Yu Yu Hakusho Vol. #03

By Dani Moure     June 15, 2005
Release Date: June 13, 2005



What They Say
Get ready for one of the most exciting anime of all time as Pierrot, creators of Fushigi Yuugi, LUM the Invader Girl, and Key the Metal Idol team up to bring you Yu Yu Hakusho!

Yusuke's three-day weekend is cut short when Botan delivers his next big case. Genkai, an aging psychic, will hold a contest to find a worthy apprentice to her powerful technique: The Spirit Wave. But Koenma has learned an evil demon, Rando, plans to steal the technique and use it for mass destruction!

Yusuke must now go undercover and infiltrate Genkai's compound - and he's got more than a murderous demon to worry about. His chief rival Kuwabara, has shown up as well.

Episodes comprise:
9. The Search Begins
10. Kuwabara's Spirit Sword
11. Hard Fights for Yusuke
12. Rando Rises, Kuwabara Falls

The Review!
New trials await Yusuke as the show’s first tournament begins.

Audio:
I listened to the Japanese track for the most part for my main reviewing, and enjoyed the performances from the voice actors, particularly Yusuke and Kuwabara on this disc. The stereo mix is basic, as you'd expect for an old show, but I noticed no dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

I also sampled the disc in English for an episode, and the dub continues to be very entertaining, and one that I continue to think would be very well suited to TV. I noticed no technical problems with the portions I listened to.

As this is a FUNimation production, we also get dubbed openings and endings. And as they almost always are, these are really good. They're not particularly accurate to the original translations, but that's a lot more difficult with songs than it is regular dialogue. They do capture the spirit of the originals well though, and it's a practice I enjoy an awful lot so I'll always give kudos to FUNimation for being one of the few companies that still dubs their songs.

Video:
With this being an older show, it shows signs of age. I didn't notice any macroblocking or aliasing during regular playback, though the transfer isn't the sharpest (which seems more down to the relative age of the source materials), and there's a bit of grain throughout. Colours are quite well reproduced, and I didn't notice any instances of cross-colouration. Nevertheless, for a show made long before DVD was a consideration, the transfer comes across quite well.

We also get alternate angles for the openings and endings. This means that you can either watch the translated, English credits in the opening, or the original Japanese opening with kanji, and the same for the ending, depending on which language you select from the menu. Unfortunately, FUNimation don't credit the Japanese voice actors at all on the English translation angle, which is very annoying to say the least. Other than that, this is a practice I really like and would like to see many other studios adopt.

Subtitles are in a nice yellow font, as opposed to the white font used on the US discs, and I didn't notice any major grammatical or spelling errors.

Packaging:
No packaging was included as this was a check disc.

Menu:
The menus are simple but functional, with the main menu screen sporting an image of Kurama (at least I think it’s Kurama) down the left side, with the episode selections and sub-menu options, as well as the series logo and disc title on the right hand side. All the menus are static, and only the main menu has music playing (the ending theme in this case). The system is simple but functional, and does look quite nice and is fitting with the style of the rest of the packaging.

Unfortunately there's no scene selection menu, and a major oversight that’s carried over from the first disc is that Madman have only added a chapter stop after the episode title screen appears in each episode (just after a brief recap), and not one at the eyecatch, meaning the chapter for the meat of the episodes lasts almost twenty minutes. This is an annoying practice that I hope is corrected soon.

Extras:
There's not a great deal here as you’d expect. More textless openings and endings, another lot of textual character profiles which are decent if short, and another set of brief translations for the character names. While it’s not a great selection, at least some effort is being made to put something on the discs.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Having liked what I’ve seen so far of Yu Yu Hakusho, I was curious what my reaction to the show would be once it really started kicking into its various tournaments, knowing beforehand that it was a fighting show. Much to my surprise, it turns out that, from what tournament action we’ve had so far, it actually plays out really well and this latest trial for Yusuke is a lot of fun.

As the disc begins, Botan gives Yusuke his latest mission as a Spirit Detective. Koenma wants him to go undercover and try to overcome the trials of a woman with a lot of spiritual power called Genkai. She is holding an event which will see the winner become her new apprentice, and because of her powers and reputation she attracts a lot of shady characters. Koenma has apparently learned that a powerful Yokai called Rando will be taking part, and makes it Yusuke’s mission to hunt him out and face off against him.

So Yusuke goes to the trial and finds that Kuwabara will also be taking part, and before them the short, stumpy old woman appears. While they don’t quite believe she could actually be Genkai, they begin their trials. But once they’re whittled down to the last eight, each of the remaining contestants must face each other in a tournament that will decide who Genkai will train, evil or not.

There are a number of things I liked about this disc, in particular how Yusuke and Kuwabara interacted during their trials, and how Kuwabara starts to learn more about the spirit world, Yusuke’s involvement and of course, his own power. He’s quite a quirky character in himself, with his gruff voice and boneheaded attitude at the best of times, but he’s got a lot of heart and refuses to give up, and it makes him a lot of fun to watch. He’s also a character that I find myself sympathising with more than I’d have expected. I was rooting for him in his fights because of the brave effort he was putting in, and when he was facing Shorin I was feeling every part of his fight.

Yusuke is a great lead, being the typical young boy with plenty of attitude, but I like that while he runs head on into things a lot of the time and never backs down, he is quite intelligent. We see this come out a lot during his fights, for instance in how he uses the cigarette during one of the fights here. He’s getting pummelled and could face his downfall, so he lets himself get hurt to capitalise on an opening he sees. In a show such as this, where there are going to be a lot of fights this kind of thing is paramount to keep the fights interesting and worth watching. Naturally, Yusuke’s other traits are on show here such as his courage and resilience, but it’s the smaller attributes that really show a lot.

Another thing that is very important in a show like this is that the characters are a diverse bunch, in particular the enemies. After all, watching Yusuke and friends beat up twenty people with no personality one after the other is a waste of time and would get boring very quickly. It’s a good thing, then, that we get a variety of characters on show, and their different abilities make the fights more interesting. Kibano was an interesting one, and Shiron in particular was a lot of fun to watch, especially when his passion for fighting really started to come out and his attacks became more and more inventive. It really did a good job of making the good guys look like the underdogs.

Genkai is another hilarious addition to the cast, and just completely cracked me up. She has a real wit about her and I really hope she becomes a more regular addition to the cast. And chances are, she will, since its obvious Yusuke will win her trial and she’ll end up training him.

This leads to one of my few problems with a show like this. The tournament aspect of it can be quite good fun when done right, but most of the time the outcome is pretty obvious. While the journey is the prime focus of this type of show, along with the characters, it’s hard to ignore the predictability of it all. Also, with the episodes on this disc, it’s a bit of the shame that a few other characters are fairly sidelined. While Botan does stick her head in, she’s got little more than a bit part standing on the sidelines. Likewise, funny though his appearances are, Koenma is relegated to watching the fights. It’s a bit of a shame as the cast of characters so far are really good, and seeing a lot of them sidelined during fights will be a bit frustrating if that’s what happens.

My hope for the series is that the characters aren’t forgotten. While it undoubtedly will continue with the fighting and tournaments, I hope there will be some growth in there for everyone, especially our leads, and the fights themselves are actually a good way to achieve this, especially when they play out well like they do here. If the opponents can remain varied and interesting, and the fights play out well, then I can definitely see myself enjoying this show for the long haul.

In Summary:
Yu Yu Hakusho definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but nevertheless it’s a very entertaining series. If you hate any kind of fighting show with a tournament kind of set up then I’d advise you to stay well clear, but the cast of characters is strong and the fights are well played out, at this stage not lasting longer than they should, making it a lot of fun to watch. There continues to be a nice mix of drama and comedy melded with the fighting too, which would really make the series perfect for TV. It’s a shame it’s not, but regardless I certainly recommend Yu Yu for a rental, if not a purchase. You could do a lot worse, and after the cliffhanger here, I can’t wait to see more.

Features
Japanese Language (2.0),English Language (2.0),English Subtitles,Textless Opening and Ending,Name Translations,Character Profiles

Review Equipment
Philips 28" Pure Flat Widescreen TV, Pioneer DV-464 code free DVD player, JVC gold-plated RGB SCART cable, standard stereo sound.