Yu Yu Hakusho
Director
Nobuyuki Abe
Production
Fuji TV, Studio Pierrot
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Running time
112 episodes
Year
1992
Yu Yu Hakusho
By Frank Orville
23rd May 04 Ever get deja vu? The more I watched Yu Yu Hakusho, the more I thought, "When did I start watching Dragon Ball?" It was as bad a case of deja vu as I've ever had with anime. The show starts out really great. In a netherworldly bureaucratic screw-up of titanic proportions, our hero Yusuke (pronounced "you-skeh") gets killed in a car accident that wasn't supposed to happen. The demon prince of the afterlife, Koenma (pronounced "ko-en-ma"), offers to fix it by returning Yusuke to life on the condition that Yusuke work for them afterward. It is a very fascinating concept, and Yusuke's experiences while dead are a lot funnier than you might expect in such a morbid situation. But after the first fifteen or sixteen episodes, the direction the story goes begins to wear very thin. The main problem is that, at the time it was first produced, Yu Yu Hakusho was competing with Dragon Ball for viewers. So the producers came to believe that their show had to be more like Dragon Ball to get the audience. Because of this, Yu Yu Hakusho quickly turns into a series of fights against very powerful bad guys who kick the heroes around for a long time until the heroes suddenly find a hidden store of power and blow the bad guys away. Quite frankly, I despise "Drag-on" Ball, with its over-blown (and much too long) battles, and I am very disappointed that Yu Yu Hakusho wasted a fascinating idea by switching over to the boring Dragon Ball formula. For that matter, even if I liked Dragon Ball, I still would be disappointed in Yu Yu Hakusho. If I wanted to watch Dragon Ball, I would watch Dragon Ball. Yu Yu Hakusho had the potential to be completely new and unique, and that potential was squandered. If you do like Dragon Ball and want more of the same, Yu Yu Hakusho might satisfy you. But as far as I am concerned, the first dozen or so episodes are really good and after that the show goes rapidly downhill. 4/10
-- Frank Orville 23rd May 04
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