Yu Yu Hakusho had more viewers than The Crown during its first week on Netflix
Sometimes a story works even when you cut it down to its bare bones
It has been a good year for Netflix’s live-action anime adaptations. Their One Piece series made big waves when it proved that you could translate the wild world of anime into live-action. Now, their Yu Yu Hakusho series has built up a solid viewership in its first week, becoming the number one new show in the US and taking the top spot among non-English speaking shows globally.
Though Netflix insists on splitting English and non-English language shows into different charts, the numbers that they’ve released for Yu Yu Hakusho would comfortably put it above The Crown in terms of the number of views. That makes it the number two show on Netflix across the globe behind My Life With the Walter Boys, a big achievement considering how many changes it has made to the classic anime’s pacing and characters.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that fans are going to enjoy the show. We loved the fight scenes, but the condensed episode count means that it sacrifices a lot of character development and plot to give those fights the chance to play out. It is a very different take on the story in the original manga and that might not sit as well with some fans.
This success also won’t necessarily translate into future seasons of Yu Yu Hakusho. Though the manga continued for several volumes after the Dark Tournament arc that was covered in the Netflix show, none of the subsequent stories were nearly as popular. Plus, the new series wraps up pretty much every dangling plotline quite nicely in the final episode, giving very little opening for a new season, which would have to feature an entirely new villain.
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