Episode 45

EPISODE 45

飛影連戦！撃て黒龍波！(Hiei Rensen! Ute Kokuryuuha)

Hiei Fights Back-To-Back! Fire Your Koku-Ryuu-Ha!

First Broadcast: August 28, 1993

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 79 (WSJ #31, 1992, July 20), first half of chapter 80 (WSJ #32, 1992, July 27)

Summary: Yusuke’s ordeal continues. Hiei fights Kuro-Momotaro, who gains immunity to any attack he endures. His sword now useless, Hiei uses his fire techniques, and Kuro-Momotaro transforms once more.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• Before Hiei and Kuro-Momotaro starting fighting, there’s another scene of Yusuke enduring his trial.  In the manga he’s alone in the cave, punching the wall and wailing around in agony, while outside in the forest Genkai notes that it was too early for him to take on this trial, and he’s got roughly a 50% chance of survival.  But she says overcoming this trial is merely the bare minimum requirement for surviving this battle, and it’s time to do-or-die.  Then we get back to the semi-finals.  In the anime though, Genkai is in the cave watching Yusuke’s agony, and actually decides he can’t handle it and starts to take out the Reiko-Gyoku from his body, only for Yusuke to stop her.  That’s when she thinks about him having a 50% chance of surviving, but we don’t get the “minimum requirement/do-or-die” line.  Then the scene switches to the hotel, where Keiko wakes up with a scream, due to a bad dream she had about Yusuke.  This wakes Botan up, and she realizes they’ve all overslept.  They leave for the stadium, leaving Puu behind (in the manga Puu’s been with Yusuke all along).

• When Onji explains to Kuro-Momotaro that Hiei still can’t use the Koku-Ryu-Ha due to the aftereffects of the last time he used it, in the anime there’s a fairly lengthy flashback to Hiei using the technique in his fight with Zeru.  Kuwabara gets impatient at their talk midway through and yells at them to start the match.  Juri asks this too but gets rudely rebuffed, at which point Onji and Kuro-Momotaro’s manga conversation resumes.

• Because Keiko and co. aren’t at the stadium, Kuwabara and Kurama take over their role in the peanut gallery, and make various filler comments to Hiei’s fight throughout the episode.  There’s more from Koenma and Jorge too, of course.

• In the anime when Kuro-Momotaro kicks Ma-Kintaro’s dead body away, you can see that Ma-Kintaro’s arm is back in place.  Whoops.  In the manga it’s still missing, from when Hiei cut it off.

• In the manga, Kuro-Momotaro uses Hiei’s sword to slice the fingers on his left hand clean off.  In the anime he simply slashes at his left forearm, without severing anything.

• After Hiei’s sword proves useless against the powered-up Kuro-Momotaro, there’s a Koenma/Jorge scene where Jorge briefly remembers the legend of the original Momotaro, who fought Jorge’s ogre ancestors.  After that is a scene of Keiko and co. leaving the hotel to go see the semi-finals, only for Keiko to realize she forgot Puu and go back for him.  Then we see Yusuke suffering through his trial some more, and we finally get Genkai’s “minimum requirement/do-or-die line” (she’s still in the cave, rather than the forest).  Then it’s back to manga material as Hiei starts to use his fire techniques against Kuro-Momotaro.

• In the manga, when Kurama explains to Kuwabara about how Hiei is in no condition to fire the Koku-Ryu-Ha, he recalls Hiei’s fight with Gatasbal, and says that Hiei tried to use Human World fire then, rather than Demon World fire.  This gets left out in the anime.

• The episode ends 8 pages into chapter 80, as Kuro-Momotaro turns into his pheasant form and starts to attack Hiei.