Headscratchers / YuYu Hakusho

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• When Yusuke decided to let Sensui kill him in order to awaken the true powers of Hiei, Kurama, and Kuwabara, why did Yusuke suddenly act like they were taking away his fight when he met them again in Demon World?
  • Yusuke never claimed he wanted his friends to fight Sensui. He knew that they would be trapped in Itsuki's dimension unless Kuwabara awakened his Dimension Sword, so he wanted them to escape by making sure his own death meant something to that end. Also, with the demon blood awakened in Yusuke, he was more tempered than ever before to fight.
• Is there a reason why Genkai couldn't go through the "golden egg" ordeal like Yusuke?
  • The ordeal was meant to test Yusuke to see if he was worthy enough to be brought back to life as well as becoming spirit detective permanently. Genkai was already trustworthy, and he used the Maffuken to bring her back, but never told Yusuke. Besides, he said it himself that he needed someone who wouldn't think too much. It's all a bit behind the scenes.
  • Additionally, there was some Early-Installment Weirdness about it not being Yusuke's time to die yet, because he was never expected to save that little boy. The only other time the series brings up the idea of having a destined time to die was at the end of the manga, where it was stated that people that died of natural causes couldn't be brought back because it was their time to go.
• In Episode 29, how did the demon that fought Kurama know he was going to fight Kurama? It's not like had to go next, right? Frankly, I don't see how he could predict it.
  • Maybe he DID predict it. After all, he knew about Kurama's human mother prior to the fight, and already had things set up for her to be a hostage. This also isn't the first time he's used the "dirty trick" as stated by the yo-yo demon kid. He likely did his research on all the fighters as well, and probably would have done the same thing with Yusuke's mother (or chose Keiko), Hiei's sister Yukina, and Kuwabara's sister too.
• Why and how was Genkai allowed to come back to life after the Dark Tournament?
  • Koenma was able to pull some strings in order to grant team Urameshi's wish. After all the winner of the tournament gets one request.
  • We see in a flashback (at least in the manga) that Toguro put her body under Koenma's care after killing her, as he knew that would be Team Urameshi's wish if they won.
• Why do demons keep mentioning how weak/frail humans are? I mean, look at Kuwabara: he got impaled, nearly had his neck snapped in two, and had every bone in his body shattered in pieces, and after all that today he can stand casually as though nothing happened, whereas Yusuke's half-demon and was temporally crippled after just one freakin' hole on his abdomen. Hell, Sensui, a human, has the strongest type of ki in existence at his disposal. Three human contestants at the Dark Tournament killed several demons without so much as breaking a sweat, Hiei is a pure demon and goes down after just one damn hit, and Kurama is a demon possessing a human and he took beatings about as bad as Kuwabara's. The latter can detect a fucking earthquake. Are demons envious of their good lifestyle or are they just plain racist?
  • Kuwabara is exceptionally resilient. He can take a beating like no other character in the series, and his strongest asset seems to be an absolute refusal to hit the ground. This is probably rooted in the fact that he's spent the better part of his life having Yusuke beat him half to death; to hold other humans to Kuwabara's high standard of endurance, resilience, and pain tolerance is about as unfair as expecting all humans to be as clever and versatile as Kurama.
  • Racism.
  • Kuwabara is an exception to the rule. The vast majority of humans can't even SEE spiritual phenomena, much less fight demons in any meaningful way. Their view of humans as weaklings is mostly justified. What's not justified is that they treat even humans who have proven to be exceptionally powerful the same way. That's a combination of racism and stupidity.
  • Additionally, the manner in which their respective energies work has an enormous effect on their strength. Per Toguro's comments, it seems Demonic energy isn't as powerful as Spirit energy, but provides a feeling of satisfaction upon use, with his manner of speech implying that using it feels natural and intuitive. On the other hand, the average person is both unaware of and incapable of affecting spiritual phenomena; while even D Class Demons have some degree of supernatural power. In D&D terms, Demons are like Sorcerors: lower potential, but higher acceleration; while Humans are Wizards: higher potential, lower acceleration.
• Hiei captures Keiko as she leaves school. However, Yusuke only realizes she's missing after Hiei contacts him... in class. He doesn't appear to be in detention, and wouldn't he have noticed if she was gone overnight? Did she actually skip or something?
  • Knowing Yusuke, he probably had his head up his ass and didn't notice.
  • This troper was under the impression that Keiko was captured after school ended, Yusuke only noticed during a time that he was held after school hours to get lectured at for being....Yusuke. After all it is about sunset or so when he finds the place Hiei is holding her, and the battle — correct me if I'm wrong — holds out 'til nightfall.
• On the subject,what happened to Hiei's "full demon form" where he goes all green and has all those eyes? That would've been fairly powerful if what was said was true.
  • The transformation costs a lot of energy, and therefore is fairly unreliable. Also, it didn't help in his fight against Yusuke, and opponents after him were way stronger.
    • The Dragon of the Darkness Flame uses far more energy and has killed everyone that has tried to master it in the past but he still uses it, risking his life if he messes it up or doesn't use enough energy and knowingly sacrificing his arm to use it. It's because if you hurt and blind one of those eyes his Jagan will be temporarily blinded until he has time to heal and recover his energy, and post-Jagan eye Hiei needs to use his Jagan eye in order to use any of his fire powers, which means he might not be able to use fire powers while in the eye form so he has to pick and he apparently prefers fire. Hiei is also a protagonist so they don't want one of their heroes looking like some kind of monster that children would run from, that is the reason from the author's standpoint to not have him ever change into that form again. During the Four Saint Beasts arc he doesn't need it, and after they rescue Yukina he sees himself differently and doesn't want Yukina to know he's her brother because he's ashamed of the crimes he committed and doesn't want her to know/likewise be ashamed of him. Finally, the more powerful the demons in the series become, the more human they look, with the strongest looking almost exactly like a human but with one or two small non-human characteristics like having horns or pointed ears and claws. Or maybe he can still use his fire while in the Jagan form but the Jagan form is like Gohan's (from DBZ) SS1 in that the use of that form actually restricts his power and makes him weaker than he is normally.
    • According to Kurama, it's the Jagan on his forehead that matters. The rest are for amplification.
  • Not to mention those eyes make him more useful for target practice.
• Okay, so Yusuke had a big wake and presumably funeral. He's Obviously Dead. The whole resurrection thing happens and....nobody seems to pay it any mind. What, do people in the YYH-verse regularly come Back from the Dead?
  • He probably said he was in a coma or something
  • Lazarus Syndrome?
  • Keiko and his mother are in on it, Kuwabara is familiar with weird spirit stuff, and the teachers clearly do figure out something weird is going on, but they don't much care why it happened, they're just irritated that, "He's like a cockroach; he just won't stay dead." The other students are afraid of Yusuke because of the rumors, so they probably assumed he was back from Hell, and they weren't interested in finding out details, lest he do all kinds of bad stuff to them.
    • It's not like his death was a small thing that could have been ruled off as a rumor or misinformation. He was gone for several days, there was a huge public funeral with lots of attendants. The little kid that he died to save was there. And yet no one thinks it odd that he just "got better" from being dead?
    • Sunnydale Syndrome.
  • They probably DO think it's weird, but the fact that no one directly confronted Yusuke about it doesn't mean that no one's talking about it. Yusuke's not a good kid; he's a violent thug that all the other kids are afraid of, to the extent that his whole relationship with Kuwabara was originally founded on Kuwabara trying to build his rep by taking down the baddest kid in school. Yes, his death was totally public and no one could have missed the fact that he died, but the fact that he's back isn't something that anyone's going to be willing to ask him about. As was said above, a kid like Yusuke coming back just means that Hell couldn't hold him, and nobody's willing to push any further than that.
  • In the manga, it's explained that Atsuko's contacts in the yakuza bully the teachers and shop-keepers in town to simply not talk about it.
  • They could have also simply passed off a miscalled death, say he was only temporarily dead when the paramedics checked him, then in a coma the rest of the time.
  • Which is actually true to an extent, since Koenma gives his body a temporary pulse during Yusuke's trial.
  • Koenma alters people's memories so that the people who would say "wtf" when they saw him walking around (e.g., his school principal who defended his honor at his wake) would forget he had spent the better part of the past week dead.
  • Alternatively, they may have assumed he faked his death to get away from some kind of trouble (crossing a Yakuza, trying to cheat/fight someone dangerous, whatever), and is back because that issue's been handled.
  • The japanese funcionaries who keep the books about being alive or dead are adults, and Adults Are Useless. The teachers are adults too, and they are even worse offenders!
• The Rescue Yukina arc as well as the details of Hiei's origins raise a lot of questions. Hiei was just a few hours old or a day at most when he was thrown off the Koorime's village. When he finds the village using his Jagan, he speaks to Rui, who tells him about his mother and, to his surprise, his sister. This was long into adulthood (for his age as a demon) so where did that one flashback where he's following Yukina as a child come from? How did Hiei know what his sister looked like? Rui didn't tell him anything but her name, so how was he supposed to identify her? And when Koenma gives Yusuke the rescue Yukina assignment, how the hell does he even know that Yukina is related to Hiei?
  • Can't explain how Hiei knew what Yukina looked like (maybe the Jagan gave him the ability to find out? I dunno, its powers were never really explicitly covered in comprehensive detail, as far as I remember), but Koenma is a ruler. He has spies and investigators who aren't limited by mortal means. Then again, what means they actually have at their disposal were never really covered either.
  • I think Koenma knew because he got a good look at them. Come on, look at Hiei and Yukina, the face is the same! That, or Koenma just did a DNA analysis. After all, he got Hiei imprisoned for a while, and in the manga he mentions knowing about Yukina from bird spies, and guess what Yukina keeps in her cell while being imprisoned by Tarukane?
  • The ice maiden clan is very secluded, Yukina was apparently the only one somewhere else. Also I think the kids scene was anime filler.
  • Hiei knew since birth he had a sister. He was a hyper-intelligent and -aware infant, and whenever an Ice Maiden gives birth she sheds a tear for her newborn child, the tear freezes and is different from the regular gems made from their tears, and it is then attached to a string and given to the child (who normally wear them around their necks). These gems also contain in them some of the mother's demon energy. Now, whenever Hiei and Yukina were born their mother shed not one but two tears, one for each her children. Hiei wanted the Jagan eye partly to find his gem and partly to find the village. He used the Jagan to look for the immense demon energy inside of his gem but still couldn't find it, Yukina however still had hers on her but swallowed it to prevent Tarukane from taking it (Hiei couldn't find his because his was in a similar place). After going to the village and learning his sister's name he was either able to find her because knowing her name allowed him to see her with his eye, because after learning her name he was able to remember what her energy felt like (although unlikely he would forget given what he remembered so he would have been able to tell she was not in the village if he knew what it felt like), or my favorite and in my opinion the best reason: after finding the village and not being able to find his gem he searched for his sister's gem's energy with his Jagan eye, located it, and found it to be in the possession of a young Ice Maiden wandering the world with the same crimson red-colored eyes as him, he even found her once before Tarukene kidnapped her but was too afraid to approach her and hid in the trees, and after that would routinely check in on her with his Jagan when he was not otherwise preoccupied.
• The whole "Youko Kurama"/"Shuichi" identity. The anime makes it seem like "Youko Kurama" is a name, when "youko" literally translates to "demon fox". Kurama is his demon name, Shuichi is his human name. Also they make Kurama... talk to himself? This is also wrong, he doesn't have two personalities. He has one, and only one identity. How else would he have been aware of his past and his powers if he wasn't fully conscious when he took over the human's body?
  • This is a Dub-Induced Plot Hole, for the most part. I guess the dubbers thought that Kurama didn't become the mask ultimately for some reason (maybe Rule of Cool?), and also that "Youko" was a title or a Species Surname.
  • It may have been intended to be metaphorical, rather than literal separate aspects.. As Kurama is not wholly demon nor wholly human anymore, it may be that thinks of his composite pieces of "Kurama" and "Suichi" as still retaining some degree of distinctness.
• The enormous walking plot hole that is Kaito. For those who forget,Yu Kaito is one of the humans with territories. His involves word taboos; those who violate them have their souls sucked out. This is pretty powerful when you take into consideration Kaito is easily the second-smartest character (smartest when it comes to literary related items), however it easily makes him the most powerful person in the series when you learn it also prevents ALL violence (from him and others, not counting his taboo) and the word taboo can be changed whenever he damn well pleases. The sheer amount of versatility this ability has is mind boggling. Why Yusuke and Co. don't use this character more (he becomes their friend shortly after stalling the group) is just jaw dropping. Every single demon/human/whatever in the entire series could be easily taken down by Kaito if he would simply engage them in words and switch the taboo midway through the sentence, even if the person he was fighting knew enough not to talk to him, one of the others could easily toss rocks or something at them and duck back in the territory when they retaliated if not just attack from inside it. This is taken to even further measures when you realize they usually leave him behind for fear he would get hurt, if anything you would want him with you at all times. Even if he couldn't move while maintaining his taboo (he can, and does) you could simply have him stop and set it up to provide a safe haven or bar a passage. He even survives the arc and in fact is not only an active participant, but is arguably the most important secondary character in the entire series — they would have never beaten the Gamer King with out him. It just stuns me that he was written in his current form, his ability is so powerful that even the author tried to get rid of it, every single character seems to forget he can do anything other than word problems the moment he is defeated (by playing on his pride and using a trick no less).
  • Maybe there is some setup involved in making his territory.
  • Kaitou is pretty powerful, but he's kind of in the same boat as Kuwabara: he Can't Catch Up because there are bad guys who are even smarter than he is. Plus this is Shōnen, they probably aren't going to focus as much on the Non-Action Guy characters as they are the fighters (unless they're villains).
  • It could be many things, such as the above "set-up time" idea. It could also be that his territory is not as unbreakable as initially demonstrated, certain forms of demon energy might be able to counter it (such as Kuwabara's dimensional sword, possibly even Sensui's sacred energy) and it was largely to show the territories as a new aspect of spiritual powers. As well, the guy couldn't change the rules on a whim and was subject to his own conditions.
  • There's two reasons I can think of. Near the end of series, the main cast was seriously strapped for time. Kaito's powers, while useful, would probably hurt them more than it would help. And in the final arc, I doubt the big bad demons would have taken kindly to a human walking around. (Kuwabara only went in because it looked like the world was gonna end).
  • Plus, he's not exactly invulnerable outside his territory. A guy like Sniper or even someone fast enough could kill him off early, once they know to avoid him.
  • There's also no reason for him to risk his life on the demon realm.
  • Could be for many reasons. His territory restricts all violence, which means they actually wouldn't be able to do anything to Sensui if they were inside, so he could just wait out until the passage is opened. Also, Kaito mentions that his territory is about 10m in range and anyone can come in and out as they please. It only works at the beginning of the arc because the guys had Yusuke hostage and were giving precise instructions not to get out of the room. Finally, it appears that his territory only restricts violence from those in the inside, which probably means that if Sensui wanted to kill him, he could probably just fire an energy ball from outside the territory.
  • It's heavily implied there's a start-up time. Remember, when the gang enter the house Kaito's in, as well as when he and Kurama begin their game, he drafts up a rhyming notice explaining the nature of the Taboo. Additionally, it's unknown if his prohibition on violence affects the physics on his territory, or the people within his territory.
• Am I the only one who thinks Yusuke's mom and Kuwabara's sister look and sound similar? Also, have they been in the same room together?
  • No, you're not. I have mistaken Shizuru for Atsuko a few times. They really are drawn too similarly.
    • Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall Atsuko going with the other girls to the Dark Tournament in the manga instead of Shizuru. Maybe this was a case of Suspiciously Similar Substitute to create Sakyou/Shizuru?
    • Both Atsuko and Shizuru went to the Dark Tournament in the manga. Atsuko even appears with the others in the anime opening, but she was left out of the actual arc for some reason.
  • The first few times I saw her I thought she was his mom.
  • In the anime at least, they were briefly seen in the same room. Remember when Shizuru and Kayko corner Botan and make her tell them where the boys have gone, (i.e. the Dark Tournament)? Atsuko is seen passed out on the floor.
  • I'm so glad someone brought this up! The first time I saw the anime, I missed the episodes in between the Toguro brothers throwing their first fight, and the start of the Dark Tournament. For a long time I thought Shizuru really was Yusuke's mom, and the series had entered some weird parallel dimension where she wasn't an alcoholic, and Kuwabara was Yusuke's uncle.
• Raizen. I know he's one of the species of youkai that supposedly have to eat humans to survive. But really, when you get down to it, meat is meat. Couldn't Raizen have eaten animals or something like that to tide him over?
  • This has bugged this troper too! They never elaborate on why he can't eat other than he doesn't want to eat humans anymore. He could easily go vegan too if he wanted. It's just....makes no sense.
    • The only logic I can find behind any of this is that in order to sustain his god-like power Raizen needs an enormous amount of calories and possibly the spiritual energy of his victims. Though what makes this odd is that you would think that your spiritual energy would be independent of your normal biological processes, Raizen certainly doesn't look like he has been starving himself for hundreds of years as he is tall and muscular and his spiritual energy is greater than that of Yusuke as he is on his death bed. Raizen should never have lost any of his great power had he simply been training himself all that time and any calories he would need for his physical well-being could easily have been met had he eaten a wild animal or fruits and vegetables.
    • Personally, I think they need to eat humans because of a specific quirk of the way their bodies function. They burn up not just the body, but the life energy and spirit energy in the body. Meaning, in short: no humans, they get weaker. I think that the only thing Raizen could eat for sustenance was humans. He's not like a human in any way, his body works way differently. If you think about it, Raizen serves as a rather good example of why the humans feared and hated demons. Beings like Raizen don't just have an appetite for... different fare, they can't survive on anything else. Raizen was massively powerful, even at the time of his death, and I think that was his absolute minimum baseline power, his maximum was probably equivalent to both Yomi and Mukuro put together with him playing with them for no reason other than to have fun wiping the floor with them. If you take it a bit further, his decision not to eat humans caused a catalysis in Yusuke: his Mazoku genetic half was immune to the need for humans; Raizen needed them to live but his refusal allowed his son to avoid passing that threshold. Sorry if this is a bit complicated. As a TL;DR: Raizen needed three types of energy, not one. It isn't calories, it's the body, life energy, and spirit energy that his body burns in tandem to produce massive post-nuclear levels of power that would be World Breaker power in our world.
  • Perhaps once a demon eats a human they can no longer survive on any other sort of sustenance.
  • The biology of things living in Demon World in no way follows the same rules of biology in the human world. Given all the weird animals and plants that have shown up, is a kind of demon that can only eat human flesh really that far out there?
• Where does Yomi get all of the humans that he eats?
  • Possibly in the Makai humans are raised in pens like cattle.
• Yusuke was in Demon World for two years, correct? What did he eat in that time? By the looks of things there are no ordinary animals in Demon World, and it's doubtful that Yusuke would become a vegetarian.
  • I am pretty sure demonish animals live there he could feast on, or maybe Raizen's men brought Yusuke food from the human world to eat.
  • There are monstrous beasts around, by then his stomach was strong enough to digest even them. That, or he pulled a Hiei and ate anyone idiot enough to try and kill him to make themselves famous.
  • In the anime at least, Yusuke asks for tea and treats from Yomi and he provides therm and the demon realm also has sake, but even so he's a demon now, and it doesn't look like all they eat is humans or each other.
  • According to Shigure, his sword is made from the bones of wild oxen who roam Makai. So while not shown, obviously because it wasn't important, there must be food in Makai. Yomi's city Gandara seemed more advanced than anything on Earth, so Makai isn't that primitive. Juri was even working in what seemed like a restaurant.
• In the "Dark Tournament Saga," why does Shizuru Kuwabara cry for Sakyou, but not her brother?.
  • She knew her brother was faking it?
  • She does cry for him. When Kuwabara first gets impaled by Toguro, everything goes silent, and you see her burst into tears.
• Poor, poor Kuwabara-kun. He is obviously the kind of person who believes in the heartwarmingly romantic "come home to after a hard day's work with his adorable wife smiling at him and his equally adorable children running to hug him" happy ending.But the franchise explicitly states that unless a Demon in a relationship is of A-Class power, no children will EVER be born even if Yukina-chan returns his feelings and no matter how hard they try. Kuwabara is smart enough to get into a good university, so he should be more than aware of the fact. Coupled with the fact that she will most certainly outlive him and probably STILL be as small and cute on the day he dies as the day she met him, a marriage with her WILL be a futile and meaningless exercise that WILL end in tears for both of them like the one between Connor and Heather Macleod in Highlander. So why would he still devote his life to her (adorable and sweet as she is) wish to start a(n ultimately meaningless) family with her if he is aware of this?
  • Where does it explicitly state this? That, and he's Kazuma Kuwabara. There's nothing else to it.
    • I don't remember exactly when, but in one of the explanations about the atavism thing in the anime, it's mentioned that only A-Class and above youkai can breed with humans. That said, Hiei was an A-Class demon very young, and only got knocked back down because of getting the Jagan surgery. It's possible that Yukina is more powerful than she appears, just not inclined towards combat, and if she's not already an A-Class, then she could become an A-Class.
  • Then he can settle for raising Yukina's parthenogenetically conceived daughter as his own. He may not be able to impregnate her, but she'll still conceive spontaneously at age 99-100, and given the relationship between human and demonic life cycles, she's probably in her 80s during the series.
    • The above assumes that ice maidens don't have a longer pre-pubescent period than their ovulation cycle. 100 years doesn't seem to be very long for youkai. It's possible that Yukina, and therefore Hiei, are a few hundred years old but just haven't gone through enough of youkai puberty for Yukina to be of childbearing age.
  • Re: having children... if Yukina's mother can become pregnant by a fire demon, who's to say that she can't have a child with a human? Considering how Hiei came out, it would be interesting to know what the result would be.
  • Demons can breed with humans and there were even half-breeds in the manga, you only need to be A-Class or above to have an atavism.
  • Sensui calls Yusuke an immortal, and being that Kuwabara has a different kind of spirit energy than Yusuke or Genkai who are human (Kuwabara's is orange not blue) and also unlike Yusuke develops an attack that uses a different type of energy than his normal spirit energy (the dimension blade) it's not out of the question to say his abnormal spirit energies will cause him to live an abnormally long life, possibly even living an extraordinarily long life as his spirit energy causes him to heal and stay in his prime far lounger than it should. Plus Yukina is a powerful healer that could keep him around for a while and Koenma owes him... a lot — he saved the world several times even though it wasn't his responsibility.
• On that note, did the series ever make it clear whether Yukina was a natural Ice Maiden or if she was also half-fire demon like Hiei?
  • Considering Ice Maidens have a single child once every century, conceiving the child alone, it isn't hard to believe Yukina didn't inherit any of Hiei's father's genes.
  • She has red eyes like Hiei, and unlike the other Ice Maidens.
    • That is a really good point, and possibly the reason why she is not cold and frigid, like the other Ice Maidens. is that the fire inside her prevents her heart from freezing over. Similarly, the reason Hiei is not affected by the bitter cold of the village or the ice of the saint beast (because regardless of his fire, if that attack was meant to freeze his limbs solid he should have at least gotten frostbite) would be that he has an extreme resistance to the cold which he inherited from his mother.
  • Where is it said that Hiei's father was a fire demon? Because what Hiei said once that because of his origin he was the opposite of the Koorime, fire instead of ice. Yukina may have just become disillusioned with her kind and decided she didn't want to be like them.
    • Good point — I don't think they ever said anything about Hiei's father or what he was other than that he existed. It could very well be that a male born from an Ice Maiden is always a fire demon regardless of who the father was. (Hey, Pokémon does it...)
    • IIRC they said something about the Ice Maidens being so pure that, when one of them gives birth to a male child, he gets all the characteristics of their father and none of their mother. So Hiei's father probably had the exact powers he has sans Jagan.
• This may seem a little silly (certainly not a plot-related question), but why is Yusuke's last name Urameshi pronounced as "Yur-a-meshi"? I have watched enough anime to have a very basic understanding of Japanese pronunciation, but wouldn't it be pronounced as "Oo-ra-meish"? Is that a dub error, or is that really how it's pronounced even in Japanese? (Note: I have not watched the Japanese dub)
  • It is indeed pronounced Oo-ra-meshi in the Japanese dub.
  • Anglocized by/to fit the taste of the English-speaking voice over cast.
• Mmkay, so... Hiei. He gets exiled and all that, so eventually he goes to Shigure to get a Jagan eye. The price for the eye is his story and also that he can never tell Yukina he is her brother, isn't it? So then he goes to the ice place (I haven't seen this in a while and can't remember what it's called) and... finds out he has a sister named Yukina. Does anyone else see anything wrong with this?
  • Hmmm, maybe he already knew he had a sister, but thought she might've been at the island; and after he found out she wasn't there, that gave him the incentive to search for her because it's only then he's been told she's in the human world?
    • Hiei remembered his sister's existence. He just never knew she had been kidnapped.
  • Hiei was aware of all that was happening to him before his exile and was aware of his sister all his life (he just didn't care about his sister at all prior to receiving his Jagan) but he gets his Jagan to try and find his mother's frozen tear he had been given prior to his exile and to find the village of his birth to take his revenge on them for trying to kill him. Once at the village he meets his mother's closest friend in life, who also raised his sister, and she tells Hiei his sister's name is Yukina and Hiei decides to find her. However, as payment for giving him the Jagan transplant Hiei is not allowed to tell Yukina he is her brother.
• Alright... We know that demons are not allowed to kill humans for any reason right? And part of the suspense of the "Rescue Yukina" arc was that as much as we want that bastard Tarukane to die horribly, we don't want Hiei to get severely punished, right? Well that would be fine, except when Hiei finally shows up at Tarukane's door, he runs in and kills two HUMAN guards and Tarukane's butler! Shouldn't he have been punished for that? Was Tarukane REALLY that special?
  • What Measure Is a Mook?
  • Hiei never intended to kill Tarukane, or he would have killed him with the first punch. He was just torturing him a little before giving him to Yusuke. Same thing for the guards and the butler: he just knocked them out.
  • Hiei wanted to kill Tarukene but is on probation for stealing the darkness sword and running amok in the human world (Kurama too) and part of his probation is that he can't kill any humans regardless of their crimes. He also can't leave Yusuke's town, which they all do in the Chapter Black saga, so go figure.
    • At the begining of the Chapter Black saga Botan gives him a pardon in exchange for going to save Urameshi.
  • Also, don't forget that the guards Hiei encounters upon first entering the fortress are implied to have been knocked out by Yusuke and Kuwabara, though Hiei not killing the guards surrounding Tarukane is a bit of a headscratcher. Maybe he just didn't view them as worthy opponents, so he let them be. Then one might wonder why he did basically the same thing when he first appeared, but Hiei wasn't killing them, merely turning them into slaves. Perhaps he views killing as a bigger crime for the weak?
  • As I recall, he didn't draw his sword. If I'm remembering that correctly, he knocked them out.
• Something that's bugged me for a while; in the Dark Tournement arc, after Kuwabara earned a CMOA by beating Elder Toguro, he confronts Yusuke about not telling him about that important, spoilery plot point, believing that Yusuke and the others didn't tell him about it because they think he's a joke. Kurama tells him that Yusuke didn't tell him or Hiei either, and that they had to sense it themselves. It's a very emotional and one of my personal favorite scenes, but I have to wonder why both Hiei and Kurama were able to sense it if Kuwabara couldn't. A big deal was made of Kuwabara's exceptionally high spiritual awareness during the Ghost Yusuke arc. Even Genkai seemed genuinely impressed by his score in the spiritual awareness game at her tournament.
  • Note how in the following season, the Chapter Black Saga, Kuwabara temporarily loses his powers only to develop a new sword technique that saved his life when the bad guys attacked him and his friends. Genkai theorized that Kuwabara's spiritual awareness was so powerful that it developed that new sword technique as a response to what it knew would be needed to defeat that season's villain and the loss of his powers was a temporary side effect of that new power developing. It is possible that during the Dark Tournament saga that power was already beginning to develop which severely weakened his spiritual awareness. This is one possible explanation. However stories sometimes use dramatic convention to spice up the plot even when you take into account that the characters all have the ability to sense power levels. The dramatic impact of Kuwabara learning the truth about Genkai's death from Toguro instead of sensing it himself, is the equivalent of characters dying in Dragon Ball Z and their friends not realizing it until later or them thinking they were dead when they were still clinging to life.
  • He had felt Genkai's death. It's just he was too stupid to realize what that feeling meant, whereas Hiei, Kurama and Shizuru could realize it.
    • He also couldn't read the situation and tell that everyone was stopping just short of saying Genkai had died, something that even those who didn't sense her passing could likely have done.
    • He also doesn't get why everyone acts like there's an inside joke whenever he or Yukina mentions about finding her brother, or why everybody goes "sure we'll look for him riiiight Hiei" wink wink "Hiei" wink wink. And when Hiei gets angry at the others for doing these things, which hint at his relation to Yukina, Kuwabara thinks it's just because Hiei is a jerk. Although in Kuwabara's defense he's never been around to hear anything more than "Yukina has a brother."
  • You can put it down to his stupidity, as explained above, or simply his lack of experience in interpreting his spiritual awareness coupled with the fact that he's distracted with looking for Yusuke.
• A more mundane head scratcher from the start of the series: why doesn't the school principal Takanaka fire those two assholes?
  • Because they aren't entirely unjustified, especially in light of the Japanese educational system. They bring a positive reputation to their school by highlighting exceptional students, such as Keiko Yukimura. At the same time, they're antagonistic and cruel to kids like Yusuke and Kuwabara, because Yusuke is a violent punk and Kuwabara is running a gang; both of them are hurting the school's reputation, and while they don't have grounds to outright expel them from their school, they can make it an unpleasant place for them to be in the hopes that the two will eventually find a different school.
    • Uh, no. Iwamoto stole from students so that he could frame Yusuke for it, and Akashi messes with Kuwabara's test to change his score so he can renege on a deal that he made, which will put a student's family on the street. That's blatant corruption right there.
  • If it makes you feel better, it is heavily implied that the teacher who changed Kuwabara's test score WAS fired, since he never appears again.
    • Mr. Akashi doesn't seem to show up after that, but Mr. Iwamoto, who in the anime was complicit with that, appears near the end, talking contemptuously about Yusuke in class while Keiko and Kuwabara are unimpressed with his lecture.
    • True, and I'm pretty sure Takanaka is the guidance counselor.
    • No, he's the principal. As for why Iwamoto never gets fired... not sure. Connections, maybe?
• Why did Hiei never again transform into that eye-covered "true form" of his? Pride maybe, but he comes close to death in several of his fights; I'd think at that point pride would go out the window.
  • Because those eyes would scream "Hit Me".
    • In the manga at least, not sure about the anime, Kurama stated that all those extra eyes were just illusions.
    • He doesn't say they are illusions, but simply that they serve as "amplifiers" for the real eye, which is still only the one on the front. One theory (aside from the obvious "Togashi hadn't meant for him to return yet"): when Yusuke first meets Hiei, he seems to be a fist-fighter who relies on his high speed and evil eye. As he becomes a swordfighter and fire user, perhaps he's not that interested in using his evil eye for fighting anymore.
  • Perhaps the extra eyes, which mainly serve to paralyze his targets, don't work on powerful opponents?
• It seems like Kiyoshi Mitarai (the Sea Man) loses about a hundred IQ points when he becomes a "good guy." Apart from playing some tennis, he mainly just stands around and looks pretty for the entire rest of his appearances in the series, despite the fact that he's the only one who could have easily defeated Sensui in combat. His power is to use his blood to summon water-monsters from any existing water, which are invulnerable to normal attacks, and which can envelope you. When they do this, you're trapped in a separate dimension, made entirely of water, and can only get out if you have an attack that can break through dimensional barriers. We know that Sensui doesn't have such an attack, because if he did, he would have broken through the Kekkai barrier by himself, instead of needing to lure Kuwabara into doing it. So, why didn't Sea Man just create a large water monster with his blood, use it to envelope Sensui, and drown him within ten minutes? Seems that would have solved their Sensui problem pretty neatly, to the point where he couldn't have escaped like he did, especially since the first thing that Sea Man does after escaping from the Uraotoko is to land in a huge pool of water.
  • Sensui recruited Sea Man, remember? So he knows full well what Sea Man can do, and Sea Man knew what Sensui could do (minus the Sacred Energy part). It's likely that Sea Man feared Sensui enough to not try anything against him. Even if he had the courage to do so, Sensui isn't gullible enough to allow Sea Man to trap him. Besides, Koenma's "Mafuuken" is supposed to be the strongest barrier in existence, obviously more so than any dimensional barrier (including one simply made by water). So, why would Sea Man even bother other than to risk getting himself killed after witnessing Sensui break away from the most powerful barrier that can be made?
• How did Kurama get away with betraying Yomi the second time? I thought Yomi still had his human family under threat.
  • Because at that time he was more concerned with Yusuke and Mukuro attacking him if he didn't go along with the tournament idea, and then the power grab. Plus, as previously mentioned in the series, he's intimately familiar with pissing off Kurama and would likely not risk it again in this situation. Had he won the throne, he might have followed through on his threats.
  • Everyone was getting in on the whole fighting individually deal, even Yomi himself later on.
  • Besides that, I remember Koenma, while musing about Kurama's motives, says, "I know about the threat on your family, but you could get around that." I expect he took steps to ensure their safety.
• Ok, at the end of the series the barrier separating the human and demon worlds was removed and everyone is living in peace. but what about the demons that need to eat humans? I mean, Raizen died because he refused to eat humans. so would demons who are like him suffer the same fate?
  • No. Remember, Enki says "No mischief," meaning that they aren't allowed to prey on humans for fun. However, there are plenty of horrible bad guys like the Black Black Club running around for them to grab up. In fact, in one version of Yusuke telling Raizen off he says "if eating humans is what it takes to get a real fight out of you, I'll just round up some really bad ones and force-feed them to you if I have to." Effectively, I think as long as they aren't going for good people and aren't doing it maliciously but as a natural requirement they'd be fine.
    • It's possible that such demons will find jobs that make that need possible (say, discrete removal of dangerous humans, or volunteering in certain circles working with the dead (say, working for funeral organizations to offer a simple solution to human remains with familial permission))
• One thing I found odd was Yusuke's attitude when he found out that Raizen's servants were eating humans. I mean, earlier on in the series he tries to beat Gouki to a bloody pulp when he found out that he was eating little kids' soul, but when Raizen's servants admitted to eating humans he simply shrugs and says "food is food."
  • People change. Yusuke by that point is terribly disillusioned with the hero thing. After Tarukane, the Dark Tournament experience, and everything that happened with Sensui, the whole idea of "Humans are special, fight to protect humanity from the evils of demons" thing is pretty much dead for Yusuke. As far as he's concerned, humans and demons are not so different. Yeah, there are demons eating humans, and there are humans butchering demons for pleasure, and humans committing various sins to each other, and demons slaughtering each other, etc. etc. and Yusuke doesn't really care anymore because that's just life.
    • That and Gouki ate souls. If you eat a human you kill him and he goes before Koenma to be judged, if you eat a soul the victim ceases to exist.
  • He's basically begun to see life isn't so black and white. Yusuke probably after living with Hokushin for a few years realized even if Hokushin did eat humans, Yusuke may have been confident he wasn't going after 12-year-old Jenny on the swings at the park.
  • Yes people change, but I don't think this is one of those situations. Yusuke has always had an open mind. But even his open mind has its limits. With Gouki, take notice of what was happening: he was eating souls. Not just any souls, souls of children. Pay attention to who Yusuke deals with best besides demons: children. He saved that kid's life at the beginning and before that made faces to make the kid laugh. It was obvious he didn't like Gouki eating a child's soul, almost like he was utterly offended. Near the end he fights that former spirit detective's kids, but does so in a playful way. Other than it involving kids, he wanted to save them not just from death, but from nonexistance. It was very important to him because failure meant they couldn't even become ghosts. To him it was a fate worse than death. Last thing was that Gouki wasn't eating out of necessity, he was treating them like a delicacy. Yusuke understood that if you need them to survive, you need them. He still wanted good people left alone, that's why he suggested getting evil people for Raizen. I think if put into another situation like Gouki, he would do the same thing, make him spit the kid out.
    • There's still the issue that Yusuke has absolutely no clue just what kinds of humans these demons are eating; for all he knows, they could literally be grabbing innocent civilians right off the streets, and it's not like he hasn't encountered Child Eaters before, so the possibility HAD to have occurred to him that they might actually be feasting down on innocent children. Also, Hokushin had admitted he did not need to eat humans to survive — he did so simply to recharge his energy, which loses its punch when you realize there was no reason for his actions and makes him out to be, at best, an anti-hero for taking the lives of possibly innocent humans just so he could become stronger.
  • It also bugs me somewhat, in light of how things aren't quite as black and white for Yusuke as they were before, that Yusuke's talking with a demon and considering things from their perspective for a moment is considered a Moral Event Horizon crossing by Kuroko. Perhaps Kuroko never experienced anything quite like what Yusuke and Sensui did, and sees all demons as heartless killers, though.
    • The problem is just last arc Yusuke couldn't bare the idea of killing another human even if they deserved it. A good example of this was his fight against Minoru Kamiya. He was insane cruel and tried to kill Yusuke and his friends, and even then Yusuke had a hard time bringing himself to kill him, and even when he did Genkai had to bring Minoru back life just to spare Yusuke the guilt.But now he has no problem with potentially innocent people getting eaten by demons, and even offers to round up a few bad ones. It's just completely jarring! did becoming a demon changed him that much?
    • Well, he'd been living in Demon World for, what, 2-3 years? That's more than enough time for him to change his stance on the matter, especially considering all the above points.
    • Yusuke said this before going into demon and when he first met Raizen and realized they were eating humans.
• Who were the other two members of the original Team Toguro and whatever happened to them?
  • Given that it was the Dark Tournament, we can guess what happened to them. We'll never know who they were though...
• Why didn't Kido just stop Doctor from moving once he was near him instead of waiting for Yusuke to arrive and stopping his movements?
  • Kido was taken by surprise and taken down before he could step on Doctor's shadow. (He has to step on their shadow with his foot.) He was able to stop Yusuke because Yusuke's shadow overlapped his foot on the ground.
• In the Chapter Black arc — Why didn't Sensui show Kuwabara the infamous Chapter Black video after he captured him? There was nothing stopping him from doing that.
  • Perhaps he simply didn't think of it, his plan at that point was mostly solid. He'd even planned to have Gourmet eat Kuwabara to take his powers and use them to break the Kekkai. Also, it's stated that the tape is hundreds of hours long and there wasn't much time until the tunnel opened.
  • Also the video doesn't work on everybody; the people it was used on already had their own issues. Kuwabara and the others already knew that not all people are like that, especially after so many self-sacrifices for one another.
    • Good point. In fact, Mitarai was able to shake off the brainwashing after being shown kindness by Kuwabara.
• Genkai, during the tournament to find her successor, doesn't give two ripe shits about the moral fiber of the candidates. Yet, she later puts Yusuke through a test, telling him he'll have to kill her to get her power, and when he refuses she says he would have failed if he'd agreed to do it. What if Rando had been it? He surely would have jumped at the opportunity. And she said the training to gain the Orb would normally have taken ten years. So, ten years training Rando, he fails the test, and she kills him and finds a new apprentice? Hoping she doesn't die of old age in the meantime?
  • She was willing to teach Rando the Spirit Wave technique, but the test she had for Yusuke was for her giving up the orb that contains 90%+ of her power. As for the second part: Yup. She was hoping to have a successor to inherit her Spirit Wave Orb, but she wasn't desperate for it.
    • Passing on the Orb seemed a pretty big deal to her. I mean, the whole point of creating it was so that she could give it to her successor. And she said, at least in the dub, that instead of being driven by heroism, she just had the sense that her power should always exist, and as long as she passed it on, she had no regrets. Teaching the actual technique seems to have just been the stepping stone to what she really wanted.
    • And, even if she didn't care that much about passing on the Orb, why bother? Ten years of her life, devoted to training her apprentice for it. Why set herself up for failure?
• Team Ichigaki, Team Masho, Team Uraotogi, Team Toguro, the Spirit Warriors, Team Gorenja, and the team that Uraotogi fought before the semifinals, plus Team Urameshi is eight teams that made it past the first round of the Dark Tournament. And with the exception of Toguro and Urameshi, every one of these teams had five fighters until they lost. Does this not seem unusual? Every team coasts until they get to their final battle. At most, they lose one fighter and bring in a substitute. Not the most effective way to put on a show, which is the tournament's business model. Of course, you could argue that it's a better show if each team in each round has five, but why not allow more substitutions? If a team squeaks by one round with three still alive and two injured, that means all their next opponent has to do is send in a strong fighter to win the first match, and since it's best of three that's the end of the round. Boring. The fans would be demanding their money back.
  • That actually pretty unlikely, for starters even if a team were to "squeaks by" one round with three still alive and two injured they should still have one substitutions so it would be 4 against 5 instead of 3 against 5 with the weaker team having at least two uninjured fighters since its impossible for a team to lose 3 out of their 5 match and advance. and even then teams are allow to change the rules a bit like how when Team Urameshi fought Team ichigaki it was a free for all instead of a best of 5 in order to make it more fair. and if one team barely survive their first or second round with half their teammates dead or injured while their opposing team somehow manage to win all their fights so far with zero injures or fatalities then they probably suck and would most likely get owned even if they had a full roster .Plus on the off change that team actually wins it would defiantly be something to see.
• Why does anyone in the tournament think they have a prayer of beating Toguro? Does no one have a clue, despite evidence from previous tournaments, how strong Toguro and his henchmen are? I mean, geez, Team Urameshi kicked Team Uraotogi's asses without Yusuke, and Uraotogi kicked the asses of their previous opponents, who presumably kicked the asses of whatever team they faced in the first round. So many fighters who seem not to realize how laughably weak they are compared to Toguro.
  • Suicidal Overconfidence. It's a very common thing among weaker demons, for some reason. I guess they're so used to kicking around normal humans and weakling demons that they forget they're small fish in a tiny pond, so they think they can take on people they obviously can't.
  • That and the fact most teams are not told exactly everything about everyone who is entering this tournament. Team Urameshi really had idea who most of the demons entering the tournament were except for Toguro. so it's possible most participants have no idea who Toguro is let alone how crazy powerful he is. and some demon are Blood Knights who likes a challenge and want a chance at killing him.
• I keep hearing that the six demons from the Dark Tournament who came back for the Three Kings arc were A class. How does this work? Their power rating was ~120,000, right? Kurama, at 152,000, was apparently stronger than Shachi, who was a little stronger than Hokushin according to the bar graph Youda showed Kurama. And Hokushin was much stronger than Yusuke at the beginning of the arc. Not only this, but supposedly S class starts at 140,000. So, Yusuke was 140,001, and Hokushin, who's supposed to be far stronger, was maybe 150,000? That's what it takes to say that Yusuke is far weaker?
  • They were A class BEFORE they went through Training from Hell under Genkai. The sequence of events was: train to A class, get introduced to Yomi so Kurama can tell him his plan and demonstrate that it will work, train to S class.
  • Difference in anime and manga. They reached A class in the anime and S class in the manga.
• What's with saying, in the Three Kings saga, that only D class apparitions or lower can get through the Kekkai barrier? I mean, granted that they might want to upgrade, but according to Koenma, they could only do so much and that was why the energy had to be spread out so much that B class could squeeze through, so they could keep the A and S class out at all costs.
  • Sakyo said that most natural holes in the barrier were really small, right? Maybe demons above D-class have to go through special (and expensive) procedures to get through.
  • Considering the Dark Tournament was full of C classes, they undoubtedly did get through the barrier.
    • Or, like Hiei, they went through the barrier when they were weaker, then became trapped in the Human World.
• During the Dark Tournament, Yusuke was willing to kill Dr. Ichigaki's experiments to put them out of their misery. Yet he gets mad at Genkai for doing the same thing. Why?
  • She didn't. She purified them, basically and freed their bodies and minds.
  • The troper's question is "Why did Yusuke get mad at Genkai for doing the thing he was about to do?" Remember, Yusuke was under the impression that the three were killed by the Masked Fighter until he was informed otherwise. But remember he was about to launch a full-powered spirit gun at them which he verbally announced would likely kill them. So it's actually a bit of a headscratcher why he would get angry at Genkai for believing she did exactly what he was planning on doing moments before. Besides bad writing, one explanation might be that Yusuke is sort of a hot-head a bit of a hypocrite. Recall what he did with the Forlorn Hope. He tends to think with emotions when he's not actively fighting, and uses his emotions (which is arguably his greatest strength) even when in combat.
• Why does the Anime put emphasis on Kurama having to choose between his demon form and human form? When he's fighting in the Demon World Tournament he makes a big deal about how fighting as Yoko Kurama is eroding away at his human identity. But why does he think that way? The mind is still Kurama's regardless of the shape of his body, all the lessons he's learned from spending time with his mother and his friends don't magically go away. Like does Kurama think the demon form will erode at his sanity and that his more unsavory impulses can't be repressed? That seems rather silly when you look at how much self control Kurama has at every point in the story. And if it's the issue of not being able to live on Earth in his demon form (which would raise all sorts of unfortunate questions with his human mother) then what's stopping him from just switching between the red haired and silver haired forms when it suits him?
  • Even Kurama has his flaws. Plus, he's the only demon in his group to perform a "merger", and demons don't operate the same way as a human does. Besides, it's not unheard of for humans to have the whole multiple personalities thing (as Sensui is proof of that), but Kurama didn't get two personas from mental stress, he got them from living in two different bodies. Also, Kurama actually wouldn't have an issue switching to his original demon fox form, but he didn't want to become dependent on it, let alone have it be a reminder of his past life, which by the way he no longer wanted to be a part of since he lived with humans since his "rebirth" so to speak. Overall, it's mostly his personal choice and perspective on avoiding going over to his demon side 100%... not any different from a former drug user trying to avoid cigarettes due to nictotine, and not wanting to be a slave to his own power like a human not wanting to be a slave to the effects of a drug. And, in the words of the younger Torguro brother: "Demon energy may not be as strong as human spirit energy, but it gives a much more pleasurable sensation when used!"
  • The character arcs of the main four are all journeys to self-acceptance. Kurama starts the series literally suicidal with guilt over his past cruelties. When he first regains his old form in the Dark Tournament, it's explicitly a regression to his old body, his old power, and his old cruel ways, but even after he starts being able to transform under his own power, taking his old form or nearly taking it is always in a moment of regressing Character Development, where he is at his worst and falling back on old habits. In the Three Kings arc especially, there's a lot of focus on how cold and cruel Kurama used to be. His decision at the end of the series to stop using that form is important because it means he's finally resolved that, even though regressing to his old ways makes him more powerful, the moral cost isn't worth it. He's finally reconciled with his past and is ready to move forward in life as a better person than he used to be.

• I'm curious about the Ice Maiden reproduction and how it's supposed to work. I think the story makes an off hand reference to them reaching the maturity necessary for asexual reproduction at 100 years of age. But what kind of reproduction is it? Do they just use a magic spell that creates Ice Maidens whole sale? Or do they still need to get pregnant (albeit, without a father) to produce more of their own kind? And more importantly, where does a man factor into this equation? Would someone like Yukina (who is probably not 100-years-old yet) be able to get pregnant with the help of a man, or would she have to wait?
  • Demon biology is clearly not the same as a human. It's clear that Ice Maidens can simply create a baby from nothing, but only ever produce one child. Of course, since they have vaginas, it's not unlikely that they can have kids in the traditional way too, they just don't need to. So, when the traditional way occurs, something different was bound to happen. Yukina being almost a century old, was probably the equivalent of a 15-year-old girl, which is old enough to bear a child, even if she doesn't look like it. Besides, she's probably flat-chested, not that we would know exactly given that shes always wearing some kind of thick kimono.
  • There are plenty of real-life examples of parthenogenesis, just not in mammals. An unfertilized ovum spontaneously becomes an embryo. Also, just because the Ice Maidens' *ovulation cycle* is 100 years, that doesn't necessarily mean that Yukina and Hiei are less than 100-years-old, just that they haven't hit puberty yet. Most large animals take much longer to reach sexual maturity than it takes for an adult to get pregnant twice.
• Okay, I've been watching a lot of the english version, and one thing confuses me: They occasionally conflate Spirit World and Demon World. In the Episode 27 narration, Jorge the Rap Ogre unambiguously says that demons come from Spirit World, and this doesn't just seem Early-Installment Weirdness either. Hokushin asks Yusuke to complete his training in the "Spirit World" while at Kuroko's place after the Sensui mess. Is this just a dub error about how the three worlds relate, or (just a headcanon guess) was it supposed to hint at some discarded plot point that Koenma, Botan and the Spirit World were demons themselves? Or what?
  • The manga delves into this a little deeper. Demon World is more like a sectioned off version of Spirit World at large. Still odd that Hokushin refers to it as Spirit World, though.
• What's the deal with the vision of Kuwabara during the Yusuke vs Yomi fight? How did vision-Kuwabara read and respond to Yomi's mental question? Kurama acknowledges it, even with understandable surprise at why he's suddenly hearing Kuwabara, so it's not simply a viewer-only thing. Did the power of friendship and MANLINESS transcend the worldly boundaries, or what? Is it supposed to be a weird thing?
  • I believe it's supposed to be an imagine spot. Kurama is caught up a little bit in the spirit, and the answer to his "what's going on?" is something that can only be expressed in terms Kuwabara would use.
• About the whole reveal with Enma in the manga: apparently, King Enma brainwashed lesser demons and unleashed them on the Human World so that they could use them as an excuse to protect the Human World from the Demons, and is treated as a very bad thing to do... but on a second thought... how does that make sense? From what we have seen, the Spirit Detectives were few and apparently located only in Japan, only a handful of people are aware of Demons, and probably even less know that the Spirit World is real or how it works, so why put up a façade considering that of the three factions involved, one is mostly unaware, one is the perpetrator and one is mostly composed of hostile psychopaths who apparently are the victims? If it's for resources as implied in the Nightmare Fuel page, then why don't just offer to fight the demons in exchange for a material that humans have no use for? (and let's be honest, even the unadultered ones like Hiei and Yoko Kurama have proven to be a danger to mankind). Seriously, when I watched the anime, that ending made more sense than the manga's one.

My idea was that the brainwashing was mostly done to convince the demons and other beings of the spirit/demon world he was in the right to place his followers as guardians of the human world and to expand his territory than it was to fool the humans.

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