Anime Talk: Yu Yu Hakusho > Dragon Ball Z

Yeah I said it. I should start off with saying that I thoroughly enjoyed Dragon Ball Z and that it's a fun shounen anime, but if I have to compare the two ( which I don't have too but I am hence the post) I would say Yu Yu Hakusho is the better of the two. For starters, in Yu Yu Hakusho the characters actually matter. What I mean by this is that Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama and Hiei all bring something that makes them unique and integral to team Urameshi; each one provides something that you cannot get from anyone else so their relationships with each other actually matters. In DBZ you don't get the same thing; almost all the characters give you the same abilities and personalities. If I were to describe a character as proud, silent, serious type you'd either say Piccolo, Tien, Android 18 or Vegeta right? There is very little distinction between the character types and as such the relationships between the characters don't really matter because they are easily replaceable ( more on that later).

The Kamehameha, so original that pretty much every character knows it

One of the major draws to a shounen manga/anime is the action and/or powers and boy does DBZ have a lot of powers.....to bad they pretty much do the exact same thing as each other. In terms of attacks, there is little difference in what each character can do and as such there is really no point in having different attacks in the first place. Maybe I should clarify this point because you could easily say that about 80% of all shounens. Let's take the Kamehameha, its an attack that gathers up all the latent energy of your body and basically shoots it in a form of a beam. That sounds pretty cool right? Except for the fact that the masenko, galick gun, special beam cannon and tri-beam do pretty much the exact same thing, hell there are just regular ki blasts that do the same thing because ki is pretty much used in the same way by every character in the manga; to power up and launch projectile attacks (and heal in some cases). In YYH, spirit energy is much more versatile as you can use it to strengthen your physical attacks, summon objects, creatures, make projectiles and other stuff, plus each character has attacks that either only they know or a few others do, making each character bring something different to each fight. If Yusuke is in a fight, you can expect to see some projectiles in the form of his Spirit Gun and Shotgun, but he also has attacks that amplify his physical strength and is a formidable hand to hand fighter; but if Kurama is fighting we are witness to a completely different type of fight, he relies more on his wits by out thinking his opponents and strategically planting his plants ( yeah he fights with freaking botany) making it less about a battle of strength a more of a battle of wits. Speaking of battles, the fights in DBZ are pretty much all the same and you can swap out any character with another and the formula remains the same: power up, yell, throw lighting fast punches, talk, power up again and shoot beams; there is little to no variation of this formula and it makes for pretty dull fights...which is something I can't say for YYH. The battles in Yu Yu Hakusho are extremely varied, ranging from your more standard shounen affairs ( punching, powering up and shooting energy) to not being able to say a taboo word because your soul will be yanked from your body, in doing so it shows the strengths and usefulness of each character because not every fight is determined by who is the physical strongest but rather who is best suited for each match.

That ol' trusty Spirit Gun

Character development is something that is very important in literature because you want to see the characters you are engaging with grow as the story progresses and sweet mother of God does YYH have that in spades. The main characters start off in familiar archetypes but evolve way beyond that and have a level of depth to them that isn't common in the genre. Yusuke goes from a street punk who cares only about himself to a borderline alturistic individual who thinks only of the greater good and even questions the motivations he has for fighting; Kuwabara starts off as the dumb jock punk type but is actually a pretty intelligent individual who is supremely compassionate ( just listen to anyone of his speeches) and shows a ton of emotion; Kurama struggles with his identity has a famous thief and trying to live life as a human and is extremely fond of humans even though he is a demon ( to the point of wanting to die for his human mother even though he took over her son's body to recover his strength); and Hiei...man he just has so many layers to him and is probably the most interesting out of the 4, has a strict code of honor, sacrifices his happiness for his sister, goes from hating humans to being one of Yusuke's most loyal and trusted allies. Even the villains have depth to them that makes you understand their motives ( Hello Sensui and Toguro); meanwhile in DBZ you pretty much see what you get, Goku remains largely the same, as does Krillin, Yamcha, Tien ( though he had his change in Dragon Ball) and pretty much everyone else except for Piccolo and Vegeta but even they just go from being villains to being anti heroes ( Piccolo had the most dramatic change though). All the villians were evil just to be evil, there was really no motivation beyond that except for maybe Cell since he just wanted to complete his programming....but was still pretty much evil to be evil.

Lol death? What's that?

As a reader of comics and manga, I know that the main character(s) generally don't die or stay dead but I still like the illusion of danger; Dragon Ball Z pretty much erases any sense of that. I know that the Dragon Balls are a part of the story but they are such a deus ex machina that things like death and consequences have zero meaning. In Dragon Ball ( which is what the manga is called but I'm referring to the young Goku days) the Eternal Dragon could only grant 1 wish as long as it doesn't exceed its own power. That made death have a bit more bite to it because you needed to find the Dragon Balls fast (which was made difficult since pretty much everyone was hunting for them) and couldn't rely on them to always fix the situation; DBZ pretty much said screw that and beefed up the importance of the Dragon Balls to a million. Krillin died? Use the dragon balls. Oh wait Krillin can't be brought back by Earth Dragon Balls? No worries let's just go to Namek and use their Dragon that can grant 3 wishes. Namek blew up? No problem let's just recreate Shenron on Earth but boost him to be able to grant 3 wishes too and have you be able to save a wish, speeding up the wait time for next use from 1 year to 4 months. It made all of the fights seem pretty worthless because any causalities on the good guy side would just be brought back after the fight or after a certain amount of time. Death in Yu Yu Hakusho carried much more weight as there was pretty much one way to revive someone and that was as a wish if you won the Dark Tournament ( which is not even close to being easy) and that gave fights an added sense of realness because if they died that was pretty much it. Granted, Yusuke died twice and was brought back but the first time his death was a surprise to Spirit World and they weren't' ready so they sent him back and the second time he was revived by his demon blood.

In the end, I feel like DBZ lost it's way, things just didn't matter anymore. Super Saiyan was supposed to be this rare achievement that happened once in a millenia but after Goku learned it, every Saiyan alive was able to do it too...even the kids. Things like strategy in fights didn't matter because whoever had the higher power level won regardless of skills/abilities, non Saiyan characters didn't matter and the overall story was stretched out for no reason other than to make more money ( The Buu saga was largely unnecessary). I can't say the same for YYH, the fights required knowing your opponents abilities and exploiting weaknesses, the powers were varied and unique, the characters all had a depth to them that added to the fights, there was a weight to the decisions made, power ups weren't just handed out like food at a buffet line and the series matured as it progressed, dealing not only with physical battles but internal ones that made the characters question all that they had done up to that point. I know people will be upset about this but again I am not saying that DBZ sucks and is terrible but that Yu Yu Hakusho just does it better. Feel free to disagree and angrily yell at my opinion.