Anime/Yu Yu Hakusho [Revived]

Maybe the reason Dark Tournament stood out to so many of us as the best arc back then is because it has a lot more Big Moments like this. Don't get me wrong, they're all great, but in comparison Chapter Black is much more...subdued. For better or worse, the big moments in CB are all at the end, the part where I and many others felt the ac went off the rails.

Thread is making me want o rewatch YYH. I'll always love this series. Maybe it isn't as perfect as when I grew up but it's still amazing and holds up for the most part.

Said it before but I wish there were more Yusuke Clones or even Kenshin Clones instead of Goku Clones.

Edited by Nikkolas on May 18th 2021 at 4:51:36 AM

So I'm doing a sort of binge of the series and episodes I've never seen before and the whole Miyuki thing is just... weird. It's not really treated as a joke and Yusuke repeatedly says he doesn't care about her gender either way, and yet the series feels the need to draw attention, both to her being female, but also, "not really" female and I'm left not understanding what the actual takeaway is supposed to be.

That's not even getting into the whole "checking" and groping bit.

Edited by LSBK on May 22nd 2021 at 10:33:39 AM

The same thing is in Rurouni Kenshin, though in a less crass way. I feel like I've seen the idea elsewhere as well, but those are the two examples that always come to mind.

It's both transphobic and sexist - the whole thing strikes as a "lol, you really thought this really powerful enemy was actually a woman?" fakeout, and these twists stand out especially now due to being nothing but mean-spirited and otherwise entirely pointless.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 22nd 2021 at 9:02:07 AM

I think the English dub has a mistranslation where Yusuke says "if you want to be a man, be a man, don't half-ass it". In the English manga, he says "if you want to be a woman, be a woman, don't half-ass it", which makes a lot more sense.

It's still fairly bad, he's saying she doesn't "count" unless she physically transitions, but it's not as nonsensical as the English anime line.

This is one moment where the Bowdlerised Toonami edit actually...well, I don't want to say improved per se, but at least made it less problematic by not mentioning her trans-status at all.

Kamatari in RK is at least a funny and charismatic character. He's the least of RK's problems with women. He has a reason to exist and he's a good character.

Miyuki...that whole bit is just bizarre and pointless. It's not trated as a joke, it's supposed to be a character moment for Yusuke. Knowing the dub mis-transalted things does clear it up some, though.

Older Funi dubs swiftly improved from tha hilarious mess that was DBZ Season 3 but they could still be excessively weird at times. I remember the scene of Izumi confronting Greed in FMA 2003 where he asked "who are you?" and her dramatic reply was "PISSED OFF!" To...a question about her identity. Is she the embodiment of anger?

Edited by Nikkolas on May 23rd 2021 at 7:06:38 AM

It is absolutely supposed to be a joke in the manga. Their entire encounter is facing off, Yusuke and her charge at each other, which is where Yusuke gropes her. Then Yusuke outs her and hits her once or twice and they move on. I don't think it even takes up an entire chapter.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 23rd 2021 at 10:05:50 AM

In that moment? Yes. Yes, she is.

Of the trio of demons, the little ninja was by far the most impressive, and even he didn't last long.

Continuing my binge, and man, Kuwabara is fucking lame. The story just dives head first into him being an idiot who never puts any thought into his fights, while also having the least interesting power and style.

Yeah Kuwabara fucking sucks

Will be interesting to see more of your thoughts as you progress through.

Kuwabara sucks but in an endearing way. He gets his victories later on and ends up being the first and only protagonist to successfully move on with his life.

He's arguably a better version of Gohan who doesn't get peer-pressured into hitting the gym.

Edited by FOFD on May 26th 2021 at 10:15:47 AM

Kuwabara's awesome. He's easily the most lovable member of the team, and his creativity with his powers is really fun to see.

of Team Urameshi, I only really like Yusuke and Kuwabara. The other two have moments but I would never say I'm big fans of their characters.

As a kid, I used to claim that each member of the protagonists represents a different specific aspect of a fighter. Yusuke's aspect was strength. Hiei's aspect was speed. Kurama's aspect was intelligence.

Kuwabara's aspect, as I explained it then, was endurance. His strongest feature, the thing he represented in fights, was the ability to take intense amounts of punishment without going down. Blow after blow after blow, things that should rightly kill a person, undone in an instant when he gets his next wind and keeps coming back for more.

This was a simplistic way of looking at things, mind you. I was like fifteen. I'm not actually sure where "Yusuke is all about strength" came from. Yusuke seems to match Hiei's speed in the Chapter Black arc. Etc. etc. If there is anything to the idea, it's probably not intentional and the show never makes a thing of it.

There is some merit to the idea that Kuwabara's best asset is his ability to keep going long after he rightly should have gone down. But this isn't really a Kuwabara thing. Determinator is a general heroic trait. Every protagonist has some moment or another where everything seems lost but then they get back up and keep fighting and win the day.

Kuwabara's actual best asset is that, of the four protagonists, he's the only one who is genuinely good. Kurama comes in second by being aloof and mysterious but inoffensive and non-hostile to people unrelated to his goals. Kurama does not personally wish to cause undue harm. But Kuwabara is the one guy in the cast whose moral compass actually seems to be wound tight to the point of complete selflessness. Even if he is a bit of a chauvinist.

In D&D terms:

• Yusuke: Chaotic Neutral
• Kuwabara: Lawful Good
• Hiei: Neutral Evil, possibly transitions to True Neutral.
• Kurama: Either Lawful Neutral or True Neutral.

Kuwabara is the odd man out, which is why he had to be booted from the cast before the arc where everyone tries to usurp the demon realm for funsies.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 26th 2021 at 11:08:03 AM

I feel like i have a different definition of endearing that you guys then, because I don't find anything about Kuwabara's stupidity, or how he acts with Botan and Yukina endearing. It's just really obnoxious.

Edited by LSBK on May 26th 2021 at 3:52:09 AM

I've always found it funny that out of the four heroes, their moral compasses are the opposite of their appearance.

Pretty boy Kurama is probably the most ruthless of them, despite also being pretty kind, cause while he won't seek to hurt you out cruelty, if you anger him, he's not going to spare you, and in fact, might inflict A Fate Worse Than Death upon you.

Hiei will kill you, no questions asked, no 1st chances given, but he'll just kill you and be done with it.

Yusuke is a thug and delinquent with a golden heart.

Kuwabara, the thugliest of the bunch, is ironically the nicest member. Yes, the chauvinism and the overrated talk of manliness can seem dated, but he's the most empathetic (it's the entire reason he was able to communicate with Yukina, and it let him see her shitty life up to that point), is the only one who cares to fight fair (which does screw him over, but also means he won't put a sword in your back as a cheap shot after a fight), and as was pointed out early, was able to actual move on past fighting. It took the three kings arc for the others to do that.

Now, I'm not ignoring his idiocy. I can see exactly why both Saiga and LSBK both consider him the shittiest thing in existence. He's exactly the kind of character who can make a bad first impression and make it easy to ignore what are supposed to be his virtues, especially due to changing attitudes towards certain character archetypes and tropes that he tends to embody.

That being said, my first memory of Kuwabara is him being the only member of the team to beat his opponent in the movie on the first try, where the rest of them got stomped. It's always been hard to get past that, and I've never tried.

Ah yes, one of my favorite moments in the show.

I adore just how many different angles and movements were seeing in this despite how limited the animation is.

I mean, it could be that, or you could just be weird. :p He's not an unlikable character but not an award-winning one either. Everybody just finds endearment in different things I guess.

My strongest memories of Kuwabara was him bawling his eyes out over Yusuke's death then, later, slugging Yusuke for not telling him the truth about Genkai. It's not hard to like his character with the emotion Christopher Sabat puts into him.

That, too. If you ignore that, which admittedly is probably easier initially than it is on rewatch.

Edited by FOFD on May 26th 2021 at 10:43:50 AM

Dunno about that one. Kuwabara's got plenty of moments of not really being "good", or doing good things because he's motivated by infatuation.

Kuwabara's love for Yukina is pure and heroic and gives him strength!

It's less that Kuwabara is Incorruptible Pure Pureness, so much as he's the moral center of the group in a series where the average morality skews fairly low. He's moral in comparison to the others.

Part of the maturity he gains throughout the series causes him to become more and more overtly virtuous (or compassionate is perhaps a better words), but he's still flawed: he does start out as - in his own words (in the dub) - a "joker who doesn't know his own strength." This is exacerbated by the fact that - especially initially - his code is based largely on being manly, and that maturity arc begins with him perceiving being good as something someone who is manly should do, though he eventually starts dropping the "manly" angle of it somewhat towards the end of the series. As such rewatching the series, yeah, it becomes noticeably that in situations where the characters discuss some kind of ethical dilemma, Kuwabara will typically be The McCoy: the voices that's extremely emotional, but intent on doing the right thing.

I don't see a problem with teenage boys in a shounen series talking about being manly, especially since Kuwabara's first big three moments are (from memory): crying at Yusuke's funeral until he's drug off, humbling himself for that corrupt teacher to help his friends, and doing everything he can to get an adorable kitten back.

It's not like being manly to him is anything toxic given how quickly he is willing to sob, swallow his pride and love cute furry cats.

YYH is not a subtle series and the fact both Yusuke and Kuwabara look like punks but are actually very vulnerable and sweet is pretty much the point of their characters from the word Go.

MHA is a much more recent series and Kirishima is all over the chivalrous manly man thing just like Kuwabara was.

Edited by Nikkolas on May 28th 2021 at 2:26:11 AM

The manly thing, while annoying, is not anywhere near as bad as the way he acts toward women, especially his unrequired crush on Yukina.

And really not a fan of the frequency of shipping the 'underdog' character with women they have no chemistry with just because the underdog is infatuation with them.

Yukina and Kuwabara are perfect for each other, you take that back. They totally have chemistry and they have some adorable and beautiful moments together.

What chemistry? She doesn't even know his feelings!