AniMania – INUYASHA: THE FINAL ACT

Last week, North American anime distributor Viz Media began airing the first episode of the long awaited conclusion to Rumiko Takahashi’s hit series, Inuyasha. Appropriately titled “Inuyasha: The Final Act”, the series will run for 26 episodes, and finally bring the animated version of Takahashi’s beloved feudal fairy tale to a close. The first episode, “Naraku’s Heart”, aired Saturday in Japan and was streamed on Hulu with English subtitles, making this a near simultaneous release. Upcoming episodes will be released the same way, with new installments airing each Saturday.

Loyal fans won’t be disappointed. Right from the start, this looks and feels like vintage Inuyasha, with beautiful opening animation set to the sounds of Do As Infinity’s “Kimi ga Inai Mirai.” DAI are no strangers to Inuyasha soundtracks, having also done the second and fifth ending themes for the show, “Fukai Mori” and “Shinjitsu no Uta” respectively. The opening animation features all of the major players fans know and love: Inuyasha, Kagome, Sango, and Miroku, along with your favorite villains and antiheroes, including Naraku, Kagura, Kikyo, Kouga, and Sesshomaru.

The rest of the episode makes good on the opening’s promise. This first episode is action packed. Wasting no time, it quickly picks up where the earlier installments of the series left off. We learn that Hakudoshi has hatched an evil plan to challenge Naraku and take the shards of the Shikon Jewel for himself. This leaves Kagura with a fateful choice — does she stay loyal to Naraku, or join forces with the traitor in an effort to escape her hated master?

Hakudoshi’s plan to collect the remaining jewel shards leads him to confront Kagome and company, and also causes Kouga and Kohaku to be drawn in. Kikyo does her part in the battle, but her powers are waning, leaving her to question whether or not she will survive long enough to confront Naraku. Sesshomaru is, well, Sesshomaru, and is busy wandering around looking menacing doing whatever it is Sesshomaru does when he’s off by himself. And in case you’re wondering, Kagome is STILL failing her classes. Whatever she did in the off season, apparently it wasn’t studying.

If the opening was beautiful, the ending is exquisite. Inuyasha is well known for having amazing ending themes and animation, and The Final Act is no exception. As we listen to the soft sounds of AAA’s “With You”, we are treated to a shot of Inuyasha and Kagome lying next to each other in the grass, with a red string of fate binding them together. The preview for next week’s episode casts an ominous light on Kagura’s struggle, leaving one to wonder if the wind sorceress can ever truly be free.

A few years ago, such a development would have been almost unimaginable. At that time, Takahashi’s epic seemed destined to go on forever, at least in its manga form. The anime had been left to languish with a non-ending that did little to satisfy fans or bring any sense of conclusion to the series. And that’s part of why this news is so important, not just for Inuyasha fans, but for the anime community at large.

For a long time, it was just accepted that many anime and manga either had really bad endings, or else didn’t end at all. A title might be canceled mid story, leaving fans in the lurch, or put on hold, sometimes indefinitely. A series in translation would often have agonizing gaps in between releases, and it was not at all unusual for part of a show or book to be partly translated, and never finished, leaving the rest of the plot line orphaned on the other side of the ocean. In such cases, a fan’s only hope was to either find a translation online (and that’s in the days since the invention of the internet!) or try to befriend someone who spoke Japanese, and persuade them to translate for them. More than one otaku ended up learning Japanese in order to finally be able to read his or her favorite works in their native language. And even when we did get a full release, it was just accepted, even expected, that we would have to wait several years before the English version made it to our shores.

But all that has changed. Inuyasha isn’t the first epic story to finally reach a conclusion. Natsuki Takaya’s long running shoujo manga, Fruits Basket, ended with its 23rd volume back in 2007. Amid a ground swell of fan support, the quirky retro sci-fi drama, Big O, was finally given a second season that told the other half of its story, though given the plot line of Big O, it might be a mistake to call the last episode an “ending.” Even Inuyasha’s creator, Takahashi, the queen of cliff hangers herself, has shown that there can be light at the end of the tunnel. Her romantic comedy, Maison Ikkoku, comes to a tightly crafted close.

Even so, the fact that Inuyasha is finally getting its long hoped for animated conclusion is a treat for fans, and suggests tantalizing possibilities for other series that were left in anime limbo. The crew for the animated version of Fruits Basket commented on how magical the experience of working on that show was, and expressed doubt that such a dream team could ever be assembled again — but if it could be done with Inuyasha, then maybe Fruiba could also be revisited.

The anime for Fruits Basket was remarkably well done in almost every aspect, even down to such fine details as the background noises in the audio and the nuances of the characters’ different costumes, but it suffered from a very unsatisfying ending that leaves many questions unanswered and large portions of Fruiba’s very deep plot unexplored. If Inuyasha: The Final Act is a success (and given the show’s perennial popularity, I’ll dare to say it will be), maybe it will inspire Fruiba to be revisited.

Or maybe we could see a new version of Ken Akamatsu’s romantic comedy, Love Hina. It seems like a long shot to think that Akamatsu would ever go back to the Hinata Sou after such a long hiatus, but with his latest work, Negima, being almost immediately reversioned, maybe we haven’t seen the last of Keitaro and the girls after all.

The simultaneous release also puts to rest another long standing gripe of the English speaking anime community. For years, U.S. fans felt like they were relegated to a “second class” status, having to wait years for an English language release. That time has been getting shorter and shorter, from years to months to days, and now, with a subbed version of the new Inuyasha episode being made available the same day it aired in Japan, there can be no doubt that the North American audience is taken seriously. This, along side other developments, like Kodansha’s Japanese release of American manga-ka Fred Gallagher’s MegaTokyo, shows that the climate has genuinely become more multicultural, a positive development for more than just anime fans.

All that with one swipe of the Tetsuaiga? Not bad, but it still won’t save Inuyasha when Kagome tells him to “Sit!” The next episode, “Kagura’s Wind”, will be available this Saturday. You can access it from Viz’s website at www.viz.com. And for more on series creator Takahashi, check out Rumiko’s site at www.therumicworld.com.