Arguably, Hiei is the least original member of the Yu Yu Hakusho group. He’s cocky, short, and has a horrible time admitting his feelings to those around him because of his harsh childhood. That definitely sets off some triggers in most Dragon Ball Z fans.
Aside from not being a person who lets his pride nearly get him killed several times over, there’s a lot of hidden depth to the fourth lead character of Yu Yu Hakusho. For those who’ve always been curious to learn more about this character, this list is for you, as we go into his backstory...and who the character’s really based off of.
10 UNDEFEATED IN THE DARK TOURNAMENT
Hiei was rarely ever known to lose fights in Yu Yu Hakusho, but perhaps the most impressive thing was he never managed to lose a match during the Dark Tournament, even when the team’s back was against the wall.
Kuwabara lost his first match versus Rinko. Kurama was eliminated by Bakken during the third round. Genkai loses in her battle against Toguro, even though it isn’t official. And Yusuke winds up with a tie against Jin thanks to a bribe by Butajiri, sponsor of Team Masho.
9 APPEARS MULTIPLE TIMES IN HUNTER X HUNTER
Unsurprisingly, Hiei makes an appearance in Togashi’s second major series, Hunter x Hunter. He pops up three different times in the manga. First, he appears alongside Yusuke and Kurama as a toy in Milluki Zoldyck’s room. Later, he’s seen as a plush toy during an auction.
Between both of those appearances though, he makes a full, non-Saturday morning cartoon commercial appearance as a spectator to Gon’s arm wrestling challenge in Yorknew City. He also seems to heavily resemble one of the Phantom Troupe.
8 NEVER USED THE JAGAN FORM AGAIN
When Hiei is first introduced, we find he’s a crook that’s stolen a specific weapon known as the Conjuring Blade, which is capable of transforming people into demons. In battle, Yusuke is surprisingly able to keep up with Hiei, until he accesses the power of his Jagan Eye.
The power gives Hiei eyes all over his body, turns him green, and vastly increases his speed and makes it impossible for Yusuke to keep up with, and he only narrowly wins the battle. Despite this ostensibly being a power-up for Hiei, he never decides to use this form again. It’s never explained why, but it’s likely because heroic characters aren’t meant to use forms that make them look like that.
7 MOST POPULAR CHARACTER ON THE SHOW
It’s sometimes difficult to quantify something like this. After all, most popular with who? Well, in the Japanese magazine Animage, he was the first, second, and third most popular character in 1993, 1994, and 1995. He was also voted first in a popularity poll in the manga when it was still releasing. And the popular Japanese series Newtype voted him the fifth-best male character of the 1990s as a whole.
Of course, the fact Hiei exists at all as a main character is because fans reacted so positively to him, Togashi changed Hiei from a character used in one story to one of the main players in Yu Yu Hakusho.
6 WAS BORN TO ICE MAIDENS
Hiei actually led a pretty rough life. He was considered a cursed child because he was born to an ice maiden, which is meant to be a tribe of all females. As a fire demon, he was immediately ostracized by the women there.
If anyone was expecting this to be a story about love and a community choosing to raise the child, they are sorely mistaken. The tribe chucked the boy off the mountain he was born on, leaving Hiei stranded in the world of Makai to be raised by bandits.
5 WAS ORIGINALLY AN A-CLASS DEMON
While Yusuke had the blood of Raizen, a demon king inside him, Kuwabara was spiritually sensitive, and Kurama was originally a legendary fox...it’s a bit weird that Hiei was able to gain power so quickly. At the start of the series, he can barely beat Yusuke, and yet within less than a year, he’s already an A-Class demon?
Well, that’s because Hiei was already an A-Class demon before the series starts. He gained this power when he was much younger but getting the Jagan Eye so he could find his sister resulted in him losing the vast majority of his power.
4 COULD BE NEARLY 100 YEARS OLD
“Could Be” sounds a bit vague; unfortunately, that's all we’re left with. Though Hiei was born to an ice maiden, he wasn't the only one. Hiei was a twin, with his sister being the ice maiden Yukina.
We don’t know the age of either of them but members of Yukina’s race don’t hit puberty until they’re one hundred years old. Yukina isn’t quite there yet, which means the two of them could be anywhere between sixteen and ninety-nine years old.
3 THE JAGAN EYE HAS BEEN IN OTHER ANIME
The Jagan Eye is something that’s used a single time and then written off, aside from explaining Hiei’s weakness earlier in the series. However, it’s still well remembered because it’s the one time Hiei actually managed to give Yusuke the hands. Furthermore, that’s not the only time the Jagan Eye has been used.
In the series Get Backers, protagonist Ban Mido also has access to a technique called the Jagan. For him, it can be used three times a day, forcing anyone he makes eye contact with into a minute-long illusion that can be time-displaced. Essentially, it’s the Mangekyō Sharingan. Every eye technique eventually overlaps.
2 LEARNED SWORDSMANSHIP AFTER HE LOST HIS STRENGTH
When Hiei first began making himself known in the demon world, he was more about fighting with his hands. He made it all the way to A-Rank by age five with nothing but hand to hand combat. But when he decided to gain the Jagan Eye, he was told he would lose all of his strength.
The surgeon who implanted the eye offered to teach him how to use a sword to defend himself while he got his strength back. Though Hiei is stronger than ever now, it seems unlikely he’ll ever give up on using a blade in combat.
1 IS BASED OFF A CHARACTER FROM PATALLIRO
It’s easy to look at Hiei and think “this is clearly someone based off Vegeta.” But that would be incorrect. For one, Hiei actually knows how to win a fight. Secondly, Togashi has already explained the inspiration for Hiei comes from the 1980s series Patalliro.
A shoujo manga set on an island home to a vast collection of diamonds, the story followed the island’s ten-year-old king, Patalliro VIII. Certainly there's at least a tiny bit of resemblance with the hair.