Application for Cape and Cowl.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Yusuke Urameshi
FANDOM: Yu Yu Hakusho
CHRONOLOGY: Pulled from the minute after he wakes up during the Dark Tournament.
CLASS: Hero wrapped up in a juvenile delinquent. He’ll keep his dog tags, just out of curiosity, or until he figures out something better.
SUPERHERO NAME: N/A
ALTER EGO: Yusuke Urameshi, spirit detective. Or just regular detective, with a specialization in strange cases.
BACKGROUND:
To understand Yusuke’s background, a few terms need to be clearly defined. There are three levels of the world, as Yusuke knows it. Firstly, there’s the Human World, which is where the mortals reside. Second, there is the Demon World, which the traditional Japanese demons reside. The Demon World was not always in existence; it was created in an attempt to keep the demons and the humans separate, although it was not wholly successful, as demons can pass between both worlds.
Thirdly, there is the Spirit World, which is where the spirits of the dead go to be judged. Ruled by King Yama and his son, Koenma, (who’s acting lord of Spirit World, as King Yama is often away dealing with more important business) souls are sent to paradise, purgatory, or limbo. The Spirit World has a contingent of workers, ferry-girls who guide the souls to the Spirit World, ogres who function as secretarial workers, and lastly, Spirit Detectives, special agents who find and arrest demons causing trouble in the Human World. As a failsafe, in case a Spirit Detective goes rogue or is unreachable, the Spirit Defense Force exists, and are called in to deal with the situation.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is the existence of Spirit Energy. Spirit Energy is the life force of living beings, and is present in all humans and demons (although demons have Demon Energy, as opposed to Spirit Energy). There is the implication in canon that demons are able to use their energy without training and simply on instinct, and that humans must successfully complete rigorous training to use their Spirit Energy.
As for Yusuke Urameshi, he is fourteen years old at the beginning of the series, and notorious for fighting, skipping school, smoking, gambling, and drinking. The series opens with him skipping school, and walking around the town. He comes across a small child, and makes faces at him, then warns the child that he should play elsewhere, that there are cars, and walks off. However, the child wanders into the street in front of a car. Yusuke shoves the child out of the way, but in the process, he is hit by the car and killed instantly. He floats above the scene, trying to get the paramedic’s attention, until he is greeted by Botan, one of the ferry-girls.
She informs Yusuke that no one in the Spirit World expected him to actually attempt to save the child’s life, and that there was no room for him in the afterlife. She offers to restore him to his body, but Yusuke declines, saying everyone he knows is better off without him around.
However, he changes his mind immediately after attending his own wake, upon seeing the reactions of the people in attendance. His mother, Atsuko, is sitting on the floor, unresponsive and consumed with grief, and Keiko, Yusuke’s childhood friend, breaks down into sobs. Kuwabara, a boy Yusuke has been fighting for years, shows up, angry and upset and yelling that Yusuke’s not supposed to die until Kuwabra’s finished beating him up. He realizes that he meant more to the people around him than they told him, and decides to take the offer to come back.
Botan takes Yusuke to Koenma, who gives Yusuke an egg, and tells him it will hatch into a Spirit Beast, which will help Yusuke come back to life. However, the egg reacts to type of person Yusuke is. If Yusuke is a genuinely good person, the egg will hatch a good creature that will help him. If Yusuke is a bad person, the egg will hatch and devour him. But before the egg hatches, Yusuke sacrifices it to save Kieko after she is caught in a fire, trying to save Yusuke’s body from a burning building, giving up all the power gained from his good deeds to have Koenma save her. Koenma uses the energy to create a safe path for Kieko out of the building.
Afterwards, Yusuke despairs of ever being returned to life, until Koenma informs him that a twenty-four hour window exists, in which the cycles of Yusuke’s spirit energy will be in correct alignment for his resurrection, so long as Yusuke receives a kiss from someone very close to him. However, if he misses this window, he'll have to wait another fifty years for his powers to align again. Yusuke informed Keiko and Kuwabara; Kuwabara wrote the dream off as a nightmare, as it depicted him kissing Yusuke, and Keiko was delayed by her mother’s sudden hospitalization. It was only some quick thinking on Botan’s part that enabled Kieko to get to Yusuke on time and kiss him, returning him to his body.
After returning to life, Botan informs Yusuke that his experience with death has allowed him to see the manifestations of demons in the Human World, and Yusuke is to become the new Spirit Detective. His job is to protect the human race from demons, and his first assignment is to recover three artifacts stolen from the Spirit World. Koenma imparts the knowledge of how to use his spirit energy as weapon, the Spirit Gun, and sends him off to track down the three thieves, Hiei, Kurama, and Gouki, who stole the Sword of Shadows, the mirror called Forlorn Hope, and the Orb of Baast. Yusuke defeats Gouki with Botan’s help, and his Spirit Gun, and Kurama willingly turns over the mirror of Forlorn Hope. Kurama only intended to use its power to save his human mother’s life. The mirror would have taken all of Kurama’s life in exchange for saving hers, but Yusuke offered up his own life to save Kurama’s, and the mirror granted Kurama’s wish and took half of each life, leaving them both alive.
The last artifact was nowhere near as easy to obtain. Hiei kidnapped Kieko, and implanted a third eye in her forehead, which would slowly open and turn her into a demon. Botan slowed the transformation while Hiei and Yusuke fought. Hiei was extremely fast and extremely powerful, but Yusuke managed to defeat him by aiming his Spirit Gun blast to ricochet off the mirror and strike Hiei in the back.
Immediately after his first case, Yusuke was sent to Master Genkai, an old master who needed a protégé to train in her Spirit Wave technique. In addition to the task of obtaining the position of protégé, Yusuke was charged with the task of finding a demon named Rando, who wanted to inherit the powerful technique. Yusuke made it through Genkai’s trails successfully, and found and defeated the demon Rando, who had disguised himself as a potential pupil and flew under the radar until the final test. Yusuke undergoes training with Genkai for two weeks, and his strength increases dramatically, from a D-class to a C-class (A-class being the highest).
For his second assignment, Yusuke was sent to the Maze Castle to fight and defeat the four Saint Beasts, demons intending to enslave the human race using parasites controlled by Suzaku, the leader of the four. Yusuke was accompanied by Kuwabara, who had developed his Spirit Energy, and by Hiei and Kurama, who were charged with assisting Yusuke as part of their probation. They successfully fought their way through the lower levels of the castle, facing three of the four, until reaching Suzaku’s stronghold. Yusuke was the one to face him, and defeated Suzaku after a long and brutal battle, which cost him all of his own life energy. He very nearly died, but was saved by Kuwabara, who transfered part of his own life energy into Yusuke’s body.
His third assignment was to rescue the ice maiden named Yukina, who was actually Hiei’s twin sister, something Yukina herself was unaware of. She had been captured and imprisoned; her tears turned to precious jewels, and her captor tortured her until she cried, and sold the resulting jewels for profit. Kuwabara demanded to accompany Yusuke on the rescue mission, and together they faced a cadre of demons, but Yusuke and Kuwabara’s combined efforts make defeating said demons child’s play. They rescue Yukina, but before they can successfully leave the compound, they must face the Toguro brothers, two demons who work as a team. The Elder Toguro can manipulate his body into weapons, and the Younger Toguro can increase his muscle mass and strength dramatically. After a brutal fight, Kuwabara and Yusuke claim victory, kill the Toguro brothers, and whisk Yukina away.
However, shortly after, the Younger Toguro pays Yusuke a visit. He reveals that he and his brother threw the fight deliberately. He treats Yusuke to a display of his powers, and demands Yusuke face him in the Dark Tournament, essentially the WWE for demons, and defeat him in a real fight. After seeing the Younger Toguro’s power, Yusuke returns to Genkai and trains with her for two months before the Tournament, increasing his power from a middle C-class to an upper C-class, before returning to meet up with Hiei, Kurama and Kuwabara to catch the boat to the Dark Tournament.
PERSONALITY:
Yusuke was raised by his mother, who was quite young when she had him, and was typically off attending parties and getting drunk. Yusuke never knew his father, and was used to fending for himself from a very young age. Because of this, Yusuke grew up in a very neglectful environment, and that definitely had an impact on his personality, making him more of a loner, and much more reluctant to depend on other people.
Yusuke has an extremely short fuse, and it is easy to provoke him into flying off the handle. He is also very, very impulsive, often leaping into situations without thinking them through, and often relying on luck to get him through said situations safely. He often comes up with either a flash of brilliance, or a stroke of luck. On many occasions, Yusuke has been pegged as rather unintelligent, and even just stupid at times.
One of Yusuke’s most prominent traits is his love of fighting, and his constant desire to do so. Yusuke’s love of fighting stems mostly from his love of a good brawl, as opposed to fighting for personal gain. In addition, Yusuke hates killing, and never takes a life if he can win a fight without doing so.
While Yusuke enjoys intimidating people who fear him, and appears outwardly to be tough, crude and entirely inconsiderate of others, he is actually very kind, and truly does care about the people around him. Yusuke is fiercely protective of his friends, especially Keiko, his best friend from childhood, and his mother, despite her faults. Kuwabara, Hiei and Kurama are all people for whom Yusuke had developed strong bonds with and mutual respect for, and he will put his life on the line to help them, if they should ever have a need.
POWER:
First and foremost is Yusuke’s Spirit Gun, in which Yusuke concentrates all his Spirit Energy into his index finger and uses it as a projectile weapon. When Yusuke first began using it, he could only produce one shot a day, but by the beginning of the Dark Tournament, after Genkai’s training Yusuke can manage four shots per day. He also can gather Spirit Energy into his fist and use it to form many blasts. They are less powerful, but more effective against large numbers of weak enemies, or invisible or extremely quick opponents. He can also shoot his Spirit Gun rapidly, one after the other, or surround his fists with Spirit Energy, using it to block attacks or increase the force of his punches. He also has mastered the Spirit Wave by the time of the Dark Tournament, in which Yusuke uses his entire body, surrounding it with his Spirit Energy. It is a very powerful close range attack, but very difficult to produce and dangerous to use.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[Video, translated from Japanese, unfiltered because he can’t quite figure out how to do that.]
Hey, is this thing on? Hey? Hello? All right. Here we go.
[Video is tilted at an angle, but nevertheless shows a young boy with slicked back hair, with a confused frown directed at the device. He shakes the device once, as if to prove a point, then starts speaking again.]
Will someone explain to me how I got here? Last I checked I was on a boat to a pretty important tournament. In Japan. You know, that country on the other side of the globe?
[He breaks off to mutter under his breath, fiddling with a few buttons irritably. The screen breaks into static for a minute, then clears, revealing half of Yusuke’s face in the right-hand corner, still scowling.]
And I kinda had a tournament to win. All this hero crap is great and all, but can’t it wait a month or so until I finished kicking everyone’s ass? I put up with that old hag for two months and worked myself to death, and I don’t even get a chance to show off all the crap I learned?
Typical.
And what’s the deal with these stupid dog tags? Am I going to be at someone else’s beck and call now? I wasn’t even in the market for a new job. Not that the old one was all roses and sunshine, but better the toddler you know than the metal man you don’t, right?
[Video, untranslated Japanese, extremely hackable filter to Kuwabara, Hiei, and Kurama]
Guys, you wanna explain what happened? Geez, I take a quick nap and when I wake up I’m in a whole different country. I know the captain of the boat didn’t look all that reliable, but this is pretty ridiculous, you’ve gotta admit.
Guys? You out there…?
…This thing’s on, right?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
Sometimes, mostly the times that coincided with him peeling himself off the mats of Genkai’s training studio and trying to convince his muscles to start moving again, Yusuke wondered where he’d be if he hadn’t saved that little boy. Or better yet, if he’d let Kieko talk him into going to class. Or if he hadn’t attempted to go to school at all, and spent the day at the arcade, or pounding Kuwabara into the pavement.
And it was a stupid thing to think, because thinking about it wouldn’t change anything, but he couldn’t help it. What if he hadn’t thrown himself in front of that car?
He’d probably be lounging somewhere downtown right now. On his own, because Kuwabara and he would still be trying to beat each other to death every time they saw each other. And Kieko would probably still nag him, but not with that strange, tender look on her face. And that might have been enough for him before, but now it wasn’t. Now it didn’t even come close.
It was strange, thinking that this was where he’d rather be, sweating and trying to balance on the tip of a nail, every inch of his body singing out in pain, not that Yusuke could hear it over Genkai’s criticism. Two weeks. He had two weeks for Genkai to cram all of that knowledge into his head, and he didn’t hate it. Well, not entirely. Sometimes he thought about walking out of here and telling Genkai and Koenma both to shove it, but deep down, he knew he never would. Because he liked this, which was beyond ridiculous. For god’s sake, he hadn’t even liked studying, and here he was, trying to learn this technique to make him be a better Spirit Detective, a job he hadn’t even wanted to begin with, and…and…
And somewhere along the line, this had become exactly what he’d wanted.
All his life he’d been fighting. And he’d been damn good at it, the best there was, and now he was better. Or getting better. His body was changing, re-forging itself; he could feel the thrum of his spirit energy when he closed his eyes. He could feel it; despite how broken and sore his body felt when he finally crawled (literally crawled, you try standing up when you’ve been meditating on a bed of nails all day) into bed at the end of the day for four, sometimes five hours of sleep until Genkai screeched him out of bed.
Demented old harpy, he’d growl, and she’d promptly kick him in the shins and think up a particularly vicious training regimen for the day. And he knew that when this was all over and done with, he’d get to go back home and back to school, and Botan would appear with a video cassette and he’d take it and complain and groan and sigh, but he’d feel it. He’d feel the crackle of adrenaline he always felt before a good fight, the way his heartbeat would drum against his chest and his muscles would all sing out in anticipation and he would taste excitement on his tongue as he clenched his fingers into fists and turned to face his opponent. And he’d have Botan and Kuwabara at his back, strange and entirely welcome, even though he’d always been on his own, since he was a kid, but not anymore.
And it had taken dying and coming back to life and fighting, always, always fighting, to get him here, but he didn’t think he’d ever look back and wish he was somewhere else.
PERSONALITY - REVISION:
The thing about Yusuke is that there is a lot more to him than the persona he projects to the world. There’s a lot going on beneath the surface, so to speak, and unless you know him well, it’s not exactly possible to discern it. Upon meeting him, he comes off as your run-of-the-mill punk, a tough kid with a penchant for fighting. And while that is a part of who he is, there’s a whole flip side to him, the part that’s fiercely loyal to his friends, the part that’s surprisingly honorable and prone to noble feats and self-sacrifice, and the part of him that’s remarkably driven.
Yusuke was raised by his mother; Atsuko was very young when she gave birth to Yusuke, and she wasn’t much for parenting. Typically, she was off attending parties and getting drunk, rather than monitoring her son, which meant Yusuke mostly raised himself. Yusuke never knew his father, was very much neglected by his mother, and consequently, was very used to fending for himself from a very young age. These factors definitely had an impact on him, making him more of a loner, and much more reluctant to depend on other people. Before his death, he wasn’t friendly with any of his classmates other than Keiko, because he’d spent his life cultivating a hard exterior, and kept everyone at arm’s length. The majority of his schoolmates were actually afraid of him, and those that weren’t wanted to fight him, and although that was what Yusuke wanted, to an extent, there are moments in canon where he is shown as being hurt or insulted by the assumptions people make about him, based off of the front he projects.
Something which feeds into that front is Yusuke’s temper. He has an extremely short fuse, often flying off the handle when someone insults him. It is possible to provoke him into a blind rage, in which instances he simply throws himself into a fight with everything he’s got, despite how much larger, stronger, or more experienced his opponent is, because he is simply that determined to make them eat their words.
It goes without saying that Yusuke is very, very impulsive. Even without being provoked, he often leaps into situation without thinking or planning adequately, such as when the first time he fought Hiei, and risked using his last Spirit Gun blast without knowing whether or not it would rebound off the Mirror of Forlorn Hope. Yusuke manages to get through his fights with a mix of brash confidence, incredible luck, and strokes of brilliance. Kurama has described him as a lucky fool, and at times, it truly does fit. In fact, on many occasions, Yusuke has been pegged as rather unintelligent, and even just stupid at times. Which is partly true, but not entirely true. Yusuke makes foolish decisions because of his impulsive nature, and sometimes those decisions backfire, but scratch the surface and he has a lot of street smarts and common sense that serve him well when he becomes Spirit Detective, and later on, Genkai’s pupil.
A thing about Yusuke is that he needs to be pushed, and pushed hard, to achieve his potential. He has a tendency to coast along on the power he has, and just throw himself into fights and rely on luck. It takes Botan bribing him to get him to sign up as Genkai’s student, and the Younger Tugoro threatening Yusuke’s life and the lives of the people he loves to push Yusuke to return to Genkai and admit he needs to get stronger. Without someone pushing at him, he gets complacent, and is content to stick at the power level he has.
Of course, one of Yusuke’s most prominent traits is his love of fighting. Yusuke is shown to be an extremely proficient fighter even before becoming Genkai’s pupil; his name sends people scattering in fear of being beaten up, and he routinely wins fights against his peers. While possessing Kuwabara’s body for a brief time after his death, he mentions how good it felt to brawl again, and once being restored to his own body, he revels in being able to fight, indicting this desire is a constant, and a large part of Yusuke’s core personality. On the flip side, Yusuke doesn’t fight for personal gain, only for the enjoyment of it. He also tries to avoid killing, if he can manage to win a fight without doing so. He has a moral code when it comes to fighting, treating all his opponents with respect, and gives a fair fight to anyone who challenges him.
While Yusuke at times can appear tough, crude, and utterly inconsiderate of the people around him, he does, in actuality, possess a good heart, and truly does care about the people around him. This becomes more and more apparent after Yusuke is returned to his body after dying, and having seen how much the people in his life had cared for him. After being restored, Yusuke becomes much less of a loner, developing a strong bond of friendship with Kuwabara, as well as being able to place his trust in Kurama, Hiei and Botan. By the time the Dark Tournament arrives, Yusuke’s loyalty and friendships with them has grown to the point where he will literally put his own life on the line to help them. Threatening his friends usually triggers flat-out rage on Yusuke’s part, to the point where his power can intensify outrageously, driven by his desire to save them. For instance, when Keiko, Yusuke’s childhood friend and the girl he loves, was put in danger by the leader of the Saint Beasts, Yusuke scraped together enough power to win the fight, despite being down for the count only moments before learning Keiko could be killed if he lost. He will give everything he has, every last scrap of Spirit Energy, even that which keeps him alive, to protect his friends, if the occasion calls for it.
CHARACTER NAME: Yusuke Urameshi
FANDOM: Yu Yu Hakusho
CHRONOLOGY: Pulled from the minute after he wakes up during the Dark Tournament.
CLASS: Hero wrapped up in a juvenile delinquent. He’ll keep his dog tags, just out of curiosity, or until he figures out something better.
SUPERHERO NAME: N/A
ALTER EGO: Yusuke Urameshi, spirit detective. Or just regular detective, with a specialization in strange cases.
BACKGROUND:
To understand Yusuke’s background, a few terms need to be clearly defined. There are three levels of the world, as Yusuke knows it. Firstly, there’s the Human World, which is where the mortals reside. Second, there is the Demon World, which the traditional Japanese demons reside. The Demon World was not always in existence; it was created in an attempt to keep the demons and the humans separate, although it was not wholly successful, as demons can pass between both worlds.
Thirdly, there is the Spirit World, which is where the spirits of the dead go to be judged. Ruled by King Yama and his son, Koenma, (who’s acting lord of Spirit World, as King Yama is often away dealing with more important business) souls are sent to paradise, purgatory, or limbo. The Spirit World has a contingent of workers, ferry-girls who guide the souls to the Spirit World, ogres who function as secretarial workers, and lastly, Spirit Detectives, special agents who find and arrest demons causing trouble in the Human World. As a failsafe, in case a Spirit Detective goes rogue or is unreachable, the Spirit Defense Force exists, and are called in to deal with the situation.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is the existence of Spirit Energy. Spirit Energy is the life force of living beings, and is present in all humans and demons (although demons have Demon Energy, as opposed to Spirit Energy). There is the implication in canon that demons are able to use their energy without training and simply on instinct, and that humans must successfully complete rigorous training to use their Spirit Energy.
As for Yusuke Urameshi, he is fourteen years old at the beginning of the series, and notorious for fighting, skipping school, smoking, gambling, and drinking. The series opens with him skipping school, and walking around the town. He comes across a small child, and makes faces at him, then warns the child that he should play elsewhere, that there are cars, and walks off. However, the child wanders into the street in front of a car. Yusuke shoves the child out of the way, but in the process, he is hit by the car and killed instantly. He floats above the scene, trying to get the paramedic’s attention, until he is greeted by Botan, one of the ferry-girls.
She informs Yusuke that no one in the Spirit World expected him to actually attempt to save the child’s life, and that there was no room for him in the afterlife. She offers to restore him to his body, but Yusuke declines, saying everyone he knows is better off without him around.
However, he changes his mind immediately after attending his own wake, upon seeing the reactions of the people in attendance. His mother, Atsuko, is sitting on the floor, unresponsive and consumed with grief, and Keiko, Yusuke’s childhood friend, breaks down into sobs. Kuwabara, a boy Yusuke has been fighting for years, shows up, angry and upset and yelling that Yusuke’s not supposed to die until Kuwabra’s finished beating him up. He realizes that he meant more to the people around him than they told him, and decides to take the offer to come back.
Botan takes Yusuke to Koenma, who gives Yusuke an egg, and tells him it will hatch into a Spirit Beast, which will help Yusuke come back to life. However, the egg reacts to type of person Yusuke is. If Yusuke is a genuinely good person, the egg will hatch a good creature that will help him. If Yusuke is a bad person, the egg will hatch and devour him. But before the egg hatches, Yusuke sacrifices it to save Kieko after she is caught in a fire, trying to save Yusuke’s body from a burning building, giving up all the power gained from his good deeds to have Koenma save her. Koenma uses the energy to create a safe path for Kieko out of the building.
Afterwards, Yusuke despairs of ever being returned to life, until Koenma informs him that a twenty-four hour window exists, in which the cycles of Yusuke’s spirit energy will be in correct alignment for his resurrection, so long as Yusuke receives a kiss from someone very close to him. However, if he misses this window, he'll have to wait another fifty years for his powers to align again. Yusuke informed Keiko and Kuwabara; Kuwabara wrote the dream off as a nightmare, as it depicted him kissing Yusuke, and Keiko was delayed by her mother’s sudden hospitalization. It was only some quick thinking on Botan’s part that enabled Kieko to get to Yusuke on time and kiss him, returning him to his body.
After returning to life, Botan informs Yusuke that his experience with death has allowed him to see the manifestations of demons in the Human World, and Yusuke is to become the new Spirit Detective. His job is to protect the human race from demons, and his first assignment is to recover three artifacts stolen from the Spirit World. Koenma imparts the knowledge of how to use his spirit energy as weapon, the Spirit Gun, and sends him off to track down the three thieves, Hiei, Kurama, and Gouki, who stole the Sword of Shadows, the mirror called Forlorn Hope, and the Orb of Baast. Yusuke defeats Gouki with Botan’s help, and his Spirit Gun, and Kurama willingly turns over the mirror of Forlorn Hope. Kurama only intended to use its power to save his human mother’s life. The mirror would have taken all of Kurama’s life in exchange for saving hers, but Yusuke offered up his own life to save Kurama’s, and the mirror granted Kurama’s wish and took half of each life, leaving them both alive.
The last artifact was nowhere near as easy to obtain. Hiei kidnapped Kieko, and implanted a third eye in her forehead, which would slowly open and turn her into a demon. Botan slowed the transformation while Hiei and Yusuke fought. Hiei was extremely fast and extremely powerful, but Yusuke managed to defeat him by aiming his Spirit Gun blast to ricochet off the mirror and strike Hiei in the back.
Immediately after his first case, Yusuke was sent to Master Genkai, an old master who needed a protégé to train in her Spirit Wave technique. In addition to the task of obtaining the position of protégé, Yusuke was charged with the task of finding a demon named Rando, who wanted to inherit the powerful technique. Yusuke made it through Genkai’s trails successfully, and found and defeated the demon Rando, who had disguised himself as a potential pupil and flew under the radar until the final test. Yusuke undergoes training with Genkai for two weeks, and his strength increases dramatically, from a D-class to a C-class (A-class being the highest).
For his second assignment, Yusuke was sent to the Maze Castle to fight and defeat the four Saint Beasts, demons intending to enslave the human race using parasites controlled by Suzaku, the leader of the four. Yusuke was accompanied by Kuwabara, who had developed his Spirit Energy, and by Hiei and Kurama, who were charged with assisting Yusuke as part of their probation. They successfully fought their way through the lower levels of the castle, facing three of the four, until reaching Suzaku’s stronghold. Yusuke was the one to face him, and defeated Suzaku after a long and brutal battle, which cost him all of his own life energy. He very nearly died, but was saved by Kuwabara, who transfered part of his own life energy into Yusuke’s body.
His third assignment was to rescue the ice maiden named Yukina, who was actually Hiei’s twin sister, something Yukina herself was unaware of. She had been captured and imprisoned; her tears turned to precious jewels, and her captor tortured her until she cried, and sold the resulting jewels for profit. Kuwabara demanded to accompany Yusuke on the rescue mission, and together they faced a cadre of demons, but Yusuke and Kuwabara’s combined efforts make defeating said demons child’s play. They rescue Yukina, but before they can successfully leave the compound, they must face the Toguro brothers, two demons who work as a team. The Elder Toguro can manipulate his body into weapons, and the Younger Toguro can increase his muscle mass and strength dramatically. After a brutal fight, Kuwabara and Yusuke claim victory, kill the Toguro brothers, and whisk Yukina away.
However, shortly after, the Younger Toguro pays Yusuke a visit. He reveals that he and his brother threw the fight deliberately. He treats Yusuke to a display of his powers, and demands Yusuke face him in the Dark Tournament, essentially the WWE for demons, and defeat him in a real fight. After seeing the Younger Toguro’s power, Yusuke returns to Genkai and trains with her for two months before the Tournament, increasing his power from a middle C-class to an upper C-class, before returning to meet up with Hiei, Kurama and Kuwabara to catch the boat to the Dark Tournament.
PERSONALITY:
Yusuke was raised by his mother, who was quite young when she had him, and was typically off attending parties and getting drunk. Yusuke never knew his father, and was used to fending for himself from a very young age. Because of this, Yusuke grew up in a very neglectful environment, and that definitely had an impact on his personality, making him more of a loner, and much more reluctant to depend on other people.
Yusuke has an extremely short fuse, and it is easy to provoke him into flying off the handle. He is also very, very impulsive, often leaping into situations without thinking them through, and often relying on luck to get him through said situations safely. He often comes up with either a flash of brilliance, or a stroke of luck. On many occasions, Yusuke has been pegged as rather unintelligent, and even just stupid at times.
One of Yusuke’s most prominent traits is his love of fighting, and his constant desire to do so. Yusuke’s love of fighting stems mostly from his love of a good brawl, as opposed to fighting for personal gain. In addition, Yusuke hates killing, and never takes a life if he can win a fight without doing so.
While Yusuke enjoys intimidating people who fear him, and appears outwardly to be tough, crude and entirely inconsiderate of others, he is actually very kind, and truly does care about the people around him. Yusuke is fiercely protective of his friends, especially Keiko, his best friend from childhood, and his mother, despite her faults. Kuwabara, Hiei and Kurama are all people for whom Yusuke had developed strong bonds with and mutual respect for, and he will put his life on the line to help them, if they should ever have a need.
POWER:
First and foremost is Yusuke’s Spirit Gun, in which Yusuke concentrates all his Spirit Energy into his index finger and uses it as a projectile weapon. When Yusuke first began using it, he could only produce one shot a day, but by the beginning of the Dark Tournament, after Genkai’s training Yusuke can manage four shots per day. He also can gather Spirit Energy into his fist and use it to form many blasts. They are less powerful, but more effective against large numbers of weak enemies, or invisible or extremely quick opponents. He can also shoot his Spirit Gun rapidly, one after the other, or surround his fists with Spirit Energy, using it to block attacks or increase the force of his punches. He also has mastered the Spirit Wave by the time of the Dark Tournament, in which Yusuke uses his entire body, surrounding it with his Spirit Energy. It is a very powerful close range attack, but very difficult to produce and dangerous to use.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[Video, translated from Japanese, unfiltered because he can’t quite figure out how to do that.]
Hey, is this thing on? Hey? Hello? All right. Here we go.
[Video is tilted at an angle, but nevertheless shows a young boy with slicked back hair, with a confused frown directed at the device. He shakes the device once, as if to prove a point, then starts speaking again.]
Will someone explain to me how I got here? Last I checked I was on a boat to a pretty important tournament. In Japan. You know, that country on the other side of the globe?
[He breaks off to mutter under his breath, fiddling with a few buttons irritably. The screen breaks into static for a minute, then clears, revealing half of Yusuke’s face in the right-hand corner, still scowling.]
And I kinda had a tournament to win. All this hero crap is great and all, but can’t it wait a month or so until I finished kicking everyone’s ass? I put up with that old hag for two months and worked myself to death, and I don’t even get a chance to show off all the crap I learned?
Typical.
And what’s the deal with these stupid dog tags? Am I going to be at someone else’s beck and call now? I wasn’t even in the market for a new job. Not that the old one was all roses and sunshine, but better the toddler you know than the metal man you don’t, right?
[Video, untranslated Japanese, extremely hackable filter to Kuwabara, Hiei, and Kurama]
Guys, you wanna explain what happened? Geez, I take a quick nap and when I wake up I’m in a whole different country. I know the captain of the boat didn’t look all that reliable, but this is pretty ridiculous, you’ve gotta admit.
Guys? You out there…?
…This thing’s on, right?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
Sometimes, mostly the times that coincided with him peeling himself off the mats of Genkai’s training studio and trying to convince his muscles to start moving again, Yusuke wondered where he’d be if he hadn’t saved that little boy. Or better yet, if he’d let Kieko talk him into going to class. Or if he hadn’t attempted to go to school at all, and spent the day at the arcade, or pounding Kuwabara into the pavement.
And it was a stupid thing to think, because thinking about it wouldn’t change anything, but he couldn’t help it. What if he hadn’t thrown himself in front of that car?
He’d probably be lounging somewhere downtown right now. On his own, because Kuwabara and he would still be trying to beat each other to death every time they saw each other. And Kieko would probably still nag him, but not with that strange, tender look on her face. And that might have been enough for him before, but now it wasn’t. Now it didn’t even come close.
It was strange, thinking that this was where he’d rather be, sweating and trying to balance on the tip of a nail, every inch of his body singing out in pain, not that Yusuke could hear it over Genkai’s criticism. Two weeks. He had two weeks for Genkai to cram all of that knowledge into his head, and he didn’t hate it. Well, not entirely. Sometimes he thought about walking out of here and telling Genkai and Koenma both to shove it, but deep down, he knew he never would. Because he liked this, which was beyond ridiculous. For god’s sake, he hadn’t even liked studying, and here he was, trying to learn this technique to make him be a better Spirit Detective, a job he hadn’t even wanted to begin with, and…and…
And somewhere along the line, this had become exactly what he’d wanted.
All his life he’d been fighting. And he’d been damn good at it, the best there was, and now he was better. Or getting better. His body was changing, re-forging itself; he could feel the thrum of his spirit energy when he closed his eyes. He could feel it; despite how broken and sore his body felt when he finally crawled (literally crawled, you try standing up when you’ve been meditating on a bed of nails all day) into bed at the end of the day for four, sometimes five hours of sleep until Genkai screeched him out of bed.
Demented old harpy, he’d growl, and she’d promptly kick him in the shins and think up a particularly vicious training regimen for the day. And he knew that when this was all over and done with, he’d get to go back home and back to school, and Botan would appear with a video cassette and he’d take it and complain and groan and sigh, but he’d feel it. He’d feel the crackle of adrenaline he always felt before a good fight, the way his heartbeat would drum against his chest and his muscles would all sing out in anticipation and he would taste excitement on his tongue as he clenched his fingers into fists and turned to face his opponent. And he’d have Botan and Kuwabara at his back, strange and entirely welcome, even though he’d always been on his own, since he was a kid, but not anymore.
And it had taken dying and coming back to life and fighting, always, always fighting, to get him here, but he didn’t think he’d ever look back and wish he was somewhere else.
PERSONALITY - REVISION:
The thing about Yusuke is that there is a lot more to him than the persona he projects to the world. There’s a lot going on beneath the surface, so to speak, and unless you know him well, it’s not exactly possible to discern it. Upon meeting him, he comes off as your run-of-the-mill punk, a tough kid with a penchant for fighting. And while that is a part of who he is, there’s a whole flip side to him, the part that’s fiercely loyal to his friends, the part that’s surprisingly honorable and prone to noble feats and self-sacrifice, and the part of him that’s remarkably driven.
Yusuke was raised by his mother; Atsuko was very young when she gave birth to Yusuke, and she wasn’t much for parenting. Typically, she was off attending parties and getting drunk, rather than monitoring her son, which meant Yusuke mostly raised himself. Yusuke never knew his father, was very much neglected by his mother, and consequently, was very used to fending for himself from a very young age. These factors definitely had an impact on him, making him more of a loner, and much more reluctant to depend on other people. Before his death, he wasn’t friendly with any of his classmates other than Keiko, because he’d spent his life cultivating a hard exterior, and kept everyone at arm’s length. The majority of his schoolmates were actually afraid of him, and those that weren’t wanted to fight him, and although that was what Yusuke wanted, to an extent, there are moments in canon where he is shown as being hurt or insulted by the assumptions people make about him, based off of the front he projects.
Something which feeds into that front is Yusuke’s temper. He has an extremely short fuse, often flying off the handle when someone insults him. It is possible to provoke him into a blind rage, in which instances he simply throws himself into a fight with everything he’s got, despite how much larger, stronger, or more experienced his opponent is, because he is simply that determined to make them eat their words.
It goes without saying that Yusuke is very, very impulsive. Even without being provoked, he often leaps into situation without thinking or planning adequately, such as when the first time he fought Hiei, and risked using his last Spirit Gun blast without knowing whether or not it would rebound off the Mirror of Forlorn Hope. Yusuke manages to get through his fights with a mix of brash confidence, incredible luck, and strokes of brilliance. Kurama has described him as a lucky fool, and at times, it truly does fit. In fact, on many occasions, Yusuke has been pegged as rather unintelligent, and even just stupid at times. Which is partly true, but not entirely true. Yusuke makes foolish decisions because of his impulsive nature, and sometimes those decisions backfire, but scratch the surface and he has a lot of street smarts and common sense that serve him well when he becomes Spirit Detective, and later on, Genkai’s pupil.
A thing about Yusuke is that he needs to be pushed, and pushed hard, to achieve his potential. He has a tendency to coast along on the power he has, and just throw himself into fights and rely on luck. It takes Botan bribing him to get him to sign up as Genkai’s student, and the Younger Tugoro threatening Yusuke’s life and the lives of the people he loves to push Yusuke to return to Genkai and admit he needs to get stronger. Without someone pushing at him, he gets complacent, and is content to stick at the power level he has.
Of course, one of Yusuke’s most prominent traits is his love of fighting. Yusuke is shown to be an extremely proficient fighter even before becoming Genkai’s pupil; his name sends people scattering in fear of being beaten up, and he routinely wins fights against his peers. While possessing Kuwabara’s body for a brief time after his death, he mentions how good it felt to brawl again, and once being restored to his own body, he revels in being able to fight, indicting this desire is a constant, and a large part of Yusuke’s core personality. On the flip side, Yusuke doesn’t fight for personal gain, only for the enjoyment of it. He also tries to avoid killing, if he can manage to win a fight without doing so. He has a moral code when it comes to fighting, treating all his opponents with respect, and gives a fair fight to anyone who challenges him.
While Yusuke at times can appear tough, crude, and utterly inconsiderate of the people around him, he does, in actuality, possess a good heart, and truly does care about the people around him. This becomes more and more apparent after Yusuke is returned to his body after dying, and having seen how much the people in his life had cared for him. After being restored, Yusuke becomes much less of a loner, developing a strong bond of friendship with Kuwabara, as well as being able to place his trust in Kurama, Hiei and Botan. By the time the Dark Tournament arrives, Yusuke’s loyalty and friendships with them has grown to the point where he will literally put his own life on the line to help them. Threatening his friends usually triggers flat-out rage on Yusuke’s part, to the point where his power can intensify outrageously, driven by his desire to save them. For instance, when Keiko, Yusuke’s childhood friend and the girl he loves, was put in danger by the leader of the Saint Beasts, Yusuke scraped together enough power to win the fight, despite being down for the count only moments before learning Keiko could be killed if he lost. He will give everything he has, every last scrap of Spirit Energy, even that which keeps him alive, to protect his friends, if the occasion calls for it.