InuYasha’s first episodes still hold up, but the filler arc is where patience runs out

Inuyasha arrives the way its hero does: sudden, loud, and pinned in place by something older than he is. Produced by Sunrise, the series aired on Yomiuri TV, Nippon Television and their affiliates from October 2000 to September 2004. Its audience score sits at 8.6 out of 10 across 2106 votes on TMDB. That number is earned, though not for the reasons the show’s loudest fans usually give.

Trailer, via vizmedia.

Kagome Higurashi and the Well

Kagome Higurashi is a modern-day girl living with her family by the old Higure shrine. She does not know she is the reincarnation of the priestess Kikyo, and she does not know she carries the Jewel of Four Souls, the Shikon jewel. One ill-fated day she finds an ancient well near her home and is pulled through it into a feudal Japan inhabited by demons.

There she meets Inuyasha, the son of a powerful demon father and a human mother, pinned to a tree by an enchanted arrow. The premise is a clean machine: a girl out of time, a boy who cannot move, and a jewel everyone wants. What makes it work is that Kagome is not a passenger, and the show never fully lets her forget the cost of that.

Two Leads, Two Kinds of Noise

Kappei Yamaguchi voices Inuyasha, and Satsuki Yukino voices Kagome Higurashi. The two carry most of the series, and the casting is the reason its quieter stretches hold. Yamaguchi plays the half-demon as a brawler with a wound he will not name. Yukino plays Kagome as the only person in the room who is paying attention.

Around them the show stacks a supporting cast that does more than fill space. Koji Tsujitani voices Miroku. Houko Kuwashima voices Sango. Ken Narita voices Sesshomaru, and Toshiyuki Morikawa voices Naraku. Noriko Hidaka voices Kikyo, the priestess whose past life Kagome inherits and whose shadow she never quite escapes. Mamiko Noto voices Rin, Izumi Ōgami voices Kagura, and Takeshi Kusao voices 曲灵, the character name as the source lists it.

The Final Act, which aired from October 2009 to March 2010, covered the last chapters of the manga. The series as a whole ran from October 16, 2000 to March 30, 2010, with 2 seasons and 193 episodes.

What the Long Run Costs

That full run is the shape of the thing, and it is also its main problem. The series aired across Animation, Action & Adventure, and Sci-Fi & Fantasy, and it treats all three as permission to slow down whenever a new demon needs introducing.

The middle stretch is where patience runs out. Episodes stack up without moving the Jewel of Four Souls any closer to resolution, and the show leans on Naraku as a villain who survives mostly by leaving. Toshiyuki Morikawa gives him a cold, patient read, but patience is not the same as presence.

And yet the good episodes are very good. The show understands that Kagome’s double life — school, family, shrine, then a well and a war — is the real engine. When it remembers that, it is sharp and a little sad. When it forgets, it is a monster-of-the-week parade.

The Verdict on Inuyasha

Inuyasha earns its 8.6. The score belongs to a series that became a decade-spanning property. It has since spanned four films, video games, toys, merchandise and a sequel. That reach is not an accident. It comes from two lead performances that hold, a premise that generates conflict without straining, and a supporting cast that gives the world weight.

The drag is real. 193 episodes is a commitment, and not all of them justify it. But the ones that do — the ones about Kikyo, about what Kagome owes a past life she never chose, about a boy pinned to a tree — are why people stayed.

This is a show worth starting. It is also a show worth skipping through, and there is no shame in that. The heart of it is in the first arc and the last, and the middle is a long road with a jewel at the end of it.

anime review · InuYasha · Inuyasha The Final Act · Kagome Higurashi · Rumiko Takahashi · Sunrise