Netflix Classic Fantasy Anime Should Be As Big As One Piece

Out of the four mentioned, Naruto is currently the most popular, placed at #8 on the popularity scale on My Anime List. One Piece is second at #19, then Bleach at #39. However, Inuyasha falls far behind from the others, only ranked at #238. 

Inuyasha has always been a popular anime, especially when it was airing. But even at the peak of its popularity, it was never mentioned alongside the other three, despite being just as influential in the industry and bringing in new anime fans. I think this is a crime, frankly, and the Isekai fantasy series should regularly be mentioned alongside the others. 

The characters are a good portion of what carries Inuyasha. While on the surface, they seem flat and one-dimensional, as you learn more about the background of each character and see how they handle the challenges, you realize how much depth they actually have. Their interactions and dynamics with each other further solidify that fact 

Not only that, it’s fair to say that this is one of the original Isekai animes out there— a genre about being transported to another world that’s currently very popular. Because of these reasons, I think it’s fair to say that Inuyasha deserves much more love than it currently has. 

Now, all of this isn’t to say that I don’t see the other side. While all Shonen animes, especially the big three, had a lot of repetition and fillers, Inuyasha’s were a little worse than the rest. While most fillers either came about during a tense moment, so you were eager to get back to the main story, or they had their own interesting tales, Inuyasha didn’t manage to pull it off well.

The fillers were often dull and came at slower moments in the show, so people weren’t enticed to keep pushing through to get back to the main storyline. Additionally, Inuyasha didn’t do a great job of changing to keep the anime and manga interesting. 

Take One Piece, for example. The series is still going, with over 1,000 episodes, but it still manages to entertain. This is because the series adds new enemies, fighting styles, companions, and abilities as it goes on. 

Inuyasha didn’t do so well, as instead of changing up the narrative, the story mostly repeated itself. The series focused on the group collecting jewel shards. However, every time the group got close, the jewels would be stolen or lost, sending them back to the beginning. I can see where it became frustrating for some. 

Despite these flaws, the characters, world-building, and enemies make up for the repetition. While it is a shonen, the strong female characters and romance made it a series that worked well for both young boys and girls. That’s not to say the other three didn’t appeal to girls in some way, but not quite as blatantly or obviously as Inuyasha did. 

If you ignored Inuyasha in favor of one of the three more popular Shonen series: One Piece, Bleach, or Naruto, it’s not too late. All six seasons are available to watch on Netflix, as well as several of the movies.