Review of Hunter x Hunter

I feel as though I'm in the minority here as I didn't enjoy this series as much as others, to this day I dont understand why this anime has such an overwhelmingly positive reception, the vast majority of reviews giving this a 10. I dont know maybe its just me. But allow me to speak for the minority here. Hunter x Hunter (hxh) follows the story of Gon as he tries to find his father by becoming a hunter in order to look for him. Hunters are these sort of people who 'hunt', that's the best way to put it, they hunt many things such atreasures, new lands, crime, doing odd jobs, that kind of thing.

Rather han having a main story, the series is divided up into arcs and each arc gives Gon a clue as to where to search for his father next, sort of like a breadcrumb trail. And by breadcrumb trail I mean Ging set all of that up, cause apparantly he's Aizen and all is going well according to his 'master plan'.

The series consistss of 6 arcs, the hunter exam, heavens arena, phantom troupe, chimera ant and election. Here's the thing, I liked 5 out of the 6 arcs, but the one arc that I thought was just boring was the chimera ant arc, that doesn't sound like much but when you consider that's 61 episodes, that's where the problem begins, honestly the chimera ant arc feels like filler because it moves away from the hunters and focuses on these insects.

The chimera ants devour humans and gain their traits, this was supposed to be a reflection of what humanity is, on paper it sounds good, but the excution was piss poor. The pacing was horrid, some of the episodes felt like an eternity and you have the narrator constantly telling us what the characters and doing and thinking (especially at the end fights), just shut please, we know what's going on, there's no need to tell us. Not to mention some asspulls such as the rose bomb and Gon's power up. And you're telling me, that under a worldwide threat, the hunter association only managed to cough up 2 pro hunters and their students, the chairman and gon and killua to fight the chimera ants?

Here's some of the problems I had throughout the series: There's way too much training sessions, like every single arc has them, and these training sessions are so bloated and last for several episodes, not to mention so much plot conviences such as gon and killua happening to right the right instructors at the right time.....oh yeah, it was all according to Ging's master plan, even Aizen may have to come over and give Ging a handshake for that master plan.

None of the arcs are properly concluded, there are always some loose ends but these carry over to the next arc, now this sounds like a good idea because its creates contunity, but its not, the arcs feel incomplete because of this.

There are so much characters that do terrible stuff and they just get away with it, the Bombers and Phantom troupe did mass killings and they were forgiven by Gon, yet when the chimera ants did that, he went apeshit on them.

Power escalation is present here, oh yeah it's here, but it does deescalate when necessary, for plot convenece obviously. I mean, during the whole greed island arc gon and killua spent so much time learning gyo, yet they convinently forget about it during the chimera ant arc. When the ants were introudced they were shown to be so powerful yet they got weaker, only the royal guards and meruem remained strong.

Lets talk about the villans because hxh has some great villans, but they follow a similar pattern, they are introduced as tyrants and as the arc goes on you get to see a more humane side of them, so you must sympathasize with them. I really couldn't care because the series did a shit job at that. Meruem in particular was a victim of that, I didn't feel a thing when he died.

I think that's enough complaining, so lets talk about some of the good stuff. The fights are well done, they reall get your blood pumping, all of the fights have some sort of strategy they use, which is pretty cool. And of course Madhouse always delivers with the animation, form episode 1 to 148 its always consistent, its really just such a good looking show.

The much as well is also top noych especially the ending songs and the ost, voice acting is also on point, but fuck the opening theme, its the same blood song 6 times! I really can't complain about the production values, its really well done.

I found Nen to be so intresing, its a quite complicated system and it works so well in the fights, cause it always boils down to who could outsmart each other. I even found myself on the wiki sometimes reading up on it, cause its so creative, its kind of like chi when you manifest your own aura or life energy only there are a lot of rules that apply to it. But nen really is something great and intresting.

The characters all have so much conflicting emotions, you really feel for them. Gon in particular stands out, as he's an inncocent and kind hearted boy, but it tends to make him irrational and selfish at times, and this is done pretty well. The problem is with the slow pacing of some episodes, this tends kill off any kind of emotional connection you had with the characters.

There's a lot of underlying themes of morality and its not as fleshed out as it can be, but its there nevertheless.

I'll be frank, this show could have gotten an easy 9 if it wasn't for the chimera ant arc, that arc despite having great moments, was way too slow and bloated. That thing is 61 episodes, the hunter exam which is the second longest is only 26 episodes, at the end of the chimera ant I just felt so tired, it was not fun. It moved way too far from what the series is about, you know the hunters, and its slow pacing ruined it. The rest of arcs were really good.

I don't know why hxh is called the best shounen, maybe its just me, as I am in the minority here, but for me hxh is just above average.