Inukami!

Inukami! is a difficult anime for me to write about. On one hand I really loved many aspects of it but on the other there were things I absolutely hated. This show is not for everyone. It features some pretty crude, perverted, and offensive humor but most of the time you can’t help but laugh anyway.

Story wise Inukami isn’t all that special. It is much better towards the latter half of the show and really did a lot to save the series for me. The main problem and the reason I overall don’t rate this show that high is because ... of some of the humor. Don’t get me wrong this show is at its best VERY funny. But a lot of the jokes, mostly in the first half of the series are over used, cruel, and start getting unfunny in a hurry. It wears you down and you find yourself asking is this how someone who claims to love someone treat them? Fortunately they move on from these jokes eventually and get on with the plot and different jokes.

What Inukami! does right is the characters. They are funny, well drawn and acted and are the strength of the show. There are a lot of them, and usually I would say this would be a weakness but because of the way the humor is delivered and the differences in them I couldn’t help but love them all. The two leads Yuuko and Keita will have you laughing and caring about them. However their relationship doesn’t ever really develop the way you would like. Just when they seem to have reached a new level we find ourselves back to the way things were before. They both can show great love and affection for each other at times but then tremendous cruelty five minutes later. The supporting characters embody all the various fetishes you find in harem anime but they are all get fairly well developed, particularly Nadeshiko and Hakee. In addition a number of guest characters appear during the course of the show that are hilarious such as the monks and jail perverts.

Really great music is featured as well, particular from Yuuko voice actress Yui Horie. Her performance and that of Keita's Jun Fukuyama are the highlights of the cast as they really brought out their characters. The animation was a bit inconsistent, I didn’t care for some of the character designs and some of the colors were a bit boring, but there are many great magical battles and smooth action scenes.

Inukami!, in the end, is a mixed bag. There is no doubt the show is at its best hilarious, but at its worst I just wanted to drop it all together. There is also a lot of good action that fans of shounen will enjoy this. There is a lot to love about it but the mean spirited and too often repetitive humor limited my overall enjoyment.

In the end my evaluation of this series when my friends asked me about was that if you don't mind like a thousand penis jokes then go ahead and watch this series. That's right so sue me if that's wrong but that how I felt.
Story- The story itself is a new twist on numerous generic plots those being the animes where there is a master slave scenario (though not in the evil hurting way and more cutesy pokemon way), there is a play on the spirit world/spirit hunter type of anime, and of course your basic girl meets guy plot with a harem scheme thrown ... in to keep things interesting.
Art- Okay it wasn't terribly drawn but I think things could've been done better so in the end I was a little unimpressed with the art.
Sound- Voice acting was okay and so was every other sound I heard of course jap lang eng sub is best for optimum watching experience.
Character- I felt more could've been done with character development I mean this series had a lot of episodes and plenty of them were just plain unnecessary so what would've been so bad about some deeper character development episodes.
Enjoyment- I liked plenty of aspects about the series but because of some of the blatantly unnecessary stupidity and cruddy jokes my enjoyment was far less than it should've been.
Overall- I summarize this series as a bad joke that's good for a cheap laugh. The romance aspect of it is a little mediocre and the action is equivalent to that which means your watching for the comedy and since I'm not a big fan of penis jokes I kind of rolled my eyes alot.