Report Aliii666's Profile

I am a little conflicted on Nana. I found the beginning to be a bit hard to get into, but it gets better over time and the end felt mature and fresh and has this bittersweet feeling to it, which I like, but it’s also a bit too open ended and I probably don’t like the message it conveys. I mean the whole relationship between Nana (Hachiko) and Takumi was a bit strange. It started of quite maturely, with Hachiko being aware that she is probably only one of many girls he has and knowing what kind of type he is. Then later it becomes more like a fairy tale story of the bad womanizer being a dream boy (to some extent), with him wanting to marry her. But you could see more and more cracks in their relationship appearing. But then the anime ends without any resolution, either a break up or a character change from Takumi. Maybe its resolved better in the manga, don’t know, but I heard its still ongoing and on indefinite hiatus. Similarly the relationship of the other Nana with Ren and Yasushi also is quite open ended with her realizing that Ren is probably not the right one for her and Yasushi being maybe a better choice. However Yasushi having a stronger bond with Ren than he has with her makes everything more complicated. In both cases it feels more like the woman just accepted their fate despite knowing that they might not be happy in their situation. And instead of any change they just keep going with the flow and what makes them happy in the moment. Probably not the take home message I prefer in a show, but sure something unique and maybe realistic to some extent.

Other than that I didn’t really care about the Shinichi/ Layla relationship… that one also didn’t have any resolution. It also would have been nice to see Nobuo relationship with Miu grow.

I don’t know if it is because the manga isn’t finished or because Nana is not that kind of story, but I probably prefer a romance to have a clear resolution at the end, with them either being together or walking their separate ways. The reason I watch Nana was because a few weeks ago I stumbled on Paradise Kiss (Also a manga from Yazawa Ai with an anime adaptation also from Madhouse… don’t know if you have seen it). I ended up really liking Paradise Kiss a lot, especially because I find all the characters so likeable (I guess in most romance shows the likeability of the characters is the most important thing). I also like the artstyle more than in Nana, which has one that I needed to get used to.

In both shows I like the music. Nana could have focused more on the music aspect, but it really didn’t and had a bigger focus on the characters. Over the duration of 47 episodes a larger number of songs would have maybe been nice, but overall they few we got were good.
So that’s basically my thoughts on Nana. If you haven’t seen Paradise Kiss, I can highly recommend it (its only 12 episodes long).

Ah, I see, you are in the middle of the move then. I wish you good luck with it, and welcome to the site!

...two accounts? Name issues?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the series. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I am not that interested into the continuation of the HxH story and reading the manga. I am also not quite sure why you are interested into what I have to say about it anyways. It would also probably be unfair to the show to force myself through it (or to watch a biased summary), since recently I am more into other kinds of shows (romance and comedy mostly) and I am not in the mood for shounen. Well I guess I am watching Dandadan right now, but that also has a lot of comedic elements.

Anyways, it was nice talking to you :)

Thanks for the nice comment and thanks for reading my review.

It is true that a show doesn’t have to be straight forward and characters motivation can change, but in the case of Gon I am not sure if I would call it maturity. Him setting aside his search for his father and his goals of being a hunter to help his friends is not really a decision that shows any kind of growth. I mean since the start you see him caring about his friends so it is only natural that he will help them if they are in need, especially since there is no immediate urge to continue with the hunter business. It’s also something any shounen protagonist would have done. But I personally find the whole plot progression contrary to what we as audience were expecting to see (and maybe what I liked to see)… what a hunter is and does. This is one of the many parts of the show that feel like want to subvert expectations. Maybe that’s why this show is liked so much because it constantly does that, which maybe puts the audience at the edge of their seats, but for me this subverting should make sense, otherwise I find it frustrating and maybe nonsensical. For example the mafia: An organization that has money and power probably has an understanding of the world to some extent. Them not even knowing what nen is and being wiped out so easily would have warranted an explanation, which I don’t believe was given. The assassin thing is the same. Normally the term assassin has a clear image in mind, as you mentioned. Making something completely different out of it is solely due to subverting expectation and no real reason is given for doing so, or any kind of further plot development.

The reason I mentioned the money arc in my review was mainly due to the scene where they complained they were not making enough money with their gambling, not understanding that if you have certainty you will win at gambling money grows exponentially (ofc up to the point the people you are getting the money from run out of it or stop gambling).

I get that some parts of my review read very harsh and they are meant to be hyperbolic and exaggerated. I mean I can see that the video game arc is not completely pointless and that not every arc has to have a point in general, although in a typical shounen anime you probably shouldn’t stray too far away from the norm and in my opinion HxH doesn’t do a good job at differentiating itself from the typical shounen formula. You mentioned growth of characters but honestly I didn’t see any. I mean, if you take the characters from the start and compare them to the end, did they really change? They know more about the world they live in but did their personality grow? I would say no. Only in some moments their personality shortly changes (like Gon after the death of his friend), but as soon as that conflict is resolved he is the same character as he was before. This is an essential component of many shounen stories. So in essence HxH wants to be a contrarian subversive story that tries to differentiate itself from the typical shounen anime but does not so in terms of their characters, is the impression I have of it now, more than 10 years after I watched it, already forgetting most of the details.

I can’t really comment on the points you made about the chimera arc, as I have forgotten most of it. If there were any deeper messages or though provoking discussions in that arc they must have not appealed to my liking. I mentioned the scene of the ant queen dying, which to this day I find to be one of the most ridiculous scenes in cinematic history when it comes to failing at trying to provoke a certain emotion after a characters death.

I also didn’t really say that the character design of the penguin and the pink panda (I guess it actually is more like a koala) in a suit is contradictory, it is just ridiculous to a point that I couldn’t take it serious. I get that they are chimeras, but what’s the point of calling them ants if they have nothing in common with ants anymore? I mean that is just a nitpick but it doesn’t even make sense, since why are there both koalas and penguins at the same place? Anyways, my point would rather be that a cohesive and consistent visual style would be beneficial at provoking the preferred emotions when seeing the villains of a show. HxH seems to randomly pick and choose elements in a way to stick out of the shounen crowd (going back at the subverting expectation point again). All of this is to say.. I didn’t like the character design of HxH.

Interesting choice of profile picture btw.