Netflix’s Live-Action Yu Yu Hakusho Can’t Conjure the Fighting Spirit of the Original

Another day, another Netflix distributed live-action adaptation of a popular anime and or manga. Ok, they’re not quite that commonplace, but the streamer has put out roughly a dozen or so of them in the last few years, and their track record is inconsistent, to say the least. While this year’s One Piece was a delight, we’ve also been forced to endure unbearable whiffs like Cowboy Bebop. But even as these high-profile hits and misses dominate the conversation, the reality is that plenty more of these retellings quietly exist amidst little fanfare, such as the 2018 Bleach movie or the Full Metal Alchemist flicks that I’ve never heard a single person talk about.

The latest in this long line is a live-action take on Yu Yu Hakusho, the best-selling ‘90s battle-shonen by Hunter x Hunter author Yoshihiro Togashi. While this new series doesn’t entirely trample on its source material, much like numerous other unassuming and somewhat cheap-looking adaptations in this style, it fails to meaningfully translate the charm of the original. Held down by its brief five-episode runtime and unconvincing digital effects, it doesn’t justify the jump to this new form.

For those unfamiliar, this story follows Yusuke Urameshi (Takumi Kitamura), a teenage delinquent who immediately bites the dust within the manga’s first few pages. But of course, this isn’t the end for our punchy hero. Shortly after shuffling off this mortal coil, he meets a psychopomp named Botan (Kotone Furukawa) and her boss Koenma (Keita Machida), who bring him back to life as a “Spirit Detective” so he can solve cases that threaten to break the fragile balance between the Human and Demon Worlds. Lucky for Yusuke, who’s more like Goku than Detective Conan, these “mysteries” usually involve using his fists rather than his head, and he’s forced to master his newfound spirit powers to battle an increasingly formidable gauntlet of foes.

This Netflix show’s first major hurdle is that it was only granted a paltry five episodes to adapt a long-running story. Although the original manga is on the “shorter” side of things relative to many other popular Shonen Jump properties, it still comes in at 19 volumes and 112 episodes, meaning there was no hope of packing all this narrative into such a small season. To get around this, this version is mostly a truncated rendition of the beginning of this tale that also incorporates a few details from later on.

At first, this approach was at least marginally successful. Screenwriter Tatsuro Mishima captures important early moments by emphasizing the underlying motivations and sentiments that drive these characters, like how Yusuke’s initial blasé attitude towards his own death is eventually challenged when he sees how his passing has affected those close to him. Similarly, we’re endeared to Yusuke’s frenemy, Kazuma Kuwabara (Shûhei Uesugi), whose failure to protect those closest to him weighs on his conscience and drives him to improve.

However, as the main baddie emerges and the plot begins to speed up, we’re subject to a non-stop procession of battles that feel increasingly emotionally hollow because we’re not left enough room for genuine exchanges. While the original is obviously centered around dudes beating the snot out of each other, the difference here is that there isn’t the same abundance of screentime to slowly endear us to its cast, making some of their later sudden turns land as cheap and artificial.

As for these fights themselves, they’re relatively uneven. On the one hand, many of these scuffles are defined by sharp stunt work and choreography that delivers surprisingly frenetic martial arts action. At one point, as Yusuke partakes in a bare-knuckle brawl with an ogre in a junkyard, he’s forced to contort through the windows of rusting cars and deftly maneuver around incoming projectiles, his movements capturing a sense of physicality and danger. The best of these showdowns provide Wuxia-esque displays of super-powered acrobatics that convey these combatants’ fighting acumen and make a halfway decent argument for why you would want to adapt this story to this form in the first place.

However, as these duels escalate and increasingly rely on otherworldly powers, the VFX simply can’t keep up. The show struggles to make abilities like super speed or our protagonist’s iconic Rei Gun look remotely convincing, resulting in some wonky sights. Even worse are many of the entirely CGI foes, specifically most of the Yokai, which come across too much like scrapped cutscenes from a Resident Evil game. Even though the fight choreography can frequently be solid, the reliance on these shoddy effects makes it increasingly difficult to become invested in the fisticuffs.

It also doesn’t help that the series has the same sterile digital look that defines much of Netflix’s catalog. As high-fidelity cameras capture every detail of these sets and costumes, the crisp realism of the footage clashes with these characters’ stylized aesthetics. It’s challenging to gracefully transfer designs envisioned for comic panels and animation to this different form, and what we get here doesn’t quite cut it, as certain characters like Hiei (Kanata Hongô) and his extra spiky hair look silly in the flesh. Additionally, although storyboarding is often a major strength in manga and anime, director Sho Tsukikawa isn’t able to wring out particularly dynamic compositions here, resulting in camerawork that feels placid outside of the action scenes.

Admittedly, I would be willing to forgive most of these shortcomings if the fight scenes that make up the latter half of the show could conjure even some of the magic that the best battle-shonens produce. Naysayers will criticize the sub-genre for always devolving into being about “the power of friendship” or whatever, but I’ll be damned if the Yu Yu Hakusho anime didn’t sell me on the camaraderie between these boys trying to punch people really, really hard to protect the people and ideas they care about.

Unfortunately, the manic pacing of this adaptation’s back half simply doesn’t offer enough space for these bonds to develop naturally. As a result, these characters feel flattened, lacking any real pop to convey the strength of their resolve or newfound ideals. And as someone who just recently watched the beginning of the anime for the first time, this reaction isn’t motivated by nostalgia. Many of the least impressive moments in this Netflix show adapted sequences I haven’t reached in the older version yet, and unfortunately, they landed with the same impact as reading a Wikipedia plot summary in this portrayal.

Whenever another live-action spin on an animated series comes out, it always invites the same question: why? What is gained (besides money) from bringing this work into a new form? This year’s One Piece gave a convincing answer, translating the appeal of that story to an audience unlikely to engage with it in its previous presentation. Unfortunately, this version of Yu Yu Hakusho isn’t able to do the same. In many ways, this makes sense, as the source material is a leisurely-paced tale deeply tied to its extended format that relies on long tournament arcs and repeated hangout sessions to convey the slow growth of its characters. By contrast, this series is a brief five-episode romp that attempts to tie numerous plotlines together and arrive at the same emotional conclusions. Between its relatively unimpressive CGI and hurried storytelling, I can’t help but feel that this supernatural action series should have been allowed to rest in peace.

Yu Yu Hakusho premieres December 14th on Netflix.

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves videogames, film, and creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.

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