Yu Yu Hakusho

aka Yu Yu Hakusho: Ghost Files, aka Poltergeist Report. 1992–95. TV series. (112 X 30 min.) Supernatural action/adventure. org Yoshihiro Togashi (manga). dir Noriyuki Abe, others. scr Yukiyoshi Ohashi, others. des Minoru Yamazawa, Yuji Ikeda, others. -jd

A juvenile delinquent who died tragically in a car accident is given a second chance at life as a spirit detective, solving crimes for the lord of the underworld, in an action-packed battle series with supernatural overtones.

Yu Yu Hakusho has one of anime’s most unique openings: it begins with the main character’s death. Fourteen-year-old juvenile delinquent Yusuke Ura­meshi is hit by a car and killed while trying to save a little boy who’d run out into the middle of a busy road. Because of his selfless act, and because his premature death is regarded as something of a clerical error by the bureaucrats of the spirit world, Yusuke is offered a second chance at life. While his physical body languishes in a coma, Yusuke struggles to pass a series of tests that will result in his revival, using his powers as a disembodied spirit. Despite failing every test due to some technicality, Yusuke is eventually given his life back. But thanks to all the time he spent being dead, he now has new abilities to channel “spirit energy.”

Recruited as a “spirit detective” by Koenma, the infant son of the king of the underworld, Yusuke uses his new skills to track down spiritual criminals, such as demons that have trespassed into the human world. He’s aided in his work by Botan, a cute female version of the Grim Reaper, and soon picks up a trio of coworkers: Kazuma Kuwabara, a rival delinquent from another gang at Yusuke’s school; Kurama, an elegant former fox demon who has been reborn as a human; and Hiei, a diminutive demon with a mystical third eye. Yusuke’s powers increase through rigorous training, and he and his companions find themselves involved in a series of fighting tournaments in which they take on the fiercest warriors of the demon world.

The first Yu Yu Hakusho movie, a short, thirty-minute film created to play in a seasonal anime festival, features the kidnapping of Koenma. The Golden Seal of his father, King Yama, which would give the bearer control of the entire spirit world, is demanded as ransom. This premise is mostly played for laughs, as Yusuke and his companions ride to the rescue and discover that the ringleader of the kidnapping was one of Koenma’s playground chums.

The second movie, Yu Yu Hakusho: The Movie–Poltergeist Report (aka Yu Yu Hakusho: Bonds of Fire) boasts impressive production values and a far more serious plot. A great flood drowns the entire spirit world, and Botan barely escapes in time to carry a message to Yusuke. The three demon gods of the netherworld plan to remake the human world in their own image by releasing the energy of five sacred spirit sites, and Botan is the key they need to succeed.

Yu Yu Hakusho has an engaging, simplified drawing style, typical of ’80s television anime. The characters are all crisply distinctive: teenage punk Yusuke has slicked-back black hair and a unique, bright green school uniform. Kuwabara, the second toughest punk in Yusuke’s school, is tall and amusingly ugly, with a large jaw, narrow eyes, and shock of curly red hair. He frequently sports the open jacket and bandage-wrapped belly of a traditional bancho (gang boss). The diminutive badass demon Hiei has a vertical brush of black hair, a gloomy gothic overcoat, and an eternally serious expression. Red-haired and dressed in pink, Kurama is an androgynously beautiful male. Botan, the cheerful young Grim Reaper, is a blue-haired girl in a pink kimono who flies through the air sitting astride a boat oar, like a witch’s broomstick. The demons that Yusuke and his companions fight range from musclebound behemoths to deceptively childlike, and have powers that range from makeup that can be used to cast spells, to ninja tricks, fireballs, water powers, muscle enhancement, and more.

Character designs for the movie were by Nobu­teru Yuuki, who also created designs for The Vision of Escaflowne, Record of Lodoss War, and Battle Angel. TV series character designer and supervising animation director Yoshinori Kanemori directed Reign the Conqueror, was a key animator on Death Note, and character designer on Rail of the Star, Queen Millennia, Twilight of the Cockroaches, Yawara, and Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals.

The movie’s script was adapted by CLAMP’s head writer, Nanase Ohkawa, along with Asami Watanabe (Shamanic Princess), and Rintaro, the film’s director.

Yu Yu Hakusho starts out on an almost James Bond note: Yusuke’s first mission is to retrieve three ancient artifacts of the spirit world stolen by a trio of bandits (two of these bandits are Kurama and Hiei, who eventually change sides and become Yusuke’s cohorts), and he receives a number of gadgets to aid him—a psychic spyglass, a spiritual compass, and a power-boosting ring. After a couple of missions, though, solving supernatural cases gives way to tournament fighting, and Yusuke and his friends are pitted against the strongest warriors of the demon world. The emphasis of the series changes from detective work to facing bigger and badder adversaries and gaining new fighting techniques, such as Yusuke’s signature attack, a “spirit gun” of energy he can fire from his fingertip, and Kuwabara’s equivalent “spirit sword.”

This is neither the first anime to feature tournament fighting, a well-established formula for action anime since well before Dragon Ball Z, nor the first with hosts of supernatural creatures—Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro, the series that almost single-handedly rescued native Japanese yokai (demon) folklore from extinction, probably has that honor. Yu Yu Hakusho, though, combines these two elements for video-game-style match-ups. Not quite as superpowered as Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho leans more in the direction of Ultimate Muscle (Kinnikuman II in Japan), with an unmistakable sense of humor in its stadium audiences filled with demons and otherworldly announcers adding color commentary to the matches as if they were real pro-wrestling bouts.

Yu Yu Hakusho’s biggest pleasure is in the unique personalities and interactions of its heroes. Yusuke and Kuwabara are a type that would normally be relegated to the background of a typical anime production—junior high school delinquents, tough-talking, cocky troublemakers who start fights, cut classes, and talk back to teachers and parents. However, both of them have hearts of gold beneath their tough exteriors, and unexpected layers. Yusuke’s generally good nature is in spite of an unhappy home life, and in the first episode, “Surprised to Be Dead,” he attempts to amuse a little boy (the same one Yusuke dies for while trying to save him from oncoming traffic) by making funny faces. Kuwabara, introduced as a rival gang leader obsessed with proving his mettle as a fighter, reacts to Yusuke’s apparent demise with furious disappointment that he’ll never have a chance for a rematch. Near tears, he storms into Yusuke’s wake and rails at the black-framed photo on display: “Who am I going to fight now? Who am I going to fight? You’re supposed to be here. For me!” As portrayals of tough-guy sentiment go, it’s pretty heartbreaking.

Kurama and Hiei, the demon fighters of the team, are equally multidimensional. Kurama’s handsome appearance and unflappable personality conceal equally large streaks of humanity and ruthlessness, and his special attacks, involving a rose and a whip made of a thorned rose stem, are surprisingly powerful. Hiei, though tiny, is a devastating fighter, with a sentimental streak that expresses itself whenever he shows concern for his estranged sister. A demon of ambiguous morals, Hiei’s admiration for Yusuke’s skill is his only guarantee of loyalty to the team.

Irony is the heart and soul of Yu Yu Hakusho. When Yusuke begins his career as a spirit detective, he discovers that the spirit world is just as subject to arbitrary rules and red tape as the mundane world of school and daily life he’s left behind. In order to prove his worthiness as a spirit detective, Yusuke has to pass a series of bizarre tests and elaborate challenges, which he blunders through with a combination of good intentions and dumb luck. Instead of reporting to an impressive monarch, Yusuke and friends are bossed around by a cranky toddler who sucks on a pacifier as he grumbles about their job performance. The bureaucratic offices of the afterlife are populated by traditional Japanese oni demons with horns and tiger-striped loincloths, who sit at their desks making phone calls and scuttle back and forth with armfuls of paperwork. The Grim Reaper is a pretty young woman; the most powerful psychic warrior in the world is a little old lady. Nothing is ever quite what it seems, and you should always expect the unexpected.

As the story continues, Yusuke and his companions continue to develop new powers. Yusuke ultimately discovers that his connection to the demon world is stronger than it first appeared, but after more than a hundred episodes of battles—not all of them riveting—he eventually begins to question what he’s fighting for. The conclusion to the final tournament tackles this existential dilemma head-on, and even arrives at a satisfying answer. An epilogue shows us the characters’ lives after the fighting is over, a rarity in anime.

Yu Yu Hakusho: The Movie (1993, movie)

Yu Yu Hakusho the Movie: Poltergeist Report (1994, movie)

Additionally, several video compilations were released in VHS format between 1994 and 1996, and these have now been reissued in Japan as four DVD volumes, including Eizo Hakusho (“Image Report”) volumes, which are simply compilations of battle scenes from the TV series, and the Opening and Ending Encyclopedia, compiling all the series’ openings and closings, with some new animation. None of these are currently available in English.

In the first episode, Yusuke gets to attend his own funeral as a ghost, and finds out how everyone really feels about him after his death. Several truly tear-jerking moments ensue, from his drunken mother sobbing for him to come back, to the little boy Yusuke saved from the car asking why everyone is so sad.

During the race to prevent his body from being cremated, Yusuke is able to use his ghost powers to possess people who are asleep or who have an affinity with the supernatural. With only an hour to get a message to his girlfriend Keiko, Yusuke possesses Kuwabara, who unfortunately has enemies all over town. Yusuke spends most of the hour fighting them off, and almost misses his chance to pass on the message.

In “Kuwabara: A Promise Between Men,” ghost-Yusuke is unable to keep his immaterial hands to himself when Kuwabara becomes the target of a cruel prank orchestrated by his teachers. Threatened with the expulsion of one of his gang members if he gets involved in any fights, Kuwabara allows rival gangs to beat him up until Yusuke possesses a schoolgirl who’d been accidentally knocked unconscious, and humiliates the gang members by kicking their butts in a skirt.

The English-dubbed anime series began airing in the United States on the Cartoon Network beginning in February 2002, on the network’s late-night Adult Swim block. It ran four seasons, ending its completed run in April 2006. To date, the show is the only anime to have also played in the Toonami afternoon block of programming after debuting in Adult Swim. Yu Yu Hakusho was also very popular in the Philippines under the title Ghostfighter, and has been shown in many other countries all over the world.

There are several references to Sailor Moon in the anime series, including Koenma dressing up as Tuxedo Mask; this was because creator Yoshihiro Togashi was romantically linked to Sailor Moon’s creator, Naoko Takeuchi, whom he later married.

Yu Yu Hakusho is based on the manga by Yoshihiro Togashi, who also created Hunter X Hunter. Director Noriyuki Abe is also director of Bleach, Ninku, and Great Teacher Onizuka. Art director Yuji Ikeda created the animation character designs for Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, and was art director on the first three DBZ movies. He also served as art director on Phoenix—Space, Demon City Shinjuku, Like the Clouds, Like the Wind, Please Save My Earth, Fushigi Yugi (OAV), Master Keaton, Great Teacher Onizuka, Ninja Scroll (TV), X (TV), and many others.

violence There is schoolyard brawling, and beatings that leave behind realistic cuts and bruises. Kuwabara’s arm is graphically broken in “Rando Rises, Kuwabara Falls.” Villains are vaporized, slashed, and burned. A man’s head is kicked off and rolls dramatically in the direction of the viewer.