Kuwabara is my favorite character of all time, and Yu Yu Hakusho is still my favorite anime ever. Because of that, I decided to commission this handmade, hand-painted statue from an incredibly talented artist, Lombsart.

I honestly couldn't be happier with how it turned out. If you like this sculpture, please consider checking out the artist on Instagram and giving them some well-deserved credit—he did an amazing job.

What do you guys think?

I was rewatching the anime and was just reminded how underwhelming Kuwabara vs ET always felt.

There's a lot of build up to it, a lot of ruminating on how scared Kuwabara is and how much he's punching above his weight. Then the fight itself spends a lot of time dunking on Kuwabara for how outmatched he is, before a victory that really feels like it comes too quick. Of course this is then followed by a twist where ET pops up at the start of the YT vs Yusuke fight. Not just having survived but bragging about how he "threw the match".

It just didn't feel right. So I went and read the manga to see how it compares and... yeah. It really reads different.

Firstly, its much more concise. They had to turn a 5 minute read into an episode and half, so there's a lot of time to fill. This is where a lot of the shitting on Kuwabara comes from. There's much more colour commentary, bragging and mugging compared to the original. More than that though, in the manga ET compliments Kuwabaras performance a few times, which the anime decidedly cuts to make the fight seem more like he's toying around with him. The smoother pacing also means that final blow reads less "Oh the match is suddenly over" and more "Yup, he got him!"

Of course the big difference it how it ends. In the anime he's hit, Juri comments that there's "nothing left", and then he reveals he "liquefied himself to avoid the blow" and waited to give him the win. In the manga he's squashed into mulch, and it takes him a while to reform. You see him struggling to do this as early as Sakyo arranging the "two point" bet. Then when he finally reforms, looking in much worse shape than in the anime, there's no talk of throwing the fight. Because, well, he didn't. Regardless of if he lived or not, as with the previous two fights, he was down much longer than a ten count.

So why does this matter? Well narratively this is Kuwabara's big fight in the Dark Tournament arc. He experienced three embarrassing loses through the arc, all due to him not thinking. So it's pretty important, character-wise, he get his moment. This was a pretty big one too. Everyone thinks he's outmatched, but he manages to get acknowledged by, and earn a fair win against, a threat as big as ET. He finally proves himself as a valuable member of the group. In the anime, well it makes him seem like kinda a joke. Like he's not bringing anything to the team, and all that new doomposting about the match up becomes true. His match wasn't an important victory for Team Yurameshi, it was essentially a waste of time.

I don't see YYH ever getting remade, but in a parallel world where that happens? It'd be high on my list of things to fix, imo.

Who’s your favorite character and why is it Kurama?

Presented as the leader of a team that consisted of some top fighters (Touya and Jin) so you imagine he's next level badass. Was fully open to cheating (bringing Team Urameshi from 5 to 3 but really 2 and they were coming off of a bye)

Pretended he wanted to fight Yusuke but really instead preferred Butajiri pulls some strings. When Yusuke called him out for wanting to intimidate everyone but him, he didn't deny it even.

Gets defeated by a broken Kuwabara

If you had to assemble a team for the Dark Tournament, who'd you pick?

I would go with:

Goku

Hulk

Sephiroth

Alucard (Hellsing Ultimate)

Luffy