Content Warning: Fanservice, sexism, transphobia

One day, 14-year-old Yusuke Urameshi suddenly finds himself dead, having died pushing a child out of the way of oncoming traffic. Since he has such a bad personality, even the Spirit World was caught by surpise that he would sacrifice himself. Yusuke soon finds out he wasn't supposed to die and has a chance for resurrection.
Yu Yu Hakusho Tiger Stripe Purple Tee. Yu Yu Hakusho Logo Baseball Hat.
Yu Yu Hakusho YuYu Hakusho is a manga created and illustrated by Yoshishiro Togashi and was published in Weekly Shonen Jump by Sheisha starting December 1990 and ended July 1994. An anime adaptation was written by Yukiyoshi Ohashi and directed by Noriyuki Abe under Studio Pierrot and aired starting October 10, 1992 and ended December 17, 1994.

Spoilers for Yu Yu Hakusho

With its superb dub and absolute banger of an opening song, Yu Yu Hakusho made its North American television debut in 2002, a whole 10 years after its initial release in Japan. In true battle shounen fashion, Yu Yu Hakusho embraces the fighter’s spirit and a taste for the ridiculously overpowered villain in arc after arc. However, these elements take their time getting fully established within the bones of the show, giving the viewer time to bond with the series’ gaggle of main characters.

Yu Yu Hakusho Shimeji Characters

Urameshi Yusuke, 14 years of age, is about as troublesome and violent as teenagers come. He is constantly ditching school, causing trouble, and getting into numerous fights everyday. One day however, he does the unexpected, sacrificing himself to sav.

It is this slew of characters that has kept me hooked on Yu Yu Hakusho for the past 18 years, in addition to the “fight your enemies head on and defeat them through raw power and sheer force of will” storyline that will always be a guilty pleasure of mine. Although these elements make it worth the rewatch even now, my love for this anime hasn’t completely obscured its flaws. Yu Yu Hakusho, unfortunately, overtly and subtly fails its female characters time and again.

In the very first moments of the pilot, the protagonist Urameshi Yusuke dies while saving a small child from being hit by a truck. As he floats above his own corpse, we are formally introduced to Yusuke, a 14-year-old delinquent who, while not dodging class or antagonizing his childhood friend Yukimura Keiko, seemingly lives only to fight. After briefly learning of Yusuke’s troubling life, the beloved blue-haired, pink-robed shinagami Botan explains that, due to a fluke, Yusuke has the option to return to the world of the living by completing several tasks — a feat that, though challenging, has him back in his body by episode five.

Yusuke is then appointed to the role of spirit detective and begins taking direct orders from Koenma, the toddler prince of the Underworld. In his new position, Yusuke must investigate suspicious spiritual activity and take out any misbehaving demons he encounters in the human world along the way. As tends to be the case in shounen anime, he forms a posse, including his childhood rival-turned-best-bro, Kuwabara Kazuma, who embodies the stereotypical gentle giant persona; Hiei, a standoffish demon with his own goals and priorities; and Kurama, an intelligent, gender-nonconforming kitsune recently reborn into a human body.

While Yu Yu Hakusho clearly establishes an all-male cohort as its main fighting characters, the female characters are still important and well-developed compared to those in other battle shounen, especially other series from the late 80s and early 90s. In addition to Botan and Keiko, Kuwabara’s sister, Shizuru, and Hiei’s sister, Yukina, join the team as well. New mario bros u iso download. Each of these characters has a distinct personality, rather than simply being “the feminine one” or “the tomboy one”: Botan is goofy, capable, and upbeat; Keiko is a responsible, caring, and plucky schoolgirl; Shizuru is a tough, no-nonsense sass-master; and Yukina is the embodiment of sweetness and light.While not necessarily the focus at any given point in the story, each make up an integral part of the crew and help keep the audience emotionally engaged throughout.

What’s nice about the female characters is, however, simultaneously frustrating: for all the show’s promise, it still falls into several instances of common “shounenbullshit.” It provides occasional fan service, including a scene in episode one, when Yusuke lifts Keiko’s skirt to give the viewer a panty shot, and in subsequent scenes where he inappropriately comments on her developing body.

Worse still, the narrative also fails in ways that are less immediately obvious than a panty shot. While in some cases YYH goes to great lengths to give us female powerhouses, the show ultimately falls short on this promise. Consider Yusuke’s mentor Master Genkai, an elderly woman who spent her life pushing her body to the limit in order to develop her impressive spiritual powers. Humans and demons alike respect and fear her, and Yusuke must battle against some of the world’s top supernatural fighters for the right to learn from her. The fact that she’s achieved such status in such a masculine arena makes her all the more satisfying as a character.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Master Genkai is not her sheer strength and notoriety, but her central role in the storyline, despite her being an elderly woman. All too often in media, female characters function merely as props, minor plot devices, or as vehicles for gratuitous fan service. Elderly female characters within the world of shounen anime are often additionally burdened with the duty of training a young, male protagonist so that he can achieve greatness. While the latter is true of Master Genkai to some degree, her past and her skill as a fighter add some variation to this tired trope. She has a rich history with fan-favorite villain Toguro, and it is her power, passed on to Yusuke, that is required to finally defeat him.

Not only do these details make this elderly woman an extremely important character, but Yusuke’s role in the Dark Tournament arc explicitly parallels Genkai’s. This parallel places Yusuke in the footsteps of his mentor and presents him with a crucial, character-defining moment: does he follow the path of his master, choosing to seek power only for the sake of protecting others, even while knowing it will lead to his eventual demise; or does he become an empty shell of a person, forever fighting solely for the sake of fighting, like the villain Toguro? Thus, not only does the storyline emphasize Master Genkai’s historical importance and great power, it also demonstrates that Yusuke following in this woman’s moral footsteps is the right and heroic thing to do. The fact that he can still be a strong fighter, still defeat this overpowered villain, is the cherry on top.

The centrality of an elderly woman to the plot of a battle shounen is powerful, and an element that has only strengthened my love for this anime over the years. However, the problem with Yu Yu Hakusho is that it offers the usual feeble gestures at gender equality that fall just short of a real embodiment of such values. The storytelling decision to relegate the main female powerhouse to the role of aged mentor, and not to make her the main character or even a main fighter, keeps her at an arm’s length — just far enough that the viewer can rest assured that powerful female fighters are not the norm nor the focus of a story worth telling.

At the same time, this distancing of Master Genkai’s character results in her backstory being told, not for its own sake, but for the sake of a male protagonist’s own character development. Her past is only relevant because Yusuke now faces a similar situation with her former partner. To add insult to injury, the plot takes this gendered trope a step further when Master Genkai quite literally passes on her power to Yusuke in order to help him win the Dark Tournament. Thus, the brilliance of Master Genkai’s character must be tempered by its execution; while she is so close to breaking through many of the usual gendere