(no subject)

I watched the Inuyasha movie tonight. It was pretty good. The television show is fun because of decenct characterization and inventive plotting, but the animation is fairly standard grade for television fare, maybe even sub par. So it's nice to see the show get the movie treatment with a much higher production value. And even though you could sum up the movie as: "new villian appears, threatens to take over the world, almost succeeds but our heroes finally defeat him", at least it was done well. I mean, it was even obvious from the start how the villian would be defeated (Inuyasha's ultimate attack is the perfect antidote for any demon too powerful to defeat any other way), but the movie was still interesting.

My only complaint would be that Inuyasha's brother Seshemaru appears in the movie, has several scenes, and ultimately does nothing and has no affect on the plot or the outcome of the movie. Why was he there? Who knows. They might just have well thrown in cameos by other recurring characters/villians such as Koga or Naraku, who also had nothing to do with the plot.

As for the series overall, I've seen 75 television episodes and it's easily Rumiko Takahashi's most inventive and creative of all of her larger series. It compares well with her Mermaid series, which is much darker and has no comedic elements. But she didn't carry the mermaid series to nearly the lengths that Inuyasha's reached, and I'd say that right up to the most recent episodes I've seen, it's remained good. But I do sense that it might have reached its limits... that it might be growing stale. I mean, at this point we've got a regular cast of heroes that are not likely to change... not likely to kill any of them off, not likely to add any new regular heroes. We have recurring villians in Seshemaru and Naraku and all of their minions, and Koga who is generally treated as not a villian but a wild card who is often on the good guy's side, if only for Kagome's sake (we seem to have completely forgotten that in his first appearance his demon wolves slew a whole village of humans). We've had Inuyasha learn several new techniques/powers, and the whole "Inuyasha must learn a new technique or power to overcome their latest obstacle" is getting a little old. Naraku still comes up with inventive and interesting new minions to fight his battles, but overall I'm wondering how much longer Takahashi can keep the storyline going and still keep it fresh, interesting, and inventive. If past history is any indication, she's likely to keep writing until she's played out all of her ideas and is just rehashing old ones. I hope that's not the case, but it feels as if the show is headed in that direction...

The ultimate villian of the show, Naraku, has been one of the best parts of the entire series... a very diabolical villian who is constantly coming up with new tricks and displaying new facets. I watched the preview of the 2nd movie, and apparently the heroes have their ultimate showdown with Naraku and kill him... then go their seperate ways, until some new threat appears. And the preview ends with the tag line, "But is Naraku truly dead?"

Unfortunately, the answer is almost certainly no. And that's sad, because we're rapidly reaching the point where if he doesn't die, the story will be unable to move forward. You know the phrase "Leave them wanting more?" I'm afraid it's a concept that the people running this show fail to grasp.

A Dream

I had a dream.

julesong was in my dream. We were somewhere, in a hotel, maybe at a convention, and we had heard of a place nearby that was an abandoned warehouse/store of some sort where there was still merchandise that had been there ever since the place was abandoned (like 1978, but somehow everything was still in great condition). So we set out to see if there was anything we thought was worth taking. It was stealing, but not real stealing you know because the place had just been sitting there all these years.

The place was in a field. It was like a large barn... in fact it was a barn, and there were horses that we had to sneak past without disturbing too much. There were ancient ramps up to the 2nd floor that were narrow and rickety and we had to go up them carefully one at a time because they threatened to collapse on us.

Upstairs above the barn and the rickety wooden ramps was solid flooring. There was a large room full of new furniture, and we were going to take at least one chair, whatever julesong picked out. I don't really know how we were going to let it down without dropping it into the mud below, but whatever. There was a lot of clothing in other rooms, all new and in good condition, still hung up as if on display in a store. We were trying to pick stuff out quickly because, in that peculiar way that happens in dreams, there was a maid who we'd met earlier (even though she hadn't actually been in the dream earlier) who was guarding the place, and we'd lied to her about why we were there but we were pretty sure she'd summoned the owners.

Anyway, I had picked out a couple of vests, one grey and one pinstriped. I had found a few other things and was looking for a nice long overcoat (aside: Jim at work bought a new black coat at work that I like very much. I've always wanted a coat something like that). Right now I can't remember what else I had picked out to steal, but I heard footsteps outside the room we were in, and someone in authority showed up and asked us what we were doing. And we were trying to come up with a suitable explanation, when I woke up.


( Oh and by the way... )