Yashahime is the sequel show to the hit Inuyasha. It stars Towa Higurashi, half-demon daughter of Inuyasha's antihero half-brother Sesshomaru, who was raised in modern times. She finds a way back to her native feudal Japan and teams up with her sister Setsuna, a demon hunter, and Inuyasha and Kagome's quarter-demon daughter Moroha, a bounty hunter, to fight demons and investigate what happened to their parents and why Setsuna can't remember Towa.
Now, this show doesn't match the original. Whereas Inuyasha was mostly based on the stories from the manga by Rumiko Takahashi, this is a purely original work. Without Takahashi, the characters and storylines are missing the particular touch she had. The show feels more like your basic battle of the week-style anime. Also, a lot, but not all, of the demon designs feel pretty generic and uninspired.
But this is all compared to Inuyasha, the show by itself is fairly entertaining. Yashahime is definitely faster-paced than its predecessor, which was a slow burn.
I was worried about the three leads being copycat characters, but that turned out to be not much of a problem, and I ended up liking them. Setsuna and Moroha are generally similar their fathers, but they manage to be their own characters as well. Towa as the most original of the trio, makes for a fine leader. She's a tough combatant who is also surprisingly sweet and empathetic. I hear the characters' designs are also by Takahashi. They fare better than a lot of the other characters on the show. Towa is pretty distinctive in her all white school boys' uniform.
The main villain Kirinmaru works pretty well. Naraku, the big baddie in Inuyasha, was a despicable schemer and puppetmaster interested mainly in increasing his own power. The writers for this got the good idea of going in the opposite direction for Kirinmaru. He's a bad dude, but he's got a warrior's code thing going on. Plus, he also seems to see the big picture besides his own goals.
There is one element in this, which I would consider a spoiler and can't go into details, that is really creepy. I wish they hadn't done that.
Still as a whole, I recommend this. If you're an Inuyasha fan, you could be disappointed. Overall, though, I found this to be a decent time waster.
