InuYasha

So I was all mopey over having finished Kaze No Stigma and wondering what next when I started browsing through Hulu... I started watching The Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok, but was getting a little frustrated with the dub. It's not bad, but I like hearing the original voices, the inflections in the voices, the timbres...I mean, the sense I get is that these actors have been doing this for a very long time. Sometimes the dubs sound too fakey for me.


It seems every anime site I go has endless episodes of Bleach, Naruto, and InuYasha. Because I tend to avoid what is massively popular for very prejudiced reasons on my part, I had never bothered to find out more about them...So, out of desperation, I queued an episode of InuYasha on Netflix...and four episodes later in the original Japanese (oh yeaaaz!), I am hooked.

I am a certifiable dum-dum because I already liked manga by author Rumiko Takahashi, who also wrote Ranma 1/2 and Maison Ikkoku. Why didn't I try InuYasha before? It's one of those great mysteries of (my) life...

I like the mythic aspect and the whole feudal Japan context. And a half-demon dog, half-human hero who can be deterred when ordered to sit by a 15 year-old girl?

 I'll write more after I've watched more, but I am enjoying the "forced" partnership between the guy with dog ears and the girl in a school uniform.

166 episodes to go!

Yay!

Kaze No Stigma- Stigma of the Wind

My plan was to go back and review all the manga and anime I've read/watched so far...But I feel lazy. I *AM* going to do it because I have a lot of opinions about the characters and titles...however...I want to talk about the anime I am currently watching.

It's Kaze No Stigma- or Stigma of the Wind, as some translations have it. The Kaze No Stigma anime is  based on the light novel written by Takahiro Yamato and illustrated by Hanamaru Nanto. I think the best way to explain a light novel is that it consists of stories more suited to young adult readers- junior high and high school, primarily.

First things first: apparently the author died before the series of books was completed.  I haven't read it yet. The anime, however, has been completed and is only 24 episodes. I've noticed that often anime based on a long-running manga (and some manga can run for years and years) will choose only a few volumes/story arcs and end. That's what happened with Fruits Basket and Kare Kano...and so far, with Kuregahime (oh please, please, let there be more seasons of jellyfish-inspired dresses, cross-dressing, and Banba's righteous afro).

The whole premise of Kaze reminded me of Avatar: The Last Airbender in that you have different groups of people mastering the use of powers based on the four elements. In Kaze, however, they are "magic users," as opposed to "benders," and the action takes place in contemporary Tokyo.

Spoilers ahead »