Makai Unification Tournament matchups (with special focus on Hokushin and Kirin)
As we all know, Togashi didn't depict like 90% of the fights in the Makai Unification Tournament. But he actually went to the trouble of MAPPING OUT THE ENTIRE TOURNAMENT BRACKET and making up names for every fighter. This means that if you pick some key people and follow them, you can see some really intriguing matchups (and also get names for your fics if you want hahaha). Which was possibly the intent - get readers all riled up and then not show anything lmao.
For fun, let’s walk through the tournament from the perspective of two powerful characters the series doesn’t really focus on - Hokushin and Kirin! OK I admit I just want to because I’m writing them a lot lmao
The handy tournament bracket chart thing
I was flipping through vol 19 and was reminded that many many years ago my sister had made these pencil notations on the two page spread of the tournament bracket. Basically she marked off where all the important people were, which is really helpful when you’re just staring at a sea of names. I've updated and transferred the notations to screencaps of the pages from MangaRock so you can see them too and be able to read them in English. A few names are rendered somewhat differently from what I’m used to, the most obvious being Rinku as Link and Kirin as Kylin. I’ve also noted a few bonus people below. Many thanks to my sis for doing most of the original legwork when we were kids lol
=^w^= Nekobaba appears in the anime as Nekotama, the size changing cat with the extra long claws.
LOL Zakuro is that loser who ran his mouth off in front of Yusuke and Hokushin about how how he was gonna take everyone down and plunge the Demon World into darkness, but then lost his first match. In the anime he also shows up with the gang on patrol in Mukuro’s territory.
(heart) Sasuga is the monkey-like demon girl Rinku falls in love with.
Also, I just have to say - DAMN, TOUYA, YOU LUCKY. He’s surrounded by (apparent) nobodies!! hahahahha. Except in the anime they changed it so he fought Kujo and gets his ass kicked. Oh well.
Hokushin and Kirin’s rounds
Here are the two surviving original generals of Mukuro and Raizen, two pretty big shots in the Demon World prior to this whole mess. Let’s see how they fared. (Ignore the stuff the announcer is saying in the images above about their block numbers, it’s irrelevant to the matchups below. These block numbers were for the mass eliminations during the prelims so that they could weed out tons of fighters at once. Both Kirin and Hokushin had to wipe out all opponents in their block in order to make it to the actual tournament bracket.)
Round 1: Hokushin's first match is somebody named Himuro. Obviously my noodle husband kicks the ass of this random nobody with elegance and grace and moves on to Round 2.
Round 2: Here he meets Shishiwakamaru. Unsurprisingly, I'm of the opinion that Shishi is no match for him. But don't take my biased word for it - the animation team agreed. This matchup is actually depicted in the anime with Hokushin as the victor. (I'm not all that satisfied with how they did it, but again, they were busy plugging a lot of other gaps left by Togashi so I understand lol.) Yusuke's amazing nanny moves on to Round 3.
Round 3: Where he meets Raizen’s old beau Kokou and gets utterly massacred. I like to think he delays the inevitable with some ingenuity that forces her to put in a bit of effort to utterly massacre him. We know for a fact Kokou is the victor of this round because in the manga, Yusuke tells Kuwabara that Yomi was beaten by Kokou in Round 4, which you can see is the very next fight. In the anime, this conversation doesn't happen, so it was super funny to me when I watched the English dub for the first time and saw Kurama telling Yusuke (paraphrased) "Yomi lost to someone he had no business losing to" WELL EXCUSE ME ENGLISH DUB KURAMA, KOKOU COULD KICK YOUR ASS TOO. Anyways, this would've been a cool fight to watch, I think anyways.
Round 1: Some other rando named Nobusama 110% guaranteed bites the dust against Mukuro's badass general.
Round 2: This round’s interesting because, just like Hokushin, Togashi gives him a potential round 2 pairing with one of Yusuke’s friends - Jin. As much as I love Jin, I'd bet on Kirin just thoroughly mowing him down. In the anime, this never happens because Jin fights Souketsu (whom I always remember as “Raizen’s friend with the ugly hat” because of what Shu says to him lmao), but in the manga Souketsu was actually in Block A. If they just wanted Jin to get wiped out by one of Raizen's pals, Denhou already appears in Block D - though perhaps the animation team agreed that Jin probably would not have gotten past Kirin and didn't want to come up with attacks for the latter lol. Similarly, maybe they just did not wanna draw Denhou being cool, poor Denhou. Souketsu has to appear during the timing of the Yomi VS Yusuke fight anyways, so if we’re just thinking about resource allocation for designing and getting voice actors and whatever it makes more sense. ANYWAYS. Our sexy demon sorcerer moves on to Round 3.
Round 3: Wuh woh, there's Denhou. Kirin was probably annihilated here. That said, from a generous writing perspective, if I had to pick any single person in the series who is not Yomi or Mukuro as having a reasonable rat's chance in hell against one of Raizen's old friends, I'd probably pick Kirin. It's still super unlikely and definitely a surprise upset (for us readers who are fully aware of how powerful Raizen's pals are supposed to be anyways), but not completely unrealistic. But actually it doesn't really matter, because even if Kirin somehow made it to Round 4,
Round 4: He would then fight Enki. Where he would be confirmed screwed. The end.
That was fun, kinda like a fantasy football pool or something!
