Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie Review

Fight club.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 16, 2011

Yu Yu Hakusho is one of those series which starts with an incredibly intriguing premise but then tends to discard the most interesting elements of that premise to toe a fairly standard line. Season One had a fascinating enough start, with Yu Yu Hakusho’s hero, Yusuke Urameshi, getting killed right off the bat and then having the predicament of first getting acclimated to his new “spirit body,” and then against several seemingly insurmountable odds, reuniting with his actual physical body when he was given a chance to be resurrected as a Spirit Detective. Unfortunately that first season then devolved, if slightly at times, into a typical battle fest more reminiscent of Yu-Gi-Oh or Dragon Ball Z than of X Files, a live action series this anime might have resembled had it stuck more to the supernatural and metaphysical aspects of what Yusuke is going through. That predilection toward the tried and true continued in Season Two, which saw the series become even more obsessed with tournament battles and various head to head matches between Yusuke and his allies and any number of supposedly nefarious enemies. This Third Season at least takes a temporary breather from the Demon World tournament and starts to explore a storyline that is more reminiscent of X Files, as Yusuke is kidnapped and one of his nemeses, a former Spirit Detective named Shinobu Sensui, who is seeking to open a portal to a netherworld where all sorts of nasty demons and dark forces dwell. After over a season of nothing but one tournament battle after another, Season Three of Yu Yu Hakusho manages to inject a little unpredictability into the series, with a new sense of dread and threat to Mankind helping to broaden the series’ scope and make it more than just one seemingly endless battle. While the battle element is certainly still part and parcel of Yu Yu Hakusho’s approach, and certainly part of this season as well, opening the show up beyond the bounds of one tournament allows for some interesting new developments and helps rid this show of some of its stale, formula driven plot mechanics.

Part of what gave Yu Yu Hakusho such a distinctive feel in its opening few episodes was the plotline of Yusuke coming to terms with his own mortality and the actual mechanics of reuniting his spirit with his body. Once the series settled down into its “this episode’s battle” formula, things took a decidedly less interesting turn. Fortunately, some of that initial interest and even intrigue returns with this third season, as once again Yusuke is confronted with a number of almost philosophical issues with which he must contend as he seeks to prevent Shinobu Sensui from attaining his nefarious goal. While the previous two seasons’ were so filled with predictable battles that the mayhem and even death involved seemed absolutely rote, this third season manages to invest a little humanity—both for good and for ill—into the proceedings, making everything seem more real, at least relative to what has gone before in this series. Sensui comes with his own minions, and they are not necessarily spirit based demons, and that raises some interesting moral dilemmas for Yusuke and his crew as they decide how these individuals must be dealth with.

As might be expected of a series that appeals to at least certain younger age groups, Yu Yu Hakusho doesn’t always have the courage of its metaphysical convictions and cops out, if just a little. When Yusuke has to to decide whether to kill an evil doctor to save the patients at his hospital, instead of just offing the bad guy (as in fact happens in some other episodes), after a great deal of questioning and internal torment (well, as much as can be squeezed into a half hour anime episode), Yusuke of course figures out a way to incapacitate his enemy while getting that good guy heroic stuff done without actually seriously harming anyone. Small cheats like this may make the third season a bit more politically correct, but they actually detract from one this season’s most compelling aspects, namely the fact that Yusuke must finally come to terms with someone else’s mortality.

If Yu Yu Hakusho walks back at least a little from the ledge of irrelevance which its second season was teetering awfully close to, the series still tends to opt for easy outs like the one listed above a couple of times too many to ever elevate the series into total classic status. The most interesting aspects of Yu Yu Hakusho--namely an “almost dead” hero, a world full of interloping and malevolent spirits—are often cast to the side or at least the background as more traditional elements hold sway. The series would have done better to have focused on the very elements which invigorated its premise and made it seems like such a promising prospect for adaptation from its manga source material.

The good news is that Yu Yu Hakusho at least partially jettisons the “same old, same old” battle arena shenanigans that took up not just the bulk of Season Two, but at least the end of Season One as well. With an interesting and conflicted villain driving the plot mechanics of Season Three, and with Yusuke and his allies having to confront several salient issues of what their battles actually end up doing, Yu Yu Hakusho reclaims at least some of its initial intrigue. Season Four will tell the tale as to whether this new momentum will be squandered or is simply the beginning of something really exciting.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As with the first two seasons of Yu Yu Hakusho, the third season blasts onto Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. This is definitely "old school" animation, and as such it has a more painterly, less stylized, look that may or may not appeal to individual viewers. But as with the first two seasons, the third season of Yu Yu Hakusho looks great most of the time, with brilliantly saturated colors that pop very nicely throughout all of the episodes. Line detail is generally excellent. As was the case with the second season (but oddly not so much with the first season), there are a couple of frame to frame alignment issues which create momentary placement shifts in individual episodes. There are also a few very minor blemishes, but overall Yu Yu Hakusho looks fantastic, especially considering its age, and this Blu-ray increases the sharpness and especially the color saturation substantially, making the series even more visually vivid.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Once again following in the footsteps of the first two seasons, Yu Yu Hakusho is presented with two excellent lossless audio options, the original Japanese language track presented in a Dolby TrueHD 2.0 track and a very good English dub presented via Dolby TrueHD 5.1. While I usually opt for original language tracks, I've been enjoying the kind of goofy ambience of the English dubs in Yu Yu Hakusho and did so again for this third season. As with the previous seasons, fidelity is top notch, with some good discrete channelization in several key sequences throughout the season, especially with regard to sound effects. The series excels at excellent LFE, and the enjoyable score is also very well presented. There's not much dynamic range to speak of, since this series is "turned up to 11" most of the time, but the sonic activity is clear and precise and very well presented on both of these Dolby TrueHD tracks.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Textless Opening Song "Smile Bomb" (HD; 1:29)
• Textless Closing Song "Sayonara Bye Bye (HD; 1:26)
• Textless Closing Song "Unbalanced Kisses" (HD; 1:27)
• Trailers for other FUNimation Releases

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 3 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Getting through the second season of Yu Yu Hakusho was frankly a bit of a chore, especially since the series seemed to have more or less completely squandered its rather promising premise in favor of one Yu-Gi-Oh or Dragon Bal l Z battle after another. While there's still some of that element in this third season, this is a marked step in the right direction. Sensui is a really interesting villain, and getting out of the tournament gives the show a new sense of energy and direction. That shark that is so easily jumped in television may be lurking just off screen, but for now Yusuke and his friends (and enemies) are successfully avoiding it. Recommended.