Anime: Eiga Inuyasha: Guren no Houraijima

This is the fourth and last of the Inu Yasha movies, taking place towards the end of the first series. Up to now it was sort of a strategy to tribute each new sword technique with a movie but at this point no new moves were introduced and thus the scriptwriter simply invented one just for this filler mission.

The scenario is very weak and most unimpressive even for the tv standards. So far they had being fighting top level demons who could take over the world, control time, and even raise hell. Now they deal with… four convicts??? Surely, where is the excitement in that? Four nobody demons that are trapped on an island and just lure other demons in order to eat them and stay alive. Another annoying feature is the little kids in this movie. You would expect token kids begging for the shounen hero to save them in a Naruto or a One Piece film, but in Inu Yasha it just feels stupid. I guess so many years past that by now the franchise had turned to just another silly show about teenagers saving kids.

The plot is not something great either. All they do is fighting one demon at a time before the last one fuses with the rest to form a last moment big boss. That’s it, nothing more. The previous movies had the decency to try to deal with some sort of drama or romance from the various themes of the main story. This one here does absolutely NOTHING! You could replace the characters with those from any other shounen show and you wouldn’t even know the difference.

Not even the action is something good, since by now Inu Yasha had enough firepower to take on the Devil himself and the enemy demons were just generic bad guys without any backdrop or interesting battle strategies. Not even the setting is good either. It is just a sort of tropical island that appeared on the sea; nothing nightmarish or complicating.

In all, this is a completely pointless movie that has no point in existing. I don’t recommend it one bit.

The last of the four Inu movies regresses to essentially a side plot to the series that, again, has no real relevance to the main story in the anime.

A mysterious island on which hanyou used to live reappears after fifty years. Apparently, Inuyasha and Kikyo had been to the island the last time and now must face the four demons that he failed to defeat last time.

Don't expect much in terms of character development (it seemed rushed for the new characters) and the battles are not nearly as engaging as the ones in the third movie.

Basically, this is a watch if 167 episodes and 3 movies has not left you saturated yet.

Animation:
The animation is again vibrant and pretty much the only real strong point of this movie. Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha both unleash some very cool looking attacks but otherwise it's the same as the other movies.

Sound:
This is somewhat new, they added a bunch of new soundtracks for the theme of the island and the Hanyous. It is fairly nice but nothing extraordinary. Voice actors are the same (new characters are okay but some of them are a bit annoying) and overall sound quality is very good.

Story:
Basically, there are these four demon who have taken over the mysterious island and began "devouring" the hanyous on the island after the island miko sealed away their true abilities. By the time that the story takes place, there are only a handful of children hanyou left. Enter Inuyasha, who visited the island with Kikyo fifty years ago and was "claimed" by the demons, as was Sesshoumaru under different circumstances.

The island returns and beckons Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru to deal with their past and Inuyasha's friends join in to help. The plot sequence is fairly linear and after the entire anime series we pretty much know that the plot shield on the main characters is pretty solid so don't expect huge surprises.

Certain parts of the story seem overly long while other more critical parts seemed to be glossed over. As with previous Inuyasha movies, the majority of the conclusion takes place with the ending credits.

Character:
In terms of the Inuyasha gang, there isn't any character development; there is no progress at all between Inu/Kag or Miroku/Sango. In addition, the new characters don't get very much of an introduction and their roles are pitifully meager. Apparently, Inuyasha is the only hanyou that has any muscle whatsoever. Not only that, but some of the new characters are just plain annoying (I really did not like the twin hanyou boys).

The villains are better than the ones in the first and second movie but something similar happens to what happened in the third movie after they are all defeated *sigh*. I personally am slightly confused since the reason the demons were on the island was that their "power jewels" were sealed by the miko. However, they are still no match for Inu even when they did have their jewels.

Value:
Overall, the villains were predictable, the story is predictable, the new characters aren't all that great, and it's just more Inuyasha if you hadn't had enough yet. I will say that Inuyasha unleashes a new attack that never appears in the anime series near the end but otherwise there isn't much here to add to the series.

Extremely predictable and pretty sappy, this final Inuyasha movie, while decent, is nothing too spectacular.

The animation is very well done, as to be expected from an anime with as much of a budget as Inuyasha. The soundtrack is the usual good collection of background music and soundtrack.

As to the story: it is an extremely predictable Sailor-Moon type plot where Inuyasha and friends work their way up the proverbial ladder of enemies until they finally defeat the "Final Boss", all the while saving some innocent children and such.

The characters are typical Inuyasha fare: cute, semi-annoying kids who Kagome and friends fawn over while Inuyasha is annoyed by them and plays the "reluctant" hero role.

This is reccomended for Inuyasha fans (specifically if you are a fan of the other movies) but not anyone else. Even for hardcore Inuyasha fans, you might be bored by the predictable nature of the story and characters by this point (4 movies and 167 episodes might do that to you).