Episode 101

EPISODE 101

魔界盗賊・千年目の再会 (Makai Touzoku・Sen-nenme no Saikai)

Demon World Thieves—A Thousand-Year Reunion

First Broadcast: October 15, 1994

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 161 (WSJ #16, 1994, April 4)

Summary: : Kurama goes to the Demon World himself to Yomi’s city Gandara, where he takes part in Yomi’s war council.  Yomi was once Kurama’s subordinate, but after being blinded by an assassin he heightened his remaining senses to the extreme and grew in power until his influence in the Demon World rivaled Raizen and Mukuro.  Yomi has captured the assassin who blinded him so long ago, and forces Kurama to see him.  In reality it was Kurama who hired the assassin to kill Yomi, after getting fed up by Yomi’s reckless actions.  Yomi threatens to kill Kurama’s mother and new step-father if he doesn’t help him with his plans to unify the Demon World.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• When Kurama talks on the phone with his mother, in the manga he’s already inside one of the buildings in Yomi’s city, while in the anime he’s still in the forest on the city’s outskirts.  After he finishes talking with his mother, there’s a filler scene where he’s attacked by three ninja guys as he approaches the city.  He defeats them easily, and it turns out this was just Yomi’s way of testing his skills.  Kurama and Yomi talk for a bit.  Yomi claims to be surprised at how Kurama has changed (it’s later revealed this is just an act and he already knew about Kurama merging with a human and whatnot), then goes into his big spiel about wanting to defeat Mukuro and Raizen to unite the Demon World and needing Kurama’s help.  Yoda walks up and says it’s time for their big meeting, and Yomi invites Kurama to come.  In the manga it goes straight from Kurama talking with his mother to him at Yomi’s big meeting.   

• In the anime Kurama says that his mother raised him all by herself.  This isn’t in the manga, and back when Kurama first explained his origin to Yusuke he says his father died “a little while ago”, which the anime changed to “a long time ago”.

• Kurama says he went to the Demon World one month after Yusuke in the manga, while in the anime he says he went two months after Yusuke and Hiei.

• Oh boy, here we go.  This part of the series brings us to YYH’s brief foray into Dragon Ball-style power levels.  In the context of the series, these seem to mainly be a way of representing Yomi’s super-analytical mindset: he’s literally got everyone’s number.  This is especially noticeable in chapter 161, which has several fairly detailed graphs displaying the balance of power between the three nations and their chief warriors.  The anime takes a somewhat inconsistent approach to adapting all this, in that it often leaves out the exact numbers given in the manga, but then adds in exact numbers at places that the manga didn’t have any.

• First up is the chart of the three countries’ total military strength.  Yomi’s country is arbitrarily set as 100, with Yomi himself making up 55 of those points (precisely what this means isn’t explained, but the general point is that most of the military strength of Yomi’s nation comes from Yomi himself).  In comparison, Mukuro’s nation has a strength of 125, 55 points of which come from Mukuro.  Raizen’s country then has a measly strength of 56, with Raizen making up 49 of those points.  So as Yoda says, each country is essentially a “one-man-team” with most of the power coming from the king, though this is especially true of Raizen’s country.  One year from now, Yoda’s analysis predicts that Yomi’s country will increase to 102 (Yomi himself moving up to 56), Mukuro’s country to 128 (Mukuro likewise increasing to 56), while Raizen’s country will shrink to merely 3 (Raizen going down to 0, being dead and all).  The anime leaves all of these numbers out, and just shows graphs labeled “Mukuro”, “Raizen”, and “Yomi”.  Yoda still states that the three countries are each one-man-teams, but you can’t really tell what he’s basing this on.  The anime also throws in what appears to be a map indicating the territory controlled by the three kings, with Raizen’s section shrinking accordingly in the predicting data for one year hence (from this it seems that Raizen’s country is in the center of the Demon World).

• When all these graphs and charts are being shown, the manga has an exposition box saying that Yomi is equipped with a special device which sends information directly to his brain, allowing him to grasp all this visual information despite being blind.  The anime leaves this detail out.

• After that we get the individual data for the three kings and their No.2 warriors.  These are divided into five categories, which have a two letter initial as well as a fuller explanation of what they are.  First is TP, “spectral power” (since this stat comes from adding together the other four, presumably “TP” stands for “Total Power”).  Then there’s HP (stamina/health), OP (offense), DP (defense), and SP (special abilities).  The information given in the manga is as follows:

Kings

Yomi:

TP: 1,550,000

HP: 422,500

OP: 382,500

DP: 325,000

SP: 410,000

Mukuro

TP: 1,575,000

HP: 351,000

OP: 231,000

DP: 423,000

SP: 570,000

Raizen

TP: 1,322,000

HP: 460,000

OP: 424,000

DP: 352,000

SP: 86,000

No.2s

Shachi

TP: 37,800

HP: 10,900

OP: 10,500

DP: 11,000

SP: 5,400

Kirin

TP: 89,500

HP: 21,200

OP: 22,000

DP: 16,400

SP: 29,900

Hokushin

TP: 36,000

HP: 13,000

OP: 5,900

DP: 12,500

SP: 4,600

• So in short, the kings are absurdly, ludicrously stronger than even the second strongest warriors in their kingdoms.  This leads into Kurama’s remark that the No.2s aren’t even strong enough to serve as cannon fodder to lower the stamina of the opposing kings.  The anime again doesn’t have any specific numbers, but does have bars representing the different stats of the characters, the proportions of which seem in keeping with the numbers given in the manga (save for TP, which as noted is the other four stats added together, but in the anime is just another bar only slightly longer than the others).  The anime also throws in a bar graph at the end comparing each king to their second-in-command, but the bars here aren’t in keeping with the manga information.  The manga has Raizen, for instance, as about 36 times stronger than Hokushin, but the anime bar graph seems to put him as only about 4-5 times stronger.

• Kurama’s response to all this data is somewhat different in the anime.  In the manga he says that, with the kings being equal, normally you’d want lots of cannon fodder to lower the other king’s power, but the No.2 warriors aren’t strong enough for this.  In the anime he instead more vaguely says that all the military strength besides that of the kings themselves is meaningless, then says that they need to wait for new No.2 warriors whose power rivals the kings.

• After the meeting, in the manga Yomi tells Kurama he didn’t recognize him at first when they met, due to his new human form.  The anime had that scene earlier showing Kurama and Yomi’s actual reunion where Yomi expressed those same thoughts, so it leaves those lines out here and instead has Yomi talk about Kurama’s prediction of the three kingdoms’ No.2 warriors changing within the year.  Yomi assumes Kurama means that he himself will become No.2 in this kingdom, while Hiei will take the post in Mukuro’s, and Yusuke in Raizen’s.  To illustrate this, clips are included showing Yusuke fighting Hokushin and the other monks, and Hiei healing in Mukuro’s machine.

• The demon who blinded Yomi is in much worse shape in the manga, with his lower and upper bodies almost completely severed, and huge spikes piercing through his body at numerous places.  If he were a human he’d obviously be dead already.  In the anime his torso is wounded but basically intact, while the spikes are much smaller and less noticeable (they’re more like long pins, really).

• OK, so a thousand years ago Kurama hired this demon assassin to kill Yomi, who was a totally crappy second in command, but the assassin failed and only managed to blind Yomi.  In the manga there are hints of this beforehand, but it’s a pretty big surprise when the demon reveals it was Kurama who hired him.  The anime, on the other hand, makes this blindingly obvious right from the start.  Kurama is incredibly nervous and Yomi keeps needling him by asking what’s wrong.  He even starts to laugh at one point, saying he’s impressed that Kurama’s heartbeat has returned to normal despite seeing the assassin in this state.  The anime also has the assassin flat-out state that Kurama was the name of the man who hired him, while in the manga he just says it was a “silver-haired yoko”, and we’re supposed to put two and two together ourselves.

• The anime expands on Yomi’s flashback to his time serving as Kurama’s second-in-command, showing Kurama’s gang attacking a fortress.  Yomi’s stupidity gets many of Kurama’s men killed, and Kurama has to bail him out.  In the manga, Yomi gets blinded by the assassin while acting on his own as the gang attacks a village.  In the anime, he hears a false report of a great treasure inside a certain castle, and leads several of the gang there.  The assassin attacks the group outside the castle and kills everyone save for Yomi.  The assassin in his prime looks slightly different than in the manga, mostly due to having much bushier, longer hair.

• After recounting how he was blinded and afterwards never met up with Kurama again, in the manga Yomi says that he heard reports that Kurama had gone to the Human World, apparently giving up on establishing himself in the Demon World, which was already divided up between Raizen and Mukuro.  However, the Human World is the Spirit World’s territory, and even Kurama had trouble with their dirty tricks (ie, he got beat up by the Spirit World Special Defense Squad and had to reincarnate as a human).  The anime leaves this out.

• When Yomi forces the assassin to say once more who hired him, in the manga once the assassin spills the beans Yomi instantly smashes the guy’s head in with his boot (we can see one of the poor guy’s eyeballs go flying).  Yomi has a chillingly expressionless face as he does so.  In the anime, once the assassin says again that Kurama hired him, Yomi growls and shouts in anger, then smashes the guy’s head in (we only see the shadow of this on the wall, instead of directly like in the manga).  He’s still struggling to re-compose himself even while telling Kurama he doesn’t blame him for what he did. 

• As Yomi threatens to kill Kurama’s mother, the anime includes another flashback recounting how Kurama was reincarnated as human.

• The episode ends with Yomi giving a fairly long speech on how Kurama is already planning ahead to outsmart him.