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「古寺の猫寿庵」 (Koji no Neko Juan)
“The Cat Juan at the Old Temple”
This week’s Yashahime might have had a lot of cat abuse, but ultimately, it gave us a little more insight into the three girls. While Moroha continues to hunt for demon parts to make some dough, we get a little more insight on Towa’s interests in present-day pop idol Julian when she meets his feudal era ancestor.
It was an unusual week for the anime because in their bid to find an acceptable target to not show our protagonists slashing people apart, they ended up going with cats. The big cat demon was a unique choice, especially with its regeneration skills shifting it from demon to skeleton form. But there were several uncomfortable moments where you just see the three slashing into a crowd of cats as their lifeless cat bodies collapse into the ground. It was ballsy, but I understand why viewers might be upset seeing a pile of cats be reduced to corpses.
I thought a major issue with the plot would be the number of time paradoxes that would happen with the knowledge and artifacts they brought with them. But they seemed to keep it low key enough that it wouldn’t be like the little girl would try to create Pocky or discover chocolate in Japan far earlier in time after being introduced to candy that doesn’t belong to the feudal era. Moroha enjoying bicycles and flashlights was cute, but I imagine there would’ve been deeper questions if someone were to discover their bicycle.
On a conscious level, I think they tried to show this restraint when the topic of Julian’s ancestor came up given that the monk’s survival is necessary to avoid a time paradox and Setsuna’s rigidness could’ve changed the fabric of time. There might be some hints next week of their battle to keep present-day history and artifacts a secret from the feudal era, but we’ll see when the next episode rolls out.
Killing demon cats doesn’t offend me, plus they did it in Inuyasha.
Inuyasha never worried about time paradox, I assumed that the magic enabled feudal era was an alternate world.
One of the biggest weaknesses of Inuyasha was that the mid-season episodes were mainly ‘kill the monster of the week with no advancement to the main plot’. It looks like Yashahime might do the same.
Takahashi Rumiko never really bothered about paradox/alt world details in her manga.
2 earlier Inuyasha manga arcs played with the idea that demons and ghosts also exist in the modern world, but Takahashi dropped that plot point and wholly concentrated on feudal world adventures afterwards.
The anime franchise however, did play around with them a bit further. Movie 2 introduced Hojo Akitoki, a feudal-era guy who greatly resembled Kagome’s modern-day classmate Hojo. A later anime-original arc confirmed that Akitoki was indeed Hojo’s ancestor.
Not to mention Movie 3, where the Sounga sword was shown to have survived into the modern days and ended up with Kagome’s family shrine.
There’s a lot of aspects of the time travel element that I’ve always wondered about in the Inuyasha universe. Moroha is breaking her back trying to make money, and yet if she had access to time travel she would become a celebrity if she was in the public eye. Characters like Naraku traveling to the future are scary because who could stop demons on a rampage if they were able to escape to the future?
I guess it would be a different show, and not something the creators want to do, but I’ve always wondered about that and the fact that the feudal era has demons, but the future does not. So something must have happened to ALL the demons, including Sesshomaru and others like him that can live for who knows how long, hundreds of years.
On both plot points, Takahashi Rumiko never really developed them in the manga.
Time travel via the shrine well was only limited to Inuyasha and Kagome, but it was never addressed if others could tap into its power if they wanted.
Also, Takahashi did establish via earlier arcs that some demons and ghosts did exist in the modern era, but she quickly dropped that plot point in favour of feudal time adventures and never mentioned them again.
I’m actually glad Takahashi never went in deep on the time travel/paradox aspect of her story. Some stories that use it end up working themselves into a corner where things either don’t get explained fully or end up with convoluted/handwaving explanations (coughSailorMooncough) It’s a dangerous pitfall writers can fall into if they’re too drive by cool plot devices but fail to think things through.
In Inyasha’s case, Takahashi figured out the focus of her story, and she left the time travel component alone so it wouldn’t become a distraction.
Well the first episode already showcased the potential for trouble by out-of-place-artifacts (I dont think Tokugawa shogunate would be happy learning from moidern history books about Meiji restoration events…), but it will be probably played more for laughs than for real drama.
Animal cruelty is a contentious issue here, but we must remember thsoe were no real cats, but rather a demonic entities taking cat shape… And they invariably attacked our crew firsat (and were responsible for quite few deaths earlier, with poor missing travellers)
Is the anime still continuing or is it cancelled? So far with the first 6 episodes, I feel like the latest one about the demon cats is like a filler where as with Inuyasha none of the episodes felt like fillers because there were essentially none. I’m more interested in seeing how Inuyashi, Kagome, Miroku, Sango, and Sesshomaru will play out in this anime.
You are wrong, InuYasha had a lot of filler episodes.