Anime/Yu Yu Hakusho [Revived]

I honestly really like how it looks like there's going to be this huge war spreading chaos everywhere, and then Yusuke rolls in and cuts the Gordian Knot.

That does remind me: in my first year of university, I brought my taped VHS recordings of the Dark Tournament when it was playing on Toonami and watched them with my roommate. Me, him, and another friend did this roleplay of a free-for-all between Yusuke. Kurama, and Hiei. Was pretty interesting.

If nothing else, I really loved that moment. You get this whole set-up for a big political quagmire, you can practically see Yomi smirking on the inside as all the chess pieces finally come together - chained or otherwise - onto the board, the air tense with uncertainty and the promise of turmoil...

... and then Yusuke shows up and says "fuck it! Let's fight!" And everybody else goes "hell yeah!" while Yomi just goes "...wut?"

Unlike the previous time the series swerved a different kind of plot straight back into shonen, Three Kings was pretty enjoyable if nothing else.

Plus, I really love the way that arc compared and contrasted Yusuke and his circle of friends in the present with the older characters' circles or lack thereof (comparing with Raizen and contrasting with Yomi). In the end, it seemed less like a fight for the fate of the cosmos and more like a celebration of the relationships Yusuke has built over the course of the series.

Even Kuwabara gets in on it at the end: a big theme for all the heroic characters in the arc is how knowing Yusuke has changed them, and one of the last things is Kuwabara having totally turned his life around - even if he wasn't in on the fight. It's a nice touch.

That said, I honestly don't know if I would have preferred the political intrigue or not. Imo, the atmosphere before Yusuke declared the tournament was the most tense the series had ever been up to that point, and it really worked. It seemed like things were just going to get darker no matter what, and it was pretty gripping. But at the same time, all that tension really sold the moment where Yusuke straight-up deflates it.

edited 8th Apr '18 10:19:49 PM by KnownUnknown

Not Yusuke's style. Going into a political drama wouldn't have been as funny or action-packed, and would have demanded a lot more of the main character than was necessary.

I do really like bits of the Three Kings arc. I think that it really does put some effort into making Yusuke's demon heritage mean something to him which takes a lot of the edge off of it being a kind of asspull resolution to Chapter Black. Like, there are bits when he's confonting Raizen that feel almost like he's getting angry at his deadbeat dad,

Yeah, I really enjoyed the parts with Raizen.

Apparently this poll on eventhubs has the attention of ArcSys for a future anime fighting title.

If I could vote, probably Yu Yu Hakusho, FMA Brotherhood, and Fist Of the North Star.

Every other series has either too many characters (Jo Jo, which I'd normally pick first, and One Piece) already has a great fighting game and has too many characters (Naruto with NSUNS 4) or is shit and has too many characters (Bleach).

MHA wouldn't fit a 2D fighter I think (and has too many characters), it'd be more suited to a tactical RPG a la Fire Emblem or a 3D fighter a la NSUNS.

edited 24th Apr '18 5:45:03 AM by Sigilbreaker26

If y'all don't vote for HXH, Jojo, and YYH I will-

Be very disappointed. And you'll have to live with that.

YYH is the only one of those series I'd vote for.

But screw making an account, I can see that it won't influence that poll with how it has progressed

YYH would be a good series, but I get the feeling it's probably too old in the minds of a few.

Oddly enough, I made a suggestion a long time before this poll came up for a Fairy Tail Arc Sys game.

And this is from a guy who came to despise the series, but I feel like it'd make a good Arc Sys game (because they could probably write around a lot of the bullshit that Fairy Tail seems to literally live on).

A Yu Yu Hakusho game by Arc Sys would be awesome, as long as its like Dragon Ball Fighter Z and NOT like Blaz Blue: Cross Tag Battle

edited 22nd May '18 2:49:49 AM by Wazzupguys

Okay, so I was having a little Wiki Walk, came upon the Creative Differences page, and turns out there's a very surprising entry for YYH there:

"This is rumored to be the reason why Yu Yu Hakusho ended rather abruptly. Anime director Noriyuki Abe made so many modifications to the TV series that, by the time the Three Kings saga hit, the already not-happy (and rumored to be rather hard to work with) Yoshihiro Togashi lost it and decided to cut off the Yu Yu Hakusho story as a whole, finishing both the manga and anime so Abe wouldn't keep introducing more changes."

Has anyone heard anything even remotely like this at all? The anime did insert quite a few changes but as far as I'm aware most of them were towards the start of the series (cutting down the detective arc) and as far as I'm aware Togashi quit because the manga was simply grinding him down. I've never heard anything else.

This definitely seems like a lot of baseless speculation out of absolutely nowhere and I think if we can't get some solid evidence to back it up we should axe it.

edited 8th Jun '18 2:46:40 AM by Sigilbreaker26

That's admittedly always been a problem with the Trivia section. The lack of citations makes any information there suspect.

I remember having a conversation with someone here about how this series ended, and how the manga version was way different from the animated one. I'd never heard about Togashi being difficult to work with, or ending the story abruptly because he was burnt out.

And it's funny to hear that considering how long HXH seems to be.

It's a fact that the stress and burnout from working on YYH led to the abrupt end of the series. He talked about it in a doujin he published after the series ended.

However that had everything to do with Togashi's own hangups and the weekly manga grind and nothing to do with the anime. I'm all for removing that trivia entry since without a source it might as well be someone making shit up.

edited 8th Jun '18 9:19:43 AM by Draghinazzo

That's pretty funny.

TBH I've always thought the one weak point of this wiki is the lack of requirement for sources.

Is there a consensus on axing that entry then?

I generally try to include a link to a source whenever I add a trivia bit or something like that mostly for that reason. I've seen many statements on the wiki that might as well be completely made up since there's no real source to their accuracy.

Actually read the manga for the first time, was impressed mainly by how many touches the anime added to make it better (Toguro knocks down the parking lot and doesn't just say he can for example). Not that the Manga is bad, but the anime really took that and added lots of really nice details.

But then I got to the Three Kings arc and I was astounded. The anime team had to make virtually the entire Yusuke/Yomi fight out of wholecloth. The entire fight (after Yomi takes the first punch and they briefly exchange punches).

Yusuke having his crisis of confidence? They had to come up with that. Yusuke finding a way past Yomi's Demon Energy Absorbing Shield? They took an ability he used once against Shura and figured out a logical weakness for it that was also really epic. Yusuke having his vision of all of his friends and unlocking Sacred Energy? They had to come up with that.

I'm genuinely gobsmacked and massively impressed.

Generally it's agreed the anime is better than the manga for reasons like that.

There is stuff from the manga that I thought was better - for example, the fight against the demon smoke ball guy is more obviously a joke in the manga because its shorter which makes the ending more appropriate to me. They also had the freedom to really go all in with the gruesome stuff in the manga, like the iconic panel when Sensui witnesses the Black Book Club's demonic orgy.

But apart from that I think the anime is outright better.

Yusuke losing his final fight is one thing. I can see how that is a refreshing twist for people.

But the description of the manga fight makes it sound like his final fight was a curb stomp battle. What's even the point? What purpose did it serve his character or the story?

Sorry, I just signed up with Funi again, figured I'd use my account to finally do a full rewatch of YYH so I came back to see what was going on in this thread.

As stated, it seems to have been Togashi having a breakdown and just ending things abruptly. Who knows how it would have ended if he hadn't been burnt out.

The last arc in YYH was basically Always A Stronger Demon: the story arc. Yusuke wasn't just facing people stronger than him (he's done that plenty), he was facing people so much stronger than him that no amount of plucky underdoggery or clever trickery could bridge the gap. So he had to find a way to resolve the situation that didn't involve punching the problem until it stopped being a problem. Yusuke being Yusuke (and Yu Yu Hakusho being a shonen), the solution still involved fighting, but in a way that didn't require Yusuke to win.

It's a bit of a curve ball that ends the series on a note that doesn't leave Yusuke as the punchiest guy in the known universe, automatically responsible for punching the next threat to show up out of nowhere, and also shows that he's maturing a bit, having reached a place where "punch it better" isn't his one and only response to problems.