Anime / Hunter x Hunter

The end of Greed Island and the Razor battle were great.

The beginning of chimera ant is the most boring part of Hx H. I'll be honest, chimera ant is my least favorite arc. It gets painfully boring, has horrid pacing, terrible enemy designs(though greed island's villains didn't look too cool either to be fair) and bloated with too many characters. It's an arc that would've glady benefited from trimming fat. Some of the moments are excellent but there's too much nonsense bogging it down.

Eh Greed Island is clearly the weakest arc.

Its just not that interesting, the setting & ergo game aren't compelling, & its clearly just a training arc so Gon & Kill can work on their Nen powers.

Now the Chimera Ant arc, from the start this shit is already far more interesting. Sure ts clearly gonna take a while but the story is easily is more compelling with the greater focus on the villains like the Yorknew Arc with a lot of nice new characters (with the exception of Palm of course ).

edited 2nd May '18 10:13:44 PM by slimcoder

RP Gs are about grinding afterall!

The Chimera Ant was never boring to me. There were some plot points I didn't like or felt could have been handled better, and it needed a little bit of trimming but it's my favorite arc of any shounen ever and IMO the best thing Togashi's ever done.

The latest dub episode reminded me that Knov was originally going to be on Team Fight Shaiapouf. Guy really dodged a bullet there. I can just imagine him trying that move where he uses portals to slice someone's head off, only for it to turn out that Pouf is the absolute worst Royal Guard to try that trick on.

Christ. The 2011 and 1999 versions are so... differently lit.

Chrollo fighting the Zoldycks in the old version and the new version.

Episode 88, Chimera Ants, Netero in the house with some previously unseen Bad Ass characters, and Gon and Killua are... training with Biskie again and hanging with some Sadako-looking chick.

I'm not enjoying this arc as much as Yorknew City. It started off interesting enough - Gon finally meeting someone close to Ging who wasn't a former serial killer, Elite Mook opponents, the return of two characters from the first story arc, a terrifying new foe.

But now it seems like we've hit a rough patch with "more training, excessively sadistic antagonists (and after Genthru that's quite a feat), and more advanced Nen to learn."

I think what made the last few arcs fun was that the Phantom Troupe and Hisoka were involved in a bunch of overlapping plots, whereas the Ants, despite some initial . None of the Ants are as interesting as those threats (and yes, I know Neferpitou and Mereum exist). The Ants slowly uncovering Nen was interesting at first, but something about Colt sharing a voice actor with Genos makes him the flattest, least interesting, most gratingly dull character to listen to.

• So why does Neferpitou start with Nen powers while no one else does?
• What is the point in "saving" Kite? It's fairly obvious by now that everyone captured by the Ants doesn't live for very long, and the man lost his arm while fighting Neferpitou - and we've seen her back at base chilling on a couch, so I'm assuming Kite is ant food.
• I barely flinched when the original Colt and his sister were murdered, but watching Neferpitou give Pokkle a lobotomy left me unsettled. That scene went on for too long.
• I'm... actually kind of bored watching Gon train.

From what I've read all the Royal Guards were born with Nen powers. They're just that much more badass than the drones.

Good genes.

Initially it's classic dramatic irony, seeing Kite's severed head to contrast with Gon's optimism. Pitou's plan to use their Nen ability to fix Kite (Specialists OP plz nerf) then puts a wrench in the situation.

And yeah, Hunter X Hunter training episodes are always the most boring ones, but luckily this batch doesn't last too long and Knuckle is great in them.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Royal Guards are always supposed to be super strong in the Chimera Ant hierarchy and get most of the good stuff from the Queen.

It's supposed to be Dramatic Irony. Gon is eager to save Kite and has convinced himself he *has* to be alive, but we as the audience know that he's in for a rude awakening.

Also the Chimera Ant arc drags a little bit at certain points. It'll pick back up not too long from now, you haven't even seen most of the iconic moments from it yet outside of Gyro's backstory.

edited 22nd May '18 5:42:49 PM by Draghinazzo

Honestly, the Chimera Ant arc is two arcs: the original invasion of the Chimera ants, and then the plan to defeat the King ant. They take place in different countries and with an almost entirely different cast of characters. Kite's death marks the end of the first arc.

Anyway, I'd say the first Chimera Ant arc is actually really bad. One of the worst arcs in the series, frankly. But the second Chimera Ant arc is really good, or at least it becomes good.

edited 22nd May '18 9:47:19 PM by Clarste

I'd argue that the birth of the king, not the death of Kite, marks the end of the first arc. It isn't until then that the story leaves Neo Green Life

Fair enough.

Also Soble fun fact Kite in the manga was originally intorduced in Chapter 1 and was the one who inspired Gon to become a Hunter. (And revealed his dad was alive, Kite giving Gon the licence and telling him to find him.)

Ah, I'm glad it wasn't just me losing my memory because The Wiki said he was the first character introduced in the series, and I swear I didn't remember him in the first episode, or being mentioned prior to this arc.

Chimera ant arc gets excruciatingly boring at parts and has too many characters.

It does have some really good moments at least. But I wouldn't put it above Yorknew arc ever.

If we took out Kilua and Gon losing the contest and doing more training with Bisky I'd have a higher opinion of the Chimera Ant arc so far.

I don't expect them to fight Mereum, and heck, that such a big villain could show up and be taken out by somebody other than the main character really speaks to me as a former Dragonball addict.

Eh, I'm only at Episode 96.

Really excited/worried about next week's Hunter X Hunter dub episode on Toonami. That's the first one with best/hypest ending theme, so I really hope Toonami's shorter cut is able to do it justice. Greed Island's ending cut was surprisingly decent.

I am eager to see things get under way, but I don't want to switch to the sub. Waiting is torture!

Kite also appeared in episode 1 of the 2001 anime.

I'm still watching Episode 101:

• This is no Yorknew City arc.
• What exactly is the "best part of HXH" from this arc that I've been hearing about?
• I know this is leading to Netero vs Mereum, which I've heard being hailed as the "greatest anime fight of all time" but it's taking forever getting there
• Killua is drowning a f'cking squid
• Killua is drowning a f'cking squid and that is how this episode begins
• And now the fish people are playing a game with Killua because everything in this show boils down to some convoluted game format eventually
• Like for the first time I actually jumped to the last five minutes of the episode because I don't feel like watching Killua stumble around figuring out the rules of this latest game for ten minutes. The Explaining Your Power to the Enemy is getting a bit tiresome.

This anime ricochets between "holy crap awesome" to "Snoresville" episode to episode. Like holy sh..........t I am tired of these friggin ants.

Edited by Soble on Jul 7th 2018 at 7:01:41 AM

I really liked that episode. The dart game was one of the coolest nen abilities in a while and I liked the concept of our main character actually getting ground down by having to fight mook after mook after mook, instead of how usually only big boss characters are threats.

Plus Little Kuriboh is in the dub which had me out of my mind when I first heard it.

I can't relate to people finding the Chimera Ant arc boring. I admit that it does drag in certain places, but I was never bored or frustrated with anything going on.

Is it just me or is the Heaven's Arena the single least thought out part of this world? Let's start with the obvious elephant in the room; that these guys are regularly showing Nen battles on high-profile TV and yet somehow the existence of Nen is still secret. Somehow no one really seems to question how Gido can make his spinning tops follow his opponent, or how Kastro can create that green energy and a freaking clone of himself. Even if you think it's just a bunch of tricks, that means Kastro most likely had agoddamn body double helping him in his fight and should have been disqualified on the spot.

And then there's the way the progression system is laid out, which suffers terribly from the series power creep in hindsight. Of the regular battles, only the absolute top floor has Nen users and they're pretty damn far down the ladder as far as Nen users go. Gon and Killua could beat most of these guys, and they were still noticeably weaker than Knuckle and Shoot two training arcs later. If you take into account that Knuckle and Shoot are still weaker than Morel, who admits that he isn't a fighting specialist, and you realize just how small fry the floor 200 guys really are. Anyone whose better than these mofos, I.E. anyone actually good by this universe's standards, will get promoted to Floor Master and won't have to fight anymore unless challenged by a newcomer or when it's time for that big fighting tournament. Basically, the system means that all of the best and most profitable fighters almost never have to fight. You could argue that this is to keep the hype around them, but this becomes laughable when compared with the third issue, their leniency when it comes to lethal force.

Now in historical gladiator bettles, battles to the death were very rare and generally saved for special occasions. It's easy to see why, havign all your fighters kill each other is pretty terrible for business. Some accidents obviously happe nbut there's no way that someone like Hisoka who obviously does it intentionally (nor a fighter who accidentally kills his opponent every single fight) should be allowed to stay. Even with as much money as he brings in, it's not gonna make up for all the top tier fighters (relatively speaking, I've already gone over how the system makes it so the actual top-tiers won't be participating) that he has killed. especially Kastro who was almost as good as Hisoka, and would have been the big star of the 200th bracket one Hisoka graduated, and also had a very very profitable rivalry with Hisoka that could have been milked for way longer. To contrast with point two: A battle between top fighters is a very hype event with not too much of a risk, that only rarely happens in Heaven's Arena. A battle where lethal force is authorized is a hype event with massive risk and the potential to greatly hurt the arena's profits i nthe long term, and it's a constant part of this establishment.

I mean I liked this arc right up until the point the Chimera Ant Queen died. The Ants spreading across the globe was neat at first, but I can't say I've cared for the pacing of these last few episodes.

:/

Not to cherrypick and disregard the rest of this, but given how Gon just caught the Lord of the Lakes, and seems to find giant, sentient animal creatures perfectly normal during the Hunter Exam, and how Killua and most people don't seem to be blown away by the existence of Greed Island, and how the Hunters' Association uses convicted criminals to conduct field exams, I'm guessing this society operates under different paradigms.

Edited by Soble on Jul 8th 2018 at 6:51:12 AM