May 5, 2020
This is my first review ever and I am very excited about it. I divided the structure into good/negative points, conclusion and rating.
At start, the good points:
You can easily be invested into the story and specially on its characters and their relationship. There is also a factor of unpredictability in which most of the time you are unable to predict what comes next, and that increases your eagerness letting you hungry for more plot. One thing that increases this unpredictability is the concept of hunters, which can be vastly explored: for example, you can have relics hunters, lost place hunters, beast hunters and even human
...
hunters, an endless ocean of ideas. The author carries character strength very seriously, so that for few times in my life I could see main characters useless and doing nothing in certain situations because they were too weak. There is no forced victory, but this brings a negative point that I will cover later. The best character for me was Killua, since he had the most well worked development. I started the show hating him and finished it crying over every sad expression on his face. We have got a bit of development for Gon as well, but what took my attention was the sacrifice he did to defeat an enemy, theoretical killing all his future possibilities on the plot. I cannot watch Gon story without feeling a deep sadness and at the same time I congratulate the author for taking a huge decision such this: if Gon story is really over, it takes some courage to cut off all the possible shounen plots just to teach a lesson that life can goes down very easy only because a moment of darkness. And, for the opposite, if there is still adventures for Gon, the author has creativity in continue a character plot that was nearly over (if this continuation is going to be well executed, of course).
Negative points:
For a shounen anime, the fights are quite disappointing. The point in where weak adversaries do not fight against the stronger, something I praised above, turns out for you not seeing creative battles where a weak enemy try to defeat a stronger one and maybe achieving success. As Itachi the philosopher once said “there is no jutsu without a weakness”, and so, by analogy, there is no Nen technique without weakness too, but I do not feel this concept was explored on the plot. By the way, since the given potential of hunter x hunter, many things were not explored: at one side, this open up for more future plots, but in the other hand, it lefts a void, a feeling of “I want more”. These disappointed fights are the main flaw at Chimera Ant arc: you have 10 episodes of fighting when the palace invasion starts, and these fights would be theoretically awesome, but in the end, does not happened anything if you look deep into it. The characters just walked from here to there, there were few moments when Nen techniques were used to change the course of battle, and all the fights could have last only 3 episodes. Therefore, some of the best fights lasted less than 10 minutes, being a one well executed attack and end. I would like to see the author exploring more the battles, making most of the fights more impactful, as the majority of shounen shows tend to do and it is one thing I praise the most on this genre. This is the reason why I liked so much on Gon versus Genthru at the Greed Island arc, because it passed an atmosphere of shounen battle, with both working their techniques and strategies to defeat thein enemy at all cost, and more importantly: a fight that did not last less than 5 minutes.
Conclusion:
As it is a show with many episodes, hunter x hunter did not maintain the pace all the time, having some episodes more boring than others, but what really pays off for the anime is: the phantom troupe, the chimera ant, the brilliant nen system and the last 18 episodes. It is incredible to watch the show atmosphere change as at episode 30 it appears like a common shounen anime and at episode 148 ends that way. But, as the hunter x hunter fanbase used to say: this is hunter x hunter.
Rating:
I calculated a mean score for every arc and it results in an 8. However, since I watched hunter x hunter over two weeks, without stopping, barely sleeping and in the moments before sleep I was still thinking about the show, if I would rate an 8, that would be unfair to myself. Hunter x hunter lefts a mark on me that will never goes away, such as Naruto, Steins; Gate, Mirai Nikki and Koe no Katachi did it. Basically, for personal reasons and external factors, like the quarantine, I will remember this moment forever. The show has its minor flaws, but if I could rate a 10 on the shows I mentioned before, why I would not rate a 10 on hunter x hunter?
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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