Review of Hunter x Hunter: The Last Mission
Hunter x Hunter, a series renowned for its unique and intelligent battles, is one of the best lengthy shounen/action series I've ever seen. However, this movie throws all of that out of the window of an extraordinarily tall tower and prefers to use more senseless, "beat-em-up with the power of friendship" tactics. The story is pretty basic: A small group of refugees band together with a powerful rival of the Hunter Association in order to get revenge on them. The story takes place at Heaven's Arena, the tower where Gon and Killua fought while learning the basics of Nen. It brings back some characters from previousarcs who all gather in the Arena to watch a tournament which happens to be the target of the group of refugees-turned-terrorists. Their goal is to defeat the chairman, Netero, and spread On, a rage-based counterpart to Nen. The story seems good enough at first but eventually ends up being solely driven by the power of Killua and Gon's friendship and nothing else. Side events like what the Hunter Association is doing during the turmoil go absolutely nowhere, and most of the side characters are just there for people to enjoy seeing them again. Even Hisoka does nothing but add a little card-related symbolism into the mix and use his spidey-powers to transport Leorio to the fight.
As for the new characters (which are just the group of antagonists), the minor villains are fairly interesting. Their reason for fighting is believable and churns up some good emotions along with the battles. Mainly the guy with the mohawk stands out, as his battle with Gon and Killua is done pretty well and lasts the longest. However, the main villain is about as boring as you can get. Considering how excellent the main villains in the series are, he just has nothing to back him up aside from showing one moment of genuine compassion for his underlings.
The animation is surprisingly no better than that of the series, which is a letdown considering movie budgets usually allow for better animation than TV shows. The soundtrack is still the same good soundtrack from the show as well and even uses "Hyouriittai" once again for the ending theme.
While this film is certainly not as good as the show, it's still something worth checking out if you're a fan of the series and want more. Like most of HxH, it focuses mainly on Gon and Killua even though Kurapica and Leorio return for a bit. The movie takes place sometime around the very beginning of the Chimera Ant arc, so I would not recommend to this anyone who has not at least gotten that far.