Episode 34

EPISODE 34

勝率0.05%の死闘！ (Shouritsu 0.05 Paasento no Shitou!)

A Desperate Battle, With a 0.05% Chance of Winning

First Broadcast: June 12, 1993

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 62 (WSJ #13, 1992, March 16), first half of chapter 63 (WSJ #14, 1992, March 23)

Summary: Koenma reminds Yusuke of his spirit egg. Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Mask begin fighting Ichigaki’s team, but Yusuke and Kuwabara are unable to even see their opponent’s energy attacks. Outside, Hiei and Kurama are ambushed by Ichigaki’s henchmen, and fight the robot Gatasbal.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• Chapter 62 begins with Kuwabara’s dream about Mitamura, his pupils, and Ichigaki.  Then he wakes up and tells his dream to Yusuke, who knows that he’s heard the name “Ichigaki” before but can’t quite place it.  The anime episode though begins with Kuwabara dreaming, but without actually showing his dream.  When he wakes he tells Yusuke he had a dream, but doesn’t give any details since Yusuke’s not interested.  Instead, he and Yusuke talk more about where Kurama and Hiei are (Yusuke’s sure they’ll show up).  Kuwabara’s dream is then shown when he actually sees Ichigaki and co. in the arena.

• When Koenma shows up to tell Yusuke about his egg, only to learn Yusuke had completely forgotten about it, in the manga Koenma chews out Yusuke for being as forgetful as the author (ie Togashi).  This gets left out in the anime.  After the egg talk, in the manga Koenma then asks Yusuke if his training under Genkai advanced far enough for him to learn any senpou, mystical sage techniques.  Apparently this was considered too vague, or perhaps too easy to be misunderstood as simply “battle strategy” (also senpou, but with a different written form), so the anime changes this to “ultimate secret techniques”.  Either way, Yusuke says no, he only continued learning the basics of Reiko-Hado-Ken.  In the manga he actually explains what these basics are: practicing the act of quickly heightening his Reihado (the flow of his spiritual energy) and also concentrating it into a single point.  The anime leaves out this explanation.

• The scene where Hiei and Kurama are ambushed by Ichigaki’s helpers is expanded slightly in the anime: first we see Hiei visibly struggling with his injured right arm before Kurama shows up and asks him if he’s alright, and then when Ichigaki’s men appear Kurama says that they’re probably there to stop them.

• When Ichigaki works out that his team has a 99.95% chance of winning in a 3-vs-3 battle against Yusuke and co., in the manga he does the necessary calculations in his head (with weird equations representing his thoughts in the background) while in the anime he uses his calculator.

• Ichigaki mentions that the use of robots is banned in the tournament, which is left out in the anime.  This presumably explains why Ichigaki doesn’t use Gatasbal in the tournament, but instead has it ambush Kurama and Hiei outside the ring. 

• Before the fight starts, there’s some filler with Shizuru noting that her brother seems to realize the true nature of Ichigaki’s fighters, and may lose if he lets his emotions carry him away.

• Between the start of the match and Mask’s explanation about why Yusuke and Kuwabara can’t see their opponents’ attacks, there’s some filler fighting.  It cumulates in Yusuke trying to save Kuwabara, but finding he can’t because he’s unable to fire his Spirit Gun, so Mask has to step in and save him.  After Mask’s explanation, we switch to the Gatasbal scene like in the manga (it’s the start of chapter 63), and when that’s done there are some more filler fighting of Yusuke and Kuwabara getting their asses handed to them to round out the episode.  The episode ends about 8 pages into chapter 63.

• Gatasbal looks much different in the anime.  In both versions it is supposed to be an artificial creature, but in the manga it looks flesh-and-blood (perhaps implying some amount of bio-technology) while in the anime it looks completely robotic.  Interestingly, the manga version of Gatasbal is one of the numerous gray creatures seen near the end of the first anime opening animation, to the right of Genbu and some (I think) original monster.