Again after the One Piece anime i have to be the bad guy, dissing on an anime that not only is revered by most of the anime community (as it is evident by its position on MAL) but that i actually would have very much enjoyed, story wise, if it wasn't for being a TERRIBLE adaptation. But if the not-so-good quality of the One Piece anime is not really controversial on the other hand i realize this is considered by most people a good adaptation, by someone even better than the original manga (ugh) so i'll need to explain.
I'm not gonna concentrate much on world-building
...
and plot since the anime is mostly a 1:1 adaptation on that aspect, so if i do i will when i got time to review the manga, here i'm just gonna talk about the aspect that made this a very bad adaptation that completely betrays Togashi artistic vision. Let's start with Togashi art, shall we? Now, despite popular belief, Togashi is a brilliant artist, while the influence of Toriyama was easily recognizible both in Yu Yu Hakusho (i think that's why a lot of people believe "He drew better back then", because he used the style they're more accustomed to) and early HxH he then started to develop a more personal style, in a way going in the opposite direction of what Toriyama canonized as the new standard manga-style, surpassing Tezuka in iconicity. Said style had as the golden rule the idea that the trait should be extremely clean and simple, any scene, especially the fight scene, no matter the inherent chaos of the moment, should be easily readable in a very short time-span by kids of all ages. You can easily realize this by comparing Toriyama art with artists contemporary to him like Hara or predecessors like Nagai to get what this meant, and surely that was one of the aspect that made Dragon Ball one of the most important manga in history. Later authors, while ususally partially abandoning the over-simplicity, mantained this ideal and created their new style from this common denominator. Togashi, from a certain point onward, decided this wasn't for him. His story wasn't a feel good story, his world was rotten, his characters disturbed, aseptic or overwhelmed by emotions, there was no reason for the trait not to retrace this atmosphere. Because of that he developed a very peculiar art-style, swingling between minimalism and over-detailed scenes, and most importantly predilecting over anything (and especially pleasentness to the eyes, an aspect he really didn't care about, very legimitely) the conveyance of the atmosphere and characters emotions, making it genuinely disturbing when the scene needed so. The anime from '99, with all its deficiencies (filler and some minor censors, i just ignore Greed Island OVAs, they don't exist) did capture this aspect, the artistic quality varied episode by episode, with some very underwhelming and some that, unlike the stuff that people new to the media believe is "great animation" (usually confusing it with "art-style", and btw dear MAL, you're doing it too) these days, were actually top notch works of art. Anyway, even when the quality wasn't on top, they really tried their best to respect Togashi's vision. Then the 2011 adaptation came from Madhouse, and for the joy of pre-teen kids from all around the world the nerfed, family-friendly version of Hunter x Hunter was produced. Jokes aside, i'm really astonished that a company that just the year before worked with Yuasa to a masterpiece like Tatami no Galaxy, that was not only well-made technically but obviously had a great artistic vision, was able just one year later to produce such a bad and plain anime, nonetheless from a manga like HxH, that is easily the best Shonen Jump manga of the last 30 years (yes, it took a while to start to actually talk about the reviewed anime, sorry, but the introduction was needed to be clearer). Or better, i was astonished, then i realized when i've seen people reaction for it. Hunter x Hunter 2011 is the Marvel Cinematic Universe of anime, a product that is well-manifactued from a purely technical point of view and bet everything on just being pleasant for the average viewer, fullfilling the minimum common denominator but actively eliminating any kind of profoundity, graphical experimentation etc from the original work and in general from what the medium can do, making it an extremely bland commercial product. All the colours are screwed, the darkness of the manga leave place to the most brightest colours possible, everything is roundish and patinated, there is no space for experimentation or risk, if they did it would have been possible (at least that's what i'm guessing went on on the director's head) that newcomers of the media wouldn't understood it and cricized it like they do with Togashi's own art-style, therefore the anime would have been slightly less successfull and god forbid us from making a bit less money, who cares about the artistic vision when you have to sell an anime to tv networks afterall?
All the expressions, especially Hisoka's, Killua's (they kept the cute faces but eliminated the crazy serial killer eyes basically), Gon's "full-black eyes" mode were screwed, except a couple times (out of god-knows-how-much) with Hisoka there isn't literally a single one of those that were saved (especially Gon is the one whose characterization suffered the most from this, but early Killua too)
Also, a lot of people love to say this, unlike the '99 version, follow the manga closely. Well, this is blatantly false for anyone reading/watching it in a way that is even slighly less superficial than "x happens". Yes, the story is the same (like in the old anime) and there's a bit less filler scenes (but immensely worst and more childish than in the '99 version) and just one almsot entirely filler episode, but the level of censorship this anime gets in the first half almost gave me late 90s/early 2000s foreign adaptations vibes and that, well, sucked. The anime was then moved to another time slot and the second half is a bit better censor-wise, but all the other problems remained and possibly become even more evident, since Chimera Ants arc is for example the arc Togashi really went all in with his disturbing dark style, where the anime (while obviously couldn't mantain the same brightness of the early parts since that would have been evidently ridicolous) kept nerfing and normalizing it, especially in the "Gon rage" (i managed to not spoil until now and i will not do that here, don't worry) scenes that had 1/100 of the power they had on paper with Togashi's expressful style.
Unlike in the One Piece review, where i was able to find at least a couple scenes that were better made in the anime than in the manga (even tho that was just because of the different media that allowed anime producers to implement the music parts) there is basically nothing i would save from this anime except obviously the story and partially the characters (that anyway were still worse characterized than in the manga, since their visual representation and behavior counts too, not just what they say), so basically the aspects anime producers had 0 to do with. I have no doubt that someone watching this anime while having 0 idea about the original work, or as said people that really cannot appreciate the artistic vision of it (probably because of age and the style they're accustomed to) will find this anime very good (hopefully not "#7 place" good tho), still if a single person reading this review will decide, despite the vast majority opinion, to give the manga a chance instead of this terrible reduction i'll consider these 20-something minutes i used to wrote this and the i-don't-want-to-remember-how-much-goddamn-hours i spent watching this show (hoping in a develoopment, because people told me so, that "trust me from the Chimera Ants the art-style becomes incredible", well it didn't) not completely wasted.
Dec 9, 2021
Hunter x Hunter (2011)
(Anime)
add
Again after the One Piece anime i have to be the bad guy, dissing on an anime that not only is revered by most of the anime community (as it is evident by its position on MAL) but that i actually would have very much enjoyed, story wise, if it wasn't for being a TERRIBLE adaptation. But if the not-so-good quality of the One Piece anime is not really controversial on the other hand i realize this is considered by most people a good adaptation, by someone even better than the original manga (ugh) so i'll need to explain.
I'm not gonna concentrate much on world-building ... 
Dec 9, 2021
Let's start by saying that i'm really really nostalgic about this anime. One Piece, after DB and Pokemon, was one of the first big anime that aired in my country post 90s. I fondly remember the Skypea and Enies Lobby arcs from elementary/middle school, and i think i could say it's, together with Dragon Ball and Maojin Guru (an anime that seemed to have disappeared from the collective memory but i really loved it as a kid lmao), the anime that really got me into this world. But, like for Dragon Ball, 15+ years later i'm forced to face reality and admit that, among the
...
|
