What Hunter x Hunter completely mastered, is the art of creating an ever-shifting narrative tapestry, serving as a canvas for an endless number of bizarre but fascinating concepts. This approach is supported by the everything-goes nature of its core conceit: What do the protagonists want? To become “Hunters”; What is a Hunter? Anything we want it to be: Some Hunters fight for justice, other fight for money, some are cooks while other just collect weird things. The series never puts a cap on what a Hunter could be, and yet throughout Hunter x Hunter that titular role never feels particularly vague or incoherent. In fact, there is a thematic through-line that connects all the prominent characters, creating a tonal backbone that helps the series keeping its bizarre nature enclosed into a storytelling that feels natural and comfortable. The best way I could describe this is that all Hunters are… protagonists? Not in terms of placement in the Hunter x Hunter story, of course, the series has four protagonists and tends to stick with them, but on a more conceptual level becoming a Hunter seems to have a significance that goes beyond the fictional benefits the licence implies, and it can more broadly be seen as a direct struggle for agency. Becoming a Hunter, in short, means becoming the protagonist of your own story.
All Hunters are in fact almost built like Dungeons & Dragons characters. They each have a very specific goal, a very broad gimmick, and a heightened capacity for agency when compared to anyone who is not a Hunter. Going even further, the anything-goes nature of Hunters, where there is no tonal nor functional niche they are bound to as a broad concept, reminds me a lot of how tabletop rpg rules need to accommodate for both your edgy friend who wants to play a Drow assassin with a tragic backstory, and me, who will put all her skill points in Profession (Merchant) and just play a happy-go-lucky traveller trying to gather enough money to open up a shop.
To be honest I have no idea if Togashi took any inspiration from tabletop roleplaying when creating the series, but the feel of the final product is very similar to those of long running fantasy rpg campaigns: Weird beasts and places, a story that’s compelling even if it feels like it’s been entirely made up as it goes, explorations of different genre just to “change it up a bit”, characters written with entirely different tones working together and becoming friends, and so on. For how much the genre and tone may shift, Hunter x Hunter always has one element that remains constant, it always feels like a fun adventure.
That is not to say that the tone is always whimsical and light-hearted, in fact the series can get extremely dark when the situation requires it, and this 1999 anime adaptation takes that aspects entirely to the next level. While it just so slightly tones down some of the gruesomeness that can be seen in the manga, it completely makes up for it in terms of mood, and added character development. Not only the animation and sound manage to make some scenes that even in the manga were a bit plain, feel eerie and tense, but the pacing is slightly revised, making the story flow slightly slower, to the benefit of nuance, by adding a number of character-oriented moments that are often very striking and effective.
In fact, one of the greatest strengths of this 1999 adaptation is just how much the authors seem to understand the source material. Any change or addition made to the original story, only serves to enhance it, foreshadowing character dynamics that will appear later in the series, dropping fun hints and details about the world and characters, and generally expanding in a very thoughtful way on Togashi’s work. The fact that the animation is absolutely gorgeous doesn’t hurt either.
So, the story is as weird and good as a canonical Shonen Jump adventure can probably get, the animation looks gorgeous, the soundtrack is atmospheric and understated, the characters are fun, the few changes from the original source actually work very well… what could go wrong? Well, the elephant in the room is that the 1999 anime adaptation of Hunter x Hunter never really… well… ended. The manga is notorious for releasing at a really slow pace, and eventually the series had to stop, after running out of material to adapt. There were a couple of OVA sequels adapting the Greed Island story arc, but that’s where it stops. In 2011 the manga was adapted again, this time covering way much more of the original material, but to be honest I still recommend the 1999 adaptation over the 2011 one, as from what I’ve seen the 2011 adaptation seems to struggle to properly convey the more eerie and tense moments in the story, lacking that pleasantly slow pace of the 1999 series in favour of a more breezy tone that, while slightly more accurate to the source material, doesn’t seem to work quite as well when transposed to the televisual medium. My general suggestion is to watch Hunter x Hunter 1999 until the G.I. Final OVA (the oddly named final part to the Greed Island story arc), and then either read the manga or watch the 2011 adaptation continuing from that point.
Practical suggestions aside, Hunter x Hunter is one of the best adventure shonen ever made, delightful at its most light-hearted, and edge-of-the-seat-tense at its most intense. Sure, it is, in the end, popcorn entertainment, but it’s, quality popcorn, like organic artisanal popcorn with some fancy dressing, caramel probably.
