Fandom Snowflake 2020 - Challenge #9

[scrubjayspeaks]

Challenge #9: In your own space, promote at least one canon that you adore (old, new, forever fandom).

Yu Yu Hakusho (sometimes translated as or appended with Ghost Files or Poltergeist Report, which is a hilariously misleading attempt to convey the supernatural aspects of this world): technically classified as a martial arts anime, but not so you could tell by looking at the crazy, more of an action/adventure with supernatural creatures, team as family, and all the hurt/comfort you can stand.

Teenage delinquent Yusuke takes the Spirit World by surprise when he sacrifices himself to save a small child, and since they don't have any plans or place set aside for his unexpectedly dead self, they offer him a quest for a second chance at life. When he comes back, he's picked up a sense for the supernatural that makes him a perfect candidate for the position of Spirit Detective, a sort of contracted gig that involves solving everything from petty crimes to murder investigations to attempted apocalypses carried out by supernatural creatures--sometimes called spirits or demons, youkai in the original, inspired to greater or lesser degrees by Japanese folklore.

Yusuke is joined by his high school punk rival and natural psychic, Kuwabara, and aided by Botan, a spirit ferrywoman, and childhood sweetheart Keiko. His first mission also brings in Kurama, a reincarnated fox spirit with ties to humanity and a penchant for plants that can eat you, and Hiei, a fire spirit with a secret and tragic past who is ten pounds of grouch in a five ounce bag. Yusuke's mentor is Genkai, a grumpy old woman who officially Doesn't Have Time For Your Shit. They all have special abilities, a tendency to nearly or actual-facts die but come back better than ever, and more snark than you can shake a katana at.

Eventually, part of Yusuke's soul is made physically manifest as a small, blue penguin thing who likes to sit on people's heads and can traverse the dimension connecting the human world with the demon world by becoming a huge fuckoff phoenix creature. Which kind of encapsulates the particular flavor of bonkers going on here.

I boosted a fic for Yu Yu Hakusho last year, and damn it, I'm going to carry on about this canon some more. It is my ur-fandom, my first and forever love*. I don't know if there's any fandom activity going on for it--I'm not really tuned in to any anime fandoms anymore in general. Sometimes, I have idle thoughts of single-handedly reviving it, or at least just writing a shit ton of id fic for my own amusement.

But I'm here today to talk canon. And friends, this show is actually really great? Like, I think a lot of anime fandoms from that era were...well, they had very pretty people and some cool concepts that gave a lot of fuel to fandom but didn't really have canon worth the time invested in watching them? It was the sort of thing that you just learned by reading fic and maybe seeing some badly scanned official promotional art. I mean, some of these weren't even available in the US through any official channels, and imports, bootlegs, and digital files could all be a crapshoot, so you might not even have the option.

There was talk for years of companies planning to bring YYH to the US, which filled most of us with dread. We had lived through the dubbing of Sailor Moon, ffs--we were a gun-shy lot. It was late high school for me when it finally happened and they started broadcasting episodes (which I couldn't watch because I didn't have cable) and releasing DVDs and VHS tapes (take a wild fucking guess which one I was buying back in those days).

Guys, the dub is a goddamn DELIGHT. Now that I have it on DVD and can choose, I still watch the dub over the original voice acting, though I will turn on captions for the Japanese version to see the differences between the two. It's a good translation--what changes are made do what they need to for adapting the work to an English-speaking audience, they convey the intent and humor well, and they sometimes manage to imbue the story with emotion that doesn't seem as present even in the original.

The voice acting is charming and distinctive. I've met some of the actors at cons, and they were lovely people, patient and engaging and kind with my dorky ass self. Characters sound distinct and emotionally complex.

There are some moments that...have not aged well, I'll say. It's an anime originally from the nineties, and it does some dumb shit at times. Though I think they were also way better than they had any right to be at the same time. For starters, for a martial arts anime, there's a remarkably robust cast of women who are delightful and lovable and get to have actual agency on a regular basis.

Actually, that's one of the things I always loved so much about this show: the supporting cast is amazing. There are a lot of opponents who, after being defeated, become allies and friends to the team. Yes, there are plenty of straight-up villains who have to be killed so they'll stop, say, kidnapping your loved ones or poisoning you or trying to take over the world. But because of the tournament that makes up the huge central storyline of the series, there's lots of opportunities to fight against people who aren't bad guys, just trying to do things for their own reasons, possibly because they're in trouble too.

There are a lot of lovable weirdos to adopt, is what I'm saying, and that's all I really need in life. It's so good. I have never outgrown it, and I just want other people to roll around in its delicious nonsense with me.

*The first fic I ever remember reading was a crossover between Gundam Wing and Yu Yu Hakusho. I knew more about GW at that point, but not by much, and I spent the fic sort of going, "...okay, definitely things are happening, possibly I will understand soon." Then I played an emulated copy of a YYH side scroller. (Both these things happened because of and at the house of my high school best friend, chief enabler of all good fannish things.) Got a little more familiar, started reading more fic.

I eventually hit the level of obsession that, in the early-aughts of webrings and homebrew fansites, meant I was reading this one author in Brazil who had a series--with OCs galore and extensive world building, illustrated with their own (possibly oil paint?!) art--of bilingual fic.

Yes, friends, I did teach myself to walk Portuguese through high school-level Spanish so I could read the stuff they didn't post in English.

And we won't even talk about the precious library of doujinshi I lovingly hoarded from now-dead fansites. There were margins full of translation notes involved. Sometimes I tried to do the translations myself if none were available. I--and I cannot emphasize this enough--do not read Japanese. I understand slightly more Japanese than I do Portuguese only if you ignore the critical issue of writing systems entirely, which is, you know, sort of important when translating written material.

Comments

[muccamukk]

This looks like a really fun show! I also find your investment in it and enthusiasm about it entirely charming. Fandom drags one to so many fun places!

[spikedluv]

That sounds like really interesting concept!