Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho
Yu Yu Hakusho

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The opening volumes, where they try and put Yusuke’s personality on track, was what started to pull me in. He reminds me a lot of Onizuka, another character I loved, in that he’s so wonderfully flawed. You don’t see Goku having some sudden epiphany and becoming a better person because he’s already sitting in the Lawful Good alignment to start with; there’s not a whole lot of room there for progression. By contrast, the delinquent is a great character to make the protagonist because he can’t be perfect and he has to grow at some point. Starting the series off dead ... and in need of redemption really gives that development a kick in the pants too. Of course, Yusuke never makes it marginally close to being paragon of justice. He is generally good, has a sense of justice, and cares about his friends mind you, but ultimately he just wants a good brawl, and saving the world in the process is gravy.

This leads into the other characters. Kuwabara is another delinquent who is determined to become more powerful that Yusuke some day. Since he’s not the main character, you can guess how well this is going to work out. He grows in a much different direction though, motivated by a few events in the story (one seemingly minor) and his blinding determination to never give up. Kurama is a formerly powerful demon that has been stuck inside of a human’s body. Forced to see life through humanity’s eyes, he reforms his ways and becomes a protector of the race. Finally, Hiei is an enigma for the majority of the series, you don’t even find out much of his motivations until the final arc. Even he develops a minor form of justice and a grudging respect for Yusuke. Overall, I loved these characters and their interactions throughout the story. Their personality clashes allow for a decent bit of levity to lighten up the fighting backdrop.

If you’re looking for a story, well, it’s a good thing there’s strong characters, because this is a Shonen series. You should check your story at the door. But, a plot still exists, and there are definite motivations to the characters’ actions. A few of the villains can even be painted as a bit unfortunate in their path to evil (or are they really evil?). The ending theme and eventual moral to this whole story is the same as that which Nippon Ichi has taken and ran with for the past few years. Light is not good and dark is not bad. Judging people based on stereotypes and what you’ve always been taught to believe is never the way to go; each being deserves to be looked at based on their own merits and shortcomings. Given that’s the conclusion, it’s natural that Yusuke ends up being a mostly neutral aligned character. Beyond that, like every shonen, there’s going to be those ludicrous points (such as the entire final arc), but just sit back and let it pay off on sheer enjoyment factor, because it will.

Manga pretty well rests on the art style, and this series doesn’t disappoint. I don’t know how many times I looked at a fight scene… then went back again… and again. They’re drawn well, lots of action and explosions and all that greatness. As a warning though, the further you get in the series, the more gore you’re going to see. Backgrounds are well drawn when they’re the focal point of the panel, and take a natural backseat in quality and appearance when they’d end up detracting from the main attraction. The same process applies to the character designs, and they’re generally in that decent to good range that you get in this genre. I do have to say that I liked a lot of the enemy characters, for appearing for such a short time there’s some original design put into them. In particular, I really liked Younger Toguro’s design.

Bottom line, this is a shonen series; you know roughly what to expect in this territory. If you like the genre then I’m going to wonder why you haven’t read this yet. If you’re not much of a fan, this series might not convert you, but it’ll still be a pretty good ride throughout.

Final Score: 8/10 SPIRIT SHOTGUNS!

Yu-Yu Hakusho. The once great, but forgoten series.

STORY: 7/10
The story isn't anything ground breaking. The main character, Yusuke, dies, comes back to life, and becomes a spirit detective with special powers. With these special powers Yusuke fights demons, monsters, and other guys with special powers. I only have beef with one of the special powers used, and thats Yusuke's. He shoots a ball of blue energy out of his finger which looks exactly like a mini kamehameha from DBZ. It kind of pissed me off, but most of the other powers are pretty cool.

So the story was broken down into three arcs. The first arc ... is defenitly the best. It's a tournament, and all the characters fight the bad guys one on one each showing off their own unique powers. The third arc had so much potential, and looked like it was going to be the best, but then the mangaka was forced to end the manga right when it was getting freaking awesome so there were around 5 chapters of absolute CRAP to end the series. Yu-Yu Hakusho has got to have one of the worst endings in manga history. That brings the 'story' score down a lot.

ART: 6/10
Theres not much to say about the art. It started off pretty good. It didn't make your jaw drop, but it was decent. It got the job done. Then, near the end, it just got worse and worse. The last few chapters of CRAP had maybe the worst art i've ever seen in a manga. I would have given a 7 or 8 if it wasn't for the ending of the series...seriously its really, really bad.

CHARACTER: 4/10
Not really unique. You had the tough guy main character who never gave up, the goofy friend, the super strong sensei, the emo guy, the girl who loves the main character, etc. If you're a shounen nut who loves everything shounen, then these characters will be your best friends.

ENJOYMENT: 8/10
I didn't enjoy the characters when they were just standing around talking to each other. But most of the time they were fighting demons, and shooting energy balls at stuff. Watching the characters fight was very enjoyable. I just straight up had fun reading through the fight scenes. It's too bad the ending is like watching your cat die.

OVERALL: 6/10
It would be wrong to say this manga did a lot of things right, but it also didn't do a lot of things wrong (except for the ending. That was very, very wrong). I'm sort of torn on this. The one good thing it did was the fighting. The two bad things it did were the characters and the ending. The art started good, but then went bad. This manga screams AVERAGE.

So it gets a 6. I know you're thinking "wait! That's one better then average!". Good observation you genious review reader. That's because all the manga that i read who have anime counterparts that I watched when i was a kid get 1 extra bonus piont. The 6 still stands.

This series is amazing. But it suffers greatly in it's final arc. Character dynamics that are well established in the earlier volumes and chapters become completely irrelevant. DO NOT READ THIS! Watch it instead. It still has many faults, but it does it better in the anime. I wish I could give this a 10 out of 10. I really do. I love Togashi's work and this was such an important part of my teens. Now that I'm more critical of what I read and watch I still think that the anime suffers greatly after the first encounter of the "Chapter Black" Arc or "Black ... Chapter" if you're reading the English manga.

While Togashi was working on this he pretty much gave up on writing and drawing it after the beginning of the Chapter Black arc. There is a lot of positives to Yuyu Hakusho, it's basically the exact oppopsite of HxH while being very similar. If you have any interest in it please watch the anime instead. It fixes and prolongs the story to a degree, the last arc is still trash though and this is just an opinion, but I think the arc before it heavily suffers in quality too. Just don't let the manga define your opinion on the anime.