Anime/Yu Yu Hakusho [Revived]

Since the Chapter Black arc added some human Psychics to the party, I'd like this hypothetical arc to add some Demon reps to help counteract the villain's narrative. Throw in Jin, Yomi's son Shura, maybe Suzuki's gadgets could help, and one of the Dark Tournament's announcer girls.

If Amanuma is any indication, if a territory doesn't want to be penetrated it won't be.

But overall it would depend on the power. I'm sure you could, say, snipe Doctor from outside his territory, because his power doesn't give him any specific defense against being attacked anyway. But if you tried to shoot a missile at, say, Kaito from outside his territory, the explosion would probably just evaporate or something within its bounds since no violence is allowed inside.

On the flipside, though, I was rewatching the Kaito episode the other day (man, that episode is awesome), and it occurred to me that while his power is hax, most psychics (Kaito included) are more effective defensively than offensively because they can only affect a certain area and most characters' territory is relatively small.

There's exceptions, like Gourmet (whose territory is small, but gives him abilities that last outside of it) and Sniper (whose territory is freaking enormous), but the heroic psychics especially had to tailor their trap very precisely to let the heroes walk into it in a way that allowed their powers to be used effectively. If, say, Kuwabara and co. had busted through a wall instead of going through Kaito's place, his whole ability to stop them would've been rendered null and void.

I just came up with a theory, tell me if the anime made this explicit, because the manga didn't.

Did it ever seem like Raizen's death being imminent happened at a very convenient time? Not too long after Sensui is defeated, everyone starts making plans for Raizen to kick the bucket. I'm thinking that Raizen possessing Yusuke and beating up Sensui using his body used up most of the remaining energy left in Raizen's body, and that's the reason he was about to die so soon.

While reading, I just assumed that Yusuke being an heir to his power made him feel like he didn't have any reason to cling onto life anymore. That's probably still part of it, but it can't have been effortless to possess Yusuke's body and unleash his hidden potential like that, so that might have been a bigger reason he started deteriorating.

You know, I constantly hear people talk up the Dark Tournament as the greatest tournament arc in all of anime, and it was awesome in the manga, but it feels like half the run-time of every episode of the Dark Tournament is just straight filler. Koto and Juri were fun in the manga, but the anime overuses them so much they become actually annoying, same goes for Koenma and his Comic Relief Sidekick Ogre.

People say that Yu Yu Hakusho has no filler, but it just doesn't have any wholly original filler arcs or episodes. The episodes themselves are padded out to hell.

Question, did the anime cover the entire series, or did it end before the manga did?

From what I've heard, the anime covered the entire manga except for 13 chapters from the start of ghost Yusuke helping random people and 3 or 4 chapters at the end of the world acclimating to life with demons. One of those ending chapters, the one with the Elite Squad turning into terrorists, was recently adapted as an OVA.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Mar 16th 2021 at 3:07:30 AM

The live-action Yu Yu Hakusho from the Alice in Borderland people has contracted TOHO studios to help produce it. So it's going to be a completely Japanese production.

What exactly did Kuwabara do with the glowing white sword from the Dark Tournament anyway. I forget.

That is probably for the best.

You're probably feeling Hype Backlash.

Edited by FOFD on Apr 12th 2021 at 6:09:17 AM

His spirit energy was completely tapped out after the tournament, so much that he was completely unable to even summon his regular Spirit Sword, and I assume that was due to the Trial Sword overtaxing his spirit. So, he probably just gave the Trial Sword handle back to Suzuki, since we see Shishiwakamaru using it later on in the 3 Kings arc.

Yeah, it's weird. In the manga, the Dark Tournament is MUCH more focused on the fights, with hardly any cut-aways. In the anime, it seems like every episode needs to have some outside-fight subplot or long skits of characters reacting to the things happening during the fights. I guess it makes the tournament more complex, but having read the manga, it kind of just feels like pointless filler to me.

As a person who loves music to bits and always tries to associate music I love with otehr things I love, I have just randomly thought up the best song ever for possibly my favorite shounen MC ever, Yusuke Urameshi

Something funny I noticed in hindsight is that Hiei didn't care about Seiryu killing Byakko at all, he was just triggered by Seiryu using ice powers.

:/.

Edited by fredhot16 on May 6th 2021 at 1:55:30 AM

I meant that literally. The trauma of his ice demon mother throwing him off a cliff as a baby in a blizzard gave Hiei a trigger in the form of ice powers.

Hot take: the Rescue Yukina arc is the worst arc in the series. It does a lot of legwork in setting up later arcs, most obviously the Toguro Brothers, but it also sets up Sakyo, Yukina herself, and the Humans Are Bastards club, which is essential to Chapter Black. As far as the Rescue Yukina arc itself goes, it's just kind of bad. Obviously, it's worse than the Dark Tournament and Chapter Black, but I'd also say it's worse than 3 Kings, and the other Spirit Detective arcs all have more to offer.

• Ghost Yusuke has a unique premise and low stakes to make the stories more personable.

• 3 Sacred Treasures introduces Hiei and Kurama, and does a lot to set them both up while not giving the 3rd member of their trio the shaft in terms of screen-time.

• Genkai Tournament has a lot of great jokes and some great low-level fights and tactics.

• Saint Beasts is clearly the peak of the Spirit Detective Saga, with four awesome fights, a great setting, and good depth and stakes.

And then the Rescue Yukina arc is just pure set-up for later arcs, with not much substance besides set-up. The Toguro Brothers are intriguing, but they're deliberately underbaked and underutilized here, and their big fight being thrown puts a damper on what is honestly the only good fight in the arc. The 3 big demons under the Toguro Brothers are literally joke characters, the first one is subject to some uncomfortable transphobia, the second one is dispatched easily, and the third one is off-screened. The Humans Are Bastards club is one of the best parts, but there's only so much heavy lifting a bunch of screens can do.

As rushed as the 3 Kings arc was, I think the Rescue Yukina arc is the only arc in the series I would say is outright bad. It feels like Togashi wanted to set up a lot of stuff for later arcs, so he made a set-up arc to introduce all those elements and then rushed through it to get to those later arcs.

I disagree on 3 counts because that is an arc where:

• the heroes' training doesn't end up being So Last Season, or being hotly contested by the latest bad guys showing up. The heroes actually can steamroll what would normally be considered terrifying enemies and do so casually. It's the first time in YYH where we get to see anything like this other then maybe Batroc in the Genkai arc.
• Kuwabara of all people gets to show off how badass he is without getting turned into mulch, and actually gets to land the finishing blow on The Dragon (even if it turns out to be for naught). But there is no hindsight/past tense/it didn't matter crap here - for all intents and purposes, prior to the story moving forward, Kuwabara had just killed a threat he and Yusuke couldn't even scratch moments prior. It sets up Kuwabara's Power of Love later on, too.
• The 3 demons weren't meant to be big impressive threats. That's the point. Yusuke and Kuwabara are outwardly normal schoolboys who can take on 3 reputed monsters. It leaves them completely unprepared for the brick wall that is Toguro. It establishes that demons and humans are in cahoots with one another (which sets up a lot of plot points later in the series). It keeps the viewer off guard for how big of a threat Toguro and Sakyo really are when they pull their double-cross later on.

Even Yu Yu's worse arc does a lot for it narratively and still has an aesthetic cool. It's also just about the last time being a "detective" or having a conflict that isn't largely shonen-themed matters, and when the fight choreography reflects Yusuke and Kuwabara being street toughs with unconventional tactics instead of being superpowered vikings. Yusuke and Kuwabara don't just unlock new powers to save the day.

We even get our first bit of Hiei having actual depth as opposed to being an arrogant Vegeta-lite.

Though.

While this doesn't personally offend me, and the delivery and the surprise of it made me laugh back then, looking back, I can see this scene being a problem, and going from "she's a man and that's terrible" to "why can't you treat me like an equal" to "I don't care what you are, you're in my way" to "are you sure she's a man" and Kuwabara trying to sneak a peek is... mixed messaging at best.

Edited by FOFD on May 16th 2021 at 3:00:28 PM

Yeah, that scene is undoubtedly the single part of YYH that has aged the worst. Every part of their interaction with her reeks of transphobia and even the would-be feminist bits are undercut by the fact that Yusuke actually considers her as a man, so the whole equality thing falls flat. Miyuki's lines about "what are you afraid of?" are good, but they get completely ignored. And of course, the fact that Yusuke and Kuwabara both feel entitled to grope her in order to "check" is gross on basically every level for multiple reasons.

The frustrating thing is that they easily could have made it trans and feminist inclusive by having Kuwabara be "Urameshi you can't hit girls! Oh wait she's not a girl, that's alright then" and having Yusuke be "hey, if she wants to be a girl, then I'm happy to treat her like a girl. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to fight her!". That would mean making Kuwabara the unambiguously wrong one in the scene, but I'm okay with that. I'm also not sure how you'd bring up the fact that she's trans without being shitty about it. Even just having Miyuki tell them would be weird, since "I was AMAB so you can fight me" would basically be invalidating her own identity.

Hindsight is a hell of a thing.

Edited by FOFD on May 16th 2021 at 3:08:13 PM

But there is no hindsight/past tense/it didn't matter crap here - for all intents and purposes, prior to the story moving forward, Kuwabara had just killed a threat he and Yusuke couldn't even scratch moments prior.

That's not true. Toguro tells his employer about his percentages ahead of time, and he's more buff using 20% killing that beast than he was fighting against Yusuke and Kuwabara, with his percentages thing not being mentioned at all in that fight. It's not hindsight/past tense, it's blatantly obvious that he wasn't going all out against them and he reveals that he threw the fight before the arc even ends.

YYH is not an all time great OST like some other shounen but it had a few key, amazing tracks it always used at the right time. I'm glad some talented person was able to whip this up.

Huh. When you put it that way, it sounds an awful lot like what Akira Toriyama did with the Babidi's Ship portion of the Majin Buu arc.

Yu Yu Hakusho did it first, mind.

At least with Frieza/Toguro, Toriyama beat Togashi to the transforming villain who keeps a running tally of what percentage of his strength he's using. At least, I think he did.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 17th 2021 at 8:11:50 AM

I'm still kind of working on that fighting game idea (next to a bunch of other ideas), so which style would fit Yu Yu Hakusho best? I feel like Yu Yu Hakusho would be best served with a slower, more grounded and technical fighting game than something like FighterZ, maybe a style closer to Street Fighter or Tekken.

Something between Guilty Gears Xrd and Strive with an SNK-style roll mechanic would fit best.

Toguro vs Yusuke was playing out the same time as Gohan vs Cell.

Which makes the whole thing of both Yusuke and Gohan losing their fighting spirit and needing to be motivated by the villain deliberately attacking their friends quite interesting.

Edited by Saiga on May 18th 2021 at 1:50:36 AM

Just watched the last few episodes of the anime, and it's weird to compare to the manga. In the anime, they don't mention that the reason the demon portal is allowed to be opened is that Koenma's father, Enma, was arrested when an investigation revealed he was falsifying and exaggerating reports of demons attacking humans to keep his authority in Spirit World.

It also doesn't show demons travelling freely to Human World and starting to become integrated into human society, such as Koto, Juri, and Ruka appearing on a human talk show.

Plus, in the anime, Genkai just talks with everyone about her will, where in the manga she died of old age off-screen during the Elite Squad's insurrection and they found out about her will afterward.

I'm not a fighting game aficionado. I don't like highly technical fighting games that I'll never devote the time to. I played Tekken as a kid and Mortal Kombat and Super Smash Bros, but I can't say I play them much anymore. I've been a bigger fan of anime fighters like One Punch Man AHNK, Kill La Kill IF, and My Hero Academia One's Justice.

That said, games like Guilty Gear or Fighterz are chock full of fanservice, characters, and actual story modes/hype advertisement. Really, when the Fighterz devs were pitching for new fighting games I really wanted a YYH game from them.

Sensui's theme (8), the sad piano music that played when Genkai died (6), the Toguro music (5), the music that played whenever Yusuke or somebody was about to do an all-or-nothing move (3), and the music that played when both Yusuke and Kuwabara died (1) is some of the most grabbing anime theme music I've ever heard.

It does indeed.

Edited by FOFD on May 18th 2021 at 7:46:27 AM