Episode 6

EPISODE 6

三匹の妖怪!飛影・蔵馬・剛鬼 (Sanbiki no Youkai! Hiei・Kurama・Gouki)

The Three Demons! Hiei, Kurama, Goki

First Broadcast: November 14, 1992

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): chapter 19 (WSJ #18, 1991, April 22), chapter 20 (WSJ #19, 1991, April 29)

Summary: Yusuke returns to school, where a teacher frames him for theft, but he clears his name with his detective tools and new Spirit Gun technique.  He then must go after the demons Hiei, Kurama, and Goki, who have stolen 3 Spirit World treasures. Goki reveals his true form and overpowers Yusuke.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• The episode opens with a scene showing Hiei, Kurama, and Goki breaking into the Spirit World treasury and stealing the treasures, something we don’t see in the manga.

• After Atsuko wakes Yusuke up early to see if he’s still alive, in the manga Yusuke notes that she learned of his resurrection 5 days after Keiko (the hell?), which isn’t mentioned in the anime.  Also, Atsuko wakes Yusuke up at 7 in the manga but 6 in the anime.

• The anime has a brief scene where Takai show off his dragon pen to his friend, explaining that it’s one of a kind, and that if Yusuke were alive he’d probably steal it.  At which point Yusuke shows up and they freak out.  In the manga Takai doesn’t explain about his pen until after it’s stolen.

• Immediately after the above part in the anime, Keiko shows up and talks to Yusuke.  In the manga this comes after Yusuke arrives in the main schoolyard and everyone runs away from him, but it’s moved to immediately before that part here.  Also, in the manga when Yusuke sees Keiko he thinks about how she still treats him the same as always and apparently considered the kiss she gave him to bring him back to life as nothing more than mouth-to-mouth.  In the anime this is replaced by a brief flashback to the kiss scene itself.

• The flashback scene where Botan gives Yusuke the spirit lens thing is expanded upon in the anime.  In the manga this scene takes place immediately after the end of the last chapter, with Yusuke still standing by the beat-up Kasane-ga-fuchi punk and Botan in her weird fortuneteller get-up.  They don’t talk about anything besides the lens.  In the anime though the scene’s sometime later, in the middle of the night.  Yusuke complains about Botan calling him out so later, and notes that he still hasn’t actually agreed to be a Spirit World Detective.  There’s also a quick bit where Yusuke tries to use the lens to peep through Botan’s clothes.  This fails to please her.

• Right before Yusuke’s classmates discover that their stuff’s been stolen, in the manga we see Iwamoto go over his loot and think that it’d probably be best to just burn it all (how he’s supposed to burn the watch and the keyholder I have no clue).  But he takes a liking to Takai’s pen and keeps it.  Then when Yusuke finds the pen in Iwamoto’s pocket per Koenma’s advice, Iwamoto tries to claim it’s just a similar looking pen, but Yusuke points out that Takai’s pen was supposed to be one of a kind.  Iwamoto tries making up more excuses, but it doesn’t work.  In the anime though Iwamoto keeps everything he takes, and the pen is just what Yusuke happens to grab out of his pocket.  Iwamoto accuses Yusuke of having put the pen in there, but then just walks off without Yusuke even really refuting this.  So all that stuff about the pen being totally unique doesn’t really amount to anything in the anime.

• In the anime Iwamoto hits Yusuke while he’s integrating him!  Is that legal?

• Backing up a bit, when Yusuke first reaches school and everyone freaks out when they see him, in the manga Yusuke thinks to himself about how Atsuko told him she cried and begged the principle to readmit him.  But Keiko told Yusuke there were some fancy black cars parked by the school at the time, so Yusuke suspects his mom used her criminal connections to get him back in.   Then when Iwamoto’s integrating Yusuke, he mentions that his mother used threats to get him readmitted.  But the anime cuts out Yusuke’s little aside earlier, and has Iwamoto say that Yusuke’s mom cried and cried until he got readmitted (just like she told Yusuke she had in the manga). 

• While Koenma’s talking to Yusuke, in the anime he freezes time so that nobody can overhear their conversation.  In the manga though he’s simply invisible, and Iwamoto even asks who Yusuke’s talking to.

• Koenma describes the Spirit Gun as about twice as powerful as Yusuke’s regular punches in the manga, but in the anime it’s several times as powerful.

• After Yusuke tests out the Spirit Gun, in the anime there’s a scene where Koenma explains to him about the three treasures, while they’re out in the school toolshed or something.  In the manga we don’t get an explanation of the treasures until Hiei and co. are talking about them in the forest.

• Also, for some reason the sword treasure is Kouma no Tsurugi in the manga but Kouma no Ken in the anime.  Both of these mean “Demon-Conquering Sword” (ken and tsurugi mean “sword”).

• Yusuke begins his search for the demon criminals by, apparently, wandering around town aimlessly.  In the manga he happens to spot Hiei, Kurama, and Goki all walking along together, and notices the spectral horns on Goki’s head.  A child passes out nearby, but Yusuke doesn’t think anything of it at the time.  From there he’s able to track them to the forest.  Only later does he connect the passed-out child to Goki’s soul-sucking Ghoul Ball.  In the anime though the child passing out is what first attracts Yusuke’s attention.  He sees the child’s soul leaving its body and follows it down a shady-looking alleyway to Goki.  Yusuke has to fight off some punks hanging out in the alley, but he still manages to track Goki to the forest, which in the anime is the first place he sees Hiei or Kurama.

• In the manga Goki is said to have killed several “Hunters” sent after him.  The word here is 追跡者 (literally someone who pursues), normally read as tsuisekisha, but here read as the English word “hunter”.  In the anime though the word is just pronounced tsuisekisha at this point.  They don’t really explain what a Hunter is (other than the obvious implication that it’s someone sent after Goki), but later on we learn that Kurama was wounded by a powerful Hunter, which led to him reincarnating himself as Shu’ichi Minamino.  Then way the hell later in the Sensui story arc we at last learn that “Hunter” is what demons call the Spirit World Special Defense Squad.  In both these later instances the anime uses the English word “Hunter” just like the manga.  Incidentally, while the Hunter who fought Kurama is explicitly linked to the Special Defense Squad, it’s still not clear who Goki killed.  The Squad’s supposed to be able to defeat any A-Class demon, so how could a D-Class demon like Goki kill a bunch of them?  Maybe there are weaker teams of Hunters out there besides the super-powerful Special Defense Squad we later meet in the series.  Well, whatever.

• But anyway, back to manga/anime comparisons.  After Yusuke interrupts the three thieves and their in-fighting, Hiei and Goki both note that despite working for the Spirit World, Yusuke seems pretty weak.  In the manga Hiei thinks to himself that Yusuke is so confident that he must really be hiding some secret power, so he tells Kurama that their quarrel’s over for now and runs off.  He actually comes across as somewhat cowardly.  In the anime though he doesn’t think anything about Yusuke having hidden power, and instead runs after Kurama to get the mirror.

• After Goki transforms, we hear the narrator explain what a Soul-Sucking Ogre is.  In the manga this is a text box, one of many used for exposition throughout the series.  There’d been a few before this, explaining about King Enma and how ghosts enter people’s dreams, but these were left out of the anime.  From now on the narrator explaining stuff like this mid-episode becomes fairly commonplace.