Title - "Y Y Hakusho"/"Yuu Yuu Hakusho"
Alternative title(s) - "Poltergeist Report"/"The White Paper"/"The Official Government Ghost Report"/"Ghost Files"
Genre(s) - Shnen, action, comedy, etc.

Someone told me that I was too harsh in the review the last time around. It was good that the fellow made this comment because I was just shouting away with bad comments and not spending enough tough working on format as well as a bunch of stuff. So, I give you the changes.

Hmmm.... "Y Y Hakusho". (Poltergeist is a German-oriented word meaning noisy spirits or something like that. Also, "The Official Government Ghost Report" may sound like a weird translation, but "Y" comes from "yrei" or "ghost" and the reason why people call it "The White Paper" is because of the word "Hakusho" itself or for a better meaning, "official government report".) At first, this was a hard anime to review. Why?

On one side of the coin, the good side of the coin, this was the #2 teenage shnen series in the early 90's. Of course, #1 was "Dragonball Z". This is also the anime which gata Megumi-san made her anime debut, playing as Kurama, after doing stage work for a while. You had decent art, a great bunch of seiy, nice audio and the series as a whole was decent. Action, comedy, romance, yeah, the series was rolling.

On the other side of the coin, when it got here, the treatment it received was and still is a mixed bag. What do I mean by this? You'll know what I mean as I go further in detail.

"Y Y Hakusho" (I bet I'm going to be wrong here) is based on a 1991 Togashi Yoshihiro-sensei manga. The anime came out a year later and if I recall, Pierrot was the studio. There are 112 episodes, a couple of OVA's and a couple of movies total.

Urameshi Ysuke is a tough acting 14-year old guy. One day, he does a good act and it costs him his life. Not all is lost as somehow, he becomes a spirit detective as translators would say. Now tracking down the bad spirits, Ysuke is joined by his rival Kuwabara Kazuma, that big, cat loving goof, Kurama/Yko, the trouble making fox spirit that is also in the form of a wise bishnen and Hiei, who can really dash his way towards victory with the help of his sword and with Jagan, that third eye of his.

The manga is more serious than the anime. This is because of the amount of dark scenes scene in the manga. I won't go any further than that.

If I recall, in the Tagalog dub, Ysuke was called Eugene and Kurama was called Dennis. Why? For Ysuke's case, if you know what "Eugene" really means, then you'd know why it would somewhat fit Ysuke. As for Kurama's case, see Ysuke's case also and while I'm at it, I could have sworn this is true, but Kurama is a girl in the Tagalog dub. (Yes, Dennis is a girl's name also.)

Oh yeah. I better say this. Never, ever, ever, ever spell the series as "Yu Yu Hakusho". Why? If you want a literal translation, it means "The Hot Water Report". I'm not kidding. This is why I'm glad the Seiyuu Database after all these years spells the series as "Yuu Yuu Hakusho" (since I assume that not everyone can see macrons that are not pictures) and not "Yu Yu Hakusho".

Fun - 7

What I like about this series is that this is a very good mix of various genres. Also, what I like about this series is that it can make a bunch of characters believable. The fighters: they all aren't characters that carry too much power and they do have weaknesses.

The general flaw: it's that 112 episodes is a bit too much. The rest of story? I'll get into that in a bit.

Life - 6

Like I said, I like the characters. I like how the series runs. It still lacks a certain ingredient or two to jump ahead a step.

Story - 7

I like the story, but with some changes (i.e. calling most creatures demons, when in reality, "spirits" is the better translation) from Funi in the dub, the score dips a bit. That's about it. Yeah.

Audio - 7

The music is pretty catchy and all, but why do I hear the English versions of some original songs? Whether or not that was intentional, I don't know. Give me my original songs in their original format any day!

As I said in the beginning, this series gets a lot of credit for being the first series to have Megumi-san as a voice actress. Bravo! Bravo.

Yes, I'm done with the cheering now. As for the dub, the best word for it is questionable. A lot of characters have a questionable actor. While I do admit that Ysuke's actor in the dub was as better than I thought, though he's no Sasaki Nozomu-san, whoever played as Hiei in the dub, I'm sorry, but you're no Hiyama Nobuyuki-san. He played as him real well. I thought Kurama's was dead on, but I thought that Kuwabara's was questionable quite often or rather more poor than great. Also, at times, the translation feels questionable and there was a statement I said earlier about spirits. At least it's better than pretty much all of the "Dragonball" saga, but this dub still has a long way to go.

Yeah, there are people that will say statements like, "How can you say that the dub is questionable?" and "The dub is better than the original," as well as "The original is flat compared to the dub." Well, some of the characters are supposed to sound cold. Even though I said "Ysuke's actor in the dub was as better than I thought," I thought he wasn't cold enough in the dub. Hiei's: I talked about his already. If you still can't get into that feeling for Hiei, play any of the Super Famicom games. Want the opposite on coldness? Botan's dub actress wasn't kawaii enough. To me, I keep thinking that by hearing Botan in the dub, I am not visualizing the kawaii version of the "Grim Reaper". Okay. I'm speaking too much here already.

Art - 9

For a 1992 series, the art looks real good. It had the style back then and it still does to this day. I won't get into Kurama's case. Why can't I give it a perfect score? Just minor quibbles and nothing more.

Overall - 7

"Y Y Hakusho" may be a fun anime to watch. The problem is the questionable treatment it got as it reached the States. Had this series got better treatment, I'd consider it to be one of the better overall series out there. Alas, it's just a good series marred by questionable dub actors and a few other problems.

+

Nice action, nice group of characters, do whatever it takes to watch the original!

-

The length and questionable dub voice actors are the big matters here.

Date of creation - 3/28/03

Last update - 8/10/04

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