My Anime Story

When I was a kid, there was a brief amount of time that I spent in a different state, and while I have several vague memories of the time I spent there, one memory that stands out and is very vivid is a night when I was feeling particularly lonely. I remember sitting in the dark, the only light in the room coming from the TV. On the screen was Yusuke Urameshi. I remember thinking to myself that if I had a big brother, everything would be better, that I would feel safer. I remember thinking that if I had a big brother I would want him to be Yusuke. That was my introduction to anime. Shortly after that night a lot of things happened in what felt like a short amount of time. In the confusion I forgot about the show, it seemed less important in the scheme of things. One day, years later, I was talking to some very close friends and someone walked passed me holding a dvd case. It just so happened that my eyes landed on Yusuke and I recognized him. "Hey wait what is that? It seems familiar!" The more I looked the more I realized that all the characters seemed familiar to me. I also happened to be at a point in my life where I was having trouble dealing with a lot of things that were going on, not only in school but also in my own head. I went home, to dial up internet and I looked up the show on YouTube, it took me hours to get through each episode but I was determined. I looked for the DVDs online, and eventually purchased the whole series. I found that, when I was scared or upset responding to people as if I was Hiei threw the discomfort from me to the person causing the distress. I employed this tactic several times, with bullies, a few times with family and particularly when dealing with news from the other state. Eventually this tactic got me through high school mostly intact. Being an extremely emotional person, I had trouble learning not to react when someone tried to hurt me. Watching Yu Yu Hakusho and learning from the characters taught me how to hide my emotions when it was necessary to shoo away bullies. It didn't always work, but it helped. When I defended my friends I would think back to Yusuke and respond like I thought he might. When I felt like I needed to be smart about a situation I would try and figure out how Kurama would approach the situation. When someone needed a friend and I felt out of my depth I responded with how I thought Kuwabara might respond and when I was afraid I would try to imitate Hiei. So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that I cried when I met Chuck Hüber. That I was so excited that I couldn't even make myself say hello. My friends had to introduce me. He was the first and only main character voice actor I had met from the show and I had no idea how to process the fact that the voice of a character I had always looked up to was standing right in front of me, and on my birthday of all days. It was the highlight of the next three years, and now, just when I'm facing a big scary choice and I'm unsure of everything, there's an announcement that the characters that helped me get through some of the most difficult times in my life are coming back in an ova. There's a new game out too. There are no words to express how excited I am to see Yusuke, Hiei, Kurama and Kuwabara again. I know some of you won't understand this post, but I'm not asking you to understand, I don't need you to understand how much this show and its characters mean to me. With all the scary things going on in the world,the possibility of a YYH OVA is a huge and exciting happiness in my life right now. That's all anybody really needs to know.