Brief Story Line
Yusuke Urameshi (Takumi Kitamura - Tokyo Revengers movies etc) was a deliquent high school student who was infamous for skipping school and getting into fights, particularly with Kuwabara (Shuhei Uesugi - River's Edge etc). At school he was only close with his childhood friend Keiko (Sei Shiraishi - Prince of Legend etc). When Yusuke got into an accident and died, he was approached by a spritual being named Botan (Kotone Furukawa - Konto Ga Hajimaru TV series etc) who told him he could be resurrected.
However Yusuke must fulfill the task given by the ruler of the underworld Koenma (Keita Machida - Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! The Movie etc) to investigate supernatural occurrences and protect the human world from demons. During his investigation, Yusuke would have to fight demons called Yokai including Kurama (Jun Shison - High&Low The Worst etc) and Hiei (Kanata Hongō - Usogui live version etc).
So what would happen to Yusuke? You could find out in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
I said above that I had not read the manga or the anime this series was based on, so I did not really know what to expect. At first I thought that the series would be filled with a lot of craziness and the extreme expressions or behavior like we would see in anime. But it turned out the series did not really have that. Aside from Kuwabara who would provide some comical relief, the rest seemed very serious.
As I continued watching, I enjoyed it more especially with the fight scenes. From the first episode I already felt it to be well crafted. And amazingly, the fight sequence became better and better as the series progressed. It was definitely the best attribute in this series as the fights were really fast paced, combined with some nice enough special effects and really made me in awe. All the fights here have the same characteristic where the good guys have to be at their lowest before they came up with their ultimate strength and/or weapon which gave real satisfaction.
What surprised me though was how short the series was as it only consisted of 5 episodes. Although it seemed enough to cover the important fight scenes but I could not help think that maybe it can have more humorous scenes or perhaps more tests for Yusuke. After watching this one, I did give a try of the anime (also available on Netflix) just to see the comparison. I only watched first few episodes (as it had 112 episodes overall which would be too long if I had to finish it). Anyway from what I watched, my view was the anime felt more humorous and I actually preferred the animated version of Keiko, Konta and Koenma.
I like the appearances of Kitamura, Uesugi, Shison and Hongō as their respective characters since they were quite convincing. Aside from the names above, there were also additional cast in support roles such as Meiko Kaji (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki etc) as Yusuke's master Genkai, Goro Inagaki (Tokyo Blood Type House etc) as Gakyo, Ai Mikami as Yukina the imprisoned girl and the two ruthless Yokai, Kenichi Takito (Last of the Wolves etc) & Go Ayano (Gatchaman etc) as Older and younger Toguro. Most of them were OK and provided more colours to the story.
The manga series was written and illustrated by Yoshihiro Togashi who also wrote another famous ongoing series Hunter x Hunter. Yu Yu Hakusho itself was originally written in 1990 and completed in 1994. The live version series was developed by Akira Morii and Kazutaka Kasamoto with all episodes directed by Sho Tsukikawa. During the closing credits, there was a nice song titled Riots to Rise by Bobby John/Yutaka Yamada. Oh, the finale also had a mid end credit scene that you could watch just for fun. I also noticed the names of the visual effects team were so many which made believed the series must have been pretty expensive to produce.
Overall I think the series was really great when it came to the well choreographed fights and definitely a joy to watch for fans of action (martial arts series). But the lack of humor and not too similar on few of the characters made me appreciate it a little bit less. Luckily I am a real sucker for those action sequence so I still enjoyed it. Of all the episodes, I really loved the 4th and 5th episodes as they provided most of the action scenes. So if you are fans of the manga and anime, then you should give this a try. For those who have not done so, I think you could still have fun watching this series if you like the martial arts elements. Let's hope there would be future seasons to have proper conclusion to this series.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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