Japanese live-action manga adaptation, “Yu Yu Hakusho” – Netflix’s boldest visual effects TV play ever – premieres in Tokyo tonight in its biggest on-ground event in the region, followed tomorrow (14 Dec) by the global streaming premiere.

The five-episode adaptation is part of Netflix’s expanded focus on Japanese content, which was the platform’s third most-watched non-English-language segment in the world in 2023 after Korean and Spanish, Netflix APAC (ex-India) content head, Minyoung Kim, said in Tokyo this morning.

“Yu Yu Hakusho” closes what Kim calls “a huge year across APAC, not only as a content maker, but also as a culture shaper” across sports, social issues and travel.

She draws attention to series such as Taiwan’s “Wave Makers” and Korea’s “The Glory”, which generated conversations around social issues, and “Sanctuary”, which drove interest in Sumo wrestling, according to a just-released report commissioned by Netflix from indie brand agency Synthesis.

The series is based on Yoshihiro Togashi’s “Yu Yu Hakusho” (Shueisha Jump Comics), the story of teen delinquent Yusuke Urameshi (played by Takumi Kitamura), in whose hands the fate of the human world lands after he dies in an accident.

Hollywood VFX supervisor Ryo Sakaguchi (“Eternals”, “Ant Man and the Wasp”) says the series – his first Japanese production – was “one of the most difficult projects that I've worked on in my career, including everything I've done outside of Japan”.

Sakaguchi’s involvement is via award-winning visual effects leader, Scanline VFX, which Netflix acquired in November 2021. “Yu Yu Hakusho” is his first Japanese project.

Sakaguchi says the entire team came out of the project with new awareness of “how to do global visual effects for a local production. This was something new for me and I think a lot of people”.

“Yu Yu Hakusho” director, Sho Tsukikawa, emphasises the almost-impossibly high bar of the live-action adaptation.

“I never imagined myself as a director to tackle this level of challenge making films in Japan,” he says.

“There was a lot of filming methods and technology that I've never experienced before,” he adds.

Tsukikawa acknowledges his own role in ramping up the challenges.

“It was actually me wanting to have the CG characters fused with real human acting and emotional expression that made the whole endeavor much more challenging,” he says.

Also ahead of tonight’s live event, producer Akira Morii (“Alice in Borderland") says the 30-year-old property’s live action adaption was only possible now because of advances in special effects technology that brings to life epic battles between humans and demons.  

These scenes were also the live action series most significant challenge.

“Yu Yu Hakusho” took five years to make – two years in development/pre production, about 10 months to shoot, and two years in post production.

The series is produced by Robot in association with Japanese broadcaster TBS’ independent production division, The Seven.