An Anime Classic, and must watch, Ushio and Tora is one of those good to see old-school animes. After watching a continuum of new Girl Meets Boy, and Gothic over tone anime I decided to do some looking up for something different. Luckly I stumbled on a game that recently came out for the PSP called Shonen Sunday Vs Shonen Magazine which featured many famous Anime and Manga Icons (I.E. Inuyasha, Negi, Ikki, etc), Ushio was one of the selectable characters. I was really interested in the character to begin with and decided to look up everything about it. The series started out as a 33vol. manga that was featured in Shonen Jump Sunday, which eventually won the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1992. The manga quickly became a 10 episode seires which was a shortened version of the Manga but depicting many of Ushio's and Tora's main battles.

The story is pretty solid and resembles many themes to Animes based on Japanese mythology. The main character Ushio was forced to release a demon that was imprisoned underneath his family shrine, which was imprisoned by the Beast Spear for 500 year, in order to protect his friends from demons that were running amok in his hometown. After that the Demon, which he calls Tora (due to his tiger like appearence), begins to haunt him and says that he'll eat him when he drops his guard. At that point Ushio keeps the Beast Spear with him at all times to protect others from Demons.

Character wise, they are pretty generic. There is the typical Tomboyish girl childhood friend and timid girl classmate that hang around Ushio most of the time. Tora is big talker, thinking highly of himself all the time until the spear is pointed at him. Ushio develops a strong bond with Tora which is typical, and that's basically it. The entourage of villains in this series isn't strong, mostly random mythical monsters out for revenge or reeking havoc, but that's okay.

If you're looking for high class animation with CG and all that stuff, you ain't finding it here. This is early 90's work so you get what you see. A few cut and paste scenes and not much detail on the character expressions. But that is what is great about old school anime, if it weren't these kinds of animes you really wouldn't have high budget stuff like Soul Eater, Code Geass, and Inuyasha.

In the long run, it is worth watching and keeps you asking for more. The action series will get you addicted and might want you to start reading the manga, I know I will. Take my word for it, if you are such a Shonen fan or you just like animes with Mythological overtones this is your stuff.

Yours Truly,
Otakufreak

PS; Sunday Vs Magazine is a bad fighting game but so addictive!!! Check it out anyways.