Well, that certainly was a glorious clusterfuck.
It seems like it would be terribly unwise to start analyzing things in Inuyashiki now – expecting the series to hold up to careful scrutiny is pointless. Of course that makes doing what I’m doing now rather problematical, doesn’t it? It’s quite the problem, but Inuyashiki is what is is and it certainly isn’t what it isn’t. And as far as the whole NoitaminA angle is concerned, well- surely that ceased to have any meaning a long time ago.
Even so, a lot of strange things certainly went into this finale. The series remembered that Ichirou’s son Takeshi existed after basically ignoring him for 10 episodes, and decided to try and give him some kind of character arc without having done anything to build it up. Then it pretty much abandoned it and left him as if none of it ever happened. That’s a larger problem with the ending, actually, because even in a series as bonkers as this one it’s kind of grating to have nothing that’s happened before really amount to much. Was there any difference in the lives Hiro and Inuyashiki decided to live after they became supermen? They both ended up exactly the same, after making exactly the same decision.
There was the nascent spark of something interesting in these characters, certainly, though it wasn’t anything Oku Hiroya seemed very interested in exploring in depth. I think the best moment of the finale probably came when Ichirou-san tried to convince his wife that he was a fake, only to have her prove him wrong by asking him to answer questions only Inuyashiki Ichirou would be able to answer correctly. I’m not just talking about factually, but emotionally – and it’s an interesting question the series is asking about humanity and what it means to be human.
Was the whole asteroid thing a Deus ex machina? Of course, but then, pretty much everything in Inuyashiki is so it’s hard to get too upset about that. Maybe the aliens who with no real explanation made Inuyashiki and Hiro into beings with the ability to destroy their planet decided to send the asteroid to cover up their screwup, and we were just supposed to figure that out ourselves? It’s possible I guess, if it even matters. It did at least give us a hilariously on-point Donald Trump appearing to tell everyone to fuck off and start acting like the world was about to end, because it was. If such an event were ever to happen in real life, I imagine that’s just about the response we’d get from the man.
Hiro did get his moment of redemption, as you knew he would – it was clear the series was kind of rooting for him even as he was engaged in wholesale murder. But ht still remained loyal to his friend so in in the end, he’s a decent guy, right? Hiro and Ichirou vs. the asteroid was the ending I’ve been pretty much expecting, so no surprises there – though again, I did find it unsatisfying that in spite of the speech Inuyashiki gave to his son earlier in the episode (which was actually one of the finale’s stronger moments) there was really no difference in Inuyashiki and Hiro’s fate. Life certainly doesn’t have meaning a lot of the time, but this is fiction and it does make one wonder what the point of all this was.
A final quibble – what sort of sense did it make to end on Mari winning the “Jump” manga contest? I mean, in the context of the story is that really that big a deal? Is Hiroya trying to make some sort of point here? Her mother remains stuck in the same dreary job, her brother is still being brutalized by bullies, and Inuyashiki’s life seems not to have amounted to much – but Mari was a manga contest, so it all makes sense? Here I am asking questions when I promised not to, but it’s hard to resist the urge sometimes. That’s not doing Inuyashiki any favors, I know, so probably best to just leave it there.
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