Well, that got real pretty fast.
Here’s how I’ve more or less come to view Inuyashiki. It’s as if Iwaaki Hitoshi had tried to write Kiseijuu when he was in 10th Grade instead of when he was 30. That may sound like a criticism, but it’s really not – talent is talent, and there’s some serious talent behind this story. I think Oku Hiroya (who’s only 7 years younger than Iwaaki and was much older when he wrote Inuyashiki than Iwaaki was with Kiseijuu) is covering a lot of the same narrative and intellectual ground – he’s just doing it at a hugely accelerated pace, and with the aesthetic of someone who’s fascinated by shiny things and loud noises and splatters of gore.
Inuyashiki is, before all else, a very entertaining TV show. And even if it seems to be perpetually walking into minefields, so far at least it’s managing to avoid setting any of them off. Inuyashiki is a fine protagonist and very interesting, but it’s definitely with Hiro’s character than the big stakes are playing out. Going the route of trying to make Hiro sympathetic was a dangerous one to say the least, after what we’d seen him do already. But Hiroya and the anime team were actually doing a fairly good job of doing just that – at least for a while.
There’s no excusing what Hiro did after the discovery of his powers and, more crucially, there’s no explaining away what it says about him that he chose to express them in that way. He’s seriously broken, this kid – who knows what path he’d have ended up on if this hasn’t happened (I doubt he’d have ended up a killer, honestly). But hey, he cares about his (one) friend and he loves his mother, and at some point here his thoughts turned to how he could take care of her. These things are not mutually exclusive – someone can be all of the above, and Hiro is. He even seems to have genuinely regretted what he did – though that’s more likely because of the harm he could see it doing to his mother and his plans, and not guilt over the people he’d killed. For Hiro, those people don’t exist as people – they’re concepts at best.
The Japanese language and society are very much built around “circles” – family and not-family, our company and not our company, Japanese and foreigners. Us and Them. Where you fall impacts the way another person speaks to you, treats you, and even thinks about you. One could if so inclined think of Shishigami Hiro as the ultimate expression of that reality, a commentary on the Japanese obsession with circles – though perhaps that’s giving Oku-sensei too much credit, I don’t know. It’s an interesting way to think about his character, anyway.
Be that as it may, Naoyuki-kun was very much correct in worrying that he and Inuyashiki-san had to act quickly to prevent Hiro from really going off once the news of his arrest warrant was out. Naoyuki and Iniuyashiki are definitely the redemptive side of this series, and always good for a laugh – the whole business with the USB ports was hilarious. But I’m not sure that with Inuyashiki’s powers held in-check by a moral compass they have what it takes to take down Hiro, who at this point seems to have no limiters at all. And that applies to his powers, too – as far as we’ve seen there’s not a lot he (and of course Inuyashiki too, if he and the boy can figure it out) can’t do. It may be lazy writing making Hiro basically omnipotent, but I’m not overly miffed by that yet. Another mine to be avoided.
Whatever one may have started to think about Hiro-kun, there really can’t be any wiggle room now – he’s a menace that must be stopped. The jackals of the media (unleashed by the trolls of 2chan) hound his mother to suicide, and that pretty much blows up the dam that’s holding back Hiro’s sociopathy. In his tortured mind all of them are responsible, and he goes about using his powers to take them down – first the media, then the internet trolls. It’s hard to see much stopping him at this point, to be honest, but Naoyuki and Inyuashiki are the only realistic possibility. Just how much of his own humanity Inuyashiki will have to surrender in order to do that is perhaps the most interesting question hanging over this series.
GC
November 16, 2017 at 7:04 pmTwo things…
1. How is he able to kill people thru a TV screen, monitor, or cell phone?
2. Notice all the internet trolls looked like mutants or really ugly people? I’m sure that was no accident.
DP
November 17, 2017 at 2:13 amI honestly have to say that I don’t know why or how you or anyone else could have anything nice to say about this hateful, sorry excuse of a story. This show wasn’t created by someone with talent; it was created by someone filled with loathing and misanthropy. Most of the characters in the show look ugly because the show itself has a hideous soul. And wonder be, one of the few good-looking characters is Hiro, the mass murderer, for whom the narrative is unconscionably trying to stir our pity.
From the laughably stupid sci-fi concepts at its core (as the commenter above points out, shooting someone through a computer screen?!), to the morally bankrupt messages the narrative is sending (equating internet trolls with murderers while trying to get us to sympathize with an ACTUAL murderer), there’s at least one thing I can agree with from your review:
This show definitely comes off as something written by a 10th grader. Just not a talented one.
Guardian Enzo
November 17, 2017 at 7:48 amAnd yet you’re still watching?
TWWK
November 17, 2017 at 12:11 pmYou could be right about the show being hateful and created by someone with a problematic view of the world, maybe, but the man has talent. There’s an engagement here at a very raw level.
But I’ll agree with Enzo—if it’s troubling to you, why are you watching? I gave up on the series after episode two, because it took me places I didn’t like going and which I couldn’t handle real well. And I definitely don’t regret dropping it. Maybe it would be a good idea if you did the same.
DP
November 17, 2017 at 5:24 pmBeing a completionist is my own cross to bear!
Although, honestly, you never watch anything you hate because you can’t fathom how something so dreadful could be popular and want to try to figure out why?
More importantly, I’m truly astonished that people seemingly don’t agree with me about how vile and corrosive the “message” of this story is and I suppose I want to see if there ever comes a time when others turn on the show. Though it appears now that I’m bound to be disappointed!
To me, this show is Death Note, but completely without wit or nuance. While you perhaps have a bit of sympathy for what Light is trying to accomplish at Death Note’s outset, it quickly becomes apparent that in no way are you meant to sympathize with him; he’s clearly shown as a remorseless monster.
Hiro isn’t any better than Light, and could actually be considered worse, since his initial killings are mostly all random, but the two-bit nitwit author apparently thinks that showing he loves his mother, and is willing to haphazardly murder reporters and internet trolls to avenge her, somehow makes him into an anti-hero for our times.
We’re supposed to sympathize with Hiro at that point, despite the fact that the reporters were following a real story of serial murders. And hey, no one likes internet trolls, so what the heck if they’re slaughtered!?!
So yes, I’m sorry, but I violently disagree about the writer. This is sensationalist trash without any redeeming qualities or actual insight into human nature. This guy doesn’t have even a smidgen of real talent, except I suppose for crass commercial exploitation.
GC
November 17, 2017 at 8:11 pmMaybe there is no hidden or secret “message” and its just telling a story for entertainment purposes?
Simone
November 18, 2017 at 1:38 pm“Being a completionist is my own cross to bear!”
What do you or anyone else with this kind of “never drop an anime” policy in place have to gain from it? You inflict yourself suffering for no reason, then you occasionally pass it on others by expressing your (rightful) annoyance at having to watch something you hate.
“Although, honestly, you never watch anything you hate because you can’t fathom how something so dreadful could be popular and want to try to figure out why?”
No. I watched SAO almost to the end and when it got too stupid and boring I dropped it, 4 or 5 episodes before the finale. Wasting even more time because you’ve already wasted a lot isn’t something to be proud of, it’s sunk cost fallacy.
Anyway I just really don’t get it. Yeah, there’s a lot of cartoonish evil in this show. There’s also some incredibly heartfelt moments of superheroism – when Inuyashiki literally cries with joy at the thought of being able to heal people. Hiro is a murderer, but even he is investigated as a human character. As for the trolls, yeah, they’re sort of caricatures, but since when are side characters and extras as well explored as the protagonists? If anything the whole sequence felt almost tongue in cheek, considering that many have probably at some point thought they’d really wish to punch someone like that through the screen. I feel like we can afford taking it even as a bit of black comedy given that it’s fiction and it’s neither harming anyone real nor actually inciting to, y’know, murder people with internet guns.
Manami
November 17, 2017 at 10:37 pmThis episode was really good. This show is just getting better and better. If people know of Gantz, the so called issues in this series isn’t issues at all and it’s somewhat to be expected from this author. People complain about not liking Hiro and what he did but I just see it as part of the narrative.
This is not your typical anime and is meant to be edgy, so all the hate this show is receiving or people not able to handle the show have to recheck their expectations.
Yann
November 18, 2017 at 3:47 pmI didn’t think of him as omnipotent but more like tech savvy because he’s young and grew up with the internet. Nowadays, whoever controls the data has power…
As for the credibility of shooting people “through” the screen… Really? Because killing people with his finger was totally cool, but THAT doesn’t make sense? LOL… Maybe all he needs is the the geolocation of a person, and he’s probably somehow manipulating energy or something, not shooting a projectile. You can come with a bazillion ideas… I don’t think the point of this show scientific credibility… 😛
Simone
November 18, 2017 at 4:37 pmI mean, as long as it’s his finger we can imagine he has some sort of embedded beam thingy. Maybe he fires air bullets, or X-ray laser beams. Killing people through screens is pure dark magic.
Yann
November 18, 2017 at 5:23 pmIt could be that the tech is so advanced that it taps into energy at the atomic level and can manipulate matter however they want, that would be how they make cancer “disappear”. They’re not shooting laser beams at cancer patients… Just because you can’t imagine how something works doesn’t make it black magic. I’m pretty sure GPS would look like black magic to someone from 100 years ago.