The main group of heroes portrayed in the series aren't your typical pure-hearted bunch as they consist of delinquents and demons who aren't entirely pure in their motives in combating evil threats. Despite their questionable upbringings though, the members of the group do get fleshing out of their characters and backgrounds to show that their upbringings are rather complicated and that their current personalities are the result of whatever complicated pasts they had. This fleshing out also extends to many of the villains that Yusuke and his group encounter in later episodes of the series, an element that would be adopted in later popular shounen battle titles like Naruto and Inuyasha. The only flaw to the depth approach with villains here is that the series usually does this when the villain is close to death or about to be defeated without any kind of proper buildup, an issue that is also carried over to more recent shounen battle titles. However, the series does provide reasonable depth and buildup to Sensui's disillusioned and manipulative character in YYH's Chapter Black saga, which made his character one of the more complex ones in the series and what contributed to Chapter Black being the best saga in the series for me.
A number of the battles in the series also involved strategy and intellect, aspects that were lacking in popular battle anime of the period as they involved more showing off over-the-top powers and techniques. Kurama and a number of other characters in YYH are known to use their intellect and strategy often to dispatch their foes, usually contending with foes that relied more on power or who are just as equal as them in cunning and intellect. Those not as notable with their brains are also shown to occasionally rely on strategy when the situation calls for it. While Yuyu Hakusho does usually resort to showing off crazy powers and abilities, it isn't the dominating focus in many of its battles.
Praises aside though, there are a good number of issues that keep me from wanting to rate Yuyu Hakusho as highly as Rurouni Kenshin. As discussed above, the series still dabbles fairly heavily in the cliches of shounen battle anime having its fair share of plot conveniences, heavy focus on battle scenes, cliched villains (Rando and the Saint Beasts are nowhere as fun to see compared to Younger Toguro and Sensui) and wasted plot potential.
The fourth element is worth mention because there are a couple major elements to the series that had potential to offer some nice developments, yet are wasted. Keiko is seen as Yusuke's love interest throughout much of the series, yet Yuyu Hakusho never provides enough time with the two to have one convinced that they are a couple worth rooting for. The Three Kings saga offered up the opportunity to see a side of the demon world that was never explored at all in earlier episodes of the series. While YYH explores what connections Yusuke, Hiei and Kurama had to each of the three powerful demons that dominated the realm, the saga isn't as well-paced as the three earlier sagas as the series rushes through its developments and makes a pretty stupid excuse to set up another battle tournament when it seemed like conflict was going to arise between the forces of the three mentioned demons. Even with the battle tournament setup, it only runs for 5 episodes and lacks the suspense of the Dark Tournament saga when Yusuke and his team had the odds stacked against them in many of their fights.
In terms of presentation, the visuals and music for YYH are nothing too notable. Artwork quality is pretty standard for an early to mid 1990s title sporting drab color, washed-out details for scenery and the typical drawing style of character designs being the big-eyed variety with details varying from simple to decent. Animation shortcuts are a regular occurrence in the series as it makes use of techniques like still shots, reused animation frames, and speed stripes. The soundtrack to YYH consists of suspenseful and energetic tracks that do their part in enhancing battle, serious and comical moments; though nothing of particular note greatly stuck out for me with the show's music.
Overall, Yuyu Hakusho has some major story and character elements that allowed it to stick out from shounen battle anime of its time period and are now a convention with modern shounen battle titles. It still sticks fairly strongly to the cliches of the genre and doesn't really do much else to break the mold of it. But if you are an action anime fan that wants to at least have a little something extra added to your titles besides crazy powers and action, then Yuyu Hakusho is a decent fix for your enjoyment.
