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Yu Yu Hakusho: The Movie


Yu Yu Hakusho: The Golden Seal (Dub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie



Yu Yu Hakusho: "The Movie" as it's marketed in the US is a total misnomer. It's not a movie, it's a 30-minute OVA, and not even a very good one.

All it is a brief side story in which Koenma gets kidnapped and needs to be rescued. As a standalone "movie", you'd think that this would try it's best to encapsulate all that there is to like about Yu Yu Hakusho, right?

No.

On the run to get to Koenma before he's dipped into lava we just throw a bunch of demon fodder at Urameshi and friends to kill. We're treated to our typical art style except the studio here clearly as a bigger budget because we get slightly more animation frames than normal. Ultimately it's exactly what I was hoping we'd get from the bigger episodes of the series, but we didn't, and instead we have several episodes that just look bizarrely out of place because the art has changed since it's obviously being handled by a different studio or animation team.

Koenma gets a lot of screentime and he's easily one of the series' weakest characters. The new bad guy who pops up has paper thin motivations and the twist ending is literally a joke. And I didn't find it funny.

I did laugh once though. At the voice acting.

Holy DAMN the voice acting.

If you were hoping to hear the classic character's voices again, look elsewhere because the ENTIRE CAST is dubbed by totally different people and EVERYONE sounds off.

Botan's... okay and Koenma's... okay. I can even see Urameshi when the voice actor isn't yelling.

But WOW, Kuwabara, Hiei, and Kurama sound SO WRONG.

They have such distinctive voices in the series that's it's just alien to see them sounding differently, and since they carry neither the tone nor behavioral traits of the original characters they just seem OUT OF character.

Kuwabara speaks normally which is... unsettling.

Hiei has this weird go-get-'im attitude which is... unnerving.

And Kurama's usually soft-spoken and intellectual demeanor is completely gone to be replaced by Generic Anime Voice Actor #5 which is... unbeuloughable (that's a word).



If the characters were doing impersonations of the original voice actors, they utterly failed. It's not like any of the characters are given time to flex their usual personalities either, the episode is a straight up rush to exposition the crap out of Koenma's kidnapping, setting up the crazy stakes, letting the animators slice up a few non-threats, and then GET ALL DRAMATIC AS **** AT THE END BECAUSE OH NOES IT'S THE BIGGEST BADDEST BAD GUY YET!

This has got to take place pre-Toguro (I HOPE!) because this fight is lame as crap and especially considering that am I REALLY supposed to believe that Urameshi MIGHT DIE from this fight?

Hell no. Get out of here. This isn't Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, this is a rejected one-off episode from the Spirit Detective arc.

I'm so not engaged at all and that voice acting is going to be the only thing I remember about this "Movie".

Instead of watching "The Golden Seal", I strongly recommend you watch this random clipshow of the original English voice actors commentate on the series instead.

These 2 and half minutes were a far more enjoyable than anything in this piece of crap.



Final Verdict:
[Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]