Despite Hunter x Hunter's incredible success as a manga and renewed popularity with it's 2011 reboot, I only found out about this series through one of the people I follow on my tumblr account almost 2 years ago now. Said person was a huge fan of the character Hisoka and after seeing her enjoy the series for multiple months, I sat myself down last spring and watched the first episode. And then continued to binge the remaining 147 episodes within the week.
And yeah just a heads up, it's kind of long. However, if you start watching the show and enjoy it as much as I
...
did, then hopefully that won't be a huge problem.
Glancing at HxH from afar, the story may seem like 20 different plot lines all jumbled together into a big mess. In reality, each arc fits perfectly and makes sense regarding the circumstances the characters are in at that certain point (Don't worry, I'll keep this spoiler free!). The main story, however, is pretty simple; 12-year-old Gon Freecs ventures off of his home island to take a test known as the Hunter Exam to (you guessed it) become a Hunter and eventually find his father, who abandoned him as a young child. If written by anybody else, this show could have been a huge flop, but because Togashi knows what he's doing, he was able to create a well-paced* series filled with wonderful characters, a fully-fleshed out world, and a story that will always keep you excited for what's coming next.
*My only dislike regarding the story was certain parts of the Chimera Ant arc, starting at around episode 76. The pacing at the climax of the arc slows down a lot, and it may make you want to stop watching. But place your trust in this series and keep going (there's no rush anyways); at the very least make it to episode 131.
As for the art of the series, the animators do a beautiful thing to the young main characters- slowly age them. It's such a slight and gradual change, you won't even realize it until you rewatch the beginning and see the contrast. Along with the characters, the general coloring of the show changes as well, going from a bright and colorful exam/tournament arena, to a more relaxed city atmosphere shining with the building's lights, to a dark and dangerous forest with the only light coming from the moon. The bright and more saturated colors do return near the end, but even then it's not quite the same as it was in the beginning, just like the characters. Also, just a shoutout for Studio Madhouse's animation team for constantly making the show look quality and even raising the level of quality as the story progresses!
Hunter x Hunter's soundtrack has a habit of repeating songs, but for good reason. The music does a great job to help amplify the intended emotion for the scene: if the audience is supposed to be scared of a character/event, the music will blast louder and louder with a mess of brass chords to show the disorder of the situation. If the audience is supposed to be sad over a character, then the music will be as soft and gentle as we wish the writers were with our favorite character. The music isn't 10/10 on it's own (more like 8/10), but I'll be damned if it doesn't do a great job to set the tone of the episodes.
For the characters I'll mostly be discussing Gon and Killua, who isn't introduced until episode 3. It's not a spoiler, but a majority of the series is dependent and thrives off of Gon and Killua's friendship.
Many fans of the series would say that Togashi wrote HxH to be a deconstruction of the shonen genre, and I believe that this can be seen the most easily with the characters. Gon Freecs, at the start, is the stereotypical shonen protagonist; determined, full of energy, full of dreams. Togashi uses this innocent type of character to initially draw his audience in, and then throws anything and everything at this kid until we see a darker side of Gon appear. The opposite is with Killua, starting off as a mix of angst and childishness with not-the-best morals and eventually changes to become a person with goals, dreams, and a constant source of happiness. Throughout the 148 episodes, the audience sees these two immediately bond and grow even closer, until the appearance of their new personality traits cause friction. That's all I can really say about that without going into spoilers, so let's move onto the "antagonists". Everyone loves humanized villains, right? I hope so, because HxH does a superb job of giving the audience enough glimpses of the villain(s) for us to determine that they're evil, and then show us situations where these "villains" are actually different from what we thought. Except Hisoka. I still don't even know what's up with him.
If someone were to ask me how much I like this series, I would tell them that the last time I was so passionate about a show, it was when I watched Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and I was moving deeper into the anime community, moving from magical girl show into deeper, more complex shows. Basically, I love this series. Despite the pacing sometimes making me want to rip my hair out and seeing my favorite characters get hurt, I absolutely enjoyed watching this show. I wish I could forget that I had watched it, just so I could watch it again (which I plan on doing within the the next few weeks). Although I wish it were more popular, I believe that HxH can be as memorable as other shows like FMA. And with the manga now finally releasing new chapters, I hope to god that one day there may be another season of HxH.
TL;DR : Hunter x Hunter (2011) is a beautifully written, well animated piece of work that accurately portrays youth characters and villains as flexible characters rather than archetypes with some great songs to match.
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May 31, 2016
Hunter x Hunter (2011)
(Anime)
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Despite Hunter x Hunter's incredible success as a manga and renewed popularity with it's 2011 reboot, I only found out about this series through one of the people I follow on my tumblr account almost 2 years ago now. Said person was a huge fan of the character Hisoka and after seeing her enjoy the series for multiple months, I sat myself down last spring and watched the first episode. And then continued to binge the remaining 147 episodes within the week.
And yeah just a heads up, it's kind of long. However, if you start watching the show and enjoy it as much as I ... |
