Inu-Yasha: The Movie 2: The Castle Beyond the Looking Glass

Reviewed By:  Carla Land

DVD  Viz Communications

Review based on only disk

Rated T (Teen)

What it’s (basically) all about: Half-demon Inuyasha and present-day-schoolgirl Kagome, still at each other’s throats most of the time, are now faced with the Princess of Heaven and her desire to destroy all living things and make it endless night. Along with their friends, they must defeat her or else all time will stop. Along the way, they get ever closer to admitting their true feelings for each other- and saving the world may depend on them doing that.

Nitty Gritty: There is a lot of sword play in this movie (same as the first) a few bows and arrows, demons getting lopped into pieces, and at one point Kagome gets shot with an arrow in her back. The violence isn’t gory, but it’s prevalent. On the upside, there are no inappropriate sexual situations, and only a brief scene where Kagome and Sango are bathing (and getting spied on, but we see nothing except a scar on Sango’s back).  The monk, Miroku, is still girl crazy, but he’s also very much falling for Sango, who is on his thoughts a lot.

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

As with the first movie, if you aren’t up on your Inuyasha, chances are you’re going to be wondering who these people are. At the beginning of the movie character’s names and brief descriptions of who they are pop up, but they go so fast that unless you pause the movie you’ll likely miss it. For the most part, though, the plot can still be followed without having extensive knowledge of the show, and you definitely don’t have to have seen the first movie since it has nothing whatsoever to do with this one.

Special features are pretty standard- info on the graphic novel and card game, line art gallery, Japanese trailers for this movie and movie 3. There’s also a 35 minute mini-documentary like show chronicling the top 30 things about Inuyasha. It’s subtitled only, and offers glimpses behind the scenes and Japanese culture, which is pretty interesting.

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 thought this one was better than the first, probably because I have seen more Inuyasha and I like the I-love-you-but-there’s-no-way-I’m-telling-you relationship that Kagome and Inuyasha have. Still, it’s just a glorified episode of the TV show.