Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie Review

Dead again.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 26, 2011

Virtually any anime series that lasts as long as Yu Yu Hakusho did is going to fall prey to the “same old, same old” syndrome, and that seemed particularly true of Yu Yu Hakusho’s middle two years, Seasons Two and Three, after the intriguing set up of the first season had been established and the show drifted into what might be termed “battle mode.” If you’re not overly familiar with this series or simply want to get back up to speed, you can read our coverage of the previous three seasons here:

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season One Blu-ray review
Yu Yu Hakusho: Season Two Blu-ray review
Yu Yu Hakusho: Season Three Blu-ray review

As I’ve mentioned in my reviews of the previous seasons of Yu Yu Hakusho, the series suffered from presenting such an intriguing premise—a ne’er-do-well kid comes back from the dead to become a sort of Spirit Fighter—and then hewing to a very standard operating procedure where episode after episode (and it could be argued Season Two as a whole) was nothing but one tournament battle after another. It robbed Yu Yu Hakusho of the very element that made it so interesting to begin with, and relegated the show into a standard shōnen format that eschewed the distinctive spirit element (for the most part, anyway) and instead just literally plopped our hero Yusuke down in an arena and let him fight it out alongside his buddies with various nefarious elements. The good news is that starting with the third season of the show, Yu Yu Hakusho at least fitfully got back to some of the supernatural elements which initially provided it such a compelling premise, and by the end of the third season, the series seemed to have escaped—for the moment anyway—the really tired battle syndrome. The even better news is that the fourth season capitalizes on that development and finally provides viewers with something at least a little unusual in the annals of shōnen animes, as the portal between our world and the Demon World is fully opened, Yusuke more or less dies and rises again, and Yusuke sets out on a heroic quest to quell a demon uprising enabling him to finally rest in peace.

As the third season of Yu Yu Hakusho drew to a close, Yusuke was engaged in a fierce battle with another Spirit Detective named Sensui, a nemesis seemingly with two things on his mind: getting rid of Yusuke, and opening a portal to the Demon World. Yu Yu Hakusho’s fourth season picks up this thread but injects a perhaps surprising element by revealing Sensui’s motives may not be entirely villainous. That element in fact seems to color a lot of this final season of the series, which is still filled with lots of blistering fight action, but which also seems infused with a certain sense of nostalgia and memory of other times and places, especially as we get some back stories of various characters that help to develop some important plot arcs.

In fact the Sensui plot arc turns out to evidently put Yusuke firmly back at square one, as Sensui’s form of multiple personality disorder reveals itself in personas of ever increasing power, leading to what seems to be Yusuke’s (second) demise. That in turn leads to a perhaps surprising revelation about the nature of Yusuke, who of course is able to spring back to life (or is it death?), though now with an unexpected shading to his generally heroic demeanor. This interesting plot development (which I’ve attempted not to spoil) provides this final season of Yu Yu Hakusho with what is arguably its strongest and most interesting arc since the series’ opening few episodes when Yusuke was killed and sought to reestablish a connection with his physical form.

Yusuke soon learns that he has a special connection to the Demon World, one which helps shape this final season’s overall storyline and one which (perhaps expectedly) gets us back to the battle arena once again as the series moves through its final machinations and wraps everything up. The interesting thing, though, is that unlike the interminable second season, the battle subplot here is almost tangential to the actual character developments and serves almost as mere interstitial material as we get final denouements concerning the major characters.

Yu Yu Hakusho’s final season is a good deal darker than previous seasons, and in fact for a while it seems that things are not exactly heading for a happily ever after kind of conclusion. The series still has its frequent bouts of goofy humor, some of which seems at least slightly misplaced in this season, but overall the series has a surprising depth in this final year that finally seems to fully exploit the dilemma of Yusuke’s plight, especially after some salient new information is brought to life about his background. The series still manages to play up the importance of friendship and teamwork, but it’s colored with a sense of regret and repentance that is fairly unusual for this kind of anime outing.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As with the previous three seasons of the series, Yu Yu Hakusho's fourth season arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. This is one of the better looking seasons all around, with robust and beautifully saturated color and some very good line detail. Overall clarity and sharpness is certainly well above average almost all of the time, but occasionally some relative softness creeps into various scenes. This particular season seems to have fewer of the frame misalignments that previous seasons suffered from, so the image doesn't "lurch" so much. The series, as I've noted repeatedly, is most definitely old school in approach, with a less stylized technique that makes it very much a product of its time, but this high definition presentation certainly makes it pop much more expressively than it ever did in standard definition and that pop is probably more on display in this fourth season than it was in the previous three.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Yu Yu Hakusho once again offers the listener two lossless audio options, the original Japanese language track in Dolby TrueHD 2.0 and a largely rerecorded English dub in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Anyone wanting to get into the nuts and bolts of how seriously the FUNimation team has taken the various releases of this franchise should listen to the really interesting commentary (listed below) which addresses the remix in particular and gets into some of the technical details as to why certain characters were rerecorded and how the mixing team addressed the challenges of attempting a quasi-surround sound mix when the music and effects were all on one track. With that background knowledge in hand, it becomes somewhat easier to understand why Yu Yu Hakusho's real immersion on the English dub is more a case of multiple channels being employed simultaneously with some of the same content rather than discrete channelization, but still the illusion of a surround mix is fairly consistent throughout this season. This is one season where even those who can't stand reading subtitles may want to at least sample the Japanese track, as the more somber, less hyperbolic, line readings of the Japanese cast seem to be perhaps more in tune with this final season's more serious tenor. Both of these tracks sport excellent fidelity and reasonable dynamic range within the context of Yu Yu Hakusho's frequently over the top sound design.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Note: Some of the commentaries feature people who are not credited in the episode and I have done my best to decipher their names and the spellings of those names, but there may be some errors.

• Episode 99 Commentary – Remixing Yu Yu Hakusho. This really interesting new commentary features Justin Cook, Producer and Line Producer (as well as the voice of Yusuke), and Andrew Tipps, Mix Engineer, discussing how both the English dub and the all new mix for the Blu-ray releases were accomplished. They also speak to the challenges of working with a combined music and effects track in terms of trying to repurpose it for a surround mix.
• Episode 108 Actor Commentary features Justin Cook (Yusuke), Jerry Jewell (Jin), and Pete Weber (Shigure).
• Episode 110 ADR and Mixing Commentary comes from 2003 and features Justin Cook, Chris Bevens (Engineer) and Justin Pate (Engineer).and a bit later Evan Jones (Head Mix Engineer).
• Episode 110 Supporting Cast Commentary is another 2003 commentary featuring Justin Cook, Bill Townsley, Sean Michael Teague, and Dameon Clarke.
• Episode 111 Writer Commentary, from 2003, features Justin Cook, Jared Hedges, Jeremy Carlile, and John Burgmeier.
• Episode 111 Outtakes and Foul Ups (HD; 10:20) features Justin Cook hosting a sort of an audio gag reel.
• Episode 112 Leading Cast Commentary features Justin Cook, John Burgmeier (Kurama), Christopher Sabat (Kuwabara) and Chuck Huber (Hiei).
• Episode 112 Memoirs of Yu Yu Hakusho features Justin Cook reminiscing about his involvement with the entire series.
• Yu Yu Hakusho Trading Card Game Revisited (HD; 29:23) is an all new featurette looking back on the card game associated with the franchise which never really seemed to take off like the Yu-Gi-Oh game did.
• Textless Opening Song "Smile Bomb" (HD; 1:29)
• Textless Closing Song "The Sun Will Shine Again" (HD; 1:28)
• Textless Closing Song "Daydream Generation" (HD; 1:28)
• Trailers for other FUNimation Releases

Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The good news is that the fourth season of Yu Yu Hakusho is arguably the strongest and most compelling of the entire series. The bad news is patient viewers have to slog through the largely interminable second season and only fitfully interesting third season to get there (not to mention the first season, which starts out very strongly and then retreats into a standard shōnen approach). If you don't mind some slow going, though, Yu Yu Hakusho is overall a very well done series that offers some fun characters and an interesting—if not completely realized—premise that helps to separate it from the pack. FUNimation has done a very nice job upgrading this series for high definition, and the fourth season of Yu Yu Hakusho comes Recommended.