Episode 18

EPISODE 18

飛影出戦!切り裂く剣 (Hiei Dessen! Kirisaku Tsurugi)

Hiei Comes Forward to Battle!  A Slashing Sword

First Broadcast: February 13, 1993

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 39 (WSJ #40, 1991, September 23), first half of chapter 40 (WSJ #41, 1991, September 30)

Summary: The group reaches the Holy Beast Seiryu’s room. Seiryu mercilessly kills Byakko for losing, and an enraged Hiei slices him to pieces.  The last Holy Beast, Suzaku, sends demon bug controlled humans after Keiko.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• The episode starts with another Koenma/Jorge filler scene.  Jorge has a book he thinks contains information on the remaining Holy Beasts, but it’s just a cookbook.  Koenma orders him spanked.

• The anime expands on the scene at the start of chapter 39 where Kuwabara uses his spiritual senses to help the gang through Maze Castle’s titular maze.  In the anime Kurama notes that there’s only one correct path to the top floor, but that supposedly nobody’s ever found it.  We get to see some filler of a guy getting done in by the booby traps that fill all the other paths.  In this scene, the walls of Maze Castle’s corridors feature some pretty badass paintings reminiscent of traditional Japanese illustrations of monsters and demons.

• After that there’s another filler scene with Botan keeping track of the demon bug menace in the Human World.  The bugs are possessing more people, and things are starting to look like a George Romero film.

• A rare instance of there being more gore in the anime version than the manga: after Seiryu freezes Byakko and breaks him into pieces, in the anime Byakko’s decapitated head has a detailed spine sticking out of it, which isn’t shown in the manga.

• Ah, Hiei vs Seiryu.  In the manga, the moment the fight starts Hiei instantly slashes Seiryu to shreds, with Seiryu’s entire upper body falling into dozens of bloody pieces on the floor.  And that’s it.  Depending on your point of view, this is either terribly anticlimactic or one of the greatest moments in the series (I lean more towards the latter).  In the anime their fight is infinitely longer.  Seiryu shows off his power a lot more, and Hiei dodges his freezing attack a bunch of times.  Eventually Hiei’s leg gets frozen, and it looks like it’s all over.  The two rush at each other, and Seiryu mocks Hiei some more before starting to bleed and then just exploding for some reason.  We then get a flashback showing Hiei actually slashing Seiryu a bunch of times. 

• The episode ends 7 pages into chapter 40, with the start of Keiko being attacked by all the demon bug goons.  There’s a filler scene where Botan is cornered by the goons, only to be inadvertently saved when Suzaku orders them all to go after Keiko.  Also at the end of the episode, Kuwabara gets a feeling that something bad is happening in the city.