A 14-year-old narcissistic, street-fighting slacker Yusuke Urameshi dies an unlikely hero, after he is hit by a car after saving a young child who was playing with a ball in the street. He soon learns that the child would have lived anyway, and that the Spirit World was not expecting him to die. For this reason, he is then offered the chance to be revived by the mysterious Botan, Guardian of the river Styx. At first, Yusuke initially refuses the proposal, but ultimately accepts after seeing the people he thought did not care for him, including his childhood friend Keiko Yukimura, his mother Atsuko, and his rival Kazuma Kuwabara grieving for him at his wake.