Anime: Han`you no Yashahime: Sengoku Otogizoushi 1i7128

Yashahime follows the trend of most modern sequels. It’s heavily dependent on the original cast, it has a lot more emphasis on chicks than men, and is overall unneeded and a waste of time. Inuyasha had already outstayed its welcome by over a hundred episodes, but at least it ended. You were free to leave it behind you as a very good action adventure than ran out of juice very quickly and then kept going in circles until you no longer gave a damn. Years later and for no logical financial reason they decided to make a sequel for a show nobody asked for or was looking forward to. How did they expect to make back their money I have no idea, since everyone had either moved on to other shows, or stopped watching anime altogether. And they didn’t exactly win back a lot of people with the direction the continuation had. I am not referring only to the callbacks, which were the only interesting thing about it. There were nonstop cameos of older characters and locations for attracting the fans of the original for which they would have a heavy dose of nostalgia about a show they had watched decades ago.

The problem was with the newer stuff which was a complete mess to figure out or to give a damn about in general. It’s all fine when they are showing you what the older characters are doing in flashbacks, but when the plot switches to the newer ones you are just waiting for another flashback. The three girls we are following for most of the show have very little to do compared to their parents. One of them wants to make money. The other one wants to be able to dream again. The third one wants everyone to be friendly with each other. Holy shit, how is any of that interesting? the monk who would be sucked in a black hole at any moment? Now that’t tension. And sure, the objective is to eventually defeat a super powerful demigod, but most of the show is wasted on silly episodic missions with weak enemies. The older series was also full of silly adventures to the most part, but that show came out at a time when having a loose plot was fine. You could have a hundred filler episode of Naruto in a row and people wouldn’t give up. A mostly episodic structure no longer works nowadays. That aside, the fights were far more exciting back then, because the horror aspect was far more prevalent. In Yashahime you never feel any tension or dread, because it’s like a bunch of silly girls going on a picnic. They are more preoccupied with unimportant first world problems than with dealing with demigods who ruined their childhood, hurt their parents, and who want to kill them. And the reason they can be so carefree is because the bad guys are not killing them despite being easy and despite knowing of the prophesy which foretells of their demise by their hands. It’s obvious plot armor and there is no good justification for it.

And even that is peanuts before the incomprehensible plot. They constantly throw these little mysteries in order to make the characters act in mysterious ways. They want to make you believe there is a lot going on behind the scenes and that is why their motivations seem to change from one episode to another. But that is not true. The more they explain what they want to do, the more you realize not even the writers know what is going on. They keep flip flopping for the sake of the plot, or plot armor in general. It’s so jarring.

And what the hell is wrong with their magic powers? Many special attacks in Inuyasha could only be used if you had a special weapon or you went through a specific procedure. In Yashahime most of these special attacks can be used freely and right away. It doesn’t matter what weapon they use and they sure as hell didn’t spend any time in training so they can learn any of those abilities. Like a typical modern shonen, the best powers are given to them right away when the plot demands it, usually in the middle of a fight and with no effort. That makes the fights very boring, because they are won too easily. As a follow up to that, it never feels like they deserve their victories, because they use powers they shouldn’t be able to master so easily. In Inuyasha they would always spend a few episodes on getting a power up, and then a few more on using it properly. There is no such thing in Yashahime; everything is easy and the girls are going on a picnic where they discuss their first world problems. It’s so boring to watch.

Oh, and one last thing. The only time the show created some buzz during its run, was when it was revealed who was the mother of two of the girls. Hell broke loose because it was Rin, a girl that was like a daughter to Sesshomaru. They never showed any romantic interests, not even in the sequel, so it came off as grooming, a very typical thing in anime that feature a man raising a girl as his daughter, only for eventually making her his wife. It doesn’t matter if that was common in feudal Japan. We didn’t see them falling in love, there was no build up to that relationship, and therefore it comes off as disgusting. And that is Yashahime in a nutshell. A show nobody wanted, almost nobody watched, and even those who gave it a chance ended up hating it for having dull main characters, boring fights, incomprehensible bad guys, and disgusting grooming.

Eleven years after The Final Act ended, here comes a second complete cashgrab of a sequel to InuYasha that most people didn't care about and it was even called BoruYasha by some.

Yashahime was completely boring and uninspired, despite having a good artwork, its visual presentation is boring, simple and lacks the cool details of the original, the sound is nothing special because the voice acting is still just ok and most of the soundtrack is rehashed from the original series, and the effects are just ok.

The series relies heavily on rehashing stuff from the original to the point of even causing serious retcons. The well worked because of the Shikon no Tama? Not anymore. Characters died or disappeared on the original series? They are here because why not, InuYasha and Sesshomaru were able to use powerful swords and techniques because of their connection to said items and because they learned how to use them? These three girls can use them however they want with no explanation from the get go and the way their powers work are changed at the end. Did you like how Kagome was bringing stuff from the modern times to the feudal era? Towa does the same.

Do you want an ongoing plot? Too bad because most of the show is wasted on stand alone missions that are resolved too easily and have no connection to the main objective before the series ends incomplete and leaves you waiting for a second season, which causes the main battles and events to play out with an even worse pacing and writing than Kanketsu-hen’s. And yes, InuYasha suffered from that as well but it wasn’t a 24 episode series thus it undeniably had more relevant stuff in it, despite also having more terrible filler.

Do you want good characters with good personalities and backstories? Not here because Moroha has the personality but her backstory is very poorly written nonsense, Setsuna has the looks and backstory but is the most boring of the three because of her amnesia and cold attitude, and Towa doesn’t have anything in her favor, she’s the most inconsistent and stupid of the bunch, she’s presented as a tomboy yet becomes a typical girly high schooler when she goes back to her time, and spits boring moral speeches that usually cause more harm than good, while also doing the most stupid things such as giving her pearl to a fishy guy she likes because she spoke to him a few times.

On top of that there are horrible fillers in the series and also very bad messages, such as putting an addiction to a cellphone (which is never shown clearly in the series) in the same level as a toxic and possesive love, or the brooming present in the series that was criticized by most, even if it was still well received by some shippers. Age is not the problem here, since Sesshomaru is a young demon and girls becoming wives and giving birth when they are teens wasn’t considered weird in that era. It’s the betrayal of the character dynamics what caused the complaints. Rin was supposed to be sort of a daughter to Sesshomaru, slowly making him care about humans, not a love interest to bear his children and not seeing him ever again, with no build up towards that change, thus it was Usagi Drop all over again.

It is also inconsistent in some elements, such as Setsuna losing control of her demon powers because she’s a half demon, but not Towa and Towa losing her powers once a month like InuYasha because she’s a half demon, but not Setsuna. There’s also the fact that Moroha’s shortcomings for being a quarter demon work however it suits the plot at the moment.

Plus the fights are boring and the enemies are defeated way too easily, except for the epic final fight which still suffers from being way too fast paced, with asspulled powers that are changed from how they were throughout the whole series, and the characters’ motivations and courses of action changing a lot in just two episodes, before leaving the series incomplete with the expectation of a sequel that who knows when it’s going to come and if it gets any good.

I will at least accept that there are a few decent things in Yashashime, the main antagonist is a honorable and respectful warrior that seems to have good motives behind, but is boring as a villain because he’s nowhere near as schemy and backstabbing as the cowardly bastard Naraku, and he doesn’t achieve anything at the end and his objectives remain unknown because of the open ending. The lore is expanded in the series and although it feels kinda like the needless continuations of Dragon Ball at times (because they introduce stuff that was supposed to always be there even if it was never mentioned in the original series), it was still pretty cool and does fit the initial concepts, and the older cast overshadows the newer one with just a few minutes of screentime, and the motivations behind the whole thing are not (just) unrequited loves and complicated love polygons.

I already summed up my thoughts about it in the comments section and I will reuse that as my conclusion here, when it was about what happened between the two series, lore and Setsuna's backstory, the show was quite cool. When it was about the main plot, Moroha's backstory and Towa, the show was pretty bad, and when it was about irrelevant stuff that had nothing to do with any of the aforementioned elements, the show was absolute garbage.