Harry Potter and Inuyasha Revisited

This is the second time it's happened-to not complete some book/show, pass judgement over it, and only to be proved dead wrong when you proceed to complete it-first with Harry Potter, and then again with Inuyasha. I first thought Harry Potter Bk 6 good, only to have its pace drop exponentially. It got good when they got to the story, but it was quite a stretch where it got a mite repetitive. Harry is trying to solve the mystery and fails, lather, rinse, repeat. Not desirable, but I suppose forgivable on the grounds that it didn't get too boring. Anyway, if any of you people are interested, the following 2 links(spoiler-ridden) have some pretty solid analysis and plot predictions.
-On Dumbledore
-Garland Graves-on Horcruxes and Such

And Inuyasha-well the same thing happened. They actually decided to remove the crap, and hence the story, which like I said was nice and solid, flowed on nicely. As an entertaining anime, I think that this definitely manages to hold it's own. Magnetic holding power that is spawned from these 2 works being good stories, hence keeping a viewer/reader interested is something both Harry Potter and Inuyasha seem to have. They also both have cheap filler that quite heavily obscures a good storyline. In terms of whether or not they should be called Art these 2 works stand on fairly equal ground. Do they deserve the title?

There have been times in which I have chanced upon some work, and after looking at it, have been so floored by its brilliance that I fell it undeniable that it should be considered Art, an example being The Great Gatsby. Though Harry Potter and Inuyasha are both made up of very good stories, for some reason or another, they failed in doing this. Why? An attempt to answer this question led me to this site, and I was just absolutely in awe of its brilliance. For some reason I knew that I had found a "good" work of Art. I thought then, that everything I have reviewed here, if judged by such standards, definitely do not qualify.

I had been wondering if Ihad been setting my standards a bit too low. But then again, to compare these against like Nobel Prize winners is a bit....harsh, isn't it? HP and Inuyasha were not intended to be for people who indulged themselves in that sort of "highbrow" stuff. Though they are not consciously "kiddy" or childish in that they do not rely solely on assorted bling-bling to garner viewers, they are still intended for kids. But then if you say that, then perhaps that is why childrens' programmes are not winning the Nobel Prize or being considered as being works of Art! Indeed, it is the presence of this "highbrow" stuff that differentiates HP and Inuyasha from those other things that just scream at me as being Art. So in that case, perhaps they are not Art.

It now strikes me what diffierentiates HP and Inuyasha from those other works of conscious Art. There seem to be 2 broad qualities present in stories that make me call them good. One is just simply being a good story-perhaps suspenseful, or simply just poignant and plain emotional appeal. The other is being to me conscoiusly "Art"-basically being highbrow and discussing incredibly deep philosophical Zen stuff. Conscious Art relies on the presence of the latter. Another thing I notice is that I have not yet come across a SINGLE work that manages to be both and be both WELL. Harry Potter 6 perhaps came the closest. It had a good story because it was suspenseful when no fillers were present. Discussions of the nature of death brought about by certain plotlines leave thinking readers with some food for thought, which is though not heavily emphasized, pervades the atmosphere of the end story. Inuyasha was a good story because they successfully managed to make viewers empathize with the sufferings of each ad every character. It was philosophical at times, but only perhaps to younger kids who've not seen as much of life and not to someone as old as me. Desperate housewives was also very suspenseful and hence a good storyline but only PASSABLY conscious Art. The Great Gatsby was powerfully Art because of it's lyrical similes and the delicate discussion of faded dreams and lost love, though I do wonder if I am alone in thinking it not suspenseful. In concentrating on either one of the 2 qualities that make a good story, I think it leaves little time left for the other quality. Perhaps this is a hallmark of how difficult it is to attain even one quality. And if it is really that difficult, I think fillers aside, perhaps having even one makes for praise. both Inuyasha and Harry Potter deserve the term of Art. It does seem that people would consider the fulfillment of being deep, or the second quality more important for something to be called Art, but I agree with Capek. If Art is to "abolish boredom, anxiety and the greyness of existance", these have done just that for million of people worldwide. No you won't be winning any Nobel Prizes anytime soon, but J.K. Rowling and Rumiko Takahashi, I won't complement you two for a fantastic job well done because YOU INCLUDED FILLERS DAMN YOU, but you did good enough. Congratulations for being the creators of 2 works of Art.

And on that note, I shall end for now this series on reviews on Art that has made me sound like some kind of ancient university professor minus the knowledge. It has been an enlightening experience that adds a little more colour to my boring school holidays. Perhaps I should congratulate myself, now for creating Art that abolishes MY boredom! Oho! I've created Art on this humble little blog of mine!

OK that's by far enough crap here. I end this entry here. Live well, dear readers!

BTW: Julian if you missed my tag, go to www.boxtorrents.com and you will find all 6 seasons available for download through the programme called Bittorrent. you may also want to search www.mininova.org for "Wind-Inuyasha Symphonic Theme Collection"-orchestral renditions for assorted tunes from the show. The music ROCKS-check it out!

New Layout

MUCH better and easier to read. Goodbye Sakura Kinomoto, it was nice having you. Tagboard and links will be unavailable until I can figure out where to put them without them being in the way.

Will update sooon with some parting words on Art.

Inuyasha-A Work of Art?

And like sand through the hourglass, so has passed the days of my lives, one day after another, as I unwittingly repeat cheesy soap opera and anime lines in my own head, visit the mentally impaired every Thursday, constantly stumble over something as annoying as rythm in trying to play 5 for fighting's 100 years yet learn the relatively monstrous Dolly's Dreaming & Awakening in 3 short days, another 2 weeks have passed since my last update. Wanting to get my thoughts on Inuyasha on the computer a bit sooner, there hence arose a dire need to get my annoying brother off the computer. The foolproof plan was hatched, but it is so often that the beast called life throws a wrench into your plan. This time, the wrench took the form of the rather unique British store named Argos.

Now, if you've done a litle Chemistry and are noticing the smilarity between Argos and the noble gas Argon, I will tell you now that this is no coincidence. Because Argon was named AFTER Argos, which in actual fact is Latin for "Lazy". And what in the name of the world of crazy false advertising is a store out there naming itself LAZY!?!? I've like heard of an Indian restaurant that acually named itself Gaylord, and it's supposed to be from America, like cosmopolitan and all where the first thing one is likely to think of upon hearing such a name is a restaurant isn't going to be anything remotely related to being the god of happiness or whatever.We ignored such warnings, anyway, only to have our TV come 4 annoying days later, ie today. Hence my brother got stuck on the computer for yet another 4 annoying days. At least he's stuck there for a change, and my plan eventually fell through.

And that, my friends, is the crap of this entry sorted with, along with just one of the many examples of how one's life can get controlled by something as inconsequential as a store...eeesh. So let me tell you about Inuyasha-possibly my final review for quite a while. I shall not include the movies here.

Inuyasha,to start with, was interesting enough. It had a fairly absorbing storyline, some very funny jokes, and some pretty good music. As I ploughed through the first few seasons, I found myself pretty much personally involved with it. Yet as it dragged on, episodes that felt extremely pointless became increasingly common. These often found themselves following a very linear storyline, with the characters performing actions that we had long since grown to know them for over and Over and OVER again! Such actions are used heavily in almost all types of anime, and the most common and effective of these are the funny ones. Yet we do NOT, for crying out loud, need to be reminded yet AGAIN of the love between protagonists Inuyasha and Kagome in what seems the 100th way of demonstrating it! Though not a huge fan of love stories myself, I found some of the methods actually worked. But I strongly suspect this constant repetition of the same message made the whole series begin to seem extremely draggy. From something that I felt to have a nice storyline full of twists yet to be discovered, it lapsed into something that was extremely linear. It all feels like the creator was doing it just for the sake of lengthening it. Seriously, it could have done MUCH better if it was shorter.

So is Inuyasha art? It does not impress me, and the story does not seem to be taking any dramatic shift in the remaining handful of episodes. I hence regret to say that I do not think it Art. Though their target audience of kids, with their slower minds who've been watching and reading less of such material(debatable?)-not to mention that anime is supposed to be aired only once a week- might think otherwise, I don't. Is my boredom perhaps then because I watch too much of it in too short a time? Probably, but if Art is supposed to include only the best works that are NOT boring, probably not...

I think we've enough of Art reviews for now. I would like to do a last review on Card Captor Sakura, as I'm wondering if it will survive my judging criteria, but that will have to wait until I get my hands on my episodes back in Singapore. Until my next entry, I recommend The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald-powerfully emotive language and story. Art? Probably. You have a look for yourself and tell me for a change. =)