I finally finished Ghost Slayers Ayashi (天保異聞 妖奇士 Tenpō Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi?) a few days ago, partly via Netflix, and partly via Interlibrary Loan, because just like with Code Geass, Netflix's holdings are incomplete with this series. I mainly watched the English dub for the first-class voice talents involved, including Steven Jay Blum as Ryūdō Yukiatsu (竜導 往壓?) and also Crispin Freeman as heretical, cross-dressing priest Edo Genbatsu (江戸 元閥?). The basic plot, well summarized by Wikipedia, is that in 1843, the fourteenth year of the Tenpō Era, ten years before the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and the Black Ships, Edo is under attack by beasts from the underworld, known as Yōi (妖夷?). Members of the Bansha Aratamesho, called the Ayashi (奇士?), are assembled to repel the emergence of these yoi. So we have here a basic historic epic fantasy story, and while there is an overall story arc leading to a conclusion of sorts, the story often becomes essentially a "monster of the week" kind of "dungeon crawl".
The most intriguing character is the mysterious foreign girl, a young Aztec girl from what is now Texas, but which used to be Northern Mexico, Nueva Espana, the beautiful, green eyed Atl (アトル Atoru?). Sometimes she dresses in her native garb, with her hair down, while other times she dresses incognito as a geisha. She is somehow linked with the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl (Classical Nahuatl: Quetzalcohuātl [ketsaɬˈko.aːtɬ]); when she prayed to the Aztec god Quetzacoatl, she summoned a Yoi in the form of a horse that could also become a dragon; for a time she works in a circus alongside this friendly, massive horse Yoi, which in Japan Atl gives the name of Yukiwa (雪輪?).
Rounding out the cast of heros is the deeply conflicted female samurai Saizō (宰蔵?)...formerly the daughter of a theater owner and an aspiring actress, but the social customs of Japan at this time did not allow women to perform on stage in theaters. After the tragic death of her father when the family theater burned under mysterious circumstances, she chose to begin dressing as a man and passing herself off as a samurai, in service to one Ogasawara Hōzaburō (小笠原 放三郎?), the 20-year-old leader of the Ayashi of the Bansha Aratamesho. He is also a scholar in rangaku (蘭学?, lit. Western studies). He often finds himself torn between his Ayashi work and the government's political schemes.
This story deals very deeply with Japanese culture and the curiosities of Japanese language in particular, so I can understand some fans preferring to watch this show in the original Japanese. It's certainly the kind of historic epic I would consider watching in Japanese with subtitles myself, but again, the outstanding powerhouse English cast kept me with the dub this time.
Some recurring themes of Ghost Slayers Ayashi is the continual presence of an etherial realm known only as "The Other World". Perhaps the afterlife, perhaps the realm of the gods and spirits...it has a very powerful allure; it is a place beyond time and space, where suffering is unknown. But it is not life as we know it, either.
Ryūdō Yukiatsu (竜導 往壓?) is the only human being known to have gone to the Other World and somehow made it back alive to our world. He comes back imbued with the strange power known as Ayagami, which allows him to pull out a creature's "true form", based upon the Japanese characters in its name and their etymological origins...this can either be transformed into a weapon or reveal the creature's hidden weaknesses so it can be defeated.
The Yoi are described variously as deceptive creatures that lead humans astray, to being like empty suits of armor that can be piloted/controlled by the Gods or their descendants. The gods are said to have once roamed all over Japan but now seem to have mostly retreated from the world of humanity, and now only the Yoi remain; Yoi seem to be summoned forth by human desires and human lies, dreams, hopes and fantasies...mostly crafted by humans seeking some form of escape from the grim, harsh, brutal reality of mid-19th century Japanese life...these lies, deceptions and fantasies become physically manifest in the form of Yoi.
Ghost Slayers Ayashi often seems to pose the question...is this frail human existence we lead, with all its pain and suffering, actually worth living? Atl and Yukiatsu's longing for the Other World can be interpreted as a kind of Thanatos or "death wish". In a pivotal moment, Atl escapes to the other world and Yukiatsu goes in to retrieve her...he confesses that it is not she who needs him, it is he who desperately needs her to find the will to go on living despite life's pain and suffering. Hearing this, Atl smiles and says that's reason enough for her and returns to the realm of the living with Yukiatsu.
The final episode of Ghost Slayers Ayashi is a little hard to wrap my head around, since basically it loops back around to the beginning, with Atl going in to the Other World to retreive Yukiatsu; we find out that this in fact is how he was able to escape the Other World in his youth, as we see Atl meeting the much younger Yukiatsu in the Other World and leading him out; It was Atl's intervention in the future that enabled the younger Yukitasu to escape the Other World and to begin the story as it has unfolded througout the series. The series essentially folds back in upon itself like a weird Möbius strip.
The series did not get good ratings in Japan and was thus ended here instead of extended to the originally planned 52 episodes. The pace of the show is at times plodding and slow, the plot advancing at a snail's pace in many volumes. It is a fun show, but it feels like a bit of a let down at the end. Lots of threads are left unresolved.
The show gives you a lot of insight into Japanese history and culture, and gives you likeable, eccentric characters that you care about...many of the episodes seem utterly interchangable with any other episode in the series...while an over-arching story arc does normally exist, the series does take a long time in arriving there.
Some of the themes of Ghost Slayers Ayashi also remind me of the more recent series Claymore with its Youma and their opponents, the Sisters of the Sword, a.k.a. Claymores, who are half-Youma themselves...in like manner, Yukiatsu runs a constant risk of being overcome and turning into a full Yoi himself, by tapping into the same source of spiritual power. Yukiatsu is able to temporarily merge with Yukiwa to form a terrifying kind of "Man-Dragon" able to take down the more gigantic Yoi faced by our heroes. It is using the enemy's power against them.
All in all, this series is very watchable, and can provide a resonable level of entertainment. The English cast is excellent, but viewers may want to watch it in Japanese because of the historical setting as a samurai/fantasy epic, and the etymological nature of Yukiatsu's Ayagami power.
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