Anime/Yu Yu Hakusho [Revived]

Keiko.

Oh wow. When I went back to watch a clip I totally heard it.

"It absolutely was a way to punch out early and end the series — as mentioned, Togashi was in poor health and wanted to wrap it up. But it still felt like it fit, which is the important thing to me. Yu Yu Hakusho was never about armies on massive battlefields, so a theoretical full-length Three Kings arc was never going to focus on an actual war. That means it would have been about the would-be kings fighting directly with the armies around them just being set dressing, or it would have been about assassinating the rivals in their strongholds, so basically just a rehash of the Saint Beasts arc. "

You are right in a way but I do feel togadashi wanted to play out diferent with more intrigue based idea and kinda give up for some reason or another, for what I get this is kind of happing in hunter x hunter so I feel he kinda have an idea that was cut short.

in fact sensui arc does feel like he wanted to do something different.

(2) I smirked when I heard "YUSUKE" after all of these years

I just realized something interesting. Yu Yu Hakusho is a series about a teenage boy being manipulated and groomed into becoming a Shounen protagonist against his will, both by his allies and enemies.

• After dying, he needs to do good deeds to come back to life, then he's forced into being a Spirit Detective and taking missions for Spirit World.

• Toguro blackmails him into joining the Dark Tournament by threatening his family and friends.

• The whole finale of the Dark Tournament is everyone, Toguro, Genkai, and even Kuwabara, manipulating Yusuke into achieving his true potential to beat Toguro.

• Genkai literally kidnaps him to force him to stop Sensui.

• Then, during his battle against Sensui, Raizen takes over his body and kills Sensui for him.

• The Three Kings arc is the first time Yusuke is ever given the ability to choose what he wants to do, and he decides to go see Raizen and then starts the Demon World tournament to diffuse tensions.

Every adult in this series can see that Yusuke has immense potential but he needs to be pushed and manipulated into using it, otherwise, he'll squander his potential by being lazy, this even goes back to his school principal at the very beginning. But that also means that Yusuke is constantly being forced to fight for his life without ever getting a choice in deciding what he wants to do.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 13th 2023 at 9:25:12 AM

....well shit.

I think you're on to something.

And now, FINALLY, the entire series of Yu Yu Hakusho is available for perusal on the Shonen Jump App.

Edit:...man, it's so easy to forget the first few chapters are mostly episodic and light-hearted as Yusuke tries to earn the right to come back to life. You can almost feel the swerve when it abruptly shifts to battle manga.

Edited by Dracoblade on Sep 13th 2023 at 3:38:17 AM

I wonder if they would ever animate a "season zero" style miniseries of Yu Yu Hakusho covering those early chapters.

You can tell early on it was conceived as a very different kind of series: more of an episodic mystery and action series where each chapter the hero goes up against a different ghost story or folkloric monster and saves X civilian from the evil curse involved. Like an anime Ghostbusters sort of thing.

You can see the exact moment where the series pivoted to a more classic shounen (and later, to a bit of classic shounen decon), and it was all the better for it, but I do still fondly remember those first few tales.

The one with the kid and his ghost dog and the one where the girl accidentally curses her friend both still stick with me.

Honestly, there's some good, heartfelt stories here that I never actually saw before, because the anime skipped 90% of it to get to the action.

Also, and I know this isn't news or anything, but the english dub had the best lines;

Edited by Dracoblade on Sep 13th 2023 at 7:21:22 AM

Netflix live action teaser:

Huh, looks like they're reworking the Rescue Yukina arc to be a battle of Team Yurameshi vs Team Toguro.

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/yu-yu-hakusho-release-date-news

It's the cast list for Yu Yu Hakusho. Genkai is played by Kaji Meiko aka Lady Snowblood!

Huh.

And there you go.

Weird to see Kurama there rescuing Yukina alongside Yusuke and Kuwabara. I note Hiei doesn't seem to be there, though.

I'm digging Team Urameshi fighting together.

Yu Yu Hakusho's been serialized and available since 1990, and the trailer is free to view and is recapping/remixing story arcs that have been available just as long.

Edited by FOFD on Nov 11th 2023 at 10:25:08 AM

Wow. That's... a lot.

How many episodes does this season have? They're mashing a lot of plots into a singular story.

Oh for some reason I assumed this would be a movie, not a tv series.

Oh crap its a series?

Well that explains a lot of the different scenes in here

Looks like they're skipping the actual ghost part of the series. Instead of earning the right, Koemma's all "We're bringing you back, but only if you work for us!"

Also, are we skipping the Saint Beasts too? Just going straight to the Dark Tournament as quickly as possible?

I'm pretty sure the Dark Tournament will be saved for Season 2. It looks to me like they're adding Bui and Karasu to the Rescue Yukina arc, and giving them fights with Hiei and Kurama to make up for cutting the Saint Beasts arc and all the fights in there.

Anituber Totally Not Mark has started covering Yu Yu Hakusho, just in time to the lead up to the Netflix show:

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Nov 19th 2023 at 1:04:35 PM

Yu Yu Hakusho was always a superior Dragonball Z for me as a teenager. Stronger characters, more morally gray situations, more snark, more unique tactics and reliance on strategy, mote complex villains, and a tournament arc with an anticlimax.

The one thing I never really liked though... was the number of situations and battles where a Team Urameshi member threw their life on the line on for a goal.

You always want your heroes to be selfless paragons, heck the series begins because Yusuke was so uncharacteristically/secretly good he gave his life to save a child when he didn't have to.

• Kuwabara was ready to let him and his gang get beaten to death over a kitten.
• Yusuke prepared to sacrifice his life for Kurama's wishing mirror.
• Again during the fight with the Saint Beast when he had to use his life energy.
  • Kuwabara threw himself over a pit of lava because he didn't want tonget upstaged.
• Again when Kuwabara fought Toguro - launching himself in front of a spirit gun to stab the latter.
• Yusuke put himself in a knife edge death match against Chu a few minutes after waking up from a deep sleep.
• Tried a kamikaze move against Jin.

And so on. It always feels like they put themselves stupidly into life or death all or nothing situations. Like This Is supposed to be the Let's Get Dangerous! but it feels less and less engaging because Yusuke was willing to blow himself up to stop the bad guy last week.

Its like part of his fighting strategy. Hell, Kuwabara and Yusuke both got themselves almost killed to motivate the other's next big power up.

Eh, I don't deny that happens a lot, but that first one's a bit of an exaggeration. All the guy told him was to beat up his friends or let the kitten get hurt, and Kuwabara didn't do it. Death never came into it.

Plus a lot of those aren't as extreme as it sounds. Kuwabara already knew Yusuke could modulate his Spirit Gun blasts to be less dangerous when he came up with the "shoot me like a rocket" plan. The "Death Match" ends with nobody dead, and Yusuke didn't "Kamikaze" Jin — the risk was his counter used up all his Spirit Energy. The Saint Beast thing is very true, though.

Edited by Dracoblade on Nov 19th 2023 at 8:43:34 AM

Not directly related to YYH, but Togashi has revealed one of the four endings he's brainstormed for Hunter x Hunter because he's worried he'll die before he finishes it. I hope he's alright.

It's kind of a strange scenario, too - he said that, if he does die before finishing, this one will be the canon ending, but if he finishes, it'll be one of the other three. He also says that of those three, the one he wants to use most will be the one he thinks the fans will like least.

Just finished watching Mark's review of the first bit of YuYu Hakusho.

Huh. Considering how the series often gets compared to DB, it's interesting to realize that YYH is the Pre Saiyan Arc to Hunter × Hunter's Saiyan Arc and beyond.

Also, him dunking on Hiei makes me look forward to his reaction to Hiei screwing up in the early part of the Chapter Black Saga.