Once upon a time I, too, was a wide eyed young lad, freshly exposed to the medium we all know and love as Japanimation. Like all budding Japanese cartoon watchers, I had horrible taste, and wouldn’t know a good show if it bit me in the ass. Thankfully, the selection at the local video store made most of my viewing decisions for me, keeping at bay the horror of things like Dancougar simply by not having the first tape. Unfortunately, even a limiting my selection to choice OVAs from CPM, ADV and Animeigo was not enough to keep me from making some bad decisions, decisions which I would only come to regret years after the fact. Not watching Ushio & Tora was one of them.
Ushio & Tora was one of those shows you would see in the trailer reel of every ADV VHS on the market at the time. I don’t think there was a single volume of the thirteen tape Blue Seed run that did not begin with the preview for it. Alas it was too soon, it’s wild character designs and rough lines were too much for my undeveloped palette, and I never did give it a watch. That is, of course, until now.
Ushio is a brash high school student with a self proclaimed knack for art. He lives in an old shrine with Tenchi’s grandfather, who has repeatedly told him fantastic sounding stories of the shrine’s long history involving the subjugation of a particularly dangerous demon. Ushio believes none of this of course, so when he stumbles upon said demon in his storehouse basement it’s quite a shock. Ushio is eventually tricked into freeing the demon by removing the “beast spear” which has kept him from moving from that spot for 500 years, but things don’t go as planned, and the tables turn back around once Ushio learns he can wield the spear and keep the demon, who he names “Tora” in check. The unlikely pair spend the duration of the show bickering and beating up demons that Tora inevitably attracts, although their alliance is a shaky one, as Tora is poised to make a meal out of Ushio the second he has his back turned.
Ushio & Tora is admittedly “standard youth comic” fare, but that isn’t really a knock against it. Youth comics are at their best when they are introducing the scenario, characters, and establishing the “rules of engagement,” if you will. It’s only when they get lost in the mire of their own nonsensical mythology, endless fighting tournaments, and giving each member of the inevitably bloated cast a bit of screen time that they fall apart completely. Brevity is definitely on Ushio & Tora’s side as it is pretty firmly rooted in this introductory period, not lasting long enough to leave it or implode under the weight of its own stupidity.
In addition to taking place in the aforementioned introductory period, Ushio & Tora also has the “buddy movie” angle going for it. Reluctant cooperation eventually turning into an unshakable friendship is the direction the show heads in, and although it isn’t fully realized, it goes far enough so you get the idea.
I have no familiarity with the original comic Ushio & Tora was based on. According to wikipedia it ran for a total of thirty three volumes from the early to mid 90′s, spawning this ten episode OVA in 1992, four years before the comic would see it’s final volume. An ending was obviously impossible that early in the game, but I’m not sure if it really needed one. In fact, I could have done without the last two episodes of the OVA entirely, as they make for a more abrupt ending than ending it earlier would have.
You could fault the show for not having any real conclusion, a common problem of animation based on an ongoing comic, but honestly I just don’t care. Sure it could have gone on forever and spawned hundreds of tv episodes, but I kinda like the “taste test” sized run we got.
All of the flavor, none of the indigestion.
While I fell in love with Ushio and Tora through the same old VHS tape you probably saw way back when it and a cold of the Tenchi Muyo movie where the only thing on the anime store shelves, my true romance did not develop until I read the comics. The friendship that’s hinted at in the anime is nothing compared to the work the writer puts into it on paper and it is indeed the best thing about the story, though not by far the only great thing.
After reading it, I can’t go back to the anime, which is completely true to the comic but also sorely out of order (the water wheel incident comes much farther along in the story) and the last two episodes with the Kamaitachi (Sickle Weasels) begins the real story and introduces two great characters who would get a lot more time later on.
In short, they’ll never finish the anime and that’s sad. But we have the manga. You gotta read it.
Ushio and Tora, voted number 20 in the 50 greatest Manga of all time. Can’t believe it was so low.
I’ll probably check out the manga sometime if I can find it around in English, I would like to see some more. The sickle weasel arc was probably the weakest part of the show, I wanted them to elaborate more on Tora’s past and his other name that was mentioned in the beach arc. I do like a good buddy story now and again so I’ll definitely keep an eye out for it.