Netflix is on an anime adaptation streak, but Yu Yu Hakusho breaks the streamer’s trend in several ways.
For one, the show is far more condensed than recent success stories like One Piece. Adapting any anime or manga is guaranteed to see certain storylines dropped — anime are long, after all — but the key elements, core characters, and vital storylines are typically preserved. Yu Yu Hakusho largely manages this, but true loyalty to the source material is impossible with so little time.
And Yu Yu Hakusho boasts an unprecedented lack of time. The first season of the series, which debuted on Netflix on Dec. 14, only sports five episodes so far. Those episodes are relatively long — with each ringing in at over 44 minutes in length — but no longer than One Piece. And the pirate-themed anime adaptation additionally offered up three more episodes than its supernatural counterpart.
Its a strangely small number of episodes, and fans are wondering when more will be coming. Sometimes Netflix releases its seasons gradually, with several recent examples — like The Witcher season 3 — dropping seasons in two parts, with a solid month in between. Is something similar happening with Yu Yu Hakusho, or are there really only five episodes in season 1?
How many episodes are in Yu Yu Hakusho season 1?
Sorry to disappoint you, folks, but no more episodes are incoming for season 1 of Yu Yu Hakusho. The series sports only five episodes in its debut season, each of which clock in between around 45 minutes and an hour in length. That makes the entire series around the same watch length as two long-ish movies, but with no more episodes incoming, it doesn’t feel anywhere close to long enough.
The decision to shorten season 1 into only five episodes feels all the more surprising when the length of the original story is considered. The original manga is a full 175 chapters long, and Yu Yu Hakusho‘s anime adaptation is 112 episodes long. There was plenty of content to cover in the live-action adaptation, so why did Netflix condense it so much?
Will there be a season 2 of Yu Yu Hakusho?
The logical explanation is to pave way for season 2. Plenty of shows release an exposition-heavy or shortened first season in hopes of gathering interest for future releases, and many fans assumed that was the case with Yu Yu Hakusho. This doesn’t appear to be the case, however, despite the show’s bafflingly short debut season.
The story covered in season 1 makes any followup seasons immensely unlikely. The season polished off its final episode conclusively, and — while I won’t give away any spoilers here — its doesn’t leave much room for a continuation. It seems Netflix’s take on Yu Yu Hakusho really is as condensed as it seems, despite the protests of longtime fans. The show does work, at least for newcomers to the story, as a self-contained single series release, but it could have been so much more.
Perhaps Netflix’s reputation for butchering source material caught up to the streamer, and it decided that a quick hit was better than pumping too much money into a property it had little faith in. Regardless of the reasoning, Yu Yu Hakusho fans are in a strange spot. We’ve got an adaptation of the beloved manga, and not necessarily a bad one — just a short one. Thankfully, we also have the anime adaptation, which is much more streamlined to the source material, and can easily provide the more robust viewing we may be looking for. And, if we ever fancy some live-action fight scenes and a shockingly attractive Kuwabara, we know exactly where to turn.
