The premiere of Hanyou no Yashahime: Sengoku Otogizoushi was pretty much a classic good news/bad news scenario for me.  I certainly didn’t hate it, and I was certainly worried that I’d come to hate this series pretty quickly.  That’s good news to be sure, but the problem is this episode tells us almost nothing about what the rest of the series will be like.  Why?  Because it adapted material by Takahashi Rumiko – her 2015 “Epilogue” chapter to be precise – and the rest of the series is going to be original material.  And the first and last two minutes couldn’t hold a candle to what came between.

On the one hand I think Sunrise did a smart thing starting with canon material, above and beyond the fact that it figures to be better than anything else they’ve got to work with.  It’s a good re-introduction to the Inuyasha universe, and it nominally puts the manga adaptation to bed (although massive parts of the manga were cut in adapting “The Final Act”).  But there’s a major risk of bait-and-switch here, as the modern reboot looks like a pretty crass attempt to recast Inuyasha as a cute girls doing cute things series, and the intro and outro of the episode did nothing to dissuade me.

Without a doubt it was wonderful to see and hear from these old friends again after a decade, though the re-casting of Miroku was a painful reminder that we lost Tsujitani Kouji far too soon.  That’s certainly nothing against Yasamura Makoto, who’s a fine seiyuu, but it was quite a shock to the system.  Rumiko’s after-story concerning the youkai Root-Head doesn’t really add anything essential to the Inuyasha-verse – it reads as a pretty standard Inuyasha battle chapter.  But it does give her a chance to reintroduce us to the main cast and bring us up to speed on what they’re up to – which in Miroku and Sango’s case is a lot of kids.  But why do they have walking and talking daughters and Kohaku appears not to have aged at all?

I’ll be honest – Sengoku Otogizoushi has a lot of work to do to make me care as much about these new characters as I do Rumiko’s.  There’s absolutely nothing in the resumes of the staff to convince me that they’re up to the challenge, but only time will tell.  I’m not able to approach this show dispassionately, because Inuyasha meant a lot to me both as a manga and anime fan – my reactions are going to be colored by that whether I like it or not.  Hopefully it surprises me and proves to be a worthy successor to the original, but if it’s not working I’m not going to torture myself by hanging around too long.