Saturday, August 13, 2005

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. =)