Episode 50

EPISODE 50

魔闘家・鈴木の挑戦！ (Matouka・Suzuki no Chousen!)

Demon Battler Suzuki’s Challenge

First Broadcast: October 2, 1993

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): second half of chapter 86 (WSJ #39, 1992, September 14), chapter 87 (WSJ #40, 1992, September 21)

Summary: Keiko and the sleeping Yusuke are saved from demons by Jin and co. Kuwabara fights team boss Onji, but gets teleported out of the ring again. Stepping up, Genkai says Onji isn’t who he seems. It turns out he isn’t really an old man, but a clown named Suzuki who aspires to kill Genkai and become a legend. Unimpressed, Genkai easily beats him with only her bare hands.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• The episode starts with a quick retread of Juri announcing the start of Kuwabara and Onji’s fight, then the scene switches to Keiko and the sleeping Yusuke.  A trio of demons (modeled after the heroes of Journey to the West) attack, but Chu and co. beat them.  In the manga there’s just one long scene of Keiko and sleeping Yusuke, but in the anime it gets split up between the end of episode 49 and the start of episode 50 here.

• In the manga Jin looks curiously at the sleeping Yusuke and Toya asks what’s the matter.  Jin says that Yusuke’s gotten stronger again, though he still looks like an ordinary boy when asleep.  In the anime Chu gets Jin’s lines and Rinku gets Toya’s.  In fact Jin and Toya never say anything throughout the whole scene, and you can’t even hear them laughing with the others.  Maybe their voice actors were out of town when they got to this episode?

• Similar to the Shishi-Wakamaru fight, the anime adds in filler of Onji dodging Kuwabara’s Spirit Sword a dozen times.  In the manga by the time the Keiko/Yusuke scene ends and we get back to them, Onji already has Kuwabara imprisoned in his Black Hole technique.

• While Onji’s dodging around, there’s a Koenma/Jorge scene.  Koenma is using playing cards to predict the outcome of the match, but he keeps drawing the joker card.  This foreshadows Onji’s true identity.

• Small subtitle mistake: after Onji brags about how he doesn’t need any tools to create a portal to another dimension (in contrast to Shishi-Wakamaru), he basically says that the Ura-Otogi Team was nothing more than an opening act for him, which he assembled so that he’d have enough people to enter the tournament.  The subtitles instead say that “this was nothing more than the first act in order to gather enough people to form the Ura-Otogi Team”.  Phrased this way the line doesn’t make much sense. 

• After Kuwabara gets teleported away, in the anime there’s a scene showing him land in the old stadium yet again.  In the manga it’s just noted that Kuwabara was sent there in a small aside at the end of the chapter.

• Once Onji sends Kuwabara away, in the manga he notes that he thought Shishi-Wakamaru at least would survive to the finals.  This drops out in the anime.

• When Genkai’s goes up to fight Onji, in the anime there’s a brief bit where Yusuke (still way the hell outside the stadium with Keiko) mumbles in his sleep for her not to lose.  Keiko is confused.

• There’s lots of baffled filler reactions after Onji turns into Suzuki.

• In the anime Suzuki says his name twice, and Genkai complains, saying once was enough.  He then tells her to make sure to always affix “beautiful” before his name when speaking to him (he says this part in the manga too, but there it’s not in reaction to anything).  Koto then fails to do this in her ringside commentary, so Suzuki throws a playing card at her.  It hits some random demon in the crowd, killing him instantly.  Koto does in fact fail to call Suzuki “beautiful” in the manga, but there he apparently doesn’t notice.

• After seeing Suzuki’s obsession with the word “beautiful”, Koenma demands that Jorge always call him “pretty”.

• Suzuki talks about how people both fear and revere that which they can’t see, and that God and the Devil are a good example of this.  In the manga, as background for this explanation we see the face of a woman (the Virgin Mary?  Or Kannon?), some featureless robed figure, and a goat-headed devil.  In the anime we see a more human devil and a bearded man (God, I suppose).

• Once Suzuki’s babbled for a while, Genkai says that he’s the type of person she hates most.  In the anime we instead get Hiei and Kurama’s reactions to him.  The crowd doesn’t like him either, and in the anime Shizuru and Botan are among the ones to complain.

• After Genkai snatches Suzuki’s rubber nose so fast he doesn’t even notice, in the anime Hiei and Kurama are completely contemptuous of Suzuki’s power.  Kurama wonders how Suzuki could have fallen for such a simple afterimage, and Hiei says Suzuki’s not even worth mentioning.  At this point Kuwabara comes back to the stadium yet again.  Suzuki uses a Toguro-like technique to make his muscles really big, and in the anime Toguro calls him an idiot.  Later, Kuwabara’s impressed at how easily Genkai is pounding him, and Kurama says that he’s just too weak.  Poor guy.

• The anime switches back and forth between depicting Suzuki’s nose as covered in white makeup like the rest of his face, or makeup-free (since the rubber nose was supposed to cover it up).

• Oddly, in the anime Genkai refers to Shishi-Wakamaru as dead.  He’s not, as we later see in both manga and anime.

• The episode ends with a brief filler scene of the gang celebrating their victory as they walk away from the ring.  Genkai goes on ahead.  She passes by Toguro, who says they need to talk.  Chapter 87 in the manga ends right with Genkai defeating Suzuki.