Not Your Typical Token Weak Teammate: The Strange Case of Kazuma Kuwabara
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This originally wasn’t going to be my piece for this week, but this whole newsletter is supposed to be me talking about the things that have captured my attention at any given moment, so here we go: right now, what I can’t get out of my head, what I have to write about, is the anime I just finished re-watching for the first time since high school, YuYu Hakusho1, and specifically how it treats one of its main characters, Kazuma Kuwabara, one of the most unusual “everyman”/“token weak teammate” characters I’ve ever seen.
A couple weeks ago, in my piece on Usopp’s journey to find his role in One Piece, I name-dropped Kuwabara as being part of the same shonen archetype as Usopp: the relatable, everyman team member who is a more down-to-Earth contrast to the cool, powerful, aspirational heroes that dominate the genre. This character is often the only human or non-powered member of the team and usually the weakest fighter. They’re generally the butt of every joke, and if something bad is going to happen, it always happens to them, but they still manage to be brave and strong, to win battles and sometimes even save the day, through tenacity and by using their wits2. This fits Kuwabara to a t…until it doesn’t.
Before we dive into that, though, let’s get some context. YuYu Hakusho was a manga written and illustrated by Yoshihiro Togashi from 1990 to 1994, which was later adapted into animation. The story originally centered around a teenage delinquent named Yusuke Urameshi, a punk with no future who sacrificed his life to save a child from being hit by a car. This surprised everyone, including Koenma, the ruler of the afterlife, who did not expect Yusuke to act so selflessly. Intrigued by this new side of Yusuke, and with no room for him in either heaven nor hell (Yusuke wasn’t “supposed” to die that day), Koenma instead runs Yusuke through a series of trials to allow him to earn his life back. Once he does, he returns to the land of the living with a newfound awareness of the spiritual world, and access to a kind of spirit energy that increased his physical power. Because of this, Koenma enlists Yusuke as his “Spirit Detective,” in charge of defending the living world from monsters, apparitions, and other threats from realms beyond.
At this point the series takes a sharp turn from small-scale supernatural mysteries and morality tales into full-on action stories, and Yusuke quickly amasses a team of allies. Two of the first enemies he defeats, Kurama and Hiei, are forced as part of their parole to assist Yusuke, but he’s also joined by his schoolmate, Kazuma Kuwabara.
Kuwabara considers himself Yusuke’s rival, as the two fist-fight every single day (and Kuwabara always loses; at the beginning of the series Yusuke doesn’t even recognize him despite beating him up on a daily basis). Kuwabara also naturally possesses the kind of spiritual awareness that Yusuke had to earn through death, which allowed him to assist Yusuke even during his time as a ghost. So when Yusuke becomes Spirit Detective, not wanting to be outclassed, Kuwabara insists on tagging along on his missions.
So far, so good, right? We’ve got Kuwabara as the Dr. Watson of the group who knows nothing of the supernatural and thus allows the other characters to dole out exposition to the audience in a natural way by explaining things to him. We have Kuwabara as the weakest member of the team struggling where his friends excel, taking beatings that would kill any of them, but staying in the fight and always getting back up through sheer endurance and stubbornness. We have Kuwabara striving to earn respect, and becoming the butt of every joke (even the bumper that plays during the commercial break of every single episode makes a joke at Kuwabara’s expense). These are all trademarks of this kind of character.
Two things set Kuwabara apart from his archetype, though. First, he’s not actually weak, not really even in comparison to his teammates. Kuwabara actually has keener spiritual awareness — and perhaps more spirit energy buried within him — than any of them, making him capable of sensing enemies and traps they cannot, as well as communicating telepathically, and seeing visions of the past and premonitions of the future. With just a little focus, Kuwabara is eventually able to channel this energy into a weapon of pure energy, his Spirit Sword, and while he rarely lands a hit with his sword — more on that in a bit — when he does it always deals serious damage. More impressively, when Kuwabara latently senses the upcoming threat of the fallen detective Sensui late in the series, his sword evolves all on its own into a far more powerful weapon: the Jigen To, or Dimension Sword.
How powerful, exactly? Well, the Dimension Sword can cut through anything — not just any object, but even incorporeal, intangible concepts. It can cut through psychic territories, the main power used by Sensui and his underlings. It can cut through time, space, and dimensions — in fact, this paints a big target on Kuwabara’s head, because Sensui wants to use his sword to slice open the barrier separating the physical world from the Makai. It’s notable that, when all four main characters fight Sensui at once, he doesn’t even bother to dodge attacks from Hiei or Kurama, taking them head-on without flinching because he's just that strong. The only attacks he makes an effort to dodge are Kuwabara’s, because the Dimension Sword can actually harm him. That’s a kind of power not normally afforded to characters like Kuwabara.
Unfortunately, the other thing that sets Kuwabara apart is the fact that the poor boy’s as dumb as a bag of bricks.
In order to compensate for their lack of strength, the everyman/token weak teammates are usually incredibly smart, or at least incredibly clever, resourceful in battle and capable of outsmarting and outmaneuvering their opponents. Kuwabara…cannot do that. He regularly scores marks of around 15 or 20 (out of 100) on his school tests. He has very little common sense and no understanding of strategy. He’s been known to run head-on into the same obvious trap multiple times in a row. While he’s been in thousands of street fights, he has no formal martial arts training; thus, he swings his Spirit Sword around like a baseball bat, almost never hitting opponents with his graceless, easily telegraphed movements.
Thus, while Kuwabara fits this everyman archetype in almost every way, he also completely subverts it; instead of being a weakling who wins with his brains, he’s got plenty of power and potential, but no idea how to use it. I find this fascinating, both in how it helps the character and how it hurts it.
First, let’s look at how it helps. This aspect of Kuwabara makes his fights tenser than any other character’s. We know that, barring extenuating circumstances, Yusuke or Kurama or Hiei are always going to come out on top, but whenever Kuwabara begins to fight the audience legitimately has no idea whether he’ll win or not; in fact, he loses more often than he wins, just to keep us on our feet. That’s a feeling I don’t get very often in action series.
This also allows Togashi to focus on aspects of Kuwabara’s personality besides power, toughness, and brains, and on the valuable contributions they make as well. He’s the kindest and most moral of the main characters, following a personal honor code of ethics — protect those weaker than you, avoid vices, never hit women — so strict that it would make Ian MacKaye proud.
This code of ethics is sometimes played as a joke, but in the battle against Dr. Ichigaki’s minions, it proves invaluable. Kuwabara’s awareness allows him to discover that Ichigaki’s minions aren’t apparitions, but humans who have been genetically modified and brainwashed against their will. The kind Kuwabara refuses to fight and gets beaten to a pulp for it, but his compassion not only allows the minions to briefly fight back against their programming, but gives his friends the opening they need to defeat them without killing them. His kindness is also what later turns Seaman from Sensui’s side to theirs, gaining Team Urameshi an indispensable ally. Kuwabara’s humanity is what eventually allows him to retire from fighting, setting an example for Yusuke to follow, even if it takes him years. Kuwabara’s loyalty means he’s willing to lay down his life just to give Yusuke the power boost he needs to defeat Toguro. In so many ways, he’s the most admirable character in the series.
But is that enough? For every moment like the ones I list above, there’s two where Kuwabara makes an utter fool out of himself. The fact that Kuwabara could potentially lose any battle he enters in a way the other characters can’t should make us root for him even more, but it’s hard to root for a character who’s so stupid that he charges like a bull straight into the Cape of No Return two battles in a row, who constantly loses because he refuses to learn how to fight, or who has the few battles he does win constantly undermined and undervalued by the narrative.
Seriously, Kuwabara loses more fights than he wins3, but even out of the ones he does win, I can only think of two that he wins with no qualifiers4, that aren’t undermined in one way or another. For example, Kuwabara comes up with the strategy he and Yusuke use to double KO the Toguro Brothers during their first encounter at Tarukane’s palace, but of course, the brothers were just faking and purposely threw the match. When Kuwabara fights Risho, the clay Shinobi, it’s immediately after taking that brutal beating from Dr. Ichigaki’s brainwashed minions; Kuwabara being brave enough to stand up and fight at all, much less taking repeated beatings from Risho and continuing to get back up, is played as brave, harrowing, and heroic, but the ending jarringly switches over to a comedic tone, as Kuwabara suddenly finds the strength to OHKO Risho only because the girl he’s crushing on appears in the crowd and he wants to impress her.
Or there’s the team’s battle against the Four Saint Beasts. Hiei and Kurama take their opponents out quickly and ruthlessly, and Yusuke decisively overpowers his after a fraught battle, but Kuwabara can’t catch a break. When he discovers that his opponent, the tiger beast Byakko, can absorb his sword’s power, he keeps feeding him energy until he explodes. But somehow Byakko survives, and Kuwabara is forced to continue the battle in his fiery lair, eventually using his Spirit Sword as a javelin to knock Byakko into a pit of lava, and only narrowly avoiding the same fate because his sash got snagged on a rock. But then, then, a battered Byakko somehow survives and comes back again, begging his partner Seiryu to help him (he kills Byakko instead). Kuwabara doesn’t get to enjoy his hard earned victory the way his teammates do.
Most galling is his final battle against the Elder Toguro brother. Kuwabara’s completely out-gunned, facing an opponent who can regenerate and rearrange his organs, making his sword useless. So, Kuwabara instead reshapes his sword into a massive spirit flyswatter and flattens Toguro into the pavement, winning the match. It stands as Kuwabara’s shining moment in the series, a battle nobody thought he could win…except Elder Toguro comes back as well during his younger brother’s final match against Yusuke, revealing that he threw his fight just so he could pop back up later to make things extra hopeless for Yusuke. It not only undermines Kuwabara’s otherwise-greatest victory, but it establishes a pattern of this happening to him. Even worse, it was totally unnecessary! Togashi could have just had Elder Toguro say that Kuwabara’s attack stunned him for a while but that he came back to terrorize Yusuke as soon as he regained his bearings! It would have established the same goal — returning Elder Toguro to the narrative — while still allowing Kuwabara to retain his dignity!
So that’s where I’m at. Kuwabara’s a character I really like, but also one I don’t think Togashi treated with enough respect. The way Kuwabara meets but also defies his typical archetypical roles makes him fascinating, but also frustrating in equal measure. He’s a character I want to enjoy so badly, but one that the narrative often mistreats in ways that are hard to watch and harder to enjoy. He’s a strange case, this Kuwabara.
CHECK OUT THAT THEME SONG
Seriously, the Yuyu Hakusho theme song has pretty much just been playing in my head on a constant loop since December.
I love the animation and how the music often syncs up to it, but I also just think this song is a total bop. It feels very 90s to me — not your typical J-Pop anime theme song — and hell, it’s even got horns! Synthy horns! What a jam.
CHECK OUT
So I’m gonna make a massive swerve here, but the entire series of The Muppet Show just dropped on Disney+ this past week. I talked a bit about my memories of this show in a previous column, but I was still shocked to revisit these episodes for the first time since I was a kid and remember not only how great they were, but how much of my sense of humor was born from the silly puns of the Muppets. It’s a fantastic show, it hasn’t been easily available to watch for a while (the last two seasons were never even released on DVD, but they’re all streaming now!), and it’s very very much worth your time.
Disney+ currently seems to have the episodes listed out of their original airing order, but the episode they have listed as Episode One is a perfect choice for an opener, featuring the inimitable Rita Moreno as a guest star. She’s so much fun here, especially in her first skit, “I Get Ideas,” which is an already rather brilliant bit of physical comedy given perfect life by Moreno’s electric physicality and athletic talent. How is everybody not talking about this skit every minute of every day?
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!
Logo by Lewis Franco, with respects to Saves the Day.
YuYu Hakusho translates to “Poltergeist Report.” I don’t know why the dubbing companies decided to leave it untranslated in America, but if I had to guess, I’d imagine they thought an untranslated Japanese title sounded more interesting to their target audience than the rather generic title of “Poltergeist Report.” I’d be inclined to agree.
While you’ll occasionally see this archetype pop up in American comics as well — the Clint Barton incarnation of Hawkeye or the Ted Kord version of Blue Beetle being perfect examples — they more often subvert it. Batman, for example, is the token human/super-powerless member of the Justice League, but his skills and fortune also make him one of the most dangerous, intimidating, and unknowable members of the team, and that tends to be a pattern non-powered superheroes have to fit into in order to be taken seriously in American comics.
Though not every battle Kuwabara loses is a humiliation of even a sign of disrespect from the narrative. In the Dark Tournament, Rinku only defeats him by trapping him out of bounds; Rinku freely admits that he couldn’t have survived another hit from Kuwabara and would have lost had he made it back into the ring.
These two are his battle against Musashi in Genkai’s tournament, and his battle against Seaman during the Chapter Black storyline.