Episode 69

EPISODE 69

禁句（タブー）のパワー！蔵馬の頭脳 (Tabuu no Pawaa! Kurama no Zunou)

The Power of Taboo! Kurama’s Intellect

First Broadcast: February 26, 1994

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): second half of chapter 115 (WSJ #18, 1993, April 19), chapter 116 (WSJ #19, 1993, April 26)

Summary: Kuwabara and Botan next fall victim to Kaito’s power, leaving only Kurama, and the two begin a battle of wits. Kurama challenges Kaito to let him pick a new taboo, which he bet he’ll get Kaito to say within 45 minutes. Kaito accepts, Kurama wins, and everyone’s souls are returned.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• The episode opens with a shot of the note on the door to 4-D Mansion that explains Kaito’s rules, then there’s a Koenma/Jorge scene where they re-explain Kaito’s powers.  After that is another scene of Yusuke and Kido; in the manga once Yusuke is kidnapped we don’t see him again until after Kaito’s defeat, when the gang heads up the stairs.  

• Following those scenes we get back to manga material, with Kaito, Kurama, and everyone sitting around.  In the manga there are clocks floating around in the air, while in the anime there’s just one clock on the wall.

• Botan calls Kuwabara “Kuwabara-kun” in the manga but “Kuwa-chan” in the anime.  In the anime she’s been calling him “Kuwa-chan” for a long time now, but I never really noticed this as a manga/anime difference.  Whoops.

• After Kuwabara and Botan get their souls stolen, there’s a Koenma/Jorge scene where the two wonder what Kuwabara did to break the taboo, since it didn’t seem like he said atsui/”hot”.  Koenma rewinds his magic TV and replays the scene a few times before realizing that while Kuwabara didn’t say the actual word, he did say all the component letters in a row, as part of separate words.  In the manga it’s Kurama who works out what mistake Kuwabara made, after Kaito explains that his taboo bans not merely saying the word itself but even the component syllables in a row.  There, Kuwabara’s words are simply reprinted large in the background, with the offending letters highlighted.  I guess they figured that sort of explanation wouldn’t work as well on TV.

• Like with Hiei’s soul, Kuwabara and Botan’s flame-like souls also are covered in some sort of bubble in the anime, while in the manga they’re just open flames.

• In the manga we see the rules written on the note on the door outside vanish and get replaced with the new rules Kurama came up with.  In the anime the new rules are already written there after the mid-episode eye catch, and we don’t get to see the switch.

• As more and more letters fall under the new taboo, there’s a brief Koenma/Jorge scene.  Koenma says that being told not to say something just makes you want to say it even more, and he rattles off all the banned letters like in a vocalization exercise.  He concludes by calling Jorge an idiot in the same syllable-by-syllable way.

• After that, now that a good deal of letters are banned, the anime starts to display a chart showing the Japanese hiragana alphabet, with the banned letters marked.  Whenever anyone talks, the letters they say light up, making it easy to confirm that they really aren’t breaking the taboo.  Since in the manga all the words are just written out anyway you don’t really need this, but with spoken dialogue it’s nice to have a visual aid to confirm that the characters (and by extension Togashi) really are abiding by the increasingly difficult rules.

• Chapter 116 ends with Kuwabara seeing how Kaito was laughing uncontrollably when he had his soul taken, and he wonders what kind of funny face Kurama must have made to get him to laugh like that.  Kurama says it’s a trade secret.  This bit gets left out in the anime, and instead there’s a Koenma/Jorge scene of the two beside themselves with laughter, saying they can’t believe Kurama made a face like that.  Either way we never get to actually see the face Kurama made, which is the whole joke.

• Following that is another anime-only scene with Yusuke and Kido.  Kido says Yusuke’s friends have defeated Kaito.