Hunter X Hunter

He's like top 5 for me for sure.

Funny thing that dawned on me is that although Gon going berserk was not treated as a positive thing, I think he ironically "saved" the mission for him and the rest of the protagonists just the same. Had Pitou survived, (s)he certainly would have been more proactive after noticing the side effects of the bomb and healed Mereum.

That depends on whether Pito would've healed the poison or not. I'm inclined to think not.

And Pito never would've stood for the nonsense Pouf was pulling with Komugi for sure.

edited 22nd Aug '16 7:46:34 AM by Lightysnake

Pitou's healing seems to be entirely surgical. She can precisely reconnect nerves and blood vessels and whatnot, but I don't see how she'd be able to identify or remove radiation poisoning.

Her power was pretty much created to heal anything. I would not be suprised if it could remove the individual cells. affected by the poison.

Her power was created to put a body back together so she could animate it and fight it again. The fact that it can heal living people is more of an accident, honestly.

Still we never saw any limits to Dr Blythe other then it can't bring back the totally dead.

I certainly can't prove a negative, but either way I don't think it's obvious that Pitou could have done something about it.

I'm gonna side with the idea of Pitou not being able to do much about about poisoning. It's a magically precise and skilled surgeon, not a Cure spell. There's no reason to believe to could affect poison any more than any non-healing ability could.

Alrighty, just completed the Election arc and finished the series. A pretty solid way to end the series. I didn't care much for the election itself outside of Leorio slugging Ging, but the highlight was definitely all the feels with Killua and Alluka.

So, Thread Hop here. I've been watching Hunter x Hunter on Toonami, and I have to ask... is Leorio ever anything other than The Load? I've watched up through the end of the fourth round of the exam, and I seriously don't think he's done anything useful.

Before the exam started, he picks a pointless fight with Kurapika (though that was mostly Kurapika's fault), almost goes the wrong way (before Gon convinces him otherwise), gets the right answer in the quiz completely by accident (when Kurapika had figured out the correct answer), and completely fails to notice anything amiss with the shapeshifters (but gets a pass anyway). Once the exam actually starts, he's the only main character to struggle in the first stage, relies on Gon (like everyone else) to pass the second stage, loses his fight (and lets himself get baited by Tonpa) in the third stage, and then completely relies on Kurapika and Gon to pass the fourth stage (after accidentally leading them into a trap, no less). In that whole time, he hasn't had a single fight that progressed past him pulling out his switchblade except getting curbstomp'd by Hisoka a couple times.

Leorio's pretty much the only character I really like (Gon is a nice kid but a boring character, Kurapika seems like he exists entirely to be Mr. Exposition, and Killua is an annoying prick), but if he's going to continue to be the series punching bag for the rest of the series, I'm probably not going to bother keeping up with it. I mean, at least other Can't Catch Up characters (Krillin, Kuwabara, etc) weren't completely useless right from the start.

The most ironic thing I've seen so far is that Killua seems to love Gon like a brother, but he wants to kill his actual brothers.

I'm given to understand that the anime cuts some of his more useful moments, so you've kinda screwed yourself there. Manga-wise at least, he's not useless but he is absent for the longass Chimera Ant arc. His return in the arc after is fucking triumphant, though.

edited 28th Aug '16 3:00:37 PM by rikalous

I should probably mention that Hx H doesn't exactly play out like a standard battle shounen in terms of the character focus. Leorio is ostensibly one of the main protagonists and shows up in a lot of promotional material but he's absent for a lot of the series after the Hunter exam, and in the manga he's only recently come back and is poised to probably be useful and do stuff. And even then, I should say that no he doesn't really keep up with how absurdly powerful the other characters get, partly because that's not really his goal in the first place. So if he's the only character you're banking on in terms of investment you're going to be disappointed.

Gon and Killua are the only two that get a consistent focus for most of the series, albeit they're pretty much never the main players of any conflict they're in. For my money, Killua, Kurapika and yes even Gon are great characters who get a lot of cool development and intense moments as the series goes on, and the series as a whole gets MUCH better as it goes on, but then again I also connected with them all immediately and don't really agree with your assessment of them except for Gon (who admittedly takes a long time to become interesting, but I had a bunch of other characters to enjoy up until that point). The series also has a lot of other great characters who get a lot of focus themselves as the series goes on.

If you dislike them already it's possible future events might change your mind or you could find enough to enjoy in the side characters, but it might just as well not be the case. Which is unfortunate because I think the series is an excellent battle shounen that I really love, but you know, not everything is to everyone's tastes.

edited 28th Aug '16 3:13:36 PM by Draghinazzo

Leorio's essentially a normal guy surrounded by absurd people. I mean, the fact that he can even keep up physically during the Hunter exam shows how talented he is by any reasonable standard, but everyone around him is just... superhuman, really. Frankly, I would almost say he's not really cut out to be a Hunter, but gets carried by the Power of Friendship. Ultimately, he's The Heart of the group, even if he expresses that in a non-standard way.

He also gets one the series' best and most memorable moments, although that's much later.

edited 29th Aug '16 1:12:29 AM by Clarste

Leorio is The Medic, and isn't really one of the mains. He's really more like an Advertised Extra. Gon and Killua are the real main characters.

Worth noting though that in the current arc Gon and Killua have both taken a backseat for reasons that would be too spoileriffic to get into. Too early to say who the absolute main players are in it but Kurapika and Leorio are in more prominent roles.

Hisoka thinks that Leorio has the potential to mature into someone who can give him a worthy fight. He probably still doesn't have the potential of the other three, but I suspect he can get to the level where Hisoka is now.

Which is interesting since, despite lamenting not being able to do enough for his friends, Leorio really has no interest in being a fighter.

In hindsight, I kinda wish he did end up becoming the Chairman lol.

edited 29th Aug '16 2:27:54 PM by Lionheart0

Leorio: If I was Chairman I'd be selfish and make you all do what pleases me!

Everyone: Votes for him anyways

I understand that Leorio is somewhat underwhelming compared to his companions because his companions are completely nuts, but what's disappointing is that they don't find a way to make him useful despite not being a physical powerhouse. There's plenty of interesting ways to do that — they could make him The Smart Guy who uses Awesomeness by Analysis to outwit people more physically capable than him (ie, everyone). They could make him Crazy-Prepared with just the right Batman-style gadget for every occasion (hell, he's been carrying that briefcase around for the last 20 episodes and hasn't even done anything with it yet). Or he could just be Hot-Blooded Crazy Awesome and combine elements of all the above with the Indy Ploy and win by confusing the hell out of people.

Instead he just... doesn't do anything useful. Oh well.

The thing with Hunter x Hunter is that it has the potential to be really interesting. The setting is basically the ultimate Adventure-Friendly World and the characters are trying out for their professional adventurer's license. They've got a good mix of talent and character archetypes. They've got a setup for plenty of entertaining situations where the characters have to use their various skills in a variety of ways in order to pass whatever obstacle they're faced with at the moment.

And then... nothing happens for 20 episodes. Oh, they make progress in the Hunter Exam and overcome each episode's individual challenge, but there's been no hint of the series' overall plot arc, little-if-any character development, and no real long-term progress on anything. I've seen entire shows with satisfying plots, character arcs, and action scenes that took less time than this.

I guess what I'm afraid of is falling into the standard "endless shonen" trap — individual episodes are very watchable, but I keep waiting for some sort of long-term payoff that never really happens.

edited 29th Aug '16 5:04:17 PM by NativeJovian

Hunter X Hunter basically never does anything that you expect it to do.

Blame the endless hiatus for that. It's a very long series and probably nowhere near done.

I don't think you can really say that Hunter X Hunter has an "overall" plot in the same way, say, Fullmetal Alchemist has one. Instead, there are arcs which are basically their own story, but which have effects on the following ones in various ways. And contrary to a lot of other shounen most of these arcs are wildly different in terms of their tone, premise, challenges, themes, etc so the series has a LOT of variety. The way the series is set up is that the world is always expanding, the appeal is seeing what kind of new concepts, places, locales and people you're going to discover, how these will affect the characters. Instead of the series overall building towards something, it's more like each arc presents its own challenges and has its own build-up and payoff.

There IS character development for Killua, Kurapika, Gon and a bunch of other characters as well, it's just that this isn't really in the Hunter exam, which is a very small part of the series and basically just a long introduction.

I do confess that the show does take a while to get to the parts that really earned it its acclaim (I believe the second most acclaimed arc, Yorkshin, starts at like episode 39 or something, and the best arc of the series starts at episode 76), and I wouldn't blame people for not wanting to put up with it that long if they were bored, since it is true that some anime are much more tightly written. The only reason I stuck around is because I thought the show was still fairly entertaining before that point and had a number of subversive and interesting ideas that kept me watching.

edited 29th Aug '16 5:30:14 PM by Draghinazzo

Though I do recommend still watching. The next episode on Toonami is a great episode for Gon