Yu Yu Hakusho up to 165

[snarp]

Originally published at I Am Completely Serious. You can comment here or there.

Mukuro = NEW FAVORITE CHARACTER. (To the surprise of no one.)

Spoilers (including some for Hunter x Hunter up to the Greed Island arc):

Togashi has the worst case of Dangerous-Women-Must-Be-Desexed-Or-Masculinized-Syndrome that I’ve ever seen. Mukuro covers herself with bandages, talks in a hyper-masculine way, and is called “he”; Genkai is alternately an asexual old woman and an asexual little girl, and wears a mask and is called “he” for a whole arc; Biscuit Krugar from Hunter x Hunter is simultaneously an asexual old woman and an asexual little girl; Senritsu’s disfigured in a way that makes her look androgynous, got her powers from said disfigurement, and, again, sometimes gets called “he.”

Also, both Senritsu and Mukuro’s Tragic Pasts are tied to their sexuality. Mukuro was a sex slave, which led to her disfigurement and her decision to totally kill everybody and take over the world. It’s at least heavily implied, if not said outright, that Senritsu and her boyfriend played the magical song that disfigured her and killed him just before or after some drunken sex.

(Genkai comes close to having the same problem, but doesn’t quite make it, given that 1) flashback-Genkai looks like an eight-year-old (Mukuro is extremely hot, and I think pre-incident Senritsu was supposed to be, too), and I don’t think we’re supposed to believe that her relationship with Toguro was ever sexual, and 2) there’s not really any suggestion that her involvement with him damaged her in the way there is with Mukuro and Senritsu. I mean, except for the part where he killed her? But given that that was temporary, and was anyway a fairly respectable shounen-manga mentor-death, I have trouble categorizing it as a Girls Who Have Sex Must Die issue. It’s still an issue, just not that one specifically.)

Has Togashi ever done a single feminine-looking-and-acting woman who could fight? All I’m coming up with is Pakunoda, and if I remember right, she wasn’t supposed to be all that good a fighter, and, uh, didn’t they blow her up for falling in love with Kuroro or something great like that? Did Killua have a mom, and did she kill people? Killua’s mom would have to be pretty good-looking - the Fruits Basket Act, mysteriously signed into law years before Fruits Basket was ever published, mandates that all manga rich kids with family issues must have sexy moms. (It’s been a really long time since I read Hunter x Hunter, and I stopped somewhere in the middle of the Greed Island arc.)