Yu Yu Hakusho

Much like Hunter x Hunter, Yoshihiro Togashi's much more acclaimed later effort in Shounen Jump, YuYu Hakusho feels like several different series all huddled inside the same trench coat. Where Hunter x Hunter presents an interrelated series of experimentally structured takes on different manga genres with results that range from extremely entertaining to legitimately masterful, however, YuYu Hakusho is a bit more of a true mixed bag. Some parts of it are remarkably standard or even somewhat boring, while others--brief as they honestly are--present glimmers of the brilliant mangaka Togashi was to become. Still others offer uniquely amazing qualities that remain unmatched in the rest of Togashi's work, although these tend to go frustratingly underdeveloped within this series's somewhat truncated length. Overall, the impression I got of this manga was of an author rapidly developing his own voice from one arc to another of a fairly loosely defined oldschool battle shounen. If Hunter x Hunter is Togashi's professional magnum opus and sabbatical-filled manga tenure, YuYu Hakusho is a record of his scrappy student years fighting to stand out in Weekly Jump. This manga succeeds primarily in the sense that he did: by the end, this series does stand out: it feels on the verge of becoming a true classic with a unique voice...if only it went on longer.

If you're a big fan of YuYu Hakusho in its own right (like, you watched the anime on Toonami back in the day or read it in Viz's dearly departed monthly Shounen Jump Magazine), you might be a little annoyed by my contextualization of this series purely as a precursor to Hunter x Hunter, rather than a story in its own right. To be honest, this is intentional, because I think YuYu Hakusho has remarkably few unique qualities to call its own during its first handful of mini-arcs. This series very clearly comes from that pre-big-three era of Jump where a manga could take some time after starting to really figure out what it was actually going to be about, and rely on the traditional staples of tough punks, street brawls, and maybe some Japanese small-town occult vibes to fill space in the meantime. This is exactly what YuYu Hakusho does at the beginning, presenting us with badass middle school banchous in big, baggy school uniforms with gekiga-style faces, contrasted against their more bishoujo-style girl love interests and the requisite weird-looking ghost of the week, or whatever. There's some light romantic comedy, a lot of charming 90s faces and patterns, and some, good, heartwarming stories about death, moving on, that sort of thing. Urameshi Yusuke's deal is that he solves ghost mysteries and fights ghost criminals, and that's kinda what the manga is about for a while, as new characters like the hilariously Joey-Wheeler-coded Kuwabara, the edgy demonic semi-ally Hiei, and the delightfully proto-Kurapika thorny rose bishounen Kurama are introduced to add to the stable cast of Yusuke, Botan, Keiko, and Yusuke's hilarious deadbeat mom. They train in some generic Chi / Reiki martial arts, fight some ugly Buddhist Asuras or whatever...its really a lot like what Bleach would go on to do ten years later, but without that series's groundbreakingly forward-thinking visual style. What we have here is a familiar, safe, comfy Shounen Jump staple of the sort that had been running steadily since the 1970s. Its a series that had an audience at the time (and certainly became a hit among American audiences mostly unfamiliar with battle Shounen), but one that would have been forgotten had it continued like that for much longer.

Luckily, that's only how things are early on. The first five volumes form what I consider to be the first chunk of the series, with the second, and longest, comprising roughly volumes 5 through 13. Here the series becomes more coherent and fully-formed, although not necessarily in a way that appeals more to me personally. To be blunt, it goes from swimming in the primordial ooze of classic battle shounen tropes to existing almost entirely in the awesome shadow of the new tropes introduced by Dragon Ball. Yep, its...a tournament arc. And a really long one, too, that subjects us to basically every fight in every round against every team of jobbers that is unlucky enough to be matched on the roster against the scrappy human underdogs of Team Urameshi. It's not an utterly sauceless arc by any means--again, many of Togashi's good ideas are starting to shine through--but it does include a lot of boring characters that honestly wouldn't even cut it as D-rank background hunters in HxH. There's...stinky drunk man...tiny propeller hat JD Vance...evil mind control goblin...uhhh...sexy...lighting guy...okay, whatever. Mostly there's just a lot of beatdowns with very little downtime, and some pretty shoddily-drawn audience reactions. Honestly, if I was a Japanese teen in 1992, I'd rather have just been grinding Street Fighter, or at least reading Toriyama's fourth Tenkaiichi Budoukai arc, this time featuring Goku's third grandson and his gay little friend.

Okay, fine...there's also Toguro. The intimidating, musclebound younger and his grotesquely transforming, much less significant elder brother are really what makes the entire middle part of this series so beloved among many fans. Starting with a raid by Yusuke and Kuwabara on the mansion of an underworld cabal of human-demon-traffickers (during which Yusuke has a rather unfortunate Ace Ventura Pet Detective moment, which I imagine Togashi is now rather embarrassed about), Toguro's ice-cold, powerful presence and tantalizingly concealed power-level provides a constant source of intriguing malice for Yusuke to struggle against throughout the whole arc. Toguro represents the cruel, mercenary nature of the demonic underworld and its shady tournaments, as well as the staggering power needed to stand at its zenith. He's a great villain that kept me reading through all of the unremarkable filler that mostly comprises the Dark Tournament arc. Of course, Yusuke goes up against him in the finals, and it's there that the arc actually starts to become enjoyable. The showdown between Yusuke's staggering potential, desperately trained up to fighting form at the last minute, and the younger Toguro's impenetrable brute power is definitely a Dragon-Ball-style, chi pulses-and-powerups-type fight, but it's a great one. It helps that Togashi's art style really starts to stand out at this point, evolving to convey a grotesque, horror-tinged grittiness that contrasts with the detailed, clear-eyed expressions of the characters. Really, the whole final team battle, where each of Yusuke's bros gets a one-on-one with a Toguro understudy, is a visual spectacle. Toguro's muscles are almost a Gigerian mechsuit, while Yusuke's sweat flies off his lean, battered body as he dodges fatal blasts and blows. Kurama and the girls have ridiculously beautiful hair and eyes, and rubble and weird-90s-manga-spikes explode wildly around the funny bishoujo catgirl commentator. It's as eclectic and varied as Togashi's art in Hunter x Hunter would become famous for being, but with an amazing level of polish that is often absent even in that series. Story-wise, there's also a genuinely good denouement after Toguro is defeated, where he reckons with his past sins alongside Yusuke's mentor, Genma, in the afterlife. It makes the Dark Tournament ultimately more than worth reading: sure, it's a bit of a Dragon Ball imitator, in ways that come off as tiresome to anyone not obsessed with 80s battle series, but it's one with its own unique visual style and voice. I got the sense that, just as long as it didn't fall into that same Dragon Ball trap of constantly introducing further, contrived villains to challenge Yusuke's now-titanic martial arts power, this series had some truly heroic potential going into its last handful of volumes.

And, you know what...it doesn't fall into that trap. In perhaps Togashi's first move of true storytelling genius, the series acknowledges Yusuke and the gang's physical mastery and evolves its structure radically in response. This is now the third section of the series, which goes from about volume 14 until the end, and shifts to a more experimental footing that often reaches peak territory. First among the arcs in this section is Chapter Black, where Togashi experiments with a more cerebral type of battle shounen conflict. Here, Yusuke goes against a truly matched rival: another agile, powerful ex-spirit detective named Shusui, who shares Yusuke's background but possesses an obsessive sense of moral clarity and a need for control that contrasts with Yusuke's shonen-punk-hero-ness. This arc actually introduces nen abilities (yes, they are literally called that) and tries to present some new cast members for some more varied fights. This is also ultimately a bit mixed in terms of quality; some of the fights strike me as a bit dumber than Togashi thinks they are, while the new side characters fail to leave much of an impression. This arc's climax also goes completely off the rails, but there lies its greatest appeal. The fight between Yusuke and Shusui, in an underground cave where Shusui and his sexy evil twink boyfriend are trying to open a portal to the underworld, is crazy coocoo bananas. Shusui's motivations stop making sense and start being insane, there are twists and turns for days involving weird portal physics, and, like...Yusuke is half-demon, he suddenly evolves into a new form, and they end up having an apocalyptic all-out hell-war in an open portal as demons flood through. The artwork in this section is astonishing, with the demon world having this absolutely massive, distinctly 90s look rife with stone spikes, biomechanical blobs, and lightning-filled horizons colliding with dense, dark forests. Yusuke and Shusui's transformations are drawn in an almost impressionistic, yet paradoxically hyper-polished way, and in characteristic Togashi fashion, auras are rendered in clear, bold marker that seems to make negative spaces glow and crackle with power. This arc's biggest selling point is its sudden, madcap, escalation, which leads to a feeling of max-level superboss desperation; even what "Chapter Black" ends up referring to is absolutely crazy, and thematically Togashi-core as hell.

After Chapter Black, the series pivots into dealing with the consequences of demonic Yusuke, necessitating an almost complete, and honestly incredible, change in genre and tone. We are introduced to a political conflict between warlord factions in the hell plane that coincides with a clash of ideologies about how the demonic threat unleashed by Shusui is to be managed, and the gang, having become power players among demons, end up as advisors to different political causes. Something particularly awesome about this bit is how it coincides with the falling action of Yusuke's life in the human world; he graduates from middle school, starts working, gets closer to Keiko, and meets another ex-Spirit-Detective who further illuminates the philosophical dimensions of YuYu Hakusho's world that Chapter Black just barely started to gesture at. The result is this really satisfying slice-of-life story following multiple characters who split their time between multiple dimensions. Life is lived on the idyllic Japanese beach and in the cold, bulbous dungeons of the demon lord Yoki. We see towering hell cities and comfy dorm-room mysteries. What ties it all together is the revelation that, across planes, people are living normal lives. It turns out that demons in the uncontrolled reaches of hell don't actually have to eat humans to survive, and are instead seeking to integrate with the human world. This is a concrete, slow process that we see played out in stages in the daily lives of the main characters, who have won a place both in the influential circles of hell and in the hearts of readers. It's a fascinatingly creative payoff, that, in its lack of climactic battles, feels all the more luxuriantly satisfying in its narrative payoff.

To be honest, YuYu Hakusho's ending is kind of better than the series actually deserves. The demonic conflict ends up being peacefully resolved by a friendly tournament in the demon world, organized by none other than Yusuke, who catalyzes and proselytizes his hard-work-and-guts values into radical political action that sways the hearts even of diehard Machiavellians. It's awesome. Its SOOOO satisfying. But the fights themselves, which are held between likeable and interesting characters with unique and meaningful stakes, are largely skipped over. And that's how most of the final arc of the series ends up feeling. Literally everything I've described basically happens in volumes 17-19, leading to a staggering density of brilliant ideas. All the demon worldbuilding, the entire tournament, the integration between the demon and human worlds, the start of Yusuke's late adolescence, and multiple other things I haven't even mentioned (like a terrorist bomb-defusal sequence that clearly served as a rough draft for the Chimera Ant Arc's palace invasion sequence). It's all in 2 and a half volumes, compared to the Dark Tournament's excessive eight. Like the aimless beginning, this is obviously a result of Togashi's work schedule--he needed a big, long tournament to fill time while he thought of ideas, and when he got to those ideas, he was tired enough from his brutal schedule to want to wrap things up quick. He basically admits to as much in his author's notes.

Even so, it's a huge disappointment that those ideas didn't come a little earlier, and a little more fully formed. YuYu Hakusho's ending stretch is so rich with vibes and ideas that its emotional payoff feels earned, but it all only really applies to itself, not to the much less remarkable rest of the series. But such is the nature of YuYu Hakusho: its main legacy was as an educational manga for Togashi, not necessarily a complete work for the reader. He turned in a brilliant final project, and was destined for an incredible career afterwards. But for most of its run, YuYu Hakusho, like its characters, is a work in progress.