Hello Hivers,
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In the last period I find always more difficult to find new anime to watch, since I have already seen most of the good ones and the new ones that are coming out in this period, are not exactly catching my interest.
So the other day, I was searching on Prime video (after having rejected every proposal on Netflix) and I saw that among the anime proposed, there was an old acquaintance of mine: Hunter x Hunter.
This is an anime to which I am really affectionate, probably one of my favorites, except a little problem, that every fan already knows: the author of the manga, Yoshihiro Togashi, does take his time to publish new chapters (some times even years between one and the other).
This post contains some minor spoilers
Plot
The anime is centered on a young boy, Gon Freecss, that at the beginning of the story, is 12 years old and that decides to leave its home town (a small island of Fishermans) in order to search for his father Jin, who left the house when he was very young due to his job as an Hunter.
A Hunter's job is to dedicate themselves to the protection of knowledge, people, and nature. They must preserve culturally precious items or species of animals and plants they are able to discover. Furthermore, they must also arrest criminals and in rare cases even fellow Hunters who have committed heinous crimes.
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He leaves the island with the goal of sustaining the exam to become a professional hunter himself. Here at the exam he encounters the other main characters of the anime, Killua, Leorio and Kurapika.
The four of them become really close and after passing the exam to become Hunters (apart for Killua who will pass it subsequently) they pursue their personal goals by helping each other.
My favorite characters
Killua
The son of a member and designated heir of a very famous family of assassins, the Zoldycks. Killua was trained from childhood to be a ruthless killer, to resist torture and not feel any kind of feeling. His personality, however, has not been completely bent by his family, and in fact the young assassin, as soon as he meets Gon, immediately takes a liking to him (the two are the same age) and decides he wants to become his friend.
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He has different sides of his personality, some very similar to his friend Gon and this is why they have a liking for each other, but has also a much darker side due to his origins, which make him a very bad-ass character with which is better not to mess with.
During the first part of the anime, we see him develop his personality and discover parts of his personality that even he didn't know. Basically he is still a child and when he goes to the house of Gon and meets its uncle, he begins to understand what it means to be have someone that loves you.
He has very dark moments during the series, especially during the Hunter examination, where he is really scared by the presence of his brother Illumi and kills his opponent, being in this way disqualified from the exam and losing the possibility to become an Hunter. He and Gon are the main characters of the series, and for sure he is the one that powers the dynamic and entertaining relationship they have.
Hisoka
Hisoka is the most deviant and ambiguous character in the manga, almost nothing is known about him the only concrete thing we know is his reason for living ...... "Fighting and defeating all the strongest Nen users in the world"
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Hisoka is an hell of a character. He is mainly a ruthless, cold and calculating type, he treats almost everyone with an air of insufficiency and pride, he knows that he is very strong and that few can get to the point of facing him, for this reason he evaluates all the people he meets. If the latter are people without potential and useless for his purpose, he eliminates them without thinking twice. If, on the other hand, they are people with a high growth potential, he can also become friendly and help them, of course with the idea that one day he will fight them.
What I really like about him is that it is really difficult to define him as a good or evil character, he is actually the Jolly of the series, since there are times where he helps Gon and his friends (like in the Greed Island part) and others where he fights against them, always bearing in mind that his final goal is to kill them when they will reach their maximum potential.
My favourite arc
In my opinion there is an arc in the series which is on another level with the respect to the others, mainly because of all the character that take a part in it: The Yorknew City arc.
Here we discover some of the main villains of the anime: the Phantom Troupe.
The Phantom Troupe
The group is made up of thirteen powerful users of Nen, cataloged for their dangerousness as wanted of level A. Although their first real appearance occurs only in the saga of York Shin City, in which they have the role of main antagonists, they are mentioned from Kurapika from the very first chapters. The main activities of the Brigade are thefts and related crimes. Most of the original members are from the city of shooting stars. This may indicate that they have lived in total squalor and misery and that they have followed the law of the fittest in order to survive.
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In this arc, we have all of our main character in Yorkshin city, with Kurapika that is hunting the Phantom Troupe (that is responsible for the extermination of all of the people of his clan) and Gon and Killua that are trying to acquire a copy of Greed Island, a game that was created by hunters and that is the only clue for Gon to find his father.
Here are my favourite moments:
- Uvogin fights alone against the Inju, a special team of fighters under the control of the mafia, and he annihilates them with pure strength.
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- Krollo, the leader of the phantom Troupe, fights against the grandfather and the father of Killua, the two top assassin's of the Zoldycks family (hired by the Mafia's leaders). Krollo is a really powerful character with an incredible power that allows him to steal other people's ability and recall them when he needs from a book. The fight is amazing, although it seems like no one is going full power, and at the end they stop fighting since all the Mafia's leaders are killed.
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My personal opinion on the anime
As I said previously, this is one of my favorite anime, and the two things I love the most are:
- the fights: visually, the best one is Meruem, the ant's king, vs Netero, the president of the Hunter's Association;
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- The characters : apart form Killua and Hisoka, which are my favorites, there also a lot of other characters that are really cool: Uvogin, Krollo, the father and grandfather of Killua, Netero and Meruem. The latter one in particular, has an impressive improvement through the series, after its meeting with an other character, i.e. Megumi, showing how even two very different species like humans and ants can find a common ground and accept one each other.
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What I don't like instead is mainly:
- The story in itself isn't really great, also because there isn't much of a connection between each arc. Basically the main storyline is about Gon that wants to find his father and a bunch of other things, sometimes not so well connected, happen. Each arc on its own is better than all together.
The chimera's ant arc is a great one for example, and the story of Meruem and Komugi (a girl to which he start to become really affectionate) is a really great one, that shows how much the Ant's king changes its perspective on humans, after getting to know them.
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The main problem is that this arc is introduced in the series without any apparent relation with the rest of story.
We see that in a certain country these new species of Ant's is developing, but there is no explanation nor introduction to what exactly happened, and I find this quite disturbing.
Moreover, since the author of the manga is a little bit discontinuous 😅, the anime was already ended (even if the manga isn't) with a final which I find really unsatisfactory.
Overall this is a great anime, with some problems with the plot, which could have been more fluent in my opinion, but the amazing characters and fights fully compensate for these small defects. Moreover recently there has been a new anime adaptation that has improved also the graphic of the series, and so now it is even more enjoyable.
My personal vote is 9/10.
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