Episode 51

EPISODE 51

宿命の対決！戸愚呂の影 (Shukumei no Taiketsu! Toguro no Kage)

Confrontation of Destiny! The Shadow of Toguro

First Broadcast: October 9, 1993

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 88 (WSJ #41, 1992, September 28), most of chapter 89 (WSJ #42, 1992, October 5)

Summary: Toguro’s team fights the Go-Renja Team without him, winning easily, and Toguro’s teammates Karasu and Bui intimidate Kurama. Meanwhile, Genkai leaves on “important business”, and meets Toguro in the woods. Toguro is really Genkai’s comrade from 50 years ago, still young. They start to fight, which awakens Yusuke.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• The Go-Renjai Team members have slightly different designs in the anime.  Aka-Renja has some weirdly colored patch of skin (or scales?) under his left eye.  Momo-Renja wears big earrings and has a different shirt.  Mido-Renja also has a slightly different shirt.  Ki-Renja has a much smaller eye, and short scarf thing instead of a long cape (in the manga he doesn’t have his cape on when fighting Bui).  Ao-Renja looks much uglier, perhaps to depict him as more unpleasant in light of his eventual betrayal of his teammates.  All of them have belt buckles with the initial of the English name of the color they are named after: Aka=R(ed), Momo=P(ink), Mido=G(reen), Ki=Y(ellow), Ao=B(lue).

• Before the fight between Team Toguro and the Go-Renja Team starts, the scene switches to the hotel.  Yusuke is still sleeping, while Genkai heads off to meet Toguro.  In the manga Jin, Toya, Rinku, and Chu are in the room too, while in the anime only Genkai, Kuwabara, Yusuke, and Puu are.

• In the manga we don’t see the start of Karasu and Midori-Renja’s fight: after the scene returns to the semi-finals, Mido-Renja has already had both his arms blown off by Karasu, and is quickly finished off.  In the anime Mido-Renja starts the fight by firing a green, foul-smelling energy blast.  The first blast misses Karasu and kills some audience members.  Unimpressed, Karasu dodges the second blast too, and blows off Mido-Renja’s arms.  At this point things go basically like in the manga.

• Mido-Renja dies in a big generic explosion in the anime, but in the manga it’s more graphic.  We see the top of his head blown off, his spine shooting out of the wound in his right-hand side, and his right leg coming off.  The anime shows some faint images of bombs the moment Karasu touches him.  Spoilers!

• In the anime after Kurama sees Karasu’s fight, he notes that as Shuichi Minamino he’s no match for the other two (Karasu and Bui), let alone the Toguro Brothers.  Remembering how Genkai told them to go watch Team Toguro’s match, Kurama thinks that Hiei may have been right not to come.  In the manga these lines come at the start of chapter 89, after Karasu, Bui, and Elder Toguro have finished defeating the Go-Renja Team.  This switch makes Kurama’s remark that he’s no match for “the other two” seem strange, since at this point Bui hasn’t fought yet, or done anything else of note.

• After Kurama mentions Hiei not coming to watch Team Toguro fight, in the anime there’s a brief scene of Hiei practicing his fire techniques.  He says to himself that he doesn’t have time to watch his opponents’ fights.  

• After that is another brief filler scene.  Genkai’s going through the woods, and remembers her youth with Toguro (more anime-only foreshadowing).  Botan and the other girls meet her and say she should rest after fighting such hard matches, but she refuses.  Shizuru has a vision of Genkai becoming distant.  Genkai tells Keiko she’s leaving Yusuke in his hands, and walks away.  Shizuru says there’s something strange with Genkai, but Botan tries to distract her.  After that we get back to the semi-finals, with Bui and Ki-Renja’s fight.

• In the manga Bui seems to just pull his absurdly large axe out of nowhere, in classic “hammer space” style.  In the anime he’s explicitly shown materializing his axe out of his own energy.

• After Bui smashes Ki-Renja to pieces with his axe, in the manga chunks of Ki-Renja’s body splatter over the crowd.  One guy even gets hit by his giant eyeball.  This gets left out in the anime.  On the other hand, the depiction of Ki-Renja’s body being impacted by Bui’s axe is pretty close to the manga, which usually skims over such detailed gore.  But having the eye-catch come between Ki-Renja rushing at Bui and Bui swinging his axe really dilutes the impact of Bui’s super-rapid response, which the manga depicts so well.

• In the manga there’s a close-up of Elder Toguro’s tendrils piercing through Momo-Renja’s head.  The anime doesn’t have this, but does show Elder Toguro piercing Ao-Renja’s head, and later Aka-Renja’s.  Maybe they didn’t want to show violence against women?

• When Elder Toguro explains that Karasu and Bui were originally enemies who the brothers defeated, the anime gives a rendition of this scene.  Karasu asks the Toguro Brothers to finish them off, but Younger Toguro says that as winner, he gets to decide whether he will or not.  Notably, this filler scene depicts Bui and Karasu as having challenged the Toguro Brothers together, which isn’t specified in the manga, and which seems to contradict later filler scenes showing Bui fighting Younger Toguro on his own.

• In the manga Yusuke wakes up when Toguro charges Genkai.  In the anime he wakes up as Toguro powers up to his 45% form, and Toguro charging Genkai becomes the end of the episode.

• In the manga as Toguro powers up and Genkai comments that he only ever thinks about fighting, there’s a page-long flashback of the two’s past, with much dialogue.  The anime moves this to next episode.  We do get a flashback around this point in the anime too, but the timing’s slightly earlier, and there’s no dialogue (no dialogue in the flashback that is; it’s used as a background for Toguro talking to Genkai in the present).

• Toguro and Genkai’s dialogue immediately before they attack each other is slightly rearranged in the anime.  But they say essentially all the same things, only in different order, so it’s probably not worth detailing in length.

• The episode ends about 16 pages into chapter 89, as Genkai and Toguro start to fight.