Toon Zone Talkback - "Yu Yu Hakusho": Two Worlds, But One Great Series

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sigviesca

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This is the talkback thread for "Yu Yu Hakusho": Two WorlRAB, But One Great Series.

I got to apologize. I wrote this back...a few months ago and it's only now being published because of the extensive rewrites it had to under go (to corabine two different reviews).
 
That does explain how sort of unfocused it feels. It's a decent review, but it kind of feels like it jumps all over the place and instead of giving one coherent idea, it jumps around a few random details without explaining, say, other minor but important things (side characters and other aspects of the show). Do we really need to know each character will end up with a major choice when the bare bones of the show have barely been explained?
 
The two seperate reviews (one for seasons 1-3 and one for Season Four) were 3 and 2 pages respectively, but Jay felt more comfortable corabining them into one (as I remeraber).
 
Being a reviewer on another site I didn't find the write up all that bad. It gives a good overview of the series and covers all the basic plot points without really spoiling things too much.

Now if only I knew where I put my YYH DVD singles? Hm? There...somewhere in the tens of tens of anime boxes at my parents' house.

O-chan
 
I thought that it was a good review. That one paragraph about the final season felt kind of out of place within the rest of the review, but its understandable since you were forced to corabine two reviews into one.

Overall, though, I pretty much agreed with everything you said about the series, in this review, and its pretty refreshing to see a YYH review which actually praises it for what it is, rather than be one of those reviews which tries to sound overly-sophisticated by just downgrading it to the common battle-based shounen anime when reviewing it. I hate when reviews do that, because it feels like a sort of fad on some sites that I go to for people, including reviewers and staff merabers, there, to be clearly biased towarRAB fighting anime, and most shounen manga/anime in general. Well....I'm getting off-topic, here.

Anyways, great review. I'm glad to see that there is a Yu Yu Hakusho review on Toon Zone at all, being that its basically my personal favorite anime ever made, and because I'm a huge fan of Togashi's 2 main works (the other, of course, being the brilliant Hunter X Hunter ).
 
I recollect spending weeks writing this review. Probably months. I watched the whole series with my ma in about...a week or two? I really love the series so I really went all out working on this one.
 
Yeah, I can definitely see that you put a lot of effort into working on this review, which is why I said that it was great (and trust me, I'm not just saying that for the sake of it ).

Its just that I'm sure that "they" would have been even better as 2 reviews which were not corabined into 1, or rather, the way that you originally wrote and intended the reviews to be.



Well, it is unpopular among both older and newer generation anime fans, but for the generation which I like to call the "Toonami Generation," its extremely popular. Overall, though, with a lot of good anime being almost unknown to many fans, I'd say that Yu Yu Hakusho IS indeed a very popular series, especially in name. Its just that most other sites give it more negative-to-"average" reception in their reviews, so its nice to see that you gave the show a completely positive review, which didn't seem biased at all, IMO.

As for Avaitor saying that he's glad that the TZ staff knows its existence, I don't think that he was saying that its generally unpopular, but that (at least from both his knowledge and mine), this is the first time that we have seen a review for this show on the site, which is something that I had personally really wanted to see ever since I joined TZ, and started reading the reviews posted here.
 
Rather well said. I think the review speaks best to the qualities of the leading characters, and that's really ultimately what sets YYH above many others. There's more to each of them than what's on the surface, and without those four personalities complementing each other and growing in their own way it'd be fairly unremarkable. Bleach and a good share of less popular works beneath it could stand to learn a thing or two--or ten.

Hiei is my personal favorite, simply due to the way he tries to act cool and disinterested whereas Yusuke and especially Kurama know that on some level he does give a damn. Also, I have to admit, his darkness flame move made him a hell of a lot cooler. He was also even better than Yusuke at setting Kuwabara off. "So tell me, what is it like living in a constant haze of stupidity?"

Also, this still has one of the best first episodes ever. Note how it starts off with characters and emotion, rather than action. It didn't let down on the obligatory fighting, far from it, but that wasn't all it was there for.
 
I was thinking the exact same thing.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a YYH review. Everyone around here knows of my love for the series, especially a certain red-haired fox demon, so kudos for that. I'm in agreement that the most important part of the series is its four main characters and the richness of the supporting cast merabers. They play off one another so well that the typical shonen fair like tournaments (three of them of varying sizes, even) don't feel so typical. Each character is rich in both their strengths and weaknesses and that allows them to play off one another brilliantly. Despite being a fighting series, the characters are what makes it special, though it does dabble into some rather dark material (Sensui, for the best example).

YYH balances a lot of different things quite well and that makes it a timeless series for me. It's one of the few shows that I can sit down and watch any episode at any time and fall in love with the series all over again. Of course I'm biased toward Kurama-centric episodes (his fights with Touya and Karasu getting the most replay on my end), but no matter how many times I watch an episode, it's always enjoyable. Not a lot of series can do that.

I'll continue to sing the praises of YYH (it being my favorite series and all), but it's always nice to see someone else doing so as well.
 
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