Anime: Inuyashiki

Nowadays most anime weebs think the best deconstruction of superheroes is either One Punch Man or My Hero Academia, although they are just a satire and the definition of a cheesy superhero story. It’s like they forgot that time in the 00s when Gantz was like a very violent critique on superheroes and social injustice, thus not that different than The Watchmen. It stopped being that when eventually the mangaka focused on the shallow spectacle and the themes became an afterthought. It was mostly the result of spectacle creep, not that different from what happens to most shonen that keep escalating in power and eventually lose everything that was making them human and relatable.

Inuyashiki skips all the escalation and starts right away with its main characters being overpowered killing machines, and wraps up everything in a rushed and sloppy way, thus failing to be appealing up to a point, such as the early parts of Gantz. The first episode alone is telling you that by using the same lazy feelfag method to make you like the protagonist, as the one used in the beginning of My Hero Academia. Just have your protagonist being weak, and constantly crying, and wishing he would have the power to make his life better, and then give him the ultimate power in the next episode. Empowerment fantasy, 101.

It’s easy to fool the inexperienced viewer into thinking it’s not empowerment and instead it’s legit criticism. The grandpa does it to help people, which is more frustrating than rewarding, and the young one is a sociopath who doesn’t feel anything and uses his power for cheap thrills. The execution quickly reveals it’s nothing more than “justice porn”. The wish fulfillment of getting back to anyone you don’t like. Such as the grandpa fighting one dimensional evil rapists, and the bully messing up internet trolls. It’s titillating, especially because it’s completely one-sided. There is no way the adversaries can defeat them. This alone proves what was making The Watchmen actually good, while this is just a terrible show made for a terrible generation of special snowflakes.

There is an attempt to somewhat show the negative side of being overpowered and uncontrollable, since Hiro keeps killing more and more people because he is bored basically, and nobody is able to stop him. Which is a weird direction to take, since Inuyashiki is supposed to be the main character, and does nothing for half the show. And by doing nothing, the plot becomes nothing more than excuses for killing hundreds of innocent people in over the top ways, turning the whole thing into no more than edgy schlock.

Towards the end, the main characters finally meet and it seems like we will get a showdown between them as the finale. But no, the author decided that wouldn’t be schlocky enough. A meteor appears out of nowhere and is about to destroy earth. Then the president of the United States tells the world there is no order anymore, do whatever the fuck you want. And everybody does exactly that, because Trump controls order in every country apparently. There is no logic anymore, it’s all random excuses for showing death and destruction.

The finale is just the two main characters blowing up for saving the world by something that was thrown in the plot at the last moment. Then everything goes back to normal and the show ends in the most anticlimactic way imaginable, leaving you with nothing to care about.

Oh, and did I mention the show is fully CGI? You can’t even enjoy it for the senseless death and violence because it looks like shit. Everybody moves like a robot, so you wouldn’t give a damn about anything from the very start, even if there was legit theme exploration. Which there isn’t, as the whole thing is no more than the lazily animated sadistic fantasies of the mangaka, as he comes up with silly excuses for schlocky justice porn.

Review
Inuyashiki is a trip to the past for most of its run. Its idea take us back to Parasyte, a tale from the 80's where a boy was gifted with a power he knew nothing about. The art style from the MAPPA studio also grant us more of an feeling from the 90's, where the cuteness was put aside in favor of darker and more realistic people. Maybe even the music scores are somewhat taking us to the past. Yeah, there's a strange feeling while watching this show overall.

This is a tale about two people struck by an alien entity, reconstructed in form of deadly machines and in search of their lost humanity. One of these people is Ichirou Inuyashiki, an old man who have just learned he had a deadly cancer. The other is Hiro Shishigami, a young boy with a traditionally flawed family. What will they do with their new power? Are they still human? That's what they are about to find out.

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1. Two sides of the same coin
   Although Ichirou and Hiro have the same quest, they are completely different people. Ichirou is a weakling, a man who grew too old and too fast. He is not respected by his family, he is incapable of taking action to do what he wants, and he learns he is about to die from cancer. Yet, with his new gift he starts searching for his value by doing good deeds, by saving others, healing people, and fighting against what he thinks is evil. It is the joy of helping that makes him feel he is still human.
   
   Hiro, however, is a wild soul, a boy without much care for things he knows nothing about. His parents are divorced, he lives with his mother in a rundown place and he sees society in general as a broken thing. For him everything is wrong because his mother suffers, his family was broken and even his best friend seems to suffer from it to. Humanity, for him, is getting revenge, hurting others, making a point by turning the broken society broken for everyone and not just him.
   
   And those two are the stars of the show
   Well, they are killing machines with indestructible bodies and capable of linking with the internet, hacking stuff, firing invisible bullets, and so on. The show, however, nicely give us two different approaches of using these powers. For Ichirou, everything is frightening, a discovery that simple puts his mind into disarray, questioning what exactly has happened. For Hiro, everything is thrilling, he wants to know more, to do more, as if he now had a mission in his life. At the start, it seems pretty obvious the old man is the good person and the young is the evil, but both give us more depth as the episodes go on.
   
   Fuck the aliens
   They don't matter. Simple as that. Instead of ever going towards explaining the aliens that gave our duo their amazing powers, Inuyashiki smartly forgets that, only really focusing on what is happening with Ichirou and Hiro. This lack of explanation could be a problem if the show took a certain "save-the-world" approach, but fortunately this is much more about how the two opposite views of humanity clash as the protagonists learn about their new identities and try to get on with it.
   
   It's somewhat superficial though
   Inuyashiki may tackle some delicate questioning, but as a general rule it seems quite a superficial tale, never really tying knots with the real-life inspired setting where it takes place. Perhaps the biggest cause of that is how the two characters act, being extremely dramatized, having a robotic behavior, and failing to pass on their emotions even when they are desperate, crying, or angry. This lack of expressive power is lessened in the support role, such as Ichirou's daughter and Hiro's friend, but these side-characters never achieve enough screen time to make up for the lacking main duo.
   
   Not ready for CG yet
   Studio MAPPA may have done a decent job giving us their more mature art style, but Inuyashi sadly suffers from two major problems. The first is the CG used when Ichirou and Hiro use their machine bodies, which transforms them into ragdolls of poor quality as in the terribly done Berserk or the first season of Sidonia. When animated in CG, those two move clumsily, unfit to the world around them. The second problem is the background during most action parts, which can be resume as simple windows copied and pasted over and over. Well, these problems are not a turn down to the rest of the solid work, but are hard to be left unnoticed.
   

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Comments
Inuyashiki is interesting. It is a solid mature tale about two different guys searching for humanity through two extreme methods: savior and villain. It could be a lot better though. Sadly, this is a series far too focused on the clash between the main guys, leaving the more interesting and emotive side-characters to a mild support role that simply doesn't work. Instead of seeing two machines trying to be human, what happens in the end is two machines being machines while the humans around think they are acting strangely.

It works for a while, but there are a few more problems hampering the progress too. The artwork is sharp and dark, but robotic, lacking expression and life, this is even worse when it is fueled by boring CG elements and a voice-acting that feels cliche, forced, and not fitting for something which tries to bring doubts and thrill to the audience.

Anyway, considering the good premise and how it manages to keep being sober for its entirety, Inuyashiki is definitely a show to give a chance, especially for those bored with high-school cute girls and lousy typical protagonists.