YuYu Hakusho (幽☆遊☆白書, Yū Yū Hakusho?, or "YYH", lit. "Ghost Files" or "Poltergeist Report"), also known as Ghost Fighter, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoshihiro Togashi with an anime adaptation. The name of the series is spelled Yu Yu Hakusho in Funimation's distribution of the anime and YuYu Hakusho in the Viz manga. YuYu Hakusho tells the story of Yusuke Urameshi, a teenage delinquent who is struck and killed by a car while attempting to save a child's life. After a number of tests presented to him by Koenma, the son of the ruler of the afterlife Spirit World, Yusuke is revived and appointed the title of "Spirit Detective", with which he must investigate and solve various cases involving demons and apparitions in the Human World.
The manga was originally published in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump. The series consists of 175 chapters collected in 19 tankōbon volumes. In North America, the manga currently runs in Viz's Shonen Jump. The anime, directed by Noriyuki Abe and co-produced by Fuji Television, Yomiko Advertising, and Studio Pierrot, consists of 112 television episodes. The TV series originally aired on Japan's Fuji Television network from October 10, 1992 to January 7, 1995. It was later licensed in North America by Funimation Entertainment in 2001, where it aired on various Cartoon Network blocks including Adult Swim and Toonami. The television series has also been broadcast across Japan, other parts of Asia, and Eastern Europe by the anime satellite television network Animax. The YuYu Hakusho franchise has spawned two animated films, a series of OVAs, drama CDs, video games, and other merchandise.
YuYu Hakusho has been well received since its debut, with the manga selling over 44,000,000 copies in Japan alone and winning the prestigous Shogakukan Manga Award in 1994. The anime series won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1993 and 1994 and has been voted by various publications as one of the greatest anime of all time.
Plot
Yusuke Urameshi is a street-brawling delinquent with a tough guy approach to everything. Yusuke's mother Atsuko, an alcoholic, had him at the age of 14 and took a backseat in raising her son. He has a reserved seat in the guidance counselor's office, and numerous other delinquents in the city are constantly trying to take him on. Yusuke is pretty fed up with his life.
However, no one expects a sudden act of heroism on his part: he dies trying to save a little boy from a speeding car. When he arrives in the afterlife, he is informed that the child would have miraculously survived, and had it not been for him the child would have one less scratch on his right arm. His act of heroism, therefore, was "completely pointless". Yusuke's premature death was unexpected and unnecessary, and the afterlife was not prepared for his arrival.
After numerous tests to gauge his worth, Yusuke is eventually revived, and is assigned to work for the Spirit World as a detective investigating demon cases in the human world. He comes into spiritual abilities of his own, and enlists the help of numerous friends from Reikai (spirit world), Makai (demon world, translated in the English manga as the Demon Plane) and Ningenkai (Human World) to aid him in his cases as they fight off demons and humans seeking to rule over all three worlds.
