Ushio and Tora TV - Reviews

Dragonball has a new series, Sailor Moon has been revived and JoJo is no-longer an OAV, I think I smacked my head on a time machine and woke up in the 90s.  Here comes another very simple straight forward shonen from that era.

Set up is easy; Tiger looking demon, kid who grows long hair and carries a long sacred spear. Each episode so far has our protagonist fighting a demon. We know what is going to happen you won't need Cliff’s Notes or Wikipedia to fill you in on subtle deep meanings. No, you will be able to follow the numbers like a paint by colors booklet.

But there in-lies the charm of the title. It is why you buy a paint by numbers book, you are looking for mindless fun. It will have some action and comical moments. Some are brought to you by Ushio and his serious yet goofy nature. He is great at sports, but actually loves art. He is best friends with two if the cute girls at school, but mostly it is platonic. Also, he is constantly hit by one of the two girls who gets mad at Ushio, but in the same way a 8 year old boy pulls a girl he likes pig tails.  And there is an on-going comic bit between Ushio and Tora that devolves into verbal and physical sparing. (Which is kind of fun, especially the part where Tora mentions he wants to devour Ushio.) The action is almost all in the form of the supernatural, and will most likely require Tora and Ushio to work together at times.

The plot is simple so far, murder a bunch of monsters that are drawn in by the evil aura that Tora has been building up over his incarceration. And Ushio is a school age kid with a cute blond and a brunet who seem to be his closest friends. I assume it will become more than just this for the future and I hope it stays true to the 80/90’s homage to the feel of the shonen love fest.

Speaking of which. The animation is modern, yet borrows the look from the past. It has an old school feel, with things like the sketchy lines on our main protagonist, and simple easy to recognize designs for the rest of the cast. Movement is smooth and backgrounds are OK.

The Sound was solid, and the opening rocks a bit. But the best part of the sound was the voice of our Tiger looking demon. He can turn on the evil rumbly crass voice then switch it over to the humble, meek and shocked voice when he wants. Watch the first banter with him and Ushio and you can tell the voice actor will bring some joy to the part.

So, if you should want to see the Calvin and Hobbes version of a Anime/demon hunter/Shonen world, and might want another title to walk down memory lane with, you can’t go too wrong with giving this a try.

90's mangafor children adapted into 90's anime for children, in 2015...

Feels like 1 to 1 adaption, doesn't take full advantage of being an animation, pacing is pretty bad and a lot of events happen off screen.

In my opinion this could have been modernized easily and the episode count could have been halved.

Thoughts: Story is ok but strays a lot, Animation is good, Sound is ok but is plain missing at times and Characters are average but sometimes annoying and stupid.

this is truely an amazing anime. i was very surprised at how well put together this was from such an old manga. it truely manages to capture the essence of everything that made 90s shonen fighters such a blast to watch and read.

This is a story that comes out of the 90's with avengence. It follows many of the old shonen genre shows and will leave you wanting to watch the next episode every time. That being said, it is a bit short and feels a touch rushed compared to other shows of its type but at least it still managed to get 26 episodes. I would say it's a must for anyone who is a fan of the 90's and looking for some nostalgia.

More often than not, and by a large margin, series remakes end up being truly awful and no where as good as the original, but with an expanded story and likable characters, Ushio and Tora was a surprise, in that it far surpassed the series from over twenty years earlier.

Story - 7/10

Ushio always thought his father’s tales of great monsters roaming the land were just the ramblings of an old man, but one day while cleaning the basement he accidentally lets loose one of the worst beast to ever exist. In doing so he also took possession of a spear which is able to call forth a great power to defeat these monsters, so for the time being he’s safe from the hulking brute following him around just waiting to have him as a snack.. Unfortunatly along with Tora, the monster’s new name, a plethora of other Yokai were released, so now the two have to work together to return Japan to normal.

For the first few cases of the Ushio and Tora yokai hunting team we get your run of the mill anime plot. Some pretty young girl is haunted by a monster, for one reason or another, and now Ushio is off to save her. This starts off with people close to Ushio, but then begins to involve others that he’s unfamiliar with. Although these may just seem like throw away episodes, and a pattern for the rest of the show, they end up playing a larger role in our story, which was a very nice and surprising twist which we don’t often see in anime.

After one monster attacks him as a way to root out his mother, Ushio starts to wonder if she isn’t really dead after all. His suspicions are confirmed by his father, and now he sets off to see his mom again after many years, hoping to get answers as to why all these spirits are out for revenge. During this time the various different Yokai start to work together to hunt Ushio, and after each fight, and use of the beast spear, he starts to feel a change, until eventually the transformation from the spear causes him to lose his humanity.

Now all those who he’s helped in the past come together to return the favor, knowing that if they can’t revive the real Ushio then the world might be at great risk. It gets a little mushy here, as it’s mostly females remembering why they love Ushio, but it at least ties in the first handful of episodes, so that they were more than just filler.

Once Ushio is brought back to normal we get some shenanigans where he’s thrown back in time, to learn about the great monster Hakumen, how he caused the once peaceful yokai to turn, and the sad story behind the creation of the beast spear. Upon returning to the present day Ushio and Tora are confronted by a rouge sect of monks, and their chosen one, Kirio.  This young boy has his own yokai companion and a weapon capable of defeating Hakumen, so the monks decide there is no need for another beast spear which can fall into the wrong hands, so they seal it away in a concrete tomb, unaware that this was all a ploy devised by Hakumen to destroy it’s only weakness. Thankfully, and obviously, this doesn’t work and our heroes prevail. 

The last small story of our series is a bit pointless and has a very cliche plot. A secret research institute is capturing yokai and experimenting on them, which Asako finds to be so mean and cruel, because it’s always the monsters that are the good guys that evil humans turned. They accidentally unleash a form of Hakumen, which Ushio and Tora need to work together to defeat once again…..or everyone will die. These episodes seemed a bit pointless, as they didn’t wrap up the series, nor give a reason to watch the second season. They certainly could have fit in the show, but were more of a mid-season type of episode.

There was a lot to like about the story here, they just needed to do a little editing for content, such as trading those last two episodes for import story information, as for once this was a supernatural shounen series with a very interesting plot. 

Animation - 6/10

The animation for the series is done very well, and even with all the action they never seemed to falter when it came to drawing characters or backgrounds.

The major problem I had is that the originality level is near zero. If you didn’t know better, and were randomly shown a frame of even a major character, you could confuse it for dozens of similar shows that are drawn in a similar way (though to be fair that late Eighties/Early Nineties period, when the original was released, all were this way.) They also tossed in a few very bad CGI elements here and there just to remind you how awful and badly integrated that style is in the anime world. All of that can often be excused what we witness the alternative styles sometimes used for Tora, which turn this fearsome creature into the sillier version that he seems to have turned in to.

Sound - 5/10

The opening theme really resembles the first closing song, Dancing Baby Humans, for Welcome to the NHK. It’s a somewhat comical sounding Metal song, which does fit well with the series. The first closing song sounds as if it came out of an early nineties fighting video game with autotuned vocals added to it. The second closing is almost like a combination of the two, a poppy techno metal song, which also feels at home in the series. None of the songs were really spectacular in my eyes, but they match the show and were decent enough where I let them play a few times through my viewing.

Most of the V.O. team are the usual suspects from today’s anime world, which means they all do a great job. For the most part everyone matches their character, except for the most important, Ushio. David Matranga is a great V.O. artist and through no fault of is own he was cast as someone who is about ten to fifteen years younger than his sweet spot. It’s a bit annoying to watch the show and have this young boy sound like a mid twenties man, it just wasn’t a good choice at all.

Characters - 7/10

With the popularity of the the original series it’s not hard to see both Ushio and Tora as blue prints for many characters seen in the decades afterwards. 

Ushio Aotsuki is a young teen who, despite at times being a seemingly calm kid who chooses art over sports, can also be a little wild, especially when it comes to dealing with his father. This leads to him opening a door under his house that he’s not supposed to and unleashing the demon Tora back on the world. After doing so, and reclaiming the “Beast Spear” that was used to hold Tora captive he starts to take his role as a vanquisher of yokai seriously, but not seriously enough to not constantly get into squabbles with his new monster pet. Another thing Ushio tends to take seriously is the idea that he must protect all women, which comes from the fact he lost his mother at a young age.

Similar to Ushio, Tora is quite goofy in the way he acts, despite being one of the most fearsome creatures to haunt the planet. Ushio agrees to help hunt down all the monsters who were released because of him, but only as a ruse to lure Ushio into setting down the spear so that he can finally eat him. As time goes on Tora continues to tell himself that he’s just in this pairing so that he can chow down on the young Aotsuki, but it’s clear he’s starting to like the kid and actively does everything he can to keep him safe.

Other characters are entertaining, but just play their little bit parts in the show. Ushio’s father is a priest who’s for years battled Yokai, but just like his son he sometimes flies off the handle in uncharacteristically goofy rants. The other two characters who we see a lot of are Ushio’s two female classmates, Mayuko and Shigure, both have crushes on Ushio, though Mayuko is the closer of the two, despite her and Ushio having a relationship that seems more like that of quibbling siblings. Most of the others are either one off characters who Ushio must help or Yokai he meets along the way.

Overall - 6/10

There isn’t too much to the series that would make it an all time great, but it was a fun series to watch. Starting off as a “Monster of the Week” show, but slowly turning into a more in depth serial kept it interesting, and the light hearted banter between Ushio and Tora give us two leads who are extremely likable. For the first time in a long time I actually never hit a point where I dreaded having to watch the next episode, each one was entertaining, even when they were a bit pointless.

I do wish that for the length there was much more backstory, as a whole section is dedicated to Ushio traveling to find out that backstory, but then having to give up half way before he ever finds his mother. With a shortened season two I hope they can fill in those plot points before bringing the series to a close.