Yu Yu Hakusho Review

The Dark Tournament is the arc everyone remembers and it is the least interesting thing here. What Togashi was actually learning to do was write fights as arguments: by Chapter Black, the enemies have single, strictly defined powers with obvious counters that the heroes still lose to, and Sensui is a villain whose position on humanity the series cannot easily refute. Yusuke's death opening the story rather than closing it is a structural joke that keeps paying off.

Hiei and Kurama were sidekicks who took over the book because Togashi found them more interesting than his lead, which he has said outright, and the Three Kings arc is a strange, deflating political epilogue about an election that reads like an author negotiating his way out of a contract. The art is clean and improves sharply across the run. The ending is visibly the work of a man who wanted to stop. Even so the ceiling is very high, and the influence is everywhere in what followed.