Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho: Meikai Shitou-hen - Honoo no Kizuna

This movie does not tie in with the TV series. It has all the main characters but different villians. One thing that I didn't like about this movie is that they don't use the voice actors from the TV series. But you can't have everything, right?!

The movie has a simple plot...easy to follow. Demons are trying to take over the world and Yusuke & friends must prevent that from happening! Everyone (Yusuke, Kuwabara,Hiei, and Kurama) fight individual battles against a team of demons. Movie does however, give you a peek of Kurama's background before he teams up with Yusuke, but not the whole background. (You ... have to watch the TV series in order to find out about the rest of Kurama's past). It might help to watch the beginning of the Toguro Saga (i.e. "Rescue Yukina") to find out who Yukina is. It's not necessary since you are told in this movie who she is.

But basically it's like the TV series. You see where the movie is going...no surprise endings. The usual plot for YYH....demons are running around and Yusuke and team must battle them!

Overview:

Shonen action movies have never really changed since the Dragonball Z movies of the early 1990s and late 1980s. The formula is that a new villain shows up out of nowhere, the heroes beat him, and this is NEVER mentioned again. These stories are almost always non-canon to the actual story. American comics have a phrase to describe these kinds of stories: "elseworlds". What is important is that the action is good and we the audience are entertained. Yu Yu Hakusho the movie delivers some decent action scenes, but also has an unfortunate amount of shoddy exposition on a story that we don't care about.

Action: ... 6/10

The action scenes in this movie when they FINALLY happen are pretty good. Hiei, Kurama, and Yusuke have predictably awesome fights, while even Kuwabara has a pretty amusing fight. However, this movie could have had a lot more action and less talking. Dialogue is great when the series is well written, but when you have a poorly written piece of crap like this movie that doesn't even make sense in the context of its own world, then you really don't want to have tons of dialogue. All it does is make the plot holes even more obvious and bore the viewer to death.

Art: 5/10

The art is decent. It seems the animators went with slightly darker colors than the main series, but you get used to it. I have no major complaints in this department, but it surely isn't a visual masterpiece either.

Fun: 4/10 if you are watching the sub. 7/10 if you are watching the English Dub!

This is one anime where everyone should watch the English Dub. It is absolutely hilarious how bad it is. I know I'm being un-original since almost every review of this movie mentions this fact, but a lot of the voice actors in this film were also in Garzey's Wing. Older otaku consider Garzey's Wing to be the single worst English dub in the history of anime, and THESE are the voice actors they chose for this movie! This only makes sense because this movie was dubbed in English years before YuYu Hakusho was brought over to the US by Funimation. When this film was dubbed, no one in America had any clue what Yu Yu Hakusho even was, so not many people rented this film at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video.

Overall: 5/10

If you are a big fan of Yuyu Hakusho or a big fan of HORRIBLE voice acting, this movie won't disappoint. It isn't a good film by any stretch, but it will give you some amusement at least.

Started strong but ended horribly. Horrible pacing and writing. The weakest villains of the franchise. Huge fan of the main series, but this movie was just awful. Took place around or after season 2 but non-canon.

The animation and audio quality were amazing. Great scores and original song but the mood setup was horrible. Love the voice casts as always. This movie ended abruptly without showing the aftermath of the battle. Meanwhile, the action or battle scenes were mediocre. The main series was way better. Horrible power sets and designs on the villains.

The new character was indeed useless and not required for the plot. ... Wish I could see more of Botan. Skippable and had no revisit value, just watch the main series instead.