Yoshihiro Togashi’s Yu Yu Hakusho is still considered to be one of the greatest shonen anime and manga series of all time. The anime series is something that many of us have grown up watching and it can be put into the same league as Sailor Moon and Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball series. The Shonen series’ immense recognition and fan following, just demonstrates how influential and incredible the series was.
Despite Togashi-san’s manga series being so incredibly popular, the story came to an end. Generally, the sagas come to an end only to return with more tropes, characters, and new storylines. However, that was not the case here as Yoshihiro Togashi decided it was time to wrap up his magnum opus due to a selfish agenda, breaking the hearts of the fans in the process.
Yoshihiro Togashi Ends Yu Yu Hakusho For a Narcissistic Motive
Even after nearly 30 years, looking back on Yoshihiro Togashi’s Yu Yu Hakusho will get the fans excited as it was the perfect series that neatly balances out epic battles and storytelling with great character development.
The show’s protagonist, Yusuke Urameshi had depth as a character and was physically strong like the main character of a manga or anime should be. However, Togashi was having a change of emotions for his Shonen series.
In the final volume of the manga, the artist gave a detailed reason for ending the series via Reddit (r/YuYuHakusho), he stated while working on the series, he “lost all emotional attachment to the work,” because the stress was more than he could handle. While there were a plethora of reasons that made him end the manga, there were three major reasons.
He said,
“My body. Thoughts I had about what it means to draw manga. Desire to do other things than work.”
Yoshihiro Togashi mentioned how his body did not feel content because he desired to do other things than crammed up on his work desk, drawing manga panels. He sometimes indulged in his hobbies by skipping sleep, but soon had detrimental consequences on his work.
“From when YYH began serialization up until the start of the Dark Tournament, I had half a day off every week in which I caught up on sleep. Other than that all I had time for were occasional naps, and I’d indulge in my hobbies by sleeping less. For a while, I quite enjoyed this.”
“But my HP (as they say in RPGs) was gradually but surely falling, and around the time that I wrote a 31-page one-shot and simultaneously had to do color pages, my heart began to hurt every time I went without sleep — and then it began to hurt more and more often.”
The mangaka artist went candid and shared how he had to go against everyone’s decision to end the series on a selfish note.
Yoshihiro Togashi Went Against Everyone’s Decision to Conclude YYH
The artist shared his emotions and how he had a “desire to attract people” with his art but this ambition was “suppressed for a long time.” Togashi-san felt immensely stressed at one time in his career because he was not satisfied with his work.
He acknowledged how some “chapters ended up horrible,” with some characters and backgrounds being messy. Despite so much stress, he did not give up and explored “every possible direction” to make his work meet his standards, but all he could do was repeat the same storylines repeatedly and even thought of deconstructing his characters.
He said,
“My attempts to deconstruct the characters were, of course, turned down by Jump. I didn’t have the strength, physically and mentally, to keep doing the same thing over and over.”
As his last resort, he went against Shonen Jump’s decision and the feelings of his fans, stating “draw manga for myself, without thinking about anyone’s reactions.”
But more importantly, “I don’t believe that anything I came up with on this premise will live up to Jump’s standards, so I will not try.” While some fans felt that the decision to end the story was extremely selfish, where he apologized to his fans writing “I ended YYH because of my own selfishness. I’m sorry.”
However, it was wise of him to end the show, rather than deconstructing the characters and repeating the storylines with some changes, resulting in a decline in the popularity of the series.
Yu Yu Hakusho can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
