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This review will contain spoilers, so if you haven't read the manga and planned to do so, please stay away from this post if you don't want the story spoiled for you.
Just to recap, this final story arc began in Volume 17 with Yuusuke, Hiei and Kurama were each visited by representatives of three powerful demons that are currently fighting for supremacy in the Demon World. Each of them were invited to join the respective group/clan to strengthen their territory that they each conquered and finally take over all of the Demon World. Yuusuke then decided to join his "demon blood-related father" Raizen, Kurama joined the blind demon Yomi, while Hiei went to join Mukuro's group. So what has our protagonists been up to in the Demon World within each group?
There are altogether 9 chapters for this volume, and the first 4 chapters are interestingly different than the others, which set up the stage beautifully for this volume. In the first two chapters, we get to see how's Hiei been doing with Mukuro's group/clan. Although Hiei had been a very popular character in the manga (at least based on the readers poll), we don't really know much about his character, or more specifically his past, and in this two chapters we got the chance to do that. It's interesting to learn and explore his dark past, and even though it was not much, at least we get to know more about his background and the history behind his cold behaviour.
Things get quite interesting for Kurama too as he took center stage in the next two chapters; we get to see how he has been doing on Yomi's side. It looks like the things that he had done in the past when he was the Silver-haired demon-fox had caught up to him. It gets quite complicated for him but Kurama is a clever guy, so I won't be worrying too much about him because I know he can manage it (and you know he will). There won't be much fighting for Kurama, his chapters instead focusing more on him strategizing and plotting his next move. But as Kurama is my favourite character from this series, reading anything about him in the manga would be enough for me. He is, up until this volume, still the most cool character from this manga series to me.
The next three chapters focuses more on Yuusuke. He finally discovered from Raizen about his demonic lineage and how he was related to the demon race, and Raizen sadly passed away after that. Then taking over leadership, the territory, as well as the group/clan from Raizen, Yuusuke sets off to meet with Yomi and propose an idea that could finally bring balance between the three powerful territories. And that is how the Demon World United Fighting Tournament come to fruition, which will be the focus in the last two chapters of this volume.
As much fun as the fighting tournament sounds, the story does not develop like the one in the Dark Tournament story arc (which featured fight after fight between teams in the tournament), which is a bit of a letdown. In fact, you will notice that this final story arc is a bit different than the others that had been told in this manga series before. This one seems to focus more on the politics and less on the action. Well, there are few action scenes in this volume but the only major fight was the one in beginning of the volume between Hiei and Shigure. Even the fights featured in the tournament were brief and nothing compared to the one featured in the Dark Tournament. But then again, we only get to see the preliminary rounds of the tournament, so there were not much to show anyway as those who were eliminated in these rounds were easily defeated (well, at least most of them).
Even though this story arc focuses more on the situation and politics between the three territories of the Demon World and less on the action, that does not mean that the story is any less interesting. The action sequences that usually filled this type of manga are now only complemented the story and not the focus of it, which somewhat set this story arc apart from the one that had been told before. I quite like how the story develop so far, and it's interesting to see that despite all the talking, strategizing, discussing, and analizing that the characters did in this volume, it doesn't pull the story down but expand the manga's universe even more.
As a conclusion, Volume 18 of YuYu Hakusho is a fun read even though it is not action-heavy. The story expands the universe even more and we get to learn a lot about our favourite characters and their past. It gets more interesting as we headed towards the end of the manga series, and if you are a fan, you should definitely get this volume.
See you again in my review for the final volume of YuYu Hakusho manga series, Volume 19.
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