Ushio and Tora
I'd been aware of this series for a long time, but somehow I got a bad impression of it from the trailers I saw--maybe it was the terrifying look of Tora, (or the fact that Ushio isn't exactly the most handsome charachter around), but this seemed like a horror story to me. After I read several reviews which claimed that this series is also really funny at times, I gave it a try. The basic premise of this show is sort of a combination of Tenchi Muyo and Inuyasha--an extremely dangerous creature has been imprisoned underneath a temple for hundreds of years, pinned in place by a magical weapon. Now, in a desperate situation, a boy must risk releasing it. I liked it (it really is funny), but as it turns out my original impression wasn't too far off. This is a sort of horror-comedy, and the horror has priority (at least for the first ten episodes--more about this later). People are decapitated, torn apart, devoured (fortunately, blood is splashed about so liberally that it's hard to take the violence seriously). Once they gain some respect for each other, Ushio and Tora ("Tiger") become a de-facto team of demon hunters, dealing with the sort of spirits you might see in Inuyasha. After episode 10 I was feeling a bit disappointed, having encountered more violence and less humor than I had expected. I also had a mystery on my hands--one critic had said there were 12 episodes, another listed 13, but my DVD claimed only to include "all 10 episodes". It turned out that the missing "episodes" were located in the category of "Comically Deformed Theater" in the Extras section. I nearly missed them because at first glance this section seemed to be nothing more than replays of exciting scenes from episodes 1-10. But afterwards comes a sort of Omake theater, 5 or 6 acts, completely SD mode, and completely comedy. I didn't have a stopwatch on hand, but I think it was around 30 minutes altogether. There's also the "outtakes" section--a combination of humorous bloopers by the voice actors and them sort of playing MST3K with the show. That was nice--I finished this often grisly series with a smile on my face.
My favorite line:
"He hides in rotating objects like this... seems to really enjoy the feeling--what a wierdo" --Tora
Last updated Friday, April 30 2004. Created Thursday, January 01 2004.
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