Grondy has asked me to post this review of a movie that I really wanted to see (this review only made me want to see it more) and it also proves that Grondy is in fact not dead. Have a enjoi!
"Inuyasha: Affections Touching Across Time" Review
Greetings to you from the East Coast’s capital of sin and sleaze, Atlantic City! How are y’all doing? I myself am fine, having recently enjoyed the Philadelphia premiere of the first Inuyasha movie’s English dub. And that, my friends, is the subject of this whimsical little article.
(By the way, did any of you happen to go to the Philly premiere? Maybe you saw me. I was the tall kid wearing an unbuttoned red short sleeved dress shirt over a black T-shirt and bluish shorts with a gray bucket hat. I lent somebody an invitation while in line, if that helps.)
First I’ll sum up the plot for you, if you don’t mind. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want it spoiled, I suggest you skip this article. I’m too lazy to write a spoiler–free version.
The main villain is a moth demon named Menomaru, whose father, the powerful Lord Hyoga, crossed the sea to Japan from China (they actually only call it the “continent”, but they’re referring to good ol’ Cathay) decades past in an attempt to steal the souls of all living creatures–or some predictable objective like that. Hyoga was defeated by Inuyasha’s pops and sealed in a tree – or some predictable place like that.
However, when the Jewel of Four Souls was shattered and its pieces were strewn all over feudal Japan, one shard managed to coincidentally (forgive me if I seem too sarcastic and cynical, that’s just my writing style) imbed itself into the tree and awaken Menomaru. The demon manipulates Inuyasha (not too hard to do…) into breaking the seal on Hyoga’s power with Tetsusaiga (evidently, Hyoga did die, but his power was only sealed away). Each generation of the Hyoga line inherits the power of its forebears and thus grows in strength, and so Menomaru gains his father’s demonic abilities and becomes the new Lord Hyoga.
A side plot is that Menomaru’s two minions corrupt Kirara and copy Miroku’s Wind Tunnel. That’ll come into play later, so I’m just mentioning it for now.
The rest of the story is where the plot really starts to pick up. Miroku and Sango take on Menomaru Hyoga’s (that’s what I call him – I’m treating Hyoga as pretty much a family name, like Smith or Jones) goons. Meanwhile, Hyoga casts a spell on Kagome, and she promptly starts beating the crap out of Inuyasha. Eventually she breaks from Hyoga’s control, but not before she’s impaled Inuyasha to the Sacred Tree with an arrow.
Kikyo arrives, gets pissed, and tells Kagome to go home. She says some stuff about how Hyoga was sealed in the Tree of Ages, and the Sacred Tree is another Tree of Ages, and a whole lot of other stuff about trees I didn’t understand. Kikyo pushes Kagome into the well which, being made of wood from the Tree of Ages (again, I’m guessing – I didn’t really pay attention to the Tree stuff) immediately closes up.
Meanwhile, Hyoga starts absorbing souls. All the inhabitants of Japan surrender their essences to the power of the demon, strengthening him greatly. This massive disruption causes Kagome’s era to be plunged into eternal winter (another rather nonsensical plot point, at least to me).
Anyway, it turns out that Kagome and Inuyasha can still communicate through the tree, and he gives her a quick pep talk. (Another thirty minutes Viz has spent on Inuyasha/Kagome…) So, she purifies the gunk blocking the well and leaps through the portal, returning to the feudal era to stand by Inuyasha.
In the feudal era, however, Miroku takes on the Wind Tunnel–copying goon. Basically they just stand there and try to suck each other in… until the goon does something ridiculously stupid and enlarges her Wind Tunnel with a spear in an attempt to overpower the monk. However, she only succeeds in sucking herself in. And then for some reason she explodes. And there goes one goon, in a brain–straining paradox of time and space.
However, Sango is getting beaten up by the other one, whose maneuverability is greatly increased by riding the corrupted Kirara. However, to make a long story short and thus escape the wrath of my editor who’s already smacking me for writing a long and inordinately rambling article, Ill just say that Kirara fights off the corruption and along with her demon slayer pal off the last goon.
So there. Now it’s just massive hyper powerful Hyoga versus Inuyasha’s gang… until Hyoga summons a billion demons and sics them on the world. However, they’re apparently pretty weak, and they’re easily dispatched by Miroku and =gasp= Shippo.
Anyway, after his (rather pathetic) minions get defeated, Hyoga starts blasting purple demonic energy beam ray things at Inuyasha, which prompts him to use his Backlash Wave with the aid of Kagome and carve up some fried moth. And so it ends. Actually, they’re a nice scene with the two at the end, but the only thing that really interested me about it was this hilarious shot.
[Editor’s Note: No, this screencap isn’t bootlegged. It’s perfectly legitimate, as Grondy bought several of the DVDs while in China.]
And now that that ridiculously extensive and boring summary (for me, at least) is over, I can finally state my opinions to those of you who are still awake and interested.
First – the villain. I actually quite liked Menomaru. He was fast, strong, powerful, somewhat bishounen–y, I suppose, after you got over the fact that he’s a moth, and possessed enough pride to be one of a very small group of demons who scorn the use of Jewel Shards – Inuyasha and Sesshomaru among them.
I did, however, have a few issues with him. First is the fact that is dialogue seemed a bit too cheesy for me – it seemed to me that he just copied the standard stereotypical Evil (Ever-Villian-is-Lemons) villain banter. Second, he skulks in his little – okay, it’s huge, but whatever – purple orb for half the movie. I’m very disdainful of cowardly bad guys–in fact, that’s the main reason why I don’t like Naraku more. And lastly, after he finally emerges from the orb, he looks downright monstrous. I greatly preferred the original Menomaru, the one who danced around with his sword like a manic ferret and was arguably the more skilled swordsman in the Inuyasha universe. At the end he just sorta sits on his [censored] and chucks energy beams at people.
One more thing, this time about the villains’ names in general. If Menomaru and his goons are from China (which, in case you didn’t know, they are), they why didn’t they have Chinese names? I’m somewhat knowledgeable about Oriental languages, and “Menomaru” and “Hyoga” and “random Japanese goon name” are all obviously Japanese.
Next, for the timeline. This troubled me quite a bit, me being the kind of guy who just can’t help notice details that often lead to odd problems in timelines. First, Menomaru is awakened when the Shikon Jewel breaks at the very beginning of the series, yet during the movie Inuyasha uses the Backlash Wave, indicating that he had already slain the dragon Ryukotsusei, yet that took place in episode 53 (yeesh, I feel so odd citing episodes like a historian or something), but when we see Sesshomaru in the movie, he is only wearing the Tenseiga and only uses his claws in battle, implying that Tokijin had not yet been forged. However, Sesshomaru had already received Tokijin in episode 45! Ah well. The best solution is just to ignore it. It’s still a perfectly good movie.
All right, on to the cameos. We see Kaede, Kikyo, Sesshomaru and his groupies (a.k.a. Rin and Jaken), Kagome’s family (Sota, Kagome’s mom, and Kagome’s grandpop, to be specific), as well as a few still frames at the credits with Hojo, Koharu, and all the rest of the random people we’ve seen throughout the series – including the dreaded WacDonald girls. However, there’s no sign of Koga or Naraku. One would think they would be affected by a demon attempting to steal the souls of all living things, since they’re living too, right? I guess this was either because the characters weren’t introduced yet in the series when the movie was releases, or maybe just because the writers were lazy. Mm. Merely another inconsequential detail.
The dramatic elements of the story were actually quite well done, in my opinion. I had expected them to be mostly a clone of any random Inuyasha/Kagome sap episode, but not so. The character dynamics worked pretty well, and you can see by all the fancy words I’m using that I really have no idea what I’m saying, but I think it focused mostly on Inuyasha, Kagome, Sango, Kirara, and Myoga. I rather enjoyed the building on the minor characters.
I’d like to take a moment to talk about the Kirara subplot. This was one of the “minor character building” moments I found rather interesting, as for most of the series she seemed like basically a flying transport for the rest of the group. The movie made her seem a lot more human – if that makes any sense at all.
[Editor’s Note: It doesn’t.]
Thank you for that enlivening comment, M.M. Anyway, as I was saying, it was great seeing the feline’s relationship with Sango (… don’t interpret that the way I know the perverts will interpret it). Kirara centered plots just don’t come along very often.
The humor. Ah, the humor. While some elements of it were remarkably redundant (poor Shippo and Myoga seemed to take turns getting konked every ten minutes), I found there were actually quite a few partially intelligent jokes in there that didn’t key off someone suffering. Examples? Ah, you’ll have to watch it yourself for that.
Next for the music. While I am an avid fan of the Inuyasha score, from the epic instrumentals to the vibrant vocals, I must admit I was a bit disappointed by what the movie had to offer. Most of the tracks were either remixes or straight copies from the series, and I was rather hoping that Kaoru Wada could have rustled up a few new songs for an event such as this (I’m not counting the opening and ending themes, because it’s basically just standard procedure that movies should have individual openings and endings). Ah well. Life goes on.
A crucial part of the premiere that many probably overlook is the audience. Me being the relatively paranoid guy that I am, I arrived about eight hours early to find the theater deserted. I wasn’t going to wait that long, so I got my chauffer (read: dad) to ferry me around the city for a spot.
When I got back after a nice tour of the historic bars and strip joints of Philly (no, I didn’t actually go into them, I just kinda looked at them) and a great dinner at a swanky restaurant (read: McDonald’s), the place was PACKED with Inuyasha fans. Brooding fans, squealing fans, even reluctant–parent–dragged–along fans. They mostly came in groups of two or more, seldom greater than five. I rather enjoyed the boundless enthusiasm with which they waited in line (I, of course, was standing irritable drumming my fingers on the excellent but thrice read Amulet of Samarkand, by the most eminent Jonathan Stroud). One particular group of fans seemed intent on yelling out characters’ names when he or she first appeared on the screen.
And there were the cosplayers.
When I got there, there were no costumes, but in less than ten minutes they began arriving in droves of typically horrid outfits. Now, I’d like to take this moment to make a personal announcement.
[Editor’s Note: NO! Get on with the [censored] article, you piece of [censored] [censored]! Grr…]
Calm down, M.M. Now, I always used to scorn cosplayers, but I have come to terms with it. It’s just another way for happy fans to express their love, like fanfiction or fanart. In fact, I actually found it pretty amusing firsthand. Perhaps I should… no, I’d look silly with ears like that.
And there. That’s it. That’s all I have to say.
[Editor’s Note: Oh yes, you were so concise in your FIVE [censored] PAGES!]
Yeesh… someone’s cranky… Anyway, in general I really enjoyed my evening. I liked the actual movie, even though it vaguely seemed like an overglorified episode, and even though contemporary critics would have eaten it up. The happiness of the crowd and the awesome fan spirit really galvanized me, and in fact I was bearing a rather silly grin for the rest of the evening and a good chunk of the next day. I’d recommend it to you, but I think much of my enjoyment came from the rabid fans and the overall festive atmosphere, so be sure to invite some friends over.
Grondring is a fifth level magician. He’s well known for raising a djinni of the fourth level while only in his teens, and currently does freelance jobs for the population of London. Oh, did I mention he was an avid fan of the Bartimaeus Trilogy? No, I don’t think I did. He can be contacted at grondring@hotmail.com.
Mad Mod, Grondring’s editor, is a long friend of his, even though he finds himself often frustrated by his companion’s spurts of incredible irascibility… like now, for instance. His email address is madmod52@yahoo.com, though you probably shouldn’t disturb him until the headache he got from editing this article has worn off.