Hunter x Hunter: Phantom Rouge is about everything which Hunter x Hunter isn't. The story is about this puppeteer who makes puppets based to real people, copying their appearance. Ironically, our main characters Kurapika, Kil, Gon and Leorio also feel like puppets, empty shells, in this movie. All of their personalities have been changed, and all former character development seen in the anime has been turned back to zero + little extra taken away. Not only are they completely different characters, they have been turned into a bunch of weak idiots as well. I don't bother talking nor spoiling anything about the characters since this anime clearly doesn't have any.
The events were most likely written by a 5-year-old retarded frog-squirrel. The writing is utterly based to coincidences. The characters teleport to each others location all the fucking time. Not literally, but the explanation given could be replaced with the following; "How I got here? Oh, I teleported." And the story would still make sense equally much. Bad guys got beaten by the power of friendship. Motherfucker. Or alternatively with the help of teleporting former villains. The fights are ridiculous and completely lacking brains. You could as well replace the attacks with a bitchslap contest and it would make tactically as much sense.
The animation looks ridiculous. The fights are executed with light effects. They also had to use some shitty cgi to make fish fly and look lame. Mostly to look lame. The art is also different, but this isn't HxH anyway, so I don't have to complain. The sounds are made with a no fricking sense whatsoever. There is a scene where Gon and Killua have to sneak so that one character doesn't notice them. And what did the sound director do? Insert footstep-voices so loud that even my neighbor can the hear the bass. I mean, seriously? No, seriously? This isn't even funny.
Well, I did enjoy few things in this. The references around eyes and main villain's sense for family. That's literally the few. The pacing was also neato as these 1.5hours went pretty fast. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who can't bear with out of character behavior, nor anyone else either, unless you die to hear more about Kurapika.
