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R1 DVD Reviews
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Monday, 21 December 2009 00:00 |
 The final batch of Season Five episodes throws up the apparent death of a very recognisable character, and the appearance of a new Naraku offshoot for the gang to deal with - and Kagome's his first target. Oooh, surprises...
124 - Farewell Kikyo, My Beloved
Given the choice between saving Koga and chasing Naraku, Inuyasha and Kagome opt to save Koga - a strange decision, given how long they've been striving to get a shot at Naraku. With Mt Hakurei collapsing around them, it's no easy task, either, and the others are soon forced to leave Inuyasha behind. Outside the mountain, meanwhile, Kikyo watches the unfolding destruction - she's been as keen as Inuyasha on getting her chance to deal with Naraku - it was her actions that indirectly created him, after all - and she's about to get her wish. You should be careful what you wish for, though...
125 - The Darkness in Kagome's Heart
It seems that Naraku had intended all along to lure Kikyo to Mt Hakurei and kill her there - his way of separating himself from the human weaknesses of Onigumi, the bandit he had once been and who desperately loved Kikyo. Now, he's purged himself of any remnants of humanity - making him an even more dangerous adversary. Never mind all this, though - Kagome's more concerned about Inuyasha, whose feelings for Kikyo are once again leading her to have doubts of her own - especially when rumours surface that Kikyo may have survived. Meanwhile, recent events have led to the local lord developing an unhealthy sense of paranoia - a paranoia that seems to be being driven by Naraku's latest offshoot...
126 - Transform Heartache Into Courage!
Having found and latched on to Kagome's fears about Inuyasha, Naraku's latest offshoot has gained control of her, and turned her into little more than a puppet. In truth, she doesn't have much to worry about - Inuyasha has heard of her plight and is on his way to help - but those little internal doubts about his feelings for Kikyo have once again proven to be a problem. The child plans to secure his control of Kagome through the use of a tainted shikon shard, and when Kagome's inner soul realises what's happening, she begins to fight back against the child's control...
Still running the Shichinintai opening credits, I see, although we've moved away from that storyline now (more's the pity) and onto something else: Naraku's latest plan to mess with the lives of Kagome and the others. Never one to do his own dirty work, we have a new offshoot to deal with, in the form of the nameless infant who speaks with the clarity and knowledge of an adult, and who has the ability to use the darkest feelings of his victims to tie them to him in some rather unpleasant ways. The problem with most of Naraku's offshoots - Kagura being the exception that proves the rule - is that they have very little in the way of personality, and the infant follows that pattern. He's just not all that interesting to watch, and with him set to be the focus of the show's next story arc, you can work out why this is the point where I stopped watching Inu Yasha the first time around.
But while the meeting of Kagome and the infant takes up most of the disc, it's not the main event. That happens in the first episode of the disc where, unusually for a show like this, a fairly major character finds death in a way that seems to be permanent. The victim is Kikyo; Inuyasha's response is predictable, in that he goes to search for her, to confirm her death or prove the opposite; while Kagome's descent into angst is equally predictable. One the one hand, her feelings become the route by which the infant is later able to exert influence on her; on the other, it's prissy teenage hormones running riot in a way that we've already seen so many times over the course of the series so far that it's already become tired. Yes, what happens to Kikyo is a major event, but the way the aftermath of it is dealt with almost cheapens it and makes it less significant than it should have been.
So an overall 'meh' for this volume, which given the event of the first episode should really have been something so much better. As ever, though, the involvement of Naraku serves to put a dampener on the whole thing and ruin a perfectly good storyline - typical Inu Yasha, in its own frustrating yet somehow endearing way. Onewards, to season six...
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