Episode 80

EPISODE 80

刃霧の標的！死紋十字斑 (Hagiri no Hyouteki！Shimon-juuji-han)

Hagiri’s Targets! Shimon-Juji-Han

First Broadcast: May 14, 1994

Equivalent Manga Chapter(s): last 3/4ths of chapter 131 (WSJ #35, 1993, August 16), chapter 132 (WSJ #36-37, 1993, August 23), first page of chapter 133 (WSJ #38, 1993, September 6)

Summary: Yusuke deals with the knives, but Hagiri next sends an exploding truck.  Fortunately, Hiei saves Yusuke in the nick of time and stabs Hagiri.  Hiei fights Yusuke to help calm him down, and decides to aid him and the others in stopping the portal from opening. The two join Genkai and co. at the mouth of Irima Cave, the site of the portal and Sensui’s hideout.

Anime/manga differences after the jump.

Differences from the Manga

(What's all this about?  Read here)

• After Yusuke manages to fend off the knives, there’s an anime-only scene with Kurama and co. back in the city.  Kurama uses a phone booth (remember those?) to call Kaito and Yanagisawa, who say they’ll meet them at Mushiyori Station.  Botan wonders where Yusuke is, and says she ought to have given him the communicator compact (as seen during the Four Beasts story arc), but Genkai says they’ll all heading for the same location anyway.  Koenma heads back to the Spirit World, saying he needs to prepare some countermeasures.

• Then there’s another filler scene, with Sensui and co. driving up to Irima Cave.  Kuwabara continues to scream his head off, which Sensui says is fine, since anger might awaken his abilities faster.  Then it’s back to Yusuke and Sniper.

• Sniper shoots the truck chasing Yusuke and makes it explode.  In the manga there’s a full page image of Sniper overseeing the explosion (“bye-bye”, he says)…followed directly by a full page image of Hiei stabbing him and holding Yusuke in the other hand.  Hiei then knocks Sniper down and we don’t see him again until the Sensui arc wraps up, at which point it’s revealed that Hiei purposefully avoided stabbing any vital organs.  Hiei tells Yusuke it’s too soon for him to die; the really interesting stuff is just getting started: Hell’s lid is coming off.  In the distance the spatial distortions caused by the portal are now clearly visible.  All in all it’s another classic Hiei moment and something that really takes advantage of the medium, where you turn the page and find the situation instantly and totally reversed.  

• The anime though really dilutes the “Hiei instantly saves the day” aspect of the scene.  After the explosion the scene switches to Kurama and co.  They’ve met up with Kaito and Yanagisawa in Mushiyori City, and Kaito shows them Irima Cave’s location on a map.  Then things switch back to Sniper, who notices someone approaching from behind.  Sniper asks who’s there.  It’s Hiei of course, and he glares silently at Sniper as the mid-episode eye catch comes up.  After the eye catch the two continue to stare at each other for a while.  Yusuke comes to and realizes what’s happened (it’s at this point Hiei tells him that it’s too soon for him to die).  Sniper points a gun at Hiei and says he won’t allow anyone to interfere with their plans, but Hiei effortlessly dodges Sniper’s shots and stabs him.  He then assures Yusuke that he didn’t stab through any vital organs.  In fact, Sniper’s still conscious, and he aims his gun at Yusuke and babbles about how nobody can interfere with Sensui’s plans, so Hiei has to stab him again.  Hiei then starts talking about the lid of Hell and all that jazz, this time without any real transition, since here he already said the “it’s too soon for you to die” line but then got interrupted by Sniper’s antics.

• In the manga after Yusuke and Hiei are shown fighting for a while, there’s a note with Botan-as-narrator explaining that the two fight for about 10 minutes, so please wait.  Then we see the end of the fight.  The anime just shows them fighting all the way through. 

• The stupid low-level demons who attack Yusuke and Hiei have an attack that’s called “Megaton Punch” in the manga.  It’s actually just a totally ordinary punch, but has a fancy name regardless.  The joke is that the attack name is written out with a bunch of kanji that happen to be read as “megaton” but mean unrelated things, rather than just in katakana the way a foreign word like that normally would be written.  “Punch” itself is written with the kanji for “fist”, but with furigana indicating it should be read as the English would “punch”.  This sort of joke doesn’t translate to spoken dialogue at all though, so in the anime the attack has no name.

• Between Yusuke and Hiei beating the stupid demons and them joining up with Genkai and co., in the anime there’s a very short scene of Kuwabara continuing to struggle as Sensui and co. drag him through Irima Cave.

• The episode ends a mere 1 page into chapter 133, as Yusuke and Hiei join up with the rest of the group, and Genkai says that the gang’s all here.