Thoughts on Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon Episode 1

Yashahime can be found on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Youtube

Happy October 3rd, Yashahime release day!

Spoilers for Inuyasha and Yashahime episode 1

Back when this sequel was announced in May, I made a post about it, basically detailing my waffling on how I felt about it. Since that post, I’ve come to mostly look forward to it. So I’ve been counting down the days, lemme tell you. So here are my thoughts, now that I’ve watched episode one:

Weirdly, the biggest emotions I’m feeling right now are dread mixed with sadness. The first episode isn’t sad at all, mind you. On the contrary, it’s got some good comedy in it and I really liked it, but I just have a feeling something bad is going to happen.

So this episode opens on Towa sitting in a feudal lord’s castle, being grilled about where she came from. It flashes from there back and forth to shortly after Kagome returns to the feudal era. A lot of the episode is actually spent there, and we see them fighting the Root Head demon from the trailer. It was really nice to see all the characters again – the whole main cast pretty much. It’s immediately noticeable that everyone has grown and matured. Things that would have been a dramatic argument in the original show were discussed calmly three years later in this sequel. It was just so nice to see the character growth.

I was expecting this episode to set up the main plot for the series, but I suppose it’ll take more than twenty minutes of show time to do that: other than flashing forward to Towa, Setsuna and Moroha together, it hasn’t (yet) explained how it got to that point. That is why I feel so much dread.

From the trailer to the movie posters, there are two people in particular who haven’t made an appearance while Towa, Setsuna and Moroha are doing their thing: Kagome and Rin. Both of them, while in the episode during the fight with the Root Head demon, haven’t been hinted at at all during the later time setting. It’s… unsettling.

Mind you, we only saw the three girls during the later time period, so it’s not guaranteed any of the other characters will be later in the show, but the lack of them being featured on the posters and images and stuff makes me worry.

So the Root Head demon – it’s obvious while ‘defeated’ in the first episode isn’t actually so. And honestly, the set up for how it got there was pretty nice. It wasn’t just ‘it showed up one day’, but actually had a reason that made sense why it was there and why it was in Kaede’s village in particular. So as said, this Root Head demon I don’t think is quite done, and I feel like it’s going to be the catalyst for… whatever happens for all the characters.

I don’t like it. It makes me feel so nervous, augh.

As mentioned earlier, this episode has some good comedy. Moroha is definitely Inuyasha and Kagome’s daughter, to put it plainly. She’s such a great combination of them that it’s hilarious just to see her being herself. Setsuna you can tell is a bit stoic like her father, which is also funny in its own way. Towa’s interactions with the feudal lord are pretty funny. Towa, unlike Kagome in the original series, is actually concerned about preserving the timeline. Her facial expressions when being confronted with a book brought back from modern time is great, and so is the one when she sees Kagome’s old bicycle seat, which was found in a river.

That part honestly made me gasp a bit, and lends to my worry about Kagome: why was her bike seat in a river? It looked old, and like it had been there for a while. It showed that clip, and I went ‘oh no. Oh no, this is gonna make me sad, isn’t it’.

We don’t get to find out what happened in episode one though, they’re gonna make us wait. It’s gonna be tortuous and it’s gonna make me cry. It’s gonna, it’s gonna.

So overall: I really enjoyed this episode. They set up some good hooks for future plot points, and I really liked the back-and-forth setting way of telling what’s happened so far. The episode was definitely worth the wait, and I am excited (I also dread) to see more.

If you watched this, do tell me your thoughts. As far as I know, none of my friends are watching so I have nobody to talk about it with.

 

One Lovely Blog Award

Hello. 😀 I was nominated by Ace to do this, so thank you ladyface. Also, if anyone has tagged me in anything within the past month and I haven’t done the post for it, please kindly remind me. I really need to start keeping track of this stuff. If I haven’t done something you’ve tagged me in, it’s because I forgot I was tagged and can’t find a log of it all, so. @@ Apologies.

Anyways, onto this awardy.

Rules:

• You must thank person who nominated you and include a link to their blog
• You must list the rules and display the award
• You must add 7 facts about yourself
• You must nominate 15 other bloggers

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7 Facts About Me:

1. I feel like my taste buds are committing a mutiny against me. Within the last five years, they decided a lot of foods that I previously hated with a passion are suddenly delicious. I’m not complaining I suppose (I mean, tasty food is always good) but I’m so confused why it’s so many foods so damn quickly. They include: Coffee, guacamole, hummus, coconut, macaroni salad, mustard, bacon, ketchup, beer, liquor, relish… the list goes on.
2. I don’t take selfies. Ever. If you ever see me in a selfie, it was taken by someone else in the shot and it was 100% their idea. I’m not against them or anything, I just feel like there are far more interesting things to show people pictures of than my face. Like books for example. Or cats.
3. My SO and I are planning on moving to a new apartment this coming February or March. Hopefully this move will allow me to put all my books in one place for once, along the same wall or same corner. I mean really. About 1/3 of them are in my living room, 1/3 in my bedroom and 1/3 still at my parents’ house in storage. I MISS MY BOOKIES.
4. I think the worst chore in the world is putting laundry away. I don’t know why I hate it so much, just that I do. I’ll do the dishes, take out the trash, even clean the toilet before I agree to fold laundry. I don’t mind doing laundry, but the after-folding is the worst. So unless my SO does it, it sits on the bed, then the chair, then the bed, then the chair.
5. I have this awful habit of buying a lot of books, seeing one I don’t own yet but want to read, thinking ‘Oh I just bought some, so I should get this one from the library’, reading that book and some other library books, thinking ‘I’ve read a lot lately, gonna buy books’, buying books, seeing one I don’t own yet but want to read, thinking ‘Oh I just bought some, so I should get this one from the library’, yada yada yada.
6. The whole reason I have a degree in psychology (studying comp sci now though) is because when I was sixteen, I ran across this butthead online who claimed to have schizophrenia but acted out having multiple personalities. I did some research on it, found out the two are completely different disorders, but by that point, I had cut ties with said butthead so I never got to call him out on it. He was so full of it, lemme tell you. Anyways, doing the research got me interested in psychology as a whole, which led to me majoring in it when I got to college. So thank you, butthead.
7. There has never been a carton of milk that my SO and I bought that we finished before the expiration date. We try, but we never get there. I buy the smallest ones I can, too. They’re quart sized! Still can’t finish them. The day we do, the earth will split open and the apocalypse will start.

And that’s it! I’ve seen this award floating around a lot of the people I normally tag, so I’m not going to tag anyone. Though if you would like to do this, consider yourself tagged by me. 😀