Warning/Note: I am going to spoil basically the entire series in this article. If you haven’t watched it yet, I would recommend fixing that horrible oversight. Further, I will be talking only about the anime, as that is the one I am more familiar with and, if we’re all being honest, the superior version.

Yu Yu Hakusho is an early 90s anime based on Yoshihiro Togashi’s manga of the same name. It is one of the most popular franchises in existence, with over 50 million copies of the manga sold to date. While the main draw of the series is probably its characters, it is really the universal themes that make the story so endearing. Common wisdom would have it that the series is firstly a coming of age story. After all, several of the main characters, Yusuke Urameshi and Kazuma Kuwabara, are high school students who reach adulthood by the end of the series. But I think labeling “Hakusho” a coming of age story would be to sell it short. Instead, I believe that narrative is merely a particular of a much larger, much more universal theme. Yu Yu Hakusho is, at its core, a deep meditation on change in general, and a meditation that comes to some rather nuanced notions of how change takes place.

Change as the Central Theme

The first thing that I will try to demonstrate is that change is really the heart of the story. This is easy, as the series is absolutely full of examples. I’ll try to limit myself, as there are too many for me to mention them all here anyways, and I don’t want to bore you with too long of a list. Ahem…

Yusuke and Kuwabara are teenagers who become adults. Yusuke is a criminal who becomes a detective, a delinquent who becomes a hero. He is alive, dies, and comes back to life. Kuwabara is a violent thug who decides to dedicate himself to honest life and scholarly pursuits by the end of the series. Hiei and Kurama are villains who become heroes. Hiei is a fire demon who was born in an ice village. He’s the most hateful of the group and finds love by the end. Kurama is a demon who became a human. All four of them are loners who become best friends.

Genkai was a young woman, who became an old woman, who used her powers to become a young woman, who became an old woman, who died, who came back to life, who died again. Koenma repeatedly transforms back and forth from a baby into an adult. Pu is first an egg, then a baby (bird?), then a giant.

And this isn’t just a feature of the heroes either. Toguro was first a human and later a demon. He was an honorable fighter and then a violent sadist, an ally to Genkai and then her killer. Sensui was a pure of heart spirit detective and defender of humanity. Then, he (they?) became a ruthless villain hellbent on human extinction. Every psychic who appears during the Chapter Black arc was a normal human who developed fantastical powers. This is all not to mention that the series is rather fond of the “power up” transformations so common in other anime.

So, change is everywhere. To reduce it to just a “coming of age” story would be to mistake a tree for the forest. Where things get especially interesting though is when we start to look at how the series approaches change, how it ‘thinks’ about it. What is revealed here is that Yu Yu Hakusho does not imagine change merely linearly, but rather, sees change as a dialectical process.

Change as Dialectics

I understand that some of the readers may not be familiar with the concept of dialectics, so I will give an extremely brief summary of it here. The relevant features, though, will be defined and talked about in their respective sections.

Dialectics is a worldview that sees the world as constantly moving forward through a series of contradictions. This can be seen in ancient forms in Greece where dialectics was viewed as a process of discovering the truth through discussion and debate and in China where dualism, often represented by the “yin yang” symbol, considered opposites to be complementary. The modern dialectic though saw itself first formulated in a scientific way by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel though, got quite a lot wrong, and so dialectics only really became scientific once it fell into the hands of Karl Marx. For this reason, we will be referring to Hegel and various Marxists to explain the particular features of dialectics we are talking about.

(a) Unity of Opposites

“In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites.” – Lenin, Summary of Dialectics “The [unity] of opposites is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society).” – Lenin, On the Question of Dialectics

For dialectics, each thing contains within itself its opposite. I can only know that I am “I” if I also know that you are “you.” White only makes sense when black is present. Left is merely the opposite of right, and right is merely the opposite of left. For this reason, each thing not only has identity with its opposite but in fact depends on its opposite to give itself content or meaning.

But to just say each thing has identity with its opposite is not enough. What we must recognize is that within each thing, particularly as they develop, there are opposing features and tendencies which struggle with each other. To use a rather common example, a seed contains within itself both the features of an immature plant (explicitly) and the features of a mature plant (implicitly). It has the feature of youth, but it also has the feature of growing old. Living things contain within them the ability to die. A planet locked into an elliptical orbit has a tendency both to be pulled toward the sun and to be thrown away from it.

The whole, concrete thing is made up of contradictory parts. This can be found all over Yu Yu Hakusho, and one of the most explicit examples is the main character, Yusuke Urameshi himself.

At the beginning of the series, it is established that Yusuke is a violent criminal. He fights, harasses, and disrespects the people around him. And yet, when he sees a child about to be hit by a car, he jumps in front of the vehicle, saving the child and killing himself in the process. There is an explicit contradiction here. He is at one time destructive while also a savior, selfish and selfless. Even the characters around him are stunned by how this action conflicts with what they know about him. Thus, Yusuke right from the beginning is a unity of opposites.

After his resurrection, he can be divided into even more contradictions. He has become both a physical and a spiritual entity, a living person with powers conjured from the world of the dead. His thuggish tendencies are still explicit, but his status as a spirit detective brings his heroic attributes to the light as well. Under Genkai’s tutelage, he is both a know-it-all and a student. During the struggles against the Four Saint Beasts and the fights of the Dark Tournament, Yusuke remains an outcast while also becoming a reliable teammate. Much later in the series, we discover that Yusuke has demonic heritage and that his spirit energy is also contradictory. He can thus be divided not only into human and spirit, but both his human and spiritual counterparts can themselves be divided into opposing forces.

Even the coming of age story itself represents a unity of opposites, as hinted at earlier. Yusuke is immature but is also growing older. He is a child, and yet he must become an adult.

Contradictions like these are plentiful. Kuwabara mirrors many of the same thug vs. saint struggles that Yusuke faces, and he too is a human with spirit energy. Hiei is arrogant and selfish, but he cares for his sister and eventually forms strong friendships. Kurama is explicitly a mediation between the human Shuichi Minamino and the demon Yoko Kurama. Again, they are all loners and teammates. In the Dark Tournament, the members of Doctor Ichigaki’s team are both mindless robots and conscious humans. In the Chapter Black arc, the many psychics are merely humans with spiritual aspects. The Doctor is both a… well a doctor… and a serial killer/mass murderer. Sensui is both pure of heart (as Shinobu) and an absolute monster (as basically everyone else). Hell, he is literally a combination of multiple contradictory personalities. In the Three Kings arc, Raizen is both the strongest demon in existence and also a virtual pacifist who refuses to harm humans.

In fact, most of the series is based around the contradiction between the human world and the demon world. The two are seen as incompatible, and yet they are connected. Attempts are made to separate them, but they fail. Attempts are made to completely combine them, but they also fail. The two are essentially opposites, each requiring a connection with the other but neither being afforded an “ultimate” victory.

As explained before, there are many other examples that we are leaving out, but the point should be obvious by now. Yu Yu Hakusho has an odd obsession with contradiction, where practically everything has to be contrasted with its opposite. However, it is not enough just that a thing should contain two opposing tendencies. Those tendencies must struggle with each other in order to propel the thing forward.

(b) Self-Movement

“The world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing.” – Mao, On Contradiction (emphasis mine) “The unity of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.” – Lenin, On the Question of Dialectics

When a contradiction exists within a thing, its development will be guided by the development of the struggle between those opposing tendencies. To simplify, imagine a person running on a treadmill. If the person is running at the same speed the treadmill is rotating the ground towards them, the person will not move. They are moving forward, the ground is moving backward, but the two are in equal proportion, and so they reach equilibrium. But imagine the treadmill becomes faster while the person remains at the same speed. The person will be thrown off the back of the treadmill in proportion to how much faster the treadmill is going. Imagine the person starts to run faster while the treadmill remains the same. They will run into the front of it, again in proportion to their increase in speed. Thus, the development of the contradiction (and therefore the thing) changes depending not just on the struggle between the two but on the proportion of each, which one is dominant or primary and which one is submitted or secondary.

Opposites have a tendency to turn into each other, though. Work becomes rest, night becomes day, etc. The seed is firstly young and secondly growing. But eventually, it is firstly grown and only secondly, in the past or the form of its own offspring, a seed. The thing develops based on the contradiction within it, but the opposing tendencies within that contradiction also change and develop based on circumstance and their own movement. A thing may develop in a certain direction now, but it may also develop in an opposite direction in the future.

This, again, is shown all over “Hakusho.” Yusuke is firstly a delinquent and secondly a hero, and so he lives a life of crime with the rare act of kindness. Under new circumstances and with the influence of his friends, this changes. Later in the series, he is firstly a hero and secondly a delinquent. He acts with maturity and in the interests of others, but he’s still foul-mouthed and crude to some degree. Kuwabara is firstly a delinquent and secondly a sweetheart at the beginning of the series, fighting all the time but having a heart of gold. But again, circumstances change and the two halves of the contradiction switched places. In the Three Kings arc, he gives up his violent tendencies for the most part, dedicating himself to school and his friends. But he still threatens to fight Yusuke in the final episode. When we meet him, Hiei is primarily a lone wolf. He drives others away and lives a life of solitude. Even the secondary characteristic of caring for his sister is submerged in the first. He loves her from a distance. He clearly cares for Team Urameshi, but he never expresses it. By the end of the series though, he is blatantly expressing feelings for Makuro, literally opening up his consciousness to her. He becomes much more intertwined with the group. He’s still silent and distant, but that is not secondary, and his development from then on reflects it. He only became more alone for the first long stretch of his life, but now he has accumulated friends, family, a lover, and responsibilities. Kurama is constantly changing his development and behavior depending on which side of him is dominant, Shuichi or Yoko. He may be compassionate during the Spirit Detective arc or coldblooded during the end of the Chapter Black arc. It is all a matter of which side of him is dominant. In fact, Yoko explicitly is developing within him as the series continues, and it is also explicitly acknowledged that Shuichi developed into his dominant side before the series started, mostly through the relationship he shared with his human mother.

Opposites struggle within them and shape their development. When the relationship between those opposites changes, their development changes. Opposites are transformed into each other, and the characters are transformed too, likewise into their own opposites.

The idea of opposites needing each other to have structure (as talked about in the previous section) and of opposites transforming into each other is explicitly explained in the Chapter Black arc.

Sensui was once absolutely pure of heart, completely innocent. Because of this, he lacked any real internal identity. He was only able to make sense of himself when contrasted with the world around him. He, as a human, was necessarily good because demons were necessarily bad (In his eyes, of course). When this conception was challenged though, when he witnessed human cruelty directed at demons, he lost any sense of self-identity. If he is innocent because he is human, and it is revealed that humans are not in fact innocent, then what is he? Further, if he is a savior because demons are the threat, and demons suddenly become the ones who need saving, then what is he? Things turn into their opposites after all! Sensui tries to maintain complete purity, but complete purity is the easiest thing in the world to corrupt. Just like negative requires positive to sustain itself and thus must have identity with it, innocence requires and must have identity with guilt. This is actually openly stated in the series itself.

“Drop ink on the finest snow-white paper, and it will inevitably absorb into black. Its purity demands it. Tainted men have immunities: Black does not absorb black.” – Itsuki, talking about Sensui

White becomes black, purity becomes impurity, taintedness becomes immunity! Itsuki has certainly been reading his Hegel!

But what really stamps these contradictions with a dialectical, a Hegelian, character is the way they are all “resolved.”

(c) Sublation

In dialectics, contradictions are not merely overcome. Instead, even when they have “ended,” they merely find themselves submerged in the new development. An aspect of a contradiction may be destroyed, but it stays around in a limited way, as a feature of the new “thing.” This process is called “sublation.”

“‘To sublate’ has a twofold meaning in the language: on the one hand it means to preserve, to maintain, and equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to. Even ‘to preserve’ includes a negative elements, namely, that something is removed from its influences, in order to preserve it. Thus what is sublated is at the same time preserved; it has only lost its immediacy but is not on that account annihilated.” – Hegel, Science of Logic (here) “Aristotle’s logic is concerned with separate, discrete (self-)identities in a deductive pattern. Hegel dissolves this classical static view in a dynamic movement towards the whole. The whole is an overcoming which preserves what it overcomes. Nothing is lost or destroyed but raised up and preserved as in a spiral. Think of the opening of a fern or a shell. This is an organic rather than mechanical logic. Hegel’s special term for this ‘contradiction’ of overcoming and at the same time preserving is Aufhebung, sometimes translated as ‘sublation’.” – Llyod Spencer and Andrzej Krauze, Hegel for Beginners

Examples can be found consistently throughout the series, but particularly towards the end.

Yusuke overcomes death, but he retains spirit energy, a token of his trip down the River Styx. He overcomes his demonic energy, but it remains as a part of his power. He overcomes his criminal life, but he remains to some degree crass. He grows up, but he still marries his childhood sweetheart. Kuwabara overcomes his violent tendencies and applies himself to college instead, but he still is aggressive with Yusuke. Kurama overcomes his demonic side. And yet, he tells Yomi that Yoko will always be a part of him. This, much like the Itsuki statement, paints a clear picture for us. Yoko is conquered but not annihilated. He is preserved in the new unity, absorbed.

Hiei is a fire demon born to ice apparitions. By all accounts, he should be a complete negation of his heritage, a total opposite. And yet, he keeps the necklace given to him by those people and cherishes it dearly. While violently rejecting the ice spirits, he still carries a small piece of them with him at all times. He also loves his sister. His past is not adopted completely nor rejected completely. Instead, it is sublated. This is true also of his loner tendencies. Even after conquering his fear of commitment, his feeling of not belonging, he is still distant and rather unpersonable. He even often sits in trees, off of the ground with the others, while at a gathering. But he is still at a gathering, regardless!

To return to the Sensui example briefly, his purity is not entirely rejected when he becomes a villain. Instead, it is retained within the Shinobu personality, just to a very limited degree. Koenma keeps the pacifier in his mouth even when transformed into an adult. The struggle between the human and demon worlds is also resolved by the end of the series, and yet neither of them are lost. Instead, the contradiction between them carries on in a new way, with the barrier between them dropped and watch groups maintaining the peace. The parts that make up the contradiction are maintained even when the contradiction ends, taking on new forms in the process.

Sublation is a constant theme when dealing with the past, particularly in terms of inheritance. Raizen’s demonic energy is sublated in Yusuke’s bloodline. Even after he dies, his energy lives on in Yusuke. When Genkai dies in the Dark Tournament, her spirit orb is still maintained within Yusuke. Yomi’s son is literally a reproduction of himself, where the essence of “Yomi” is incorporated into a new being. Every villain that our heroes face bring out or highlight features of the protagonists, and these features, whether good or bad, remain to some degree expressed even after the villain has been defeated, even killed. At the beginning of the Three Kings saga, Yusuke is still carrying within him some of the ideas and emotions brought out by his encounter with Sensui, sometimes to a point where it scares those around him.

Even the structure of the series is to some degree an example of this movement. The series begins with a death, Yusuke’s, and develops from there. It begins with an end. The relevant message here being that there is something beyond the end. This is echoed again at the end of the series. The title to episode 111, the penultimate episode, is “‘Closure.” And yet, the final episode, 112, is titled “To the Future.” We have a closure, and then a future. The ending is followed by a beginning. The conclusion is subsumed into the new process. The past is taken into the future.

“Forever Fornever”

We’ve gone into a lot of detail, but there is still one moment that I think really drives this point home. At the very end of the series, after the final credits, we are left with this message.

This has been taken by many fans as just a quirky goodbye, a fun, “Hakusho” specific way to say “Thanks for watching.” But, in light of the themes of change found in this series, the dialectical view of that change, it takes on an entirely new meaning. Let’s break it down.

“Forever” simply means “always.” We all know that. If something is “forever” it is permanent. “Ever” meaning “at any point in time,” something being “for-ever” means it is “for-any point in time.” On the other hand, “fornever” is… well, it’s not a word. But using the same logic, we can deduce what they mean. “Never” means “at no point in time.” If something is “for-never” then it is “for-no point in time.” It is the opposite of “forever.”

So the entire phrase, when taken as a whole, is a message of permanent impermanence. Change is forever. This is perfectly in line with dialectics.

“Something becomes an other; this other is itself some[thing]; therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on ad infinitum.” – Hegel, The Shorter Logic (here)

Further, “Forever Fornever” is itself a unity of opposites! This is not just a peculiar way to say farewell. Instead, it is a thesis statement for the whole show.

Afterword: Notes & Supporting Evidence

Notes

There are tons of others things you could pry into with a show as dense as “Hakusho.” For instance, the series clearly has something to say about the role institutions play in shaping individuals. Yusuke is a delinquent because he lacks parental guidance and the other officials in his life would rather punish him than help. He is able to develop his heroic potential only when he becomes a spirit detective. Institutions are what failed him, and it is a change in institutions that allows him to flourish. I encourage these investigations, but I think they should all be done in the light of the things explained here. Approach every other theme or message in the series from a dialectical perspective, as that is what really makes up the core theme of this series, the essence.

Supporting Evidence

The idea that dialectics was consciously inserted into the series has some real-world evidence. Although a source is not provided, the wiki entry remarks that Togashi was influenced by Buddhism when writing the series, and others have pointed out the definitive influence of Buddhist mythology. Buddhism does contain a form of dialectics, even if it is not quite as developed as that of Hegel or Marx.

Further, in another one of his series’, Hunter x Hunter, Togashi explicitly mentions Hegel as a great thinker.