Review of Hunter x Hunter
(6.0/10) Hunter X Hunter is a flawed show that's trying incredibly hard to break through the endless loop of sameness that plagues its genre. Shounen-action anime has always been something that's light. Its also something that's made to last. From shows like Bleach to One Piece to FMA to Hunter X Hunter, these shows almost never stop before the sixty episode mark. This is mainly due to their incessant need to stay on air. Its very blatant that a lot of these shows have a very prolonged production schedule that seems to string the entire show along. This means that these shows are almost flawedby nature. When you have an endless stream of consciousness, you tend to babble.
I know this first-hand, too. I tend to talk way too much about a topic I know i can be concise about. I just kind of repeat the same shit in a slightly different way and only after i'm done repeating it do I realize that i've repeated myself. Its an awkward flaw to have, especially since I love talking about things i'm passionate about, positively or negatively. So i tend to talk way too mucha bout a topic i know I can be concise about. I just kind of repeat the same shit in a somewhat different way... Well, you see what I mean.
...
I'm a fan of things that try to be out there. I love shows that make that creative leap into the realm of the unknown... so it should come as no surprise that i'm simply not a fan of Shounen-action shows. They're always so drawn out. They always beat a dead horse until its nothing but mashed meat. They always pretend not to have filler by injecting plot into otherwise filler episodes, and that in itself is annoying. Lastly, they almost always have shit animation.
Even shows like FMA:Brotherhood ended up feeling dragged out to me. I ended up being very disenchanted with a story that just goes too far. The stakes became too high, the entire scenario ended up being really dumb and over-the-top in the worst way possible. That defines Shounen for me.
...
I don't think you'll be surprised to hear that I think HunterXHunter is massively overrated. I think that just about every aspect of it isn't as good as I see people claim it is. However, I do think that it does its best to separate itself from the onslaught of shit-Shounen out there. If anything, its the most entertaining one I've seen.
Much like the show, i'll be splitting my review into six parts, with a short conclusion to wrap things up. So, without further wait, lets get into it.
________________________________________
[PART 1] : The Shounen Exams
When comparing this show to other shounen-action anime I try to think back to every single episode. This is naturally hard since there are a whopping 148 episodes. But nevertheless, I try.
Much like a lot of Shounen, HunterXHunter plays like a stream of conscious. The breathing breaks are the light hearted episodes and the story-driven episodes are the rambling. Which, for the most part, is fairly cohesive.
Occasionally the story gets a bit too muddled with its own rules, as the creator of the manga seems to have a hard-on for them. The amount of information overload through undramatic exposition is pretty incredible in this show.
I felt like every other scene is just a certain character explaining a new rule or a new way to implement a previously established rule. If you think you'll get away with learning the rules from the beginning of the show, I have bad news. Literally every arc has a brand new set of rules.
From an MMO-esq card game to learning how to use your inner force, everything has names and abilities and ways to establish them. I feel like all of them are impressively crafted but in the end it feels as though it's something to study rather than to watch.
They are almost never delivered in an engaging way and these exposition scenes quickly lose you as a viewer.
...
That's the sad thing about most Shounen. A lot of them make their way to the action, but the actual way they end up going is animation-saving dialogue scenes that do little to establish characters. And when they DO establish characters its almost always through wrestler-esq jobbing or blatant exposition.
And that's just part one of these Shounen exams. Since Hunter X Hunter seems to eager to check every single marker off the "Shounen Cliches list". But that doesn't mean it doesn't do them well, for the most part.
These exposition scenes are almost always backed by engaging, if not overused, scores. As well as at least some character banter that makes it seem like you aren't being lectured in a college classroom.
This goes for fights as well. Each one is about strategy, and while that may be engaging for some, I found myself horribly disinterested in a lot of them. Thankfully most fights don't last for more than an episode, but when the fight is dragged out, I found myself zoning out.
The issue the writer has to juggle with is the idea of maintaining tension while still dragging the show through the exposition puddle every half a second. Even in the shows more memorable fight scenes, its Shounen roots show and I find myself relaxed instead of gripping the edges of my seat.
I think its more of a personal taste...But if there was a Shounen-cliche exam, this show would pass with flying colors. Here's your Shounen-card, HxH, use it well.
_______________________________________
[PART 2] : The Shounen Family
Now that the show is settled comfortably in its Shounen roots, lets talk about how it tries to break free. In the middle of this shows teen-boy demographic I constantly see a show that's just one or two steps away from becoming fully engaging.
Through the shows six arcs, it developed solidly. Starting as a mostly innocent fun romp, its slow decent into darker storytelling was something that intrigued me. However, I never felt like they went "whole hog" with it. Apart from very specific scenes every so often, I hardly ever felt surprised with this show.
This is mainly due to it inheriting a lot of negative traits from its Shounen parents. Those traits being Deus Ex Machina, and as I've said before, a mass amount of exposited information... constantly.
The show itself has two goals, develop the relationship between Gon and Killua, the shows protagonists, and make its merry way to the next battle. While the relationship between Gon and Killua never feels forced, I always felt like it was one step away from becoming something special.
For every entertaining piece of character building we got an extremely cheese-filled edgy sequence. Or one of those horrendous panning shots of the characters face as he says something edgy. Its cheese, and its not funny cheese. its the kind of cheese that's kind of moldy that smells bad, not the kind you want to sprinkle over your beef stroganoff.
That being said, their relationship does end up playing as the crux of the show, even if the show does do the smart decision of not making them major players in a lot of these arcs. Apart from one arc in the show, Gon and Killua always felt like helpers, rather than leaders. This was a conscious decision by the creator to make the universe feel constantly more dangerous as their eyes open to new possibilities with their power.
Apart from one scene in particular, the show stays true to that and I appreciated this greatly. It had a certain honesty to it.
__________________________________
[Part 3] : Shounen Arena
So lets talk about how this show stacks up when compared to its partners like FMA. Well, personally, i enjoyed it a decent amount more than FMA. For one, the tone of HxH felt more engaging.
While FMA usually kept its tone serious apart from the very obvious "joke" scenes, where the failed attempt of humor became overbearing. HxH does the smart thing and makes the humor feel slightly (and I mean very slightly) more natural. A lot of the jokes aren't really drawn at the characters expense.
With that, the shows entire tonal shift towards the latter half, with it becoming more violent and heartbreaking, works fairly well. Its always interesting to see something so happy go so wrong.
I had a very "Avatar: The Last Airbender" vibe with the shows first two arcs. This is great news, since Avatar is one of my favorite shows of all time. The light hearted nature combined with the less-lighthearted thematic elements made for a nice little juxtaposition.
While I won't compare it to the likes of Attack on Titan, since that show is hardly finished, I'll say that HxH does Shounen in what is most likely the most engaging possible way. It stays true to the cliches whilst enhancing the parts it can make better.
For example, its willingness to have these characters get separated, or stay off-screen, is a change that I enjoyed. The cast in this show is gargantuan but they never feel forced. This leads me to the best part of the show.
________________________________
[PART 4] : An Auction for Design
This shows best quality is its character design. While the animation itself is fairly lacking due to the constant use of re-used footage as well as still-images to fill time and save budget, the character designs shine.
I can't think of a single character in this show that wasn't memorable to some extent. Even the smaller characters that ended up being killed soon after their introduction had so much creativity put behind them, you couldn't guess that they wouldn't be major players.
In fact, the most entertaining aspect of the show was the unexpected change that certain characters were introduced only to die... and you realizing that, that amazing character design had you completely fooled!
Every character also has a place in the shows extensive rule-book of power. Each character does feel like a player. That's great.
Whether its the creepy, yet bad-ass joker-esq clown, Hisoka, or Killua's entire family, these players are constantly something to look out for. This show does a marvelous job with making these unique characters stand out and I never found myself forgetting who someone was. That's a great feat for show that has seemingly hundreds of characters!
___________________________________
[PART 5] : Greedy Episodes
Every arc feels like it has progression. This keeps building and building until the shows final arc. I'm not counting the very final twelve episodes as a whole arc since I felt as though they were there to create a conclusion rather than a continuation, even if the manga isn't done.
Before I get into the final arc, I want to discuss a shounen anime's ability to drag. Whether its something like Dragonball Z or even a much shorter show like Attack on Titan. Shounen has this genre cliche of dragging out stories to fit time slots.
Hunter X Hunter felt as though it was breaking that mold by making every arc feel as though its breezy and fast. Even the Greed Island arc, which had an entirely new video game rule-set in place felt quicker than I expected. It played with its sillier roots well and the conclusion of the arc, while a bit obvious, served as a nice segway into the next one.
This was the case for most of the shows arcs, too. Each one was backed by catchy toons, especially the Yorknew Auction arc which has my favorite ending theme to any anime i've seen thus far. They're also backed by a lot of characters and a constant feeling of escalating power.
This is where the show struggles. I feel like just like the dragging cliche, a Shounen's incapability to escape rising action is plaguing the entire genre.
By rising action I mean the base idea of any storytelling. To ramp up the story by raising consequences and stakes to create a tenser environment. This show, along with its shounen family, don't understand when too far is too far.
This shows with its character introductions. By introductions I mean two possible ways a character can be introduced.
1.) They walk in and one of our characters talk about how "their aura is the strongest they've ever seen, they are so scary!" And that gets repeated a few hundred times.
2.) They job. By job, I mean when a previously established powerful characters gets his/her ass swiftly beaten by this new character. This happens to establish the fact that this new character is a level above anything they expected!
While number two is a viable way to approach an introduction once or twice... I felt as though this is how the show introduced almost every character. When it wasn't number two, it was number one, which is even worse.
Every character felt like the show was trying hard to ratchet up the stakes and at one point it just became too much. The show hit its diminishing returns and it looped back and all this energy the show has spent making this character seem cool and bad-ass was thrown back in its face. It became a cheesy mess.
FMA:Brotherhood did this with its absolutely hilarious shark-jumping finale that was so "out there" and overblown that I was laughing at it. It was dumb. HxH does this too at one point. It really puts a damper on the whole thing and it makes you realize that you are in fact watching a power fantasy for a kid, rather than a show just focused on being a good show.
Mind you I'm not against kids shows. I believe every piece of entertainment can be amazing. Its just how it breaks free of a lot of cliches that plague it. As well as the amount of effort and time the creators invest into making it engaging and unique for everyone.
_______________________________
[PART 6]: An Ant in a Parade
I promised that i'll talk about this shows final arc. I'll keep it relatively spoiler free, only mentioning character names and one aspect of the story. The Chimera Ant arc is the shows longest arc. It spans upwards of sixty episodes and presents a completely new world for the characters in this show to play with.
New and more powerful players are introduced again, and new rules are established. Thankfully the rules are more simple this time. The characters need to stop an invasion.
With that in mind, I was digging the arcs slower pace as well as its focus on developing the main characters. It felt like a slow burn that I was actually enjoying. The show became darker and the themes became more mature. The political commentary was a little on-the-nose, but the creator of the show really does demonstrate how he has a lot of knowledge on a lot of things.
This enjoyable arc which I, at the time, was called "The show coming into its own", also introduced my favorite character. The King. A sympathetic villain that became the shows diamond in the rough. A seemingly horrible being that goes through a personality crisis.
However, this is where the show stops. On literally the 100th episode of the show. Our protagonists launch an attack on the invaders and here we get thirty five.... THIRTY FIVE episodes of nonstop fighting.
And while that may sound cool to someone, let me reiterate. ELEVEN HOURS of Shounen action. This means we get re-used footage, still images, and incredibly cheesy moments for eleven fucking hours. Apart from a highlight or two, these thirty-five episodes were damn near unbearable.
Everything was dragged out to a point of unbelievably, every character given enough cheese to fill up a... cheese... factory. And worst of all, it was BORING. Every piece of dialogue was perfunctory. Every emotional breakthrough was so long that halfway through you just stop caring and hope that they move on. Every second of action was prefaced with five minutes of exposition regarding a characters power. I can't be the only one who thinks that explaining your power to the villain is fucking stupid.
While this arc has an absolutely remarkable ending. An ending that I think was so good and so heartbreaking that I felt like this show didn't deserve it. But for all the sadness I was feeling, a feeling of anger crept over my anime-fueled mind.
The reason the ending was so good was because of The King and his relationship with another character. This character was given five episodes of screentime. Five. Five. Five fucking episodes. FIVE.
They gave a stupid fucking invasion THIRTY FIVE episodes, yet the best part of the show, the one part of the show that I WANTED to see more of they cut short. This character was the reason The King became such a great character and this character was totally sidelined for the invasion.
This infuriated me. I'm even angry thinking about it. Nothing is more angering than seeing a show wash away its potential due to its dumb focus. This is the pinnacle of that.
But even with this massively squandered potential, even if that character only got five episodes to shine, and even if that characters prolonged presence could've made this ending EVEN BETTER, it was still good.
That just goes to show you how good it could've possibly been... but I digress. The show has to stay within its Shounen family, for better... but mostly for worse.
______________________________
[CONCLUSION] : The Shounen Election
If you can't tell already, this show caused a pretty mixed reaction from me. On one hand we had beautifully done character designs, but on the other, we had mostly stilted and meandering animation. On one hand we had a few standout characters, on the other hand we had them bogged down by fights. On one hand we had Gon and Killua play realistic roles, on the other hand we had dramatic escalation to the extreme.
Its mixed, but even if it is, I will say that I do not regret watching that. Even if I do honestly believe the show's story could've been told better in half its run-time, I still enjoyed it.
For as frustrated as it made me, by the time the final episodes credits rolled I felt like I went on a journey in a world full of journeys. I felt like I saw enough character progression. I felt like there can be infinitely more stories to tell. I even felt a hint of sadness from the knowledge that I may never see these character again.
For everything that this show put me through, I appreciate it. Its a show stuck in an infinite loop. A show that tries so very hard to break free of a lot of cliches that plague its genre.
Much like someone drowning in the water, the show tried its best to kick its way to the surface and break through to yell and wave, "Hey, look at me!" In a sea of stilted Shounen-action anime, its there trying to get noticed.
I think it just might have been.