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Yu Yu Hakusho – Full Color — Official VIZ Translation (EN) 《Manga》
YuYu Hakusho (幽☆遊☆白書, Yū Yū Hakusho) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoshihiro Togashi.
A delinquent’s gotta do what he’s gotta do…in the afterlife.
Yusuke Urameshi was a tough teen delinquent until one selfless act changed his life…by ending it. When he died saving a little kid from a speeding car, the afterlife didn’t know what to do with him, so it gave him a second chance at life. Now Yusuke is a ghost with a mission, performing good deeds at the behest of Botan, the ferrywoman of the River Styx, and Koenma, the pacifier-sucking judge of the dead.
Synopsis:
Fourteen-year-old thug Yuusuke Urameshi spends his days skipping school and causing trouble for the adults in his life. Yuusuke regularly engages in street brawls against rival Kazuma Kuwabara and ridicules his childhood friend Keiko Yukimura. Filled with self-loathing and the burden of an alcoholic mother, Yuusuke sacrifices it all in a split-second decision—he tackles a small child out of the way of an oncoming car, losing his life in the process.
Spirit guide Botan intervenes, allowing Yuusuke to see how the people in his life react to his death; he is moved by the emotional ruin his loss causes his mother, Keiko, and even Kuwabara. Additionally, due to his death’s heroic nature, he receives an opportunity to return to life from the Spirit World ruler’s son, Koenma.
Koenma hires Yuusuke as a “Spirit Detective” and tasks him with solving a series of increasingly challenging paranormal mysteries. Battling and befriending demons such as the beautiful Kurama and hostile Hiei, Yuusuke further develops and utilizes his skills as a fighter. But as dark forces move in the Underworld, Yuusuke struggles alongside his companions to defend everything he took for granted.
YuYu Hakusho (Japanese: 幽☆遊☆白書, Hepburn: Yū Yū Hakusho) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoshihiro Togashi. The series tells the story of Yusuke Urameshi, a teenage delinquent who is struck and killed by a car while attempting to save a child’s life. After a number of tests presented to him by Koenma, the son of the ruler of the afterlife Underworld, Yusuke is revived and appointed the title of “Underworld Detective”, with which he must investigate various cases involving demons and apparitions in the Human World. The manga becomes more focused on martial arts battles and tournaments as it progresses. Togashi began creating YuYu Hakusho around November 1990, basing the series on his interests in the occult and horror films and an influence of Buddhist mythology.
The manga was originally serialized in Shueisha‘s Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 1990 to July 1994. The series consists of 175 chapters collected in 19 tankōbon volumes. In North America, the manga ran completely in Viz’s Shonen Jump from January 2003 to January 2010. An anime adaptation consisting of 112 television episodes was directed by Noriyuki Abe and co-produced by Fuji Television, Yomiko Advertising, and Studio Pierrot. The television series originally aired on Japan’s Fuji TV network from October 1992 to December 1994. It was later licensed in North America by Funimation in 2001, where it aired on popular Cartoon Network blocks including Adult Swim and later Toonami. The television series has also been broadcast in various other countries around the world. The YuYu Hakusho franchise has spawned two animated films, a series of original video animations (OVAs), audio albums, video games, and other merchandise.
YuYu Hakusho has been well received. The manga had over 78 million copies in circulation by 2022, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. It won the 39th Shogakukan Manga Award for the shōnen category in 1993. The animated series won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize for best anime in 1994 and 1995. The anime series has been watched by a large audience in Japan and a wide range of age groups in the United States. The anime has been given mostly positive reviews by critics in North America, complimenting its writing, characters, comedy, and amount of action.
Information:
Yoshihiro Tsogashi’s manga career began in 1986 at the age of twenty, when he won the coveted Osamu Tezuka Award for new manga artists. He debuted in the Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1989 with the romantic comedy Tende Showaru Cupid. From 1990 to 1994, he wrote and drew the hit manga YuYu Hakusho, which was followed by the dark-comedy science fiction series Level E and the adventure series Hunter x Hunter. In 1999, he married the manga artist Naoko Takeuchi.
COVER IMAGE CREDITS:
. Official Art
NOTES:
. This version is 95% viz translation. There are small edits here and there to correct some weird phrases Viz used as well as correct the naming of certain things (i.e. Viz uses the term Rei Gun, but this version changes that to “Spirit Gun”, Viz uses “underworld detective” and this version changes that to “Spirit World Detective” or “Spirit Detective”).
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