YuYu Hakusho
| YuYu Hakusho | |
|---|---|
 Clockwise from front: Yusuke, Hiei, Kurama, Kazuma | |
| Original Manga | Yoshihiro Togashi |
| Director | Akiyuki Arafusa Noriyuki Abe |
| Format | Anime (TV), Manga |
| Made By | Studio Pierrot |
| # of Episodes | 112 |
| # of Manga Volumes | 19 |
Contents
Genre
Sum it up in a Sentence
Fighting ghosts/demons through detective work or tournaments.
Main Description
Yusuke Urameshi is a fighting delinquent like any good shounen underdog. One day, he decides to save some kid by pushing him out of the way of an incoming car but is killed himself. The people of the afterlife never expected Yusuke's fate to come to end this way, so they offer to let him go back to living. Yusuke, however, doesn't give a flying fudge and says he's fine with dying. After being shown all the people who miss him back in the mortal realm, he changes his mind and is given an egg that will either revive him or devour him depending on how many good deeds he can do. After a bunch of trials and shenanigans, Yusuke is revived and also told he is to be the earth's spiritual detective to protect the human race because why not.
Then like a good shounen, he enters fighting tournaments and meets evil supervillains...each just slightly more powerful than the last one Yusuke meets!
If You Liked This, You Might Like...
- Dragon Ball Z - Both shows have famously long power up sequences and training montages that take place mostly off screen. That and DBZ is kinda the seminal work of shounen.
- Naruto - Besides both being shounen, these shows can bond over having tournaments in lieu of plot.
- One Piece - One Piece feels a lot like what YuYu Hakusho could have been if it had continued to have a plot. If you watched the first bit of Hakusho and really liked it, One Piece is for you.
- Bleach - Similar premise of a human acting as the hero between the borders of the afterlife and living.
Personal Opinions
Linall
Shonen straight to the core, I think the only reason I even remember Yu Yu Hakusho is that it eventually abandons any pretense of having a plot and rolls with back to back tournaments until it was canceled. Which is a shame, because what I suppose you could call the training arc was actually fairly watchable. I remember actually being fairly concerned the first time Yusuke missed with his one hit wonder and for being a cliché given form Kuwabara was surprisingly funny. The problem was that the first tournament ended and then like two episodes later the cast was gearing up for a second one and I didn't even know why.
Keyboard Kid
Yu Yu Hakusho is standard shonen fare. I have not actually finished the show, and probably will not very soon, so I'm writing this as I've seen everything up to the final tournament arc.
YYH has an outstanding beginning. The fights soon after are shallow and rely on incredible deus ex machinas, which is fine for the early arcs. After a bit of time passes (let's just say, the Dark Tournament) the only real things that happen are that our characters gain a few powers and use them once for significant effect. Most battles come and go in a sort of 'here's my new power lol you're dead' way. There are some creative elements to the show--mostly outside the battles--and there are great ideas. The few main characters are a great cast. I love the atmosphere of the show, but I can't truly recommend it unless you seriously need a shonen fix. The animation quality is astoundingly low once it gets moving (they literally reanimate previous episode clips for the 'last time' segment and are using stock footage and serious budget savers by the end of each episode). One thing I liked about the show is how they never truly gave out numbers, just loose rankings (which were never seriously considered), but then they went ahead and fucked that up in the final season.
All in all, the fights are dull, the tournament arcs are way too long, the animation is poor, but there's a certain charm to the series. It's not really good, and most people recognize it, but you'll probably enjoy it a bit if you were a fan of it ten years ago. There's no way I could straight up recommend this over something like One Piece, Kenshin, or Dragon Ball.
