Yu Yu Hakusho

[Avaitor]

If they're skipping Suzaku, who in hindsight kinda sucks, I get it. You can easily squeeze two seasons out of Toguro. But this looks like a mess, almost like the anti-One Piece.

[Daikun]

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I actually didn't even realize that TNM had never seen YYH. For whatever reason I just assumed he would have grown up with it since he's basically from the same generation that I am, but then I have to remember that he grew up in a different company where it probably wasn't localized for him through Toonami like it was for me and many other people who grew up around the same time.

I've really enjoyed his blind read-through series (he's also currently doing Hajime no Ippo), so I can't wait to see what his thoughts are on The Dark Tournament and Chapter Black arcs.

I have been reflecting on the series myself, and it's funny because while I'm not obsessed with it to the level that I used to be when I was younger (make no mistake, I still love it to death and always will, I've just moved on to manh other things in my life), but I still so vividly remember most of it since it has imprinted itself so strongly into my mind. You really love a series when you can so readily pick out it's flaws, and TNM coming at it without any sense of nostalgia pretty much called out many of the weaknesses that I have seen in the Spirit Detective arc for years. That said, I really appreciate how he also comes at this with the context of having already read HXH, and knowing that Togashi was still new to battle manga at this time and experimenting with fights and writing in general. I see a number of modern reviewers checking out YYH for the first time being pretty dismissive of it's quality and influence just based on the beginning having so many rough edges, but it's refreshing to see a take where the reviewer has a respectful level of patience to allow the author time to grow in their ability, and doesn't just reject the series outright.

It's also funny that I always felt that YYH was very underrated among western anime fans back in the late 2000's and early 2010's, but nowadays it feels like it gets a lot more love from old-school anime fans who may not have given the series it's due back in the pre-streaming days. I'm really happy to see that.

[Dr. Insomniac]

In many ways, I think YYH has overshadowed a lot of its contemporaries and forebears, at least in America. For instance, I saw a bunch of Saint Seiya fans take offense at a recent tweet saying YYH introduced adding shoujo elements to shonen manga.

[Daikun]

[Dr. Insomniac]

Obviously, nobody came back from the old dub because this is Netflix, but some of the choices sound baffling. Johnny Yong Bosch as Kurama? Denji from Chainsaw Man as Kuwabara? I can buy Kaiji Tang as Toguro though.

[Daikun]

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I can give the fight choreography in the live action series a lot of credit, and that's about it.

From a writing standpoint it's everything I expected it to be: a rushed mess of a bunch of the story's most popular moments and characters without a care or thought to context or how to build to any of those scenes to make them feel earned.

Watching this show does really do a good job of emphasizing that it was Togashi's particular stylistic voice as an author that made this series feel unique and special. When you rush past Yusuke's time as a ghost and try to cram in the end of The Dark Tournament saga into the Rescue Yukina arc you are basically just telling the most soulless, generic, boring shounen story that you possibly can.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I assume they severely doubted they'd get a second season, so they just fast forwarded to the Toguros because they knew that's where the series' signature moments start to happen. Which isn't in defense of the show, because they do not know when to breathe. Now this is the actual Yu Yu Hakusho abridged, skipping through and speeding up so much of the story that I don't think it's even comprehensible to people who didn't watch the anime or read the manga beforehand. Reminds me of how awful the pacing of the live-action FMA movie was.

And this is still a nitpick, but I just do not understand why they redesigned Kuwabara while other characters like Kurama or Botan stylistically adhere to the anime/manga in ways that come off as bad cosplay (Yoko Kurama's look in particular).

[Dr. Insomniac]

Obviously, those CBR/Screenrant/Ranker listicles are the brain-rotting junk food of the internet, but I was looking at a few "Which 90s anime deserve a reboot?" pieces, and YYH kept making appearances in all of them. And why? What would you get out of a reboot besides a YYH that isn't cel-animated? Because personally, when watching those recent YYH OVAs, the digital animation never sat right because the colors felt off and it lacked that texture you get from a 90s series' art. Yeah, it obviously wasn't as jarring as the CGI Berserk or anything, but I just don't see the appeal in a remake if it'll look like that. Reminded me of those videos that compared the art between HxH's '99 and '11 adaptations.

[Avaitor]

YYH has as perfect of an adaptation that you can ask for, I don't see what a digital remake could besides entice new audiences to pick up the original manga and anime to forget about it. Kind of like what Sailor Moon Crystal did.

[Dr. Insomniac]

In general, I can barely even think of a reboot/sequel of a 80s or 90s anime that benefited in ways other than "We were able to adapt more of the source material this time". Even for reboots I quite enjoy like the Jojo anime.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The answer to why they would make it is money, of course. As a business move, I can't exactly fault companies for going back to the well of already proven IPs and recycling them with a new coat of paint. Maybe FMA Brotherhood is the one exception I can think of because the original was VERY different from the source material, but in most cases it's like Insomniac said, it just has the benefit of adapting more of the source material than before. Another reason I'm glad that authors like Inoue Takehiko have so much control over their IPs and elected to just adapt the end of Slam Dunk himself as a movie instead of milking an already perfectly accessible anime with a remake, even if that would have made more money.

And to this day I will still emphasize that I personally find HXH 1999 to be superior to the 2011 remake; except for Greed Island which was done by a different team with the OVAs and was complete ass (2011 gets the win there by default).The one arc that it got to adapt on it's own was the Chimera Ant arc (which, to be fair, is like half the length of the series up to that point so it's a pretty large chunk), but If I'm being honest as an adaptation it's very safe and in trying to be so close to the manga, it adapts things in a way that's not that well suited for an audiovisual medium. The pacing is quite frankly terrible, IMO, and I'm genuinely surprised that so many people enjoyed this version of the arc let alone had the patience for it.

Truthfully, I more often caught myself wondering how the '99 anime would have interpreted this material had it been available to adapt back at that time.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I remember reading an interview from the FMA 2003 director lamenting how many recent directors of manga-to-anime adaptations often don't get a chance to stretch their creative muscles or actually direct, and are just expected to use the manga panels as storyboards and call that a day. And yeah, it's more "faithful", but you get a show that doesn't flow as well and at worst, comes off as no better than a motion comic (I think there was a show called Back Street Girls that was exactly that). While to contrast, I believe a franchise like Demon Slayer is doing so well because the anime direction gave plenty of fight scenes glow-ups they didn't have in the manga.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Believe it or not, the one series that I think is benefitting from more creative input is One Piece with it's most recent seasons. The pacing still suffers a lot, don't get me wrong, but ever since Wano it feels like the animation directors have been allowed to get really experimental with their own styles. Additionally, since the manga has gotten considerably more condensed in it's storytelling so that Oda can actually end this series within his lifespan, it leaves the anime more room to fill in the blanks and add in some content of it's own without coming off like filler (not unlike what YYH did so well). It's far from perfect, and the quality is not consistent, but the results are definitely interesting enough to be worth my time to watch.