Making Rando as dweebish as Butters from SOUTH PARK was a stroke of brilliance. I thoroughly enjoyed watching him get beaten up.
The tables do eventually get turned on Kuwabara in a way that scarily recalls something Lewis Carroll might’ve dreamed up, sure, but the portions where these bullies kick this runt around like a bag of jellybeans (?!) offered some of the most satisfying guilty pleasure in any show I’ve seen in a while. Yeah, maybe such an unfair fight would be mildly disgusting in “real life,” but you’re lying to yourself if you don’t think part of the appeal of this show lays in the catharsis of getting to root for the bad kids. I love how whatever advantage Rando ever gets repeatedly crumbles away because he seems to be stupidly forgetting to stay intense. LOVE IT.
Look, we’ve to another portion of the show that’s more about the procedural details of the fighting and, while that’s a gas to watch, it’s tough to come up with much commentary without the insight of Joe Rogan or Dana White. That said, I’ll take another opportunity to muse on how this show stacks up to sort of fantasy fiction I’m more familiar with… namely, superhero comics.
Specifically, I’m finding it terribly amusing that Yusuke and Kuwabara are essentially superheroes by this point. They’ve got their powers (spirit gun, spirit sword.)They’ve got their costumes (those uniforms look a lot more colorful than in real life.) What’s missing is some aliases, and that makes all this demon-fighting business kind of amusing. It’s just these… guys versus evil. You think they’d be famous by this point, since they’re not taking too much effort to hide any of this from the public.
Look up this episode, "Rando Rises, Kuwabara Falls" and decide for yourself, then read my comments on the previous episode here.
Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE. Order them on Amazon here & here. Follow him on Twitter: @tompinchuk
Real heroes shouldn't need to use aliases. Of course these guys are living in the spirit world so they are already not in the real world anymore.
If you're liking it now, then you'll defiantly love what this series has in store for you. Yusuke is defiantly an anti-hero worth getting behind