Inuyasha Kanketsu-hen Ep. 05
犬夜叉 完結編 Episode 05 Review
Inuyasha: Final Act – 05

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Kohaku joins Kikyou while Kouga leaves Ginta and Hakkaku with Shinta and Kai and takes off on his own since he cannot trust the Shikon shards in his legs. Mouryoumaru encounters the entangled twin youkai of Kinka and Ginka locked in their eternal struggle and at the suggestion of Akago, attacks the two, managing to trick them in order to consume them. This is observed by Byakuya, who is soon attacked by Sesshoumaru but manages to dodge it. Sesshoumaru goes after Mouryoumaru with his new Meidou Zangetsuha but Byakuya interferes to allow Mouryoumaru to escape.

Toutousai inspects Tessaiga and says that Inuyasha has to train in order to use the sword now that it has upgraded. As such, Toutousai sends them to see Yourei-taisei, a youkai hermit. However when they arrive at the youkai’s pocket dimension under a bridge, they discover he’s been attacked and the humans in the village have been given the appearance of youkai. Inuyasha must return Yourei-taisei’s insides to him but to insure that only the youkai attacked Yourei-taisei is Inuyasha’s target, Yourei-taisei places sealing chains on Tessaiga.

Inuyasha goes on a youkai hunt and in the process causes Tessaiga to receive more chains. When he encounters what he thinks is the real youkai that attacked Yourei-taisei, he is captured and learns about the swirling pools of youki known as youketsu. Cutting a youkai’s youketsu will defeat the youkai, so Inuyasha finds this youkai‘s youketsu and destroys it without using Tessaiga.

This turns out not to be the real youkai so with Kagome in tow, Inuyasha soon finds the real youkai. Inuyasha sees youketsu all over and after failing to find the right one the first time, senses an invisible one and destroys it with Tessaiga, which has now been unsealed. Turns out, this whole thing was a training exercise by Yourei-taisei and now Inuyasha can use Tessaiga’s new dragon-scaled youryouku.

Thoughts/Review:

I just LOVE Viz’s 1990 adaptation of the anime for subtitles. Ugh. Yeah, I’m getting to see this for free but that doesn’t mean I have to like the westernization of the subtitles nor the misspelled “Tetsusaiga.” *_*

Heh! We haven’t seen Inuyasha use his Sankon Tessou attack in a LONG time. I’d forgotten he’d even had it until he used it here. I can’t remember if Inuyasha used this attack in the manga story, though I’d guess he would have. Further, Inuyasha pulls out another old favorite — Hijin Kessou. Well, it is nice seeing the old original attacks by Inuyasha.

When Takahashi-sensei came up with this youketsu concept, I remember rolling my eyes big time. After all, Inuyasha had slain countless youkai without seeing these swirls of youkai energy, including powerful youkai. That’s the problem with these constant “power up” aspects to shounen titles like Inuyasha — in becoming more powerful, the hero now has to face even more powerful opponents and it becomes an endless cycle. Suddenly, the more powerful opponents, which seemed rare when the series began, are now common and thus the series begins to get silly (though for the young crowd, I would guess this wouldn’t be a problem).

Kinka and Ginka’s tale got heavily modified. In the manga version, Inuyasha was involved and after Mouryoumaru consumed Ginka, Kinka ended up willingly sacrificing his flame ability to Tessaiga which thwarted Naraku’s plan. Since Mouryoumaru consumes both in the anime, we’ll see what else happens there. I want to say that Inuyasha uses Kinka’s abilities (via Tessaiga) later on, but that stuff may get skipped.

The tale with Yourei-taisei was pretty much spot on with the manga version. Considering only three chapters were devoted to this story in the manga, I suppose it wasn’t too hard to keep intact.

So the rapid pace of the series continues. As I’ve said before, I’ve no problem with so many of the tedious battles being cut or reduced (such as the Mouryoumaru bit from this episode, which was another boring battle in the manga).