News
Live-Action Yu Yu Hakusho Series Debuts at #1 on Netflix's Global Non-English TV Rankings
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
The show ranked in the top 10 in 76 countries, and it ranked #1 in seven of them. It ranked #5 in the U.S.
The series debuted worldwide on December 14.
Sho Tsukikawa (live-action Let Me Eat Your Pancreas) directed the series, and Tatsurō Mishima wrote the script. Ryō Sakaguchi (The Lord of the Rings, X-Men) was the VFX supervisor.
The manga follows 14-year-old delinquent Yusuke Urameshi, who dies after saving a child in a car accident. The Spirit World is surprised by his death and offers him a chance to come back as a "spirit detective" who is tasked with defeating demons.
TOHO Studios and Netflix signed a multi-year contract to lease two of TOHO's stage facilities in Tokyo starting in April 2021. Netflix's first production there is the live-action Yu Yu Hakusho series.
Togashi (Hunter X Hunter) published the original Yu Yu Hakusho manga from 1990 to 1994. Viz Media began publishing the manga in its English edition of Shonen Jump in 2002, and it also released all 19 volumes in print.
A television anime adaptation ran from 1992 to 1995, and spawned two films and two original video anime (OVA) releases. Funimation released the television series and OVAs on home video in North America. Media Blasters and later Funimation released the first film, and Central Park Media released the second film. The television series ran on Adult Swim and later Toonami.
A new OVA debuted at a screening event in October 2018, and later shipped with the fourth part of the anime's 25th Anniversary Blu-ray Box collection in the same month. The new anime adapted the "Two Shot" bonus chapter from the manga's seventh volume, as well as the manga's penultimate chapter "All or Nothing."
The manga inspired a stage play that ran in Japan from August to September 2019.
Sources: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web, Netflix (link 2)
