Inuyasha the Movie 4: Fire on the Mystic Island Review

The last of the four films opened three months after the television series ended, and Theron Martin of ANN put his finger on its problem: cut into four parts, it would be just another mini-arc. The Four War Gods who rule Hōrai Island are a sword-wielding leader, an effeminate one, a gunner and a turtle, a lineup Martin found close to the Band of Seven, and none gets enough screen time to become a character.

The fresh element is the island's half-demon children, branded by the gods and sacrificed to a cauldron to restore their power. Asagi, the eldest, who means to give herself up for the others, supplies the film's only real feeling, along with the melancholy song she is singing when the heroes first meet her. Kikyo appears in flashback and against a double grown from her blood, and Sesshomaru settles a score of his own, but both are brief.

Yoshihito Hishinuma, who designed the television series, takes over as character designer and chief animation director, so the cast finally looks like the show, and Martin called it the most artistically solid of the lot. Carl Kimlinger of ANN saw the downward slide continue. Do As Infinity's theme song, Rakuen, plays the franchise out of cinemas.