Episode 10: Flowers drenched in sadness
悲しみに濡れる花 (Kanashimi ni nureru hana)

Chapters covered: Rest of 471 through the beginning of 475

New ending this week. It's called "Diamond" and is basically just a slower version of "Essence of me" (according to sakuraangel on Channel Ai, ats- arranged the song and reserved the right to change the title). In all likelihood, the single version of "Essence of me" that was talked about was indeed "Diamond". Confusing, I know. I can tell that my overeager reporting didn't help much to alleviate this confusion. Sorry everyone.

As for the ending visuals themselves, they are very charming and snow oriented.

As for the rest of the episode, it was mostly devoted to Kaou (well-animated villain, but nobody wanted to screenshot him) and very hot-blooded Kagome. This wasn't to exciting though as the beginning and end of the episode took a few minutes to set up for the fight to the death with Kanna next week. What was most interesting is that Sunrise gave Kanna a bit more personality than I was expecting with respect to her grieving over Kagura. The scene of her holding the fan was really a nice touch. I hadn't expected the fight with the Mirror Monster to begin this week, but I'm glad that it did in light of the episode 12 title implying the poison jar trials of Yakurou Dokusen.

HD screencaps (courtesy of 2ch/Futaba) – click to magnify

Aniplex is more loose-lipped about episode titles than I thought. This is the second time that a title has been revealed through a DVD description by an online retailer.

Episode 12: "Sango's feelings, Miroku's resolve"  (Yakurou Dokusen story?)
(珊瑚の想い 弥勒の覚悟 Sango no omoi Miroku no kakugo)

Source: ggking.jp

As expected, more details have come in. The name of the song is "Essence of me" "Diamond" and the initial version came out only a few days ago as part of her new album, "my life".

map"Essence of me" and another song, "Over the clouds" will be re-released and re-arranged as part of a single this coming January. With that in mind, I cannot say with any degree of certainty as to whether the single version we hear this weekend will differ at all from the currently available version. All I know is that the single version of the song will be the version promoted for Inuyasha Final Act. For what it's worth, it's not unusual for a song to be re-recorded and resampled before or while being used in an opening or ending. "ALONES" (Bleach OP6, Aqua Timez) and "ANGELUS" (Inuyasha OP6, Hitomi Shimatani) are good examples of this as both were tweaked half-way through their runs.

At any rate, you can listen to the "my life" album version of the full song here. The song starts out a bit crappy, but it gets progressively more awesome and J-Pop. But like I said, I'm not sure of which version or parts of the song Sunrise and avex will use for the TV-friendly 90 second version.

Source: Channel-Ai

Edit: There's a temporary Inuyasha merchandise store opening in a Tokyo mall for a few days this December. Also, the full version of the opening, "A Future Without You" came out a few days ago. As for "With You" by AAA, the full version came out a while ago.