(SPOLIER)
(SPOILER)
Before I begin, this review is more of an opinion piece for myself; a way to achieve catharsis by reasoning out my experience and trying to move on. It may not make sense to others and I don't think it would give much insight until after you've watched HxH 2011. If you choose to read be warned it also contains major spoilers.
Overall I would give hxh 2011, a 6-7. My suggestion is if you plan on watching it, don't binge watch it. You can finish this show in a week if you have the time, even less if you have the effort. But I really suggest you don't, because I made that mistake and it's what drove me to a lower score than I think it honestly deserves.
The first half of this show is amazing, it would cement itself easily in best shonen animes/manga based off of the first 70 some episodes. That is why I gave the original hxh a 9/10. However, in my opinion, it's all down hill from there in regards to pacing, rhythm and character development.
Everything after the events of Greed Island, namely the Chimera Ant Arc, is where it went down hill. Up until this point, the pacing was typical shonen with building friendship and trust, big battles, short training periods, and battles testing strength and resolve again. Even with all this, most arcs didn't take more than 20-25 episodes.
The entire last half of hunter x hunter is dedicated to only one arc, spanning more than 60 episodes. It's a complete pace change, where we went from light hearted hope and admiration of Gon and Killua's strength to complete terror and darkness. No seriously, I'm surprised the rating didn't go up considering the torture scenes, massacres, lack of morality, death and the amount of dismembered limbs.
The characterization goes completely wonky where half way into the arc Gon and Killua do a complete character swap - Gon with murderous intent motivated by revenge and Killua the loyal friend with a driven will to protect those around him. Mentally it left me a bit put out when I realized I was more excited to see Killua on screen than Gon, considering a large part of his part in the battle is sitting in one spot, crying, and then going bat shit insane. The power-ups were insane but ultimately useless. Gon and Killua's characterization remain questionable right up until the very end. I can't say with certainty I disliked their new qualities but I just felt that the reasons for the shift were too quick and too unfounded to really have any impact on me. I was left more confused as I jumped episode to episode on where this was going than excited to see how this would end.
The battles are disappointing and the defeat of the Chimera Ant is almost largely accidental. Netero defeats the King not with Nen but with a bomb and the King's own pride, after which we see the King being reborn even *stronger* than before. It's at the point where I threw my hands in the air and was just done with the absolute imbalance of power. It was at the point where I was so certain the only way they could go with this was the complete devastation of humanity because not even a Goku level power up could save any of them. But then lo and behold, the Ants are defeated not by strength, but by a delayed poison effect, leaving them to die on their own with no opponent needed to face them (not that anyone there stood a chance). What's worse is before that point, there is a complete character change in the 'villains', to the point where you almost sympathize with them. That was neither good nor bad but just a quiet end to a bombastic season.
I think the biggest reason the Chimera Ant Arc was so disconcerting is because it was fruitless. We spend 60 some episodes on the massacre of humans, the fight for humanity, the ultimate war, and at the end of it I do not honestly feel like the Hunters 'won', just that they got lucky that the events unfolded the way they did. Knuckle and Killua hardly do anything real fighting the entire 'war', Netero and Morel too much. Gon going berserk in his battle with Pitou led to more harm than good - and that he had to go to that point to win also made the months of training and will beforehand seem pointless. Netero's fight was fascinating, but it wasn't a good enough to tip my opinion - his ultimate attack did mediocre damage, leaving him to have to resort to death by bomb to kill the King. The character deaths in this arc give me a strong reminder to the pacing of AoT/SnK and it was really off putting compared to the first half.
The snowball effect continued on with the last 10 or so episodes with the Chairman Election Arc. Most of the time spent on this arc was trying to figure out the dubious logic that was fuelling the election. I have a university degree that specializes on critical analysis, and even with it I was left shaking my head in confusion on how any of the events made sense or were even pertinent to the growth of HxH.
The final straw that crumbled my enjoyment for HxH were completely summed up in the last episode in 3 main parts: how Gon finally met Ging - an abrupt end to the journey I felt like Gon has yet to complete; how Gon and Killua chose separate paths - the deep bonds of their friendship leaving me to wonder why they would do so when the narrator even admitted that Killua considered him his most important person; and how we never see Kurapika again - the most interesting plot line from HxH that was left too short and uncovered, and which I thought we would revisit one last time before the end. The culmination of all of that was having all the 148 episodes I binge watched become empty and hollow - like the stairs I was climbing to reach the peak suddenly started to crumble the closer I got only to completely break leaving me to free fall. It's an empty feeling I feel like a lot anime lovers can empathize with when the end is not what we expected.
So overall I cannot say that this was a bad anime - just a confused one. If there is another season or renewal in the works a year or years from now, I would like to watch it. No, I need to watch it. Because as it is right now I am left with a niggling feeling of disappointment and empty promises where there is brilliant potential for more.
