Only about halfway through the first arc in YuYu Hakusho, it undergoes a large foundational shift. Before this point, it had followed the antics of Yusuke as he dealt with various spiritual problems. But there was a movement towards being a full on battle shonen during Genkai's tournament. Of course Yoshihiro Togashi had planned writing this shift into the manga from the beginning, and thus is able to pull it off with (almost) the same sort of effectiveness as Toriyama did with Dragon Ball. This first arc is not great, or perfect, but it symbolizes the sense of organized chaos I appreciate from an author like Togashi. His commitment to imaginative scenarios that aren't even always consistent within their own manga is something that I always loved about Hunter X Hunter.

All this is what makes the situation of YuYu Hakusho more disappointing for me than I thought it would be. From the way I see it, YYH has two conflicting aspects that Togashi was seemingly forced to wrangle with all series. There was its status as a popular battle shonen, which the editors at Jump seemed keen to maintain at the cost of adding limitations. There was Togashi's desire to continually explore interesting directions and create manga he was happy with. The clashing of these two factors seem like an obvious reason why Togashi felt largely dissatisfied with the work he was doing at a certain point.

Of course it would be careless to put particular blame on either the author or editors for the issues I have with this manga. My biggest issue with YYH can be summed up with one part of the manga, specifically the Dark Tournament arc. To put it simply, the longest and easily most complete and tied up arc in YYH is the one that I find the least interesting. I don't say this to call the Dark Tournament bad, because as far as shonen arcs go you can get a lot worse. It's a mix of good and bad fights, some minimal storytelling, and the only truly harsh thing I can say about it is that I thought the

Spoiler, click to view

Genkai revival

was a really pointless way to rob the arc of the gravity it has by the end. But I suppose that is also representative of the problem with the arc as a whole, it all feels too basic to feel strongly about and I don't know what YYH gained or lost from the arc despite its length.

The flip side of this issue that I have with Dark Tournament can be easily represented by Chapter Black. I find this arc much more inherently interesting, and it gets off to a great start. The opening in the house that explains the territories system is a perfect storm of Togashi's best qualities as an author. A great way to explain these new and creative abilities while applying them to an interesting physical setting and still giving the situation a lot of stakes. It's no surprise that Togashi himself would take the most elements from Chapter Black when it came to HxH, and that Gege Akutami would take clear inspiration from this arc with the trial-by-fire character growth in Jujutsu Kaisen. The cast of villains as great as well. Sensui is a fascinating premise for a character as the inverse of Yusuke, and it's a logical conclusion that someone could be changed so much by working as a spirit detective. With the Doctor and Gamemaster fights, Togashi shows that he can deliver fights that are entertaining for the action and fights that are entertaining for clever characterization respectively. As I hinted at before however, no arc comes close to the level of completion that Dark Tournament achieves and Chapter Black is particularly sunk here. It would easy to just attribute it to the reliance on a not very interesting fight between Yusuke and Sensui, but also an obnoxious powerscaling hitch that leads there. The fight against Toguro was one that still felt satisfying because it felt like Yusuke had been forced to the brink and still barely scraped by on his own merits. But by retroactively scaling Toguro down to a B-class demon, the story is put into an awkward position. Ultimately Yusuke gets a contrived power-up to S-Class power, one that feels less earned than anything prior. Togashi was struggling with his physical health more than ever at this point, and it shows in the art and story. It's no surprise he originally wanted to end the manga here.

I would remiss to not mention that there is an admirable attempt at giving consequences to Yusuke's power up in the final arc. Unfortunately, if the end of Chapter Black was undercooked, Three Kings arc is a goddamn rough draft. I found this arc to have an interesting premise that would have come close to being able to justify the last one if it had more time to be fleshed out. Unfortunately Togashi was clearly past the point of being physically and mentally exhausted by then. The tournament part of this arc is crammed in so fast that it makes HxH's Heaven's Arena look like a laboring magnum opus. I appreciate the actual ending of the manga, but to say this arc was a whimper is an understatement, although a fairly expectable whimper at that.

I think I gain a lot from the benefit of hindsight here. One principle I always think about when I see a first attempt go awry (but still have interesting ideas) is the fact that it can always serve as a stepping stone rather than a roadblock. In this case, that is beyond apparent. YuYu Hakusho is far from a bad manga (at least most of the time), but it's not one I could exactly call great either. But Hunter X Hunter is great, it's probably one of my favorite pieces of fiction ever. And it clearly owes a lot of that to YYH. I don't think Togashi learned from all of his questionable decisions from YYH to HxH, more than apparent from Election arc, but he did gain a lot and even aside from that I appreciate a lot of what YYH does in its own right. Regardless, I will always admire Togashi's imaginative power that can't be seen in most Shonen, and YuYu Hakusho helped me understand this even better.