This isn't to say that I don't like Hunter x Hunter, because I honestly do like the programme. It had this ebullient charm that was lost in the recent sea of grimdark shonen programmes that came out over the last couple of years like Attack on Titan and Akame ga Kill!. This show combined the light-hearted atmosphere of shows like Dragon Ball and One Piece, the wit and humour of Yu Yu Hakusho, and the maturity that came with shows like Fullmetal Alchemist and Rurouni Kenshin. Hunter x Hunter had virtually everything I could ever want from a battle shonen programme along with the kitchen sink. What's more is that when it did decide to drop the shenanigans and take itself seriously, it was able to do so without going overboard. The stakes were gradually getting higher and higher, but it still retained some of the ebullient charm that made me gravitate toward this show in the first place.
The very concept of "Hunters" was also something that I adored the shit out of. Much like the Grand Line from One Piece, the whole concept of Hunters allows for adventures of any scope to go down. We could have an arc that shows what it takes to actually become one of these fanciful Hunters, an arc dedicated to simple fighting tournaments, or we could have an arc where the the fate of the world and humanity as we know it rests upon the shoulders of an elite group of Hunters as they combat nightmarish creatures. The possibilities would've been endless were it not for the fact that Yoshihiro Togashi lack's the work ethic of mangakas like Eiichiro Oda. With that said, Togashi shows that he's more than capable of writing up complex characters, countless artifices, plot twists that actually make sense, and all that stuff. As the stakes gradually get higher and higher, you'll be demanding more because you're hooked and living in suspense is killing you.
Unfortunately, this is the thing that gets my goat with Hunter x Hunter: Yoshihiro Togashi spends all of this time building up your expectations and then instantly shatters them because it's like he gets bored with what he's doing and then moves onto the next arc to do the same exact thing. Take the Yorknew City arc: Kurapika spent so much time chasing down the Phantom Troupe, the villains were all fleshed out really nicely, but what does it amount to in the end? Nothing! Nothing of consequence actually happens by the time the arc is over! Instead of seeing the bombastic conclusion to a story about a person exacting revenge on the monsters who killed his family, we get an ending that reinforces the tired-out cliches of friendship and not becoming the monster that you set out to destroy.
This isn't even getting into what became of the Greed Island arc because that entire ordeal was something that left a sour taste in my mouth and made me want to give up on watching the show altogether. Gon and Killua go into a video game to look for a trace of Gon's father, but the problem is that Gon's father left a message for him saying that there's no clue to his current location. Right off the bat, Gon and Killua's impetus to play the game was shattered. However, all was not lost because Ging said he wanted Gon to have fun playing the game. You know what? That's a sentiment I could get behind and the entire concept of Greed Island being the ultimate game for any Hunter seemed like would bring about some rather entertaining adventures to watch. Unfortunately, the Greed Island arc was just some pathetic excuse for a survival story with one of the worst villains I've ever had the displeasure of seeing as the focus of the entire thing.
The Bomber's entire characterisation amounts to nothing more than "I'm a bad guy and I kill people for fun." That in and of itself isn't an entirely bad thing, I mean that's Hisoka in a nutshell too. However, all of the other villains in Hunter x Hunter had a personal connection to the main characters. For example, the Yorknew City arc had the Phantom Troupe and they were the guys that murdered Killua's entire clan. Hell, even the Chimaera Ant arc had Neferpitou who was responsible for doing unspeakable things to a close companion of Gon and Ging's. Bomber lacks any sort of connection like that whatsoever, and so I have no reason to care about what this guy's doing. Hell, he even gets killed off by a bit character once the entire arc is over so that just hammers in how pointless he was to the entire story. This arc could've been omitted completely and NOTHING of relevance would've been lost whatsoever.
Now we come to the Chimaera Ant arc, which is one of the most lauded arcs in all of shonen anime and manga. I can totally see why people would adore the shit out of this arc but it's not flawless. Hell... it has multiple problems, all of which come back to bite this show in the ass. The first (and quite possibly the biggest) problem is that the world-building in Hunter x Hunter up until this point was rather non-existent. The only locations we got to see before this point were Whale Island (Gon's home), the Hunter Exam testing facilities, the Zoldyck family estate, Greed Island, and Yorknew City. The Hunter Exam arc established that there's a vast world out there with countless adventures waiting to be told but we never got a good idea of the finer workings of the world that Hunter x Hunter takes place in.
The Chimaera Ant arc takes place in a place called the "Mitene Union," an island consisting of 5 nations with varying degrees of a turbulent history. This is a complete departure from the previous locations we've experienced before, but the problem here lies with the fact that Togashi brings up all of this political mumbo jumbo into the foray as he also goes along with the story of the Chimaera Ants. For example, we find out that the NGL region where the Chimaera Ant Queen is residing abides by an isolationist, Neo-Luddite culture where anything synthetic or remotely technological is expressly forbidden. That in and of itself would've been more than enough set-up for us but then we learn other irrelevant things like how the NGL was really a front for an international drug cartel and arms-dealing operation along with the founder of the NGL's history via protracted spiels of expository narration. Let's not forget the whole situation with the Republic of East Gorteau among other things as well.
This is all stuff that would've made GREAT material to work with for other arcs, but the problem is that all of this stuff is being shoehorned into an arc about carnivorous mutant insects. As the Chimaera Ant arc progresses, any sort of extraneous material introduced in this arc that could've made excellent subject matter for future arcs ends up eradicated due to various plot developments and that just further reinforces the biggest question that I have with this arc: why did Togashi even bring up these details in the first place if he wasn't going to use them at all? All of this extraneous stuff about Gyro, the NGL, and other such political nonsense could've easily been omitted from the story completely and nothing of consequence would've changed.
On that note, the pacing of the Chimaera Ant arc is absolutely appalling. It took Yoshihiro Togashi NINE YEARS to actually finish this arc because he was going in and out of hiatuses and those protracted breaks he took whilst writing up this arc really do make themselves quite obvious. The anime excerbates this problem by slowing down the pacing of the arc from Episodes 113 through 120. If I'm not mistaken, Togashi was on yet another hiatus when these episodes were being produced so Madhouse was close to running out of material to work with. Whilst I can understand why they intentionally slowed down the pacing of the arc at that point in time, they chose the absolute WORST place to slow everything down. Our team of Hunters were in the middle of invading the Chimaera Ant King's castle and right when the invasion starts, the pacing slows down to such a degree to the point where I'm wondering if I'm watching Gantz again.
Okay, that comparison was a bit too hyperbolic but the point still stands. Madhouse chose to adopt a psychological approach to the whole invasion but that's the problem: THEY WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FAST-PACED INVASION THAT WAS CRITICAL TO THE PLOT. The psychological approach to the invasion would lend itself better to manga than anime as a medium. For seven back-to-back episodes, the pacing of each episode was slower than the flow of sand in an hourglass. I don't care if we got to see what was going on in their heads during such a crucial moment of the story, I wanted to see Gon and everyone else haul some serious ass! To me, there's nothing quite like the lingering feeling of dissatisfaction that stems from being denied my fix of fast-paced and enthralling action and unfortunately, Hunter x Hunter denied me my greatest pleasure multiple times over the course of 148 episodes.
Going off on a bit of a tangent, another problem that the Chimaera Ant arc suffers from is the way Yoshihiro Togashi handles the darker and more complex themes he brings up. The Chimaera Ant arc brings up themes such as survival of the fittest, human nature, and all that stuff but its execution is rather heavy-handed to say the least. I think it's safe to say that Togashi lacks the sort of tact that mangakas like Inio Asano and Naoki Urasawa have when it comes down to tackling darker and deeper themes in a particular work. Instead of operating on two levels where you can either take the story at face value or choose to analyse it further and then draw parallels between it and other things like Monster and Oyasumi Punpun does, Hunter x Hunter opts to just outright tell you "this is happening, and I want you to know that I'm trying to draw parallels here." The whole thing just reeks of pretension, and it just gets really irritating after a while.
Also, what really made me dislike the Chimaera Ant arc as a whole is the fact that this is the arc that took that ebullient charm that Hunter x Hunter had from the very beginning and just eviscerates it completely. I have no problem with shonen anime/manga going into darker and deeper themes (that's one of the reasons why I love the Jinchuu arc from Rurouni Kenshin), but seeing Hunter x Hunter go down the grimdark path that so many other shows in recent years went down just never sat right with me. What really drew me toward this series in the first place was the fact that it was a light-hearted and fun shonen programme that still had the capacity to take itself seriously without losing what made it fun to watch in the first place. By the halfway point of the Chimaera Ant arc, the entire show just became tedious and boring to sit through to the point where I stopped caring about what would happen next. That's no exaggeration either. I honestly had no strong feelings one way or the other by the time that the Chimaera Ant arc ended and when the entire series ended as well. Sure, both the arc and the series had a fair enough conclusion but they still don't excuse the fact that this show has some really serious problems.
The world-building was mediocre and it really shows in the Chimaera Ant arc (given that there's so much expository narration), the storytelling repeatedly builds up your expectations only to fail completely at delivering something significant, and many promising characters end up being thrown to the sidelines. Nen as a battle system is intriguing as it's simple and practical, and yet the limitations of Nen are sometimes disregarded completely. For example, Kurapika's a conjurer but if his eyes turn red (and he's learned to change his eye colour on command), he's able to use the other types of Nen at full strength (can you say "asspull?").
Going back to the characters, I've found myself getting frustrated with them so many times. Gon was never really that good of a character to begin with, as he immediately struck me as an imitation of kid Goku but with the ability to differentiate between a man and a woman, but that was forgivable since I still found myself really liking him. Unfortunately, the Chimaera Ant arc had him turn into a complete and total psychopath as he threatened to kill an androgynous cat person/ant thing because it was in the middle of saving a critically injured blind girl. I know that Togashi was trying to show what happens when you let the pursuit of revenge get the better of you, but there's a fucking limit.
Killua on the other hand was quite a delightful character and when Gon was too busy being the bad kind of homicidal maniac, Killua was the one I'd turn to to get some entertainment value. His sarcastic demeanour and approach to virtually everything made the show that much more entertaining to watch, and what's more is that of all the characters in Hunter x Hunter, he's pretty much the only one who's changed in any significant manner from Episode 1 all the way to Episode 148. Whilst that's great for Killua, I can't help but feel like the rest of the time in Hunter x Hunter could've been better spent developing other characters.
Leorio was a character that I really wanted to see more of, especially given that his motivation for becoming a Hunter stemmed from the desire to save his (now deceased) childhood friend from a curable illness whose surgery cost an exorbitant amount of money. That's an amazing motivation to become a Hunter, and I get the feeling that he could've accompanied Gon and Killua on their adventures as a medic/mentor kind of character. Unfortunately, he just HAD to be relegated to comedic relief. Am I the only one who takes umbrage with the fact that comedic relief characters in most shows nowadays have awesome backstories and ultimately end up getting screwed over because they have to be the designated idiot? This is a trend in anime and manga that REALLY needs to stop because it's so fucking annoying.
The other characters in Hunter x Hunter are more of the same. We have countless awesome and likeable characters like Knov, Morel, Knuckle, Shoot, Bisky, and Palm (did I forget to mention that Palm's da waifu?) but the fact that they're all introduced and developed in the Chimaera Ant arc doesn't really feel right to me. To me, it seems like all of these characters should've been introduced in earlier arcs so that we could've had more time with them and then develop a greater attachment to them. I could easily see Morel and Knov being instructors during the Hunter Exam arc, among other things but that's hindsight talking. I swear, retrospect is the worst enemy of everyone, isn't it?
Going away from the story and characters, let's talk about the production values. I don't think it's any stretch of the imagnination to say that the Hunter x Hunter manga has some downright terrible artwork. I mean, Yu Yu Hakusho isn't anything to write home about from a visual standpoint but the piss-poor quality of Togashi's artwork in Hunter x Hunter is just plain inexcusable when we KNOW he can do much better. Thankfully, Madhouse took the piss-poor artwork of the manga and made it look good. Character designs were cleaned up or partially redrawn so they don't look like complete and total garbage, the backgrounds look much better with colour and shading, and what's more is that the animation across the entire show is quite lovely and remarkably consistent. Then again, this IS Madhouse we're talking about: their stories might be hit and miss, but their production quality will always be some damn good stuff!
Their sound work however could use some work. I have no problem with the voice work or anything of the sort. What really makes Hunter x Hunter annoying for me (at least from an audio standpoint) is the opening theme. I never liked it, and the fact that they kept the same OP throughout all 148 episodes is something I take umbrage with on so many levels because it just grates on my ears. What's more is that the all of the EDs that Hunter x Hunter had would've been PERFECT openings: they're all fast-paced, energetic, and just get you pumped to see the next episode! Seriously Madhouse, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!?! On the other hand, the rest of the OST has some rather nice BGM to it. My favourite track though would have to be "On Whale Island" but that's just my shit taste talking. There is no dub to speak of at the time of writing, but I wouldn't put it past a company like Viz Media or Funimation to license this show and then give it a dub since it's one of [adult swim]'s most requested programmes.
Final thoughts? Well, Hunter x Hunter is a show that definitely does get a lot of stuff right and it certainly is a cut above the more typical shonen programmes but it certainly isn't perfect. How this show got into the Top 10 here on MAL is beyond anything I can comprehend. Then again, this website has baffled me more times than I can count. As it currently stands, Hunter x Hunter is one of the many shows on my list of shows that I started out adoring the shit out of that ultimately ended up disappointing me. On the flip side, it's nowhere near as disappointing as Nagi no Asukara was but let's not get into that. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback is always welcome and with that, I'm gonna barricade my house so that the rabid HxH fans can't kill me. Peace :)
