YYH-Revival

brella:

i love that, at the end of the day, yu yu hakusho is a story about identity. not just who you are, but who you were; how those facets are changed by the people around you, good and bad; how you have to find the balance between them to discover who you will become—who you can be.

every decisive battle in the final demon world tournament is the ultimatum for the main characters to decide on who they really are: kurama has no choice but to decide if he is yoko or shuichi, and to negotiate which makes him stronger, or is it an impossible union of both?; mukuro urges hiei to use his jagan to “end [his] search—the real one—and find [himself],” and to find his reason to keep living when he’s told himself his whole life that he deserves nothing but death and suffering; yusuke’s whole fight with yomi hinges on a sudden internal crisis that renders him catatonic: he’s forgotten what he’s fighting for. and if fighting is all he’s ever done—if it’s the only way he’s ever expressed himself, and felt like himself—then what does that make him, now that he can’t remember what it was that made him do it in the first place? moreover, is he mazoku or human? (he’s both—this is obviously symbolized by the fact that his spirit gun becomes a blend of his spirit and demon energy; he is strong enough as one or the other, but at his strongest and most true when he accepts both.)

even kuwabara, who’s barely present in the last arc, has to make a choice about who he is; is he going to follow in yusuke’s footsteps forever, fighting for any reason, or is he going to grow up and fight for what matters to him, and to do it in his own way? the times when he does the latter are when he shines brightest—when he fights for love, he wins his dark tournament match against an unstoppable foe; when he fights for his friends, he unlocks his greatest power (the jigen-tou); where yusuke might have busted up seaman or even killed him, kuwabara shows him honor and faith, and this brings seaman to their side and makes him a valuable ally! it’s by NOT fighting in the demon world tournament that kuwabara demonstrates how much he has learned about himself and his values, and how very much he’s grown.

after it all, after all of the cool fights and saving the world and typical shounen stuff, yyh is about change, and growth, and identity. kurama discovers that, yes, he can be shuichi minamino, soft-spoken and loyal and noble and kind; AND he can unify that with his past as youko, cruel, calculating, capable of betrayal and hatred and murder (and worse—see elder toguro!), prepared for anything because he plans for everything, loveless, thinking only of himself. he can balance these, and become something new, someone stronger. 

hiei must look inside himself and accept that, yes, the hatred and violence in his burning heart make him strong, deadly, unmatched in battle; but it is his capacity for that single flickering ember of something like hope that unlocks his greatest potential (he is never more powerful, many in the show say, than he was when he was willing to die for someone besides himself). shunned by his own people for something he could not control, shunned by his adoptive family for something he could but chose not to, he belongs to, and is loved by, no one, so he resolves to love nothing in this world that has shown him nothing but hate—but what drives him is not hate: “it’s longing—you just want to belong to something.” in the end, hiei defies his curse: he lives. 

kazuma kuwabara comes to save the world in quieter, gentler ways; he detects earthquakes, he studies hard, he raises his cat, he makes his sister proud. (but still steps up to the plate for the next demon world tournament, battling alongside his friends for a better world.) yusuke urameshi finally learns who he is: something new, and different; something entirely his. and even after all that, he comes home. 

they fight. and they learn. and they grow. and then, perhaps the most monumental accomplishment of all: they find a reason to live.

please watch yu yu hakusho.