InuYasha – The Final Act: Episode 2, Kagura’s Wind

A recap by someone who’s never actually watched InuYasha before and then recalled the episode from memory after an alcoholic beverage.

This recap is brought to you by the fine people at Viz and Hulu for posting new, subtitled episodes of this series quickly.  Because lord knows I wouldn’t ever download this crap.  Er, any crap.  At all.  Never!

Last time on InuYasha, IY showed up at Kagome’s school for…something.  And there’s a horrible monster.  And Kagura betrayed someone over something…oh, who cares, it’s InuYasha.  They’ll give us 400 episodes to figure out what’s going on.

Kagura’s zooming around on her feather (as you do), thinking about getting her heart back from Naraku.  I’m assuming this isn’t a metaphorical heart, like the one Tony Bennett left in San Francisco, or a real, beating heart, but a shojo anime heart, like in Sailor Moon S.  Either way, she still seems to be doing okay without a heart, so who knows what the big deal about getting it back is.  Whatevs.

This episode is called Kagura’s Wind.  Episode 1 was Naraku’s Heart.  I wonder if every episode will be named thus, because eventually they’ll run out of characters and/or interesting objects.  If we reach an episode called Kikyo’s Baloney Sandwich, I’m done.

Ninja Chick with a Boomerang and NCwaB’s little brother are laying flowers on the graves of their family.  NCwaB wonders if it’s too soon to bring her weeping brother here, and the animators realize they’re dangerously close to character development.  Quickly, cut scene!

InuYasha, Kagome, and PriestPerv and possibly that little fox kid enter a horrifying cave and give us back story on an ancient priestess named Midori Sour.  She fought demons, and sucked their evil souls into her body, which forced her soul out into the Shikon MacGuffin.  This show is all her fault! Bitch.  There’s a hole in her statue, or possibly fossilized body, where the Shikon MacGuffin used to be.  They look inside and find a cocoon.  That’s not surprising; it’s a damp, dark cave, and no one’s been there in years, all sorts of bugs set up home– HO SHIT A FUCKING DRAGON CAME OUT OF THAT COCOON!  I mean, this is a shojo anime, I expected some sort of sparkly butterfly or something.

InuYasha calls it a Soul Collector and said he totally smelled Kikyo’s Paris Hilton perfume all over the cave, and chases the dragon down.  Our other heroes are kept from following him by a Deus Ex Barrier.  Kikyo’s hanging out in a waterfall, thinking about how Naraku’s smegma is so strong, even Kagome’s heroine purification powers couldn’t get the stain out.  She needs Midori Sour’s soul so she can stay alive longer.  But wait – I thought Midori Sour’s soul was the Shikon MacGuffin!  How did Kikyo get her soul from her caterpillar dragon?  …Whatevs.

Kikyo’s plan to kill Naraku involves – surprise! – piecing together the Shikon MacGuffin.  She wants to give it to Naraku so he can turn it into totally sweet goth jewelry, and as soon as he does, purify the jewel and Naraku at the moment they’re linked.  Then she turns into a jet and flies away.  NCwaB’s little bro has a piece of the Shikon shard in the back of his head, and he runs off after Kikyo, to help defeat Naraku and possibly die dramatically in someone’s arms.

Cut to: Gamera is awoken by a mutant demon/Frankenstein’s monster thing.  …Time for another drink.

Okay, Gamera is awoken by a mutant demon/Frankenstein’s monster thing.  md/Fmt wants Gamera’s hard candy shell, and so he tentacle rapes him for it.  Then there’s an evil baby!  These kids today and their shitty villains.  In my days, the villains were evil and hot.  And they had to walk uphill in the snow both ways without any shoes on to tentacle rape Gamera for his shell, and that’s the way we liked it.

Meanwhile, Koga’s in a graveyard with his comedy relief cohorts, after some ultimate weapon of the dog face tribe, because he wants to kill Naraku, too.  There’s so many damn people trying to kill Naraku, in fact, I can’t help but feel like I’ve stepped into a bad anime adaptation of a Tarantino movie.  Maybe it’s the alcohol talking, but InuYasha would be well-served to have Samuel L. Jackson in it.  There, I said it.

Koga and friends get smacked back by Stone Golem Cerberus, who’s all, “You are not dog face enough to get the magical steel press-on nails weapon.”  Also, the steel press-on nails are full of souls.  Seriously, do people in InuYasha just leave souls lying around everywhere?  What is this, Bleach?

Koga tries to kill Stone Golem Cerberus with his bejeweled Uggs, and fails.  Just when he’s about to reach the steel press-on nails, Stone Golem Cerberus breathes fire at the comedy relief, who are so incompetent they don’t even know how to run away.  Koga turns away from the weapon and saves them.  SGC taunts him for doing so, and Koga gives generic hero speech #44 about how the weapon is useless if he’d have to turn his back on his friends to get it, and I said, “Oh, look, it’s a test to see if he is pure of heart enough to take it.”  Hooray for tropes.

Koga wins the steel press-on nails and gets the souls of the dog face tribe to hang around.  He defeats the SGC, and then the steel press-on nails disappear inside his body.  …Ouch.

Kagura’s still flying around on her feather! Considering the episode’s named for her, we’re about halfway through and only saw her for about 10 seconds so far.  She runs into Naraku floating around in his pretty pink soap bubble.  The sky must look really weird in InuYasha land.  Naraku says he’ll free her and give her her heart back.  That’s nice of him.  He’s a villain?  Really?  You kids today and your shitty villains and your pierced scrotums and Blu-Ray DVDs.

Naraku holds out his hand and there sits a bloody, beating heart.  Huh, so I guess it was a real heart after all.  It magically appears back into Kagura’s body, and she’s all, “OMG AWESOMESAUCE!”  Then Naraku tentacle stabs her and pumps her full of purple smokey smegma.  LULZ!

Meanwhile…somewhere, Sesshoumaru is wandering about and runs into md/Fmt, who knows he’s InuYasha’s half brother.  Sesh is all, “If you know that, you must be Naraku’s heart.”  Really?  People don’t know that the two white-haired pretty boys who always fight are related? Interesting.

Back to Kagura, who is now doing the “I’m free, and it’s okay that I’m mortally wounded, really,” monologue as she sees butterflies and her vision blurs in and out.  It looks like a character is just about to have a moment!  Quickly, cut scene!

Back to Sesh, fighting Naraku’s heart monster.  Heart monster has Gamera’s hard candy shell, so Sesshoumaru is about as effective as Magikarp in a fight against Sephiroth.

And back to Kagura!  The animators forgot to take their Ritalin this week, folks.  She’s wandered into a field of white flowers.  Yup, she’s a goner.  Bleeding to death and walking into a field of flowers?  She might as well have spent her last few scenes fluffing the pillows in her coffin.

Sesshoumaru!  His sword is stuck in Naraku’s heart’s hard candy shell, but then a blood-covered flower petal floats over from Kagura, and he’s all, “Hey, I know her,” and Naraku’s heart is all, “LULZ, she dead,” and Sesh is all, “Oh no u din’t,” and breaks his hard candy shell.  He can do that now because…?  Love?  Whatevs.  Naraku’s heart disappears in a puff of smoke, shaking his fist and saying, “I’ll get you next time, Gadget!”  Sesh’s sword breaks, but he can’t worry about that because Kagura is dying somewhere and he has to go to her for some reason.

Here is a screencap of the very next shot.

I’m not sure if alcohol is the cause of or solution to that.  Better safe than sorry, though.  Time for drink #3.

Kagura!  She’s bleeding blood into the flowers, turning them red around her, and bleeding purple smokey smegma into the air again, which she had stopped doing in the previous shot.  Sesshoumaru shows up and is all, “I smelled you dying, so I thought I’d drop in.”  This is about as tender-hearted as he gets, folks.  A dramatic wind blows up flower petals, so it’s time for her to die in a puff of smegma and feathers.  The blood from the daisies is all gone now.  Whatevs.  The Scooby Gang appears just after she dies and asks Sesshoumaru if Kagura was in any pain when she died.  I mean, she got her heart put back into her body right before she was horribly stabbed and pumped full of smegma, then used her strength to walk to a dramatic place to die.  I’m sure she was fine.

End credits.  These are the most hardcore pinwheels ever, motherfucker.

Next episode preview – That little fox kid has a wacky adventure or something!  Seriously? Episode 3 and you’re already onto filler?  REALLY?