‘Yu Yu Hakusho’ Releasing New Anime Special in 2018

Yu Yu Hakusho is one of the biggest shonen series of the 90s, and one of the most popular with fans of a certain age, and now it’s coming back in a big way.

To celebrate its 25th Anniversary, a Yu Yu Hakusho box set will release with a major inclusion, a new anime special:

As spotted by @YourAnimeGuy on Twitter, the box set will feature some kind of OVA or short animation bundled with the 25th Anniversay Blu-ray box set release. To celebrate this, there’s art depicting the main characters from the series in fancier duds than fans have ever seen them in.

Yu Yu Hakusho was as known for its fashion sense as it was for its story and well animated fights. It is also one of the few anime series where the fandom is often evenly split between the original Japanese language release and the English dub. The fact it’s returning in some form will definitely be a huge get for fans who have been fondly looking back on the series for years now.

For those unfamiliar with Yu Yu Hakusho, the series was originally created by Yoshihiro Togashi and follows the story of Yusuke Urameshi, a teenage delinquent who loses his life when he is hit by a car trying to save a child’s life. After passing a series of tests, Yusuke is allowed to return to the living world but with a few caveats. With the gained ability to see spirits and demons, Yusuke is given the title of “Underworld Detective” and must solve various cases of spirits running amok in the living world.

The series ran in Shuiesha’s Weekly Shonen Jump from December 1990 to July 1994. It has been collected into 19 volumes, and was licensed for an English language release by Viz Media from 2003 to 2010. It was adapted into an anime series by Fuji Television, Yomiko Advertising, and Studio Pierrot and aired from October 1992 to December 1994 for 112 episodes.

It was licensed in North America by Funimation in 2001 where it first aired on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block, but later transferred to Toonami under the name Yu Yu Hakusho: Ghost Files. The manga has sold over 50 million copies in Japan and was praised by both critics and fans for its writing. Unfortunately, production faced its own share of issues as Togashi was public about his stresses and health issues when drawing the manga and had ended the series on his own terms.

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