Episode 104

EPISODE 104

意外な提案・魔界の変動 (Igai-na Teian・Makai no Hendou)

An Unexpected Proposal—A Change in the Demon World

First Broadcast: November 5, 1994

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): second half of chapter 164 (WSJ #19, 1994, April 25), chapter 165 (WSJ #20, 1994, May 2)

Summary: Yusuke proposes to Yomi a simple tournament to decide who will rule the Demon World.  Kurama and co. threaten to mutiny if Yomi doesn’t go along with this idea, and even Mukuro (who has snuck into Gandara) accepts the proposal, leaving Yomi no choice.  Yomi uses his advanced technology to create a powerful son, Shura, to help him win the tournament.  Meanwhile, Raizen’s old friends come to pay their respects.  They want to enter the tournament too and show off their power.  In truth each one is on par with Yomi, and together they create a massive surge of energy felt throughout the Demon World.  Yomi and the embryonic Shura sense this, and Yomi realizes there have been powerful people out there living quietly and without ambition, something he never calculated on.  Moved, he decides to abandon his strategies and fight in the tournament as a single man.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

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• The episode starts with a re-do of part of last episode’s closing scene, with Yusuke yelling for Yomi to get things ready for him.  This time we get the rest of the scene, with Kurama and Yomi discussing whether Raizen has died and what Yusuke will do next (they went over basically the same thing in an anime-only scene last episode).  Yomi then orders Yoda to have some soldiers escort Yusuke in, and to measure his power as he comes in.  He also tells Kurama to wait in the next room with his men and be ready to kill Yusuke if necessary.

• After that is an anime-only scene with Kurama informing Jin and co. about what Yomi wants them to do.  They don’t much care for the idea of killing Yusuke of course, but they’re anxious to see him after so long.  

• Next up is another anime-only scene, as Yusuke and Hokushin are escorted in.  Yoda measures his power as 200,017 points (talk about specific).  In the manga Yomi just tells Yoda to gauge Yusuke’s power, but we don’t see the result.

• Following this is one more brief anime-only scene, with Mukuro’s mobile fortress arriving in Yomi’s territory and stopping.  Hiei jumps out to go enter Gandara, and Mukuro insists on coming too; she wants to see Yusuke with her own eyes.  They easily infiltrate the city, and Mukuro says Yomi is intentionally letting them sneak in.  After that it gets back to manga material as Yusuke meets with Yomi.  In the anime version though, Yoda comes in and informs Yomi that Mukuro is in the city, but Yomi says he already knows.  After that things go like in the manga.

• While Kurama and co. write out their thoughts on sheets of paper so that Yomi won’t hear them talk, the anime has their voices reading out whatever they write, like we can hear their thoughts or something.  When Kurama asks the group who they’ll side with if Yusuke fights Yomi, in the manga Shishi-Wakamaru (the lone dissenter) writes “no comment”, while in the anime he writes “I’m thinking about it”.

• When Yusuke presents Yomi with the gem stones engraved with the names of all the important warriors in the three kingdoms, in the manga Yomi reads off the names engraved on several stones in his hand.  In the anime he’s able to read the names written on stones he’s not even touching.  I know that Yomi’s supposed to have all his other senses super-duper heightened to make up for being blind, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.

• In response to the above, Yusuke says he’s impressed Yomi can read what’s on the stones.  In the manga he asks if Yomi knows Mahjong, and makes some Mahjong analogy that, frankly, I can’t be bothered to research the meaning of.  The anime staff apparently also thought this was too obscure, and left it out.

• As Yusuke proposes a tournament to decide who runs the Demon World, in the manga a margin note explains that Mukuro has bugged the room and is secretly listening in on what they say.  Then when Mukuro later tells Hiei that she’s going to go along with the tournament idea, they’re on top of the mobile fortress.  In the anime though there was that earlier scene showing the two leave the mobile base and sneak into the city, so the two are actually shown simply overhearing Yusuke and Yomi’s conversation from a short distance.

• Going off of that, in the anime Yomi overhears Mukuro say that she’s supporting the tournament idea, which makes him quite angry.  He tells Yusuke and co. that he has no choice, and the narrator explains that it took half a day for word to spread throughout the Demon World that Raizen had died, Mukuro and Yomi had dissolved their countries, and a tournament would be held to unify the Demon World.  The reason why Yomi felt he had no choice but to accept the proposal isn’t explicitly stated.  In the manga though, the narrator explains that though Yomi could have killed Yusuku, Kurama, and the other six, doing so would have dropped his power by a third, leaving him too weak to fend off Mukuro (in this version Yomi learns only after Yusuke’s proposal that Mukuro is on her way there).  This is basically the pay-off to the whole “balance of powers” idea the previous few chapters set up: Yusuke and co. aren’t strong enough to defeat Yomi on their own or even by teaming up, but together they can weaken Yomi just enough for him to lose to Mukuro, so he’s stuck going along with what they say.

• After that the manga has a little scene where Yomi regrets not having removed Mukuro’s spy device earlier (again, in the anime there’s no spy device so Mukuro just goes to spy herself) and thinks about how strange Yusuke is.  After that is when the narrator explains about the news of Raizen’s death and the tournament spreading throughout the Demon World.

• This is followed by another manga-only scene; this is the first time there’s really been substantial manga-only material in quite a while, as opposed to just lines getting dropped here and there.  We see the guys in charge of registering participants for the Unification Tournament, both of whom look like ordinary humans.  They’re both quite bored since nobody is signing up.  It’s only natural though, one of them says, because the tournament is just going to come down to Yomi versus Mukuro, and anybody else would have to be suicidal to enter.  A margin note explains that these two guys make 700 marka an hour, “marka” apparently being the currency in the Demon World, or at least Yomi’s domain (compare this was “maka”, the demon currency in the Shin Megami Tensei series).  The narrator explains that Yomi set up Gandara as the site of the tournament.  So since anyone wishing to enter would have to go sign up there, this would serve as a way of Yomi keeping the population in fear of him, despite him supposedly dissolving his kingdom.  In other words, signing up for the tournament means you have to walk into Yomi’s domain and essentially announce you desire to defeat Yomi, which few people had the courage to do.  The narrator also explains that as a condition for going along with Yusuke’s tournament idea and dissolving his country, Yomi asked that the date of the tournament be set for 100 days hence (this is, we soon learn, in order to give him enough time to create Shura and train him).  The narrator goes on to lay out the current situation.  There’s 93 days left before the tournament, with only 107 entrants so far: Yomi and 15 of his underlings, Mukuro and 78 of her underlings (her 77 elite warriors, plus Hiei), then Kurama, Chu, Rinku, Suzuki, Shishi-Wakamaru, Toya, Jin, and finally Yusuke, Hokushin, Toh-Oh, Seizan, and Nankai.  After that is the scene introducing Shura.  The anime just has the narrator announcing the spread of the news of Raizen’s death/the tournament, then the eye catch, then the Shura scene.

• In the manga Yomi just says that if he raises Shura’s power to be over 500,000 points, he (Yomi) will definitely win the tournament.  In the anime he elaborates on this a bit more, saying that he and Shura together will definitely be able to defeat Mukuro.  Since the tournament is based around one-on-one fights, I’d assume the idea is that he’ll pulls strings to have Shura fight Mukuro first and tire her out enough so that she’d lose her match with Yomi.  In either version it’s a bit vague though.

• During Yusuke’s brief flashback to how Mukuro gave him a flower to set at Raizen’s grave, in the anime Hiei is there with Mukuro.

• When Raizen’s old friends power up, the anime shows Kurama, Jin, et al reacting along with Mukuro, Hiei, Yomi, etc.  Also, in the manga Yoda is the one who notices Shura reacting to the powerful energy Raizen’s friends are emitting, while in the anime a random soldier comes in and tells Yomi this (in the manga they’re still in the same room as Shura, while in the anime they’ve apparently gone elsewhere).