Yu Yu Hakusho

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yoko Kurama is weak? News to me.

He was clearly more powerful than Karasu who was also an official B. If Yoko Kurama wasn't an A rank, then the fight wouldn't have been so one sided.

[talonmalon333]

Yoko Kurama is weak? News to me.

He was clearly more powerful than Karasu who was also an official B. If Yoko Kurama wasn't an A rank, then the fight wouldn't have been so one sided.

He seemed nervous when Karasu's mask was removed.

[Aurora]

To make it short, as of the end of the tournament Kurama was a B. He DID jump up to an A in the next saga. That part's a fact. My question is about his demon form, Yoko Kurama. In the Dark Tournament they make him out to be fairly weak, and yet he's supposedly an A.

Oh yes, that. I just thought Kurama low level B class and turning into Yoko turned him into a mid-B. Though your right about him dominating the fight..which Hiei basically, did too when he absorbed the Dragon. I hate this. 

[gunswordfist]

So I've recently started rewatching this. And I think, for the first time, I'm gonna state my problems with this series. And that's the fact that, good as it is, it REALLY feels like they are making it up along the way. Few things I believe were planned, such as Toguro's survival in the first season, and Hiei and Kurama teaming up with them (though Hiei's crude character design in the first few episodes makes me wonder otherwise).

But things like Yusuke's lineage certainly feel like they weren't planned. And most of the time I don't have a BIG problem with this, but the inconsistencies get sloppy. For example, King Yama's character design completely changes in the third season. Sure, like we won't notice that! Not only that, but his established character also changes. What we learn about him in the first few episodes is that he's basically an angry god who will, as Koenma states, destroy cities to get his 3 artifacts. Tell me, do you imagine the CURRENT King Yama, all official and proper, doing that? No. He'd send out the SDF to search for the artifacts.

Another thing that just doesn't line up for me is Hiei's whole story. His first appearance no longer works. Look at his story. We learn that he was exiled from his home... Okay... We learn that he gets the Jagan and wants to find his sister... Makes sense... So how on earth does he get so sidetracked by those artifacts? Heck, the least they could have done is whip up an explanation for it, that maybe he wanted the sword to create demons to help his search. At least then they could pretend they had things planned.

There's also the fact that every demon they meet is the end all, eat-face-and-die, master villain. In the beginning, OH MY GOSH HIEI KURAMA AND GOUKI ARE PUSHING OUT TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF ENERGY. Then we learn they are just a bunch of wimps. How about the Saint Beasts? They supposedly could have taken over the world. Well... I think Sensui would have a few things to say to that.

Then we get Toguro, who they flat-out call "the most powerful". And even when they try to bring in the statistics in the next season, it still feels weird. But I guess they do have a good way to explain this. Basically he's the most powerful in human world...

Now we get to Sensui, probably my biggest problem. HE seems like the ultimate villain. I remember when these episodes were on Toonami years ago, after seeing the Sacred Energy I actually said "No one will ever be stronger then Sensui". Then, guess what? He's a weakling! And what ever happened to the A-class? Minoru called them the equivalent to beasts and gods of myth, and that they are watching from the tunnel "waiting for their chance to rise to glory". Seem invincible, eh? Nope! They're just fodder! Once you get to demon world, everyone and their dog is AT LEAST an A-class. Good thing they didn't make a fifth season, where we'd learn that Raizen is the lackey of "a greater power".

Of course there are other things here and there, like powers being ignored. The Spirit Wave could have been useful, and how come Koenma stopped using that time freeze ability after the first few episodes? That could have been useful!

All these little things do bother me. But of course, they are drowned out by the brilliance of this series. So don't take this as me trying to put it down!

Hmmm, time freeze. I don't really recall that.

[gunswordfist]

Going back to the artifacts that must have been some weak security guarding if they were defeated by D-classes. :-/


In fact, looking at the whole First Season...did Koenma seriously expected Yusuke to win his battles? They wanted him too fight 3 D-classes were able to infiltrate Spirit World kill some guards who might have been stronger than Yusuke, A demon going around collecting the best techniques of psychics that might have also been more powerful than Yusuke, and go up against 4 powerful(at the time) Saint Beasts all by himself(I doubt they expected the other 3 to help) without any other support?


I know it would be boring if everything was easy and the opponents weak, but still.

Koenma assigned both Hiei and Kurama to help Yusuke as some sort of work release kind of thing like they do in prison. That made sense. Team up Yusuke with two other powerful demons. Kuwabara went on his own behalf out of honor or some shit. Koenma also made sense in Chapter Black when he knew Yusuke would get killed. The first 3 missions was ridiculous though. Well actually Rescue Yukina much less so since Koenma admittedly had little data on the Toguro brothers but the Genkai Tournament and 3 artifacts missions were straight up suicide. Kurama would have beaten Yusuke with laughable ease. Koenma had no way of knowing he was kind hearted.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, Koenma was clueless. He got better at his job as the series went on, but at the beginning he was as dumb as Yusuke was.

The time freeze thing was from when Yusuke was accused of stealing the pen in school and Koenma froze time to give him his mission and point out where the pen was. In the manga, that didn't happen. Koenma did it in real time and nobody knew what Yusuke was looking at. I think they just used time freeze to make the scene play easier in animation.

[gunswordfist]

Togashi mentioned in an interview once that Kurama was always planned to be a good guy, but Hiei wasn't at first.

As for the Karasu thing, Karasu was a B rank and Yoko Kurama was an A rank. Going gold wouldn't have brought him to A rank, or he would have beaten Toguro long ago.

That reminds me, didn't Sensui's right hand man say Hiei and Kurama were on the verge of being A class demons right before Yusuke died? I believe when Yoko Kurama first appeared, he was B class. Likely B just mid B class because I doubt they'd have him stronger than Toguro at that point.

[gunswordfist]

To make it short, as of the end of the tournament Kurama was a B. He DID jump up to an A in the next saga. That part's a fact. My question is about his demon form, Yoko Kurama. In the Dark Tournament they make him out to be fairly weak, and yet he's supposedly an A.

Oh yes, that. I just thought Kurama low level B class and turning into Yoko turned him into a mid-B. Though your right about him dominating the fight..which Hiei basically, did too when he absorbed the Dragon. I hate this. 

I believe that's exactly what happened. And Hiei was another example of a B class dominating another B class but in Hiei's case he pretty dominated throughout the entire Bui fight.

Yeah, Koenma was clueless. He got better at his job as the series went on, but at the beginning he was as dumb as Yusuke was.

The time freeze thing was from when Yusuke was accused of stealing the pen in school and Koenma froze time to give him his mission and point out where the pen was. In the manga, that didn't happen. Koenma did it in real time and nobody knew what Yusuke was looking at. I think they just used time freeze to make the scene play easier in animation.

Makes sense and yeah, baby face acted like an idiot.

[talonmalon333]

I also think the SDF makes things from earlier seem less dire. It makes sense for them to send their weaker men (Yusuke) first and hold back on the SDF. But they talk like the Saint Beasts and Rando will DESTROY THE WORLD if Yusuke fails.

And I still don't buy that King Enma would "destroy continents" if the artifacts weren't recovered in time.

[Spark Of Spirit]

And I still don't buy that King Enma would "destroy continents" if the artifacts weren't recovered in time.

He probably wouldn't. But remember, this is Koenma being a baby. He didn't think rationally once during the three artifacts arc, IIRC even yelling at Yusuke to finish faster even though he was half dead from Koenma's terrible directions.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I just reread Kurama Vs Karasu in the manga, and it wasn't a one sided fight at all. Yoko Kurama took Karasu by surprise and did him some damage for it, but Kurama turned back before we could really see them go at it. Karasu lost because he didn't understand Kurama's plant powers, and not because he was outmatched at all.

Kurama won because he was smarter, not stronger.

[gunswordfist]

I also think the SDF makes things from earlier seem less dire. It makes sense for them to send their weaker men (Yusuke) first and hold back on the SDF. But they talk like the Saint Beasts and Rando will DESTROY THE WORLD if Yusuke fails.

And I still don't buy that King Enma would "destroy continents" if the artifacts weren't recovered in time.

Of course he wouldn't do that.

Koenma sent Yusuke to avoid angrying his father because if he failed, he would have gotten a beaten and of course SDF would finish Yusuke's early jobs with ease.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I also think the SDF makes things from earlier seem less dire. It makes sense for them to send their weaker men (Yusuke) first and hold back on the SDF. But they talk like the Saint Beasts and Rando will DESTROY THE WORLD if Yusuke fails.

Well, keep in mind that the SDF were under King Enma's control, not Koenma's (recall in Chapter Black that King Enma himself issues the order for them to kill Yusuke and capture Koenma, and then later to kill Koenma in the beginning of the Three Kings arc). I believe it was implied that King Enma was away on "business" of some sort and it would be likely that since he's the big honcho of Spirit World, he must be the one to deal with more pressing matters, and perhaps something was going on with demon world or something (and I also believe it was implied when Genkai died that there were other worlds or dimensions that one could be sent to after they died, or something like that, so maybe Spirit World deals with other dimensions we've never heard of as well, but that's just a theory of mine with not really enough evidence to back it up, so I only propose it as an idea).

They never talk like Rando will destroy the world if Yusuke were to fail. Where did you even hear that? As I recall, they said that if he gained Genkai's ability he would go on a massive killing spree testing the limits of his power, which is certainly a very big deal, but it was never made out to be a "world ending" catastrophe. The Saint Beasts demanded access to the human realm, and likely wanted to take over the world or something like that, but if anything Koenma didn't take them seriously enough since he just sent Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Kurama and Hiei as allied support to take them out (keeping in mind that even if they were around the same class level, Yusuke and Kuwabara were still way too inexperienced to be expected to take on something of that sort). They also never really acted like the Saint Beasts would destroy the world, but more like they would endanger a whole lot of human lives if they were to gain access to the human world.

Also, as for the Dark Tournament which I believe you mentioned something about earlier, don't forget that Yusuke himself agreed to do it because Toguro threatened that he would kill Keiko and others Yusuke cared about if he didn't. Koenma had nothing to do with forcing Yusuke into it or anything of the sort.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Rando was just after the techniques and loved testing them out on humans. That was never a world ending catastrophe.

The Saint Beasts was Koenma's jurisdiction, and had he failed, King Enma probably would have sent in the SDF. But Yusuke's group was the first line of attack and had a very high chance of success with Kurama and Hiei, so it was probably never in the cards.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Reading Chapter Black now.

Ranks by Dark Tournament's end:

Toguro - B+
Hiei - B

Which would probably put Bui at B- (due to Hiei's dominance) and Karasu at most around likely the same due to him being slightly overwhelmed when first fighting Yoko Kurama.

Hiei's rank in the Three Artifacts arc - D+ (and they comment at his astonishing progress in the last six months)

So I guess Yusuke would be floating around matching the lower C rank until his training for the Dark Tournament shot him up to around the C+ level before the Spirit Wave.