Episode 105

EPISODE 105

魔界大戦・予選開始!  (Makai Taisen・Yosen Kaishi!)

Great Battle in the Demon World—The Preliminaries Commence!

First Broadcast: November 12, 1994

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 166 (WSJ #21-22, 1994, May 9), certain parts of chapter 167 (WSJ #23, 1994, May 23) and chapter 168 (WSJ #24, 1994, May 30)

Summary: The Demon World Unification Tournament begins.  Everyone who’s anyone enters, including all of Raizen’s old friends.  Yomi must fight Shura in the preliminaries, while Chu has the misfortunate of going up against Raizen’s friend Natsume.  Natsume easily beats Chu, but he falls in love with her.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

 

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• Chapter 166 opens with a scene of the crowd gathering for the tournament, followed by a two-page spread of Yusuke, Mukuro, and Yomi’s faces, with exposition boxes explaining the current status of the tournament.  Ultimately a total of 6,272 demons signed up for the tournament.  The previous chapter explained how 93 days before the tournament only 107 people had signed up, everyone else being too afraid, since Yomi was keeping a strict watch on everyone who registered under the pretense of organizing things.  The narrator explains now though that Yomi’s underlings have gradually dispersed, adding credence to the idea that Yomi had in fact dissolved his nation like he claimed.  This caused the number of people who felt they might have a chance of winning the tournament to skyrocket.  As a result, there were too many participants for Yusuke to use the precious Rurimaru stones to determine the tournament match-ups, and they just used regular cards as lottery pieces instead.  Despite the fact that almost everyone figured it would all come down to Yomi versus Mukuro, a strange sense of excitement still swept over the Demon World.  The anime version leaves most of this information out, only mentioning the 6,272 tournament participants and the Demon World getting strangely excited over the tournament as part of the episode-opening narration (the thing about the gemstones is mentioned by Koto later in the episode).  This opening narration is said over a shot of the big crowd gathering to watch the tournament, but we don’t hear them say anything.  In the manga a tournament official says there is still 20 hours to go before the tournament actually begins, and the crowd complains that they want to watch things right from the very beginning, when they decide the match-ups.

• In the manga, the random demons entering the tournament (not to be confused with the random demons coming to watch the tournament) note that Yusuke is not very strong compared to Yomi or Mukuro, and wonder why those two kings went along with his idea to hold this tournament.  In the anime when the demons wonder this, they instead say that Yusuke doesn’t seem that strong, without the qualifier that he only seems that way in comparison to Yomi/Mukuro.  A minor point, I know, but it does make these random demons look oblivious, since Yusuke is shown to be extremely strong by normal standards.  In the manga though, these random demons are actually basically right, since Yusuke does ultimately prove no match for Yomi.

• The scene where Yusuke meets up with Chu and the others is expanded on in the anime, with Rinku saying how much they all trained to defeat Yusuke, and Chu saying that he’ll definitely win this time.  Yusuke points out that winning is partially a matter of chance.

• After that is a purely anime-only scene showing Koenma and Botan arriving at the tournament, wearing silly disguises so that the demons don’t recognize they’re from the Spirit World.  In the manga they aren’t present for the tournament at all.  The two look for Yusuke, and spot him just as Mukuro and Yomi approach him, getting things back to manga material.

• In the manga, before Mukuro reveals her face, she and Yusuke discuss how the strong energy she felt last chapter was from Raizen’s old friends (it seems she’s just now learning this from Yusuke), and Yusuke says that the group is probably here at the tournament.  The anime leaves this out.

• When Mukuro takes off her head bandages/scarf thingy, in the manga this reveals the scarred right half of her face.  In the anime though, underneath the bandages she still has her right half covered up by a piece of cloth affixed to a lens over her right eye.  Japanese Wikipedia says that according to the anime guidebook YYH Forever, this was because the anime staff considered Mukuro’s scarred face too difficult to animate.  I think she looks kind of silly in the anime, but I guess there was no helping it.  One nice touch though is that in the anime when Mukuro approaches Yusuke with her full bandage/head scarf still on, her trademark bug-eye isn’t visible, because in this version it’s covered by the glass lens that’s revealed when she takes the bandages off.

• Anyway, in the anime when Mukuro reveals (part of) her face, some random crowd demons are shocked to see that she is a woman.

• When Yusuke learns Shura’s name, in the manga he says it’s a good name and that he hopes the kid lives up to it.  “Shura”, for the record, is the Japanese form of “asura”, demons of Hinduism.

• After Shura says that Yusuke is only about as strong as him, in the manga Yomi warns Shura not to underestimate Yusuke: the guy improves with surprising speed, and this tournament will be no exception.  Shura then indignantly asks if this means Yusuke has greater talent for battle then him, but Yomi assures him this isn’t so, and that he’s improving at an even faster speed than Yusuke.  This part about Yusuke/Shura’s rapid development is left out in the anime.

• Similar to with Mukuro, in the manga Yomi knows that the massive power emitted in the previous chapter was from Raizen’s old friends, while in the anime he doesn’t mention this.

• As Yomi walks away from Yusuke, in the manga he says that Shura is very formidable and may even surpass him (Yomi) depending on how the tournament match-ups go.  The anime leaves this out. 

• After Yomi and Yusuke’s conversation, the anime checks back in with Koenma and Botan, who wonder what the two were talking about (they can’t hear from where they’re standing).  Koenma wonders what Yusuke was thinking when he came up with this tournament, and Botan says that, knowing Yusuke, he probably wasn’t thinking anything at all.  While Koenma and Botan talk, with see Yusuke meet up with Kurama and Hiei.  Yusuke notes how (if they happen to face each in the tournament) it will be the first time in a long time since he fought Hiei, while he and Kurama have never fought at all before.  Hiei says he hopes not to fight Yusuke in the preliminaries; it would be too pathetic for a tournament head-honcho like Yusuke to not even make it past the preliminaries.  This comment fails to please Yusuke.  

• After that things get back to manga material for a little bit as the big-nosed tournament official starts the lottery for the preliminaries.  But before the lottery actually gets underway, in the anime Koto (the bunny?/cat? girl announcer from the Dark Tournament) makes a dramatic re-entrance to serve as the commentator for this tournament as well.  She sees that her fellow commentator is Jorge (wearing a silly disguise like Koenma and Botan); Jorge is excited to be here, but quickly realizes in horror that Koenma is glaring at him furiously.  Koto meanwhile ignores all this and introduces the other additional commentator, Yoda.  Koenma chews Jorge out for drawing attention to himself, since if the demons here realize they’re from the Spirit World then they’ll be in big trouble.  In the manga, only Yoda is present as a tournament commentator, the other commentators all being generic, nondescript characters.  Jorge of course isn’t in the manga at all, while Koto only reappears until after the tournament is over, when she, Juri, and Ruka become pop stars.  Much of what Koto says is taken from what the nameless commentators say in the manga.

• As commentator, Koto explains that due to the large number of participants the tournament lottery will be held using ordinary cards, instead of the gemstones Yusuke gave Yomi.  In the manga this is mentioned by the narrator at the start of the chapter.

• While the lottery begins, the manga explains that when Yomi and Mukuro drew their cards, the TV ratings for “Demon World Fushi TV” surpassed 95% (the average ratings for its tournament coverage being 88.2%).  It then lists the ratings for competing programs, the top contender being the 7 O’clock News on Channel MHK, with ratings of 6.5%.  These shows and channels all seem to be parodies of real Japanese ones, with “Fushi TV” an obvious joke on Fuji TV (fushi meaning immortal or, as seems more fitting in this context, undead).

• Chapter 166 ends with comments on some of the more notable participants, and what preliminary block they are in.  The anime moves these comments to during the actual drawing of the lottery cards, instead of afterwards, and they only include the comments for Yomi, Mukuro, and Yusuke.  These comments basically just say stuff we already know and so aren’t a big loss, save for the puzzling statement that Kirin (Mukuro’s former right-hand man before Hiei) has announced his intention to defeat her in the tournament.

• The other thing notable about these comments is that they reveal the names for all of Raizen’s old friends, several of whom aren’t identified by name anywhere else.  The big guy with a mask on is Tetsuzan, the beast guy with long hair and big fangs is Denho, and the black-haired guy with big ears is Saizou (whose name is mentioned later as being that tournament runner-up, but it’s only here that we learn who the name actually goes with).  The anime instead has these guys identified by name when they’re shown on the huge TVs as they each pass the preliminaries. 

• Chapter 167 begins with a detailed explanation of the setup for the preliminaries.  44 contestants all fight at once atop the gigantic Okunen-ju (100 million year-old trees) until only one remains.  Each contestant wears a ring around their neck which can only be removed by saying a 5-digit code number.  To advance past the preliminaries, a contestant must remove the rings of all the other contestants in their block, either by forcing them to reveal their code number, or simply by killing them and taking the ring that way.  Huge monitors are divided up into screens tracking each contestant, and when the contestant is eliminated their screen goes blank.  The narrator says that seeing contestants eliminated one-by-one like this thrills the crowd, but their excitement dies out when they see Yomi and Shura’s fight.  At this point the scene switches to the aforementioned fight.  In the anime version, the narrator just mentions the thing about the contestants fighting on top of the big trees until only one remains, and the whole complicated business with the neck rings is eliminated.  The ring system seem rather pointless in the manga, but perhaps that’s the point: the tournament is run by Yomi, who’s so obsessed with organization that he comes up with such a ridiculously complicated and high-tech system for what should be a simple process.

• Earlier it was said that each block has 49 contestants (there are a total of 6,272 contestants, divided up into 128 blocks, leaving 49 per block).  But as you may have noticed above if you are as insane as I am, the narrator at the start of chapter 167 says each block has 44 contestants.  The anime fixes this mistake, changing 44 to 49.

• More significantly, while the manga goes from this explanation to Shura and Yomi’s fight, the anime moves this event to next episode.  In its place it shows Chu and co. fighting in the preliminaries: Chu runs around eliminating the others in his block, mostly via headbutts.  Toya freezes the entire arena and all the other contestants.  Rinku’s yo-yos knock out his competition.  Jin fights some sort of ghost with his Shura Rengeki Senpu-Ken attack, while Suzuki wins with his Rainbow Cyclone Extra Flash technique.  Various other established characters pass the preliminaries (we see people watching this all on TV, including Juri, who seems to be working as a waitress somewhere).  The block numbers mentioned for all these people is in keeping with what’s said at the end of chapter 166.

• At this point in the anime Koto announces that everyone in Mukuro’s block has forfeited, leaving her to automatically pass the preliminaries.  In the manga this isn’t announced until after Yomi and Shura’s battle, and before Yusuke passes the preliminaries.

• While everyone else seems to be easily advancing, Chu continues to take his time knocking his opponents out.  Meanwhile Shishi-Wakamaru has a tough fight against a giant beetle-like creature, whose body is so hard that even his “Shin Makokumeizan-Ken” sword can’t scratch it.  The monster eats him using a really cool giant mouth on his back, but Shishi-Wakamaru destroys the creature from the inside.  

• Following this we get back to manga material for a bit, as the narrator explains that Raizen’s friends advanced through the preliminaries while still concealing their full power, though people like Yomi or Mukuro recognized their strength.  In the manga this comes after Shura and Yomi’s fight.  In the anime this is where we see the names for each group member.

• After that we get back to Chu, who has eliminated all but one opponent in the preliminaries.  Unfortunately the remaining one is Natsume, one of Raizen’s friends, who beats him easily.  In the manga Chu actually passes the preliminaries; he and Natsume instead fight in Round 1 of the main tournament.  The anime makes Yomi and Shura’s fight the focus of an entire episode, so they moved that to next episode and in turn switched Chu/Natsume’s fight here to flesh out this episode.

• Chu/Natsume’s fight is followed by the scene where Rinku curses Chu for falling in love with his opponent, only to be instantly smitten by his own upcoming opponent, Sasuga.  The anime keeps these two scenes together, meaning that the Rinku/Sasuga scene likewise becomes something that happens midway through the preliminaries, rather than after the start of the main tournament.  As a result, while in the manga Sasuga notes that she and Rinku are going to face each other in Round 1, in the anime she just says she “has a feeling” they will fight at some point, since the preliminaries are not yet over and therefore the matchups for the main tournament have not been drawn.  Likewise, Sasuga’s whole reason for approaching Rinku in the first place is changed from her wanting to meet her Round 1 opponent to her just being interested in Rinku for his impressive performance in the preliminaries (he defeated 16 people at once, she says).  The offshoot of this is that in the anime Sasuga seems more genuinely interested in Rinku, while in the manga there’s the strong implication that she met with him as a psychological tactic, purposefully charming him so that she could get him to go easy on her.

• As mentioned before, the manga has victory in the preliminaries be decided by an overly complicated system wherein you have to remove neck rings from your opponents, which requires a 5-digit code number.  This is referenced again at the start of Yusuke’s fight in the preliminaries, while the anime instead says contestants are eliminated if they are knocked out, killed, or surrender.  In both versions, Yusuke simply knocks all his opponents far from the ring, and the ref explains that this too counts as a win.  The manga has Chu remarking that he hadn’t thought of that, and instead he went through all the trouble of forcing each of his opponents to reveal their code number.  Yomi meanwhile tells Shura (still sore over his lose) to notice how much Yusuke seems to enjoy fighting, and that he wished Shura could have fought him in the tournament.  The anime leaves these lines out of course, and instead inserts Koenma and Botan noting how much stronger Yusuke has grown.

• The episode ends with Koto saying that things in each block are progressing smoothly, only for the narrator to explain that there was one block where a fierce battle was still underway: Block 34, where Yomi and Shura are fighting.  The episode ends.  So this episode covers…let’s see here…All of chapter 166 (save for things that were simply left out of the anime), 9 pages of chapter 167 (leaving out Yomi/Shura’s fight and Yusuke’s speech opening the main tournament), and about 6 pages of chapter 168 (Chu/Natsume’s fight, Rinku meeting Sasuga).