Yu Yu Hakusho Episode 91 Discussion

These last few episodes have showcased exactly what I don't like about this series:

1. Fake stakes: Nothing bad ever happens, but that doesn't stop the show from pretending that there's a possibility of failure. It's not a problem when the show doesn't act like failure is a real option, but in Yuyu's case it does. Kuwabara has been in two situations the show has literally told us were death, in one the power of love pulled him through and made him invincible(Rishu) and the other Toguro didn't kill him even though it's ridiculous for him not to(If he just got up it would of ruined Toguro's plan). Kurama has done a suicide technique to kill Karasu with him, and what happens, the asspull yoko juice he drank right before saved him by giving him like 5% extra strength. Now Genkai dies, a character made to give Yusuke her power and pass away, the only time I ever accepted some stakes were real in this show and something bad would be permanent. Guess what, she comes back out of nowhere after the whole show has acknowledged she is 100% dead. Yusuke has never, ever lost. He's finally lost against Sensui and we think he's dead, but guess what, he actually survives and is now 10x stronger. Yusuke should thank Sensui if anything. On top of that every final fight(and often not so final fights) acts like there is no way to win, and instead of losing and learning, Yusuke powers up by burning his life energy against Suzaku(asspull which only he and Kuwabara can ever do and it only happens when the plot needs it), he gets angry and becomes infinitely stronger(against Toguro, which is just lazy) or in this case gets reborn 10x stronger like an episode after he dies. This show has no backbone, Togashi is so afraid to make bad things happen, but he understands that if the threat isn't there people would get bored. So what he does is he waves a carrot named stakes in our faces but never commits to anything bad. There was an entire fight about making Yusuke choose to kill to save lives, take a lesser evil to save the day rather than win purely because hes the good guy main character. What happened, well Genkai revived the Doctor immediately after Yusuke killed him. Why? Because Togashi is a hack sometimes and is afraid to ever commit to his promises, even after he already got a character to go through with them.

2. Fake hype: Hiei and Kurama both leveled up, Kurama turning into Yoko purely because he's mad, and then we see this arbitrary writing choice used purely to add hype to the asspull to come later where Yusuke turns into a demon. They all use their strongest attacks on Sensui, and Sensui plays with them rather than killing them, well blocking every single one of their strongest moves without flinching. The squad we know and love broke the rules of logic and leveled up for no reason just in time, just to be treated as hype tools like every match of Dark Tournament which Yusuke didn't fight in. Just to lose so that the asspull demon could come and show everyone how strong he is.

3. Asspulls: As you could guess, most of the fights in this show end purely because the main characters are main characters. From burning life energy, to powering up from love, or anger, or breaking the rules the show already put into place(Kurama jumping around with paint on him), or being reborn as a demon with absolutely no foreshadowing, or getting a power up right before the last fight so they can keep up with Team Toguro(looking at you Dark Tournament minus Hiei). It's just ridiculous.

Yuyu Hakusho does not respect it's audience at all during fights, the fight system and everything that surrounds it is contrived and manipulative. This arc had fixed it for the most part, winners winning because of smarts rather than arbitrary power ups and breaking the rules, but this final fight falls right back into the formula. It makes me sad that it's doing so. To clarify, I really do enjoy this show, some fights are fantastic(Hiei vs Bui for instance) and the characters are great. It's just offensive how transparently weak the writing is when it wants to be intense. At least this arc stayed away from doing all of these problems for the most part, sadly this fight is committing all of it's problems and taking a very long time. Just one of these issues isn't a massive problem, but when all are paired up, all the time, it invalidates nearly every fight in the show. This is a fighting Shounen, so this is a problem.