A Post 20 Years in the Making

Other than requests for my three sizes, the number one query I’ve received in response to my season preview posts is, “Why aren’t you talking about the sequels that are gonna be airing?”

I thought leaving sequels out of the previews made sense. After all, why would you need my assessment of a series sequel when you presumably would already know what you’re getting into?

But now I’ve come to the same realization you all knew inherently: my opinion is so fucking good that it absolutely should invalidate your previous thoughts on literally anything.

So, yes, I’m aiming to be caught up on every series with a new iteration coming in Fall 2020. And that means sitting through 83-some hours of Inuyasha, so I can more accurately tell you whether the sequel about lesbian dog girls is gonna be a 10/10 or just a 9/10.

A Brief History of People Who Should Be Pushed Down Wells

A bit of background here. (I’m like 90% certain on the timeline.)

Long ago, some garbage group named Anime-Supreme ([a-S]) did a terrible DVD rip of Inuyasha, in which they introduced a shitton of errors partly because they didn’t know how to OCR, and partly because they’re a bunch of fucking retards. Since shit always rises to the top in the anime scene, this obviously became the most popular sub base for Inuyasha releases.

We’ll use [Cleo]’s release as an example, since it’s the only seeded DVD release on Nyaa:

Enter an illegal Israeli streaming site titled sdarot. They snagged a release that used the [a-S] script, adding their own name into the eyecatches, because how else would people know what site they’re on? This, courtesy of a cool cat named snufkin1089, also known as Jasman, who is apparently not a man.

From a lazy Google Translation, it looks like she translated it into Hebrew for them as well.

Fast forward a bit to the first English BD release on the scene – [Fullmetal] – uploaded by adamluffy, who credits the subtitle source to… sdarot?

Weird that adamluffy didn’t know the actual source, considering whoever put the [Fullmetal] release together was Jasman, aka our girl snufkin1089, but okay.

This, of course, is not that interesting. If you want interesting, feel free to scroll through our friend’s Twitter account.

If I had to describe that account’s central thesis, it would be that filming yourself shitting blood and marrying your father is the best way to fight nazis.

 

Back to the subtitles. After [Fullmetal] releases, DmonHiro jumps in, citing [RUELL-Next] as his source.

But comparing mistakes between the releases, either [RUELL-Next] fucked up the OCR in the exact same ways [a-S] did, or they just edited [a-S]’s release (poorly) and called it a day.

Comparison of the scripts in a release with both of them:

For our final contender, we have [SAD], as seen above, which released with two tracks: one pulled from [DmonHiro]’s release, and one pulled from [Fullmetal]’s. Their font choice sucks, so if you end up with this release, I’d recommend changing it to something legible.

[SAD] appears to have modified the subtitles a bit, but since their eyecatches promote sdarot, it’s not too hard to tell they didn’t directly source from [a-S].

 

 

So… which release to get?

None of them. Partly because they’re all shit, and partly because the show sucks (which we’ll get into).

• DmonHiro doesn’t believe the human eye can register more than 720 pixels, and he thinks mux is a pokemon.
• [SAD] is eyecancer.
• And [Fullmetal] is… well, you’ll see. I’m confident in saying it’s the worst.

If you can’t fucking wait till someone decent touches the series, maybe go with [SAD] and do your best to ignore the subtitles. Not that the differences are huge, anyway:

If all you get out of this post is that bad Inuyasha subtitles prove Israel’s illegitimacy, I think I’ve done my job.

1-27 (Season 1, I guess)

This alone is disqualifying. However, please consider:

There can’t be too many timelines in which people are stupid enough to come up with the above. But we’re in one.

 

 

Scanlator-Tier Translations:

Some of this just reads so poorly that I find it hard to believe [a-S] ripped the official DVDs for S1.

I mean, TL Notes for fucking Nobunaga? Viz sucks, but they don’t suck that bad.

I’d check my copies, but they’re in storage in one of 50 bins of weeb junk I couldn’t fit in my new apartment and that does not seem like a fun treasure hunt.

 

 

Apostrophetic Failure:

The opposite of Elysium is a lack of proper elision.

 

 

Pause for a Drink

The above screen ain’t even that bad in consideration of everything else.

But it got me looking at pictures of anime girls drinking cocktails, and I’m not gonna say what that led to, but it may have involved the appearance of an old friend.

 

 

Find the Missing Word

If you’re looking to help your cousin pass their third-grade English test, I guess you could use these as flashcards:

 

 

Assorted Awfulness

AKA I’m gonna dump a few screens and call it good cuz this hackjob is giving me a migraine.

To quote the title of Kanye’s only good song, “Yikes”.

 

80+

The subs were pretty bad before, but you could at least soldier on through the errors. But starting with episode 80, shit gets miserable.

I got to about episode 82 with the [Fullmetal] release before I got extremely pissed off at how common those errors were. Ended up downloading [SAD]’s version, which was maybe 10% better, and did my best to ignore their shit too.

Inuyasha doesn’t deserve this. (Well, it kinda does, but for sake of argument let’s pretend it doesn’t.)

It’s “Tessaiga”, Not “Tetsusaiga”, and Other Hard-to-Swallow Pills

ED7 still makes me thinking Inuyasha could have been good. What a waste.

 

From this rewatch (I originally watched the Adult Swim run), I was able to validate all my positive & negative memories of the series were accurate:

• The Kikyo x Inuyasha drama is technically good, but all the flashbacks and callbacks run it into the ground
• Kagome has a lot of good moments, but she’s pretty much only motivated by Inuyasha’s thick dog dick
• Sesshy is hot (there are no drawbacks associated with Sesshomaru’s involvement in anything)

While it deserves praise for its concept, and likable characters (I’ll give Rumiko Takahashi props there, at least), the story it wanted to tell could have easily been done in 48 episodes. Instead, we’re forced through a slog of macguffinery with all the plot development of Garfield.

 

 

Fill Me In

Unlike most shounen, the filler in Inuyasha is oftentimes better than the episodes that adapt the manga.

And many of the fillers are killer concepts:

• “What if Inuyasha tried to teach Kagome’s brother, Billy, how to fucking iron claws?”
• “What if Sesshy decided to stick his dog dick in someone older than 7?”
• “What if we had a Shippo episode?”

It’s little more than fan fiction, but it shows that the people working on the property actually gave a fuck about it.

On the other hand, after the main cast is assembled, the actual arcs resemble shitty spin-off movies more than anything that matters.

The Band of Seven arc gets like 40 fucking episodes to do little more than spin in place until you vomit.

 

 

Third Section

Pretend I said something here other than “Inuyasha is a waste of time.”

 

 

/ED

Inuyasha gets bad, but it never gets miserable. I give Inuyasha a 6/10 out of respect. But taking the nostalgia goggles off, it’s a lot closer to a 5/10.

If you have fond memories of it and can at least remember who Kagura is, I’d mark that shit complete on MAL and move onto The Final Act. For those of you without nostalgia for the series… there are a lot of better shows out there that respect your time more.