☆ Rereading Yu Yu Hakusho - Spirit Detective Saga - Part 2 ☆

8/26/2024

Genkai's Shenanigans

The introduction of Genkai and her set of trials (including a tournament!) are great fun. Kuwabara is along for the ride too, which is perfect, because he made scant appearances in the last few chapters. Genkai is unique within the martial-arts-masters archetype for being a woman. YYH is not outstanding with female characters, but Genkai being an elderly woman keeps her from being treated like Keiko sometimes is. Genkai's storyline is really going to take off in the Dark Tournament, but her role prior is strong. She has a sort of flippancy that matches Yusuke in a lot of ways. Genkai is old, has been there, and done that. What we see isn't even her at her prime, this tease will pay off in the Dark Tournament. If Yusuke wants to be half as strong as she is, he better lock the fuck in.

Or so the story suggests. Subverting things further, Genkai's first trials are rather clever and have nothing to do with fighting. When the finalists have to trek through the woods, we can see Yusuke and Kuwabara complete the same task in different ways. Kuwabara gets by on his strong sixth-sense and intuition, while Yusuke fumbles his way around and beats up a bad guy on the way to the finish. It's amusing, but not everything in this mini arc is. Mainly, its villain.

I know I'm inserting a modern context where it probably shouldn't be, but this guy is literally named Rando. I kind of like the idea of a villain in disguise among some characters so generic looking it could reasonably be any of them. It's almost clever, but the story can't even pretend for a moment that any of these other guys matter, or that Rando won't make it to the end. On the plus side, this part of the story goes by extremely fast. Like I mentioned last time, Togashi starts to explore dramatic reversals. While that continues here, you can also see the series starting to explore how this whole tournament thing is going to work. Judging by the pacing, I can't imagine it was ever intended for anyone here to be a fleshed out character, but they do have neat little gimmicks for red herrings.

When Rando's true form is revealed, he... ties up Yusuke over a tiny pond with little demon pirana fish. I hate to say this, but I've never found this little scenario terribly dramatic, and it comes off as weirdly forced. Kuwabara serving as a motivating force for Yusuke is awesome, but it also has very little to do with the fact that the pond just happens to have a little channel to sneak up on Rando, or that he accidentally uses the shrinking spell on himself because Yusuke just happened to have his ears clogged with water. I don't always mind some luck and pluck when it comes to these kinds of things, especially if the other guy is a total dickhead, but it's stretched a bit far for my taste here. In just about every way, Hiei served as a better "shit gets real" villain. I guess there's a reason why Rando doesn't join the cast. Thankfully, villains only improve from here!

The Beatles If They Were Awesome And Didn't Fuck Around

Yusuke and Kuwabara are tasked with infiltrating the castle lair of the criminal organization "Four Beasts", as they demand the barrier between the human and demon worlds be taken down. This barrier is maintained by the Spirit World office that Koenma leads. I mention this now because the nature of this barrier and the relationship it has to everything else comes up a few times, including the very end!

I won't pretend to look at this impartially. The first adventure with Hiei and Kurama joining the fold, and everyone together is a hoot. It's on like Donkey Kong, baby! This is where Hiei's real personality starts to come into view. I can't think of another way to say this, but he's a textbook tsundere, honestly. We also get to see Kurama actually fight, and of course he comes with an elegant Rose Whip. It seems natural that everybody gets a member of the Four Beasts to fight with, but with so many prideful personalities and colorful commentary from the gang, it doesn't seem quite as audacious to not gang up on them as it can in, say, later Dragon Ball.

Kuwabara's fight with Byakko is a highlight for me. It's filled with comedic beats, which is just the kind of thing that an honest guy like Kuwabara seems built for. I could see it being a bit too silly for some, but seeing Yusuke react to Kuwabara's apparent death in a manner not unlike Kuwabara did for his is both heartwarming and deserving of a hearty chuckle.

After Hiei kills Seiryu in style, and a genuinely hilarious way to break into his lair, we're introduced to Suzaku. I think more well of him than Rando, he's an upgrade for sure. Attacking Keiko and Yusuke's school, as we saw with Hiei, is an effective way to raise the stakes and keep us connected with the characters. This time around, though, a parallel is drawn between Keiko and Yusuke as she gets in on the action! While they're apart, they're fighting for each other. It does make me wish Keiko got to really be equal with Yusuke and company at some point. Still, it's nice to see her and Botan work together and tough it out while Yusuke gets his ass kicked until the last minute. relationship does advance after this (it kind of had to, though!), so in the story as it is, all is well.

One interesting element at work that will remain so for a bit is that we barely see what Yusuke was up to with Genkai after the Rando duel. We know he came back a lot stronger, but it's honestly kind of clever that we don't know all the details. It allows for fun flashbacks to insert themselves when Yusuke needs to beat some demon freaks. Thought of slightly more negatively, it works great as a sort of last minute power-up if we need one.

Younger Toguro

Yusuke and Kuwabara are tasked by Koenma to rescue an ice maiden named Yukina, who's the prisoner of a human(!) gem dealer who is selling Yukina's crystal tears. I could watch Yusuke and Kuwabara simply receive missions together all day. For some reason, I love every scene where they gather around that TV. Kuwabara's reaction to Yukina should be in the expression hall of fame. Bro is flabbergasted. This is a bit of a new aspect to Kuwabara's character, but it slots right in with what we already knew about him. He's a white knight type underneath a rough exterior, a defender of those he cares about. He won't even think of fighting a girl. So it's only natural that later on, his affection for Yukina is going to send him into overdrive. Yukina also happens to be Hiei's sister(!), which gets to be a fun dangling plot point for a while.

This final portion of Spirit Detective, at a glance, has a lot of repeated elements from Four Beasts. Yusuke and Kuwabara are once again tasked with, basically, storming a castle. I have to imagine that Togashi saw that this would have been a bit boring. Gonzo Tarukune and his Black Book Club are the villains on paper, but we're pretty quickly shown that he is way out of his league in terms of fighting power and his own stupid little criminal operation. Sakyo and the Toguro brothers are the real stars.

Even at this early stage, Younger Toguro is an outstanding villain. They finally hit upon everything. It's hard to take your eyes off of him when he's in a room, especially after it's revealed how insanely strong he is. The sick sunglasses and haircut really are iconic, and we're only teased that there might be more to him than meets the eye. In some ways, I think Younger Toguro is like an amplified Yusuke. He looks like even more of delinquent type, but seems to have some sort of internal gentleness, a calm demeanor that Yusuke lacks. They just feel like they're gonna be rivals from the moment Toguro walks on page, even before the Dark Tournament gets mentioned.

Sakyo is the type to manipulate things from the shadows. It's not clear what he's after, but he's the most dangerous guy in the Black Book Club by a country mile. The way he ups the ante constantly and practically gives Tarukune a heart attack reminds me of the battle with D'Arby in Stardust Crusdaers. In this case, it's fun watching one villain completely trample another in a game of wills.

Not to imply that Tarukune is a complete jobber. He is one, but he is still Yukina's kidnapper, and his scumbag ways motivate Kuwabara and push him beyond his limits. In the end, Hiei gets to smack up Tarukune, then Kuwabara and Yukina have a little conversation about the nature of humans. This theme about humans, demons, and evil is something that will become a frequent subject of interest in Yu Yu Hakusho, and I really adore how it's introduced here. I love Yusuke to death, but a lovesick Kuwabara was the right character for this concept.

It would be wrong of me to not at least briefly interject and mention Yusuke's transphobic moment. It's not terribly complicated or anything, but it's disappointing nonetheless. I know it's illustrative of Yusuke's "don't take shit" type personality, but it's weirdly mean-spirited and sexist, even for Yusuke. Being a 30 year old manga doesn't excuse that it's a disappointing bummer.

...all seems well, until Toguro just gets up from his fight with our heroes, and we learn that he was really working for Sakyo. It's hilarious in a good way, and Toguro personally assesses Yusuke's strengths and asks Sakyo to let the two fight again. If there was ever any doubt that these two were going to throw down again, this clears that up. It also must be mentioned that the way Toguro kills Tarukune is so sick.

The final chapter of this saga is "I Must Get Stronger", definitively telling us that it's about to get real. I absolutely adore the scene where Toguro just rolls up to Yusuke. The gauntlet is formally cast here, and Toguro knows that basically nothing can hurt or harm him at this stage. But he so desperately wants Yusuke to get stronger, and we do too. Toguro even rolls up on Kurama and Hiei like it's nothing. Yusuke demands another training session with Genkai, because the Dark Tournament is going to be everyone's biggest challenge yet.

Concluding Thoughts

It's hard to talk about the Spirit Detective Saga because it is so many smaller stories that do so much work together, with little threads between all of them. I would offer that if this series had started much closer to the Dark Tournament, it probably would have sucked. At 51 chapters, and so much happening and changing so quickly, it's not like it's a boring slog to introduce every character. Yu Yu Hakusho, in general, is a breezy read, in the sense that there's basically nothing uninteresting in it.

The series lets us get to know Yusuke when he's divorced from the physical world, triumph when he returns, and watch him grow having learned a thing or two. He doesn't totally change, but he does grow, or at the very least develops a sense of justice. With that as the foundation of the series, it never feels like we're totally separated from some sense of reality, even when things get wild in a demon world. We spent enough time in the human world, with human problems, and have a sense of place and normality before things escalate.

Kuwabara steals the show when he's around, at least for me. Stakes are raised appropriately, but not without casting away the appeal of what came before. When you have completely lovable characters like this, that's one of the things that can contribute most to something feeling like it's real. As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, I have a personal connection with what I see in Yusuke, and that drives a fair amount of appeal for me in this early portion. Maybe someone else sees themselves more in the shoes of Kuwabara, Kurama, or Hiei? I do wonder. I can't imagine anyone reading this and not adoring someone, even if it's someone I would think unlikely, like Toguro, Keiko, or Botan.

We also saw Togashi explore making these one-on-one fights interesting, and try out a few different things for villains. There aspects have some stumbling blocks. But as experiments for what can come later, I would say they're quite successful.

Yu Yu Hakusho is able to weave its narrative in and out of different genres in a way that it gets the benefit of all of them. I don't think anyone would describe the series as a "youth drama", but that's kind of how it ends up feeling, and a lot of that is thanks to the Spirit Detective arc.

- James