I've seen 112 of 112 episodes, within 5 straight days, during finals...

            This show took me by the head and surprised me with goodness.  I don’t remember where I heard it from, but I somehow got the idea that the guy that made Dragonball (not DBZ) made Yu Yu Hakusho.  I have no idea how this works because YYH is based off of manga, so I may be wrong or he’s just the guy that made the transfer.  Whatever it is, the show is VERY close to the manga, which may be why it avoids being shitty for how long it is.

            YYH is about a student who dies and is then given a chance to come back to life.  Once he does get back to life, he is told that he now works for hell as a Spirit Investigator, solving problems for the spirit world.  One thing I like about this show is that there is an actual reason that the main character is stronger than everyone else, but that isn’t revealed until late in the series.

            Anyway, YYH does a very good job with character development, and there are so many great characters in this shows, good guys and bad guys, that it’s amazing.  It seems like every single character, no matter how long he’s actually in the show, had a whole history planned out for him or her, and it comes off as if the people who made the show didn’t just toss in a concept character for shits and giggles.

            The animation also surprised me.  It was much better than I thought it would be.  While it did have still moments, whenever there was movement, it was nice and smooth, and the artwork was also great.  Not only that, but it just got better as the show went on, or as the show transitioned into the 2^nd season… if there was a 2^nd season…  You see, I lost my mind after I got this show.  It is 112 episodes long and I watched the whole shit between Monday and Friday of one week, during finals.  The main reason I noticed the artwork change was because my brother, who had watched some of the early episodes with me, hopped in for some of the later episodes and had to have me clarify that the main character was who he was, because the artwork had changed enough to give doubt.  I, on the other hand, hadn’t noticed because my eyeballs were falling out of their sockets from watching so much subtitled anime.

            Going along with the good animation is the fights.  YYH has actual fights!  It’s not like DBZ where they just toss in stock footage of blurry arms and call it combat, they actually do moves in this show!  For instance, at one point, one guy punched and the other dodged, then the dodger tried to sidekick the guy and the guy back flipped and did whatever.  I don’t think it went exactly like that, but you get the idea.  Also, the fights were more centered on strategy then I’d have thought possible, with each combatant actually changing tactics during fights to try and overcome the other.

            Another good thing is that the plotlines don’t take 100 episodes to complete, if there’s a big bad guy, it might take 3 or 4 episodes form the start of the fight to the end of the fight, which, considering the type of anime we’re dealing with, is nicely short.  Unfortunately, even though there are numerous actual stories in the show, they blend together so well that it’s hard to pick a point to start watching the show from again, and it’d be insane to watch the whole thing again.

            Yep, YYH has shitloads of excellent characters, great fighting, good animation and artwork, a good plot, great characters, the good guys don’t always win, gets better as the show goes on, super characters and it’s believable (considering).