Review of Hunter x Hunter
The anime many seem to love, but seems to fly under the general populace’s radar. Hunter x Hunter, your seemingly proto-typical shonen anime coming from a manga that started in 1998, does a good job at entertaining but like many other long form anime series, have trouble dealing with the pacing and monotony that comes with the long story. Beginning as a light hearted, humor filled, coming of age story, Hunter x Hunter does a very good job in setting up the stories descent and shift to a darker, more mature tone as the show progresses. With 148 episodes in its 3 year run, thestory follows several arcs, which feature a grand display of versatility, range of plot lines, character development, and overall enjoyment.
Hunter x Hunter starts with a typical shonen setup, with Gon setting out on his journey, forming a sort of party with a few other key characters he meets along the way. This is the general run of all the arcs that occurs in the anime. Each arc is more or less seeing Gon and his partner in crime, best friend and friendly rival, Killua Zoldyk, encountering new obstacles, training to get stronger, and interacting with new characters that are relevant to that arc. All the arcs feel episodic without any real connection between. It is however important to see each arc in sequence because they build up on each other but only in the sense that the previous provides a subtle background for what is to come. This leads to one of my gripes with Hunter x Hunter.
Besides Gon’s main mission of finding his dad, there is no other plot line that carries through to the end. The simplest of tasks is stretched over 136 episodes or so and we only get relief in the form of the side tracking and tangential events that happen in each of the arcs. The arcs serve no other purpose than to some what add thrill to Gon’s journey, albeit with lots of character development and plenty of excitement, but that is about it. Many times through the anime, as you can imagine with 148 episodes, things get drawn out for much too long. Conversations end up taking up the bulk of many of the arcs, and a few of the arcs feel utterly useless and out of place in the overall narrative. Hunter x Hunter attempts to cover a lot of bases by offering many characters in each arc and attempting to give every single character some sense of depth and personality, which I must applaud the effort, but made watching it at many points such a chore. There is definitely some thinning and editing that could have happened to Hunter x Hunter to make it easier to digest and allowed for other characters and elements to grow to even higher levels.
Something I would have wanted to see more of is a deeper dive into the darker elements that were brought up as the series ended. The Chimera Ant arc, which is more or less the second half of the anime, is by far the best, most thrilling, complex and overall fulfilling of them all. In this arc we see some of the most brutal displays of existence and are presented with real questions of what it means to be strong, what desire will do for and to us and even the lengths one will go to in efforts to save the ones they love. We are also given some of the best music in the entire anime. The scores were superb and added immense levels to the gravity of the circumstances. This arc also held arguably the best fight sequences and animation of the anime thus far as well. The Chimera Ant arc is lauded by many as an epic and I agree with every praise that it is presented with. I will say that it does have pacing issues and tends to give a little too much attention to some aspects that eventually fade away later. Like the rest of the anime, there were points that feel like chores to watch and I found myself skipping through episodes because the filler became unbearable. I will say that at this point in the anime, the structure is so ingrained in how the anime operates that we wouldn’t have been able to reach this point without everything that happened prior, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant.
Hunter x Hunter is an enjoyable anime that may be a little overrated. I will admit that at its best, Hunter x Hunter is simply amazing and stands up against any other anime I’ve seen, but it’s low points take up too much space in the grand scheme of things and it makes me question how others are judging the anime. I would recommend this anime to anyone with time on their hands as it is thrilling, but you won’t lose anything if you happen to skip a few bits along the way.
Hunter x Hunter has a lot going on that is a bit difficult to cover in a short review. There is a lot to unpack and it’s evident in the amount of deeper analysis that exists on the internet, so that speaks a bit to how dense and multi faceted the anime is, but that isn’t to say it is all good.