YuYu Hakusho

• 1. Introduction

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  YuYu Hakusho begins with a 14-year-old street brawler named Yusuke Urameshi shoving a young boy out of the path of a car. The boy lives. Yusuke does not. It is an uncharacteristic act of kindness from a teenage delinquent, and it kills him early in a manga by Yoshihiro Togashi. The series ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 1990 to July 1994. In that time it filled 175 chapters, later collected into 19 volumes. What follows Yusuke's death is stranger than the setup suggests. A ghost story about bureaucracy in the afterlife slowly becomes a saga of tournaments, rival worlds and demon bloodlines. How did Togashi plan that change of direction? Where did the odd title come from? And why did an author whose editors wanted more choose to stop?

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• 2. Underworld Detective

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  A woman named Botan greets Yusuke's ghost at the Sanzu River, where she works as a pilot ferrying souls to be judged. She tells him his sacrifice caught even the Underworld off guard, and no place exists yet for him in heaven or hell. Koenma, the son of the Underworld's ruler King Enma, offers a way back through a series of tests. Yusuke passes them with help from his friends Keiko Yukimura and Kazuma Kuwabara. Revived, he receives the title of Underworld Detective and a duty to investigate supernatural activity in the Human World.

  His first case sends him after three treasures stolen from the Underworld by a gang of demons named Hiei, Kurama and Goki. He recovers them with a new technique called the Rei Gun, a shot of aura fired from his index finger.

  Next he travels to the mountains to find Genkai, an aged female martial arts master. She organizes a tournament to choose her successor, and Yusuke and his rival Kuwabara fight through it. Yusuke secretly uses the contest as cover to hunt Rando, a demon who steals the techniques of martial arts masters and kills them. He defeats Rando in the final round, then trains with Genkai for several months to deepen his command of his aura.

  A later case takes him to Labyrinth Castle, in a third world occupied only by demons. There Kuwabara and the newly reformed Kurama and Hiei help him defeat the Four Beasts, a quartet trying to blackmail Koenma into removing the barrier that keeps them out of the Human World. When Togashi introduced Kurama and Hiei in volume three, he already had early plans to make Kurama a main character. About Hiei, he was not yet certain.

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• 3. Birth of the Series

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  Around November 1990, Togashi began conceiving YuYu Hakusho, though he later admitted he forgot the exact time. He had just finished serializing a romantic comedy, Ten de Shōwaru Cupid, in Weekly Shōnen Jump. During that run he had felt intimidated by some of the more popular authors in the magazine. His conclusion was that he needed to create a fighting manga, both to win readers and to write something he enjoyed.

  His own tastes pointed toward the occult, horror films and Buddhist mythology. An earlier occult detective manga, Occult Tanteidan, had drawn positive reactions from readers, and he cited that response as a reason to keep making manga.

  The title came together in a hurry. While showing rough drafts to his editors, Togashi used the tentative name "How to be a Ghost." Once publication was approved, he proposed "YuYu-Ki," meaning Poltergeist Chronicles, a play on the title SaiYu-Ki since demon battles were coming. But a series with a similar name, Chin-Yu-Ki, had already begun publication. So he quickly invented "YuYu Hakusho," meaning Poltergeist Report. He said he could have chosen "Den," meaning Legend, or "Monogatari," meaning Story. But "Hakusho," meaning Report, was simply the first word that came to mind.

  Character names came from skimming a dictionary and pulling out kanji he found appealing. "Yusuke Urameshi" is a pun, and "Kazuma Kuwabara" combines the names of two professional baseball players. Hiei and Kurama were, in his words, "just names that popped into Togashi's head."

  The shift from occult detective fiction to martial arts after Yusuke's death and revival was planned from the very beginning. Togashi took the idea from Kinnikuman, which began largely as a comedy before concentrating on action. He wanted readers to know the main characters well before placing them in tense physical conflicts. His editor at the time was nervous about this approach and suggested moving to a battle-focused plot after about 30 chapters.

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• 4. Planes and Tournaments

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  Three parallel planes of existence hold the manga's universe. They are the Ningenkai, or Human World, the Reikai, or Underworld, and the Makai, or Demon Plane. Togashi drew on Asian folklore for them, especially Buddhist beliefs about the afterlife. He imagined that modern technology could not carry anyone between the planes. Only a spirit without a material body could make the crossing easily. The idea of "territory" powers in the Sensui arc, however, was parodied from a separate, unnamed work by Yasutaka Tsutsui.

  Those planes collide in the Dark Tournament arc. Yusuke meets Toguro, a human turned into a demon, who invites him to an event run by corrupt, rich humans. Teams of demons, and occasionally humans, fight there for the chance to receive any wish they desire. Team Urameshi consists of Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama, Hiei and a disguised Genkai. They reach the finals against Team Toguro and win. Team Toguro's owner, Sakyo, had hoped to win in order to open a huge hole between the Human World and the Demon Plane. After his loss, Sakyo destroys the arena and dies in the blast.

  Shinobu Sensui, who was Yusuke's predecessor as Underworld Detective, picks up where Sakyo left off. He recruits six other powerful beings to open a portal to the Demon Plane and bring genocide to the human race. Sensui kills Yusuke in their final battle and retreats through the portal. Yusuke is reborn as a partial demon, because an ancestor passed down a recessive gene that stayed hidden until an heir with enough power appeared. On the Demon Plane, that ancestor takes control of Yusuke's body and finishes the fight against Sensui.

  The ancestor is named Raizen. Afterward, Yusuke loses his detective title, since his superiors fear his demon blood could drive him on a rampage. Unsettled at having been controlled, he accepts an offer from Raizen's followers to return to the Demon Plane. Raizen is on the brink of dying of starvation and wants a successor for his territory. His death would upset the delicate balance among the Demon Plane's three ruling powers. The other two rulers, Mukuro and Yomi, summon Hiei and Kurama to prepare for war. The three protagonists train there for one year, during which Raizen dies and Yusuke inherits his territory.

  Yusuke proposes a fighting tournament to name the Demon Plane's true ruler, and Mukuro and Yomi accept. He meets Yomi in the second elimination round and loses. He hopes a similar contest will be held every few years. Two years later he returns to the Human World, while Hiei stays with Mukuro and protects humans who have wandered into the Demon Plane by accident. Koenma learns that King Enma had been falsifying reports of demon activity to justify keeping the two worlds apart. He takes over his father's position and opens access between them. Genkai dies and leaves her estate to the main characters. The story ends with Yusuke and his friends reuniting at a beach.

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• 5. The Cost of Deadlines

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  Four hours per page, plus five hours of sleep each night. That was the formula Togashi used to work out how much personal time he had left while drawing YuYu Hakusho. He worked in drafting ink with Kabura pens. His artwork began with screentone and gradually moved toward minimalism. When he wanted a particular effect, he drew figures and faces either very detailed or, in his phrase, "cartoony, sketchy, and jumping with action."

  The workload wore on him. He said that from the Dark Tournament arc onward, inconsistent sleep caused by overwork gave him health problems. He recalled being very ill while he worked on the color pages for Yusuke's match with Chu. On several occasions he created nearly an entire manuscript by himself, including Yusuke's meeting with Raizen and the battle between Kurama and Karasu.

  Togashi had originally wanted to end the manga in December 1993, at the climax of the Sensui arc. In his own dōjinshi, Yoshirin de Pon!, he wrote that he stopped production out of selfishness. The final six months of publication brought particularly heavy personal stress. The magazine's editors tried to persuade him to reconsider canceling. He justified the decision by saying another popular series would take its place. When the manga finally ended, he felt relieved.

  The same schedule kept him out of production on the anime adaptation, which was already airing on television.

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• 6. Screens and Stages

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  On the 10th of October 1992, the YuYu Hakusho anime began airing on Fuji Television, and it ran until the 7th of January 1995. Noriyuki Abe directed its 112 episodes, and the production was shared by Fuji Television, Yomiko Advertising and Studio Pierrot. Togashi did not work on it, but he later said he was greatly impressed by Shigeru Chiba's voice performance as Kuwabara. He even admitted that the actor understood the character better than he did himself.

  Two animated films followed, both with original stories that are not canonical to the manga. The first, simply titled Yu Yu Hakusho, opened in Japan on the 10th of July 1993 as part of a seasonal film festival. In it, Yusuke and Kuwabara try to rescue a kidnapped Koenma from two demons who want the Golden Seal, a stamp used to finalize the sentencing of souls. The second, Yu Yu Hakusho the Movie: Poltergeist Report, reached Japanese theaters on the 9th of April 1994. Its plot has Yusuke and his friends defend the Human World against inhabitants of a fourth plane called the Netherworld.

  A series of original video animations came out on VHS in Japan between 1994 and 1996. They hold short clips set after the end of the series, montages from the anime, image songs, voice actor interviews and satirical shorts about the four protagonists. A brand new OVA arrived with a Blu-ray box set on the 26th of October 2018. It adapts the bonus chapter "Two Shot" and the penultimate chapter, "All or Nothing."

  On the 16th of December 2020, a Japanese live-action series was announced for Netflix. Kazutaka Sakamoto, Netflix's contents acquisition director, served as executive producer, and Akira Morii produced at Robot. Shō Tsukikawa directed, Tatsurō Mishima handled the script and Ryō Sakaguchi supervised the visual effects. Takumi Kitamura plays Yusuke, Shuhei Uesugi plays Kuwabara, Jun Shison plays Kurama and Kanata Hongō plays Hiei. The series premiered on the 14th of December 2023.

  The franchise also reached the stage. A play produced by Office Endless was announced in May 2019, written and directed by Chūji Mikasano, a screenwriter for the Tokyo Ghoul anime. It ran from the 8th of August to the 22nd of September 2019 in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka and Aichi.

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• 7. Pages, Games and Toys

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  Shueisha released the kanzenban, or complete, editions of the manga between the 4th of August 2004 and the 4th of March 2005. Each of its 15 volumes carries a new cover and more chapters than a standard tankōbon. Nine volumes in the Jump Remix magazine-style series appeared between the 22nd of December 2008 and the 27th of April 2009. A bunkoban edition ran from the 18th of November 2010 to the 18th of October 2011.

  Viz Media brought the manga to North America. Its translation debuted in the inaugural January 2003 issue of American Shonen Jump and ended in January 2010. All 19 volumes came out between the 1st of May 2003 and the 2nd of March 2010. Viz counted 176 chapters because it numbered the unnumbered extra chapter "YuYu Hakusho Tales: Two Shot" as the 64th. That chapter, found in volume seven, tells how Hiei and Kurama first met. Digital editions followed from August 2013 to February 2014, and the series reached ComiXology as well. Other publishers licensed it across Asia and Europe, and a French translation from Kana began in 1997.

  Video games arrived early, but most stayed in Japan. Titles appeared on the Game Boy, the Super Famicom and Sega consoles before the franchise launched in North America. North America received only three, two for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance and one for Sony's PlayStation 2. A Mega Drive game, Yū Yū Hakusho Makyō Tōitsusen, was published in Brazil by Tectoy in 1999 as YuYu Hakusho: Sunset Fighters. After Atari gained the publishing rights in 2003, it released Yu Yu Hakusho: Spirit Detective, an action-adventure game, and Yu Yu Hakusho: Tournament Tactics, a tactical role-playing game. Both were for the Game Boy Advance. The third was Yu Yu Hakusho: Dark Tournament, a 3D fighting game for the PlayStation 2. Yusuke, Hiei and Toguro are also playable in the Jump crossover fighting games J-Stars Victory VS and Jump Force.

  Shueisha published a reference book on the 4th of March 2005, with character profiles, story summaries and an exclusive interview with Togashi. An art book followed on the 27th of April 2005, gathering illustrations from the series and from the kanzenban reprints. Japan also saw trading figures, plush dolls, gashapon toys and a card game from Movic. In North America, licensed products included apparel from ODM and action figures from IF Labs and Jakks Pacific. Radica Games made a Skannerz electronic toy, and Scholastic published an activities book. Score Entertainment produced a Yu Yu Hakusho Trading Card Game, which received an English guidebook from Cocoro Books on the 12th of October 2004. In September 2019, the series joined the Universal Fighting System card game, the second anime license to enter that system.

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• 8. Reception

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  By 2013, the manga had more than 50 million copies in circulation, which places it among the best-selling manga series of all time. Togashi won the 39th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category in 1993. Patricia Duffield, a columnist for Animerica Extra, called the series "one of the kings of popularity in the mid-1990s." She noted that it was sold everywhere from large bookstore chains to small train station kiosks.

  In North America, several volumes reached the weekly Nielsen BookScan graphic novels list. Volume five placed sixth and ninth in October 2004, volume six placed sixth in February 2005, and volume seven placed seventh in June 2005.

  In 2004, a Florida grade school teacher complained about an issue of American Shonen Jump that a fifth-grade student had bought at a Scholastic Book Fair. The complaint cited violence, mild profanity, a character wearing a swastika and another character smoking a cigarette. About 18,000 copies of the magazine, out of 120,000, were returned from the fairs. A Viz spokesperson defended the manga, explaining that it was meant for older teens. The spokesperson added that the alleged swastika was actually a Buddhist manji.

  Reviewers writing in English were divided. Martin Ouellette of the Canadian Protoculture Addicts compared the series' progression to Dragon Ball Z and wrote, "Togashi's art, while simple, is extremely efficient and the story is really fun." In an older article he had argued against the comparison, saying YuYu Hakusho had better-developed characters, more interesting action sequences and more humor. Eduardo M. Chavez of Mania.com enjoyed the artwork and noticed that supporting characters tend to be drawn with more detail than the main ones. He praised Lillian Olsen's English translation but disliked Viz's overlaid English words for sound effects. He was dismayed by the move from early detective cases to the Dark Tournament arc, writing, "Seeing fight, after fight, after fight gets boring, and this seriously is only the start of this trend." Dan Polley of Manga Life gave volume five, which covers Yusuke's battle with Suzaku, leader of the Four Beasts, an average grade. He found some battles engaging but judged the chapters lacking in characterization, and he thought the comedy of "bit gags or fairly lame jokes" was "too much" at times.

  Near the end of the run, Togashi was publicly criticized for missing chapter deadlines and for lower quality art. Yet readers kept returning. In TV Asahi's Manga Sōsenkyo 2021 poll, 150,000 people voted for their top 100 manga series, and YuYu Hakusho ranked seventeenth.

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