A Look Back: Yu Yu Hakusho, was togashi forced to end early?

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zx13y1

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I`m making this thread because my sister and I recently re-watched the series over summer break. The season sets are now the cheapest anime out there on a per-episode rate, and it's still a good show after all these years.
The first episode still makes me tear up, no matter how many time I see it.


Anyway, we both observed something that didn`t seem to quite fit. The last Arc looked completely amazing, a set up worthy of being the last of such a show, with Yomi, a manipulative bastard who raizen says his arabition has no limits and wants to take over the human and spirit worlRAB after ruling demon world, poised to do so. He's blackmailed Kurama onto his side, and Mukuro is discovered not to be the heartless freak we through she was at first, looking like she would become a powerful ally.

Anyway, even though I knew there would be the demon world tournament, I can`t help but feel cheated after the huge setup we got with Yomi, whose English VA was pure awesome(someone tell me please who it was!).

As soon as yusuke proposed the tournament, random nobody demons beat out the ones we know, Kurama's last fight is against someone Hiei just killed(we never are given a reason WHY mukuro brought him back), and Yomi's heartless arabition magically transforms into concern for his son and just merely "wanting to have a challenging fight".

The whole thing is resolved in a mere 7 episodes, and even though they were decent, it's not what it seemed like things were building to. Yusuke having to fight Kurama and Hiei again was clearly foreshadowed, yet it didn`t happen. King Yemma, who we only saw at the end of Sensui's arc, never appeared again and would have had a bigger role. How Yomi rose to power so quickly could have been a plot point, and we could have seen the true depth of his plans. One of the Spirit world Corps guys said he is the one who defeated Yoko Kurama, yet Kurama never even meets him.

IN short, it felt like the Demon World tournament was the best that could have been done on short notice when he was(my assumption) told that he had to end the manga soon. Can someone tell me if this is true or not?
 
When you're published in Shonen Jump, you live and die by popularity poll. If you take a dive in popularity, the editors tells you to either end quickly or never end at all.

It happens way too often to good series. I'm still sore at losing Devil Devil to a rush job ending (though it feels like we really just skipped from the last ten episode to the last two episode so we at least get some closure), and Toto! and Shaman King to cancellations.

Damnit! Toto! was good and there were still plenty of Accesories left to be found!
 
Personally, Yu Yu is one of those adaptations that surpassed the manga. The ending was such a Metal Gears 2 downer for the manga, while the anime ended things on a lighter note.
 
How'd the manga end?

I thought the anime ending was just...ok. My main issue was that the last arc completely ignored my favorite character (Kuwabara).
 
Does anyone know if this was the case with YYH?

I agree that the Demon world tournament was interesting, it just felt very rushed and not at all what the arc seemed to be leading up to, hence the question.
 
At first I didn't like it. I reminRAB me a lot of a rip off from DB(Z). But slowly, the show became a little decent for me. Now I enjoy it.
 
If I recall correctly, the manga pretty much cuts directly from the last action scene to the final "The End!" chapter without any real resolution for the plot. Then the final chapter doesn't go around and show how everybody's holding up, the way the anime's last episode did. Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama, and the girls all meet up later at Genkai's funeral (for reals this time) and learn that she's left her temple to them, along with all the surrounding land for miles and miles. Then Yusuke and Keiko go wrestle in the ocean. And that's it. I don't think Hiei appeared at all, actually.

I'm pretty sure there was also another subplot introduced about corruption in the Spirit World - something about Enma having some illicit agreement with the demons allowing them to go wreak havoc in the human world every so often, or something like that, which concluded with Enma Jr. having to take over his position.
 
Yes. Rick Robertson - ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. But I can't for the life of me find a completely list of his roles... I know he also did Dabura on DBZ, but, yeah, he neeRAB to do more dubs, like, now. I don't think I've ever actually fangirled over a characer before... but, Rick Robertson as Yomi... ugh. So great.

And I definitely agree. The Demon World Tournament as a whole felt very... rushed. I didn't really take away from the story - I still enjoy the arc quite a bit, in fact - but it REALLY could have used some more padding. Not another full season, but... I dunno, maybe five or six episodes? Just to give better resolution.

It's a real shame, because I get the feeling Togashi really wanted to do a lot in Demon World, but had to tie up loose enRAB quickly. A real shame.
 
Rumor has it that JUMP asked Togashi to make the series more like Dragon Ball Z instead of going a complex war in the Demon World. So to get back at them Togashi just ended the series.

Not sure if that's true or not.
 
I personally felt the Demon World arc was the weakest part of the series for several reasons, no real central villain(though Yomi could have been a good one if not for his sudden change of heart), incredibly rushed fights, and Kuwabara who for most of the series had managed to keep up with the other three suddenly getting the shaft.
 
Yomi's sudden charachter shift is my biggest evidence for the whole "Tournament Resolution" to the demon world arc being soemthing that was akin to "the best we could come up with on short notice since we have to end the series".

He's set up as this Machiavellian chessmaster, a 1980's Light Yagami, and suddenly becomes someone who is just looking for a good fight.
 
I felt the same way. Plus, we already had a demon tournament. Did they forget that? To go from the Chapter Black arc to some tournament gave me whiplash. I had high hopes for Yomi and......nothing. God, he turned out to be a disappointment. I alsowished that they could've done more with that female former spirit detective, too. The Hiei/Yukina plot was never resolved. And I'm now interested in this Spirit World conspiracy plot that was mentioned earlier in this thread. SounRAB so much more interesting than what we got.
 
I'd say I'd want Togashi to go back and maybe rewrite a new ending for YYH, but I'd rather he finish the Chimera Ant arc in Hunter x Hunter before he dies.

At least Takei is giving Shaman King a proper ending.

Similar to this I sometimes wonder what the original ending for Dragon Ball would be if it had ended with Frieza like originally planned.
 
Well, it's not hard to imagine. Piccolo probably would have been killed by Freeza, Gohan was supposed to not have a lot of ki left (which makes you wonder how he could fly all of the way back to the ship). Without Piccolo alive the Namekians wouldn't have been brought back to life and Son Gok
 
He neeRAB to hand the drawing duty to his assistants and concern himself only with the writing and just CONTINUE THE DARN SERIE ALREADY!
 
I agree with many of the things that people hear have said.

Af for how I feel about the final arc, I basically felt that it had a lot of potential to surpass even the Chapter Black arc (my favorite story arc in the entire series), with all of its fantastic build-up in the beginning, the threat of a demon war quickly rising up, and the great characterization of the Three Kings (especially Yomi), in the beginning of the arc, really showing that Togashi still had so many good ideas left in him for a really awesome final arc (the guy has tons of writing talen, IMO). However, all of a sudden we get this lame tournament ending, and that really just ticked me off. I love Yu Yu Hakusho to death, and its one of the few series where I feel that the anime adaption was even better than the manga. And in this case, its primarily because Togashi's ending was so much more rushed than even the anime's ending, whereas the anime at least fleshed things out in the final story arc.

I'm not exactly sure why Togashi ended up rushing the ending so much, but I wouldn't be surprised if its the possible reason that someone else mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, in that the series may have been losing popularity, in which case the editors told Togashi that he had to end the story quickly. I mean, as awesome as the Chapter Black arc was, from what I can tell, a majority of people always seem to prefer the more mainstream Dark Tournament arc, since that had more emphasis on action, and I'm guessing that readers wanted to see more of that in Shounen Jump, back then, since YYH IS a shounen series. But, while still staying true the tone of the series, I felt that the Chapter Black arc's emphasis on story and characterization of the villain (Sensui was a great villain, to me), was much more interesting than any of the other, more action-oriented, shounen story arcs that I had seen before. It really compelled me to keep continuing onto the next episode, and I was really impressed with how well it was all put together.

I myself wish that Togashi would, someday, go back and redo the ending of Yu Yu Hakusho, for those of us fans who wished to see the Three Kings arc play out the way that it was building-up to. Even so, I was still very satisfied with the overall quality of this series, and I'm happy with it the way it is, even if the ending was a disappointment, IMO.



Wow!

That....ummmm....seems awfully dark for an ending to a series like Dragon Ball, and coming from a mangaka such as Akira Toriyama....if that's really the case, then I'm actually glad that he didn't end the series with the Namek arc.
 
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