left to right: kuwabara, hiei, yuusuke, kurama

Okay...Yuu Yuu Hakusho is a pretty cool series...but I feel REALLY tempted to just not put anything here and tell you to go back and check out the anime web turnpike (there are tons..and i mean...TONS...of Yuu Yuu Hakusho sites out there...). But *sigh*...this would be the only one of the manga I've listed w/o a summary...and...and...agh. You know? ;)

Soo...Yuusuke is the main character of this series; 14-year-old boy (from what I remember) who's like, a prime candidate for juvenile hall recruiting. He cuts class, picks fights, etc etc...he's feared by boys of his AND other middle schools because he's a really strong fighter, etc. (Kuwabara, another delinquent, keeps challenging him to fight even though he knows he's going to get beaten..the two of them eventually become friends and fight together...) Yuusuke's mother raised him alone; she's about 29 or something. She's always smoking, sleeping, drinking, or away. She's pretty funny =) but not a great nurturing mother to have. Yuusuke also has a childhood friend named Keiko. She acts like a mother sometimes...she makes him go to school...cooks food for him...etc. She generally tries to take care of him. They're always fighting, but you can tell they really care about each other, etc.

One day Yuusuke's just wandering around being his usual delinquent self when he sees this little boy playing with a ball near the road. He picks up the ball for the kid and warns him not to play too close to the road, or something'll happen to him. The little kid doesn't understand, I guess, cuz he keeps playing...his ball rolls into the street...he toddles out after it....into the path of an oncoming car....

**CRASH!**

Yuusuke jumped into the street, pushed the kid to the other side, and got hit by the car. Next thing he knows, he's staring at his body on the ground. He's dead! Then appears some wacky girl in kimono, riding a broom--this is Botan, some kind of emissary from the land of the dead/Demon World...she works for Ko-enma, who is the son of the...hrm..Lord of the dead/demons? She's there because Yuusuke...well...two reasons. First, Yuusuke lived a pretty rotten life, but he died saving a little kid, which was a good deed; second, Yuusuke wasn't supposed to die yet! The kid wasn't supposed to die yet! What would've happened, had Yuusuke not rushed into the road, is that the little kid would survive with no injuries...which means Yuusuke basically gave up his life for no reason. (what's worse, the little kid got scratched up when he fell after Yuusuke pushed him to the side of the road.) Haa....anyway, Yuusuke follows Botan around for a while and eventually gets the chance to be resurrected. Meanwhile, he and Botan visit a few places, see a few people..err...ghosts, and he generally does a few good deeds more. He also finds out how much he meant to both his mother and Keiko. He meets Ko-enma...blahblahblah...this is just a kind of prequel to the entire series in general, because what happens later really has nothing to do with him dying in the beginning of the series...well except that the dying thing got him acquainted with Botan and Ko-enma and the alternate worlds, etc....gah....OK!! You know what?? This is too much for me to handle writing right now...the series is pretty good (I mean..come on, I usually read shoujo manga and this is shounen...that must mean something right?). It involves a lot of battling of strange demons...a few of the demons are pretty hot (think Hiei and Kurama....yeah, Kurama....XD* ehehe) and a LOT of them are pretty ugly. (gross, more like it) Yuusuke makes some friends, gains some new powers, and learns a lot more about the demon world than I think he'd really like to know. =) To say the least.

Now go check out the series on the anime web turnpike...or you could try....hrm....HEY! is that manga translations I see??????