Episode 110

EPISODE 110

俺の力・これが全てだ！(Ore no Chikara・Kore ga Subete da!)

My Power—This is My All!

First Broadcast: December 17, 1994

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 169 (WSJ #26, 1994, June 13)

Summary: Mukuro and Natsume have a close fight, as do 2 other of Raizen’s friends, Shu and Soketsu.  Meanwhile, Yusuke begins to fight Yomi.  Discouraged at first, a vision of Raizen helps him regain his determination.  He manages to break through Yomi’s force field technique, and the two begin pummeling each other at close range.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• Yusuke and Yomi’s match is match #4 of Round 3 of the tournament in the manga, while in the anime it’s match #2 of Round 4.  Similarly, Mukuro and Natsume’s fight is D Block’s match #1 of Round No.2 in the manga, while in the anime it’s match #3 of Round 3.  And Soketsu and Shu’s fight is also A Block’s match #3 of Round 2 in the manga, but is match #3 of Round 4 in the anime.  In the manga the explanation of all this is given by a generic announcer lady, while in the anime it’s said by Koto (who’s not in the manga at all at this point).  The same switch happens with all the ringside commentary from the manga.  One such generic commentator in the manga is a completely ordinary, human-looking guy, a fat middle-aged man wearing office clothes and glasses.  Swapping him for Koto was probably the right choice.

• There’s a lot more pomp and circumstance as Yomi and Yusuke prepare to fight in the anime, including the two dramatically entering the ring, and Koto explaining who they are.  When Yusuke thinks about how he’s roughly on the same level as Shura, the anime illustrates this by replaying scenes from Shura’s fight with Yomi.

• There is in general a lot of extra comments from Koto in her role as ringside commentator, and from Yusuke’s friends and other people in the audience.  I’m not going to note these unless any seem particularly interesting.

• As Yusuke and Yomi power up to fight each other, the anime draws this out a bit and has their two auras struggle against each other.  Koenma and co. marvel at Yusuke’s energy and say he’s not the same Yusuke they used to know.  Raizen’s friends also seem more impressed by Yusuke’s power than in the manga, where we just see them look surprised as he powers up.  Natsume is amazed that she can sense Yusuke’s power from this distance, while Soketsu says Yusuke isn’t some run-of-the-mill brat.

• I probably ought to have noted this before, but Shu is bald in the manga, while in the anime he has hair.

• In the anime the business with Yomi and Yusuke powering up ends with Yomi’s energy starting to push Yusuke out of the ring.  Yomi suddenly stops though, and Koenma says this is because Yomi is trying to entice Yusuke into a physical battle.  In the manga there’s no part where Yomi’s aura pushes Yusuke back, and as Yusuke powers up Jin (rather than Koenma) says that Yusuke is trying to entice Yomi into a physical fight.

• When Yusuke rushes forward to punch Yomi, in the manga Chu yells that attacking Yomi head-on like that is reckless, since Yomi will definitely block it.  In the anime Kurama says this instead.

• After Yomi intentionally takes Yusuke’s aforementioned punch head-on, he gets back up and the two talk a little before they resume their fight.  Once they start back up again, in the manga they rush each other, Yomi slips past Yusuke, touches him on the shoulder, then nails him with a series of blasts.  Yusuke is sent flying back, but he seems unhurt and has a wild look in his eye.  Suddenly (with no real transition) he and Yomi are in close proximity again, Yusuke blocks a punch from Yomi, and, and, and…that’s it.  The chapter ends.  Next chapter, it is quite some time later.  Back in the Human World, Kurama and Kuwabara casually discuss the end of the tournament, and Yusuke shows up to fill in more details.  This is what we get of Yusuke and Yomi’s battle in the manga.

• But let’s not dwell on that for too long, not at this moment anyway.  In the anime after Yomi takes one of Yusuke’s punches and the two begin fighting again, the initial exchange goes like in the manga, with Yomi knocking Yusuke away with a series of blasts.  It might be worth noting that the manga depiction of this attack is somewhat vague, and could be interpreted as Yomi punching Yusuke several times with extreme rapidity, but the anime clearly depicts it as a volley of energy blasts.  The attack also destroys Yusuke’s shirt in the anime, presumably to set up the later scene where the demonic markings from the end of the Sensui fight reappear on Yusuke’s body.

• Anyway, in this version after getting sent flying Yusuke does not immediately come right back at Yomi, but instead is knocked to the ground and lays there for a while.  He wonders why his strength seems to be failing him.  Yomi thinks Yusuke is playing some joke on him, and doesn’t believe he can already be finished.  He picks up Yusuke by the head, with Yusuke offering no resistance.  Yusuke asks what he’s fighting for, which makes Yomi pretty mad, since this whole tournament was Yusuke’s idea in the first place.  He punches Yusuke repeatedly with him still offering no resistance, and says that thanks to Yusuke he’s given up everything and now thinks only of fighting.  Yusuke’s thoughts turn to Toguro and Sensui, whose purpose in fighting was simply to find someone to defeat them.  He wonders if that’s his purpose in fighting now too.  Raizen suddenly appears to him in a vision, telling Yusuke he has forgotten the reason he came to the Demon World and left Keiko behind.  Yusuke realizes he can’t return home until he finishes this fight, and starts fighting back at last.  

• At this point Yusuke regains the same strange markings he had when he fully awakened as a demon while fighting Sensui, though for some reason his hair doesn’t grow out like it did then.  He says Yomi has awakened Raizen’s blood in him, which suits Yomi fine, since Raizen was the one he always wanted to defeat anyway.  Yusuke warns that he gets stronger the more he fights, and he attacks Yomi with a Spirit Gun blast.  When commenting on this, Koto calls the attack a “Spirit Gun” (Rei-Gan) but then corrects herself, saying that since Yusuke fired spectral energy (yō-ki) rather than spiritual energy (rei-ki), the attack should really be called a Yō-Gan/Spectral Gun.  Anyway, Yomi simply uses his patented “Renpa Hansho-heki” force field technique to block the blast.  But Yusuke stubbornly fires blast after blast at Yomi (apparently no longer bound by his prior limit to only four such attacks a day), with each one getting blocked by Yomi’s force field.  Gradually though, Yusuke’s blasts start to pierce through the field.  Kurama and Koenma realizes this is because Yusuke’s blasts are a mix of both rei-ki and yō-ki, such that only a human/demon hybrid like Yusuke can use, and Yomi’s force field can apparently only block yō-ki.  The yō-ki component of Yusuke’s blasts gradually disappears, leaving them only rei-ki, which hurts Yomi more and more.  The demon markings on Yusuke’s body also disappear during this process.  

• Yusuke finishes this barrage off with an extra-large blast that creates a huge explosion.  When the dust clears though, both he and Yomi are still in one piece, and they start trading blows as the episode wraps up.  This closing sequence of punches seems loosely based on the end of chapter 169, mostly in Yusuke’s wild expression and the two fighting in close proximity.