Anime/Yu Yu Hakusho [Revived]

RK has many great features. Its female representation is not one of them and it has bugged me for a long time. Kaoru is just totally worthless.

The scene does happen in the anime, but it's modified. In the manga, she straight up punches the dude in the face and then complains that she didn't hit him hard enough because she's getting rusty.

In the anime, it's turned into the "flustered girl shrieks and slaps with her eyes closed" cliche.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

In the manga, it's played less like Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male and more that she, Kuwabara's sister, and Yusuke's mom are legitimately strong enough to beat up weaker demons easily.

Studio Pierrot is not kind to females...not named Hinata.

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I kind of wish one or two of the guys in the Genkai tournament came back later in some form. Some of those guys had legitimate skill, with Kazemaru even being heavily implied to be STRONGER than Yusuke was at the time. Maybe the Ichigaki team in the Dark Tournament would have resonated more if those martial artists had been seen earlier in Genkai's tournament.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 11th 2021 at 11:35:58 AM

You know, sometimes I see people mention Yusuke and Hiei's "rivalry", and I stop and have to wonder what they mean. Yusuke and Hiei don't have a rivalry. It's Yusuke and Kuwabara who have the rivalry, Hiei's more just doing his own thing.

It feels like people forcing Goku/Vegeta parallels when Hiei isn't even based on Vegeta to begin with (he's based on this guy). And like Kuwabara can't be the "shounen rival" character, he's the comic relief and not nearly cool enough, so Hiei must be the rival, right? Except Hiei doesn't compete with Yusuke to get stronger at all, and Hiei's personal feelings on Yusuke can be summed up more as "begrudging respect and admiration" rather than "aggressive competitiveness".

Yusuke and Hiei are bros.

That's kind of the cool thing about Yu Yu Hakusho, just how bro-ey the four leads are. Kuwabara occasionally panics about how powerful Hiei is but for the most part everyone's just chilling.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 15th 2021 at 5:17:52 AM

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Kuwabara thinks he's The Rival.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

It's not entirely one-sided, Kuwabara was able to get Yusuke to break free of Rando's webs by astral projecting to him and calling him a big weenie wuss. Some part of Yusuke does have a competitive side with Kuwabara.

I feel like Kurama and Volg from Hajime no Ippo are the same character reincarnated in different worlds. Redheads who have a dark side but are actually super wholesome at their core and love their moms.

A small change the anime made that I don't like is that Kuwabara trains with both Kurama and Hiei in the lead-up to the Dark Tournament. In the manga, Kuwabara only trains with Kurama, and it creates a neat relationship between the two most human and wholesome members of the team. It also helps explain how Hiei got the Dragon of the Darkness Flame, the lead-up to the Dark Tournament is when he got it and why he didn't train with anyone else.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 15th 2021 at 6:29:23 AM

Eh, there was an indication in the anime that Hiei held back a lot on Kuwabara, so it wouldn't surprise me if Kurama did the bulk of the training (and helped Kuwabara with improving his Spirit Sword) and during those times, Hiei worked on the Dragon of the Darkness Flame.

One Strip! One Strip!

I always assumed that in order to access the Dragon of the Darkness Flame technique in the first place, Hiei had to make a personal trek into Demon World to that pit of black hell-fire it comes from and learn how to summon it from the source. Not much time for that if he's beating up Kuwabara.

Hiei would have still been able to go through the barrier back then wouldn't he?

Like, at that point he was below B-class, and you gotta be A-class and above to get blocked.

I could buy he took a trip back to demon world.

One Strip! One Strip!

Competitive in the sense that "Kuwabara is the only one who gives him a workout". I sorta think that before the whole dying thing, Kuwabara was his second best friend, and the events after that only improved the relationship.

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That also explains why he didn't use it against Urameshi, he didn't have it yet.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I was about to blow up that Yusuke didnt have a first best friend if it wasnt Kuwabara then I remembered Keiko. Good on you.

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Nah, Yusuke and Hiei had that weird rival fight in the middle of Chapter Black. That's probably where it comes from.

That wasn't a rival fight, that was Hiei going "Bro, I know you're feeling frustrated now, bro. Those guys have abilities that invalidate your strength, I get it, bro, so fight me, bro. There, are you feeling better now that you've had a real, personal fist-fight, bro?"

That wasn't a fight meant to prove anything except that Yusuke isn't weak and useless. That wasn't a rival match, that was Hiei seeing that his bro was feeling frustrated and inadequate and helping a bro out in the best way he can.

Kuwabara and Hiei have that Kyle and Cartman energy lol. Friends who are diametrically opposed morally and constantly belittle each other because of it. Except without the whole archenemy thing those two have.

I guess in this analogy Kurama would be Kenny, which... actually tracks. Huh.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 16th 2021 at 10:32:21 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

One thing we were talking about a little while ago is that the new status quo established at the end of the series, with Spirit World having received an overhaul in leadership with Koenma taking over in light of Enma being revealed as an evil corrupt asshole, would be a good setting for a continuation of the series. We've already seen one example with the elite squad turning into terrorists and taking everyone hostage, but I just thought of another potential antagonist: Kuroko Sanada, the first Spirit Detective. I could see her becoming an anti-demon antagonist later down the line.

Something that's surprising me in the anime is the prominence of this random blue ogre who hangs out with Koenma, he's not in the manga at all. Also, Koenma being in his baby form during the Dark Tournament, when he was in his human form the entire time in the manga.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 26th 2021 at 5:10:57 AM

George was probably another thing they changed/added to force the story in line with genre conventions. Shounen love The Watson characters who need to be told what's going on, and while the series is quite funny, there aren't an awful lot of specifically comic relief characters (there's, like, Kuwabara and that's it).

George was one, and likewise turned Koenma into one, allowing the series constantly pop back to them for jokes.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Not just Kuroko Sanada, there may be other former Spirit Detectives that has potentially gotten stronger than the Elite Guard that may not see eye to eye to the idea of the Demon World being allowed to freely travel to the Human World again.

They wouldn't even need to be as strong as Yusuke's crew to keep them in check. If their base of operations is in the Human World, Yusuke and the gang would be forced to keep their attacks below S-Rank lest they risk breaking the Earth.

Edited by Servbot on Feb 27th 2021 at 12:42:25 PM

Also, as we've seen in the Chapter Black arc, humans are capable of developing abilities that bypass power levels entirely, so that's one major way that a human group of anti-demon extremists could be a serious threat.

For much of the series, it's generally implied that human reiki had greater potential to increase in strength than demons, but live such short lives that even though who train and study rarely reach that level, and those that do rarely stay there for long. Humans in YYH generally burst in power to great heights and then wane.

Meanwhile, demons live hundreds if not thousands of years and (typically) keep slowly rising in youki, power and prominence in that time. As a result, the average demon will always be stronger than the average human, but guys like Sensui are a problem, and old guard demons like Raizen are on different level than anybody.

Chapter Black both added to this and subtractws to this, establishing that psychics could have powers that were straight up hax in comparison to reiki or youki, but also retcons one of the stronger humans in the series into being part demon all along.

But that's just a lot of rambling to kind of explain why I could buy a team of human martial artists / psychics - especially one from a powerful master - being capable of being a serious challenge.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 26th 2021 at 10:45:48 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

A group of humans with the right kind of powers could likely take out demons.

Look at Aonuma and Kaito. Get a demon inside their territory, and no level of power in the world can save them....in theory.

We don't know if it's possible to just raise your youki so high it might break the territory somehow. That's really more a DB thing, but I still wouldn't rule it out completely. Apply enough power and nothing is impossible. It's simple a matter of how to get that much power, and where to apply it.

There's also the fact that they have to get them inside the territory as well. I'm still wondering if it's possible to kill them by just launching an attack from outside of said territory at them.

One Strip! One Strip!

The only characters we know of who have the ability to completely bypass the territory system is characters with the ability to rip through reality itself, which is Kuwabara and apparently the anime gave Mukuro that ability, too.

This conversation is just making me think of the possibilities of a "Chapter Black arc, Part 2", except instead of the villains being Sensui leading a team of humans who want demons to kill all humans, it's Sanada leading a team of humans who hate demons and want them to stay out of the human world. Chapter Black, but from the exact opposite side.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 27th 2021 at 8:28:31 AM

Speaking of, Kuwabara would probably end up getting separated from the group again to prevent him from making mince-meat of any territory using psychics in the hypothetical anti-demon group.

On the other hand, being the Token Human, I could imagine Kuwabara getting isolated by the anti-demon group anyway in an attempt to convince him to join them. Maybe being forced into a duel with one of the traditional non-Psychic reiki users.

...actually, we haven't seen any Psychics that had also mastered how to use their reiki have we? Someone having both would likely create quite a challenge for the heroes, being someone they'd need to both outthink and outfight.

Edited by Servbot on Feb 27th 2021 at 7:42:58 AM