| Yu Yu Hakusho Volume 1 Part 1 The story begins with our young hero delinquent, Urameshi Yusuke, dead. As he floats above the city, he reflects upon the events leading up to his untimely death. Merely three hours ago, Yusuke had been in school, or rather, on the rooftop skipping class and smoking. A girl steps onto the roof, spots Yusuke, and immediately begins to scold him. As it turns out, the girl is the class representative Yukimura Keiko, who is Yusuke's childhood friend (and therefore the only one who dares to cross him). After running away from Keiko, Yusuke runs into two wannabe thugs smoking, who'd used Yusuke's name to get money (told people that they were related to the infamous delinquent Urameshi Yusuke and scared people into giving them money; as it turns out, the people of Yusuke's high school, Sarayashiki High, do it all the time), and Yusuke bullies them into giving him the money instead. Just as he was about to leave, Iwamoto-sensei, a teacher who's always hated Yusuke's guts, spots them, and mistakenly believes that Yusuke had been smoking on campus (which he was, mind you, but this is a different situation). He yells Yusuke to get out of the school, saying that their school had no use for bad students like Yusuke. Yusuke, who was about to leave anyway, gets even more pissed than he already was from the run-in with Keiko. Grumbling, he exits the campus (note: this was his first day in school after skipping for 10 so days, and he's already leaving), but is stopped by Takenaka-sensei, a kindhearted teacher who'd always wanted to help Yusuke. Escaping from Takenaka, Yusuke is now more pissed than ever. He went home and saw that his mom was finally up. His mom, Atsuko, starts to complain about giving birth to Yusuke at the age of 14 and having to support Yusuke when he doesn't go to school (Atsuko's really not that great a parent). Yusuke, angry, leaves home and goes out. He finds that due to his infamy as an evil delinquent, all storeowners were baring their doors against him. Suddenly, a gang of 4 surrounds him, and the leader of the gang was Kuwabara Kazuma, Yusuke's longtime rival. Kuwabara has always wanted to beat Yusuke and claim the title of #1 delinquent at Sarayashiki High, but has never been able to best Yusuke when it came to fighting. He challenges Yusuke to a fight (an everyday occurrence), and Yusuke happily obliges, taking his anger out on poor Kuwabara. When he's finished, Kuwabara's gang tries to convince a half-dead Kuwabara not to challenge Yusuke anymore, and Kuwabara replies that before he met Yusuke, he'd never lost a fight and that he was determined to win. Yusuke then meets a little boy, who'd been playing ball on the side of a busy street. Yusuke pulls faces for the little boy for a while, acting the fool, then takes leave of the boy, telling him not to play near the street anymore. Before he gets very far, he notices that the little boy had kicked his ball into the street, and was running to get it. Seeing a car coming, Yusuke yells for the boy to run, but the boy does not hear. In a rare moment, Yusuke runs and pushes the boy out of the way, and get hit by the car himself. Now, floating the air, Yusuke realizes that he is dead and that he is a ghost. Right then, a bubbly blue-haired girl in a pink kimono sitting on an oar appears next to him (in the air) and tells him that she is Botan, a spirit guide, basically the equivalent of the Western Death. Flipping through a little booklet, she reads out Yusuke's name and a description (violent, rude, dirty, gambler, delinquent, drinker, smoker, etc bad habits). Concerned about the little boy he pushed out of the way, Yusuke is relieved to find that the boy lived, with a few scratches. Botan, however, tells him that the boy was destined to survive miraculously without a scratch anyway, so Yusuke had done nothing but get himself killed and get someone else who wasn't supposed to get hurt, hurt. Botan informs him that he can take the test of resurrection, since he wasn't supposed to die yet and that his case was one in a million. Yusuke rejects the idea, believing that it'd be more interesting to be a ghost and that everyone else would be better without him. Botan tells him to go to his own memorial and think it over before giving an answer, and then takes leave of him (flying on the oar). At his memorial, Yusuke floats above his house, and sees the students from school laughing and joking around. But then he sees Keiko crying hard, and then Kuwabara charging into the place, yelling that Yusuke couldn't die yet because he still hasn't beat him.(this was actually a very sad moment, despite the ludicrous situation) Kuwabara's friends carry him away, stilling screaming at the top of his lungs, and Yusuke had to laugh. Iwamoto-sensei stands in the corner, badmouthing Yusuke with a fellow teacher, saying how Yusuke had probably pushed the kid into the street in the first place, then had to go save him. Before Yusuke could take a swipe at the two (despite the fact that he went through everyone he tried to touch), Takenaka-sensei stopped the two teachers. He then went into the house, and paid his respects to Yusuke's mother. Atsuko, who until that moment had been in shock, began to cry as well. Then, the boy who'd been saved by Yusuke arrived with his mother, and they both paid their respects. Yusuke follows them out, to hear the boy asking his mother why onee-chan (big brother) was sleeping and whether they could go visit after oneechan woke up. The mother, crying, hugs the boy and tells him that it is not possible (*sniff* so sad). Yusuke is moved despite himself, and sees that there were people who cared about him. He tells Botan that he will take the test of resurrection, and Botan takes him to Reikai, the Spirit World, to meet the King of the Dead (Enma-Daio-sama). Arriving at the Gate of Judgment (which is huge, btw), Yusuke wonders what Enma-sama was like and whether he could take him on. As the inner door opens, Yusuke is greeted with the sight of many oni (monsters) rushing back and forth, hard at work (who died over here, who needs to be picked up over there, blah, blah). Yusuke is surprised (and just a tad amused) to see that Enma-sama was a baby toddler with a pacifier in his mouth. He learned that this was Koenma-sama (little Enma), Enma-sama's son, who took care of the business of the dead, thus the Jr. sign on his baby hat. Koenma tells that Yusuke's test was successfully hatch an egg of the Reikai beast, which could take anywhere from a few years to 20 years. Unbeknownst to Yusuke, the secret of the test was that whatever hatched from the egg would be a reflection of Yusuke's heart or soul (i.e. good or evil). If an evil creature hatched from the egg, the monster would eat Yusuke. At the very moment, Yusuke's heart began beating again, but it depended on Yusuke whether he could go back or not. In the meanwhile, Keiko goes to visit Atsuko, to grief together. After Keiko leaves, Atsuko begins to drink, and tells the picture of Yusuke that he should have seen the sad expression on Keiko's face and asks him if he remembers once when he was younger, and was in bed with a fever after slipping and falling into a freezing cold river being chased by Keiko (cos he pulled up her skirt). Little Keiko was worried for him and had tears in her eyes. The next day, Yusuke is up and ready to go to school, despite the fact that he still had a high fever. Atsuko comments that normally Yusuke wouldn't even bother to go to school (skipping school at that young an age, it's a wonder he managed to finish year after year), and young Yusuke replies that he didn't want to see the sad expression on Keiko's face and that she was sure to visit again if he stayed home sick (awww, isn't Yusuke sweet in his own little way?). Back in the present, Atsuko cries and says that Keiko's expression now was infinitely more sad than then. Yusuke, in the meantime, is more concerned with the fact that his body was alive, but was about to be cremated the very next day. Botan informs him that there was a way to communicate the message through a dream that very night. Yusuke counted his mom out since Atsuko was raving drunk by then and was banging on Yusuke's coffin, yelling at his body. He decides to go visit Keiko. Arriving at Keiko's home, he sees to his surprise that Keiko is crying her sleep. Sitting on top of her, he tells her that he's still alive, and that if she didn't believe him, she could go look. (insert sweet moment right before Keiko wakes up). Keiko runs to Yusuke's house, where she finds Atsuko in a state of shock. Apparently, Atsuko had gotten so mad at Yusuke for dying that she opened up the coffin to punch Yusuke one last time, and discovered that he was alive. On to Volume 1 Part 2 Back to YYH Summaries page Back to YYH Main Back to Main Back to K & K |