This was inevitable, but I wasn't expecting it to be revealed like this. I've been following the Facebook page of Kelly Sheridan for a few weeks now and she has been teasing about a dub for the longest time. Well, a few days ago, she finally spilled the beans:
"First day back recording Inuyasha – The Final Act! Lots of fun."
I can't imagine Ocean or Viz being too happy.
Episode 25: Thoughts Fall Short
(届かぬ想い Todoka nu omoi)
Chapters covered: 550 through the end of 555
As I had predicted to be necessary, 555 was included. Now, you may be thinking, "STARKS, THAT'S 6 CHAPTERS! SUNRISE HAD TO HAVE FUCKED IT UP, I JUST KNOW IT!". Drop those thoughts, they are unfounded. If anything, Sunrise could've made it into 556 if they wanted to.
While the final battle with Naraku was dull and repetitive, you can blame Rumiko for that. She had handled it poorly to the point where Sunrise couldn't even pad it if they wanted to. I wasn't expecting Final Form Naraku to be a rusty brown, but Sunrise made the battle look good where it counted though. The attack stances for Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru looked awesome as they used Meidou Zangetsuha and Bakusaiga respectively. Naraku's death was handled quite well though.
The second half of the episode was dedicated, perhaps to a fault, mostly to 554. Unlike 550-553 and 555, 554 was not very compressible, a recurring attribute associated with Modern Era scenes throughout Final Act. I'm not happy with how long it took, but it had to be done. At least 555 was given enough time.
For those of you wondering, the Shikon no Tama is being voiced by Tohru Furuya, the man behind the voices of Yamcha and Amuro.
Strangely, the promised new background music for 25 was extremely underwhelming and I'm not even sure if they were new tracks. The two instances I noticed were during Naraku's crash along the ground and while Inuyasha was confronted by the youkai of the Shikon no Tama.
Next week is the final episode. Preview looks promising. Elements of the epilogue are mentioned, but perhaps appropriately, they are not shown. Only material from 556 is seen. Nevertheless, Sunrise has paced things perfectly such that the finale can be done correctly. Right now, the only question that remains is how the episode will be divided. For me, I think 558 needs at least half of the episode, however doing that might take away from the emotion and drama of 556 and 557. Whatever will happen, will happen, I guess.
Finally, while the inevitable dub has yet to be announced, Kelly Sheridan, the English voice of Sango has said on her Facebook wall that "things are looking positive for Final Act".
Edit: If anyone claims that there will be bonus material for the finale, they are unsourced speculators. Ignore them unless they can prove it.
Episode 24: Naraku's Uncertain Wish
(奈落 儚き望み Naraku hakanaki nozomi)
Chapters covered: 545 through the end of 549
Solid episode this week in terms of plot progression. There was one fatal flaw though: Terrible art. Character designs were fine, but the backgrounds and non-character animation looked like complete ass. They lacked detail. It was very noticeable in the Viz simulcast and I can imagine that it'll look worse when the HD raw appears later today. I don't know whether to attribute this to Koiso's lack of experience as a director or a high-level decision at Sunrise to reserve the rest of the budget for 26 and perhaps 25.
Content-wise, this week was another page-for-page adaptation save for that stupid anime-only subplot involving Shippou and yet another convenient Jinenji antidote. I can understand that Shippou's need for protection against Naraku's shouki was overlooked in the manga and I would not have minded if the antidote was exclusively for Shippou. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. What we have later in the episode is Sunrise making Miroku out to be a complete douche by having him take the antidote before Sango after he went through so much trouble to save her life from the poisonous shouki.
One thing that annoyed me in the manga was Inuyasha's confident declaration that every single one of his comrades was present to defeat Naraku. Much to Kouga's lament, it was kept.
Next week is the penultimate episode and boy did the preview catch me by surprise. Final Form Naraku is only seen for a single frame and much of it is dedicated to beginning of the duel with the Shikon no Tama. One would think that the death of Naraku would be more prominent. From what I can tell, at the very least, 550 through the first few pages of 555 will be covered. That's a lot of chapters to cover compared to the past few weeks. While pacing is always a concern, I feel that the chapters for next week are compressible enough to make it work. Besides, we all want the final chapters to get as much time as possible, right?
As expected, Sunrise has revealed them.
24: Sayaka Koiso
25: Sachiko Sugimoto and Kayo Tachibana
26: Yoshihito Hishinuma
I'm not surprised that Sunrise is using Hishinuma, one of the more prominent directors from the first anime, for the final episode, but I must remark that he hasn't done anything of merit outside of Inuyasha and Final Act in quite a few years save for Yakitate Japan and that terrible Tales of the Abyss anime (yeah, it looked good, but the 26 episode pacing killed it).
As for the episode summaries, I'm not going to bother trying translating them. I can't.
Source: http://www.sunrise-inc.co.jp/yasya-kanketsu/onair/06.html
Edit: I apologize if the mailing list is acting up again.
Edit 2: According to producer Michihiko Suwa, 25 and 26 will have new background music tracks by long-time series composer, Kaoru Wada:
http://www.ytv.co.jp/anime/suwa/back1158125.html
Episode 23: Naraku: The trap of light
(奈落 光の罠 Naraku hikari no wana)
Chapters covered: 540 through the end of 544
I don't have any serious complaints about this week other than the fact that Sakuma directed it. There was nothing special about how the animation looked this week nor did it deviate from the manga. If I wanted to nit-pick, I could say that the whole scene with Sango begging Sesshoumaru to kill her and Kohaku trying to verbally defend her didn't translate very from the manga to the anime. However, it wasn't great writing to begin. The shots off Rin's feet was also kinda weird.
Furtheremore, call me an insensitive fan if you will, but this anime is just terrible at eliciting an emotional response from me. Sure, there was plenty of on-screen emotion this week, but it just isn't translating towards me. I don't get it.
Finally, right now, pacing is perfect. 24 should cover at least through the end of 548, but I'm pretty sure it will go through the end of 549. Since we are averaging 4-5 chapters per episode, I'd like to make a preliminary prediction of the last 3 episodes.
24: 545-549
25: 550-554
26: 555-558 (end)
Summaries and animation directors for those episodes will most likely appear on Sunrise's website by the end of the week.
Episode 22: Naraku: The trap of darkness
(奈落 闇の罠 Naraku yami no wana)
Chapters covered: Second half of 534 through the end of 539
There were some things I liked this week and some things I didn't. First of all, chapter 537 and 538 were adapted to the point where they were practically changed. The end result was rather well-animated claw battle between Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru, but how Inuyasha loses his grip on Tessaiga is a considerable departure from canon. Rather than Narakua and his tentacles being the one to pry it from his hands and removing Inuyasha from the fight, it is instead Sesshoumaru who rather effortlessly knocks it away onto the fleshy cliff and continues the fight. I could continue to remark on this destruction of canon, but I'll not waste my breath. Just reread 537 and 538 and you'll see what I'm talking about.
On the bright side, Shippou vs. Jaken was hilarious and the dialogue with Kohaku perhaps even moreseo. Furthermore, I wasn't expecting the death of Magatsuhi (539) to be covered this week. I'm not sure how this will ultimately affect pacing. Also, remember that 558 has the content of 2 chapters.
Next week should at least get us through 544.
Episode 21: Inside Naraku
(奈落の体内へ Naraku no tainai e)
Chapters covered: 530 through half of 534
Shinichi Sakuma earned a very bad reputation for his second rate animation direction for the first Inuyasha anime. To his credit, he's improved for Final Act, but then you have episodes like this week's…
First, the good: This week was pretty panel-for-panel with a few exceptions. There was also budget-breaking use of CG animation for Spider Naraku and it looked very nice
The bad: Important lines regarding Naraku's plans for the future from chapter 530 were omitted.
The ugly: 3 minutes of footage from the original anime. If you look closely, you can see that even a scene from "Owarinae Yume" (Inuyasha OP3) was included. It must take a special level of desperation to do that. Probably makes sense when you waste half of an episode's budget on computer generated animation.
Next week should cover at least through the end of chapter 538. Atsuo Tobe returns to animation direction and from what I see in the preview, we may be in for a treat. At least, I hope so…
On the issue of pacing, things look very stable at an average 4 to 4.5 chapters per episode.
Episode 15: True Heir
(正統なる継承者 Seitounaru keishousha)
Chapters covered: Rest of 499 through 504
Other than retouching a few frames (most visibly with the jyaki-breaking Hiraikotsu) and cutting down scenes by a couple of seconds, practically nothing was changed. Despite being on the shelf for two years, the animation was still top-notch. Quirky non-canon things from the OVA like Toutousai's Moomoo-vision were kept at the expense of giving the previously mentioned cut-down scenes more time. Granted that the entire episode was shrunk by 3 minutes with respect to the OVA, it worked out better than I had been expecting and was faithful to the manga in all of the critical areas. All in all, I've seen this episode enough times in one form or another that I'm sick of it. As such, I have no interest in doing a more in-depth of review.
Next week is Hitomiko. It will cover chapters 507 through 511. Chapter 505 and 506 were the Kitsune Youjutsu exam and was already covered (by Sunrise's definition). I still have Bakusaiga pegged for episode 17.
Now, in other news, Adult Swim ran a bump early this morning about how they decided not to renew rights for Blood+ and Death Note and have picked up three new anime series. The safest assumptions that have been floating around for months have been Soul Eater, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and Inuyasha Final Act. Coupled with another bump that suggested 2 of the properties had February 6th (likely Soul Eater because it already has a mostly completed dub and a February 9th DVD release) and September 25th premieres, a 2010 dub for Final Act seems more likely now.
I must stress (even though commenters will overreact and ignore this) that AS has not announced the titles for any of the three properties.
Source: Anime News Network
Episode 13: A Completed Meidou!
完全な冥道 Kanzen na Meidou
Chapters covered: 489 through 494
For the first time in a long time, NTV actually aired Inuyasha Final Act at its scheduled time without moving it back another 30 minutes to finish a soccer game. Of course, by scheduled I mean still 55 minutes later than the original broadcasting slot that the anime was allocated to.
Anyway, this week was another panel-by-panel adaptation and it was damn good. Despite covering 5 chapters worth of content this week, the battle-oriented nature of this episode allowed a leisurely pace of what was both a dialogue and action-heavy story. This pace was quite surprising since Sunrise thoroughly covered the content and even had an extra minute or two for artistic liberties and flashbacks. The end result was exactly as the preview for the episode had promised: crazy-ass CGI meidou spam. With Shishinki launching 10+ meidou balls at once, it was literally a game of dodgeball.
By the way, I can't stress enough how critical it is that you watch this episode in 720p or above when it hits the net. I don't care if it's raw or subbed. The screencaps on 2chan do not do this episode justice and neither does a low quality KeyHole or Hulu stream. Yes folks, the animation this week completely blasts the animation for episode 11 out of the water. The animation directors this week were Hiromi Maezawa and Kayo Tachibana but here's the catch: their past directorial roles are pretty non-existent and most of their past work with Inuyasha has been key animation. This is their first animation direction for Inuyasha and I'm literally shocked at how well they did. Episode 11 looked amazing because Rie Nakajima, a seasoned Inuyasha director with about 30 episodes under her belt, was at the helm and she knows how to manage a budget. This week, I have no explanation.
As I mentioned earlier, this episode was incredibly faithful to the manga. Nothing, to my knowledge, was cut. All of the essential lines were spoken and the battle was choreographed properly. Minor things like Shishinki's bug-eyed assistant (who remains a plothole to this day), Myouga talking to Sesshoumaru and Shishinki and Sesshoumaru's meidou'd arm sleeve were not missed or glossed over. This was quite nice. Also, before you ask: I don't know who voiced Shishinki or his assistant.
One of the more unusual aspects of this episode was how the flashbacks were handled. We got a new glance of Sesshoumaru trying to remove Tessaiga from the Inu no Taishou's grave yet only seconds later we see recycled (and ostensibly remastered) animation from the first series; namely the battle to claim Tessaiga (Inuyasha vs Dog Youkai Sesshoumaru) and the battle where Sesshoumaru uses the dragon arm before receiving a direct hit from the Kaze no Kizu. It was a bit strange to see the mix of old and new, but considering how quick the scenes were and how such trivial things can derail an animation budget, I can see why they weren't reanimated.
In short, Sunrise produces great Final Act episodes when they follow a rather simple formula: 1) Focus on one event or two relatively simultaneous, yet unrelated stories. 2) Don't try cover one story and then cover the next related story in a single episode. 3) Battles are easy to adapt.
Finally, a little housekeeping before I go. I'm well aware of how harsh I was regarding last week's episode and I know that Sunrise has only 26 episodes to finish the series and splitting stories between two or more episodes won't work aside from the final battle. Nevertheless, I hear your concerns. While I call the episodes as I see them with a kanji dictionary and manga on hand, I'll try to tone it down. On unrelated note, I've been messing around with the commenting system. I hope you like it. Also, please forgive me if the newsletter sends you two or more emails for a post. It acts up at times and doesn't always send to every subscriber on the first attempt.
Important edit: According to Syoboi and the NTV website, there will be no NTV (Nippon TV) broadcast of Final Act next Saturday, only the Monday broadcast on ytv (Yomiuri TV) at 12:14 PM EST. I'll keep you guys posted on whether there are any changes to this schedule. I'll probably see the episode when you guys do since ytv streams are almost non-existent and ytv Final Act raws even more so. Whatever happens, Viz's sub should not be delayed because they normally finish it days before the episode airs in Japan.
HD screencaps (click images to magnify, click here for more)
