Mar 15, 2015
I remember the days when I would scroll through my Crunchyroll app, looking for good animes to watch, and I would come upon HunterXHunter. I remember examining the cover, disliking the way the show looked, and moving on without even reading the anime summary. I was missing out on so much. The only reason I'm grateful for my ignorance is because I was able to watch the whole anime all the way through without having to wait for the next episode.
HunterXHunter is sorely underrated. Unless I activiely searched it up, or I became lucky, I'd never see anyone recommending it or even commenting about
...
it. I never saw a trace of anyone referring to it even. This might just be from my experience, but HXH seems to have been largely ignored. But I don't feel bad for the anime itself, I feel bad for the people missing out on it. I usually try not to profligate my opinion because I know everyone has a different taste, but this is just such a well-rounded show that I feel you'd have to really try to hate it. Onto the review.
I really understand why this anime is so underwatched. I'm talking from personal experience. Just one look at the cover and you see a generic shonen with odd-looking characters. This is the main reason I avoided it for so long. Next you see that it has 148 episodes. Immediately you think, "That's way too long...it's just another run-on shonen...No thanks." And you avoid it even more. But then one day you look at the top anime lineup on MAL and you notice it is within the top five most highly rated animes. You do a double-take. Suddenly you have to watch it.
And then you do. And what do you find?
An even more generic storyline than you thought it would be. Gon is a kid who wants to become a Hunter and find his dad, he can do things other people can't and is talented, he takes stupid risks and amazes the people around him...Oh heck no. This just screams "I'm a long-running shonen anime, the main character is destined for greatness and he's going to go out on a never-ending journey to find his father, make new friends along the way and show up everyone else around him." Yeah, I had the same exact thoughts. That's why after one episode I put it on hold for two months.
But then I read a review on MAL one day and decided to pick it up again, and what I found was something I thought I'd never find again- a masterpiece. For many many years, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood was my all time favorite anime. But after watching HXH, I found that I couldn't decide between the two and now they are tied for first place. How did I have such a change of heart?
One of the things that makes this anime shine the most is its ability to destroy all of your expectations. Every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, this anime spun everything around and completely surprised me. I never quite knew what was coming next.
Another thing I loved about this anime was its fights. No fight was boring, and more importantly, they were all filled with strategy. There were no annoying shonen fights where it basically goes like this: They encounter an enemy and go all out, trying so hard to defeat it, and the enemy is only a little scuffed up and they've "only used 3%" of their strength. The enemy then beats the crap out of them, and everyone seems to lose their spirit. But then they have an emotional speech about friendship/strength/love and they come up with a whole new powerful move on the spot and wipe out the enemy, who increasingly becomes more and more pathetic.
Yeah, that doesn't happen in HXH. Each battle is thought out and interesting. Also, a lot of battles are actually lost. I can't even count how many times Gon or someone else lost a fight. I remember seeing Gon laid up plenty of times, and no, he wasn't healed by the next episode, his injuries took actual time to heal. Also, people die. There is blood. Unlike Fairy tail, where I can count the number of deaths and appearances of blood on one of my hands, HXH doesn't hold back on either of those, but it doesn't go crazy on them either. (I'm not bashing oh FT, but just for the record it was one of my favorite animes until I watched HXH, then I realzied how...not amazing it was.)
Now onto the characters. They're all awesome, even the enemies. When I try to think of an enemy I hate, I can only think of one but even then he's only really a half-enemy and its my personal opinion on the character. Honesly, they are all amazing. I don't eve have any more to say about them, I've said all I needed to.
The art is great. I don't really pay attention to art usually but it's very nice to look at and it's consistently good.
I don't really pay attention to music, but a lot of it fits the mood perfectly when it plays and I enjoyed it as well.
This is just a little thing, but HXH only has two fillers which you can just skip.
Another great thing is the relationships. The relationships between the characters are enjoyable, especially between Gon and Killua. I admire how well all of the relationships are built, and they all just make you love the characters more. (Also, these same relationships are what caused me to cry on multiple occasions.)
This is getting lengthy so I'll just end it here. I give this show and everything in it a 10. It is a masterpiece and I have yet to find anything better than it. It may seem generic and cliche at first, but it isn't, and you won't regret watching more of it. If you watch this show and by the end of it you dislike it, I'd need to see a very detailed explanation to believe you.
Watch this anime. I feel bad for people who haven't seen it yet.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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