(Inuyashiki Poster Art)
It’s that time of the year again. The winds are gusting, leaves are falling, and greedy rugrat children are preparing to roam the streets, searching endlessly for your hard-earned candy. While you snuggle up under the covers this season, you’ll need some anime to accompany you. But with so many choices available, it should be something that stands out. Something that catches your attention. And Inuyashiki is begging for that chance.
Warning: Spoilers from episodes one to three are mentioned.
Background:
Inuyashiki, a manga written and illustrated by Hiroya Oku, is being brought to life by anime studio MAPPA. If the artist’s name sounds familiar, you likely have heard of him due to his previous popular manga, Gantz. The Inuyashiki manga completed in 2017 with eighty-five total chapters written across ten volumes. However, this article will only address the anime as a stand-alone entity. We don’t dare to cross the streams. Additionally, only elements from the first three Inuyashiki episodes will be included, as they are what’s released at the time of this article.
Story:
The story so far centers around Inuyashiki (sound familiar?) Ichiro, a fifty-eight-year-old man in a seventy-year-old’s body. Down on his medical luck and detached from his family, he takes a midnight stroll to a local park to cry with his new dog and wonder where shit went so wrong. During his emotional breakdown, a mysterious U.F.O. crashes into the park, eviscerating Inuyashiki’s human body in the process. The aliens, probably determined to avoid human contact at all cost, decide to rebuild Inuyashiki into a robot and leave Earth immediately. The rest of the first episode showcases him slowly coming to the understanding that he’s been given a second chance to shape his life. As he realizes the potential powers of his mechanical body, he decides to pursue a superhero lifestyle and assist the citizens around his city in any way he can. This includes curing cancer, somehow™.
"Bang." - Hiro Shishigami
Characters:
As the show progresses we move away from Inuyashiki and instead introduce and develop the second main character in the series, Hiro Shishigami. Very misleading by the way. Keep hero far away from Hiro in your mind. Hiro appears to be a borderline sociopathic high school student, with the body of Light Yamagi during a blue phase. He only shows affection for his family and individuals that entertain him, further hinting at the possibility of a mental illness. Likewise Hiro possesses a stoic personality and rarely displays emotion when speaking.
Inuyashiki utilizes its sixty minute time slot for the first three episodes to introduce a character contrast. In a mildly-shocking turn of events, it turns out that Hiro was also crushed under the foreign spaceship. The aliens rebuilt his body from scratch as well, and he begins to discover and understand his new vessel. Both characters experience the same event, yet by the end of the third episode Inuyashiki has used his newly bestowed robo-powers to save a hobo, a weak businessman, and a cat. On the other hand, Hiro used his three episodes in a more relatable approach: to read manga, dick around, and kill innocents for entertainment. The show strategically sets up a man filled with compassion, and a man void of it that will inevitably lead to a clash of ideals in future scenes.
Inuyashiki sings the Astro Boy opening to calm himself after turning into CG.
(From Inuyashiki Episode 3)
Animation:
With MAPPA on the case, you can rest easy on the artistic side of Inuyashiki. The animation looks clean and crisp, but doesn’t hesitate to integrate CG on regular intervals. The CG isn’t a deal breaker, but can break immersion in some scenes. It is mostly implemented when the characters are using robotic functions, while most calmer scenes are in drawn in 2D. If you’d rather talk to each and every one of your family members this holiday season than watch an anime with CG, this show might not be for you.
Get ready to be singing this one for a while.
(From the Inuyashiki opening)
Score:
While the background tracks played during episodes fail to stay memorable, both the opening and ending try to cover the musical end of this anime. J-rock band Man with a Mission performs the banger “My Hero” for the opening, and lucky for us weebs, they dumbed it down to include plenty of English lines for us to sing in public without receiving some weird looks. The ending theme, “To You Who Taught Me Love” by Qajiff, takes a more emotional and somber tone in preparation for future episodes that probably plan to make us cry (looking at you, Gantz ending).
Inuyashiki stood out to me the moment an older main character in anime wasn’t ugly, fat, and screwing twenty bitches per minute. Perhaps I’ve seen too many doujins, but regardless, Inuyashiki aims to stand out from the crowd with interesting and opposite characters, a unique premise, and the promise of an emotionally investing story.
Do you plan to watch Inuyashiki? Did you already start watching or reading it before it was cool? Tell us in the comments!
Finally, a policy I can get behind.
(From the Inuyashiki manga)
