(Photo credit: Jonathan McInnis)
Crunchyroll is releasing a special Blu-ray Limited Edition box set to celebrate the anniversary of the iconic anime series YuYu Hakusho, based on the manga created by Yoshihiro Togashi. YuYu Hakusho tells the story of Yusuke Urameshi, a good-hearted high school delinquent who dies trying to save a kid from a car accident and is then resurrected as a Spirit Detective, charged by the Underworld with investigating supernatural activity within the Human World. The series soon turns into a supernatural-themed battle shonen, and it's credited with inspiring many works that followed, including Togashi's own Hunter X Hunter. The manga inspired, besides the 112 episodes-long anime, two animated movies, a series of OVA's, videogames, merchandise, and most recently a Netflix live-action series
The YuYu Hakusho anime was licensed for North America in 2001 by Funimation, now Crunchyroll, and it aired on two popular Cartoon Network blocks, Adult Swim and Toonami. The series helped popularize anime for Western audiences, building on the success of Dragon Ball Z, Funimation's first license. Justin Cook, the accomplished actor who has voiced, among others, Raditz from Dragon Ball Z and Eustass Kid from One Piece, and is today one of Crunchyroll's leading voice producers, gave his voice to YuYu Hakusho's protagonist Yusuke and also directed the dub for the series. We sat down with Justin to discuss the legacy of YuYu Hakusho and his pioneering role in bridging the gap between Japanese anime and Western audiences.
Screen Rant: When Funimation acquired the rights for YuYu Hakusho in 2001, you were 25 years old. At such a young age, not only you voiced the protagonist, Yusuke, but also directed the entire dub. So tell us something about how that came to be. How much experience did you have at the time? Was it a lot of pressure for you?
Justin Cook: Well, for sure. And as far as experience, I was a bit of a hyperactive kid. My mom started putting me in theater classes when I was in elementary school, and a lot of it was ultimately just trying to keep me from bouncing off the walls at home. Right? Put me into it theater space. Let me bounce off the walls there. But I got to work with some folks that really kind of helped me to home that energy and be able to kind of direct it into characters. So that really was a bit of a love affair that I had as a child. That kind of developed and continued to go and follow me, as it were, throughout my life, and I kind of chased it as well. Starting at Funimation as an engineer recording all the actors, quite frankly, I was just honored and happy to be there and I wanted to make sure that anything I was doing was good work, because it feels different when you're working on something that's going to hang around for a while. You make a mistake on one of these things, it lasts forever. We wanted to make sure that we did a good job on this particular show, I mean, that was with every title that we worked on, but YuYu Hakusho was unique because it was one of the first shows. We were starting to move away from only working on Dragon Ball, which had been really just the one title any of us had worked on, anime specific. I think there was a part of it that was about proving ourselves to the community, proving that we weren't a one-hit-wonder. A lot of the pressure we were putting on ourselves was to make sure that what we were presenting was something that, quite frankly, was deserving of this incredible property.
Screen Rant: Did you always want to work specifically with anime, or is that something that happened by chance? Did you have a passion for Japanese culture or media before, or did it just happen by chance?
Justin Cook: Unbeknownst to me as a young child, I had really fallen in love with the series Star Blazers. Now I didn't know it at the time, but I had just been exposed to anime, but anime wasn't necessarily something that I grew up knowing a ton about. But as I got older, into my very early twenties, anime was kind of starting to rear its head, in several forms and fashions. Whether it was Ghost in the Shell, Trigun, or Cowboy Bebop, and so I was really kind of blown away with the more adult kind of format or storytelling that I was seeing, but presented in an animated form. So I definitely fell in love with it quickly but I don't know that it's fair to say that I kind of chased my job at Funimation because of a love of anime. It was a love of acting and performance that really brought me to that door, and then getting to match that desire on my part to something so unique and incredible like these programs was, I guess luck, or destiny.
Screen Rant: You did a lot of incredible things in your career, and you have a lot of accomplishments, but does YuYu Hakusho still hold a special place in your heart, 20 years later?
Justin Cook: Oh, absolutely. It was the first show that I was given the responsibility to voice direct, and the character that I was honored to be able to provide a voice for within that show, so it definitely has a couple of "firsts" for me, but it's just a great show, and I'm not trying to measure it against anything else. Everything that I've had the honor of being able to work on or participate with, I feel lucky to have all of these children. Because I love and cherish each one of these shows that we get to work on, and each one motivates or inspires people in different ways, and that's pretty powerful.
Screen Rant: This new 30th-anniversary box set is a great way to celebrate the legacy of this series, and it also includes a commentary from you and the other actors. Would you tell our readers what, in your opinion, is YuYu Hakusho's legacy as a show overall?
Justin Cook: I think legacy is kind of a funny thing, right? Because legacy is ultimately, in my opinion just what is left behind. And so that's the whole series, and it's incredible. It's a great story, it's got great heart. It's endured over these 20 or so years the dub has been available, and 30 that the series has been out there in the world. That right there is, I guess, the evidence of its legacy. It's hard for me to necessarily see where, maybe the character of Yusuke has found his way to inspire other actors to bring about another character in a show. Maybe that's the case as well, but it certainly inspired me, and so it doesn't surprise me that it could have inspired so many other people.
Screen Rant: Among your most recent accolades, you have produced the dubs for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero and One Piece Film: RED. What are your feelings in seeing these franchises that are three or four decades old and are still around, showing no signs of stopping? Do you consider yourself a pioneer in bringing these franchises to Western audiences?
Justin Cook: I don't know about being a pioneer. I'm just lucky and honored to be part of this. Every day that I'm here I feel like it's my responsibility to throw everything I've got at the stories that we're helping to tell. All of these are stories that have already been told. Our job is ultimately to put an English lens on it so that the same kind of emotional touchstones and feelings that the Japanese audience had when watching it in its original language translates into English. And that's I think the job or responsibility for anybody working on this stuff. I've often thought that the job we're doing working on dubs is like adding a limb to a branch that's on a tree that is already been well maintained and well pruned. And so it becomes a bit of an art form to try to make sure that this piece we've added to it matches the rest of the feature. So it's always finding a way of working with the entertainment and making sure you're not working against it.
Screen Rant: As someone who is working with these franchises for so many years, what do you think is the secret of their longevity?
Justin Cook: I think the thing with all of these shows is that they're relatable. An audience member can see themselves in a character. They can see themselves in more than one character, and you're also watching these characters grow up as well, and I think that's one of the things that's so unique about all of these shows. It's not a stagnant storyline. In a series like Dragon Ball, or even with YuYu Hakusho, it's a progression of these characters growing up, growing wiser, becoming better people, or demons, or aliens, whichever the case. That, I think, is the thing that's so impressive about this medium, and that's certainly what impresses me so I could only assume maybe that's what has impressed the rest of the world.
Screen Rant: You're still very active today, of course, but is there any anime series that you are not involved with, but you wish you were?
Justin Cook: That's a good one! I'm a fan of so many of these shows, but Cowboy Bebop has always been one that's been a huge part of my heart. I love that show But you know, I've been asked before: "if you could voice a character in something else, what would that show be?" I don't. I don't want to do that, because I love Cowboy Bebop so much the way that it already is I don't want my voice messing that up. So I'm not looking to rewrite the clock or anything, but using that as an example, being able to participate in creating one of the special features for Cowboy Bebop was such a great way to be involved with the series, without wishful thinking. But that's certainly a show that that's, you know, very close to my heart. Akira is probably another one. That's always kind of been on my radar, Ghost in the Shell is probably another one, too. You've heard the term "Otaku", as an anime fan. I think that I probably fall into more of the "Old-taku" part of that.
The YuYu Hakusho 30th Anniversary Blu-ray Limited Edition box set will be released on January 31, 2023. Exclusive features include 30th Anniversary artwork, and two never-before-dubbed OVAs; "Two Shot" and "All or Nothing". The whole YuYu Hakusho anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll.