Feels good to be back! Hopefully you all peeped the message at 2:39 but if not, 2024 is going to be a big year for Bonsai Pop. We have 21 more videos picked and scheduled for the rest of the year including many "Insane Stories Of ---" (We know you guys like those) As far as where we've been? You're gunna have to check out the Bonsai POPcast and/or join the patreon for the full story. Again, we can't overstate how important the patreon is, and how dedicated we are to it. There are few to no other creators out there that give as much as we do for our patrons, let alone spend as much time as we do with them. The POPcast Premium is an additional weekly podcast for our second tier patrons that's much more personal and "inside baseball" as far as we and the channel are concerned. Without the support of the proud and the few who join the community we wouldn't be here, and without additional help we simply can't put out as much content as we'd like (or you would like, we assume.) We do our best to be the creators we want to see, so when we need editors we pay them as much as we can, fairly. That's unfortunately uncommon in this industry. Part of joining the patreon is supporting skilled workers and artists who are often taken advantage of. You can also join for free. You won't have access to tiered posts, but you will get updates. All we ask is that you check it out. Thanks to everyone who was patient with us and special thanks to everyone who showed up right away today to help support this first video back. You're good people. TTYS, -Mike

Modern retellings are too obsessed with getting to the action without realizing the reasoning behind those scenes and the journey along the way there is what matters the most to make a story good.

Baccano is the answer. The anime got cut short. Most of the characters are American or European. Minimal special effects mostly involving explosions and fake blood. Most of the Light Novels' stories can be adapted into a single hour long streaming episode.

I was so bothered that the MC didn't have a white shirt underneath his school outfit the whole time. Like, the point of his character is that he's a good guy underneath a rough exterior, right? The white shirt is character design 101.

They tried to cover like 64 episodes in 5. It wasn’t dogshit, but it was super rushed.

The dark Tournament arc gave me real feelings of anxiety upon my first watch of it.

Thank you for this. You confirmed everything that I thought about this adaptation. The trailer made me go "Aw, cool, this looks awesome!" Then I saw that it was only 5 episodes, and it made me go "🤨😒 nevermind..."

THANK YOU. I honestly thought I was trapped in some alternate universe when YYHLA came out and it just had an avalanche of praise, even from long-time die-hard fans (many of whom I also respect). Outside of cool choreography I can't think of any redeeming factor in this weird speed-run abortion of an adaptation. Also, missed opportunity to say "Yu Yu Haku-NO" after your script's question of "Is This Still Yu Yu Hakusho?".

If only they made the detective arc in a season where it has the mixture of horror and action. They messed up so bad.

I don't know why they went up to the end of Dark Tournament. 5 hours just isn't enough. I originally wrote that they should've just gone up to the end of the first Toguro fight and rescue Yukina but the more I wrote, the more I realized that even the first 25 episodes was too much. Really, things should've ended with the 4 Saint Beasts. And it's fits perfectly. We see Yusuke resurrected, we get his encounters with Gouki, showing Yusuke isn't just a good fighter but he's smart, able to think out a clever way to win against a stronger fighter (shooting Gouki in the mouth when he realized he could never get through the tough skin). We see how kind he is and willing to sacrifice with Kurama and he cares for Keiko, which we see with his fight against Hiei (and again, being clever with the mirror). The tournament with Genkai introduces us to her and it buffs him up. Then we get the gang all together, for 4 Saint Beasts. Yusuke brings along his rival Kuwabara along with Kurama and Hiei, 3 enemies now turned allies. We get to see them fight and they put it all on the line to save the city from the 4 Saint Beasts. Perfect! Yes, we don't get the favorite parts from the anime, the Toguro Brothers and Dark Tournament, but fans would much rather have it done competently than haphazardly. And saving that for S2 would be better. It gives it more time, plus rescuing Yukina is perfect for the first part of S2. We see Yusuke and Kawabara just clean up demons, showing that they're way above most normal enemies. It gives weight to the strength of the Toguro brothers.

Welcome back 2024 is finally awesome with the BPop boys🔥

I've seen the first episode so far, and I *love* the action scenes. The focus on the horror elements was an inspired idea. Honestly, I would have been down for a season of Monster-of-the-week stuff, with Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Botan tracking down low-level demons, including Kurama and Hiei, culminating with Genkai's tournament/training. With season 2 rolling in hot with the Yukina/Togoro Arcs

I’m happy to see yall back been rewatching the catalog to many times now lol

The EXTREME compression is so insane to me that it makes me interested in watching the show because they'll have to rework so much.

YuYu Hakusho IS my favorite Anime, for that reason I haven't watched the adaptation. If it were focusing on just one arc at a time this could have been better. As Mike pointed out.

7:38 I don't think Go Ayano played Kenshin, that was Takeru Satoh 🤔

Didn't expect to hear the FTL soundtrack at 17:01, drove me crazy trying to figure out where I had heard it before

Love your vids!!!!! Welcome back!!! Happy 2024 🍜

Thanks for this. Also i missed you guys. Welcome back

13:05 Dark tournament in the live action didn’t feel like a tournament to be sincere. It was more like a confrontation like “hey Yusuke I got your girlfriend. If you want her back bring your squad and fight us.” Type shit💀

Mike Kun is back been rewatching the whole catalog over for 3 times

Very fun video! Thanks for letting me work on it with you :)

Omg they’re finally back 😭 Honestly, perfect return video, no bs opinion of an important topic. Classic

Missed ya uploads man

Look who's back!!! Missed you man

Missed you guys ❤

Thanks for the vid

That disrespect with the chun li taunt KO

Fun fact: the actor of Kuwabara is the same Dude in the Music video of Plastic love.

Nice to see you're back! P.S. Please make a video about Golden Kamuy🤩💛

When do monster like to party the most? April Ghoul's Day.

BONSAIBOISS ARE BACK BABYYY

"That goes for all main characters in series shonin they have plot armor" *Cries in chainsaw man and jutsu kaisen*

Definitely agree with you. In my opinion I don't think it was really their fault making it this bad. I think the five episode limit with no guarantee of a second season is really what killed it. With a restraint like that and having to remake an action show with little action in the beginning of the show, I understand the need to get to the good stuff quickly (The Dark Tournament). I think their heart was in the right place, but without the plot and character set up, the show lost it's soul and was reduced to a "Bat in the Sun" type of production. Focusing mostly on cool characters in cool fight scenes.

I didn't realize how much I liked Yu Yu Hakusho until I watched the first episode of this... adaption and realized I'd never been more personally offended by the existance of a piece of media. Its one of those stories that is so defiantly different that changing any part of it makes it less good. Like Wonderwoman, or the Addams family. I had to go back and watch the anime. Yusuke's funeral f*cking still makes me cry so hard. It deserves to be thrown in the abyss with The Adaptation of Which We Do Not Speak (atleast that one kept the story beats)

Every 4 months Mike returns from the mountains to buy provisions and deliver a long-form video essay on anime.

This was my fave as a kid along with Flame of Recca and12 Kingdoms

Algorithm be lackin, it knows I love Bonsai Pop so why keep secrets?

Koenma- the original Boss Baby XD

I was super excited for a live action YYH. I was even more hype when I saw a couple of the trailers that came out. And even though I dislike watching things in sub I was willing. Then I heard how short it was and how much they tried to cram in. Instantly my interest fell threw the floor. Also my ears perked up when I heard about Gundam being looked at. Loved the series. It can be a little silly, but I feel the main message of just how insanely bad war is out ways how silly newtypes can be in some of the later shows/movies.

Welcome back, Bonsai Pop.

Yu Yu Hakusho was a HUGE hit in Brasil during the 90s and it's still remembered very fondly by my generation (along with Saint Seiya). It's a shame that the adaptation didn't live up to the manga and anime's reputation 😢

eyyy, we got Bonsai Pop reloaded, misses y'all can't wait to hear the vid on Crunchyroll dropping the ball on us & Funimation subs getting rug pulled from under them

welcome back!

Missed yall ❤

Thank you so much, you just saved me 5hrs, now I'm going to go rewatch the original 66

Welcome back, gentlemen

I been waiting for this video since the live action dropped lol

They need drag queens to take care of the wigs because those Kurama wigs had me rethinking if he is truly my favorite character. Yusuke and Kuwabara were the best casting in my opinion. They shot themselves in the foot by not making Rando the main villain. I feel they could have re imagined him into a great villain. Instead they took away one of the best season “Dark Tournament “.

It felt more like a trailer rather than a whole season or story arc

Saw the live action twice after watching it a second time I was inspired to. re-watch the entirety of the anime and honestly it is good inspiration to watch the anime. The tournament is even better than what I remember the thing when I was younger and I think it still is my favorite out of all the arcs in that series

Just freaking remaster the old music. That's all anyone ever wants. Why do they keep thinking they need to update the music for a series to keep up with the times or whatever when we're still listening to ass quality rips of osts from 20 years ago?

Happy to see your back at it I hope your well earned break was good

I watched the live action. It was fun & condensed it well, did some great things speeding it up. However, I agree, people should watch the original, Dubbed! And then watch this.

From what I can see and grew up to understand, most live-action shows try to be like a soap-opera or even a sitcom, which some animes are animated soap-operas and sitcoms, unlike the method acted movie or high budgeted tv drama.

MOM WAKE UP BONSAI POP UPLOADED A YUYU HAKUSHO VIDEO!!

The return!

I agree with just about everything you said here but I did still enjoy it. It was a mashed mess but I think the way they mashed it made sense for how very very little time they had to do it in. I went into it already with that in mind though so I enjoyed what we were able to get. But ultimately, yeah this series should have either been given more episodes or not been made to include so much of the shows plot in just 5 episodes. I think it was clear the cast and crew love the source material and were severely kneecapped by time restraints

The boys are back! ❤

I came into this adaptation with hope, and left wanting to rewatch the anime to forget it. Happy YYH rewatch time!

I’ve been waiting with bated breath for a video from you guys!

thank you

Yu Yu is my favorite anime. Was the adaptation perfect? No. Personally I felt it was good for what it was.

I literally read all of YuYu Hakusho for the first time to get ready for this. I was disappointed by this thing

Glad to see you back! I look forward to all the good stuff coming down the pipe. That said, I'm glad that you're pointing out these genuine concerns about people casually taking in this cheapened version of a heartfelt shonen classic. YuYu Hakusho is still to this day one of my favorite shonen anime of all time with hands down the absolute best tournament arc (Flame of Recca also has a top tier tournament arc but I digress). The point still stands, a lot of people will be missing out on a masterpiece in character driven action based story telling because they felt this hollow garbage was worth their time. You're doing a public service announcement with this video, thank you!

All I can say, I'm at the bottom tier of the patreon because that's what's doable for me right now, and supporting the channel alone is worth it, but the discord is unbelievably fantastic. Just had long conversations about punk and the people that got me into it with the community and it was such a fun judge free zone. Support these fuckers, they, and the community they've cultivated are worth it.

Okay okay, I’m on season two rn, I’ll be back when I’ve finished, sheesh

This is why I’d like to see an adaptation of black lagoon. Nothing supernatural, tons of action, shootouts, gangs, and violence. Plus the main character is a fish out of water Japanese salaryman trying to survive the south Asian version of the wild Wild West in modern times.

bonsai pop 2024 lets gooooooo 💯💪🏾

Wellcome back fellas!

It seems Kenshin and Edge of Tomorrow are soo far the best Live Action adaptations we'll get. Maybe City Hunter?

Feels awesome to see you guys back and with a YYH live action video at that which I think the fights were the only good/decent things about it but everything else was awful

I've watched alot of YYH, but I'm not a fan. BUT, when I watched the show, my only passionate reaction was, "Where's the color? Why is this show so dark? The anime's really colorful."

I thought they did OK with the live action 😅 not horrible anyway…. My friends who had never seen the anime show actually wanted to watch the live action after they seen the first episode ❤

Great to see a new vid! Missed you guys

Live action YYH was an okay piece of television, but it was an absolutely horrific adaptation of one of my favorite things on this earth.

Hey there, big ol’ bangers.

Yuusuke Urameshi Unfortunately didn't lose absolutely nothing because Genkai came back to life which is the greatest stupidity

Cutting that much stuff is heinous. Imagine if Luke ran over and grabbed Obi Wan's light saber and the final duel between him and vader began there and then.... what the hell man.

13:43 Juri really is the best girl 🥰

I want NOTHING to do with ANY Netflix live action adaptations...I will just stay close, really close to the source materials thanks! 😊

Love yah man but demons door cave (hole) was in Mushiori City.

Incredible how much self-sabotaging was done in an adaptation with such a strong start

Thumbs up for the cat and I'm totally not jealous of your Puu plushie❤

Next, I'd like them to compress all of Gundam Wing into 4 episodes. Do it!

I found this to be fine, I was watching and reading the manga before coming into YuYu Hakusho live action. I gave it an 8/10 and I would say the same thing to the Saint Seiya live action which I gave that a 7/10. Speaking of Saint Seiya I hope to see more from that on Saint Seiya on your channel, your video on Saint Seiya is the reason why I got into Saint Seiya. But on topic I do prefer the manga and anime over the live action.

I watched some episodes of it butt i liked anime version better and yu yu hakusho is still one of my favorites hey bonsai pop i once had a dream about it

Ok, gotta save this for later.

Stoked

Talking about live action remakes. I love reading books along with being an anime fan and so on and so forth. I remember watching the movie Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter before reading the book and thought that the movie was Flipping awesome. Several years later I was able to get my hands on the book and after reading it thinking how wrong in thinking that the movie was any good. The book was a 1000 times way awesomer than the movie. I've tried going back to watch the movie and I absolutely cannot get into it because of how much of a difference that there is between the movie and book. Now I know that this is just a book but somewhat the same I think.

It’s the only way my mom will ever take in the show. Just like I know she’ll never watch 700 episodes of Naruto, this is a compacted simplified version. The anime will always be for fans but on a scale of 1- Dragonball this is pretty god damn good.

They skipped kuwagaras growth , damn. And genkai was killed thatr fast? Why? They couldnt do the yusuke is a good guy but hadnt really a role model to keep him straight, and liked fighting, so he got into fights and became a delinquent. Why didnt they keep that?! Show him enjoying to fight and that be a cause ot talk how he gets always in fights? Which makes it worse not establishing, it was the first adult that got and supported him, why . And no yosuke calling out kurama"aye, i can see through your fassade, you want to die for your mom, i cant klet that happen"

I wouldn't go as far as "love", but I did LIKE it. YYH is my #1 anime to this day and very influential to the stories I make. What I like the most about this was that the people who've I have been trying to get into the anime has finally started their anime

Lol I remember asking what Mike thought of the show after I watched it over in the discord, I thought it kinda slapped. Now I realize how much of the anime I had completely forgotten. Feels bad man. (But I also still like it)

Gotta miss the days of old anime when it was a battle of philosophies.

I think a lot of the good reviews are built upon the one piece adaptation being good and believing that this was the same... when it just wasn't (and even then I have a lot of issues with the one piece one)

Did we forget the episode title for th dub of yu yu hakusho was entitled "Thr Death of Genkai?" Pretty sure that was pretty spoilerific.

What told me from the get go that there was little care put into this adaptation from a character standpoint was making Yusuke’s trademark green uniform the official school uniform of Sarayashiki. Being that school uniforms are (especially in Japan) representative of discipline, Yusuke intentionally wearing a bright green uniform over his school’s required blue uniform is an outward expression of his rebellion, disregard for the consequences of his actions, and a general disrespect and distrusts towards authority. This is all lost with the choice to have everyone at Sarayashiki wear green. It makes Yusuke seem just like everyone else, which is the antithesis to who he is supposed to be.

Any time someone describes something as "decent", you know you're not talking to someone who knows what's what.

Wait that is THE Meiko Kaji of Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter, Lady Snowblood and Scorpion Female Prisoner 701? Did they at least give her a giant hat and a knife? She could not possibly have avenged Toguro without a hat that has a diameter of less than 16 inches!