One Classic Anime Asks The Biggest Question Every Other Action Show Ignores

(Welcome to Ani-time Ani-where, a regular column dedicated to helping the uninitiated understand and appreciate the world of anime.)

While there are countless types of stories told in the anime medium, there is one genre that is king: the action shonen. It's the most popular genre there is, but it's not without problems. Shows like "Naruto" and "Dragon Ball" tend to follow a very specific formula without much change, which means even the slightest variation on the formula — like making the protagonist a 30-year-old and not an angsty high schooler — makes for something exciting.

One of the biggest tropes of the genre, one that "Dragon Ball" perfected and made its bread and butter, is the idea of training to fight. Specifically, it is the idea that training is everything, and that fighting is the purest form of living. "Dragon Ball Z" has Goku constantly abandon his wife and kids because he enjoys fighting so much (he literally ends the original series by leaving his family behind to train the reincarnation of a former antagonist), while "Hunter x Hunter" protagonist Gon internalizes that being a hunter must be a great life since his dad abandoned him to become one.

This can make for great storytelling of course, but the overabundance of "fighting is good and pure" can get tiresome rather easily. Then there's "Yu Yu Hakusho," the first of three masterpieces by Yoshihiro Togashi. This is a story of contrasts, a dark fantasy where fighting is exhilarating, but comes with terrible costs. The story follows Yusuke Urameshi, a good-for-nothing teenage delinquent who one day pushes a young boy out of oncoming traffic, dying in the process. This is such a shock to everyone, not even the rulers of the afterlife saw it coming. To reward Yusuke for his selfless sacrifice, he becomes a Spirit Detective, tasked with working for the Spirit King to combat evil demons and investigate paranormal occurrences on the physical plane.

Like other shonen anime such as "Dragon Ball," you could split "Yu Yu Hakusho" into two distinct shows. The first one is a spectacular paranormal detective story all about investigating demons and apparitions in the human world. The stories are small scale, with protagonist Yusuke Urameshi doing small cases to prove he is a good kid — like helping a boy get over his dog's death, or helping a ghost girl move on from her obsession with a boy she liked when she was alive. 

There's a mix of horror imagery — such as the mini-arc where Yusuke teams up with a schoolmate and two demons to defeat some evildoers in the Demon World from taking over the human race with demonic parasites — and a melancholic, soft tone that knows how and when to take its time that makes early "Yu Yu Hakusho" stand out from other shows that are all about quick escalation.

The other part of the show is, well, an action extravaganza. Relatively quickly in the series' run, author Yoshihiro Togashi changed the story's tone to be more action oriented, introducing big tournaments that came to define "Yu Yu Hakusho." What were already thrilling and phenomenal fight scenes in the manga are given new life in the anime adaptation, with the Dark Tournament Arc generally regarded as the greatest tournament arc in anime history, in no small part due to the visuals.

Noriyuki Abe (who would later oversee one of the Big Three of anime, "Bleach") led the team of animators at Studio Pierrot, who accentuate the horror influences of the manga and make this one of the best dark fantasy anime out there. Toyashi was already a big fan of H.R. Giger, which shows in the designs of the demons and the infrastructure of the demon world, but the anime takes it to a new level by adding hyper-detailed moments of horror in the fight scenes, focusing on body mutations and transformations as something truly horrific. Bodies are constantly distorted while the camera delivers impossible angles in order to convey the huge difference in power during fight scenes.  The show also uses dark backgrounds and contrasts, evoking the use of black paper for the backgrounds of "Batman: The Animated Series," and instantly adding an oppressive mood to the story. 

When "Yu Yu Hakusho" premiered, it came at a time when shonen anime and manga was dominated by "Dragon Ball," and countless imitators were being made. Though there are clear similarities in the change from a series of small adventures to a story about endless fighting and tournaments, the biggest thing that "Yu Yu Hakusho" does — which radically diverts from the battle shonen ethos — is warp the idea of fighting as the purest form of living.

Every big battle shonen has training, gaining power, and fighting opponents as the ultimate path of a great champion. Goku loves the mere act of fighting so much that he ends the story by leaving his family behind to train a stranger. Luffy relishes in fighting stronger opponents, his smile getting bigger the more he's being beaten up. That's not what happens in "Yu Yu Hakusho," a story that is constantly showing how the path to becoming stronger for the sake of strength will inevitably consume us. As the series veers into constant action, Togashi makes fighting not just the means to an end, but an inescapable end itself. As Daniel Dockery put it in a retrospective for Crunchyroll, it's as if Togashi was asking both the characters and the audience, "You like fighting so much? Well, what if that's all you could do?"

We see this in Yusuke himself, a character who is established from the beginning as someone who will push himself in order to do good things for others. But when the fighting begins, it becomes obvious he is not above abandoning his friends or the mission in order to chase every chance to do pointless fighting for the fun of it. His self-improvement through training and fighting also becomes his self-destruction, and when the consequences of his actions pop up, it is bleak and emotionally devastating. This idea of showing the dark side of a protagonist being so eager to fight and become stronger is one that Togashi explored further in "Hunter x Hunter," resulting in some of the best episodes of that show.

It's not just the heroes that see the problem with fighting taking over their lives. The first time we see the endgame of this concept is during the Dark Tournament arc, in the character of Younger Toguro. This antagonist is first introduced as Yusuke's dream opponent — a guy whose superpower is to literally just grow infinitely stronger.

It becomes clear quickly, however, that Toguro's entire reason for living lies in battle, as we learn that he sold his humanity just to get stronger. He tortures Yusuke during their eventual encounter in order to push him to become a worthy opponent, after shredding every aspect of his humanity in the pursuit of strength and a good fight. Even Toguro's transformations during the fight, rather than being awe-inspiring like those in "Dragon Ball Z," are painful and horrific. His machismo and his desire for strength are pure nightmare fuel.

The idea of losing oneself in a fight becomes integral to the final stages of the story, which ends with another massive tournament. Except, by this time, the characters have been impacted by their history with violence, and seeing how low people fall in their lust for blood. In a show of rare courage by a manga creator, some of the characters even abandon the final fight, knowing there is nothing in it for them. "Yu Yu Hakusho" laughs at the aspirational tone of battle shonen anime's idea of endless fighting, and instead turns the dream of becoming ever-stronger into an inescapable nightmare.

Then there's The Black Chapter arc, a very different storyline. It builds on legendary titles like "Devilman," whose influence can still be felt in shows like "Demon Slayer" and "Dan Da Dan," in how it flips the script on the idea of demons as antagonists. In The Black Chapter, the main antagonist is a man who is so disturbed by seeing the cruelty and savagery being inflicted on demons by humans that he decides humanity itself must be eradicated. It is a clever story that calls into question every victory we've seen the characters gain against demons in the story, and the idea of using a fantasy or supernatural race as the bad guys for the sake of simplicity.

"Yu Yu Hakusho" is a brilliant subversion of battle shonen tropes — a story that embraces the fun of popular titles like "Dragon Ball," but twists its ideals into horror territory. The show asks audiences to question the idea of always striving to be stronger as not something to aspire, but rather see the toxic and self-destructive nature of making fighting not just the means, but the end.

Thanks to some stunning animation by an A-list team of animators (which includes key players in the making of "Naruto" and one of the founding members of P.A. Works), this show looks like no other battle shonen. The story boasts a dark fantasy aesthetic that highlights the horror inspirations and the more grim chapters in the story. Whether you want a fighting anime with monster designs that look straight out of your nightmares, or just an adventure tale with a group of four lovable idiots coming together as a team, "Yu Yu Hakusho" remains an essential story in anime, and one that asks the questions other action anime refuse to ask.

Watch This If You Like: "Dragon Ball," "Hunter x Hunter," "My Hero Academia"

"Yu Yu Hakusho" is streaming on Crunchyroll, Netflix and Hulu.