YuYu Hakusho (2023 TV series)

YuYu Hakusho (幽☆遊☆白書) is a Japanese action fantasy adventure television series developed by Akira Morii and Kaata Sakamoto for Netflix. The series is a live-action adaptation of the 1990–94 manga series of the same name by Yoshihiro Togashi. It is produced by Robot Communications, and stars Takumi Kitamura, Jun Shison, Kanata Hongō and Shuhei Uesugi. The series premiered on December 14, 2023, and received praise for its action and fight scenes, but was criticized for the plot condensing required to fit five episodes.

Premise
The story revolves around Yusuke Urameshi, a delinquent junior high school student who spends his days getting into fights. He dies after saving a child in a car accident, and gets resurrected to serve as an investigator of the supernatural.

Cast

 * Takumi Kitamura as Yusuke Urameshi
 * Shuhei Uesugi as Kazuma Kuwabara
 * Jun Shison as Kurama
 * Kanata Hongō as Hiei
 * Sei Shiraishi as Keiko Yukimura
 * Kotone Furukawa as Botan
 * Ai Mikami as Yukina
 * Hiroya Shimizu as Karasu
 * Keita Machida as Koenma
 * Meiko Kaji as Genkai
 * Ayumi Ito as Atsuko Urameshi
 * Kenichi Takitō as Elder Toguro
 * Go Ayano as Younger Toguro
 * Goro Inagaki as Sakyo

Development
A Japanese live-action adaptation of Yoshihiro Togashi's YuYu Hakusho manga was announced by Netflix on December 16, 2020. Netflix contents acquisition director Kaata Sakamoto serves as executive producer and Akira Morii produced the series at Robot. Netflix signed a multi-year contract with Toho Studios to lease two of their Tokyo stage facilities, and YuYu Hakusho is their first production there. On July 15, 2022, it was reported that Shō Tsukikawa would serve as series director, with Tatsurō Mishima handling the scripts and Ryō Sakaguchi serving as the visual effects (VFX) supervisor. Tsukikawa, who was a fan of the original series as a child, felt that combining the entertaining aspects with the story's serious themes would make for an interesting live-action series. Togashi gave Netflix and the showrunners creative freedom; Sakamoto said the original creator's only request was for them "to ensure a great quality adaptation." Tsukikawa stated that there was an initial idea to tell the story of YuYu Hakusho in three seasons, "But realistically, we didn't know how long that was going to take, so we ended up doing five episodes and just showing part of the long, epic story".

According to Sakamoto, the show took almost five years to complete; two years of pre-production, more than 10 months of filming, and another two years for post-production. The show's creators revealed that because YuYu Hakusho's fantasy premise and supernatural action make it a VFX-heavy title, production companies were afraid to take on the project. Even when Tsukikawa was brought on board, he thought it would be an impossible project to materialize. Due to the large amount of VFX, eight such companies worldwide contributed to the show. According to Morii, "Japanese creators have the vision and knowledge on how to do these VFX but they had no experience, so this was the first time they went through this top-class VFX process." Sakaguchi revealed that the Toguro brothers proved especially difficult as they had to integrate CGI with the two actors' real-life acting and facial expressions; "We could have done it differently, but it was very important for the director that the actors' performances drove everything in the show."

Casting
On casting, Morii said they looked for actors who could capture what was great about the characters in the original manga and in their script, "It doesn't necessarily mean that they need to look exactly like the characters. Instead, we tried to look for people who could portray and capture the essence of the characters." In July 2022, Netflix announced the series would star Takumi Kitamura as Yusuke Urameshi, Shuhei Uesugi as Kazuma Kuwabara, Jun Shison as Kurama, and Kanata Hongō as Hiei. Kitamura said he studied and took aspects from both the manga and anime, such as the way Yusuke walks and how much of a stride he has. He remarked how a delinquent character like Yusuke could come off as outdated, so he had to put some "modern twists" on the character. Kitamura also noted how there is a slight age difference from the original, as Yusuke is aged-up from a junior high school student to a high school senior. Uesugi said he was asked to gain 14 or 15 kg for the role of Kuwabara.

Release
Netflix screened the first episode of YuYu Hakusho to an estimated 5,000 people at the Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan on December 13, 2023. According to Zoe Leung of Hypebeast, this made it the streaming service's biggest world premiere event to date. The entire five-episode series premiered on Netflix on December 14, 2023.

Critical response
Review aggregator Metacritic reported that YuYu Hakusho holds a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Joshua Kristian McCoy of Game Rant praised YuYu Hakusho as one of the best live-action adaptations of a manga or anime series, placing it alongside the Rurouni Kenshin films. Although noting that the plot condensing erases much of the original manga's nuance, leaving emotional moments little time to breathe, McCoy called it a "solid action/horror/drama in its own right" that is designed to steer newcomers toward the source material. IGN's Juan Barquin called the show a delightful retelling, albeit condensed, that manages to capture the tone and characterization that makes the original "so charming". He praised the excellent characterization of the core duo of Yusuke and Kuwabara, but found Mishima's scripting falters when it comes to the supporting characters due to the pacing required of a five-episode series. Daniel Dockery of Polygon also found the Netflix adaptation to effectively capture the wild tonal shifts and the characters that has made the franchise adored for the last 33 years, but said its length does a disservice to some crucial moments. He called Yu Yu Hakusho one of the few series of its kind to "actually kinda make you feel bad for how fist-pumpingly cool the battles are", as it darts from a spirited contest between warriors into the psychological ramifications of pursuing such battles.

Ash Parrish of The Verge praised the performances of Kitamura and Uesugi, as well as the "authentic" and well-choreographed action sequences. A fan of the YuYu Hakusho anime adaptation, Parrish understood why Netflix chose the plot points that they did, but found the condensing of the story into five hour-long episodes left "characters that are formless, uninteresting seat-fillers" in high school production-quality costumes. In a critical review, Tokyo Weekender Cezary Jan Strusiewicz found the show "very dark. Not just tonally like the manga and anime, but also color-wise". Labeling original creator Yoshihiro Togashi a master of weaving together serious plot and tear-jerking character moments with wacky cartoon humor, Strusiewicz felt Netflix doubled-down on the darkness and drama, but "when you pair that with a character shooting demons with his magical finger gun, the effect is comical in all the wrong ways." Although he called the show "disappointing", Strusiewicz wrote that one must give credit to the "phenomenal" action scenes.

Viewership
Netflix announced that YuYu Hakusho was number one on its list of non-English-language rankings in its first week of release, with 7.7 million total views and 32.1 million hours viewed. It ranked in the top 10 in 76 countries, and ranked number one in seven of them. According to Tadashi Sudo of Animation Business Journal, this is the first time in Netflix's history that a Japanese production has topped the non-English rankings. It remained at number one for its second week, when it also ranked number five out of all Netflix shows globally.