Why You Should Watch Yu Yu Hakusho

Writing about your favorite series is difficult, it can be difficult to put into words how much the series you love the most really means to you and even more so if it is one that you experienced at a young age, since many of your memories and emotions come from it. Time becomes inseparable from your actual feelings about the show, which makes it difficult to really break down its individual elements or view the series with any kind of perspective and this is something I've been struggling with a lot lately because I felt like it was already Time to cover it.

It's possibly my favorite anime, but this has left me with something of a dilemma: how do I talk about this series in a way that communicates how I feel about it and at the same time gives an evaluation that could be considered fair and after thinking about it for many? weeks, the answer I've come to is that I can't, some series are too close to home, too rooted in our own personal narrative and approaching them in a way that can be considered objective or unbiased is impossible and maybe that's okay, maybe What's worth exploring here isn't an arbitrary assignment of value based on perceived objectivity, perhaps the far more valuable discussion is what it is about this series that sparked such a strong reaction in the first place.

Yuu Haka shows that Volume 5 was the first. manga that I once had. I first came across the series in the early 2000s, back in the days when I was mass-downloading Japanese SNES ROMs, one of which turned out to be YuYu Haka show toku betsu hen, a strange turn-based fighting game with a close game mechanic. It's impossible to explain, but despite this and the fact that it was entirely in Japanese, something about the world the game presented really resonated with me. I liked Moody's dark atmosphere, the intense and often strange special attacks, and most of all, the strangeness and out of place. infinitely stylish characters and I became fascinated with them, deeply curious to find out more, the title was in Japanese, however, it meant that I was left without a clue to continue until one day, on my local Forbidden Planet, there was a single copy of YuYu Haka. program Volume 5 I read it in its entirety on the bus home before doing it again that night and would continue to do so many times and even without prior knowledge of the rest of the series I totally fell in love with its world and its characters, there was a different energy to this manga , one thing to note, however, is that the Yuu Haka show, at least for me, is not unique in this regard.

I have similar stories about practically every other popular anime and manga from this period, however, the key difference is that over time most of my interest in these other series would eventually wane and disappear, but this never really happened with the show. by Yuu Haka. I re

watch

ed parts of it at least once a year and it's always been a series I've been excited about. to show it to people and it seems I'm not the only one To date, the series has sold 50 million volumes, which may not seem like much compared to the giants of the industry, at least not until you take into account that the YuYu Haka show is only 19 volumes, which means it has one of the highest volume sales rates of any manga, so the discussion is what is it about this series that grabbed me in the first place and second? , why I and so many others still have it.

In such high regard 25 years after its conclusion, well friends, it is with great pleasure that I can say that it is time to discuss, only this one has been coming for a long time, so let's talk about why you

should

watch

the Yuu Haka show. The YuYu Haka program began. publication on December 3, 1990 and over the course of its 4 years, it would chronicle the adolescence of Yusuke Urameshi, a high school delinquent who, after being hit by a car and becoming the subject of an underworld administrative error, is He would assign the role of spiritual detective and this would be the door that would lead him to become entangled in a world of spirits, demons and psychopaths.

One of the strongest aspects of Yuu Haka Show is how the storytelling evolves as the series progresses. Things start off relatively light and episodic with Yusuke tasked with It's a series of minor cases involving the spirit world and this is the only part of the show that really lives up to its translated title of Ghost Files as of episode 20. , the structure and tone of the show changes dramatically not just with the physical danger. Our hero's face intensifies, but also with the sophistication of the narrative, the series begins with Yusuke trying to stop bad people from doing bad things, but the dark tournaments in each of the subsequent villains would present a major ideological difference with regarding Yus's, whether it be the nature of the strength and how to achieve it, the true essence of people and whether that is really something worth protecting or whether human life really has more value than that of other races Despite this, the series never loses its sense of fun and enjoyment. its lighter previous episodes and a big part of this comes down to its cast of extremely likable characters who are relatable in a way that it's quite difficult to communicate the very particular charm of CWU's hoaky show.

On the surface, they seem like a team quite typical shown with many. Their influences are clearly obvious, but digging a little deeper you can see that there is a subtle nuance at play here and the result is that you are left with a cast of incredibly distinct and fully formed feeling personalities. I think what separates this aspect of the show so completely from other shows and series is that while the cast of the show Yuu Haka goes through very similar story arcs to other anime with very bad power levels and tournament arcs , there's always a distinct focus on who these characters are and how they feel - take Yusuke, for example.

He is very impulsive and loves to get into fights, but what this belies is his negligent upbringing in a broken home which in turn has left him unable to really deal with his emotions, which explains his aggressive temperament but also feeds into the Shonen style narrative later. We continue with the separation between Yusuke and his feelings that serve as a barrier between him and his true Inner Strength, meaning that Yusuke's power progression is directly tied to his emotional development, which is something I've seen attempted in many series. different, but this is one. one of the few that actually pulls it off and it is in this that we can see one of the true strengths of the series as a whole, even though these characters are expressed in a very typical Shonen style narrative and world, the characters themselves never stop feeling. as real people with very particular thoughts, motivations and perspectives.

I remember seeing this scene much later in the series, where Yusuke is almost killed by an enemy psychic and, upon being saved, falls to his knees and begins punching the ground in frustration and fury at the fact that after everything What he's been through up to this point, all the battles he's fought and all the villains he's survived, somehow new, more dangerous enemies keep emerging. I'm always amazed at what a strangely human moment this is in this type of story, the nature of Shonen. The narrative requires that when a villain is defeated, another more powerful one must rise to take his place, but I have never seen a protagonist show frustration at this fact, but when you think about it, this is the exact type of human reaction. that would be invoked by such a continuous stream of increasing problems.

Another thing that helps sell these characters is that they are often simply given the space to be characters; There are several episodes where the plot doesn't really advance, but instead I just get to spend some time with the cast and see the different interactions that develop between them and invariably these are some of my favorite moments of the entire show. , whether it's the simple cuts of Yusuke hanging out in an arcade or the menacing interaction. place between Kurama and Karasu establishes a latent hatred between the two but also a kind of twisted attraction, although I think it is easy to establish who a character is in the most important moments of a story's plot, it is more difficult and in several ways more valuable to be I can do it in the little ones and this is another area.

I really think the show stands out. Take this moment from the Black Saga chapter as Kabara Boton Kama and hello, everyone has to go through separate doors in a giant puzzle house and this happens. I'm ready when the rest of you are. I'm ready here, let's get started. What appeals to me about this scene is that, instead of joining in with his allies' enthusiasm, he remains silent and I love this touch on a less well-written tone. story, he probably would have just blurted out some standard tough guy line, but the fact that he doesn't say anything says a lot about his disdain for the current situation, as well as his disdain for his allies' enthusiasm, perfectly capturing what an adorably little guy he is. cynical. actually it is, it may seem a little excessive to mention such a small moment, but my point here is that it is so small, little character moments like this are present in every scene of the YuYu Haka show, giving us constant little insights into the world of these.

The characters and how they think and this same consistent writing can even be seen through the relationships the characters form with each other as the series progresses, various members of the cast develop a sort of cadence with each other and can often be see different parts of their characters. Personality is highlighted depending on who they are interacting with, such as taking the mocking and mocking tone he will use in his many, often humorous, EXP exchanges with Kuara and comparing them to the much softer, yet clearly aggressive manner he will use with his sister Yukina. There are even several examples where very minor side characters form strangely touching relationships with each other and what we see in these characters during these moments does an incredible amount to develop the minor cast members of the Yuu Haka show, even if it does nothing. to advance in general.

The plot and result of all this is that whether the characters are fighting for their lives or just hanging out in a hotel room, it is always equally engaging and although the Yuu Haka show is at its core a battle manga , I never found myself waiting. To get the combat going like I do with so many other series, it's fun to spend time with these guys and see the different interactions between them to the point that I feel comfortable saying this is probably my favorite Any cast. anime In fact, I used to carry a photo of these guys in my wallet when I was a teenager, which speaks not only to my extreme social ineptitude but also to the incredible job dagashi has done in making them feel like real, genuine people, with this approach deeply focused on the characters.

It also carries over to many of the brutal and exciting fight scenes from the yyu Haka show, as not only are we more interested in these characters and therefore more invested in watching them overcome and survive the battles, but also there is a different texture to the fight of each different character. Styled with Kurama's careful tactical plans that differ greatly from Kabara's direct attacks. There is a great variety in the type of fights that can take place in Uaka's show and much of this is due to the many strange and imaginative powers. Characters have things like the sniper's ability to lock onto targets and turn everyday objects into deadly homing missiles, or the elderly Bull's grotesque ability to rearrange his internal organs at will, meaning that landing a fatal blow is virtually impossible.

I think that's what I appreciate most about fighting. What about Yuu Hakha, though, is that they always feel integrated into the overall narrative in a way that always feels meaningful. Take the Dark Tournament, for example, the show's most battle-focused Arc, not only are our heroes forced into the bloody contest against their will, but also. From the audience's perspective, they are the bad guys with a stadium of demons fighting for their blood, they must also constantly deal with the corrupt tournament committee plotting against them, putting our heroes at a constant disadvantage, making every victory feels even closer and each defeat seems harder. crushingly unfair and at the end of it all is the climactic battle with Team Tagoro with several key plot events feverishly building up to the personal stakes of this fight, meaning that when Yusuke finally comes out to face Tooro, the show has established A deeply personal animosity between the two gives their battle palpable emotional weight, another big aspect that makes these fights stand out is their unique visual treatment, many of the fights are animated with a phonetic energy, limbs elongate, Proportions are deformed and faces are distorted to brutally convey how tough these characters are.

HEthey hit each other and how much kinetic force is behind each and every attack with the animation. Direction and even shot composition are pushed to what seems to be their absolute limit and the result is that something as simple as a street fight becomes a dynamic visual explosion. with the stylistic touch of a much larger encounter that also conveniently takes us to the footage from the YuYu Haka show, but before we dive in, I think it's worth first taking a step back and examining the series' source material, the manga of 1990 in our Dragon Ball genius. In the video we talk a lot about Toriyama's specific approach to designing manga and the path of action he creates within his pages and it's interesting because Tagashi is kind of the opposite of this, his pages don't really flow the same way that Toriyama does.

Instead, Tagashi seems much more focused on the distinctive emotion of each panel, putting a lot of emphasis on the character's facial expression and using different techniques to better convey the appropriate tone to the point that the drawing style can change dramatically from page to page. to another with the characters portrayed as ridiculous stylized cartoons in some and bleak semi-realistic portraits in others and this is what I like most about Tagashi as a cartoonist, the incredible variety of visual language in his work, sometimes it is fun, playful and cute and sometimes grotesque, imposing and terrifying, unfortunately due to a combination of physical and mental health problems, the quality of tashi.

The art would decline dramatically as the series progressed, but this is also why I considered the anime so important. While I think the earlier episodes of the show suffer from stiff character animation and weak posing in the key art, the quality of the series would increase dramatically as the series progressed. The show progressed from the flat designs of previous episodes giving way to much more complete and detailed character work. The visual variety we talked about in the manga seems to be something that studio Periot worked very hard to recreate rather than tying the show to a specific style.

There is great variety in the way characters express themselves on screen; It really feels like a production where each animator's individual strengths were encouraged and let fly, and the result is some incredibly unique animated pieces that seem designed specifically to match the emotion and tone of the show's most dramatic moments, one of my favorite examples. of this being, he is Dragon of the Dark Flame, storyboarded by akiyuki shinbo and animated by Masa Yuki yoshihara, and just look at how much the drawings here deviate from the show's standard style and how it really sells the crazy uncontrollable Force that is exercising, you can even see much of the same expressiveness behind many of the characters' minor and even mundane actions, as look at this animation of Cotto climbing onto his desk, a much simpler move.

It could have been conveyed in about five or six drawings, but instead, just look at the love and detail that goes into his animation here, how fun it is to watch, and how perfectly it conveys Cotto's playful and excitable nature; There are even several scenes where the anime goes completely beyond the manga, it adds a lot to The Source shot for shot, for example he fights Bui in the dark tournaments, on the right we have the animated encounter and on the left we have the corresponding sleeve panels. Look at how much the manga has added to really elevate his desperation while also greatly boosting his cold, distant confidence.

I'm actually editing out a lot of the animated sequence here for the sake of brevity, but still, the amount of extra work shown here. It's amazing stuff and it's cases like this that make the anime adaptation so valuable. Another great example of this is the fight between the doctor and Yusuke, which takes the simple visual treatment of the manga and turns it up to 11 by bathing the scene in deep black shadows. and introduces both characters in gruesome detail and in doing so dramatically increases the tense drama of the scene, which is appropriate since this is the first time Yusuke has been faced with taking the life of a human.

This scene also shows another strong aspect of the show's production. his willingness to push the color and lighting design of different scenes with many sections of the show set in distinctly strange and strange color palettes, further enhancing the IND visuality and tone of many of the show's scenes, all of these factors being combine in a way that makes YuYu Haka constantly visually striking and what it loses in consistency it often gains with a style that swims and emerges to match and even elevate the show's story, as well as the various emotions of its characters. I think Yuu Haka is shown alongside Outlaw Star and the gunsmith cats. is probably my favorite example of the '90s anime aesthetic and this is largely due to the show's gorgeous character designs, partly due to the distinct '90s proportions of the character's facial features with big dramatic eyes and thick, volumetric and highly stylized hair, but it is also Due to the extremely Centric clothing of the time, the characters wear a look that was heavily highlighted in the show's official promotional material, not only do the different characters and the different outfits really stand out the particular time period of the show's creation, but I think also managing to communicate that these are real outfits that could be worn by real teenagers, which really helps communicate that despite all the crazy dramatic and supernatural events going on, these are still very much kids going through their adolescence, the same sense of style also appears in many of the more fantastical demonic characters have a much more supernatural style, but still retain much of the look of anime from that period. , resulting in some wonderfully distinct and memorable character designs, and you know, between you and me, I actually used to have a bit of a crush on the jury, the ring announcer who, looking back, was really dumb.

God, she's beautiful, the distinct '90s vibe also contrasts wonderfully with many of the show's more grotesque visual aspects. Tagashi has mentioned in interviews that he is a big fan of H o Gyer, a Swiss surrealist painter most notable for his work on the Alien films, and you can see his influences in many of the show's more demonic characters and architecture, particularly the second stadium in the second half of the Dark Tournament, an imposing and terrifying building that subtly foreshadows the grimmer and darker direction the show would take from this point on. I think this duality in the show's visuals, the fun 90s aesthetic and the spooky horror Vibes, is an important part of establishing its distinctive atmosphere and the two looks together create a great image. metaphor for the show as a whole, a series that is extremely funny but also becomes incredibly dark and nihilistic.

The same duality can be heard in the soundtrack of the Yuu Haka show. It's a great mix of nostalgic late 8's synth rock combined with really excellent understated spooky tones. The same style of synths has been infused into many of the show's sound effects, creating some really strange but effective audio accompaniments, particularly the way the synths integrate with the sound whenever someone hits a big hit, It's unusual but it also does a lot to sell. the impact of these moments check it out so this brings us to voice acting and I know there are mixed feelings about sub and dub and all that but unless you are 100% against dubbing on a fundamental level I have I would highly recommend the English Dub in this one, there are too many standout performances like Chris Sabot's voice of Vegeta and his incredibly energetic and energetic portrayal of Kabara Damen Clark's cold, distant and terrifying performance as Tooro and of course the incarnation Chuck Huber's brilliantly cynical and mean-spirited Hello, It's a Fantastic Location. and the almost perfect button accent is incredibly cute and I won't hear another word about it, don't get your eyes wide open, any attack has to travel through the air to get to me.

I control the air, so you could too. hand him over and say do whatever you want with him, Jen, it's okay, almost all of the voice acting in the Yuu Haka show is great and let's leave it at that. Was he supposed to be Irish? It was supposed to be an Irish act. Finally, since I have spent 23 minutes gospelly singing the praises of this program. I think it's fair to point out some of the flaws the show does have. I mentioned earlier about how the art of the earlier episodes isn't particularly strong and unfortunately, I have to say the same for many of the early story arcs, particularly those of the spirit detective saga, they are still extremely fun in their own right, but looking back at the show as a whole they don't really have the same level of characterization or emotional weight as later on the show took about 20 episodes to start hitting its stride there is also the odd fight with some pacing issues unfortunate ones with a lot of time spent on reaction shots or the two fighters just standing and talking to each other.

I think you could even look at the combat rhythms of these particular fights and condense them into really solid encounters; It's just the space between these combat beats that frustrates, resulting in the occasional fight feeling like it lasts half an episode 2, but even then most of the time. the fights end quickly enough at about an episode and a half. The show also has an unfortunate tendency to commit to highly dramatic plot events only to return to them later, which retroactively robs some of these show's best moments of their dramatic punch. Any more would be getting into major spoilers, but anyone who has seen the show will know what I'm talking about.

Finally, it's hard to talk about the Yuu Haka show and not mention the ending without getting into spoilers. There comes a point in the final arc where things just sort of cut away and the story concludes with the main plot events explained to the viewer retroactively in what basically amounts to a summary of the dialogue and it's incredibly unfortunate since that the build-up to the final showdowns of the previous two arcs was incredible and while the final epilogue episode serves as a pretty sweet and enjoyable farewell to the series. It's hard not to feel like the third arc of the final saga is missing, leaving one of the best stories shown in existence feeling tragically incomplete.

However, the interesting thing is that days after the final chapter. The YuYu Haka program was published. Tagashi published a short essay along with an interview about the end of the YuYu Haka show's serialization. Looking back on the failure, he talks about the extreme pressure that creating the series put on him and how he felt like he could never do it. keep up with other manga artists, which in turn led him to work 7 days a week, sleeping an average of 4 hours and every night, obsessively trying to create the manga he wanted, causing mental exhaustion. and extreme physicality until he finally became disillusioned and abruptly ended the series.

I think what comes through most strongly in this essay is the pain and frustration Tagashi feels in creating a weekly manga, but I also think it is through this that we can understand the final part of what makes the manga Tashi be so great, as we can see. Elements of this same pain and frustration in the characters of YuYu Haka show that there is a moment towards the end of the Dark Tournament where Tagoro tells Yusuke that to succeed at anything you must first throw away everything else and after reading Yusuke's essay Tashi it's impossible not to.

See this as something he really struggled with or take the earlier moments where Yusuke has his breakdown and the frustration he feels here feels so real because it's Yusuke's anger at the constant stream of instrumental problems that feels like frustration. exactly what Tagashi wrote. is about in his essay and once you realize this, you start to see these deeply human little feelings everywhere in yuu hakos, whether it's Toro's willingness to abandon everything else in the pursuit of success or Toro's extreme disillusionment. Sen with the world around him or the simple camaraderie between Friends who have survived so much together, these narratives parallel Gash's, so what he really did here was take the standard Shonen framework and work within it to tell a unique and personal story.

What brought me to this series was its unique appearance, its exciting battles. and its endearing characters, but what keeps me coming back are the deeply human components of the challenges these characters face, these stories of obsession,stories of disappointment and, ultimately, stories of how friendship and hope can overcome both. These will always be stories worth telling. why the series has never lost relevance why it's still great and why you

should

watch Yuu Haka show it to friends who will thank you so much for joining me today and I really hope you enjoyed the video if you did and would like to help If I create more videos like this one, then why don't you visit my patreon, where for a single dollar you can join the official super patch wolf pack and see your name among these incredibly strong people that I'm here for and appreciate so much.

They are the only reason I can keep this channel. I'll be taking a few days off and letting my creativity recharge a bit, but of course I'll be back soon with another video, but in the meantime, why not come? Hang out on the Let's Fight a Boss video game podcast or follow me on Twitter at iatch Wolf friends, take care of yourselves and I'll see you next time.