Episode 84

EPISODE 84

蔵馬の怒り！正体は誰だ?!  (Kurama no Ikari! Shoutai wa Dare da?!)

Kurama’s Fury! Who Is That, Really?!

First Broadcast: June 11, 1994

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): second half of chapter 137 (WSJ #42, 1993, October 4), chapter 138 (WSJ #43, 1993, October 11)

Summary: Sensui explains that only 30 minutes remain until the portal opens.  Kurama fights “Gourmet”, who absorbs others’ abilities by eating them.  Though Kurama decapitates Gourmet in a matter of seconds, his body is really being controlled by Elder Toguro, one of his earlier meals.  After being critically injured by his brother, Elder Toguro met up with Sensui and plotted revenge against Yusuke and co., giving him the idea of the Demon World portal.  He was ultimately fed to Gourmet, but took over his body from the inside.  Still furious over having to kill Amanuma, Kurama beats Elder Toguro with a parasitic tree that imprisons him in a world of illusion.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• The episode starts with a re-do of last episode’s closing scene, as Yusuke and co. reach Sensui and see the Demon World portal.  This time Sensui doesn’t give his anime-only speech from the end of last episode though.

• After Sensui explains about how the demons currently swarming around the other side of the Demon World portal are C-class, the anime cuts to a filler scene of Botan outside the cave.  Genkai and co. exit the cave, and Genkai tells Botan that they passed Koenma as they came out.  Botan says that Koenma will remove his pacifier if worse comes to worse, and this seems to alarm Genkai.  But ultimately she’s just as ignorant as Botan about what Koenma removing his pacifier actually means.  Notably, during this scene Kaito is still carrying Amanuma's body, though we later learn that Koenma performed a technique to restore him to life, which presumably must have happened when Genkai’s group passed him in the cave.  Perhaps the technique takes a while to work, sort of like in The Princess Bride? 

• After that scene we get back to Sensui’s explanation about the different classes of demon and their characteristics.  When saying that demons who reach B-class develop intellect and reason, in the anime he says that Kurama and Hiei are like that.  This is kind of interesting in light of how the two of them were supposed to be D-level back when Yusuke met them, but it might be intended to tie in to what we later learn about them both having originally been A-class demons.

• When Gourmet explains about how he ate Murota and gained his mind-reading abilities, the anime has a flashback to Murota reading the minds of the people passing by on the street, back when he was trying to help Yusuke and co. learn about Sensui’s group.  It also shows Gourmet eating Murota, in some alley somewhere.  

• In the manga, chapter 137 ends with Kurama starting to fight Gourmet; Kurama slashes with his Rose Whip, while Gourmet notes that Kurama’s mental voice has stopped.  Sensui’s video player shows the movie is at 1:33:42.  Then chapter 138 opens with a shot of the video player reading 1:33:44, followed by a shot of Gourmet with the upper half of his head already severed.  In other words, it took Kurama 2 seconds to defeat him.  In the anime version Kurama pulls out a rose, Gourmet notes that Kurama’s mental voice has stopped, and the video player reads 1:34:36.  Kurama then turns the rose into his Rose Whip, which he wraps around Gourmet’s mouth and tightens until the upper half of Gourmet’s head comes off.  The video player reads 1:34:46.  So 10 seconds to defeat Gourmet instead of 2.  There, aren’t you glad you know that now?

• There’s a lot less blood in the anime as Elder Toguro’s head sprouts out from the severed stump of Gourmet’s head.

• During Elder Toguro’s explanation of how he met Sensui, the anime leaves out the part where he mentions having only regenerated half of his head by the time he washed up on a “beach somewhere”.  This is because the anime-only material from the start of the story arc depicts Elder Toguro washing up on Kubi-Kukuri Island instead of just “somewhere”, and having already regenerated an arm and most of his head.

• After Kurama defeats Gourmet/Elder Toguro, in the anime Itsuki thinks to himself that Kurama’s mind is so deep that it’s no wonder Gourmet wasn’t able to fathom it with his mind-reading abilities.