Synopsis:
Yu Yu Hakusho is the story of a 14-year-old delinquent by the name of Urameshi Yusuke, who gets into an accident that changes his life forever. With Yusuke's second chance at life Koenma, the son of Enma who is the ruler of the Spirit world, appoints Yusuke as the Spirit Detective for the Spirit world. Yusuke is given new powers and abilities to assist him on his various missions and later gains powerful allies to help him.

Review:
Yu Yu Hakusho may start off slow (believe me I thought I had wasted my money), but around the sixth episode things start to get interesting. In the first twenty or so episodes Yusuke gets around four or five different missions, each lasting anywhere from four and six episodes. At first it may seem that this is what the story is about but when the second saga / story arc comes in to play you realize how different things will be from then on. The second saga is a long 44-episode tournament that has amazing fighting scenes that throw Dragon Ball Z’s in the dirt.

The character development is what made this series so special for me. Yusuke becomes great friends with his rival Kuwabara, who has much honor -- he hates losing and likes to fight alone. Yusuke is later joined by two powerful demons -- Kurama and Hiei. Kurama is a demon in the form of a human whose true powers are brought out when he is in his real form. Hiei is an incredibly powerful and fast demon who seems to be unbearably bitter at first, but as the series progresses we learn of his tragic past.

One thing that I must mention is the villains. There are points in this show when I liked the villains better than the heroes. The reason for this being the fact that they have a great deal of development. One villain in particular is Toguro, my personal favorite. He may seem very mean and nasty at first but at the end of the second saga I understood him as did Yusuke and the other characters. Rather than the saga ending with the celebration of his defeat, Yusuke looked at him and smiled and said goodbye as if he were saying it to a close friend. The fights in this show won’t try your patience like Dragon Ball Z. There’s always a reason behind the fighting, and most of the time the universe isn’t facing impending doom (cough, cough, DBZ). The villains always have something significant behind their actions.

The art and animation start off fairly crappy, but as each episode pasees the animation also improves. Some episodes contain a lot of eye candy, in the way of fighting and action scenes. Regardless the animation is better than that of DBZ’s; it’s also much more gory. What makes the fight scenes better than DBZ’s is how you see fists making contact and the way the camera angles twist and zoom about. Rarely will you see people punching and kicking so fast that all you see are speed lines a la DBZ.

Overall, I'd say it is the best fighting anime I’ve seen. Before this, DBZ was my favorite but this show made me realize what else is out there.

Miscellanies:
When DBZ was making record ratings in Japan, Yu Yu Hakusho was the only show to stay close behind… meaning it was extremely popular.

Screenshots:

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