Inu-Yasha: The Movie: Affections Touching Across Time

Reviewed By:  Carla Land

DVD  Viz Communications

Review based on only disk

Rated T (Teen)

What it’s (basically) all about: A new demon named Menomaru has arrived in feudal Japan, and he wants to take over pretty much everything. By tricking Inuyasha he manages to secure all the power of his ancestors, and now he’s causing havoc throughout time. What’s a half-demon to do, especially when he doesn’t have all of his friends by his side? Throw in a love triangle between Inuyasha, a resurrected Kikyo, and schoolgirl from the modern day Kagome, and you have an action packed, emotional, sword wielding hour and a half.

Nitty Gritty: There is a lot of sword play in this movie, a few bows and arrows, souls being sucked out of whole villages, and a couple of demon possessions. The violence isn’t gory, but it’s prevalent. On the upside, there’s no nudity or inappropriate sexual situations, The closest the movie comes to that is the monk, Miroku, asking two pretty women to bear his children. Imagine a girl-crazy thirty-something with an affinity to grab women’s back ends, and you pretty much have this guy’s character figured out.

For the most part the language is mild. In the dubbed version we hear a lot of “damns” and in the subbed version a “bastard” or two sneaks in, but mostly the language is PG and inoffensive.

The movie relies heavily on the hopes that those watching it have been keeping up with the television show. There is clearly a lot that has been happening before this particular demon shows up, and some of the nuances are going to be lost on viewers who aren’t up on their Inuyasha. In fact, the movie probably has more emotional giddy-up if you’re already vested in the characters. Fortunately, there are the special features coming to our rescue.

The special features are pretty standard- Japanese trailers, an English trailer for the second movie, character sketches and the closing credits in Japanese. There is also a roughly forty-five minute long “recap” documentary of the entire series, which is all in Japanese but has English subtitles, that can at least make the movie a little more interesting by getting you up-to-date on what the heck is going on in this world.

Survey says:  This is fine for your teen sections. There is nothing here that should be sending up red flags or danger signals. Clearly there is some love-tension going on between various parties and there is a lot of action, but compared to some TV shows popular with the teen sect, it’s nothing to get worked up about. Even younger kids would probably enjoy it if they’d seen enough of the series to know who was who.

Personal Ad: I’m still not a big Inuyasha fan, but there is a lot more going on in this movie than there was in the first disk of the TV series. Characters have bonds, the story had been fleshed out, and it was easy to get involved in the story, even if it was just to groan at the impossible ineptitude of Kagome to assert herself with everyone but Inuyasha. Why is it that against demons and bad guys she’s a bow and arrow marksman with confidence, yet around Inuyasha she gets all flustered when the omelet burns? Ah, young love. Anyway, after seeing this I’ll be willing to give the series another go, because I can see that it does in fact get better than it’s first three episodes suggest. All those teens in my Anime Club can’t be wrong.