Hunter x Hunter (2011)

brianwuzhere said:
Well, it should technically begin near the end of the next episode, but the episode after that is where I'd say the gloves are officially off. From what I skimmed through, things escalate from there and all this build up starts to pay off big time.

I feel pretty confident a lot of fans will find "Last Mission" more to their liking than "Phantom Rouge".  The story certainly seems more "canon" this time around, the tone is quite a bit darker, and it just feels more like Hunter X Hunter (though I quite liked "Phantom Rouge", which had its own charms).  Madhouse brought in Kishima Nobuaki, one of the writers from the Nippon Animation adaptation, and I think that helped with continuity a bit.

I think fans will be pretty happy - a non-Togashi movie just isn't going to have the same depth as his material but this is highly entertaining stuff.  What we miss without Togashi is the deep psychological underpinnings of the story - these movies are mostly action-driven.  I think the behavior of the main cast is very much in character, critically - we just don't dig nearly as deep into the reasons behind their actions as Togashi does.