Reading about it and it seems like they were digital download codes provided with the physical disc. So these people bought the disc, claimed the code, then sold the disc. Sucks for them but maybe keep the disc.

I love how confused people are with the McDonalds thing with Wc. Now you know how I felt with Cardi B and Travis Scott bitches.

Akira Toriyama has passed away at 68. Dragon Ball is the anime series I ever got into.

Dude I almost think that's worthy of its own thread.

One of my favourite aspects of Yu Yu Hakusho is how well paced the earlier seasons are. They set up angles that could last entire seasons, but they wrap it up fairly quickly and find a way to continually raise the stakes. It would have been so easy to have Yusuke commit 100 good deeds to come back to life, instead they go through it in four episodes and it's interesting framing device to introduce some core characters.

I forgot how much the world resembled River City Ransom. It seems like around every corner there's gangs looking to have a fight. Between this and Yakuza I'm convinced Japan is actually Ireland and if you can't throw down you're in big trouble.

I'm only ten episodes in, so we've just been introduced to Genkai who's like the King Kai of the series. Not only are there a ton of Street Fighter references (a bunch of fighters are looking for Genkai's training) but the only way Botan is able to convince Yusuke to go is by bribing him with Pro Wrestling tickets to the Tokyo Dome. Then later in the episode he eats an Axe Bomber from Kibano.

The show definitely shows it's age sometimes. It's 30+ years old so a lot of it's ideas and subversions have been played out. Still, it throws so many ideas and has that early 90s charm to it that you could make a nice cup of tea and wind down.

Anime high schools is just different. Street toughs wearing those uniforms. Student council is always like lowkey evil. Bathrooms are haunted. Everyone magically comes together for culture fest, literally the opposite of my experience "working as a group". Subway and walkways is dangerous from perverts.

In america you go to college for the experience. Japan you gotta get to HS.

Yu Yu Hakusho update: The show just pulled a Ground Zero and gave us a set-up saga where Yusuke's gang had to rescue Hiei's sister from a nefarious mobster. It doesn't sound like much of a storyline, but it introduces YYH's equivalent of Brock Lesnar, Toguro. He also has a Matt Hardy gimmick where he has different versions of himself, Toguro v 0.3 can slice a behometh with one chop of his hand. Somehow the Yusuke's gang bring him down, but swerve! Toguro took a dive to screw the mobster and invite Yusuke to the Dark Tournament.

Now tournaments and shonen animes go together like vegemite and toast (or peanut butter and jelley -_-). It's usually just an excuse to introduce a new cast of characters and have them duke it out without making a big angles. The twist here is that it's like Survivor Series with 5 on 5 duels, except without tags (which is what Survivor Series should be!). I'm still making my way through the first Team Yusuke fight, so far Kuwabara lost to a kid but only because he was too busy arguing with a sleep-talking Yusuke, Kurama turned this Peter Lorre sounding demon into a thing of flowers after he threatened his mother, Hiei looked like he got burnt to a crisp, only to summon up some dark energy dragon that completely obliterated his opponent. Now we're onto Yusuke vs. Chosu who's this Aussie Mad Max wannabe who gets on the piss to activate his attacks. He and the kid seemed poised to become babyfaces in the coming episodes.

Lony dunno if you're a fan of Shinedown, but I dig it...

It's been a week or so, but Yu Yu Hakusho is officially in the books.

On the whole I enjoyed my time with it. Did it reach the heights of DBZ? Not quite, but there was more depth to the story. Sure, the story may have been about Team Urimeshi taking on powerful demons but the show was largely about finding your purpose in life and cherishing your golden years.

Fortunately it isn't too heavy handed with it's messaging and doesn't forget it's a shonen.

The show is divided into four main arcs.

Spirit Detective - The introductory saga that introduces the main cast, how Yusuke became a spirit detective, how he met the main cast, how he met his mentor and eventually how he got involved in the Dark Tournament. This saga differs greatly in the manga which has a heavy emphasis on Yusuke performing good deeds to come back to life. Essentially the show started off as a 100 Good Deeds for Eddie McDowell before it went full shonen.

The Dark Tournament - 5 on 5 Survivor Series elimination tournament where Yusuke and co. have to win in order to stop Sakyo who plans on using Toguro to win the tournament and grant his wish to let the demons invade earth. Tournaments have been done to death, but this was a really fun iteration with memorable characters and all the characters get an opportunity to shine. I just hated the ending where Toguro trolled Yusuke hard enough that he could finally be free of his mortal coil. Just one too many fake-out deaths - I thought I was watching an anime not PWG.

Chapter Black - Turns out there was somebody else who wanted to make that portal Sakyo was curious about. Sensui (Sen-Sway) was the former spirit detective, until he learned just how evil humanity is and could not believe his role in serving them. He gives a bunch of like-minded people on earth powers all to distract Yusuke and gang while he builds this portal. For 3/4 of the arc, it was pretty awesome and there were so many twists and turns and series highlights. Then right at the end, it turns out Yusuke is part demon, he gets possessed by his ancestor, turns Super Saiyan 4 and makes short work of Sensui who grew some ridiculous looking armour.

Three Kings - The biggest bait and switch of all time. After getting possessed by his ancestor, Yusuke is summoned by a bunch of demon monks to demon world where he can learn how to harness the demon powers. Since he's no longer a detective and worse, actually a fugitive of the spirit world since he's a demon, Yusuke goes along. Both Hiei and Kurama are also summoned by the other kings to help make preparations for this all-out world.

The saga's doesn't entirely suck. There's some good backstory with Hiei, Kurama and the other kings are interesting enough. The issue is the saga is incredibly rushed, there's a massive time skip so everyone can power up and right as we're about to get this all out war, the saga quickly transitions into a friendly tournament which is won by some random character. Somehow that tournament solves everything, the demons will leave everyone alone, all the three kings found peace and Yusuke who barely interacted with his 700 year old great-great-great-great grandfather comes to terms with his humanity and is free to live on earth.

Supposedly the series creator suffered from major burn-out, so I'd have to presume it happened around the end of Chapter Black because the show takes a noticeable dip.

Still, even without best boy Kuwabara, the show still has it's moments and the initial premise of the Three Kings saga was pretty sweet. I just think the creator was making the point that in life there's always going to be the next challenge you've got to face - but at some point you've just got to appreciate what you enjoy in life.

The show worked best for me as a late night before bed treat. I could flick it on, get a dose of 90s anime with the classic Japanese score and the familiar Funimation dub.

Watching it back, I was reminded about how I got into Pokemon, DBZ, Digimon etc. Not only would I watch those shows, I'd spend precious dial-up minutes on Pojo or various old school websites learning about these shows. Not only that, but I'd also buy whatever magazine I could that covered the show - I used to have just about every Beckett DBZ until I tossed the collection away years and years ago. I used to read these magazines and could tell you chapter and verse who every character was, their signature moves, what sagas they appeared in and what collectables there were. There's Wikis for all this stuff now, but if you sat me down now there's no way I'd be able to retain that info.

Good stuff, I have to find a new show now.

Hilarious how Bleach blatantly stole Chapter Black for one of their filler arcs. Even moreso when Bleach is basically YYH with swords.

Bleach even got a spiritual successor to the best YYH game.

Owned this and never watched a single episode/read a single chapter.

The DS was home to some great shonen licensed games.

Jul 20, 2024 14:39:28 GMT Big Pete said:

It's been a week or so, but Yu Yu Hakusho is officially in the books.

On the whole I enjoyed my time with it. Did it reach the heights of DBZ? Not quite, but there was more depth to the story. Sure, the story may have been about Team Urimeshi taking on powerful demons but the show was largely about finding your purpose in life and cherishing your golden years.

Fortunately it isn't too heavy handed with it's messaging and doesn't forget it's a shonen.

The show is divided into four main arcs.

Spirit Detective - The introductory saga that introduces the main cast, how Yusuke became a spirit detective, how he met the main cast, how he met his mentor and eventually how he got involved in the Dark Tournament. This saga differs greatly in the manga which has a heavy emphasis on Yusuke performing good deeds to come back to life. Essentially the show started off as a 100 Good Deeds for Eddie McDowell before it went full shonen.

The Dark Tournament - 5 on 5 Survivor Series elimination tournament where Yusuke and co. have to win in order to stop Sakyo who plans on using Toguro to win the tournament and grant his wish to let the demons invade earth. Tournaments have been done to death, but this was a really fun iteration with memorable characters and all the characters get an opportunity to shine. I just hated the ending where Toguro trolled Yusuke hard enough that he could finally be free of his mortal coil. Just one too many fake-out deaths - I thought I was watching an anime not PWG.

Chapter Black - Turns out there was somebody else who wanted to make that portal Sakyo was curious about. Sensui (Sen-Sway) was the former spirit detective, until he learned just how evil humanity is and could not believe his role in serving them. He gives a bunch of like-minded people on earth powers all to distract Yusuke and gang while he builds this portal. For 3/4 of the arc, it was pretty awesome and there were so many twists and turns and series highlights. Then right at the end, it turns out Yusuke is part demon, he gets possessed by his ancestor, turns Super Saiyan 4 and makes short work of Sensui who grew some ridiculous looking armour.

Three Kings - The biggest bait and switch of all time. After getting possessed by his ancestor, Yusuke is summoned by a bunch of demon monks to demon world where he can learn how to harness the demon powers. Since he's no longer a detective and worse, actually a fugitive of the spirit world since he's a demon, Yusuke goes along. Both Hiei and Kurama are also summoned by the other kings to help make preparations for this all-out world.

The saga's doesn't entirely suck. There's some good backstory with Hiei, Kurama and the other kings are interesting enough. The issue is the saga is incredibly rushed, there's a massive time skip so everyone can power up and right as we're about to get this all out war, the saga quickly transitions into a friendly tournament which is won by some random character. Somehow that tournament solves everything, the demons will leave everyone alone, all the three kings found peace and Yusuke who barely interacted with his 700 year old great-great-great-great grandfather comes to terms with his humanity and is free to live on earth.

Supposedly the series creator suffered from major burn-out, so I'd have to presume it happened around the end of Chapter Black because the show takes a noticeable dip.

Still, even without best boy Kuwabara, the show still has it's moments and the initial premise of the Three Kings saga was pretty sweet. I just think the creator was making the point that in life there's always going to be the next challenge you've got to face - but at some point you've just got to appreciate what you enjoy in life.

The show worked best for me as a late night before bed treat. I could flick it on, get a dose of 90s anime with the classic Japanese score and the familiar Funimation dub.

Watching it back, I was reminded about how I got into Pokemon, DBZ, Digimon etc. Not only would I watch those shows, I'd spend precious dial-up minutes on Pojo or various old school websites learning about these shows. Not only that, but I'd also buy whatever magazine I could that covered the show - I used to have just about every Beckett DBZ until I tossed the collection away years and years ago. I used to read these magazines and could tell you chapter and verse who every character was, their signature moves, what sagas they appeared in and what collectables there were. There's Wikis for all this stuff now, but if you sat me down now there's no way I'd be able to retain that info.

Good stuff, I have to find a new show now.

So cool to see you do an entire series run through, YYH is still probably my favorite anime of all time in large part since there's such minimal filler. I agree that it has a rough beginning and I think it goes one too many episodes of dead Yusuke observing the school before he's tasked to be Koenma's spirit detective. I think the show really picks up on Genbu/Kurama/Hiei's introduction and then goes to another level on the Genkai tournament. 

I always have treated the Four Saint Beasts as it's own saga as well as Genkai's Tournament. There's also the Poltergeist movie that happens in between(Or is it post Four Saint Beasts?). 

Yeah the Kuwabara fights were always my favorite because he was seldom overpowered in any of them and he was the one who usually lost his fights which adds to some realism. It's why the Joey Wheeler duels trumped the Yugi Motoh duels in Yugioh in both the Duelist Kingdom & Battle City fights. This isn't some overpowered card nonsense like the Ancient God card or Exodia the Forbidden  or Dark Magician deck, there were some trial/error tricks involved which made it feel very realistic. 

Big Pete This was always an anime I wanted to jump into and given Netflix has a brand new Kinnikuman show up, this might be something to look into. I only was able to see Ultimate Muscle when it was dubbed here in the states and really liked it, even though I assume the manga/Japanese version as usual destroys it.

^ I was excited to see that pop up on Netflix only to realise it's a brand new series. I don't think I ever saw the second season, or even the finale of the first season where they were taking on the Poison Six Pack.

I'd be curious to know if the YYH creator knew what genre the manga would be from the out-set. It seemed like it was going to be more slice of life/romance before he went balls out shonen. The anime seemingly recognised this and opted to cut it out, so Yusuke's initial ordeal just feels like one of those four-part TV specials that were pretty common at the time.

I'd actually have Kuwabara behind Kurama when it comes to the Meltzer scale. I love Kazuma, but Yoko Kurama was so sinister that I looked forward to how he'd completely ruin somebody's life for daring to make a 'yo mama' joke. The Sensui arc picked up when Kurama just had enough of everyone and ended three people in a row. I went into the anime expecting to be put off by how 'perfect' Kurama was, but he won me over. Still, Kuwabara has too much going for him - loved his banter with his sister for example.

Poltergeist movie? The Makai Insects?? Ohhh! There was a YYH movie - yeah I haven't seen that yet. Yeah, you could easily sub-divide season one - hell in DBZ you could sub-divide seasons based purely on fights. I think Goku vs. Frieza lasted 20 episodes.

I can appreciate the Joey Wheeler love - but let's face it - Kaiba saved that entire series. Without Death T, there would be no Magic & Wizards and Yugi would still be the world's best russian roulette player.

I am glad Togashi stood the way of Shonen. There would have been only so much room you can do with a slice of life/mystery sort of thing. The Genkai tournament was a good way to get Kuwabara's spirit sword stuff involved and for Yusuke to really get into a fight with a decent opponent. The Four Saint Beasts was also a good way to introduce Hiei & Kurama's abilities. Yusuke introducing the spirit shotgun to down a flying enemy when his spirit gun wasn't working was dope too.

I liked the Kurama fights probably 2nd, he had a lot of tact and tricks up his sleeve. Would purposely distract someone with a pebble hit to their forehead only to plant a instant death seed in someone who was holding his mother up for ransom to take a fall for the win and when the opponent begged for mercy, Kurama condescendingly walked away and said "no." before they died. Yoko Kurama talking that shit to the Fisherman/ogre in the Semis was amazing. Hiei was good too until he began to introduce his Dragon of the Darkness Flame stuff which felt like this show's Spirit Bomb.

Kuwabara just had the right amount of foolishness. Saved Team Urameshi vs the Ninjas at like 25% health because he saw Yukina in the stands cheering him on and he just got horny and just chucked their team leader to the upper row. :rofl: Kuwabara also rode by that code of honor throughout, never once cheated or wanted a means to cheat. He was the only one who never killed any of his opponents in these sagas too. 

Sensui was also such an evil bastard but he had some conflictedness due to his split personalities and what he saw on the tapes. His idea of a human genocide and tossing away kids while doing all of this is vile as fuck. All while he was going to die of cancer eventually so he wanted to take down the human race with him.

I have heard great things about Togashi's other work, Hunter X Hunter which is still going on strong to this day. Heard there's a lot of similarities to the characters of YYH but not sure how dark it gets. Part of YYH was how gruesome it can get. That Dark Tournament was especially gory as fuck. Team Toguro had some absolute killers. Elder Toguro would purposely stab someone 100 of times just because or Young Toguro would one hitter quitter someone and blow their head off.

I loved the original HxH anime. Never got around to the reboot despite it being readily available on flix. Hard to get invested for several seasons when it's still unfinished.

I'd really weigh the first season of yyh up with the best of them. The dub is really good from what I remember, course that was before I really went ham with subs.

Kuwabara also has the chad hair.

I haven't really watched any new anime in forever, I don't even know what new/recent series are worth checking out.

Only thing I really check out is legacy series. Now that I've wrapped up AOT, it's mostly just seeing if a new MHA season pops up.

Caught the first episode of the Kenshin reboot. Dunno if I'll reach the end, but I haven't written it off yet.

Record of Ragnarok is so ridiculous, it's great.

Well that sucks. Got a MHA spoiler randomly. Looks like the manga JUST ended too.

Heard the Shonen genre got another one. I been wanting to watch it for a long time but I tend to bump into the ones that turn bad. :lol: Some people think maybe a Boruto type show could follow.

I ended up watching my first Gundam-related thing, in what feels like forever. That, of course, being Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway, I dug it.

For even more proof, that I have been out of the loop, apparently, Netflix released two more live-action Fullmetal Alchemist movies in 2022 (The Revenge of Scar, and The Final Alchemy). I remember thinking the first one, which they released in 2017, was good for a live-action anime adaptation, so I might have to check these two out as well.

Netflix has a Ranma 1/2 remake?? Only four episodes up right now. Once there's more I'll check it out.

They're really tapping into the 90s/00s nostalgia with the recent remakes of Kenshin and Urusei. Guess I'll have another helping.

Oct 23, 2024 20:22:35 GMT @ness said:

They're really tapping into the 90s/00s nostalgia with the recent remakes of Kenshin and Urusei. Guess I'll have another helping.

They also have the original Hajime no Ippo and Slam Dunk, classic 90s animes.

Oct 23, 2024 20:22:35 GMT @ness said:

remakes of ... Urusei

Hold up, I missed that one. There's a new Lum?

Oct 23, 2024 22:28:14 GMT Gyro LC said:

Oct 23, 2024 20:22:35 GMT @ness said:

They're really tapping into the 90s/00s nostalgia with the recent remakes of Kenshin and Urusei. Guess I'll have another helping.

They also have the original Hajime no Ippo and Slam Dunk, classic 90s animes.

Oct 23, 2024 20:22:35 GMT @ness said:

remakes of ... Urusei

Hold up, I missed that one. There's a new Lum?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urusei_Yatsura_(2022_TV_series)#Season_2_(2024)

I liked season 1, but kinda dropped it a few seconds into the 2nd.

I watched the first five episodes of Ranma. Overall, almost exactly like the original anime, scene for scene. I noticed a couple minor things were cut. They do fully nudity but don't include nipples or butt cheeks. People without defined butts is kinda disturbing. The pacing is a little too fast, they eliminate some reaction shots and don't let something breathe before moving immediately to the next line.

Watching the second season of Goblin Slayer. They slay goblins, in case you didn't know.