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Conclusion: Kurama is a suicidal dumbass.

I've just talked this out with a friend, for the original purpose of analyzing the YYH characters' respective battle tactics, strategies, and fighting styles, the better to figure out a coordinated fight scene in my fanfiction; but I found myself increasingly unable to fathom Round 3 of the Tournament. There weren't simply bad tactics involved -- there were the worst tactics I can possibly imagine Kurama getting away with and still hoping Yuusuke wouldn't notice. As I began to parse out each individual strategic decision he made during that round, I became convinced entirely of something that I'd suspected for a while: Kurama was not just stupid, he was actively trying to get killed.

This differs from my previous opinion that he had definitely suicidal tendencies, but wasn't acting on them consciously. As far as I'm concerned, there was no way he could have made this many mistakes in succession without doing it on purpose, so I'm revising my evaluation to assume that either Togashi-sama sucked royally at strategy, or everyone's favorite redhead spent Round 3 being rampantly suicidal.

Without further ado, as I imagine you're wondering where I'm coming from, we'll start at the beginning: with Kurama stepping in front of Yuusuke, and preventing him from taking the first match.

The strategic advantage in having the team leader/strongest member go last assumes that both teams are equal in strength. In addition to making the fights more challenging and more enjoyable, it ensures that the leader is not too fatigued to face his counterpart. If one team is significantly stronger than the other, the advantage goes away, since the power expense necessary to take out the weaker members is less drastic, and the leader can afford to take them on and still expect to have plenty of power left.

Now, Kurama knew this. He would not simply take it for granted that the leader goes last, not without being aware of the strategic merit. He was also able (as Yuusuke was not) to reliably gauge Team Masho in terms of their power levels relative to him and Yuusuke. If we trust Genkai, who was also able to assess their power, the Shinobi were not particularly strong, as Shinobi go, and at least two of them were significantly weaker than both of Team Urameshi's eligible members. Even though Kurama listed Risho as one of the two strongest, the Earth Master was less than impressive, and either of the two fighters could have taken him without too much trouble -- as evidenced by the ignoble defeat he suffered when Kuwabara hit him just twice. So, and not to be unfair to the ninja, even only Yuusuke and Kurama should have been plenty to defeat their team no matter in which order they fought, provided Yuusuke faced Jin without too much of his power drained and was still able to handle it well.

In addition, the reason Kurama gives for taking the first few fights -- so he could "ascertain their weaknessess" -- is rather lackluster, although good enough for Yuusuke, apparently. Kurama would be equally capable of sizing up the team members from the sidelines -- possibly more so, as he could watch the entire team as well as the fighter in the ring -- and there's no rule against giving Yuusuke information and advice as needed. Once again, not to impugn the ninja overmuch, but Yuusuke would have taken Gama and Touya and Bakken apart in succession, as long as he was even moderately cautious, and he was in a sufficiently serious mood at the beginning of the round that he wouldn't have lost his head. He would not, for example, have been fazed by Gama's speed, and would have taken a punch or two and then given back a wrecking ball before the demon had a chance to mark him up and seal anything -- you'll recall that Gama's strategy was to enhance his own strength and try melee before moving on to marking his opponent. Touya was not nearly as fast as Yuusuke (he was slower than Jin, and Hiei remarked that Jin was slower than Yuusuke) and did not appear to be able to take very much punishment. His ice attacks are geared towards surprise more than anything -- ergo, they aren't optimally effective in the open when the opponent can dodge, but would be very devastating if used from hiding -- and he would have gone down after the first few pummelings. And, of course, we all know how Bakken fared.

We have to assume, by the way, that Kurama knew at least a moderate amount about Team Masho's capabilities. Even Hiei seemed to, and Hiei is much younger than Kurama. Kurama knew Jin on sight, rather than by reputation, and no matter how well-known the Shinobi are in the Makai, I doubt too many demons have seen them face to face. It's remarked on significantly that the Shinobi are "exposing" themselves, having "always conducted their affairs in secret" up until now; so it suggests to me that he's not only had dealings with them before, but that he knows a great deal about this particular sect. This makes his "ascertain their weaknesses" excuse even less plausible, and some of his subsequent actions even less excusable.

Ergo, taking the first few fights was not the most strategically sound decision Kurama could have made, and was largely responsible for how badly the round went. But let's suppose I'm wrong about all that (who knows, I might be), step back, and take a look at how Kurama handled the fights themselves.

GAMA:

Even Hiei saw how Kurama's tactics were flawed -- waiting until he'd gauged Gama's strength to make a move -- but he didn't know the half of it. The fox had already ascertained that Gama was a close-range fighter, and yet failed to make a long-range offense. He spent a nice long time doing pretty, pointless flips and dodges that let Gama get far too close to him until his leg got marked. At that point, he rather ought to have attacked as well, but chose to try and dodge again -- a maneuver he knew would fail due to the curse. Where was his "Petals and Thorns" then, when it could easily have been used to guard him from Gama's makeup attacks? He waited until the last minute to take the offensive, and only after all four of his limbs were chained. It's one thing to hold your hand until your opponent has shown his, and quite another to allow yourself to be compromised in the process.

And even then, for some reason, when he had the damned whip summoned and was totally capable of manipulating it with his usual precision, he refused to kill Gama. I seem to recall him agreeing with Hiei during the first round that mercy was not a luxury they could afford, and yet he not only did not kill Gama on the first attack when he clearly could have, but he tried to talk Gama out of moving so that he wouldn't bleed to death. I really, truly can't fathom why he made this particular decision; it makes no sense to me, unless (as I've previously stipulated) he might have background with these demons. But even then, he has no excuse for violating his own rules at the possible expense of his team's survival.

Here's a thought: Was there no other attack available to him that could have incapacitated Gama without mutilating him? I know he can't use demonic plants while in human form, but he acted during these fights (and most of the rest of the series, for that matter) as though the Death Plant and the roses were the only things he could grow or manipulate. You would think he'd have some vines or some ferns or at least some damn weeds on hand in the event that he was not getting anywhere with the first two. He's arrogant and vain, but not an idiot. I doubt anything will convince me he was simply without any backups unless he deliberately went in without them -- which only reinforces my point.

Speaking of blood, he knew, or at least suspected, that it was an ingredient in Gama's makeup; he recognized it by the smell, much as he had tracked down Genbu earlier in the series. His sense of smell is incredibly acute, and he's familiar enough with the scent of blood that I'm surprised it took him as long as it did to make the internal remark that let me know he'd figured it out. It goes without saying that he knew better than to let Gama get blood all over him the way he did.

And even assuming he didn't quite figure it out in time, he knew Gama could seal his energy, because Gama told him so. I don't buy his total surprise when it actually happened. You could see it happening, and he's got peripheral vision enough to have noticed the regular pattern with which he was being splattered.

So that's the sum of the first fight, and we'll move on. Once again, let's forget all of that s**t, and presume that bad luck got Kurama stuck in the fight with Touya with his limbs chained and his energy sealed.

TOUYA:

Kurama began this one much more rationally, by attempting to buy time for the seals to wear off, and that at least worked for him well enough. I do, however, contest that he had no other recourse than to run. He was more agile than Touya, and as evidenced later in the Tournament, he had a pretty badass martial arts style of his own. While being aware of the fact that Touya would probably have a melee technique as well, he could have used the element of surprise to get in a good strike or two. Hand-to-hand is enough of a departure from his usual style that it could easily have caught Touya off-guard if correctly timed. Rather than attempt this, Kurama ran around the ring and let himself be plinked half to death.

That seemed to be his entire strategy for this fight, barring smearing blood on the seal, which was a suspect move in my opinion. As Touya was telling him it wouldn't work, he pulled out a rose and tried to make it work, when it should have been fairly obvious that he still couldn't reach his energy. He didn't have to pull the whip to test it, if it needed testing, and it was needlessly dramatic and seemed to injure him further. I call foul, and accuse him of doing it for audience benefit -- which is to say, for Yuusuke's benefit, to make sure Yuusuke knew how helpless he still was.

While that maneuver with the Death Plant might have been the only decent way around his inability to reach his power, it was also the fastest and surest way to take him out of the picture, and would not have been necessary if he'd planned up to par in the first place. By the little speech he gave at the end, it was reasonably obvious to me that he was sure he wasn't going to live more than a few seconds more, and that he wasn't awfully sad about that; the fact that he survived seemed to surprise him as much as anybody.

So that's the sum of the second fight; handled better, but still not handled at all well.

Taken all together, this, ladies and gents, is not just a background suicide complex. This is an "I hope Yuusuke doesn't notice because Hiei will but can't do anything about it" complex. This is active, self-destructive action. I surmise that it was a situational attempt, with three main criteria: 1) Hiei would be unable to interfere, 2) Yuusuke would not know what he was attempting, and 3) Kurama would still win all his matches (this last so that the team would still have a chance at survival). The only thing that went wrong was the dying part, and that only because Hiei and Yuusuke were willing to throw the entire Tournament for his sake. Otherwise, it would have worked perfectly, although he would have died from Bakken's attacks and not Touya's.

And, yet, he displayed such genuine surprise when things went badly for him that it made me doubt for a long time. But I'm serious when I say that he's smarter than that. He's more experienced than that. He should have known better than that and done things completely differently. I'd buy these tactics out of Kurama if he were no older than his human body -- his excellent reasoning only goes so far, and under duress I would expect any less seasoned fighter to make these kinds of glaring mistakes when life and loved ones are on the line. But Kurama is 1000+ years old. When one has Kurama's level of experience added to his level of cognitive reasoning, one has no bloody excuse for this much bald stupidity.

I'm not terribly certain why he picked mid-Tournament for this. It's kind of a bad time, considering he might doom his entire team, and he hasn't seemed the type not to care. One person stipulated in a fanfic (I highly recommend you give it a read, it's very good) that Kurama allows himself to be injured in battle to throw off opponents. This I'll buy. It's solid philosophy and good tactics. However, anyone with the precision and skill necessary to pull off the exact sort of careful wounding that Kurama does is someone with the capability to fend off much more damage than he routinely takes -- someone crafty and devious and generally better at surviving. When Kurama plans to win, he wins, and with lots of flamboyant drama but no undue fuss (read: Genbu and Roto). It's only when he's planning to lose that he has trouble. A friend of mine, watching the series for the first time, remarked that he instantly assumed Kurama was planning to lose, from the redhead's words to Yuusuke at the start of the round, whereas I always assumed until now that he was still thinking of better plans.

IN DEFENSE OF KURAMA:

Kurama seems to me to be strikingly weak. None of his techniques require all that much power to maintain, and he doesn't really display any more raw power behind his attacks than Kuwabara, and perhaps even a little less. He has little of Yuusuke's bodily resistance or ability to take a punch, seems to have little to no defense beyond dodging, and employs precious few techniques that even have the potential to be defensively spun. He doesn't even seem able to throw up a basic energy shield, which even Yuusuke can do (we saw him attempt it against Suzaku). This seems odd to me, because knowing that it would have been easy to be killed once he became human (should any demons find him), he should have built defenses before he even considered attacks. He has 1000 years of knowing how not to die at his disposal, and the fastest way to die is to trust either offense or defense to always work; you need both, and lots of both, so that you always have a backup to keep you alive. However, in the absence of either, you get defense first. So why does he seem to have no defense at all? I'm still puzzling over this one. Even outside of the Tournament, his defenses suck royally, and that just seems very much unlike his character setup. I'm still taking suggestions on this one.

If anyone has a better insight into this, feel free to toss it my way, and remember that I only imperfectly remember the sub for these episodes and have not read the manga at all. Trust me, if there's a better explanation for it in either the sub or the manga, I'll pounce on it. I'm not quite at a loss, but -- damn. Where did his long-term planning go? And why did he pick the Dark Tournament, Round 3, to be such a jackass? He knew better than anyone that he'd neatly doom his team if he died mid-Tournament. Gah, it makes my brain bleed. >.< *headdesk*

Heh. I try. I swear I have to take everything that interests me apart, and there are so many places in YYH that are just ripe for it. This makes the third complicated theory I've put forth about the series, and I don't see as I'll ever quit finding new things to research. ^^ Somewhere I have one about Kurama vs. Youko, and another one about something else I can't remember; they both need retooling, but if I can find them they'll probably make it to the guild also.

And you, m'dear, are awesome for caring about my crackpot theories in the first place.




Well, someone else (on livejournal) pointed out to me that regardless of why he wanted to kill himself in the first place, there would have to have been some kind of tangible benefit in his eyes for the rest of the team. He's not selfish enough, really, to throw his life away without any other purpose than that he didn't want to live anymore. I'd say he started with semi-active suicidal tendencies, and then saw an opening, as it were: something about the situation made him decide that it was a perfect time to take himself out when it would actually do his friends some good. What that good is, I'm still thinking about.



That fits with my general theory that he hasn't adjusted to being human yet. He's got new sets of emotions, new sets of foreign experiences, and even his old reactions to things like loss are likely to be grossly skewed. A major plot point in my longfic depends on it, actually. ^^;

But yes, that's sound. It gives us the most solid basis for why he hates himself enough to want to die, and fits with every little clue he's given us in the series. I just need to figure out why he thought dying during Round 3 would be good for his team in the first place. You can bet he chose his moment on purpose, so he had to have some rationalization for the timing.



No need for shooting it to hell, it was perfectly good. ^^ Thanks tons for actually responding -- I was afraid my monster of an OP would scare most of the guild-members away.

There is indeed. I wonder if he was trying to pull a Kuwabara and get killed to motivate Yuusuke? It fits with his vanity, works fine with the timing, and might explain why he was so careless overall. Or maybe he owed the Shinobi a debt of honor or something, or had screwed them over a long time ago and then felt bad for it. Or, hell, maybe both. He's a strange fox, that one. >.<

Hm. I'm going to throw each of those three ideas in my brain mixer and break them down into logistics. I'll come back with that as soon as I can. Feel free to toss down your thoughts on them in the interim; mine is likely to take a long time due to my need to be overly thorough. sweatdrop



Yay! I'll have to get right on my other ones, then. This will be so much more fun with someone to talk to about them!

You make perfect sense Jasenae. I am not sure I could really take that all apart piece by piece because I agree with it. Sorry I can't go into intense detail on this, but there's not really a heck of a lot for me to analyze. You've pretty much said it all here Jesenae ^_^.

Nifty! Yes, his line about making his stand does seem fishy all on its own, doesn't it? And the point about him figuring he was too weak to take on anyone from Team Toguro is a good one‭; ‬I hadn't really considered that,‭ ‬but it does make sense.‭ ‬But he was on the team because he had to be‭ ‬--‭ ‬no one on the guest team was given a choice,‭ ‬and it wasn't like he could up and leave.

As for Uraurishima,‭ ‬I've got a couple of theories.‭ ‬One,‭ ‬it might be that it's much more difficult to lie over telepathic connection than by other means.‭ ‬The minds have to be linked,‭ ‬and it's probably unholy difficult to control one's thoughts‭ (‬except for Kurama,‭ ‬as he later proves when he fights Elder Toguro in the Sensui arc‭)‬.‭ ‬If Ura was good enough to sound sincere over telepathy,‭ ‬that might have been enough for him to believe it.

Alternately,‭ ‬he‭ didn't‭ ‬believe Ura and was in the process of Suicide Attempt‭ ‬#2.‭ ‬He didn't know about the Idunn Box just yet,‭ ‬so none of his reasons would have changed.‭ ‬He might have been reluctant to try it again because of Hiei,‭ ‬but my general theory runs to the fact that they probably had a very memorable talk after Round‭ ‬3,‭ ‬during which Hiei verbally tore him a new one for his actions that entire round.‭ ‬When he knows that Hiei's telepathic as well,‭ ‬he could either assume that Hiei was monitoring his telepathic conversation with Ura and pretend that he was snowed under,‭ ‬because we know Kurama‭ is‭ ‬that good at concealing his mental processes,‭ ‬or else he could have just done some old-fashioned acting and either intended to leave Hiei without explanation,‭ ‬or else had some plan in mind to let Hiei know what had happened.‭ ‬It wasn't too hard to figure out from context,‭ ‬anyway,‭ ‬since Ura referenced it tons right after.

The Idunn Box was something about which he didn't know,‭ ‬but if he deliberately let Ura temporarily disable him and trap him in the ring‭ (‬where have we seen THIS before‭? ‬Oh,‭ ‬ja‭)‬,‭ ‬he knew Ura would have something or other to hit him with.‭ ‬The fact that he didn't even take a swipe at Ura when he was pulling the box out kind of speaks to the fact that he wanted it to affect him,‭ ‬without knowing that it would turn him back to his Youko form.

And you know,‭ ‬I'm kind of leaning on that second theory a bit more.‭ ‬It seems more like him.

But yes,‭ ‬I agree with you that after he found out about the Idunn Box,‭ ‬sacrificing himself was no longer the best option.‭ ‬Especially since the Youko form was able to act much more ruthless than his human form,‭ ‬it might have even seemed to be a way around the problem entirely.‭ ‬Now the other demons would no longer be able to count on him being weak-hearted,‭ ‬because hiding behind his Youko form gave him the ability to be as cruel as he needed to be.‭ ‬Also Shishiwakamaru was close enough to the fight that he knew Ura was about to spill the beans,‭ ‬so he was also close enough that he probably heard everything going on in there,‭ ‬so at least one team of demons knew that Youko wasn't inclined to act at all like human-Kurama.‭ ‬That sort of thing gets around pretty fast.