-Story-
Blinders-On: The story held well for me, with Inuyasha and Kagome growing in complexity as I did, gaining romantic subplots as my young mind was beginning to grasp the idea of truely loving a "stranger", yet keeping my young Carnage-obsessed mind distracted enough to keep me from questioning L-O-V-E too much or getting distracted by whatever was on the floor. The more disturbing and sexually suggestive things (Daemon Egg/Pearl in Sango's Vagina, various things involving tentacles) passed right over my head as a kid, though it contributed to things like the V-Chip to becoming standard in TVs back then.
Blinders-Off: The story takes its own pace, often allowing for a level of distraction in a world with a very real Daemon problem. but at the same time it can get very filler-y at times, with nearly every other episode being a filler EP after the first 30 or so, varying from hardly noticeable to blatant filler where nothing much happens for 25 minutes and nothing develops in any way. The sexually suggestive moments today come off as a bit overtly perverted, with the previously mentioned Vagina Pearl episode bordering on censored pornography.
-Art-
Blinders-On: Not much to say for someone like me here, It was perfectly standard to me with few other points of comparison from the time frame and none that really WOWed me consistently enough to be above or below anything else, not particularly stand-out outside of a few episodes with epic landscapes that wowed me at the time.
Blinders-Off: Today the art is substandard, under-detailed, and sometimes flatly colored, leaving something to be desired outside of the rare landscape shots filled with detail, presumably to prevent the viewer's eyes from wandering too much.
-Sound-
Even less for me to say here blinders on or off outside of the common absence of overlap between words and sound effects in the background... It was perfectly fine then and still is perfectly fine. no need to fix what isn't broken eh?
-Characters-
Blinders-On: The characters where fresh, and outside the clueless female protagonist first shown here in the USA in Sailor Moon, where completely unique to me and perfectly acceptably written, ignoring the awkward initial dynamic between our leading duo. Inuyasha was always cool but not infallibly so, sometimes showing his more personable side, Kagome was trustworthy but unlucky, sometimes creating hilarious moments with monsters and double-entendres.
Blinders-Off: Today, the archetypes used for Inuyasha, Kagome, Miroku, and Sango have been beaten to a sometimes literal death by the new blood coming into the Anime industry having also grown up with Inuyasha&Co., using copyright-dodging stand-ins with more boring designs to echo the characters into their own works. the occasional filler Inuyasha episode will pick at the characters, revealing details about them previously unexplored, leaving no stone unturned by the ending. some details, and by extension episodes, being more mundane than others.
-Appeal- ("Enjoyment"? The level of being able to be enjoyed? Lets go with Appeal.)
Blinders-On: This appealed highly to my young mind and continued to far into my teens. The action, the characters, the twin settings, it was all perfect in my mind back then and to this date I have trouble critiquing it honestly on its faults and merits.
Blinders-Off: It's very dated, if it where made today people would call it a bland mashup of well abused character archetypes, settings, and attacks that will have far outstayed its welcome. completely bypassing the taboo 50-episode limit most modern anime set for themselves. -Begin American Anime Otaku Rage- creating major plot points then commuting seppuku all over the place, before they *dare* have any negative impact on the LN/Manga they now exist purely to sell, though those things never make it to America, and the episodes will sell for exorbitant amounts in box sets with far more Blu-Ray discs than they have any right to come on for being a sub-50 episode run, it is expensive bullshit that has no right to exist. -American Anime Otaku Rage End-
-Conclusion-
Overall, Its a great anime that had a lot of great ideas and story telling for the time, but today it would never survive the expectations of the modern anime buff thanks to being the most heavily copied from anime ever. If you want to know where the most infamous and abused tropes in anime came from give it a go. otherwise please let my darling Inuyasha rest... The years where hard on him. :,(
(Scores based on the most unbiased opinion i can provide comparing Inuyasha to modern anime, though there's probably still a bit of bias there. my true bias-included score would likely be solid 10s)
