Are We Talking About Bleach?!?

[Super Saiya-jin 4 Goku]

The main character is a teenage boy with 1 parent, spiritual awareness and powers far beyond someone of his age should have. He has trouble bouncing between school and his new "job". He has a female companion who helps him with said job. A woman in his group who is able to heal others. A companion with red hair. Has a love/friend relationship with a female since childhood. And said woman is the inspiration/reason for some of the battles and power increases. Beating countless enemies and becomes friends with a few. Has a fight with a guy named Jin who controls wind; another enemy controls water, and even another whose powers are based on the manipulation of video games. Deals with a supposedly evil group of 3 people, one of whom is able to mimic/copy others, when in reality it was all a ploy by his mentor; who later on actually come in handy to help him and his companions. Has an Arc where the main villian is a guy who used to have his "job". He has to die for his latent Demonic powers to take effect and bring his powers to levels unknown. Someone after a major battle that loses their powers, but regains them after a period of time. He lives in a town of immense spiritual energy. Some of his friends have the awareness of these phenomenons. Battles demons and monsters from another dimension inhabited by said demons and monsters. Dimensional holes that allow those monsters to travel between the Living World and the Demon one. Those rips need to be manipulated for bigger and more powerful monsters to be able to travel through them. Sounds like Bleach right? Nope! It's Yu Yu Hakusho; an anime that came out years before Bleach.

Even the animation is similar. Watch either episode 71 or 72 (Where they're fighting The Doctor) and the scene where I believe it's Botan running look at the houses, walls and whatnot and you'd SWEAR you're looking at Karakura Town, or vice versa. Yes the woman who helps with his job (Botan) is also the one with the ability to heal. The one who loses his power is not the main character: Yusuke, but instead his friend Kuwabara. But the rest is pretty much cut and dry. The more and more I rewatch YYH, the more I find similarities. Thus, if you're a Bleach fan, I would suggest watching some episodes. The anime itself doesn't really get truely rolling until the Dark Tournament Saga (Season 2), but it's definately worth the watch. I would write more in here, but I can't think of anything else without possibly giving too much of the story or anime away.

LOL looks like I wasn't the only one who noticed a lot of similarities between the 2. Here's some links that further talk about what I have. (I swear I didn't know about these sites, or the idea of it being written about before online. It's the internet, I should have thought so. The old saying goes; if you thought of it, at least 2 others have before you.)

http://www.baka-raptor.com/BleachRipoff/index.php
The group of 3 I mentioned

There's countless other Forum Topics on other sites that slightly talk about this. Unfortunately, too many are filled with Trolls and flaming. But in the research I just did (about 10-15 minutes before typing this paragraph) I found out 2 things that are interesting indeed.

1) Both Yu Yu Hakusho and Bleach have the same Japanese director: Noriyuki Abe
2) Kubo's first draft of Bleach was declined by Shoenen Jump due to being too similar to YYH and had to rewrite it.

The first tidbit also explains why the 2 have a good deal of similarities. Especially since the whole Bount Arc is filler, and mostly done by Abe and not Kubo.

[Jawneh]

I guess that also explains why the Bount arc sucked.

But that is interesting. I wouldn't have thought something as big as Bleach could have been a partial knockoff of something else. I guess you can't trust anyone these days.

... Not that this will stop me from watching Bleach. I still want to see how it ends.

[Vicious!]

Yeah I've thought that the very few times I've had an episode on my TV for background noise. Coincidently I just bought Yu Yu Hakusho on Blu-ray.

That's most anime though right there. That youtube video "Every Anime Opening Ever Made" sums it up really good too. But on the other hand, one could say for example that Devilman, which shares similar themes, was ripped of by YuYu Hakusho. Where the line gets drawn between being influenced by something and "not this sh*t again" plays a part too. I didn't like Bleach because I had seen it done better before.

[Super Saiya-jin 4 Goku]

There's a difference between classic anime cliches and having too many similarities that aren't "classic anime cliches." Yes other animes have also taken heavily from Yu Yu Hakusho like Flames of Recca, but these animes aren't as widely known or popular in the U.S or Japan as Bleach is.