Inuyashiki

Inuyashiki (いぬやしき) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hiroya Oku. It was serialized in Kodansha's manga magazine Evening from January 2014 to July 2017, with its chapters collected in 10 volumes. The story follows two people who, via a mysterious event, are endowed with superhuman abilities, but the way they choose to use these abilities is completely different.

An 11-episode anime television series adaptation produced by MAPPA aired on Fuji TV's late night programming block Noitamina from October to December 2017. A live-action film adaptation premiered in April 2018.

Plot

Inuyashiki Ichiro is an older, friendless man with an uncaring family. One fateful evening in a nearly empty public park, he is struck by an explosion of extraterrestrial origin, and his body is replaced by an incredibly powerful, but still outwardly human, mechanical body. He quickly realizes the extent of his body's powers, and after saving a homeless man being beaten by a pack of teenagers, he decides to dedicate himself to doing good, using his powers to heal those with incurable diseases and fight crime.

However, a teenager who was with him at the time of the explosion, Shishigami Hiro, had the same fate as Ichiro, but unlike Inuyashiki, Shishigami becomes a psychopath who goes about using his newfound abilities to murder various people, from classmates that annoy him to innocent families, including young children, just for amusement. His acts of merciless cruelty bring him the attention of the police, who can do nothing to stop him. Hiro becomes the most wanted criminal in the country. The series follows these two different people who once shared the same bizarre experience, as their paths are destined to clash.

Characters

• Ichirō Inuyashiki (犬屋敷 壱郎)
• The head of the Inuyashiki family who looks older than his age, being 58 years old. He has no friends and is disrespected by his family, with the only thing he trusts being his dog, Hanako. He was on the verge of death, but after being struck by extraterrestrial beings, he was transformed into a cyborg. Not wanting to lose his humanity, he fights to save those in trouble.
• Hiro Shishigami (獅子神 皓)
• A teenager who was with Inuyashiki when the extraterrestrial beings struck them dead. He also became a cyborg, but he takes pleasure in killing people, which, according to him, keeps him human. The only people he cares about are his mother, his friend Naoyuki, and, later, Shion and her grandmother. His standard method of killing someone is making a finger gun and saying "Bang!", which has the same effect as shooting someone with an actual gun. This will work on anyone who witnesses it, even if played on a television screen. He can also imitate a machine gun by shouting "da-da-da" while pretending to hold one, which will have the same effect.
• Naoyuki Andō (安堂 直行)
• Hiro's childhood friend who initially shut himself in at home after being bullied at school. He is the first person to learn about Inuyashiki and Hiro's cyborg bodies. Wanting to stop his friend from killing, he teams up with Inuyashiki. He is a fan of Gantz, another manga of Hiroya Oku.
• Mari Inuyashiki (犬屋敷 麻理)
• Inuyashiki's teenage daughter and a classmate of both Hiro and Andō. She secretly wants to become a manga artist.
• Shion Watanabe (渡辺 しおん)
• A classmate of Hiro who has a crush on him. She sheltered Hiro at her home after he first escaped from the police, and became another woman that Hiro loved.

Production

During Hiroya Oku's work on Gantz for Shueisha's Weekly Young Jump, editor Shiota offered him a position at Kodansha's bimonthly magazine Evening. The publication's smaller scale and flexibility would allow Oku to develop his ideas with complete creative freedom.[6][7] He accepted and began developing what would become Inuyashiki. Before completing Gantz, Oku drew inspiration from the film Astro Boy for the story of a deceased man revived as a super robot, which evolved into the narrative of Inuyashiki and Hiro—two characters seeking, in their own ways, to regain their humanity.[8] The series proposal was approved, and Oku maintained near-total creative independence, with minimal editorial oversight from Shiota. For the title, Oku sought an ambiguous word that would intrigue readers. He selected "Inuyashiki" ('dog mansion'), a surname that does not exist in Japan, in contrast to the similar "Nekoyashiki" ('cat mansion'), which does appear in Japanese records.[6]

Media

Reception

External links