Hunter X Hunter

Oh, and in regards to what my Nen-type would be, I'd guess I'd probably be a manipulator or emitter, just based on personality.

edited 31st Mar '18 7:39:35 PM by LSBK

Hunter X Hunter returns 9/22

Neat. Maybe I'll reread a few chapters so I am not as lost when it starts up again.

That's probably a good idea. There's so many moving pieces to keep track of.

Let's just hope he actually manages to get to the Dark Continent so we can see what it actually looks like up close before his inevitable Hiatus. Again.

There's no way we're getting to the Dark Continent anytime soon. The Succession War arc is going to be going on for a while.

Viz has made Chapters 340 thru 380 temporarily free for everyone, on their site, starting from September 10th until the 24th.

Which forces me to once again confront the fact that the official readers always seem to suck compared to the illegal fan readers.

Since this got brought up in the Shokugeki thread, I'll bring it here. Namely whether Hunter X Hunter is "overhyped" and whether it's actually as deep as people make it out to be.

Now, I dislike the term "overhyped" almost on principle at this point so I'm not going to use it, but as for it's depth? Hunter X Hunter has never come off to me as nearly as different from other Shonen series as people advertise it. And the ways I do think it is legitimately different have not struck me as universally for the better.

And that's not to say that Hunter X Hunter doesn't have its own style, it clearly does, but I don't look at this series for deep or compelling characters or motivations, and things like the worldbuilding don't strike me as particularly amazing either.

And that's not to say I don't enjoy it, I do (for the most part). But I'll note it's one of the few series I undeniably prefer the anime version off. Usually if I like one, I won't have a overall preference for a version except for specific scenes but Hunter X Hunter? That's not the case.

Edited by LSBK on Sep 11th 2018 at 4:35:23 AM

I think it does some things better, like consistently having Antagonists out of the heroes league that they at most can escape or plan around but are more likely to be murdered if they fought directly. And if they do try to beat them it tends to come at a cost.

But Togashi can bullshit with the bes....er I mean worst of them. Like Alluka conveniently has the power and other self Nanika to grant wishes that work on equivalent exchange except when she likes someone like Killua to fix Gon.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Sep 11th 2018 at 2:29:52 AM

Just to be clear, when I said depth I didn't actually mean I thought it was better: I actually probably prefer YYH overall, and I've certainly rewatched it most of the way through and read the manga after that whereas I've never rewatched Hx H or really read the manga. I'm not a huge fan of Hx H's pacing, especially as it got on, and some of the fights lean too far into explaining EVERY DAMN THING.

But Hx H is just portraying, for the lack of a better word, a more complex set of human beings and a more complex world than in the standard Shonen. They don't fit into boxes as easily; see, for instance, the former assassin Killua and the innocent child Gon; that's the same Killua trying to hold Gon back from killing a blind little girl. When did the relative positions of morality of these two change? Did they ever change? Was it like this from the beginning and we just never saw this side to Gon? Has Gon had a positive enough influence on Killua that now Killua has become the angel on his shoulder rather than the other way around? Is it both?

I'm also going to go out and say that Hx H is probably the only shonen to get the pointlessness of revenge portrayed entirely correctly (no small feat when I consider the same theme trying to be portrayed by freaking FMAB to have not entirely succeeded; Naruto basically tried to have this theme be its guiding light and Hx H surpasses it seemingly effortlessly in that regard.). That's an achievement in of itself.

I could go on a bit more, but it's getting late. I'll do some more tomorrow.

I'm actually curious about how it got "the pointlessness of revenge entirely correct" but if you're tired now, I get it.

Oh, if I mentioned it I might as well elaborate.

Nen is basically what you devote your life to. On a basic level it determines your fighting ability if you dedicate yourself to fighting. But for the people in the Hx H world who don't have their lives revolve entirely around fighting (I'm guessing the majority, even of nen users) it represents their life skills.

So... Kurapika. Assume he wins, avenges his village, kills the members of the Spider. That's it. He could still have a life, but he has permanently sold his nen to assure their deaths; he has essentially let them take not just the lives of his family and neighbours; he's given them his own as well.

But, the payoff for Kurapika's plot relevant Crippling Overspecialisation has not yet happened, whatever it may be. (Perhaps he will be unable to save someone from a non-Spider foe?)

Let's look at Gon. Gon would be absolutely at home in almost any other shonen. But Hx H, though it indulges him well enough for most of the run, refuses to give him any more slack and hits him with the Chimera Ant arc. Confronted with a situation - a situation not entirely to his liking, not entirely black and white - Gon nearly snaps. He simply has not got the character, the moral fibre, to handle something that goes against his wishes so completely in terms of obliging his mission to kill Neferpitou and save Kite. But he doesn't kill the girl (he is our hero after all).

So he takes her back; and finds out the horrible truth. And then, Gon, who we've followed through adventure after adventure, Gon with his sheer innocent delight in the fruits of the world and his determination to improve and explore; throws away everything he's ever loved, everything he's ever cared about, everything good and pure just so he can have the power to squash one bug. He is so determined to avenge Kite's death that he actively tramples on everything Kite helped inspire him to be. He basically tries to ruin the previous 100-something episodes of anime for a single moment of catharsis.

It's here that I could talk about how Hx H "deconstructs" shonen, that that's what the Adult transformation is supposed to be, a tragedy where Super Saiyan and its ilk is triumph. And I don't think that's an invalid reading.

But Hx H doesn't have to be a deconstruction. It stands on its own two feet. If you had virtually no knowledge of shonen - and I actually didn't have that much when I first watched Hx H years ago - it would still have all that emotion and layers and tragedy. The deconstruction is, like for Evangelion, only the first layer of a fairly big onion.

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Sep 11th 2018 at 9:51:51 AM

I think most of Hunter X Hunter's praise comes from its always complex tactical combat (which is not always literal combat, as we recently have a very layered conflict about which phone call should Kurapika pick up) and for how Nen power system is neatly organized while still allowing pretty much any ability. At least that the source of most of my own praise.

On the subject of revenge, one of my favorite parts of the series is in the Yorkshin epilogue, where Killua asks Kurapika about the current state of his revenge and he answers he will just focus on retrieving the eyes instead because he had spent his entire life so far preparing himself to fight monsters, but what he found instead were humans (refering to how the spiders care about their companions enough to sacrifice themselves for them).

Well, I agree about Nen being handled very well (things like Alluka possibly excluded...)

Allukas thing is Dark Continent related so she's the magic bs that exists outside mankinds understanding of the larger world. Ill give it that.

The way she was revealed was bullshit though.

Oh, it is? Huh, I don't remember that.

They've strongly implied Ai of the Five Great Calamities might have a potential connection to Alluka. Especially as one Zoldyack has encountereed it with Netero.

Of course there's no direct statement at the moment.

This is revealed after the arc introducing Alluka though so we can complain about her sudden appearance and bs power appearing then.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Sep 11th 2018 at 4:06:48 AM

My least favourite part about Alluka/Nanika is how her powers had all these complicated rules with more and more added as the arc went on and the end result of all those restrictions and exceptions ended up being "Killua can make Nanika do literally anything without consequences".

Yeah, one of the catastrophes brought back by an expedition was the incorporeal entity that only says "ai", and some of the specimens from the secret Dark Continent research lab were bodies crushed in totally unnatural ways, similar to the penalty Alluka imposes.

And of course we also see that a Zoldyck was on at least one expedition.

Edited by Clarste on Sep 11th 2018 at 4:41:14 AM

There is◊ but it was shown in one of the interstitial pages for Volume 33.

Another thing I think Hx H does pretty well is it's very good at subverting expectations - not necessarily just expectations of the genre but the story itself, and what comes after is usually either just as compelling as what you first expected to happen or moreso. I don't think a story being "predictable" is necessarily bad if it's emotionally satisfying or something you actually want to see, but the fact that Hx H is able to consistently surprise me and showcase interesting ideas that I don't see much in other battle manga is a big point in its favor.

Also, for as much shit as Togashi gets for the series' art (somewhat understandably given the infamously low quality stuff he's released on occasion, sick or optherwise), when he is at his a-game he is extremely proficient at creating distinctive, powerful imagery.

Togashi does a lot of experimental, narratively weird stuff in Hx H that would be considered bad writing generally. Sometimes it works (like Gyro's backstory coming out all of sudden, the narration and exposition in the chimera ant arc in general), but sometimes it's just bad like the Alluka stuff.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Sep 11th 2018 at 11:24:00 AM

It's beyond implied that Nanika is related to Ai, for various reasons. In the volume 33 extras, there's a sketch of Nanika saying "Ai. I'm from the Dark Continent."

Well, how she says Ai in the Japanese version is a little complicated. When Nanika and the calamity say "Ai", it's written in hiragana. The name Ai is written in katakana. They both sound the same. And the forum apparently doesn't support Japanese text so I can't show the difference here.

The pun sort of still works in English if a translation has Nanika say "Aye."

Looks like both anime and manga go with Something's tic being 'Kay. Oh well, not that important ultimately.

Anyway, I read through the free chapters and it turns out that when I'd read the chapters the first time I'd completely missed the implication that Kurapika added the "Life loss during Emperor Time" condition as a way to try to alleviate the severe exhaustion it caused him when he used it in Yorknew. What a dumbass move.

Edited by Moth13 on Sep 13th 2018 at 3:03:41 PM

Volume 36 cover◊.