Episode 33

EPISODE 33

激突！ベスト8出そろう (Gekitotsu! Besuto Eito Desorou)

Clash! The Best Eight Are Decided

First Broadcast: June 5, 1993

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 61 (WSJ #12, 1992, March 9)

Summary: Dr. Ichigaki and Toguro’s teams pass the 1^st round. Besides the loss of Yusuke’s Spirit Gun, Hiei can’t use his right arm because of the Koku-Ryu-Ha.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

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• The episode starts with a filler scene of Yusuke out in the woods trying to fire his Spirit Gun, but finding that he can’t concentrate his reiki.  Kuwabara shows up and asks why they’re not having any meeting to discuss the first round or plan for the next, but Yusuke just blows him off.  We see that Mask is up in the trees watching Yusuke, and then there’s a brief scene of Hiei trying to practice his swordplay only to have trouble with his right arm.  This all sets up later manga scenes.  The manga chapter begins with Ichigaki’s team passing the first round.

• The demon who M-3 (Ryo) beheads looks slightly different in the anime (he has big bat ears there), and we get to see him throw the head down into a pile with the heads of the other guys he beat.  Nice touch.

• Kai’s bow attack is called “Swing Crush” in the anime, while in the manga it has no name.  We also see some kind of electric discharge in Ryo’s hand as he uses his Hound Claw attack, somewhat weakening the whole “invisible attacks” theme.

• There’s a weird mistake in the subtitles when Kurama comments on Ichigaki’s team.  In Japanese he says that Ichigaki’s three fighters are using reiki, which is surprising because he didn’t expect there to be any other humans at the tournament besides Yusuke and co.  The subtitles instead say that “Whatever is controlling those three is Yoki”.  Reiki being a human’s spiritual energy and yoki a demon’s spectral energy.  And instead of the fighters manipulating the energy, the subtitles say the energy is manipulating the fighters.  So the subtitles get it all in reverse.  Odd.

• After Team Ichigaki’s match there’s a Koenma and Jorge scene.  Jorge has come back with a ton of snacks, but the matches are already over, angering Koenma.

• Then there’s a longer filler scene where we see Yusuke trying that “balance on one finger” trick, but he still can concentrate his reiki.  Suddenly he’s attack by “Rugby”, a member of the Makai Kyo-Senshi Team, who fights with a “demonball” (a glorified rugby ball).  The demonball keeps chasing after Yusuke like a homing missile, with the Spirit Gun-less Yusuke unable to counterattack, until the Makai Kyo-Senshi Team captain, Ogyoku shows up and destroys the ball with his axe.  He tells Rugby to stop this illegal behavior (attacking Yusuke outside the ring), but Rugby refuses, so he kills him.  As Ogyoku walks off, vowing to later defeat Yusuke fair-and-square in the ring, Kuwabara appears and is impressed that Ogyoku killed his own teammate so calmly.

• Kuwabara then asks Yusuke why he didn’t fire his Spirit Gun, and it’s here that we get back to manga material.  Kind of.  In the manga the scene where Yusuke tells Kuwabara about not being able to use the Spirit Gun just started right with Kuwabara hearing the news, and takes place entirely in the woods (apparently they’re just hanging out there).  In the anime, once all the filler scenes leading up to Kuwabara learning what’s up are finished, the scene switches to the hotel and that’s where the two discuss the problem and Mask shows up to explain what’s going on.

• One of the advantages of the anime is that we can actually hear that Mask has a young voice.  In the manga it’s implied that Mask sounds distinctly different than Genkai ought to, but it’s not quite as effective as in the anime.

• After the eye-catch we get a scene of Botan and Keiko discussing Yusuke.  In the manga this comes between Team Ichigaki’s fight and Yusuke and Kuwabara’s conversation, but here it’s moved to after the Yusuke/Kuwabara scene and the various accompanying filler.  Botan has her hair in rollers in the anime.  When Shizuru shows up and they all drink to Yusuke and co.’s victory, the anime makes sure to have Keiko note that she’s only drinking juice.  Atsuko shows up with Shizuru in the manga, but she’s not in the anime of course.

• In the manga only Kurama is shown watching Toguro’s match, while in the anime Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Mask are there too.  Toguro takes a moment to glare at Yusuke.  

• So the Makai Kyo-Senshi Team are the guys Toguro fights in the first round.  In the manga none of them appear until they fight Toguro, they have no individual names, and they’re pretty much there to be killed by Toguro.  But as we saw, in the anime Yusuke encounters two of the team members and has a hard time fighting one of them before the other saves him by easily killing his teammate.  Even if Yusuke’s supposed to be in a weakened state, this still builds up the team much more than in the manga, so that Toguro killing all five remaining team members in ten seconds with a fraction of his power becomes much more impressive.  The team captain (Ogyoku) was also shown as behaving honorably towards Yusuke in the anime, making him a more sympathetic figure when Toguro slaughters him.  All the team members look a little different in the anime, especially Ogyoku, who in the manga is a huge fat guy with his mouth sown shut, pupil-less eyes, and a dumb hairdo.  In the anime he has a more or less regular human-looking face (and is bald), again making it much easier to sympathize with him. 

• We also get names for all the team members: Ogyoku (team captain), Dosukoi (sumo wrestler guy), Gorilla (mallet guy), Babaki (fish head Mohawk guy), and Gagaki (horn guy).

• Before the Makai Kyo-Senshi Team fight Toguro, they emit a huge wave of energy, impressing the crowd and even Yusuke.  Dosukoi does some sumo wrestler moves and creates big cracks in the ground, and Toguro calls him “sekitori”, a sumo wrestler rank.  “Dosukoi” itself is the chant of a sumo wrestler.

• The manga version of this fight is a bit more graphic.  There’s blood splattered around the ring and Toguro’s arm, we see that Toguro has torn one guy’s head off and another guy in half.  In the anime the first guy Toguro kills emits a big stream of black blood, but other than that it’s comparatively tame.  Even the black blood seems like a distancing effect, to mark it as not “real” blood.

• In the manga Toguro kills the team captain in one second just like all the other guys, but in the anime he has a somewhat extended fight.  Ogyoku swings his axe around but Toguro keeps dodging.  Then the axe seems to go into Toguro’s shoulder, but it bounces back out like he’s made of rubber.  After that, Toguro catches the axe with his bare hand and finally kills Ogyoku.

• Following the fight, in the anime we see Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Botan all freaking out at Toguro’s power.  Then when the scene switches to the match-ups being posted for the rest of the tournaments, there’s a brief Koenma/Jorge bit.  Commenting on how the match-ups assign the greatest number of fights to Yusuke and co., Jorge notes that Koenma isn’t the only sneaky guy in the world.