audience with the old stuff. But the plot of the series is rooted heavily in the past actions of the Inuyasha crew, and the main cast are the children of those characters, so you really have to make sure their story is strong, and it’s not.
Plus, the way the backstory keeps getting jutted into the series at completely random intervals a lot of the time is off-putting. Either a character will suddenly mention that something is connected to someone from the past, usually Sesshomaru, and that will usually be completely pointless, or we’ll get a backstory episode out of nowhere. Even the very first episode was an almost fully backstory episode that threw off the pace from the get-go (Though, being fair, that was based on an extra story that was included in the Inuyasha manga, but that doesn’t change how awkward it was in Yashahime.)
One of the main reasons any old Inuyasha fan wants to watch this series is to know what happened to the original cast, and it’s largely a mixed bag that’s marinating in disappointment. Kohaku’s the leader of a new demon slayer group alongside his nephew, Hisui, which is awesome. Sango’s a stay-at-home….uh, I guess she’s not a stay-at-home mom anymore considering her kids are all grown. A stay-at-home…..demon slayer weapon/item maker? Which is suitable enough. Miroku’s off training for 1000 days, which is fine, especially if he actually does get some divine power out of it. Sesshomaru’s doing….stuff. Kagome and Inuyasha are trapped in a pearl. Koga may have had a hand in raising Moroha. And Rin’s stuck in a tree.
…Oh and as for Shippo…
Writers:
There’s a backstory, but there’s no big epic event or circumstances surrounding this series. It just is.
The main characters do everything in their power to avoid talking about anything Inuyasha-related, and it is legitimately frustrating. Either they bring it up and it goes nowhere or it’s contained to flashback episodes that are purely for the audience’s benefit and don’t affect the lives or actions of the main characters at all. There are much better ways of presenting this information that don’t make it seem so divorced from the main plot.
The Lack of Emotion is Staggering – Like I mentioned in my review of episode 15, it’s easy to claim Inuyasha was melodramatic at times, especially when it came to the romance angle, but I’d rather a series be overly dramatic than be underly dramatic…..That’s a word, I assume. Nearly any emotional moment tends to ring hollow either because they don’t put proper focus on the event, especially if it has to do with the backstories of the girls, or they try to make it emotional and it misses the mark.
It is really, really, REALLY hard to care about when, where and how the girls will meet back up with their parents when they seem to give less than zero shits about them.
I get it, to some degree. They’ve never met their parents, they didn’t raise them, they don’t have any actual keepsakes (barring Moroha’s rouge) or memories of them, but if you’ve been on your own your whole life and found information about your family, wouldn’t you care a little at least? Yet these girls ask no questions or even discuss their parents unless it’s (briefly) Sesshomaru, and those occasions are lent more annoyance than anything because they don’t want to inherit a responsibility that was supposed to be his. Even when they just stumble upon information about their parents they don’t care.
Moroha briefly lived with the family of her mother and she didn’t ask them anything or seem interested in them in relation to her – Hell, they barely seemed interested in her for that matter, and they didn’t bother asking about Kagome or Inuyasha. Ya know, the daughter and son-in-law they haven’t seen for 18 YEARS and, for all they know, might be dead.
The most obvious of questions or musings regarding their parents and pasts are completely absent just for the sake of keeping the mystique and/or stringing along people who are most interested in the Inuyasha-related stuff, which is annoying as hell at best and skeevy writing at worst. When you hear Moroha being melancholy about how lonely she was growing up, you expect her to maybe think about her parents, even just as a ‘what if?’ but she doesn’t.
Towa’s main motivation is family-related yet she barely cares about her family other than her sister. And, yes, I’m also talking about the Higurashis right now. Did you guys forget that she’s actually TRAPPED in the Feudal era and can’t go back to the family she grew up with? I totally did. She barely registers it. It has to have been months by now, and she never even thinks about this issue. She mentions her family sometimes, but you’d think doing that would make her sad considering, given the current situation, she’ll never see them again.
I don’t even really care on the opposite side of the coin because, even with a whole episode dedicated to flashing back to the origins of the girls, there weren’t any real emotional moments with them. Towa and Setsuna are born, named by Rin and then it’s just swooped up by daddy, couple of pearls in the eyes and bam you’re done.
Moroha’s origins were a little more emotional with Kagome, and her giving Moroha the nonsensically existing rouge was the best item origin we got, but it was equally as quick of a reveal and departure, and there was no emotion whatsoever with ‘nearly killed my pregnant wife with a stupid stunt’ Inuyasha.
Let’s even direct attention away from the main kids and talk about Miroku and Sango’s kids. The one time they focus on their interactions as a whole family, we get flimsy drama from Hisui based on ridiculous assumptions that shouldn’t make him that pissed at Miroku even if they were somehow true in any way. And then they’re cleared up ridiculously easily.
There are no interactions between Miroku and Sango, they don’t talk about their once very close friends Inuyasha and Kagome nor do they care to discuss such matters with their friends’ friggin’ children.
So many times in this series you think ‘wow, this is going to be a really emotional and interesting moment’ but then you find yourself going…
Even the battles are just disappointing. Some of the moves look really cool, some of the threats are interesting, but they’re usually over quickly with little fanfare or impact on the overall story. There’s little to no tension in most of the battles, especially with ‘What power will she pull from her ass today?’ Towa over there, and when there is tension they usually ruin it somehow.
Finally, it’s really difficult for me to suggest this show for either fans or people who have never seen Inuyasha before. If you’re a fan, the continuation of the characters leaves a lot to be desired, to say the least, and the new characters have few actual connections with the old cast. It maintains the same vibe of the original series, barring the romance, quite well, but it doesn’t really capture the spirit, if that makes any sense.
If you’ve never seen the entirety of the original series, you’d be very confused, and chances are you’d be even more emotionally disconnected from it. What’s funny is that they screw up so much in regards to continuity from the original series that you almost need to watch the entire series and then train yourself to ignore numerous aspects of it….
I don’t want to be such a wet blanket in this post, so let me go over some stuff I really enjoyed.
The Art and Animation Are Quite Good – A lot of these most recent spin-offs and sequels tend to get really crappy art and animation because they bank so much on nostalgic people flooding the view counts that they feel they can afford to leave this aspect to the wayside and fix it later if the series reaches high enough popularity. However, with Yashahime, despite a tiny bit of rockiness, it has rather impressed me with how nice it looks and how decent the animation is. It’s not blowing my mind or anything, but it’s still quite pretty.
The Music is Great – This is cheating a tiny bit because the music is largely based off of the original Inuyasha soundtrack. A lot of the BG music is extremely reminiscent of it, some of it is identical, but it’s still an original soundtrack, especially with the OP’s and ED’s, which are great. Really enjoy the tracks in the show.
Snowball!Moroha – come on. It’s too adorable.
Riku was Alright Too – I didn’t reach a point where I found out what Riku’s deal was, but I like his character. He comes off like a chaotic anti-hero, and that’s always fun.
The Character Designs Rock – While I have my complaints about the aging up or lackthereof of the adult characters from Inuyasha, many other characters have awesome designs. I love Kohaku’s glow up, Towa’s so unique and slick, and Setsuna looks awesome with her demon slayer/Sesshomaru-esque outfit and mini fluffy boa. I like how both of the twins have red streaks in their hair, even though I have no clue what caused that. Moroha looks awesome and adorable in her custom-designed Robe of the Fire-Rat (Still want to know where she got it, though. We now know it most certainly isn’t Inuyasha’s.) and those little gloves and the ribbon that resembles dog ears are great touches. When they actually put in the effort, they create some awesome character designs on this show.
I Like that the Time-Travel Aspect is an Actual Part of the Main Conflict – Granted, it hasn’t been focused on a whole lot, to the point where I’m kinda concerned they’ve dropped it as a plot point, but supposedly Kirinmaru plans on basically ruining the space-time continuum….I think, so that’s pretty cool. That means the modern era might be involved in the grand finale.
And that’s about all I got.
I didn’t want to reach a point of dropping this series, but I just can’t go on like this. My conclusion on Yashahime is it could’ve been much worse, but also could’ve been much better. I don’t want to keep reviewing each individual episode of the show and being a Sour Sally about everything. I think I already have enough of a rep as a negative critic without picking apart this series every week, deserving or not.
Also, please don’t get me wrong, if you enjoy the series then more power to you. You can apparently see something in it that I can’t, and I’d never take that away from you. I keep saying that this series has a TON of potential, and it does, I know it, I’m just sick of seeing it get squandered so badly.
Now, this is another one of those ‘quit’ posts in that I will probably follow spoilers and stuff on the series just in case something huge happens and it’s actually huge and not just something medium sized pretending to be huge by putting on stilts and a trenchcoat. I also may catch an episode or two if I feel like it, but I’ve run out of gas keeping up with this series on the reg. I’m going to try to find something to be a little more positive about.
Peace out, Yashahime. Here’s hoping one day we can reunite under a brighter sky.
Until then, remember, a one-shot cell phone addiction is not comparable to a young girl’s toxic relationship with an obsessed, controlling, murderous fire-powered mountain god.
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Episode Review Masterlist:
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episodes 10, 11, 12 and 13
Episode 14
Episode 15
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The Anime Madhouse 