Idiots and Tests and Summoned Flashbacks
(Yes, I made a reference to Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu (Idiots and Tests and Summoned Beings), a hilarious high school anime airing this season, get over it.)
Episode 18: Day of days!
(人生の一大事 Jinsei no Ichidaiji)
Chapters covered: 494, 519, 520
Not much covered this week, but it was unavoidable. Let's start with how it was arranged. The first few minutes covered 519, from there until the break was a well-blended backtrack to 494, and then the episode finished with 520. Sunrise had to do things this way and I'm very glad that they did. As I said last week, modern world plots are a good way to waste an episode, the logical solution was to bunch a few of them together. This week was one of those episodes, and it worked out great without damaging the plot. Unfortunately, as a consequence of the episode arrangement, Kagome is made to look like a very deredere (lovestruck) girl in one moment, and complete bitch in the next. There are 3 instances of "OSUWARI!" (Sit boy!) in this episode and the first one during the bedroom scene was added by Sunrise for some stupid reason. Of course, the next two instances are justified since they are in manga, but this episode hearkens back to first series when Kagome was reimagined by Sunrise as someone who mercilessly shout it 10 or more times just for kicks.
Art-wise, this episode was amazing. You may have noticed the great amount of care placed into Kagome's facial expressions and Inuyasha's eyebrows this week. You can thank Rie Nakajima for all of that. On the downside though, there were a lot of flashbacks this week. Half of it was remastered (read as: recycled) animation from the first series while the rest was stuff from 10 minutes earlier. It was consistent and looked rather lazy.
There was a new ending this week by Ai Takekawa called "Tooi michi no saki de" (The long road ahead). It kicks the shit out of "Diamond" in terms of how it sounds. I'd compare it most to "Come" from the first series. Visually though, it seems to lack the focus that the first two endings had. Byakuya and Bakusaiga don't really follow.
Next week will mark the beginning of the battle for Kohaku's shard. I'm not sure how far it will get.
Finally, to those who complain about my lack of proper episode summaries, I say this: I don't summarize, I critique. The "chapters covered" is all the summary you need. If you're visiting this site, there is an expectation that you've already read the manga, the chapters in question, or have already watched the episode. If you want a summary, go bug the guys who run the Random Curiosity blog.
Can't wait for next week's episode (SangoXMiroku FTW)
The animation in the Final Act really almost reaches the movie quality and that really impresses me. Maybe that could also be that they stuck to the 26 episode limit. I'm sure with a longer running series that animation quality would be hard to keep up with.
