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- BirthdayApr 17, 2003
- LocationYo mama, or something humorous like that. (Brazil)
- JoinedApr 5, 2020
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Dec 9, 2023
Writing a review about something you like THIS much is... Very hard for me.
A lot harder than taking the time to absolutely shit on something you hate for a few paragraphs of text, explaining the many reasons why you hate it. Which is why i've basically never seriously attempted it until now.
Conveying to anyone why i love something feels like it can't be done with just the words in my own vocabulary, but nonetheless i hope this review can express to everyone reading why i think Hunter x Hunter is Yoshihiro Togashi's most successful work, not just in terms of the number of copies sold
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but also in terms of the authors own artistic expression.
To me, the most intriguing aspect of Hunter x Hunter as a story is the sheer variety of settings, themes and tones it has from moment to moment while still feeling as if it all belongs together. This is something i feel was missing from Togashi's second most well-known manga, Yu Yu Hakusho (which i also love) due to his turbulent history with it as it was still being published. On principle, Hunter x Hunter is an action adventure manga targeted towards young japanese boys just as Yu Yu Hakusho was, but in practice, i'd say what Togashi actually did with Hunter x Hunter was use what his audience and editors expected and wanted from him as tools to create whatever he wanted instead of viewing them as limitations or guidelines. Everything in this story, from the beat-by-beat action to where and why anything happens at all, are all completely subservient to Togashi and whatever he feels like doing at that moment in time.
THE ACTION
I'd say almost every action scene here after a certain point early on in the story serves an extremely introspective character based purpose, since Togashi tends to put a lot of focus on the many thoughts every character involved in any given conflict has as the action progresses rather than purely focusing on their physical, tangible actions. Even when the character's inner monologues don't seem completely relevant to what is currently happening or in some cases where we know for a fact that a character's thoughts and assumptions of a situation are completely wrong due to information that was given to us prior but not to the character, Togashi makes sure we know the thought process behind everything, because that way Hunter x Hunter always manages to feel like a coherent, living, breathing world. It's also very common for fights to be a lot shorter than one would expect or want, and even more common for fights to be completely one-sided beatdowns, as if the other side never really had a chance of winning as opposed to the usual desperate struggle until one of the characters finally proves that their power level was superior afterall.
THE ADVENTURE
The "adventure" aspect of this series basically serves as a way of removing all the main players from any given setting and inserting them into another whenever Togashi decides hes done everything he wanted to there. Even when a setting has almost infinite amounts of potential for further elaborations and adventures, it's not all that common to get a second glimpse at any place that the characters have moved past with one of the only exceptions to this being the island in which the main character was raised in. Since the main players are in a constant search for a specific person/item, there is always a perfectly understandable reason for the characters to simply move along without being stuck on one place for longer than what Togashi wants/needs.
THE FANTASY
Another thing that makes Hunter x Hunter a lot different to Yu Yu Hakusho is that Hunter x Hunter goes a lot harder in the fantasy elements. Instead of taking place in "current year, Japan", Hunter x Hunter takes place in a pretty chaotic and completely made up world while still being heavily based on our own planet earth. By creating this incredible world with just the amount of fantasy elements needed, Togashi basically guaranteed himself that he could never run out of usable ideas for both settings and characters. Bounty hunters, genocidal gangs, killer clowns, kings with super powers, multifaceted political conflicts involving those same previously mentioned lunatics, alien man-eating ants and reincarnation is all fair game.
CONCLUSION
Basically this story is so unpredictable that it feels like a child getting distracted every few minutes by the new cool thing it just found, someone who is just happy to be there at all, and i can't help but feel the same whenever i read it. It's so intricate and seemingly planned out far ahead of time that you can't help but try and see where it goes next even though you fail at doing that every time, the gift that keeps on giving...
Except for when its on hiatus.
It's very well known at this point that since 2006 the publication for this series has been very inconsistent due to Togashis poor health to the point where, even though it's only one year younger than One Piece, Hunter x Hunter currently sits at 400 chapters as i'm writing this.
But i have to say, this doesn't really discourage me as much as i know it does for a lot of other people.
At the end of the day, Togashis health matters more than anything else, and i feel like i would be plenty satisfied with the 400 banger chapters we've already gotten, and Togashi seems very determined to actually finish this story despite his condition.
So all we can do is pray that he is okay and wait for another batch of chapters to eventually drop on our laps.
I'll be there no matter what.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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May 2, 2023
IMPORTANT INFORMATION ---> (I initially wrote this review several months ago when tokyo revengers was still going, and i wanted to update it with my feelings on the last chapter once it released, only to realise i had to delete the old review and post it again with the update... So here it is.)
Now, as i'm writing this, Tokyo Revengers has not ended yet, but my issues with this manga are now far beyond things that could get so easily fixed by whatever happens next chapter or any chapter released after that. So i'm doing this now because, frankly, the amount of unreasonable anger that
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the last year and some change of Tokyo Revengers chapters have brought to me is far too much for my puny little soul to handle without making my vitriol public for the world to see. The only reason i still read it every week is to see how much worse it can get, but that wasn't always the case.
I believe that everything the series gave us from the start until the end of the Tenjiku arc is mostly totally fine, it's not exactly groundbreaking stuff and there were a lot of cringy moments and stupid dialogue within those 180 or so chapters, but from the very start it managed to hook lots of people in (myself included) with it's great premise and some genuinely cool characters. To me, the manga could've and should've easily ended with the Tenjiku arc, even if the arc itself has kind of a weird and anti-climatic ending, it certainly would've made for a better ending than whatever the one we are going to get is like (believe me, the bar is exceedingly low). But why exactly do i think that? Saying "Uhh it's bad now, so it should've ended earlier" Is not a good enough reason, as convenient as it may be, so excuse me as i try my very best to explain to you exactly why i think it is bad now and by proxy why it should have already ended.
Well let me just say it straight up
this final arc that the story is in?
It is utterly pointless.
This arc happening at all is actually baffling to me and its continued existence only serves to make everything else before worse.
I fully believe that Ken Wakui planned to end the story after Kisaki gets hit by a truck and Takemichi goes back to the present for the last time, but then the series started making so much money due to it's sudden incredible success that he decided to continue it in order to profit even more from the growth in popularity, mostly because i think that if this was always the plan, thats way more embarrassing, but also because after the conclusion to Tenjiku, there was absolutely nothing left to be resolved and everyone got the best possible ending out of the whole time travel mess. Takemichi managed to save Hinata and get a new group of true ride or die friends, who are all alive and well, but then Takemichi thinks to himself: "Oh no! What's this? Gasp! Theres a person missing! Mikey isn't here! Oh golly gee willikers what will i ever do without the guy who i failed to save multiple times despite literally changing the whole timeline to do so on every occasion? What will be of my perfect flawless life without the guy who always manages to ruin it somehow there with me? This simply will not do! I must go back in time again, risking not only my own life for the millionth time but also the now amazing lives of all my friends and loved ones around me in what is a totally 100% selfless act of sheer heroism in order to save one guy who does not deserve or even want to be saved, only then will i be able to truly sleep at night!".
This right here, might be the most frustrating and stupid development i have ever seen in any story. In just one move, Ken Wakui managed to completely ruin the protagonist of his story by making him the most stubborn and annoying asshole known to man, normally if this involved pretty much anything besides time travel, it could have actually been pretty alright, but because there is time travel, if anything goes wrong and someone ends up dying when normally they wouldn't have, that blood is now on Takemichis hand.
It would be entirely his fault.
...
So Draken dies in chapter 221
and pretty much ever since then i have lost any patience i might have had for this series
i mean, was there not an entire arc dedicated to preventing Drakens death?
Whatever, that didn't matter i guess.
Basically, the writing has pretty much been on a downward spiral of epic proportions, sometimes it feels like really bad improv and gives me the impression that the author doesn't know what hes doing anymore, thus adding to my belief that he wasn't planning on making the series this long. The dialogue has become so robotic, its like Ken gave a prompt to an AI so it could write all the actual text for him while he half-asses the art, and because of that i can't bother to even try to get myself invested in any of the new characters introduced, or even the older characters, let alone the current conflict they're all in. At the same time, i also can't wait to see where it goes next, i have to see this whole thing to the end.
No...
I WILL see it through to the end, no matter what.
CHAPTER 277 UPDATE:
You know, i'll be honest, eventually the story reached a point where i actually thought it could not possibly get any worse, as if for just a few chapters, the terrible nature of the chapters had reached its absolute peak.
But it seems i was proven dead wrong
there was never a rock bottom
it was an endless light consuming pit that led straight to battle shonen hell.
Chapter 277 is the penultimate chapter of the entire story and it is also most definitely the worst chapter, i fully believe no other author has outdone themselves to this degree when it comes to absolutely ruinning their own creation, and that is because these 18 or so pages make it so that there may as well have never been an actual story to begin with. Chapters 1-276 now have next to no actual influence over the plot, not one part of it really matters now.
I seriously doubt anyone has read this review up to this point without actually reading this series, but if that is the case for you, take this as a warning.
This is, without a doubt, the worst manga i have ever read.
Are there worse out there? Oh most definitely, yeah
it's not like i've read every manga known to man
but if there is anything that genuinely manages to go below this, i am certainly not keen on finding it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Aug 18, 2021
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR JOJOLION
Well, Jojolion has just ended and it's... Very weird...
Before it was finished, part 8 easily had the potential to be the best part of jojo, the characters are amazing, the art is still fantastic and keeps evolving, plus it could be even better! We don't even know who the main antagonist is yet!
...
So we thought. Because if my score tells you anything, that ended up not being the case.
Don't get me wrong, even before its downfall, jojolion wasn't exactly perfect. In some ways, it doesn't feel nearly as memorable as other parts of jojo, perhaps this is because it's the
...
most recent part, and because less people have read it compared to your average part, no "iconic" moments and characters truly exist within it. But i think there is a different reason, the setting of a new and hardly improved morioh. Part 4's version of morioh has an undeniable charm to it with all of its wacky stand users, places like the ghost alley and the rock angelo was fused with and the probable existence of aliens, apparently. But in comparison, morioh in part 8 feels like a very bland modern japanese town for the most part, any amount of weirdness from part 8 mostly comes from things unrelated to morioh itself. Well, except for the wall eyes, but even then, despite being the only reason the protagonist even exists and easily jojolions weirdest tool in its box, is completely ignored and unimportant for a huge chunk of the story.
Speaking of the story...
Oh boy, here we go...
Story (6/10)
Chapters 1-82 of part 8 are really great. For the first 55 or so chapters, jojolion is a story about our protagonist, Josuke, who has just been found barely conscious, underground and with no memories of who he used to be, trying to regain those same memories while dealing with the members of his new adoptive family, the Higashikatas. At this point one would probably think they know where Araki is going with this story, but they're wrong, and this will remain constant for better or for worse.
Araki instead chooses to give Josuke a more nuanced andcomplicated journey, by making it so that this times jojo can never recover his previous memories, and now has to become his own individual. After those amazing 55 chapters, part 8 then becomes a story about our protagonist clinging on to any existing remains of his previous identity, trying to save his previous selfs mother (Or, well... the mother of one of his 2 previous selves, but frankly i don't wanna give too many plot details in this review, since then it would definitely be too long, i apologize if some points i make are made confusing because of that).
Point is, Josuke now needs to get the McGuffin of the story in order to save his previous mother, and that very much becomes the main focus for the second half of the story. And this second half was going perfectly fine, not really as good as the first half, but it was still good.
But...
At some point the story feels like it lost its way, we could probably argue for hours about what that point even is, and if you think such a point exists but i am here to share my point of view. If you ask me, everything went downhill with the wonder of you arc.
The wonder of you (miracle of your love) is jojolions equivalent to part 3's DIO's world or part 5's Gold experience requiem, the final arc of the series, starting in chapter 83 and ending in chapter 108 with the death of jojolions main antagonist.
Now, that might sound weird to you, i've written THIS MUCH about the story of part 8, and yet, not even once until now was this main antagonist ever mentioned, why is that?
Well im glad you asked.
That my friend, is because this supposedly omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent character...
Is introduced in this last arc. The same way your average jojo villain of the week would be introduced.
The intimidating presence other better written villains in the series have had? Gone.
The screen time necessary to make us understand a main antagonist fully or to make them even slightly interesting? Gone.
My smile and optimism? Gone.
So already were off to a bad start to this arc, but it gets worse. Because with the power of his incredibly overpowered and confusing stand, Wonder of u, the main antagonist doesnt just go down as a underwhelming antagonist, he goes down as an underwhelming antagonist whos biggest achievement ends up being the murders of characters who are approximately 10000000 times more interesting than him (and in Keis case, a character who had the potential to be that interesting someday).
One of those characters being Jobin, who still had a character arc to complete, and the one a lot of people thought could end up being the main antagonist with all the conflict he causes in the story, specially for Josuke himself, but he was instead basically replaced by a entirely inferior character in every single way.
Jobin, Rai, Kei and Kaato all bite the dust. Supposedly because Araki probably didnt know what to do with them anymore, and the story needed to be wrapped up.
Speaking of wrapping up the story... Go beyond.
That is the name of Josukes endgame power up that is used to defeat Wonder of u. But unlike the previous endgame power ups, go beyond had very little set up, the closest we get to that is rai noticing that josukes stands ability seems to probably work in a certain way, only to then never actually give that information to Josuke.
So this power that our protagonist was completely unaware of comes basically out of nowhere at the most convenient time possible to almost immediately defeat the villain.
Which is like... The textbook definition of a deus ex machina.
...
So that was a total disaster.
But it doesnt end quite yet, and what comes next isn't bad at all,
the part 8 equivalent to part 5's sleeping slaves aka the radio gaga incident is actually a very nice mini arc, containing an exciting reveal of this new universes version of joseph joestar and a killer guardrail (yes im serious). Not really much to say about it other than that.
And chapter 110, the actual ending to the series, is pretty great. A sort of bittersweet ending where the protagonist fails to save his previous mother, and comes to finally accept that he is a different person now, and that therefore the one he was trying to save has no actual connection to him. Not only that, but we see him quite literally but also metaphorically take charge of the higashikata family, to lead them towards the right direction.
So the story overall is fine, takes a MAJOR nose dive toward the last fourth, but the rest is either amazing or still kind of entertaining, so i cant exactly say its bad.
It's funny, theres so much other stuff i have not even mentioned in this segment that some would say i probably should, like the rock humans.
But since i wanna keep this as short as possible while making my opinions at least a little clear, i won't mention those things.
You can message me about any questions you have if you want to.
Art (8.5/10)
I mean... Honestly i don't know what you want me to say here...
Arakis art is fantastic
part 8's art might be a little worse than the late chapters of part 7, but its still amazing, honestly.
Okay, next.
Characters (8/10)
This score would definitely be higher if not for the main antagonist being one of the worst in jojo history, and also the fact that many characters get killed before realising their full potential.
Actually even when they don't die, some characters never get any sort of resolution, like Joshu. Some people thought he would eventually get a redemption arc of some kind.
Take a wild guess if that actually happens or not.
And what about Karera?
She disappeared while announcing she would come back one day, but never actually does.
But i'm being negative
What i should be saying is that most characters besides the ones mentioned are really good, especially the protagonist, Josuke Higashikata. Definitely one of the better jojos, right next to Johnny.
Enjoyment (7/10)
I think that if theres anything you can take away from all of what youve just read, its that Jojolion is one hell of a ride.
Certainly a roller coaster of emotions, especially for those that read it as it was being released, like myself.
Its not perfect, far from it actually. It has pretty big flaws.
But i dont regret reading it one bit, in fact im sure i'll do it all over again one day with the full picture of what it's like from beginning to end.
Overall (7/10)
Not everyone is going to like it, thats for sure.
I can even see this becoming the most controversial part of jojo in the years to come which is honestly kind of a terrifying thought.
But i enjoyed it, and i can't wait for what part 9 has in store for us.
God bless you, Araki.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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