Episode 111

EPISODE 111

決着！激闘の果てに (Ketchaku! Gekitou no Hate ni)

Concluded! The End of the Conflict

First Broadcast: December 24, 1994

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): small part of chapter 170 (WSJ #27, 1994, June 20)

Summary: Yusuke and Yomi continue their fight, which ends in a huge explosion.  Yusuke wakes up a week later in the hospital, and learns that he lost to Yomi.  But Yomi was in turn defeated by Koko (one of Raizen’s old friends), due to having used up much of his stamina fighting Yusuke.  The tournament was ultimately won by Enki, Koko’s husband and yet another friend of Raizen, and Yusuke is just in time to see his victory speech.  Enki says that as ruler of the Demon World he wants to ensure peace with the Human World.  The tournament over, everything winds down.  Kurama heads back to the Human World, while Yusuke has to take care of some lose ends before he can do the same.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• Despite essentially being the climactic battle for the entire series, Yusuke and Yomi’s battle is, in the manga, something of a non-event.  There’s merely one chapter devoted towards showing how it starts, then the next chapter picks up long afterwards and has the characters discuss the battle’s conclusion after the fact.  Episode 110 essentially adapted all we were shown of the fight in the manga, expanding on it considerably to make it last an entire episode.  Episode 111 then is devoted to adapting what we are told in the manga about the match’s outcome, but again expanding on it considerably to get an episode’s worth of material out of it.

• Besides the kinds of additions you have to make to turn 3 pages of conversation into an episode of fighting, the anime changes the…tone of Yusuke and Yomi’s battle, you could say.  Though Yusuke ultimately loses like in the manga, the anime puts him on much more equal footing with Yomi.  In the manga before the fight Yusuke notes that since he’s about as strong as Shura, the difference between his strength and Yomi’s should be the same difference as between a child and an adult.  And from what little we see of their fight, Yusuke seems to be at a distinct disadvantage but hangs in there the best he can.  Then when Yusuke discusses the match with Kuwabara months later, he says that it ended when, after 60 hours of fighting, he finally gave up.  Yusuke considers this pathetic on his part, because Yomi’s sound/sense-based fighting style uses up a huge amount of stamina and concentration, yet Yusuke was the one to throw in the towel first.  Yusuke recalls that after the match, Yomi said Yusuke “might” surpass him by the next tournament.  So all in all it seems that Yusuke put up a good fight but there was still a big gap in their powers.

• In the anime though, once Yusuke gets properly motivated he starts fighting more or less evenly with Yomi (Yusuke even notes that he gets stronger and stronger as he fights).  Random crowd demons comment that it wouldn’t be surprising for either side to win (though Hiei says Yusuke doesn’t have a chance), and ultimately Yusuke loses only by the slimmest of margins.  After the two simultaneously hit each other with their final attacks, it looks like the match will end in a tie, but Shura’s cheering gives Yomi the extra mental boost he needs to stay on his feet, while Yusuke collapses.  What’s more, last episode depicted Yusuke as losing his spirit shortly after the start of the match, and passively letting Yomi hit him again and again, before finally getting his shit together and fighting in earnest.  Since Yusuke manages to still fight practically to a draw against Yomi despite giving him so many free hits at that early point, the anime gives the impression that Yusuke might have won had he been properly motivated from the start.

• We also get to see presumably all of the two’s fight in the anime, and there’s nothing about it lasting 60 hours like in the manga.

• This episode starts with a re-do of last episode’s closing scene, with Yusuke’s yō-ki/rei-ki combo blasts damaging Yomi.  Though there’ve been many similar re-dos like this throughout the series, I think this is the first time this happens with purely anime-only material. 

• In the anime Yomi uses a sort of energy tornado attack against Yusuke, which knocks him into a lake and drills straight through the giant tree arena.

• As the fight reaches its conclusion, Kurama has a vision of Kuwabara cheering Yusuke on.  An image of Kuwabara is also shown later after the tournament, when Yusuke talks with Koenma, to illustrate the idea that some people can only understand others by fighting them.  This is probably to try and make up for the considerably reduced role Kuwabara plays in the final story arc.  Anyway, besides Kurama seeing Kuwabara, Yusuke likewise mentally hears Genkai giving him advice, telling him to remember what he’s fighting for (the “what” in this case being the entire supporting cast).  

• After all this encouragement, Yusuke unleashes a golden aura that resembles Sensui’s Seikōki.  Koenma however says that it’s actually completely different than Sensui’s sacred energy.  We’re never told what this golden energy is actually supposed to be though.

• Once Yusuke reveals this golden energy, Yomi says he wants to continue fighting forever, but Yusuke says every party must come to an end.  This is a reference to the title of chapter 170 (the one which recounts the end of Yusuke and Yomi’s battle), “After the Party”.  Yusuke and Yomi then start to punch each other, leading to them simultaneously hitting each other in the face.  This creates a suitably climatic explosion (their fists are brimming with energy).  Yusuke hallucinates that he’s getting up in the arena just before Koto counts to 10, but he’s actually getting up in his hospital bed, and has been out for a week.

• Yusuke’s friends rush in to see him, and he learns that he lost, that it’s a week later, and that the tournament has just ended.  In the manga we’re not given a timeframe for how long the tournament lasted.  Yusuke’s just in time to see Enki declared champion and give his winning speech.  He learns from Kurama that Yomi lost to Koko in the next round (Round 5 here, rather than Round 4 as in the manga), due to his unique fighting style using up his concentration and stamina during his fight with Yusuke.  Kurama then tells Yusuke how Mukuro beat Natsume but lost to Enki in the semi-finals (in the manga she fights Enki in the semi-semi-finals, aka Round 5).  In the manga this information is what Yusuke tells Kuwabara, rather than what Kurama tells Yusuke.  Also, in the manga Yusuke says that after beating Yomi in Round 4, Koko lost to Kujo in Round 5, and Kujo lost to Saizo in Round 6 (the semi-finals).  By extension this must mean that the final round was a match between Saizo and Enki, with Enki as the winner.  This all gets left out in the anime.

• Enki’s victory speech is given in the manga in flashback, as Yusuke explains what happened to Kuwabara.  In the anime we see the event “live”.  The actual speech is basically the same in both versions, with the addition that when the random crowd demons hear that there will be another tournament in three years, they all get fired up to win that one.

• After Enki’s speech Kurama tells Yusuke that Yomi and Shura went off on a journey together after Yomi lost to Koko.  He says he’ll make Shura stronger than Yusuke, but Shura says Yusuke isn’t so great, and he’ll instead get even stronger than Yomi, and Kurama too of course.  Yomi tells Kurama to give Yusuke a message once he wakes up: that Yomi enjoyed himself fighting Yusuke, and never exerted himself so much before.  He says there’s no telling what will happen the next time they fight.  Compare this to the manga, where Yomi tells Yusuke it was fun watching him get stronger and that Yusuke “might” surpass him by the next tournament.  And in the manga their match ended when Yusuke surrendered, meaning that Yusuke was still conscious at the end and so Yomi was able to give him this message directly (there’s also nothing in the manga specifying what Yomi did after he lost to Koko).  

• To get even more strength debatey for a bit, Shura’s intention to surpass Kurama implies that Kurama is currently the stronger of the two.  In the manga Yomi intended Shura to grow to a power of over 500,000 points by the tournament (though whether he succeeded is never clarified), while Yoko Kurama had a power of 152,000 points when he killed Shachi.  It is however possible that Yomi did not succeed in raising Shura to over 500,000 points by the tournament, or that Kurama has himself grown to over 500,000 points since fighting Shachi.

• Anyway, in the anime scene where Yomi takes off, he’s carrying some sort of long metal object in a holster on his back.  I’m curious as to what that’s supposed to be.  Could it be a walking stick, the sort that real blind people use?  Though Yomi doesn’t seem to need such a thing.  Maybe it’s a sword, or some other weapon?

• With the tournament over, the rest of the episode is devoted to tying other lose ends up.  Hiei tries to make Kurama return Yukina’s keepsake Hirui Stone to her and say that her brother is dead, but Kurama says Hiei should be the one to do it, no matter how many years it may take him.  Koenma discusses with Yusuke the reasoning behind the tournament and the changes that will start taking place in the Demon World.  As Yusuke runs off, the narrator seems to pipe in to give some closing narration, but it’s revealed to actually be Jorge talking (they share the same voice actor).  Koenma asks what Jorge is babbling about and why he has such a serious face, and he says he’s doing the narration.  No attempt is made to explain this bit of meta-fictional tomfoolery.  Yusuke goes on to visit Raizen’s grave and chats with his ghost (?).  He says that he’ll spend the next three years training for a rematch; in the manga this is what Yusuke tells Kuwabara and Kurama.  Raizen says he should go on a journey through the Demon World, but while Yusuke says that sounds nice, for now he should return home.  He tells Hokushin and the rest of Raizen’s followers that he’ll come back to check on them later.