Mangá vs Anime

As a sequel to yesterday’s post about Brooke Davis meeting Chopper; I have a FUNNIER one!

Imagine if she met YUSUKE URAMESHI 😂

Yu Yu Hakusho POP UP STORE in Loft vol.4 (2024)

Volume 4: "Makai Edition Battle"

AMNIBUS has announced the 4th edition of the Yu Yu Yu Hakusho POP UP STORE in Loft! It will be held from February 17th, 2024, for a limited period at some Loft stores! The new illustrations are based on the 3 Kings Arc, so there's no Kuwabara! 😢 But, we can spot Shigure in those silhouettes. It's rare to have Shigure merch.

Details will be announced later!

The last three volumes covered the Dark Tournament and Black Chapter Sagas:

vol. 1 ~ Nostalgic 90’s Casual Fashion (2021)

vol.2 ~ Dark Tournament (2022)

vol. 3 ~ Tactical Fashion/Sensui Saga (2023)

It seems they like drawing Kurama in a ponytail. It's good to see him with his normal hair for a change. I love papa Raizen ♥️

⸺ yu yu hakusho

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Yu yu Hakusho

I saw Yu yu Hakusho the Netflix live-action version, I am a die-hard fan and I was really hyped but wary about it before it came out lol but I would say if you are a fan watch it! below are spoilers and my take on the live-action :)

I watched an interview before watching the show so I knew a few things first. Some of the people who worked on the show were fans so they were really determined to do as much as possible to give us the actual story. With that said!

The choreography was amazing, the characters were pretty spot-on for the most part. A few times I was like ehhhh, but otherwise.

They were aged up to 17 which is around the age they were during the Three Kings saga. Rather than the 14 they were at the start of the manga and anime.

Keiko had short hair the whole time instead of the whole the fire ruined her hair. They did do the fire lol The whole Yusuke dying part was a bit different but that was because they were smashing things together lol

They also had to smash two other things together lol the rescue of Yukina and the dark tournament which was more of a gauntlet than a tournament lol which means we missed the saint beasts before the dark tournament and the other contestants for the tournament like the wind master jin.

Also, Hiei gets his Jagan differently which I found boring but eh whatever, The demon surgeon was more interesting lol

We obviously don't get the humans with powers arc, sensui, or the three kings which they could do in the future if this gets enough attention and I would like to see them do more as this wasn't half bad!

overall? I liked it, Die-hard fans like me will always notice the differences and mourn some of the changes due to time constraints. but I really enjoyed it anyway! It brought back memories of reading the manga and watching the anime. I will always love the original but I don't hate this, for what it is? It's impressive!

Also! I almost forgot, we got smile bomb even if it was for a second lol

Custom Toonami Block Update!

Man it’s been a while since I’ve posted an actual update huh? Kinda been having a hard time making room for the block lately since work has been scheduling me on weekends more and more and I may not be able to do it every week if that keeps up but I want to try and keep things going.

I call this the “Fuck it, Real Toonami doesn’t seem willing or capable to air hype anime atm and is feeding off Adult Swim reruns and their own pet projects of varying quality so here’s a bunch of shit I wanted to watch but never put on the block because I thought real Toonami might get around to it at some point but that doesn’t seem likely anymore” Pack, or “Fuck it Pack” for short.

This is all stuff I thought it would be really cool for Toonami to air and was avoiding putting on the custom block since I wanted to do a blind watch if they ever popped up but I’ve been saying that about some of these for almost three years at this point and Toonami has half a dozen shows they still haven’t even aired all the seasons for so I’m not gonna let something I’m supposed to enjoy stop me from enjoying these series anymore and maybe watching them on my own will make me somewhat less bitter about real Toonami dragging their feet on trying to get a lot of the anime people are actually talking about.

But yeah, pretty self-explanatiory, Inuyasha and Yu Yu Hakusho are the only long-runner holdouts from the previous block, Spy X Family takes the first slot since having something relatively easy-going seems to work pretty well, then we start getting into the darker shit with Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man which’ve just been on my list for a while now and we end off with some more cult hits like Ranking of Kings and Vinland Saga because those just kinda match the tone of previous holders of those slots.

Pretty excited for these, hopefully I won’t burn myself out trying to watch all these at once, fingers crossed!

A True Warrior Needs No Blade...

Imo the live action Yu Yu Hakusho screwed itself over by trying to do too much

This is a critical take (obviously), so you should scroll away if you're not interested in that. I'm not trying to spoil anyone's good time and you shouldn't let me. That said...

In my opinion, the live-action Yu Yu Hakusho tried to cover far too much material in far too little time. As a result, it screwed itself twice over: first, the material it did adapt was not given enough time to develop, and second, that same material having been used up in this one season means that it can't be used for any potential future seasons. The Dark Tournament is completely shot with Team Toguro already gone; that tournament plus the Spirit Detective Saga took up over half of the original series. I don't know what they expect to do from here. Chapter Black could still work if they just, you know, gloss over all the parts where Genkai did anything (RIP Genkai lol)...but it would be repetitive in a way it wasn't in the original anime or the manga because the live-action series made Sakyo much more of a focus. In the original Sakyo's ambition of opening the demon world was less the main threat and more a nebulous threatening idea introduced through Sakyo and then properly fleshed out with Sensui. Here it was made a far more real and immediate danger, which was then dealt with. Bringing up the exact same danger again the very next season is just redundant.

Even if they did use Chapter Black, then what? Without the Dark Tournament, there are no former opponents for Kurama to recruit to help him with Yomi in the Three King's Saga. Hiei's part of Three Kings is also pretty much destroyed with him already having his teargem and giving himself the Jagan with the Conjuring Blade (even if they did include Shigure he would not have the same history with Hiei, making both Hiei's fight against him AND Kurama's later fight against him in the Makai Tournament thematically pointless).

Idk. To me it felt like they were trying to fit in all of the highlights of the original series without leaving much of anything to use later and without including any of the buildup necessary for those highlights to be meaningful. Hardly anything had the impact it should have had because nothing was given time to breathe. Like... I watched the Karasu vs. Kurama fight and it was just straight to the finals of the Dark Tournament (though the conclusion was ripped from the Kurama vs Roto fight). No watching Karasu dismantle Midorenja, no time after the creepy hallway encounter to actually process it, no Kurama struggling with image training/nightmares. Those might not seem important, but so much of Karasu's impact in the original series was in the anticipation, the growing sense of dread. Without that, it's just another fight.

Anyway. I don't know if I'll make any more posts about this series, so even if this post interested you it's probably not worth following me. This was just me shouting into the void I guess.

I REALLY HOPE THEY WILL DO A PART 3 WHERE WE WILL GET TO SEE KARASU AND BUI AS WELL AS ALL THE OTHER DEMONS FIGHTING IN THE DARK TOURNAMENT!! JUST IMAGINE YOKO KURAMA 😍😍😍🥰🥰🥰 I ALSO WOULD WANT TO SEE THE CHAPTER BLACK SAGA ARC AND THE THREE KINGS ARC JUST DO THE ENTIRE MANGA

Mazuko Yusuke Urameshi in the Three Kings Saga

That’s it, that’s the entire fucking show. 

Okay here’s a hot take:

Yu Yu Hakusho WEB Lottery 9

～ to The Next Stage ～

The 9th Yu☆Yu☆Hakusho WEBKUJI has been announced! The new art focuses on the Three Kings Saga, so no Kuwabara this time 😭.

Kurama's cropped outfit, showing off his navel and upper arms, is too precious. Youko pointing down 👇🏻 is like: "get down on your knees". 🤭

Official site: webkuji

Lottery type: box type

Sales period: June 22 to August 8, 2023

Shipping: October 2023

More details such as selling price and prizes will be disclosed at a later date.

Yu Yu Hakusho -- Volume 19, Chapter 170 "The Highlight of Round Three"

Buy me a ko-fi!

DO NOT DELETE CAPTION!

Watching Yusuke fight in the Demon World tournament, I glance away for two seconds and when I look back he’s already lost his shirt

Custom Toonami Block Week 153 Rundown

Spy X Family: Fiona gets her big mission with Loid and we get a neat little loredump about the War which I’m all in favor of, this world could use a bit of fleshing out. So apparently at the end of World War X there was a guy that was just like ‘okay everyone let’s just forget all the war crimes both sides have committed and make peace’ but he also kept a ledger of all the fucking human atrocities both sides did and if it ever becomes public EVERYONE’s gonna be pissed and the clue to finding it is in a painting that’s a prize for an underground Tennis tournament… is it just me or does this sound like a Lupin the Third plot? Anyway yeah Fiona and Loid are a a fake married couple literally named Phony and blast through the tournament because apparently actually knowing how to play tennis is no match for whatever the fuck WISE training does to a person. Like some of these matches make The Prince of Tennis look downright sensible for as wacky as that series was. But yeah by the time of the Finals we’re dealing with rocket powered tennis rackets, tennis whips and drugging as well as a collapsible course but they’re no match for the power of a yandere and the six million dollar man, so let’s see how much blatant cheating happens next time.

Inuyasha: So Inuyasha gets the page from Kikyo’s cherubs and Kikyo’s just like ‘bro this is a fucking trap, Naraku’s gonna steal Kagome’s eyes, don’t send her with you to attack Abi’ and that’s kind of a problem because they need Kagome to find the fucking jewel shard in the first place and Kikyo’s solution is to just go kill Naraku right now which sounds cool but she’s basically already half dead and she was already kind of half dead before so she’s like three quarters dead so she has to give up and go ‘fine here’s an extra magic dirty arrow for her then’ which is kind of nice that Kikyo’s seeing Kagome as a more competent ally after she saved her life and their relationship is developing beyond the Inuyasha love triangle. There’s a small moment of ‘Kagome’s upset because Kikyo was mentioned’ but luckily Inuyasha cuts it short by saying it was all business and gives Kagome the arrow. Meanwhile Naraku comes to visit Abi and Tekkei and is like ‘hey bros, heard you gave my castle the good succ, your mom all better now? Can she come out and play?’ and Tekkei pops out of the mountain and just fucking eats Naraku in her giant bird form. Which like, idk if that’s a good idea like even if you COULD digest Naraku he’s literally MADE OF POISON like they watched him stand in the poison that made Tekkei sick to begin with and then gas bomb the brothers of the demon that poisoned Tekkei, no wonder she needed so much human blood if she just keeps eating every poisonous thing she comes across like a damn housecat. But yeah Inuyasha and co. get there but Abi and Tekkei don’t get to gloat about being the new series antagonists too long because turns out being eaten didn’t even scratch Naraku and he just rips his way out of her head and blows off Abi’s arm by self-destructing the bone trident (note: do not use the weapon made out of the bones of the guy you’re trying to kill on said guy, if he can manipulate his bones into a trident he can probably take it back) but yeah Abi’s reward for helping Naraku kill her mom is a painless death and now Inuyasha’s group and Naraku both get to go to the afterlife thanks to Tekkei’s magic phoenix hell blood or whatever.

Yu Yu Hakusho: The Three Kings Arc is to my understanding an arc of ‘Well, what now? Why are we still doing this?’ it’s a shonen series having an existential crisis of why it’s still going after all its story beats have been filled, like if the Buu Saga was self aware about how pointless it was. And that theme really starts coming in as we get the second half of Hiei’s backstory as he fights Shigure. After he was yeeted as a baby he was taken in by some ogre bandits and flashed his Mom Bling around to purposely start fights and kill anyone that tried to take it, but turns out people don’t like it when you’re just fucking killing everyone so the bandits kick him out and he loses his Mom Bling in a fight and has to go to Shigure to get the Jigan Eye implant and learns a bit more about swordplay. We cut back to the fight against Shigure and turns out it’s over pretty quick, like one pass does it in classic samurai movie fashion but it’s pretty cool how they choreograph exactly what happens and how Hiei sacrifices his arm to parry Shigure’s sword and take his arm while using the backswing to cut off part of his head, it’s quick but it’s basically what you imagine happens whenever they do one of those ‘they run past each other and someone explodes in blood’ deals. Mukuro gives Hiei back his Mom Bling and Hiei’s like ‘yeah guess I’ll die’ since he’s missing an arm and got ripped open a bit in that fight. Turns out he found his original village already before the events of the story but decided the best revenge was letting them all live in the emotionally stunted hell they created for themselves, though Rui does tell him about Yukina and he’s just like ‘guess that’s a good new life mission for now’ and he finds Yukina along the course of the series and her finally trusting him enough to give him her stone put him at peace enough that he’s just feeling done and is just like ‘okay I’ve run out of life missions, time to die’ which seems kind of abrupt but like I said, the theme of searching for meaning after a climax is kind of the point of this arc. Either way Mukuro puts Hiei in her rejuvenation chamber and strips naked to show off her horribly scarred third of her body yet somehow completely immaculate ass and is like ‘here’s a titty Hiei, we’re gonna do fights and shit so don’t worry I got another life mission for you’. Which you know, fair, titties will restore your will to live even if she only has one intact one.

Jujutsu Kaisen: After all the main bad guy shit and Chunin Exam character shenanigans we’re back to a mission of the week arc which is kinda nice, always felt like some of these shows ramp up too fast and don’t give enough of these (that aren’t just filler) to get us into a good fleshing out spot with the characters. Speaking of fleshing out, it’s Megumi time (personally think Nobara could use a hit of character fleshing at this point but Megumi’s good too) the new mission brings him back to his middle school and Nobara and Yuji realize how little they know about their local Sasuke. Seems a Cursed Spirit is doing an It Follows and leaving peoples’ doors open and killing them two weeks later and they track it down to people who were in school together and it turns out that Megumi’s bedridden sister is among the potential victims within a week’s time and since Gojo’s on his ‘I’m too strong so they keep sending me on vacation to balance me’ retreats it’s up to the main trio to exorcise the spirit to save Megumi’s sister and also all the other people we’re supposed to care about. It’s nice to see the main trio working together again given they didn’t have a lot of time together between when they started and Yuji’s death and then everything at the Chunin Exams was basically separate character studies so it’s nice to have a simple relatively low-stakes activity where they kill a whack a mole and his friend with too many mouths.  

Zom 100: THE TITTIES ARE HERE, THE TITTIES ARE HERE!!! It’s kinda funny how ridiculously brief Beatrix’s introductory period is, like she just kinda slides right into the group like she’s been there all along. She makes a fantastic first impression by basically aligning with Akira’s philosophy and being a samurai and actually bringing a fucking weapon to the zombie apocalypse instead of trying to punch the zombies out or find a new method to dispatch them each time, it’s like when Michonne was first introduced in The Walking Dead and we got that neat rush of someone who actually knows what the fuck they’re doing in melee combat (also helps since because this is in Japan guns are ridiculously unlikely to play any major role). But yeah she’s a German weeb with big tits who just wants to see the land of anime and sushi for herself, though she does seem to be more interested in the legitimate cultural heritage and knowledgeable about it as such rather than your standard pop culture loving tourist. But yeah there’s a fun mission about getting fish to a sushi artisan to get an all you can eat pass and Shizuka gets to pull out her inner Zhou Yu which was a lot of fun to see considering I’m playing Samurai Remnant right now. Then there’s a standard hot springs episode because we have the full fanservice roster now so we can get straight to the gimmick episodes without worrying about Shizuka bearing the whole brunt of that. I like how we get the titty girl and IMMEDIATELY jump to the plot that strips the girls naked, though I also appreciate how there’s significantly less sexual tension about the group being naked around each other partially because they’re not hormonal teenagers that squirm from brushing a boob and also half of Japan has seen Kencho’s dick by now so while they’re not just gonna strip for each other it’s less weird and taboo than it is in most anime and it’s nice. There’s also some good shipping fuel for Akira and Shizuka where she shoots down his romantic ideas again but apologizes about it later and talks about how her relapsing into her father’s ideology is mostly a reflex of regret for having lived like that and trying to justify the resentment by claiming she was right all along even though deep down she really has changed, which is kind of a neat touch like her progress isn’t a straight line but it’s also not like her character refuses to change for the joke of her being the stick in the mud. She wants validation that the way she lived her life up till now was worth it but also knows that she’ll be freer if she cuts ties with it and starts living today rather than regretting how she used to be. And then Beatrix gets her tits out and I forget what I’m even talking about, 10/10 episode.

Ranking of Kings: Time for a good old wrap-up episode, Bosse’s soul shows Daida the final part of his backstory with Miranjo as he’s giving him back control of his body. Miranjo was basically suicidal after the whole thing with her mom and the village being burned down and being mutilated but over time they healed enough of each other’s wounds to keep living toether and Miranjo felt like Bosse had given up on his own dreams to take care of her which is literally not what he said but okay. So they challenge the regional god and he fucking kicks Bosse’s ass so Miranjo goes to an old demon friend and it turns out the more wishes a demon grants the more demony they become and Miranjo promised to never ask anything of the demon but breaks that now for Bosse’s sake which now comes with the penalty of robbing Bojji of all strength in order to double Bosse’s power where he finally kills the regional deity and establishes the kingdom and all that shit but he feels really shitty about it and then dies which kickstarts Miranjo’s plan to revive him through Daida even after Bosse is like ‘oh yeah take care of my son for me’ and we make it perfectly clear Miranjo has only been hearing what she wants to from Bosse’s speeches. But yeah back in the present they manage to sucker punch the demon into granting them a wish but instead of Despa wanting to save Ouken, Bojji and Daida agree to wish to save Miranjo. (Which may have been for the best because if you just remove Ouken’s immortality while he’s still a goo marble inside the rock does he just turn into a mortal goo marble and fucking die in the most painful way possible?) But yeah turns out Daida’s a pretty cool person now, like he hasn’t done a lot in the plot but he’s grown tremendously as a character and it’s good to see. That being said, it’s still weird as fuck to have him ask Miranjo to marry him, like sure, take your father’s Daughter-Wife and make her your Mom-Wife, I’m sure Freud will fucking love that, everyone’s suitably weirded out by this but it still comes out of nowhere though it does have the added effect that no one can come after Miranjo for all the shit she did because she’s now the Queen Regent so yeah. Hilling has a nice scene of marveling at how her sons have grown and Desha hears Plan Demon has failed so he’s switched to Plan Eldritch Relic From the Divine Vault that Kills Everyone (it’s the second plan, they didn’t get around to editing the name) so yeah the arc’s wrapped up nicely but there’s still enough plot threads to pull on from here.

Vinland Saga: Picking up right after Askeladd and Bjorn’s duel, it’s time for Thorfinn to fight but he’s hesitating, seeing a small bit of humanity in Askeladd but also blinded by rage enough like he always is so Askeladd kicks his ass bare-handed and he’s just like ‘man this is getting old, they could legit just reuse animation from our past four fights dude’ and it looks like Askeladd almost considers actually killing Thorfinn for a moment and burning all bridges from his life as a Viking but Canute stops him and wakes Thorfinn the fuck up. Askeladd just sits down and is like ‘alright bitches, you want some Count of Monte Cristo shit, HERE’S how you kill a father figure’ and gives his full backstory, some of which we already know. Askeladd was the bastard son of a lord and had a crazy sick slave mom who was a King Arthur fangirl and to avoid her being killed he fights his Lord Dad and does pretty fucking well for his first time ever holding a sword so Lord Dad’s like ‘good killing skills, my sperm is strong in you’ and takes him in. And for two years he trains and builds up trust before killing Lord Dad and Lady Step-Mom in their sleep and pinning it on one of the legitimate kids. So yeah moral of the story, if you hate your father figure and want to kill him don’t be a pussy and just fucking do it. No but really, the real moral is the general theme that’s been going through the whole arc that waiting for paradise won’t save anyone, and that only by working to take it here on Earth can anyone be saved. Askeladd ends off by telling Thorfinn off and telling him there was never any real chance of him beating him and humoring him is just the dues he felt he had to pay to get a useful member of the crew and that if anything he’s thankful to Thors for wrapping Thorfinn in such hate in turmoil that he chained Thorfinn to Askeladd for ten years. And that just kinda hits Thorfinn with the ‘what have I been doing with my life’ truck as he’s kind of known for a while this wasn’t what his father wanted but still can’t get over the grief and rage propelling him forward. Canute asks Askeladd why he doesn’t just become king without him and Askeladd’s just like ‘bro did you hear my backstory just now? I murder everyone I disagree with, you really want that as king?’and it’s specifically Canute’s reluctance towards fighting that makes Askeladd believe in him as a leader and believes he’s too old and too embroiled in warrior culture to properly be anything but an advisor. But yeah Thorfinn’s in a bad way and I think/hope that this will finally be the chance for him to reflect on what he wants and not just scream and stab things all the time.

Father and Son Face-off!