Hanyou no Yashahime: Sengoku Otogizoushi - Ni no Shou

I'll try to keep this review short. I was born in 1993 and watching Inuyasha when I was a kid are literally one of the happiest days of my life. Seeing his daughter and nieces just made me tear up almost every episode uncontrollably. I didn't need an anime with a complicated story and big budget graphics, this really was what I was expecting. The music definitely set the mood as one of the reasons why I love Inuyasha. A slice of life, fantasy, adventure, and a happy ending. I thank the creators for giving me new memories that I'll never forget similar to a ... time where there was never heart-ache, only the warmth of the best days of my life.

This is my first review because it's deserved. Inuyasha was my favorite anime growing up and even now. I don't remember the dialogue being so awful corny, and redundant. the story could have been easily four seasons and they did it in 2. The character development was nonexistent and the only ones I liked were the original group from Inuyasha.

This was a disappointing end to a rushed story and not one I hope gets a third season. Not only becausee of the story but the dated animation and art is uninspiring and takes me back to the early 200s of Tonnami in the worst ... way.

If the writers want to continue this story focus on Towa's gender identity which is a subplot that was long forgotten. Setsuna and Hisui actually having a romance rather than a few lines together. And finally Moroha not being annoying. A female Inuyasha is not appealing at all.

Side note: It's really gross that Sesshomaru got Rin pregnant when she was 18. He raised her from a child and he's hundreds of years older than her. Talk about grooming.

The show was not bad but it was great either. Inuyasha was the very first anime i ever watched growing up and it left a pretty significant mark on me. This one the other hand was nice to see but i could never bring myself to watch it, out of fear it would ruin how i felt about the original. I found myself the most interested when the major characters from Inuyasha appeared. I watch every episode but it felt I was dredging through the whole series solely so I could see the scenes with the original character in it and know the context. ... I was very confused by the whole rainbow pearls and how they apparently were never heard of during the original adventure despite many demons knowing of them in these 2 shows. I was happy to see the original characters having grown up (even it they all looked pretty much the same) and had children. But I personally would've preferred a story with them just travelling around and doing stuff training the next generation over this twisted net of objectives the all had.

Hell what I think pissed me off the most was the whole wolf tribe and Moroka. Koga and Ayame would have never allowed Inuyasha's and Kagome's daughter to be sent off with some random tribe member and then be cool with her pretty much being sold into pseudo-slavery. They probably would have raised her as their own even if that caused conflict within the tribe.

So if you read my Season 1 review you know I was not very impressed with it, Its main issue being that it lacks focus on the main story & proper character development.
Well Season 2 does a big 180 but still has a few issues. The main plot ( No spoilers ) stays the central focus of the season so far ( 11 episodes in ). Many characters get more development of who they are including Sesshomaru, who gets major development with out breaking the character we know. the central story setup in season one becomes the main driving force in season 2 with our ... leads all working to find a solution ofcourse one of them is a little more committed to money than the mission but at least her character is consistent. As of S.2 EP.11 things are reaching a critical point and so far the series has been much better but still needs work. I hope the momentum keeps up and by season 3 ( if we get one) we get a great series. until then I feel the team still has some learning to do BUT they have learned sense the train wreck of a season 1.

I will update this review after I watch the last episode of season 2 with an over all review.

Good old Inuyasha with badass female leads passing Bechdel test with flying colors. The holy trinity is badass. I didn't agree with the extremely low reviews of season 1 but I did see the show not living upto its full possible potential. Well season 2 flips that dynamics and delivers on all loose threads left hanging in the first act. Characters are more dynamic, lore fully explored, climaxes delivered and story is coherent. In the essence this passed the Inuyasha vibe check while being a coherent interesting story by itself. I think this is a reasonably well done show and should be seen as itself ... and not compared to Inuyasha even though it is set up in the same world. On that note this show is great and I loved it.

Rating:- 7.5/10 wanted to give 8/10 but something felt missing which was surprisingly there in Season 1 (2nd half). So both Season 1 and Season 2 get 7/10 from me.

Review:-
In most ways better than Season 1 and did enjoy myself watching season 2 every week but honestly both Season 1 and 2 are unnecessary and after watching the ending of Season 1 the ending of season 2 lacks that impact.


On the good side of Season 2:- Finally the girls seem more like "nakama".
All Moroha wanted was that and she got it and she no longer felt like a comedy side character, Towa isn't ... OP in this and though she is clearly the Main Protagonist of the story she doesn't completely take over screen time which should have been given to Setsuna or Moroha or all 3 of them. Setsuna was awesome in Season 1 and she is equally awesome in Season 2.
Takechiyo is a surprise. I hated his character in Season 1 really hated the way he was written and Season 2 actually made me care for him. He feels like a friend to Moroha and Moroha and Takechiyo definitely get along better than Inuyasha and Shippo did.

Sesshomaru as always steals the show! Everytime he's on screen love it!

Inuyasha and Kagome were handled well too. (spoilerish? Loved the Reunion. Fav ep. Inuyasha and Moroha are so sweet to watch. So awkward at first but Inuyasha quickly gets over that and Inuyasha as a dad is a must see! At least watch that Ep even if you don't watch the others.)

Season 2 definitely has better story pacing compared to Season 1. The problem with Season 2 is the impactfullness of it. It fell short to Season 1 in that aspect.
A good happy ending no doubt but I just felt like 'something was missing' When Moroha and Towa fought Kirinmaru that sense excitement I got was completely not there in Season 2.
If you don't mind not having that, then it will like a present neatly gift wrapped with a bow, where in the end everyone is happy which is also nice. Not every story needs an epic showdown.

Just remember no one really is a bad guy in this. Everyone are in the grey area you could say....though the only reason we accept that is the way the 'sengoku jidai' is presented and how it's normal to almost die and also die.

Frankly if Tenseiga and Akuru weren't there we wouldn't be this chill about how they handled Kirinmaru and Zero. Rion and Kirinmaru is definitely an interesting plotline and so are Kirinmaru's incarnations (Osamu Kirin and Riku) even if Osamu Kirin still doesn't make sense to me.....

Sound:- Season 1 is way better than Season 2.They are alright.
Art:- It's fine. No problem on that end.

In the end, if you watched Season 1 or like Inuyasha then I would recommend watching Season 2. Definitely not a bad watch. You will have fun.

Thank goodness for second seasons!!

While I enjoyed the Inuyasha revisit from season 1, story wise it lacked direction and depth. Some backstory on how things started for Half demon princess was decent and the intro to the big bad were nice but really lacked cohesion.

This second season not only plays to fans service by bringing in the right amount and the right placement of the OG cast but gives the new cast enough space to spread their wings and flourish as their own characters.

Old tropes are introduced with new twists, supporting cast is really fleshed out and plays to important plot elements in the ... story.

Some fight sequences can be boring and predictable but adding some consequences to the actions of the characters OPness helps. (ie. Towa's sword). The seasons not done yet but overall huge success imo. Hope I can see some more seasons of Towa, Setsuna and Morah(really want to see her wield the Tetssaiga)

The best part of this series is....THE OP THEME. ITs the best OP SONG in 2021 ANIME!

Reborn by NEWS.....it great and then the chorus hits:

Hanarenaide te wo nigitte
Sadame wo koete zero kara no reborn wo
Inochi nante kurete shimae
Nando demo tsuchi wo haratte tachiagare
Kawaranai ai wo kimi e
Tighten up my soul kizuna no ribon

AMAZING!

I'm not a pro on how to rate an anime but I will give my thoughts without spoilers. Some scenes don't make sense and are explained later without any credible logic, but I guess they had to keep the audience satisfied with what they wanted to watch. Some powerups come out of nowhere or the logic of why something is happening isn't right.

I did like the music though, good thing they used the original series' OSTs, and the opening isn't bad.

I liked Sesshomaru's, Moroha's and Setsuna's character development. It's very entertaining but don't try to understand the why to everything or look deeprly ... into it because as I said before some things don't make sense, which means you're not gonna enjoy the show thinking how something like that could happen.

(spoiler) I think it's nice they "brought back" Kikyo, I'm sure a lot of fans me included liked to see her again. My only question would be, why didn't the tree of ages (idk how it's called in english) didn't have a "personality" before? Looks like they took thsi out of nowhere and suddenly the tree can speak when it never did before during the original series.

Real score: 6.5

I knew it! I've never been a fan of Inuyasha even though I was a 90s kid. In fact, I like this more than Inuyasha as it's more focused on the girls rather than a general romance comedy isekai. This was dilapidated in the former season as it was the worst thing in the world, and guess what? This was one of the few decent ones that I've watched from Fall and Winter 2021.

The best: It's entertaining enough to follow on the story they're trying to tell us. And it's interesting for the simple fact that we're able to see what happened ... later to the characters from the original series.

The worst: It's more intended for kids, not surprising. There are dark elements, but not too deep or impactful. It's true the script leaves something to be desired.

I didn't expect anything more than being entertained. I didn't fall in love with this sequel, but I still feel it's lovable.

Reposting because my first review was done a bit earlier than it should.

Really strong start but goes down the hill on the last episodes. That is how I describe the second season of Hanyou no Yashahime.

As I said in my review from the first season, my final score for this show is not a 10, but I will keep it until the end because even though I think it does not deserve a max score, it still keeps a lot of the original Inuyasha and can still bring a lot of enjoyment from old fans in general. I would say this second season's real score ... is, again, around an 8.

It starts literally right where the first season ends since it ended with A HUGE cliffhanger. The first season's writting was all over the place at the start, but at the very end it started to grow and it only gets better through the second season. It was fun to see the anime's score growing slowly each episode, which only shows how people were actually getting convinced by its writting and pace.

For me, the first arc of this season is amazing and even after the end of said arc (around ep 12) the story keeps a strong pace for a few episodes, before going back to its roots. In other words, to its rushed pace like how it was when season 1 started. Said that, I would still state that the anime is still great up to around episode 18, which is actually a lot if you consider the total of episodes.

The problem is everything that happens during those last 5-6 episodes. People change minds like they change clothes (well, not a good comparison since people do not actually change clothes in this anime) and everything scaled up just too fast. Small threat to huge threat, to small threat again to world-ending threat. It is all over the place. At some point you realise that even the characters are tired and just want this mess to end already, antagonists included. The big highlight from these last few episodes is Sesshoumaru, but I will hold myself from giving spoilers and just say that, for me, he carries the show in the mid of all this mess at the ending.

Talking about Sesshoumaru, the characters here are mostly good. Not taking into account that most of the characters' development is sacrified to rush the ending, most of the characters have a good development and you just get really happy for Sesshoumaru at the end. His growth is probably one of the best you will ever see and Yashahime gives it a beautiful end. Other characters that I loved were Zero and Setsuna and their development was great as well. I even found myself liking Towa a bit through the end even though she was far from being one of my favorites.

Inuyasha and Kagome are ways more present here than in first season but since the main focus are the three main girls and specially Sesshoumaru's family, they are still treated as just side characters and I do not see any problem with that, they were the main focus on the OG anime, so lets give others some spotlight this time. Moroha is not treated like a comedy relief anymore and she has the proper development she deserved back in season one. She is not one of my favorite characters but is still a fun character and I can understand the many reasons why she is a fan favorite. And we finally get to see Shippou again, he worked a lot through the end fo the story.

The animation is fine. This anime is more focused on its story that we do not have that many fights we had in the first season. The important fights in the first arc of second season are just ok and the final fights at the end are actually good. Specially when Sesshoumaru is involved.

The OST though. If there is something that they nailed (again) is the soundtrack. Some small rearranges from the OG Inuyasha and some new music are simply amazing. Some moments at the end of first arc just made me cry because of how they nailed the story and music to make it emotional. Oh, that Sesshoumaru (always him) theme playing when he fights...
Not to mention that I enjoyed a lot both Openings and Endings. Have no complaints about this show when it comes to its overall soundtrack.

Even though Takahashi-sensei was only watching over the planning/writting and wasn't directly involved in this anime outside from the character design, it still holds up a lot from the Original Inuyasha and I had a lot of "oh that's so Inuysha" moments while watching it. Yes the story ends almost abruptly, but the reason is probably because they were not planning for a third season, so they had no other option other than rush it, unfortunately, because would they ever keep the quality they had up until a bit over half this season, I would not bother a season 3. But right now, I'm fine with they way it ended.

It might not be the greatest of the sequels, but it was still great to see our loved characters back with a different background, now focused on their kids' journey.

This season it finally felt like I was watching a sequel to Inuyasha. Actually no, that's a lie. It felt like I was watching the corpse of a long finished show being dragged through the corporate money pit of recycling old properties for a quick profit. Sorry that's the cynic in me talking. The first season managed to keep me engaged enough even though these characters were new by having their past be shrouded in mystery and keeping the audience guessing as to what happened to the old Inuyasha party from the old days. We got snippets here and there about what they might be ... up to but it turns out the explanation for why they were never around was pretty lame. It is a pretty cool moment when they all finally are there together on screen again, though I felt a little bad at how they mistreated poor Shippo. He's a comic relief side-kick, but holy cow they didn't have to make him such a punching bag.

Kirinmaru and his various offspring/incarnations were a poor substitute for Naraku. I still think of Naraku as one of the great anime villains of my childhood simply because of the sheer scope of his will that you could feel in nearly every aspect of the original story. Kirinmaru, while technically a more daunting threat and a force that's been around since the days of Towa and gang's grandfather, is just a boring villain. Naraku was the kind of evil that you love to hate, just pure cartoonishly villainous right down to the core. Kirinmaru is just there. Like yeah he's kind of evil, but he's honestly getting shown up by his weird human alter ego or his sister most of the time.

The ending felt a little forced or rushed or whatever you want to call it. Suffice to say it wasn't very satisfying. But that was true of the original Inuyasha as well. Maybe they'll bring it back in another 15 years with Towa and Setsuna's quarter-demon babies, or quarter-human if they wanna try and shake things up. I dunno, it's a show that on paper sounded kind of neat but in execution was sadly just like Boruto: constantly inviting comparisons to the original while never quite living up to it. At least it wasn't as bad as modern Star Wars... marginally.

7/10

Season two of Yashahime was both better and worse than season 1. Once again I liked the art, and sound designs in this anime a lot and those did not take a dip to the worse in my opinion in this season. If anything it felt like those two at times were even better than in season one. I even feel like characters were working better in this season, and my girl Moroha finally had much more to her than just being a comic relief like I felt like she was for the most part in season 1. But more about that later.

I want to ... start by saying that despite me finding season two worse in some aspects, I still think it's an enjoyable watch. I was excited tremendously for this season to continue each week and that was due to the story being better. Well, more so that we didn't need a full 24 episode season to set everything in else to start and have no resolution at the end since season 1 was basically that. Many storylines were resolved in this season and I think Zero's storyline was executed beautifully. There is no doubt in me that it was the best part for me personally of this season. However, I cannot bring myself to give this season a better score altogether despite liking it more than the first.

Why though? Well, it has to do with the ending of season 2 (not the very last episode, that was very cute, although I would've preferred to not end the season with an episode that is kinda filler-y). All the build-up in season one and the first part of season two were giving me this feeling of a very grandiose event that would take place. Something big and truly show-stopping, almost like the final act of Inuyasha. What we got was disappointing.

This might be on the spoilers! side, so skip to the next paragraph just in case if you want to avoid this. In a sense, it felt like the girls, our main heroes, didn't take that big of a part in the resolution of the plot lines. Yes, they were present and they were fighting, but they weren't fighting the characters I felt like they should've. Not to mention, having them separated so often throughout the anime felt awkward when big fights were taking place in different locations and we had to jump in between. The final fights weren't an exception. I liked the ending better because at least we got an actual ending, but it lacked the impact the series had been building up for it.

Aside from me not liking the ending that much, I also had a problem with some of the choices. As I said, the girls were separated quite often and we had to jump from girl to girl to see what was happening. Those were weird choices as they made it hard to keep up with the pace at times and focused on what was happening and where.

Enough about the story and to the characters. This alone could've bumped up the over all score because the characterisation was aced this time around. For most of the characters, there was an upgrade from being rather one dimensional 99% of the time to being likeable characters with meaning to them. Moroha is one that comes to mind the most since I was really sad originally to see she lacked the depth I was hoping to see in her. In this season, however, she was amazing. We got to see many new sides of her and she was so much more than the comic relief.

But not all of the characters were executed well and I think I am not alone in saying that Shippoo wasn't needed. I won't go into details, but basically, every single time I saw him on the screen I almost wanted to quit the episode and anime. His addition wasn't good and I think his presence dampened the whole feeling of scenes just before and after.

All in all, I think the second season is still enjoyable for the most part. However, there were things that pushed me to give this a 7 despite all individual scores being 8 and above. It is better than season one until the final few episodes that felt like they were stalling and jumping around like crazy. And the very final episode was cute but maybe could've been just a one-shot episode somewhere else than as a season ending episode.

Well, well, well. I'd guess my review of Season 1 did some harsh numbers for everyone to stop watching Yashahime after the awful blender that was the resurgence of the new-generation Boruto flak that now the Inuyasha franchise has literally and unfortunately carved its name in, but what do I know. And that's where Season 2 comes in, and rightaway it solves all the problems of its preceding season...by having an ending and a resolution. That's just it.

Most of the problems in Season 1 were just the foundation for Season 2 to solve, and even going back a bit to scour the cliffhanger (since this ... sequel is a continuation after all), I'd say that it still suffers the same writing issues as Inuyasha, and for a lack of better words, is the core theme of the series as a whole: seemingly unconnected stories that connect to a large-scale operation to defeat demons. The character dynamics really improved as the series pads on, and going back to my Season 1 review, for example: where Moroha was a sitting duck in the presence of Towa and Setsuna's sisterhood and family problems, she is more grounded this time to help them both, aside from standing out (which she does even less this episode, thank goodness).

The idea about Season 2 is just one word: reunion, reconciliation. And bringing back the OG cast in and of itself does the servitude well to re-connect the children with their parents, and this is easily one of the highlights of the sequel to both good and evil. It feels more grounded and less like a modern Inuyasha on reboot and repeat, you wouldn't want to watch the same thing more than once nowadays.

But otherwise, this is Sunrise's very last work as the animation studio is transitioning in the Bandai Namco parent company as Bandai Namco Filmworks while the Sunrise name will be withdrawn solely for IP creation. You will be missed, Sunrise, and you did good for close to 50 years of animation since 1972. We will miss you.

OST is just as decent, and yeah, it's kinda expected though Season 1 was the high for me.

Yashahime, the "bastardized" child of the Inuyasha series, has finally hit a stride on Season 2, though its conclusion was one long awaited for hardcore fans. But please Sunrise (or Bandai Namco), no more, just no more. We've had enough more than Gundam offshoots, so just let the Inuyasha franchise rest in peace of what it managed to achieve, thank you.