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May 3, 2012
I was never the biggest inuyasha, fan and thought the original work was too slowly paced, full of filler and had characters that were defined by their flaws rather than their whole personality. Of course, at it's base the characters were still likeable and the technical elements were fantastic.
Fortunately, the art and music are still awesome. The music consists of a nice mix of stirring western symphonic parts melded with traditional Japanese music. The art is some of the best I've seen recently, and it's a blend of great character designs and backgrounds that flow seamlessly with stunning CG. Rest assured, every battle scene is
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dazzling.
For the plot, in general it fixes it's problem of having slow pacing and too much filler. There is only really one filler episode, and it's out of the way early and generally entertaining, though it only starts out as an above average shounen with the first part being skirmishes, power up arcs and resolution of subplots. It was however nice, to see miroku, sango and even shippo get a few last minute upgrades so they can do more than just comment in battles. Speaking of the battles, they range from entertaining in the beginning to awesome in the latter half. They're kinetic, fast paced and exciting and are never dragged on too long and the great art and CG help out too.
The biggest strength in inuyasha was it's likeable characters, and weirdly they seem to come into their own more here than in the previous series. They stop being defined by flaws and work those flaws into just part of their personality. Inuyasha is no longer overly abrasive, miroku doesn't just feel up women and trick people anymore, sessomaru isn't just an obstacle for inuyasha, and most importantly naraku get's the biggest improvement. Before he never seemed menacing to me but rather protected by plot armor. Here, he is cunning and truly evil, and we even get a few looks into his motives in this series. The romances between sango and miroku and Inuyasha accelerate and never slow down, and with a combination of this and the fast moving, almost intricate plot the last half of the anime grabbed me by the heart and the neck and didn't let go. I found myself deeply involved with characters I previously only liked but then loved. This is really a great ending to the series, fans of the original you should be watching this now, and critics of the original this definitely warrants Inuyasha a second chance.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 28, 2012
Aria the Animation and it's sequel's are pretty much held up as the pinnacle of slice of life anime. If you take a look at the reviews and the overall rating it's nothing short of glowing. Take my review with a grain of salt, since I'm definitely not a big slice of life person.
Take any literature class, or even high school English, and you'll most likely come across the plot diagram. Introduction, rising action, climax and resolution. Conflict drives almost every story, and in terms of anime it tends to be on a fantastic scale. The end of the world, the fate of a nation
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or even the ebb and flow of a romance in a harem or romantic comedy anime. Well, aria doesn't really have any conflict on a fantastic scale. In fact, it doesn't really have conflict at all. Any conflict that does pop up is quickly resolved to demonstrate is easy going mood. It barely suffices to have the skeleton of a plot. Akari, a girl from earth, travels to a terraformed mars made up entirely of water specifically to the the city of neo-venizia. It's essentially just venice on mars or Aqua as the show calls it. Akari is trying to become a professional gondola tour guide within the city, and the show supposedly follows her in trying to achieve her goal. The pace is glacial, and most episodes are only tangentially related to Akari trying to become an undine if at all (said tour guide). Most episodes are simply the characters traveling the city by gondola in between ordinary activities.
The lack of any kind of real plot irks me a bit but I'm getting ahead of myself. It's a slice of life show, one shouldn't expect it to be plotted like a spider web. Slice of life shows are about character interactions. Unfortunately, though initially likeable, the cast doesn't really develop much beyond basic archetypes. Among the undines in training, there's the driven, uptight type in Aika, the reserved and mysterious Alice, and the airheaded, unfailingly cheery Akari. For their teachers and seniors, there's the motherly, gentle type in Alica, and the strict older sister of Aika in Akira. There's a curious lack of any major male characters perhaps attributable to the show's heavy use of moe. The three trainee undines often react and act the exact same way, with blushing, cries of 'ehhhhhhhh?' or 'ahhh' and deformed cartoonish reaction faces. A few have their own catch phrases and keyed reactions to situations. That's really about it.
So, with a ghost of a plot, a very basic character set, what exactly does aria have to keep you watching? The show actually turns out to be more than the sum of it's parts. The music is laid back flemenco and is very good, if recycled a bit, and the art depicting neo venizia is usually beautiful, except when it takes a nose dive in quality due to poor backgrounds or shoddy animation. The show has a genuinely calming effect and manages to be very charming. It takes away any stress you have and transports you to a world free of any kind of strife. So is aria a good anime? Probably. A masterpiece? Not in my opinion. If you're looking for deep characters, action or a complex plot, steer far away. It's not to me what it's cracked up to be, but judging by the other reviews and the overall score I probably can't tell you whether you'll like this or not. In any case, it's decent enough to warrant at least a few episodes worth of viewing from their each viewer can probably decide if they want to continue with the rest of the Aria franchise.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 23, 2012
To be honest, this series is something I really tried to like. It seemed like a less testosterone filled shounen anime with a strong romance element and undercurrents of adventure and comedy. On the surface, it looks to be excellent. Attractive art, good ending music (I've only watched the dub on adult swim) a satisfactory dub and an interesting enough concept and setting. A spunky, sweet modern day Japanese girl Kagome gets transported in a well to a fantasy laced feudal japan where she must team up with the crude, boisterous half demon Inuyasha (a jerk with a heart of gold and a potential love
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interest of Kagome), the lecherous monk Miroku and a slew of demons and ordinary peasants to recover a mystical sacred jewel that said girl accidentally smashed into thousands of pieces. While doing this, they have to keep it away from the nefarious and (supposedly) brilliant demon Naraku. Sounds interesting enough right? However, despite the anime community's buzz about the show, Inuyasha is the anime equivalent of a polished turd.
The first problem props up in the pacing and plot. The premise turns out likeable enough, but the vast majority of episodes can be put into equally sortable and equally boring categories. One episode type is where we get Sesshomaru Iinuyasha's brother causing some sort of mischief with our heroes often involving the tetsuaiga (Inuyasha's fathers sword who this villain thinks deserves to be his because of his full demon blood). The thing is though he's vaguely evil with a cackling sidekick and emotionless girl who never get developed he doesn't do any real harm because he 'deep down' cares for his brother and can be counted on to bring the fight to Naraku anyway because for some unexplained reason they hate each other. This basically makes him a pointless character to induce filler because there is no tension whenever he shows up for the seventh, eighth and thousandth time.
Speaking of Naraku, this clown is the worse excuse for a villain ever. Even though he is supposedly a mastermind, any reason for him surviving or his plans working can be chalked up to him having his own personal plot armor factory. I can't count the number of times the main cast has dispelled some kind of magical barrier saying 'big bad villain is right here' to nearly kill him and have him retreat or kill him only to turn out our heroes just killed one of his ten billion clones. He also has a sidekick that wants to betray him but never really gets around to it. Again, she's as flat as the majority of this anime's characters. If you haven't gathered, the 'fight Naraku and almost get him' episode is the next major type of plot we have that like the Sesshomaru fights have no sense of tension or story advancement at all.
Occasionally we have episodes where Kagome goes back to modern japan to live a normal teenage life, struggling to catch up in school and get a date because of her weeks spent inside feudal japan. These are generally the best episode type, especially when Inuyasha tags along for the ride and has to disguise the fact that he's a demon. Unfortunately, this is the rarest of the common episode types and doesn't really advance character or plot at all.
Remember how I said that the sacred jewel was smashed in to many pieces? Well, this is the writers favorite excuse to jam pack the show with more filler than Naruto can shake a stick at. Since there are so many jewel shards, somebody thought it was a good idea to create hundreds of cardboard thin villains who manage to get hold of jewel shards which increases their power. The vast majority of these shards gets fed into completely forgotten monster of the week mook demons. Every episode featuring them is as follows:'hey guys something is wrong in this village! Oh my god, a demon! And look, a sacred jewel shard! Let's kill the demon!' after this, Inuyasha promptly curb stomps said demon with his infinity plus one legendary sword and generic but recyclable shounen powers 'wind scar' and 'iron reaver soul stealer' which he proceeds to tell you every millionth time he uses.
Then there are a bunch of minor rouge characters and villains that don't really do anything to threaten the main cast of the show. There's disposable filler villains the band of seven who (surprise!) got a hold of some sacred jewel shards, Koga and the wolf demon tribe who also have some jewel shards who snatches kagome but never harms her or is forced to give her up by inuyasha's blade. There's also Sesshomaru who although vaguely threatening never really does much of anything except fail to be given character depth or cause nothing but minor irritation to Inuyasha and crew.
The biggest problem however is the show has likeable characters that don't ever stop being static to a meaningful extent. The romance aspect is bungled first and foremost by completely useless rival romance options of Kagome and Inuyasha. Kagome has Koga who Kagome pretty much hates for the entire series, and a schoolboy who's name i forget because he only shows up in the episodes where Kagome treks back to the modern day. For Inuyasha we have the high priestess Kkikiyou who despite nailing Inuyasha to a tree he somehow has the hots for her. Kagome is supposed to be a reincarnation of her, but she ends up being a completely stoic and poor explained copy of Kagome The problem with all of these possible suitors for the main characters is that it's painfully obvious who the official couples are so these are just more filler elements the show can pack in.
The problems don't stop with the main cast either. It's a shame, because all of these characters are very likeable but their relationships or personalities are never developed past square one. There's the best of the bunch, the perverted and scheming monk Miroku who despite his flaws harbors a crush for the demon hunter Sango. He's also affected by a curse from Naraku that causes his life to be on a doomsday clock but also grants him a hand that is a black hole which ultimately becomes useless because Naraku has more hyper intelligent villainous obscructionist bees than a 2d Donkey kong level. Sango unfortunately doesn't have much for anyone to get excited about, she's a run of the mill human who is useless in combat and who's only point to being around is for her to get revenge against for her little brother and to serve as crush fodder for Miroku. Of course their relationship goes nowhere because every time Miroku confesses his affection for Sango he goes and screws it up by feeling up random women in the show. There's also the cute mascot characters of Shippo, Kilala and Myoga the magic flee, but they serve as nothing but beasts of burden or sources of irritation to Inuyasha.
The worst however, comes from the shows supposedly central relationship between Inuyasha and Kagome. No matter how many times Inuyasha rescues Kagome or Kagome shows her love towards Inuyasha Inuyasha always mucks it up by being a meatheaded jerk and pushing their relationship straight to square one. And that, in a nutshell is what inuyasha's biggest and unforgivable flaw is. The minor plot elements and characters consist entirely of filler and stock personality types, and the major elements end up being drawn to one sided or inconclusive ends that infuriatingly results in a series that can't even decide to come to an ending that ties up anything at all! What could have been a breath of fresh air in a stale genre is just banal fodder for anime newbies that don't know anything better to watch. Really, watch almost anything, it's shorter and better than this crap.
Parental Rating – PG-13 – Not too much objectionable here. Some mildly bloody violence from time to time, very mild language ('hell','bastard' and 'damn') some adult themes here and there with sexual innuendo's and some camera obscured James Bond style nudity. And if I'm really grasping at straws, the presence of good and evil demons might rile the feathers of some very religious folk. Nothing here that wouldn't be fine for mature older children or teens. Though it should probably be considered child abuse to make anyone sit through this 167 episode long tirade of tripe.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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