Netflix’s ‘Yu Yu Hakusho’ Live Adaption: What To Expect, Release Date
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Netflix is on a roll with the amount of anime and live-action anime adaptations they’ve put out over the last 5 years. Not a good roll, in the opinion of almost all critics and anime fans. But it’s a roll, nonetheless. They clearly plan on keeping their streak going with a large slate of new live-action anime adaptations coming in the future. One of those adaptations is Yu Yu Hakusho, and it’s a very interesting choice.
Yu Yu Hakusho is both a manga and an anime from the early ’90s. It was very successful considering how short both its manga run and its anime episode count were. There were only 19 volumes of the manga and 112 episodes of the anime between 1990 and 1994. A fairly short run for both, by industry standards. Still, the manga sold 50 million copies, which is very high in ratio to the released volumes. So can this live-action adaptation live up to the brand’s cult success? Or will it be yet another anime adaptation failure to add to the ever-growing Netflix graveyard?
Yu Yu Hakusho, Live
There’s significantly more hope around this live-action adaptation than many of Netflix’s other attempts. The main reason is that this is a Japanese production. Netflix’s worst anime adaptations are always the American reimaginings of Japanese IP. Death Note and Cowboy Bebop are two of the least-popular Netflix originals ever put on the platform. And it’s made many anime fans sour to the idea that they’re doing something similar with the popular anime One Piece in the near future.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t bad Japanese live-action anime adaptations as well. The Netflix adaptations of Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Rurouni Kenshin are all Japanese productions. And they all bombed similar to the American adaptations. All in all, many anime and manga fans are wary of any live-action anime adaptation, given the rocky history.
All hope is not lost for Yu Yu Hakusho, though. The showrunner for the series is Kazutaka Sakamoto. He’s the executive producer behind Alice In Borderland. A show that is is considered one of the best anime adaptations out there to date.
Demon Mysteries And Underworld Detectives
At this time, very little is known about the adaptation aside from the showrunner and a few of the lead actors. What little we do know gives many fans hopes that this adaptation can live up to the manga and anime’s legacy. It’s not the most popular IP out of Japan, but it has a strong fanbase, even 3 decades later. Plus, it would be nice to have better adaptations on the Netflix platform. As of right now, their batting average is fairly low. Alice In Borderland‘s success isn’t quite enough to salvage its reputation.
The live-action adaptation of Yu Yu Hakusho is premiering on Netflix in December of 2023.