Episode 38

EPISODE 38

蔵馬無惨！死の化粧 (Kurama Muzan! Shi no Keshou)

A Tragic Kurama! Bodypaint of Death

First Broadcast: July 10, 1993

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 68 (WSJ #19, 1992, April 27), first half of chapter 69 (WSJ #20, 1992, May 4)

Summary: Kurama manages to defeat Toya by sprouting plants from his own body, the only way around Gama’s curse. But he’s left unconscious, and still unable to leave the ring. The next opponent, Baku-Ken, begins mercilessly beating Kurama.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• The episode starts with a retread of 37’s ending scene.

• After Butajiri talks with Sakyo, there’s a filler conversation of Hiei and Mask discussing Kurama’s fight.  Mask says he can win if he draws out the fight long enough for Gama’s spell to lose effect.

• As Toya gives his explanation about a demon ninja’s life, the anime shows some generic ninja running around fighting.

• In the manga Hiei explains that demon ninjas entrust their secret techniques to a pupil before any death-defying fights, while in the anime Mask says this.

• An odd mistake in the subtitles: Hiei says that Toya is so much better at manipulating ice than Seiryu that there’s no comparison.  In fact, he’s top-class out of all demons with ice abilities.  There’s even a chart in the manga showing this, with Ice Maidens (represented by Yukina) slightly above Seiryu, and Toya way above them.  The subtitles instead have him say that Seiryu is an ice master without peer, and was strongest of all ice-using demons.  I can see how Hiei’s statement could be taken as referring to Seiryu rather than Toya (it is phrased slightly vaguer than in the manga), but Hiei refers to this super-skilled ice guy in the present tense, while Seiryu’s long dead.  Anyway, besides messing up any “who would win?” debates (fuck ‘em, I say) the subtitles make Hiei’s line seems completely random, like he just feels like talking about Seiryu for some reason.

• In the anime, as Toya powers up to attack Kurama, he creates some sort of barrier that turns the arena ice blue.  Koto says it feels like the north or south pole.

• After Kurama tries to dodge Toya’s ice bullet attack for a while, we get the standard filler responses from the peanut gallery.  Koenma says Kurama should just quit, and he gets mad at Jorge for having a less than enthusiastic response to this.

• In the manga Kurama beats Toya right when Toya first comes at him with his ice sword.  In the anime, he dodges the ice sword a bunch of times before finally working out how to beat Toya.

• More peanut gallery filler as Toya’s knocked down and Koto counts down to his defeat (Butajiri runs off in disgust), and as Kurama is forced to continue fighting.

• The third member of the Masho-Tsukai Team is called “Bakuken” in the manga, while in the anime…well, the subtitles say “Bakken”, and it does sound like that, but Japanese Wikipedia doesn’t say his name was changed for the anime.  The trouble is that “Bakuken” and “Bakken” both sound pretty similar in Japanese.  Either way, these are both different ways of reading the same kanji (baku=“explosion”, ken=“fist”), so the way his name is actually written doesn’t differ between the two versions.  I’m going to stick with the manga spelling.  In fact, I think I’ll go with “Baku-Ken”, since that looks less like a typo for “Bakken”.

• The episode ends 9 pages into chapter 69, as Bak[u]ken beats up on Kurama.