Hunter x Hunter sucks.

[Char Aznable]

People kept saying that this is the best anime out there, and after looking into it I saw was made by the same guy who made Yu Yu Hakusho, which is actually one of my favorites. I also heard the anime was made by the same people who did One Punch Man. So I figured this has to be good, and tried to watch it. I gotta say though, it seems very boring, generic, and juvenile.

No, I'm not going to watch X amount of episodes waiting for it to "get good." If they can't hook me in the first few episodes then really they failed to accomplish what an anime is supposed to do. The characters are just so bland and shallow. After watching two episodes and glancing at the wiki anyone could summarize them perfectly.

Leorio is the stereotypical anti-hero motivated by greed.

Kurapika is the "my clan got murdered so I want revenge" guy. In other words, blonde Sasuke.

Killua is a Gary-Stu assassin. Started training at 3, entered a tournament at 6. Come on. Putting kill in his name makes it even worse. Reminds me of anime like "Kill la Kill" that try to be all dark and edgy but mostly only appeal to dorky 14 year old girls.

As for Gon, he should just become a meteorologist. The only interesting thing about him in the first couple of episodes is that he predicts the weather. Big deal, I can do that with my arthritis. Then for some reason when Leorio and Kurapika are about to get into a fight, which in this anime I guess just means glare angrily at each other and spout angry remarks, Gon talks down to the old sea captain trying to act all wise and stuff. It would have been a lot more believable to have the old sea captain use that line, it felt forced and out of place to have a 10 year old kid spouting words of wisdom to someone much older and more experienced than him.

Hunter x Hunter is a battle shounen with very few battles, and the few it does have are terrible. Fans excuse this as focusing on story and dialogue, only those consist entirely of tropes and stereotypes which are common in other anime, and often done better.

Protagonist seeking father? Fuu from Samurai Champloo does this better.

Protagonist seeking money? Cowboy Bebop.

Protagonist seeking revenge? Sasuke.

Protagonist who is an assassin with a dark past? Kiritsugu from Fate Zero does this without being a Gary Stu.

I mean they might as well throw in Liam Neeson and let him rescue his kidnapped daughter again since they're going with the theme of overused tropes. I hate to say it, but this show is probably objectively worse than Bleach, which is sad considering how much I loved Yu Yu Hakusho. How people can rip on shows like Sword Art Online, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, or One Punch Man, then praise garbage like Hunter x Hunter and Fairy Tail is beyond me. I guess weebs just have bad taste.

[Sagathar]

List of Reasons Hunter x Hunter isn’t a kids show (in somewhat chronological order)

-From the creator of Yu Yu Hakusho
-Death death death death death death death death death death death death death
-28 year old prevuing on our 12 year olds
-Secondary protagonist slices up two guys because he’s a bit upset
-Blood lust and battle lust (many instances)
-Assassin family
-Child abuse
-Graphic whipping scene of a 12 year old named character
-Protagonist cuts himself with a knife
-Child abandonment (several instances)
-Secondary protagonist joins the mafia
-Massacred clan who’s eyes are cut out to be sold
-Body parts trade
-Cannibalism (between humans and between pseudo-humans)
-Secondary protagonist brutally tortures another character
-Secondary protagonist kills someone for refusing to answer a question
-Corrupt polotics
-Protagonist stated to have no morals.
-Counterfeiting
-Very brutal torture discussed in detail
-More death and massacring
-Naked pervert getting turned on
-28 year old watching 12 year old booty
-50 year old (in 12 year old body) perving on 28 year old
-Complex strategic battles
-28 year old perving on (at the very most) 9 year olds
-Complex morality (many instances)
-Horrible governments
-Drug trafficking
-varied and complex world views and social structures
-horrible child hoods
-society is rarely benevolent
-On screen child death (graphic)
-Vengeful protagonist
-sexual slavery
-Protagonist threatens sincerely to kill an inocent character to assist his vengeance
-Did I mention there’s a lot of death in this?

REVIEW

Hunter X Hunter is the story of Gon Freecs, a twelve year-old boy who grew up with his relatives on an island in the middle of nowhere after being abandoned by his father as a baby. Gon wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a Hunter, so that he can eventually meet him and try to get some insight into why he was left behind. Hunters, in this story, are essentially mercenaries, although being a hunter gives one access to all kinds of faculties and abilities outside of taking on mercenary missions. It’s kind of like mensa for people with superpowers, and to be a Hunter basically means being one of the biggest badasses on Earth.

On his way to becoming a professional Hunter, Gon befriends the vengeance-seeking hard in the paint mofo Kurapika, and the goof with a heart of gold Leorio, shortly before meeting his instant best friend and arguable life partner, the child assassin Killua. While these four could be considered the main characters, and appear together on all of the promotional art, Gon and Killua are the only characters who consistently appear throughout the entire story; and the main emotional crux of the narrative is focused on their relationship.

In many ways, Gon and Killua are the glue which holds this series together, as the storyline itself is absolute madness. It feels like the creative stream-of-consciousness of creator Yoshihiro Togashi, with an arc structure that at times barely feels like a structure at all, so much as the loose thread binding all of Togashi’s wild ideas together. Over the course of the first twenty-six episodes, which comprise the Hunter Exam arc, the characters are put through a huge variety of unique situations which have virtually nothing to do with one-another. One episode will have a test of endurance where the characters have to run down a hallway for miles, and then there’ll be a cooking contest, followed by a puzzle where they have to find the entrance to a pyramid, then a series of unique battle scenarios, and then an intense game wherein contestants all have to try and steal badges off of one-another’s chests.

At heart, Hunter X Hunter could be considered a battle manga, but the kind of battles that it incorporates are rarely about just fighting. Even when the characters do fight, they rarely have to rely on physical strength as much as they do on tactics and creatively manipulating their powers and surroundings, which makes it a lot less obvious how things are going to turn out. Togashi is a master of creating scenarios in which losing won’t necessarily put the main characters out of the game, or in which the circumstances for winning are a bit more complicated, which allows his characters more opportunities to fail. Because failure in most scenarios won’t immediately lead to the death of a character, it’s not always easy to predict what the outcome of a scenario might be–and often those outcomes can be pretty surprising.

As the series gets into its later arcs, it becomes more combat-focused, but also invents a number of massively fleshed out systems and power balances which keep the combat fresh and interesting time and again. There also is not a single battle which ever lasts for more than one episode, with the exception of one part in the epic finale of the Chimera Ant arc, wherein the series continually cuts between a bunch of simultaneous battles over the course of several episodes. This way, none of the action ever feels drawn out, and even if there’s a battle which isn’t as interesting as the one before, it will quickly be followed-up by something cooler which might catch your attention.

In this way, the moment to moment appeal of Hunter X Hunter is like that of a variety game show, wherein half of the fun is in learning the unique rules of each new game, and then seeing how the characters will interact with the set pieces. However, again, were this all that there is to the series, then it wouldn’t have reached the level of acclaim that it has. The true magic of Hunter X Hunter is in its character-driven core narrative and unique execution.

What sets Gon and Killua apart from most shounen anime leads is that the two of them are often bit players in the stories that they find themselves involved with. While Killua is significantly more powerful than Gon, for the most part, both of them are often overshadowed both by their allies and their opponents. They often are not the deciding factor in which side prevails during any of the central conflicts; and even when they are, they have to win by outsmarting their opponents more so than by overpowering them.

This works awesomely in favor of the series’ grand sense of adventure, because no matter how many leaps and bounds these two make in power levels, it’s always made abundantly clear that they still have a long way to go. Gon’s main rival in the series, the badass evil gay clown Hisoka, is implied to be one of the strongest characters in the show–but his interest in Gon comes from how much potential he sees in Gon to eventually become much stronger. Hisoka never has to use much of his power when he comes into conflict with Gon, and even saves Gon’s life or helps him out at times with the hope of getting to see him grow.

Because the narrative puts so much emphasis on Gon and Killua’s lack of strength, not only is most of their training and progression more satisfying, but we also get to take a step back and watch them develop as people without being too worried about how Gon is going to fight the next bad guy or whatever. Gon and Killua’s relationship is the bread and butter of the show’s emotional resonance, and with Gon being the kind of straightforwardly honest numbskull you’ve come to expect from shounen manga, this means that the lynchpin of the series is Killua.

What makes Killua fascinating is that, rather than trying to fulfill his own ambitions like the other characters, the only thing Killua wants is to be friends with Gon, and to prove to himself that he’s capable of experiencing friendship in spite of his ultra-controlled upbringing as an assassin. Even though Killua plays the straight-man to Gon’s idiot, their personalities somehow coalesce perfectly, and Killua ends up being more like Gon’s better half than his sidekick. It’s hard to imagine either of these kids making it very far without the other, which is why it’s so interesting that the two of them basically met by random chance and instantly became friends.

While Hunter X Hunter can be a little bit cheesy and hammy about its character development at times, I really think that Killua’s relationship with Gon manages to be among the most emotionally gratifying friendships in anime; which is why it’s able to really pull at the heartstrings when Killua has to deal with even more complex emotions towards Gon in the later arcs of the series. This relationship pulls so much of the series’ weight that there were several times at the start of a new arc, wherein I found myself kind of bored by the setup and introduction of new characters, and then was instantly drawn back in as soon as Gon and Killua became involved in the action.

That isn’t to say that none of the other characters can pull their own weight, and indeed the exact opposite is usually true. While not every character in Hunter X Hunter is equally fleshed out, it’s rare that any of the characters are outright boring. Almost everyone has some kind of uniquely quirky personality or superpower. One of Togashi’s biggest strengths in my opinion is his ability to make almost every single character in the series totally unique, both in terms of design and personality. The variety of design styles makes the world feel mysterious and vast, and the characters represent so many different perspectives and ideals that they give the story a sense of worldliness and intellectual weight.

Another of Togashi’s biggest strengths is that he seems to have a ludicrously vast general knowledge of many unique concepts. There are nearly as many nods to philosophical, psychological, economic, and political ideas, as there are implementations of game design, shounen battle tropes, and segments of heart-stopping violence.

Togashi seems to have a penchant for subversive elements in his writing, which has made him somewhat infamous over the years. It often feels like he wants to reveal as little as possible about his characters so that he can still pull more cards from his sleeves later on. He likes leaving little plot threads untied as he segues from arc to arc, keeping the audience constantly wondering what happened to so-and-so character. This can even be frustrating at times when one arc suddenly ends, and then a new one opens in full force–but since every arc turns out to be pretty great in the end, it’s hard to ever stay too mad.

At one point in the series, a certain character explains to Gon that life is all about enjoying the little detours on the road to your destination, and that the connections you form along the journey are what counts the most. I think that this basically represents Togashi’s entire ethos when it comes to writing this story. Fans of Hunter X Hunter often find themselves frustrated thanks to Togashi constantly taking hiatuses as the result of poor health, meaning that it takes even longer for the unpredictable chapters to come out–and at present, the series is still unconcluded, with Togashi on hiatus once more. However, I think that if the story had to end at the place that the 2011 anime concludes, then it would be a satisfying enough ending for the kind of story that Togashi was trying to tell.

Of course, I’d be lying if I said that every single arc of Hunter X Hunter is equally good. There’s at least one arc where it seemed like Togashi realized that it was turning out kind of ♥♥♥♥ early on and just quickly jumped into the next one to get back on track. There are some weaker episodes here and there, but the best parts of the show more than make up for them. A lot of reviewers seem to think that a so-called “ten out of ten” show is one which doesn’t have any flaws, and I tend to disagree. To me, the best shows are the shows that do the most good, and there’s no question that even in spite of its minor failures, this series has excelled at providing some of the best things which I’ve ever seen in an anime series. If that’s not enough to make it one of the most deserving series around, then I don’t know what is.

Part of how Hunter X Hunter succeeds is also in how well it covers up the parts which might not have looked so good anywhere else. There are two recap episodes and a fair share of recap footage, but all of it comes at the beginning of the episodes, meaning that it can easily be skipped when marathoning the series. Even though there are quite a number of talkative exposition scenes, Madhouse(the animation studio for HxH) practically got away with murder through the clever use of the show’s exciting and highly memorable soundtrack. A lot of times, the longer exposition scenes are combined with an attention-grabbing backbeat, which makes them feel a lot more exciting than they are, and causes the episodes to seemingly fly by. In spite of its length, I found Hunter X Hunter to be one of the easiest shows to sit through that I’ve watched, and most of the people I’ve talked to who watched the show said that they marathoned it in less than a week.

While I’m on the subject of audio, Hunter X Hunter also has some of my favorite ending themes in the form of Just Awake by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the spectacular Hunting For Your Dream by Galneryus which practically made a lot of episodes in the Phantom Troupe arc. Most of the voice acting in the series is pretty good as well, though I’d say that Megumi Han’s performance of Gon improves dramatically over the course of the show, having started out pretty uneven.

At this point, I’ve said about all that I can about Hunter X Hunter without going into too many specific details, and hopefully some of what I’ve said has resonated with you as well. I hope I’ve explained things in such a way that you can understand what others see in this show. I don’t know if Hunter x Hunter will ever continue as an animated series, or even as a manga series for that matter, but right now I’m satisfied with what I’ve gotten from it, and am very glad to have experienced it.


By the way HxH its not a "Naruto remake" the original HxH was made back in 1999 and Naruto in 2002 therefore making Naruto a "copy" of HxH.

Here is a "funny" video that shows how dark,depressing and morbid the series get

(WARNING SLIGHT SPOILERS) https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_674359449&feature=iv&src_vid=nETwCvnko6I&v=lqskVmii3iY

[HyperCube]

Автор сообщения: Cold

Agreed. All the today's animes feel like Naruto remakes.

because they are just chinese cartoons
*puts on sunglasses*

[HypersleepyNaputunia]

Maybe try code geass lelouch of the rebellion. Pretty catchy mech suits fighting a alternate timeline british empire. All the episodes are action filled so far.