Name: Inuyashiki is a classic! A supernatural but realistic trip, giving similar feelings to Parasyte and even Death Note
Item: INUYASHIKI LAST HERO
Rating: 90
Author: edgythehedgy

Waifra

Inuyashiki is a classic! A supernatural but realistic trip, giving similar feelings to Parasyte and even Death Note · Waifora

This anime does a great job depicting the good and evil that's living in our world. It‘s a great watch from start to finish and definitely worth your time! Sounds, music and especially the opening are amazing at creating the right atmosphere at the right time. The animation might not be the most detailed, but it’s seriously no issue here. Everything that matters to the viewer has been executed perfectly. And what’s really unique: The main characters and their machinery. It’s almost horrifying to watch those animations because it’s just so creepy to see humans open up in such a weird fashion and revealing tech inside. It’s so scary it’s actually captivating!

The story isn’t very complicated, but genious. Inuyashiki, a regular white-collar 58-year old guy, learns that he has cancer and only 3 more months to live. He loves his family more than anything, but unfortunately, as he was about to tell them about his horrible fate, nobody wanted to listen. He ends up going to the park with his dog to cry his heart out, where he is eventually killed by a stranding UFO. Hiro, a regular, but handsome high school boy was hit by this as well and it’s unknown why he was there on that same day. The aliens want to go home unnoticed, so they immediately restore Inuyashiki and Hiro – but they actually end up as ultimate war-robots with a human appearance and heart.

Now, where do I even start? This premise is amazing. Giving humans such insane powers and letting them do as they please makes for one of the most interesting plots out there. They can kill with just pointing at people, hack into any electronic device and even heal injuries and illnesses. It’s thrilling to watch Inuyashiki uncover his new powers and use them to save as many lives as he can, while Hiro kills random people just ‚to feel alive‘.

Hiro, our main anti-protagonist, has been a cold-hearted killer since his childhood. Instead of killing small animals, he now uses his powers to induce despair into people and kill them afterwards. This anime does a great job depcting what society and human relationships do to people. He lives with his divorced mom in a small apartment and it’s shown that she is very depressed and unhappy. This environment is without a doubt not beneficial for a developing child’s mind. It’s also shown that he has already felt emotionally drained as a kid and that he only cares about the people closest to him. Meaning his mom and his only friend, Andou, who gets bullied at school and ends up working against Hiro with the help of Inuyashiki. Later, he ends up losing more people who he grows attached to and actually have the power to change his ways.

Spoiler, click to view

He was ready to give up killing people in order to stop upsetting the people close to him in two instances. Both times however, these people got killed right in front of him because of how society works. His mom commits suicide after it's revealed to the public that the inexplicable recent murders are Hiro's doing. The media and people on the internet start harassing her, plus Hiro escapes, leaving her all alone in an already vulnerable emotional state. The second time, his class mate who has had a crush on him decided to protect him in her home together with her grandma. They both get killed by a military force breaking into their house and shooting everything around them. Just before that, Hiro promised the girl the stop killing people and they even saved many people’s lives in secret, as this was the only way for Hiro to really show remorse after his horrible actions. Luckily, he manages to revive the girl and her grandma in time, but from then on, he has to part ways with them again, in order to protect them and figure out what to do against the whole country who’s against him now.

Hiro clearly has a mental problem that gets triggered again in his high school years when he sees a man commit suicide in front of him. After telling Andou, his only friend at the time, and showing him his powers, the latter starts distancing himself from Hiro, fearing that he is the one killing people and ultimately working with Inuyashiki to stop his friend and save his own life. The problem here is that after a certain amount of deaths, Hiro starts killing hundreds of people, like guiding airplanes to their demise in the center of Tokyo. One can argue that he has already lost everything at this point and that there was no way to ever atone for his sins and live on planet Earth, but it still seemed so odd to me. He initially started killing people after seeing them suffer in front of him, so his big killing sprees are lacking in an ulterior motive. He might have said that he wants to erase all of Japan, so the ones dear to him can live peacefully in Hawaii, but obviously, killing the entire country won’t restore any peace.

I would have loved to give this anime 10 stars, but there is a few things that take away from that. It’s realistic to not have an ultimate mastermind who does everything perfectly until the very end, but Hiro’s character still seems flawed in a few aspects. Inuyashiki on the other hand is an ordinary old man who feels good when he helps others - which is debatedly just as selfish, considering that he could have spent 24/7 healing people instead of doing it as a ‘hobby’ if that really was his true, selfless motive. Still, Hiro’s moves are very over the top and inexplicable at some points, which might give him the character of a normal, faulty human, but sometimes it doesn’t fit with his usual, calculated manner. I feel like what could have given this anime more substance and color would have been more story, more backgrounds and definitely more different settings in which the main characters use their powers. Everything happened so fast in these 11 episodes and I still have so many questions. It would have been great to witness more character (and story) development, which is currently more or less limited to Hiro’s. I also think that it could have helped to give the aliens a more significant role to help with that.