Rumiko Takahashi, the writer/artist behind the enduring, mega-popular manga/anime series Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, and Urusei Yatsura, scored another big hit in Japan with her latest project, InuYasha. Viz Communications is distributing the ongoing series here: the company's up to 10 printed graphic-novel compilations, in addition to the monthly comic. But this is the first time the animated adaptation will air in the United States.

It's easy to see why Cartoon Network chose to put this series in its Saturday-night "Adult Swim" programming block—the show's tone is not as dark as some of Takahashi's more brutal occult series, like the Mermaid Forest stories, and it retains some of the flavor of her romantic comedies, where a lot of comic yelling and rivalry takes place, and the ultimate insult is for a male character to tell a female character that she's "not cute." But InuYasha is still a graphic horror series—blood and severed limbs fly, people and animals die grotesquely, and InuYasha himself, in spite of his teddy-bear looks and redeeming qualities, is a brutal, smug killer.

The InuYasha TV adaptation looks great—the colors are vibrant and vivid, the animation is excellent (so much so that the occasional shortcuts are very noticeable), and the design fills out and solidifies Takahashi's somewhat scrunched-looking, sketchy characters without losing their individuality. The voices in the early episodes seem a bit inconsistent, and the translation's an odd mixture of formal dialogue, colloquialisms, modern slang and at least one awful pun. But most importantly, the series' adventure kicks in strongly in the first episode, setting up a solid framework for all the adventure to come. In her decades on top of the manga field, Takahashi has become a consummate storyteller, whether she's dabbling in comedy or horror—or, in this case, both, in a comfortable balance and with equal success.