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 by alan. 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 alan chose). In all likelihood, the single version of "Essence of me" that was talked about was indeed "Diamond" all along.

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. But on the whole, I'm not a fan of the new ending. It's pretty weak compared to "With you" or the endings from first series. I also still can't understand why we're got a new one so quickly.

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 too 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 and hatred of Naraku. 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, mouse-over for captions

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".

"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.

Patches alluded to this bit of news earlier today, but now, it's pretty much confirmed: Episode 10 will have or mark the start of a new ending theme.

Sources: alan – official website

Episode 9: Sesshoumaru in the Underworld

Chapters covered: 466 through most of 471

First off, Viz may be in a bit of trouble this week. Because the episode aired two hours later than usual on NTV, Viz thought it would be appropriate to violate NTV's first-to-air rights and uploaded the complete subbed episode while it was still airing.

mapWith respect to the episode itself, while I watched it on the rather fugly KeyHoleTV stream, the screencaps were quite definitive in establishing this week's episode as extremely well-animated. The background music was not as good though. The original theme for Tessaiga was used during Tenseiga's 100 soul revival. Sessmom's (voiced by Yoshiko Sakakibara) dry wit and Mother-of-the-Year (trademarked by Rosa Ushiromiya) qualities were left in tact. Unfortunately, the Hell scenes, which seemed like hours in the manga, felt slightly rushed. When I say rushed, I don't mean rushed like the first few episodes of Final Act, instead I mean that the Hell scenes would've benefited from an additional 1-2 minutes.

Anyway, next week is Kaou and he is apparently being voiced by Ryuusei Nakao (best known for the voice of Frieza in DBZ/DBKai and Mayuri Kurosutchi in Bleach).

HD screencaps (click to enlarge)

Episode 8: Among the Twinkling Stars

Chapters covered: 459-465

Note: NTV is still on my shit-list. They delayed the broadcast of the episode by 70 minutes. Next week will be delayed by 2 hours.

Lots of action and emotion this week for Kikyou's send-off. Despite news of anime-only material being inserted, relatively little was actually changed aside from a short scene with Loli Kaede and the predicted flashback. An instrumental version of "Dearest" (3rd ending) was used to set the tone of Kikyou's death and was quite a great choice in my opinion. Plenty of time was given by Sunrise in order to properly pull this off and they certainly did a great job of getting everyone's reactions perfect.

My only complaint is that this was done at the expense of a fulfilling battle with Naraku. It was too short and lacked the tension that the manga had. I guess this couldn't be helped since Kikyou was a higher priority for the episode.

Anyway, next week is Kouga's departure, the Hell arc, and Sessmom (voiced by Yoshiko Sakakibara). Should be interesting.

HD screencaps courtesy of 2chan/Futaba (last image is a stitched panorama)

Episode 7: The Mausoleum of Mount Azusa

Chapters covered: 452-458

(To hell with NTV for delaying the episode for an extra 15 minutes!)

Just as predicted. A literal cliffhanger ending. Sunrise accomplished everything that needed to be accomplished this week: Spiderwebs, Kohaku/Sesshoumaru vs Byakuya, Mount Azusa. They could've given another minute or two to Kagome on Mount Azusa, but I think Kagome's rant coupled with the use of  "Futari no Kimochi" that old background song whose name currently escapes me (please help me out!) really made up for it. Also, poor Kochou and Asuka.

Next week will mark the end of Kikyou. Much like how episode 124 was the defining moment of the first series, episode 8 will be the defining moment of this series. While I expect a well-done episode that not only does chapters 459-465 justice, I'd also expect that Sunrise uses the opportunity to make the scenes as powerful as possible beyond what might be necessary. This is perhaps where Patches' mention of new anime-only material for next week may come into play.

One final note: SUNRISE BETTER KEEP THE CHEST ARROW!

720p high definition screencaps:

A kind anonymous on 2ch has scanned a newly published programming guide that gives us the titles for episodes 9 and 10 as well as summaries for 7 through 10. Sunrise kindly gave us the 11th.

Episode 9: 冥界の殺生丸 (Meikai no Sesshoumaru | Sesshoumaru in the Underworld) *Hell arc*

Episode 10: 悲しみに濡れる花 (Kanashimi ni nureru hana | Sorrow-soaked Flowers) *Kaou story*

Epsidoe 11: 神無の墓標 (Kanna no bohyou | Kanna's Grave-marker) *Mirror Monster story*

Episode 6: The End of Mouryoumaru

Chapters covered: 439-448

Despite covering pretty much an entire volume this week, Sunrise managed to pull it off practically panel-by-panel and make it look beautiful.

I'd like to point out that this still doesn't make up for how poorly Mouryoumaru and Akago have been treated up until this week. Every upgrade Mouryoumaru received seemed horribly executed and done for naught. Of course, the same can be said of him with respect to the manga, but in that case, upgrades were spread out and acquired through huge battles as opposed to "I've absorbed your Kongousouha! HAHAHAHA!" or the mangled Kinka and Ginka storyline.

At any rate, I have no complaints about this week and I think both manga readers and anime watchers will be able to agree.

As for next week, I'm expecting chapters 452-457 with a literal cliffhanger ending at Mount Azusa.

Edit: Once again, Viz is showing their dedication and has the episode up on their Shonen Sunday site.

Episode 5: Yourei-Taisei's Test

Chapters covered: 416-421 (heavily adapted), 426-431, 438

The episode was more linear than previous weeks and didn't feel as rushed. Yourei-Taisei's storyline as well as the youketsu were pretty well-executed. Kinka and Ginka was radically changed and Flame Tessaiga was cut altogether. It's that not a great loss considering how much of a plot-hole the Flame Tessaiga was, but it was still a great battle to acquire it. Kai and Kouga's companions (unofficially named Ginta and Hakkaku) were unceremoniously written out of the story this week.

Preview for the next episode: We've known for weeks that episode 6 would mark the much-accelerated end to Mouryoumaru and Akago. The preview wholly confirms this and seems to suggest that the entirety of the episode will be dedicated to it with zero distractions. I hope that we can get a decent fight out of this.

Also, here are some out-of-order (I'm lazy) HD images…