Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho

One fateful day, Yuusuke Urameshi, a 14-year-old delinquent with a dim future, gets a miraculous chance to turn it all around when he throws himself in front of a moving car to save a young boy. His ultimate sacrifice is so out of character that the authorities of the spirit realm are not yet prepared to let him pass on. Koenma, heir to the throne of the spirit realm, offers Yuusuke an opportunity to regain his life through completion of a series of tasks. With the guidance of the death god Botan, he is to thwart evil presences on Earth as a Spirit Detective.

To help him on his venture, Yuusuke enlists ex-rival Kazuma Kuwabara, and two demons, Hiei and Kurama, who have criminal pasts. Together, they train and battle against enemies who would threaten humanity's very existence.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Urameshi, Yuusuke Main

Sasaki, Nozomu Japanese

Hiei Main

Hiyama, Nobuyuki Japanese

Kurama Main

Ogata, Megumi Japanese

Kuwabara, Kazuma Main

Chiba, Shigeru Japanese

Botan Main

Miyuki, Sanae Japanese

Toguro, Younger Supporting

Genda, Tesshou Japanese

Sensui, Shinobu Supporting

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Genkai Supporting

Hayashibara, Megumi Japanese

Koenma Supporting

Tanaka, Mayumi Japanese

Jin Supporting

Yamaguchi, Kappei Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer, ADR Director

Watson, Barry Producer

Kimura, Kyoutarou Producer

Hagino, Ken Producer

Reviews

Jul 7, 2008

ensatsu-ken

Recommended

Alright, I'll start off by saying that I'm no longer a big fan of fighting-based anime. However, I do still enjoy the ones which are well done, as well as some of the classics. That said, if you really don't like fighting anime of any sort, even if its one which has a decent or really good story, then don't bother reading this review, because I can already tell you that this anime is most likely not for you.

Anyways, for those of you who do like a well constructed fighting/action anime, Yu Yu Hakusho is an outstanding show in this category, overall. Yes, it is ... a shounen, and yes, it does have a few of those typical shounen clichés. However, it also manages to come up with a lot of very unique and inventive ideas, and its dialogue, above average story, with much more depth to it than what you would expect from a shounen, and actual good sense of humor (when compared to most other action anime), make this title stand out from the crowd.

I find the characters to be the real award winners here. They each have something unique and interesting about them. Upon first glance they may look like they each have those 1-dimensional cliché roles of an action series, but upon further viewing you will see that there is more than what meets the eye with Yu Yu Hakusho characters. I can guarantee that throughout the course of this show anyone watching it would at least find 1 character which they can truly appreciate. Also, this show doesn't just focus on the main character getting stronger and always being the big hero. There is some very interesting character development for many of the characters, and the way in which they interact with one another, as well the diversity and similarities that they show, make for a very balanced chemistry between this cast.

The animation and artwork isn't top notch, even for its time, but its adequate and gets the job done. The action isn't amazing, but believe it or not, unlike most action/shounen anime this anime often tends to focus more on developing its story and characters, rather than producing lots of mindless action. And at that, even if it doesn't look all that great it is great to see actual strategy and emotion playing big parts in many of the fights, rather than simply just having a bunch of punches, kicks, throws, explosions, etc., taking up multiple episodes.

Now, as for the music, its really all opinion. Some people won't find it to be anything special. I personally fell in love with the entire soundtrack of the series, and believe it or not, it has some of the best BGM that I have heard in any shounen anime. Its doesn't quite give you the same diversity and overall satisfaction that the soundtracks of Cowboy Bebop and a few other anime with great musical scores give you, but once again, its far above average when compared to most other shounen and action anime, or at least I feel that way about its music, personally.

And then finally, there is the voice acting. Oh, and how wonderful it is. Well, if you're watching the sub then chances are the voices will stand out to you as adequate, yet nothing amazing, but as long as you're watching a decent and reliable fansub or the DVDs, you will love the dialogue, which is brilliant in its use of sarcasm/jokes and also in delivering many of the serious and plot-oriented lines. However, if you're an English speaker, even if you typically can't stand dubs, the English dub is the way that this series should be watched. The English voice acting is absolutely fantastic. The voices all fit their respective characters almost perfectly. Sure, the dialogue may not be 100% accurate in correspondence to the original lines from the sub with its added humor and sarcasm (which is well worth going a little off track from the original script for, though), but the messages that each character gets across with their lines are delivered solidly and would be interpreted and understood in the same way, whether you were watching the sub or the dub. So, overall, the dub is loyal to the original text despite the fact that it makes a few very noticeable changes and states some lines in different ways.

Overall, Yu Yu Hakusho is a very fun and enjoyable series. This anime is not something that everybody is going to like, but most people should at least find something about it that keeps them interested. Its not a DBZ clone, and its not just a mindless excuse for intense action scenes. The show is fairly long, but its one of the few series that go over 100 episodes and still manage to stay fresh the whole way through. Therefore, I highly recommend this series. I personally find it to be one of the best series that anime has to offer, action or otherwise, and I know that many people would disagree with me (although, I'm really not a big anime buff), but I have watched my fair share of anime and I almost never give out 10's as scores since no series is perfect (and this anime is no exception), but when I feel that a series deserves it then I give it that score, and Yu Yu Hakusho is one of the few. If you haven't seen it yet then go out and give it a try. I can almost guarantee that you won't be sorry.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 13, 2018

ChouEritto

Mixed Feelings

Note: For the most part a copy-paste of my review of the manga, with a few anime changes warranting a little separate discussion.

Yu Yu Hakusho is a series that has garnered a reputation as a great classic amongst many members of the anime/manga community.Much like many Battle Shonen, however, most of the praise YYH gains as a great work is purely fuelled by one of the major banes of critical thinking; nostalgia.

Note that this review will be more of a spoiler-filled analysis of each arc of the series to fully analyse the story's quality, particularly for a fair lengthed Shonen in which delving into detail ... is fairly necessary.

===Part 1: Spirit Detective Arc===

The Spirit Detective Arc, whilst having an interesting beginning, quickly turns into about 5 episodes of episodic, boring missions. Even after Yusuke's revival, we only have a repetitive formula of a new big bad demon trying to conquer the world with about as much personality as a piece of paper until the Toguro brothers show up. Two of these, Hiei and Kurama, are given more personality by becoming permanent members of the main cast, but the former is poorly handled. Despite his nefarious introduction, Yusuke seems to have no qualms with working with him during the Four Beasts segment despite the common trope of misgivings and conflict amongst the main cast being appropriate here. Instead, the only character with any animosity towards Hiei was Kuwabara, someone who wasn't even there to see Hiei in his evil phase and has conflict with him just because Hiei called him an idiot. Overall, the Spirit Detective Arc is an overly formulaic arc that has some problems in it's character writing and is fairly mediocre overall. 5/10

===Part 2: Dark Tournament Arc===

This is what is often considered the peak of the series as we're offered the idea of a death tournament with the fate of the world in the balance...only to get a very by the books tournament arc with nothing new to offer to the over-saturated formula. Hardly any of the tournament matches outside the finals had much lasting impact with the plot or character progression, with the only opponent to offer anything meaningful to the plot after their defeat being Suzuki and the only one to offer much food for thought being the triple battle against Team Ichigaki. That said, you could cut out or change 90% of the tournament and the overall plot and character development wouldn't change at all. It also doesn't help that Toguro was constantly pushed as the endgame for Team Urameshi from the start with how far above the rest of the competition he was to the point it makes all the other teams and the backing of rich council members acting as though they stood a chance meaningless.
Saying that, why not change it to a tower-style team ranking in a style similar to Heaven's Arena in Togashi's current work? Doing so would not only be more engaging than a run of the mill tournament, but make the factor of Team Toguro being the only endgame far more justified.
I will say Toguro's character writing was good with his guilt and his sympathetic qualities being well foreshadowed. However, this is little saving grace when the majority of this is infodumped after his death and what repercussions he brought to the main cast through the deaths of Genkai and Kuwabara are made completely hollow when the former was revived and the latter was never actually killed. On the subject of Genkai's revival, this brings out a lot of questions about the series' afterlife, as if the likes of Genkai can be revived by Koenma, why is death treat as something truly permanent in this series? At least something such as DBZ had consistency in how the dead can interact and venture to the living world and the ruler of it's afterlife wasn't part of the main cast for maximum plot convenience.
Overall, the Dark Tournment had potential, but ended up being a typical Shonen tournament with all the poor plot devices the demograph is guilty of. 5/10

===Part 3: Chapter Black Arc===

Now, I will offer some fair praise to this arc, with it's first half easily being the peak of the series. The idea of having skill vs power akin to in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Togashi's current work Hunter X Hunter, as well as much focus on the idea of humanity's savage nature being very engaging. However, everything quickly goes downhill once the battle with Sensui starts. Not only does the revelation that Sensui was immeasurably above the main cast all this time come out of nowhere, but the other major revelation of Yusuke's ancestry have no foreshadowing whatsoever and act as a highly contrived power up. Along with these and Yusuke's friends getting rage boosted to A-Class instantly, this completely betrays the arc's premise of strength not being everything, especially when the 3 humans who ushered in this interesting aspect of the arc are completely removed from the climax.
Perhaps character writing could have saved this arc, but not quite. Most of the Sensui Seven didn't have much depth to their character and whilst Sensui was interesting, the plot twist involving him was poor and his seven personalities was unnecessary for doing anything but prolonging the arc when there was little conflict between them in their overall goal and if comparing it to other similar characters, Gemini Saga from Saint Seiya pulled off the multiple personality gimmick far better. On the subject of comparison, the ideas of humanity he represents have been explored with far more coherent writing through the Hunter X Hunter character of Meruem and many more in the Chimera Ant Arc, to the point Sensui and this arc seem fairly dated overall. What could have been the shining jewel in this series was forced by cheap conveniences to be an average at best one. 4.5/10

===Part 4: Three Kings Arc===

Whilst I gave the three previous arcs flak, I at least found them to be average or so. The Three Kings Arc, however, is absolutely terrible. Let's start with the power ups being a further betrayal of the previous arc's premise with how bad the power creep became. Not only did the 6 returning side characters from the Dark Tournament return to far surpass Sensui after Genkai's training, but Kurama far surpassed them by doing...absolutely nothing from what we're shown. Now, the idea of the Makai being divided in three could have been an amazing premise harkening back to the historical epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms and if mimicking it's drawing points could have been the best arc in the series...except nothing of the sort occurs because after Raizen's death, the conflict just becomes another boring tournament to settle everything. Going back to the 6 demons and Kurama, their training and reaching of new plateaus amounted to nothing as their performance in the tournament were so irrelevant most of their performances boil down to getting stomped by Raizen's friends. Kurama at least gained some development, as did Hiei. However, the former shouldn't really have had much of an internal struggle when he was Kurama from the start so Yoko Kurama being portrayed as an alternate personality made little sense, whilst with Hiei his backstory was underwhelming. It also doesn't help that their contribution from the start was fairly pointless, as whilst it's nice the anime gave them more focus than the manga, it was overall unnecessary when it was made abundently clear early on that the only competitors who mattered were Yusuke, Yomi, Mukuro and Raizen's friends, and Raizen's friends were just a bunch of one-note personalities not worth being invested in at all.
Unlike the manga, we actually get some level of climax with Yusuke and Yomi's fight. However, none of that really matters when the point of view on the tournament is erased after Yusuke's defeat in order to skip the boring battles to get to the conclusion of a character nobody cared about becoming the King. After that, the last episode is just everyone waiting for Yusuke to come back. Quite a boring finale. 1.5/10

===Part 5 - Characters, art and final thoughts===

Moving on to quickly go over characters, there's little to say, whilst they are more consistent than most Shonen characters, the cast is still a bunch of fairly typical archetypes beyond the two villains already discussed, despite the anime doing a decent job developing them a lot better than the manga and the majority of such characters have a far better equivalent in the series' spiritual successor of Hunter X Hunter to the point discussing any more of them in depth would be rather meaningless.

Onto the superficial aspect of art, this is a good and consistent aspect unlike the manga, with it containing a distinct nature and much of the 90s charm. The sound is also good with good voice acting and a great soundtrack. However, such superficial aspects mean little compared to plot and characters and thus, will not factor much into the overall rating.

In conclusion, Yu Yu Hakusho is quite a dated work now that it's creator has polished his craft far more long after it, with it being more interesting as a case study of his improvement, and with people not being so limited to what they can watch nowadays, it ought to be evident that most of the elements praised by the masses had already been done better elsewhere. The anime may be better than the mediocre manga, but not by much. If wanting a series not so focused on fights being settled purely by power, there's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. If wanting a series focused on giving it's 4-5 main cast members a good deal of spotlight, there's Saint Seiya. If wanting a series that offers far more creativity and depth than the average Shonen, there's Togashi's other big hit Hunter X Hunter. For any of those categories, however, I can't recommend Yu Yu Hakusho.

Overall Ranking - 5/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Dec 10, 2009

Rotom

Not Recommended

I decided to make some sort of review of this since there didn't seem to be many negative ones previously. The first thing I want to say here is that Hunter x Hunter, the other popular work from the same author, is one of my favorite anime series for half a decade. I therefore had very high expectations for Yu Yu Hakusho. Hell, I'd even have been able to say I liked it even if it was a Dragonball clone. But it was something much worse...

The story is quite trivial most of the time; it gets somewhat good during the last 25 or so eps, ... but it's not worth watching all those battles before it which don't relate to it any way. The few individual story arcs before that are extremely simplistic, if not nonexistent. Mainly you get the feelling that the author came up with them in 5 seconds in order to give some cause for the action.

It's a series from the early 90's, so the art isn't very cool. You'd think that when the series is just pointless action, they'd at least make the action look good? Well, you're wrong. They've not used even those flash and sketcy-line techniques they used on Dragonball at roughly the same time period.

There's no musical scores you'd remember afterwards. Unlike some people, I find several anime series to have music you want to listen discretely from watching the series. But YYH is definitely not one of those, so it's music is well below average.

The main characters are, besides Kurama, unsympathetic slow-witted tough guys. The bad guys mostly lack any personality, their motive to attack the main cast is mainly just because they're bad, and you forget them immediately after they get slaughtered - the shaggy story arcs mostly don't intersect in any way, so you never hear anything about them from any character (and if you ask me, that's one of the defining marks of a bad series). Some of the characters develop at the end - but again, it's nothing exceptional, and just goddamn not worth watching those never-ending mindless bloodbath battles!

So, the battles are long and dull, with exceptionally random power-ups or mutations. There's no adventuring, just tournaments or premised quests to go to some place to beat up some guys. There's little drama, and most characters remain one-dimensional. Unlike in Hunter x Hunter, the superpowers are pure raw power without any strategical element to them. There are only few fighting female characters, most are just cheergals. To me, there wasn't simply anything enjoyable or inspiring in anything.

Overall, it's not the worst series out there (to me the worst are those that try to be something but fail epicly), it just doesn't have anything to say. It's the most generic, mediocre shounen action series probably ever made, and you could watch it if you have absolutely nothing else to do, but don't expect anything.

If you want to watch a fighting series, watch Dragonball - there's some meaning to the fights, there's some plot in between them, and the action is mostly cool.

If you want to watch a quality shounen series which revolves around sympathetic and unforgettable characters, which is mainly adventure and not tournament, which has a good plot and only short battles right on the hot spots of the plot, or want to have a glimpse of that genius of Yoshihiro Togashi they talk out there, watch Hunter x Hunter.

Naruto is fine too.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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