Inuyasha the Movie: Affections Touching Across Time Review

Toshiya Shinohara and the writer Katsuyuki Sumisawa set the template all four films follow: an old evil breaks loose, its minions pair off against Miroku and Sango, and Inuyasha and Kagome combine their powers for the finale. Here it is Menomaru, son of the moth demon Hyoga, with his minions Ruri and Hari, and none of them is more than functional.

What lifts the film is its middle. Menomaru takes control of Kagome and makes her shoot Inuyasha at the Sacred Tree, repeating Kikyo's arrow of fifty years before, and Kikyo forces her back to her own time. The snowbound modern Tokyo that follows, with Kagome talking to Inuyasha through the tree across five hundred years, is the most affecting stretch in any Inuyasha film. Carl Kimlinger of ANN called this the tastiest of the four for exactly that reason, and Theron Martin praised fights staged so that the heroes seem genuinely in danger.

Hideyuki Motohashi redraws the cast closer to Rumiko Takahashi's own art, the action moves more fluidly than it does on television, and Kaoru Wada's themes carry over intact, with Ayumi Hamasaki's end theme, No More Words, over the credits. It is still a formula piece, but the best version of it.