3ET: Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou

Can you spot the bitch in this image?

Studio: Gonzo

Director: Takahashi Yukio (Debut)

Main Cast: Sakurai Takahiro as Harumi Kazuhito, Inoue Marina as Natsuno Kirihime

Writer: Nemoto Toshizou (Inu x Boku SS)

Music: Matsuda Akito (Baka to Test to Shokanjuu)




The anime studio Gonzo has fallen on hard times. The same studio once responsible for Full Metal Panic and Afro Samurai fell on such hard times it was nearly closed in 2009. But, thanks to a merger and some marketing of its more lucrative to streaming services such as Netflix, it has reemerged and is showing viability again. But, does that mean it is putting out quality works to match its predescessors? Well, if I were to base it on Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou (InuHasa), the answer is a definitive no.

The show begins by telling the audience that "This is a show about books." That statement is a lie; because InuHasa is a show about crazy people and stupid bullshit. After a zany scene of the two pictured characters where YELLING EQUALS COMEDY, we meet our protagonist, Kazuhito, who loves books. He is especially obsessed with an author named Akiyama Shinbou, who transcends genres as one of the great young novelists of Japan. While witnessing a robbery, he tries to defend a girl who ignores the robber's instructions and ends up getting shot in the head. Show over, let's get out of here! Oh wait, his love of books is so strong he takes over the body of a miniature dachshund. Yes, that happens. He then gets violently adopted by the same girl he defended. Of course, because this show has to follow the most predictable plot imaginable, the girl, Kirihime, is actually his beloved Akiyama Shinbou. And to top off the stupid sundae, she can hear his thoughts. As a dog.

Animal abuse! It's hilarious!

After that delightful exposition, we spend the next two and half episodes dealing with Kirihime's psychosis. Every time Kazuhito says something snarky or slightly derogatory, she either threatens to cut, gut, cook, or otherwise murder him in some grisly fashion. And occasionally slices his fur off using her scissors that she wears in a holster on her thigh. Now, maybe I've seen one too many of those Sarah McLachlan commercials with crying dogs, but animal abuse isn't exactly my idea of great physical comedy. Interspersed with these attempts at comedy is a plot where the two of them find the man who murdered Kazuhito as a human (whose love of books somehow redeems him in Kazuhito's eyes) and a cast that is somehow both bland and crazy. What I mean by that is that they're all batshit insane, but that's all there is to their characters. Like Kirihime's masochistic editor, Hiiragi Suzuna (Itou Shizuka). Or the author-idol Akizuki Maxi (Serizawa Yuu). Or Kazuhito's younger sister who probably wanted to fuck him, Madoka (Asumi Kana). And really, that last part could be applied to all of the females in this show. Because all of the signs point to this show ending up being a harem show where girls want to fuck a dog. With scissors. Kirihime even says as much at the end of episode two.

Also, for a comedy, there aren't a lot of jokes in this show. And no, references are not jokes. References are not comedy. A show cannot just reference a bunch of stuff with a thinly veiled plot to hold it all together and call itself a comedy. The jokes we do get are jokes about breast size, the aforementioned animal abuse, and one funny moment late in episode three where Kazuhito cannot resist playing with a piece of hair lopped off of the pet shop owner's afro, because he's a dog and that's what they are wont to do. More of this could have made the show possible, exploring the conflict between the human soul of Kazuhito being in the instinct-driven body of a dog. But, that would require effort, and there wasn't much of that put into this show.

If you can phase through bars, why are you still in that cage?

I'd like to stop there, but as you can see above, the animation is almost as bad as the plot. Suddenly transparent bars, awful walking animation, even the OP, which should be the prettiest, most expensive animation in the show, looks like garbage directed by someone with ADD. Not to mention that the direction in the show itself is piss-poor. I actually felt nauseous after a full camera spin midway through episode one. I don't know how they did that, but they did. This was Takahashi Yukio's first directorial effort, and if this is an indicator of his talent, I hope it's the last. Especially since he was an animation director before InuHasa and should know better than to make animation mistakes like this. Or maybe Gonzo's profitability comes not from putting out good anime, but cheap anime marketed to the lowest common denominator of anime fandom. Or both. Either way, I'm failing the show because I obviously want no more to do with a show about dogfucking with scissors.