Yuusuke Urameshi
Preliminary Notes | Updates/Requests | Part I: Personality | Part II: Fighting Style | Part III: Pairings
SECTION I: PERSONALITY-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My breakdown begins with this statement: not much in Yuusuke's life has ever been reliable or permanent.
At the beginning of the series, we don't know much about him. He might as well have been immaculately conceived for all we hear about his father; he tells Toguro that he hasn't had many older men to look up to. It seems likely that his father was yakuza, given that Atsuko doesn't work, binge drinks, and still somehow both avoids child services and manages to keep them in food, clothes, and shelter of a comfortable nature. We don't have any confirmation of that, though, and it's safer to assume that Togashi-sama just didn't want to get into it. Atsuko herself isn't much of a parent, and so Yuusuke hasn't had anyone to depend on but himself for a long time. He's only ever had one friend -- Keiko -- and it's not a mystery why he's a delinquent with a hatred for authority. His father is nonexistent, his mother can't be counted on, his peers avoid him (and appear to have always done so, from the sketchy flashbacks we're given), his teachers hate him and consistently try to cause him trouble, and he isn't old enough to do anything about any of it. He looks out for himself because no one else ever does.
This leads to the unique quandary of needing desperately to have control over something, and yet being unable to care enough about anything to put in the effort required. Nothing hard is worth the energy, and nothing easy is worth having at all. Yuusuke chooses a middle ground, taking the one thing he's got that seems both worthwhile and not too difficult -- fighting -- and making it into something he can care about just barely enough to pursue it consistently. It's possible he has something of an instinct for it anyway, being latent demonic; he's also never
belonged, as Keiko points out during the Tournament. This, unfortunately, exacerbates his problems, given how little fighting is accepted by most of the people around him -- it gets him into more and more trouble and makes all his peers afraid or contemptuous of him. Like a shark in an aquarium, he free-floats, lonely, miserable and defiant in his denial, and is quickly and clearly heading down the road to a ruined and meaningless adulthood.
For all of that, though, he's still basically a good person. He probably has Keiko to thank for that, as the exception to the rule and the one person who thinks he has some worth (outside of Principal Takenaka, who is an authority figure and therefore not to be trusted). She's the only one willing to stick around for no apparent ulterior reason and contradict every other sign that indicates how pointless life is. All of the above about how no one looks out for him and nothing is reliable can be modified by adding "except Keiko". It's also not a mystery why he's in love with her -- he literally has no one else. She keeps him honest, at least, and gives him a reason to keep caring about something other than himself.
Even from her, however, Yuusuke keeps most of his feelings hidden. This is partially because he does not always know what precisely what they are, most especially in the case of positive emotions and the more complex negative emotions. He doesn't really recognize that he's lonely, nor that he turns to her for comfort; and even if he did, he wouldn't be able to show it. It's never safe to show any emotions but anger and amusement, and he jokes constantly because it takes much less energy than anger. It stands to reason that when he cannot show his feelings, he can default to his tough-talking, wise-cracking front whenever required. It helps that Keiko knows that front for what it is, and still cares about what she sees underneath it.
From her example contrasted with his own, he's come to the conclusion that he's beneath her and everyone else, so that anyone, no matter how much he despises them, is worth more than he is. In order to cope with his dead-end future, he finds fault with both the world and himself, blaming circumstance and his own nature equally -- but he's also seen through Keiko that people can succeed, and can be happy, and can even care about others who are worth it. Karma dictates the nature of things in Yuusuke's eyes; if he has a life he hates, it must be because he's flawed, and deserves nothing better. Throughout the series, his own view of himself does not improve. That's part of his impetus: to be better than anyone expects, to overcome his own inclination for failure. In the beginning, this impetus (in addition to a feeling of powerlessness) drives him to be the toughest punk around, even though he couldn't care less what the other punks think, just so he can prove to himself that he's the best at something.
This translates into a persistent view of himself as inadequate, which places everyone else above him by default. But he really has to
know them to care about them. Yuusuke doesn't give a rat's a** about humankind (or demonkind) as a group -- but if you're right there in front of him and you're not an outright enemy, he'll give up his life without thinking, just because he can't stand to see anyone else's life go to waste when it's worth so much more than his own. He displays this trait numerous times during the series, and indeed it causes several major plot shifts (saving Keiko from the house fire, saving Kurama from the Mirror, etc.).
When he dies saving a little boy in just that manner, and is given a chance to see that people
do care about him, he begins to wake up just a little from the half-asleep existence he's had until now. It gives him a new perspective, and the tiny part of him that has always needed to be wanted comes more to the fore of his personality. He discovers through the experience that not only does he exist, but his existence has positive impact; he has a purpose in existing now, if only to keep everyone from being sad, and that's a good sight better than anything else he's ever had. But that isn't what really brings him to life -- it's becoming a Reikai Tantei that makes him into the person he is.
Suddenly, he belongs. He has a place where he needs to fight instead of just wanting to, needs to be good at something, and needs to really succeed. In the past, he never bothered to try more than a passing little, quitting whenever things got hard or inconvenient, because it never made much of a difference; but now other people are depending on his abilities -- other people
need him for more than just his mere presence. His talents can really make his life better, where before they were just dooming his future even more. Most importantly, he suddenly has friends, real friends.
Kuwabara is at least someone who hangs around, who comes back time and again, and is sad when Yuusuke dies. That alone makes him closer to a friend than anyone but Keiko has ever been. The kinship that Yuusuke feels when he meets Kurama surprises even him, I think; Kurama's devotion to and sacrifice for his mother touches just the right chord in Yuusuke, and he'll probably always see Kurama as similar to him in that way. It isn't clear to me why he trusts Hiei so completely at the Gate of Betrayal, after only experiencing him as a psychopath who tried to kill him and turn Keiko into a demon, but he has good instincts when it comes to people, so he might merely be able to see what Hiei really is. The point, though, is that suddenly he's able to trust people when he wasn't before.
This is only possible because becoming a Tantei has given him a new set of rules by which to judge his life. Life as detective and life as a school thug are separate for him in several crucial ways. He has never been really happy before, never had friends like these before. He's never had a purpose before or cared about anything much. The ways in which this new life is different allow him to see it in a way he's never seen his old life: as something that
could be permanent, that isn't subject to the cynicism with which he views everything else. Yuusuke, contrary to expectations in general, has a unique sense of justice and fairness in the universe. He's given up applying it to his normal, mundane life, because it's never come through there, but surely
here, where everything suddenly feels
right, he can finally trust that nothing will fall apart. A large part of his determination and bravado in general is an idealization, an unconscious awareness that he can't lose -- that everything will work out at the last minute, and that everyone he cares about will be safe. Some of this is because he's actively
trying. He has great faith that his decision to commit to them will keep them from harm; when he gives his all for something, it succeeds. Genkai could not have kicked him into committing unless he were really ready in the first place.
The speed with which he wholly embraces this new viewpoint is only startling until we consider that he didn't think he'd ever find anything worth it. He's smart enough to have known that his life really held nothing for him, and would hold nothing for him in the future. The chance to be what he wanted and to make a difference is too impossibly good a dream to doubt, and he throws himself into it with everything he has.
This is where I mark Yuusuke's first major character shift during the series. The Yuusuke who existed before his first death, while vitally important to who he is throughout the entire series, is only a small part of his overall character; the most persistent view of him is as a Reikai detective, with a new outlook and a fresh start in his life, literally. He does, however, pull away from that well before the midpoint of the anime -- specifically, at the end of the Rescue Yukina arc, when the Dark Tournament is about to begin.
Something very important to understanding Yuusuke's subsequent, subtle shift in character is that, by this point, he's never lost before, not really -- not a battle, and not a friend. He's been set back, he's been knocked around, and he's had a couple of close calls, but he always bounces back, and everyone is always fine at the end. It reinforces his perceived invulnerability every time he wins a fight or overcomes an obstacle. He's quickly learned to view himself as an invincible protector, who can do anything if it means his friends will be safe. It's his new role, as he sees it, a role he needs in order to fully belong, and he's been doing a bang-up job so far.
The first inkling for him that things might not last is his encounter with Toguro after he and Kuwabara have supposedly killed the demon during the Rescue Yukina mini-arc. He hasn't allowed himself to be afraid of how powerful Toguro is, because he's already defeated him; but now that Toguro is back and remains quite undefeated, Yuusuke realizes how outclassed he is. The threat to everyone he knows and loves shakes him more because he realizes he can't do anything about it than because they haven't been threatened before. All he can do is obey Toguro's orders and appear at the Tournament, and hope he can get stronger in time to save them. As much as his confidence is rattled, though, he calms himself with the reassurance that he can and he will. He's never failed before.
And, steadily, the Dark Tournament begins to break down his illusions.
There are too many near misses, and too many times when he's uncertain for a handful of heartbeats, not knowing if a friend is alive or dead. Kurama does this to him the most often, although Kuwabara does once in a while also (Hiei holds the distinction of never having really done so until the finals, unless one counts the first round, during which Yuusuke was sleeping and didn't notice). But he bulls ahead, regaining his footing a little more slowly each time but regaining it all the same, and sets his sights on the final round with Toguro and displays every confidence that he's going to pull it off again. He holds up his team by refusing to allow them to sacrifice themselves, and by sticking to uncharacteristically safe methods of fighting himself (the battle with Jin notwithstanding) so that he'll be able to meet Toguro in the end, and eliminate the threat to his loved ones. Even his last ordeal with Genkai gives him yet more evidence that he'll be able to come through when he really needs to, and when he falls unconscious after it's over, he seems more relieved than anything -- not only because the physical pain is over, but also because he's finally succeeded in overcoming the obstacle.
To detour a moment, the scene when Genkai tells him he has to kill her in order to receive her power is a very interesting and relevant scene; it ties in with both the value Yuusuke places on his loved ones and with his certainty that he'll be able to pull through. When faced with the decision to choose, essentially, between killing Genkai or dooming everyone he knows and loves, Yuusuke rejects both choices and is determined to make it work regardless of whether or not he acquires Genkai's power. He's naturally relieved (and annoyed) to learn that it was a test only, but he could not have chosen differently.
Then Genkai is killed, and the rules are suddenly different.
It's a shocking blow to Yuusuke -- proof, undeniable, horrible, that the fate of those for which he cares more than himself can be outside his control. And yet he doesn't blame fate, or the universe -- he immediately blames himself, and still refuses to accept that this special world might be just as unfair as the mundane world he's resented for so long. He spends an entire day in active denial, insisting to himself that Genkai's death is a personal failure, that he could have done more to save her if he only weren't so worthless a person; and he goes into the final fight of the Tournament still failing to admit even to his team that Genkai has been killed.
Yuusuke grows more aware of himself during the Tournament, or at least aware enough to realize some of his own denial and acknowledge it to Kuwabara. As a result, he almost accepts the permanence of Genkai's death, until he's hit with yet another sucker punch -- two, in fact, and right on top of each other. Genkai's spirit suddenly appears, temporarily inhabiting Puu, and tells Toguro to kill one of Yuusuke's friends; and Toguro, insisting on bringing out Yuusuke's true power, unhesitatingly does so. This, incidentally, is the same choice that Genkai gave him before his final ordeal -- the life of one friend or the lives of them all -- only she chooses differently, when he still refuses to do so.
The fact that Kuwabara does not really die is rather moot in considering most of the effect the event has on Yuusuke. The shock and trauma hit him with even more guilt than before. He even says to Toguro that he
let Toguro take his friend, even though it was clearly unwilling, and this view comes from his internal conviction that it is also a personal failure. He didn't come through at the last minute, just in time to save Kuwabara; he didn't hold up his end. When he gives the last of his strength to kill Toguro, he doesn't care if he dies, and he immediately feels even guiltier for surviving. As with Genkai, he believes the flaw and thus the fault lies entirely with him. When Kuwabara proves to have been only faking, Yuusuke is able to indulge in a spontaneous fit of emotional relief, mostly evident in his beating the crap out of the other boy, and any further emotional upheaval is put on hold as they all flee the collapsing stadium.
Once the strain of the final round has dissipated, and the team is preparing to leave the island, Yuusuke sinks into depression. Kuwabara tells Botan that it took them all morning to get the lead Tantei out of his room, and even Hiei remarks on Yuusuke's intense emotional repression. He's moody, quiet, and only puts on momentary, shallow displays of cheer that he knows won't fool his friends but that are all he can manage. He's spiraling down into self-hatred once again, still blaming himself for Genkai's death, and no one around him knows how to help him.
We get to see very little of his reaction to Genkai's return; it's assumed that as she is no longer dead, life begins again as normal. She goes home, Yuusuke and Kuwabara return to school (sort of), and until the three psychics show up, life continues as it always has. The effects of the Tournament, however, have not vanished; they're just very subtle by the time we rejoin Yuusuke as a character, months later. The timeskip doesn't allow us to examine the transition between moody despair and almost-normal functioning, but it can be said that the experience has a profound (if quiet) effect on Yuusuke's personality.
The fact that he's willing to get into a fight with three schoolboys at the beginning of the arc is telling; as Kuwabara so snidely points out, he might as well attack a nursing home. Knowing his own phenomenal strength, Yuusuke is essentially entering into what is not and could never be a fair fight, just because he's bored. This, though, is possibly merely shout-out to what we already knew about him, given his complete indifference to people he doesn't know in a non-dangerous setting. If there had been a demon attack, he'd have protected the boys with his life, but he has no problem kicking the crap out of them for no good reason, as long as he doesn't damage them seriously.
One does see that he's become harder, being willing to kill Doctor even though it goes against his morals -- but he was willing to do that mid-Tournament, anyway, and the three fighters controlled by Ichigaki were verifiably good people, whereas Doctor is definitely not. This, though, seems to be his main direction during this arc: responding to threats with unhesitating intent to kill, regretting the necessity only after it's over, and accepting the changes in his new life without undue struggle. They don't seem to have matured him any, only made him angrier and less willing to compromise. His quips become less natural, almost seeming forced at times, and he doesn't spend much time actually
talking to his friends. It's not made clear whether he even keeps in contact with Kurama, despite their schools being relatively close to one another. Considering their closeness during the Tournament, this has a distinct, off-kilter feel to it.
It also seems odd that he doesn't attempt to contact Hiei even when he needs all the help he can get; he lets Hiei walk out, forgets about him until the demon finds
him, basically says nothing except that he'd expected Hiei to show up all along, and then takes the Jaganshi's presence for granted. This tells us one of two things: either he hasn't bothered to care whether Hiei's there or not (unlikely), or he's deliberately decided to distance himself.
Distancing himself does seem to be his other pattern -- he pulls away from friends and loved ones and only interacts with them as necessary. While they're clearly still important to him, he doesn't cling to them the way he has up until now. It almost seems as though he wants as little to do with them as possible, perhaps fearing that they'll be threatened or that he'll let them down again if they come to rely on him too much. This holds for Keiko, with whom we barely seem him talk the entire arc, and for really everyone but Kuwabara, who seems to be the only person close to him whose company he actively seeks out. Even Kuwabara, though, is relegated to the status of friendly rival once more, and they don't seem to share much more than the occasional halfhearted scuffle.
This, though difficult to notice, is the Dark Tournament still hanging over Yuusuke. He's fouled up so badly that he doesn't feel as though his friends can really rely on him anymore -- but he'll be damned if he doesn't try twice as hard all the same. By both pulling away and becoming more ruthless in their defense, he can minimize his chance of failing them and maximize his ability to protect them. Basically, he's come to realize that nothing is ever fair, not even here; that this new life isn't intrinsically special, just different, and subject to every failing he's come to hate about his old life. He can no longer afford to trust it completely, and so he doesn't try.
This isn't to say that he doesn't trust his
friends anymore; on the contrary, he's got as much faith in them as ever. While the world isn't fair anymore, as far as he's concerned,
they've always been there for him, and always come through for him. He has absolute trust in them, because anything less would insult and devalue them -- and since he regards himself as being so far below them, he isn't capable of that. He measures his own worth by their example, and that's what pushes him to do his best; while he believes himself to fall massively short of worthy,
they believe he is, and he won't let them down for anything, even if he has to die. He has such trust in them that when everything else has fallen apart, when he's failed completely and isn't going to be around to make it better, he has faith that they'll do it for him. This, I think, is the highest example of trust of which Yuusuke is capable, and he still extends it to his friends without hesitation.
His behavior during the entire arc almost reads to me as though he's been aware from the start that he wouldn't survive -- has been planning on it, actually. Oh, he's taken every way around it that presented itself, but when the moment comes at the end of the arc that allows him to sacrifice himself in the hope that his friends will win, he neither hesitates nor seems surprised. It's different from the other times he's tried to give his life; always before it's been a desperate decision, or even one without any conscious thought behind it, but this time it's deliberate and has a very specific intended effect beyond just saving everyone. He knows how much his death will hurt them, but he'd rather hurt them himself than see them die.
Recall his speech to Kurama way back during the Mirror of Darkness incident -- that he didn't want to have to see anyone mourning over the loss of someone they loved, ever again. In any self-sacrifice he knows that will happen and regrets that it's unavoidable, but he's never done it on purpose before, never used it to push everyone forward the way Kuwabara's seeming death at the Tournament did for him. It's part of his new ruthlessness, the little spark of demon in him that knows he can't idealize anymore and has to use every resource available to him, no matter how grim or cruel it is.
Here, though, after his resurrection as a demon, I have a problem with the way his character is handled. The motivation to beat Sensui, the sheer need to do it on his own, wouldn't be peculiar, except that it seems to exist entirely because he wants to know which one of them is the stronger/better fighter. After all the buildup of his character, a cosmic-level wang-waving contest wasn't really what I was expecting from him. It might be that it's his new demonic nature, but there's no indication of that later, and the series actually goes to great pains to explain that he's still the same Yuusuke despite his new biology. After everything he's been through, and everything he's done, it shouldn't matter to him whether or not he's the one to defeat Sensui. I'll buy that it bothers him to have been taken over, since he hates even mild authority at the best of times, but he was going to kill Sensui anyway -- he couldn't
not do it and ensure his friends' safety. That his inability to prove he could beat Sensui on his own is such a major problem for him doesn't fit with his character up until this point. If anything should have made him angry that he didn't defeat Sensui all by himself, it would be that he needed to prove to himself that he could still win once in a while, that he was still capable of defending his friends; but then again, he's already let go of the need for that assurance, instead choosing acceptance of his inadequacy and whatever ways around it make him feel worth existing (aforementioned withdrawal from friends and willingness to go further to protect them).
After that minor part is over, his uncertainty and apathy are well-established. His identity has changed again, and he doesn't know what to do, for the third time in his very short life. The beginning of the Three Kings arc and his decision to go to the Makai and find his ancestor make perfect sense for him; his segue into unrealistic reactions is apparently brief this time around.
Yuusuke's breakup with Keiko is decently believable, and is ultimately necessary for him as a character. Keiko, for as much as she means to him, is part of the old life in which he has never belonged and will never belong, and she can't be a part of the one in which he does, even if he knew where he belonged anymore. His largely quiet acceptance of her decision is saddeningly perfect, and even his promise that he'll come back and marry her lends it an air of poignancy. He intends to keep that promise, and yet he's mature enough now that he knows how much it will cost him. His break with Kuwabara at the portal is bloody perfect also -- he really feels as though he's gaining back a measure of the old him, from before the Tournament broke him down. It's possible that the fresh start he's given is enough like the first time he died to make him feel as though he's got another chance to make this world worth it, and to believe that it won't fail again.
He's far from recovered, however. It's my interpretation of Yuusuke that his seemingly insular behavior, the decision to further his own needs above everyone else's, is a sign of maturity and denial at the same time. He combines the realization that he's not invincible and needs to know himself better with the mistaken idea that they'll be better off without him because of it, or at least that they won't need or miss him much. Keiko's leaving reinforces that, and the gentle acceptance of Kurama and shrug of seeming indifference from Hiei do as well. He leaves for Makai believing that he has to come back a better, more complete person, or he won't be worth their friendship.
Another author gives us a unique viewpoint on Yuusuke's life and training in the Makai with his ancestor Raizen (go
here for said fic, it's short but phenomenal), and puts Yuusuke's relationship with his friends back into perspective. Yuusuke's never been alone before as a fighter, not since he was a junior high street tough. His friends are the most important thing to him, and his only real motivation to better himself. Without them to support him, to keep him moving, he goes very much nowhere for a long time.
Again, I differ from the series in that he becomes so very strong without them -- I don't think his character allows for it. His need to beat Raizen is as woodenly implausible a motivation as his need to beat Sensui; there just isn't enough there to speak to his essential personality, his essential values. What happens to him during this arc is confusing, and at first it doesn't seem like he goes anywhere at all. He trains, he trains more, he lolligags about in the Makai, he sets up the Demon World Tournament, and he skims through it without any insight into what he's thinking or feeling. It's as if he no longer wants to fight at all; and it isn't all that surprising. Fighting for its own sake has never made him happy, or else he'd have been content as a street tough in the human world. Now, stripped of his title as Reikai Tantei, when the only reason for him to fight is for his own gratification and his own self-discovery, that self-discovery is unable to really happen. He enters his battle with Yomi unsure of why he's really trying anymore. He hasn't learned anything about himself in his time in the Makai; he's been hunting for an answer without knowing what question to ask. He felt he needed to come to the demon world to know more about his identity, but he has no real point of reference to relate his new experiences back to himself. He isn't able to relate to demons any better by living among them, any more than he'd been able to relate to humans when he was one. Yuusuke has always needed to
do things, and to have meaning behind his actions, and there is no real point to training to beat Raizen. Defeating his ancestor would prove nothing at all besides what he already knows: that his spirit energy can always become stronger if he trains it properly. Genkai told him that a long time ago.
I think he comes to realize that he doesn't want to fill Raizen's place -- that finding family in the demon world doesn't mean he'll find a new purpose. He thinks that he and Raizen will identify because they're family, no matter how distant, and that he can be content with what Raizen has because it will coincide with his own needs and wants. He wants so badly to finally find a father, and more, to find someone who's
like him. But Yuusuke is not ambitious; he doesn't want to be the king of anything, and power matters nothing to him if he can't use it to help the people he cares about. Instead it brings him into conflict with them, and he wants none of it. His first act once Raizen dies is to surrender that power, to remove that conflict before it starts, and to absolve himself of the need to take his ancestor's position.
Characteristic of his mindset throughout the series, Yuusuke doesn't quite know even his own motives. He sees the DT Tournament only as a brilliant way to avert mass bloodshed; it takes him until his fight with Yomi to realize what he's really been doing. He figures out that he
hasn't learned anything about who he is as a demon, and that he can't go back home until he does -- and then suddenly the fight is only an obstacle that's keeping him from his loved ones, and his renewed determination is a foregone conclusion. He isn't expecting to win the Tournament, and doesn't at all want to, but he wants to do his best, and not to let down everyone who has been trying so hard because of him. Yomi wakes him to that a little by being outraged at his sudden reticence.
What makes the series so sad is that we never know whether he finds what he's looking for. He spends more time in the Makai after the Tournament, and what he does during that period is never said. Does he give up and come back without any self-knowledge, realizing that he won't find it there? Or does he really learn what he set out to learn, and come back because his quest is over? To be perfectly honest, I very much doubt the latter. His best examples of what being a demon means for him are Hiei and Kurama -- power given purpose beyond ambition, and cruelty only when necessary. Even Toguro taught him a valuable lesson: that when you have so much power that you cannot be challenged, that power has no more worth. He can't be a true demon, and he can't be a true human; his values don't match either well enough, and his only real place is one that he'll never have again: a Reikai Tantei, existing between all three known worlds, fighting the fights that no one else can or will. It's likely that he comes to care for the demon world as much as the human one during his stay there. He already knows that demons and humans can be very much alike, and the Makai probably feels much more like home than the human world ever has -- except for Keiko. Keiko makes the choice for him, just by existing, because he is unable to leave her behind. He returns to her,
for her, and everything ends there.
I consider the conclusion of the series very bittersweet because it offers him no real resolution, and indeed it seems as though he's been permanently denied it. He'll never be a Tantei again, and so he has to figure out how to live now that his place is gone.
Yuusuke, I think, is a simple character for all of his confusion -- a disillusioned boy suddenly given a new dream and holding onto it with desperation that gives him all the strength he needs to make it real, and then a more mature person just entering adulthood with his dream marred but his determination unaltered. He's my favorite character for a reason, because I admire that about him. Even my overall disappointment with his lack of character resolution can't make him any less of a fantastic character, or any less of a perfect protagonist for a series this deep and complex.
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I hope that if you have any problems with my analysis of his character, you'll put them intelligently forth, and I promise to give you a sound and rousing debate. Thanks so much for reading! Also, pay special attention to the last two pages or so when looking for flaws. I wrote them after three in the morning. >.>
The next section will deal with his fighting style.
