In the early 2000’s as we were approaching our teens, we started to sneak and stay up late to see what this Adult Swim was about as it always came on after shows like Scooby-Doo. That’s when we saw some shows that we didn’t quite get at our age like Home Movies and Space Ghost Coast to Coast but it was as taboo as The Simpsons, King of the Hill and eventually Family Guy so we keep tuning in when possible. Eventually I would encounter animes like Blue Gender, Big O and Trigun, which we didn’t quite resonate with at the time; probably due to it being aimed at an older demographic, but then we saw it for the first time…Inuyasha.
Despite the contents of the show, there was enough light-hearted casual banter and humor to hook my young mind in and then the rich story of hunting down Naraku, finding the Shikon Jewel shards and other story beats like Sesshōmaru/Kohaku and Kagura’s side stories really hooked us. But the topping on the cake were the ending songs; mainly My Will and Fukai Mori, which touched me on an emotional level.
Even though I probably didn’t know what language it was at first, I would hum and try to sing it from time to time and yearn to hear it more as this was the time before practical music downloading and listening on the go.
Still fondly remember dumptrucking with my dad and playing my Gameboy Color during the day and eventually being able to stay up later on holidays to watch Adult Swim at night to tune in to at least an hour of Inuyasha.
Though we didn’t know at the time and unlike other animes; primarily geared toward children, there wasn’t a lot of censoring. Due to that, we were able to learn tidbits about Japan over its near decade-long re-airings.
During the latter half of the 2000s, we not only got deeper into anime but also understood the distinction between American cartoons and Japanese anime, especially the censoring. By that time, we also had our first PC and Vugo, so we had access to the entire OST to listen to whenever we felt like it. It also helped that we were heavily into video-taping and DVD recording all of our favorite shows for the times we went to visit our family in East Texas and had no Internet access.
We can say that without a doubt that it played a part in us wanting to study Japanese and our hyperfixation on Japan at the time, amongst other things.
It should be noted that the creator’s ended the series on a cliffhanger like with her previous work Ranma 1/2 but unlike Ranma, Inuyasha: The Final Act wrapped everything up nicely. We have yet to finish watching its sister series, Yashahime but we finally got around to watching the tetralogy of movies in 2025 while working in Japan.
It’s been a minute since we’ve done a full rewatch of the series so that may be in the near future for old times sake since we’re about to finish our Shin-Chan rewatch.
Looks like Surtus left a in progress tag as usual. Eh, no harm in letting his antics stay.
Watsup to all my non-Elexeyian aliens, Surtus here. Just leaving my tag here before that human comes along to talk about… What’s an Inuyasha? Guessing by the title it must be a Japanese thing, kinda like how Plasma Balting is a Raiolexian thing. Eh, things seem like they’re still in progress here so im’ma dip. Thunder Prodigy out!