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Okay, so Hunter x Hunter is praised a lot so I gave it a chance. After watching it I think it's the most overrated anime ever, even more than SAO and SnK which are often called overrated. This review is probably more a salty rant intended towards people who have already watched Hunter x Hunter rather than people wondering to watch it, but I'll try too many spoilers.

To clarify, the only real start bias I had was that I didn't watch it until now because I'm not a fan of the art style.

I will mostly talk about the story since that's what I see ... praised the most but I'll go over the different points that MAL uses.

Story: To summerize what I thought about the story; It started good at gradually became worse, reaching the bottom at the later stages of the Chimera Ant arc. There will be a lot of indirect spoilers, so if you want to be spoiler free don't read further than the first part.

The first arc, Hunter exam arc, was actually very interesting especially since I have read/watched many long mainstream battle shounen such as Naruto and One Piece. It's very clear how they influenced each other and share a lot of traits which I found very interesting to examine, in fact Hunter x Hunter might be the basis for the Naruto Chuunin exam arc, however I'm not sure which was published as manga first. We realise there's a lot of different types of hunters and we see some cool creatures in this fantasy world, I'm a big fan of the big turtle/dinosaurs. This is the only arc I would classify as a fantasy adventure. I had trouble understanding why people would call HxH a masterpiece but at least at this point I liked it.

Then there's the Heaven's Arena arc, where the shit begins. The story stops being anything about adventure, now it's just fantasy battle. The battles are more or less pointless, the only purpose is to train the main characters power like going to the gym or pressing the "Train" button in an sim dating game.
We are introduced to "Nen", which is actually very confusing at this point because we've seen nothing at all to it until this point. They're introducing a very abstract and foreign concept where only one of the 4 concepts Nen consists of has any exposure before this and only very little in Gon's usage of zetsu.
Then Nen is divided into 6 categories and then there's a persons unique Nen ability... Then there's the advanced Nen techniques etc etc etc... It feels like an endless addition to a battle system which is made up on the spot.
From this point everything besides Nen basically becomes irrelevant which is honestly a shame.

Yorknew city arc starts very interesting, but towards the end it gets really silly and bad. The Phantom Troupe which is supposed to a group of the worst criminals in the world actually fights for the power of friendship and ends up sacrificing more than the main cast to save the lives of their friends... I don't have an issue with the power of friendship, but it's not very cool and intimidating when they care more about their friends than the main characters. This was probably to show that the bad guys aren't flat 100% evil people but in this case I just found it lame. Besides that we are also introduced to more useless characters.

Lastly I'm going to talk about the Chimera Ant arc. Honestly, I think this is the worst of any anime I've ever watched. It starts quite interesting by being dark and almost apocalyptic. However it quickly just feels out of place in this bright anime where friendship prevails and leads to 0 consequences. However it switches rapidly between overly serious and extremely silly which I at least found very disturbing. One moment we got chimera ants trying to take over the world where the cast considers if they should be treated humanely or as monsters (which was done poorly imo) and then we got some of the monsters with abilities called sexy stinger and the last bosses having an orgasm while they feed their liquid (Nen) to their leader for 10 minutes.
The pacing was monsterous slow, even worse than the worst parts of mainstream anime. The narrator made it a living hell, explaining everything pointless and the arc included so much useless information. It clearly felt like this arc was drawn out to be as long as possible.

Art: Honestly I'm not a fan of the art. The art style/character design is older and very simple, which is something I don't like. Gon has a nose sharp enough to cut fruit, the characters pretty much wear the same clothing 24/7 and their style is imo too simple, plain and boring. There was never a point where I thought "Hey this design is pretty cool" or something similar. The colouring in the anime in general is pretty nice though.
The animation is good in general and better during important fights, but especially towards the end there's tonnes of loops and still images which only serve to keep the budget low and extend the episodes to be as long as possible.

Sound: I think the soundtracks are good, very good in fact. However I think they're used very poorly and there's not very many. Maybe this is due to not paying attention but I can only remember around 6 soundtracks, which were played over and over. Something which especially annoyed me was the soundtrack they played every time Nen was involved.
The voice actors did good though and sfx was also good.

Characters: I like some of the characters but aside from this, I think the characters are quite poorly done, especially Gon. (For reference I liked Hisoka, Illumi & Killua)

Gon is very straight forward like most shounen MCs however he's slightly different because he's far more childish (and stupid). His stupidity is on a different level which made me hope that the other characters would somehow break him so he could learn. But no. Every stupidity he performs is rewarded and comes without any real consequences. During the hunter exam he refuses to give up despite being totally outclassed and threatened with getting every limb broken? Break all his limbs and spit him in the face please. Not giving up can also trying again even if you fail rather than just being stupid. Also during the Greed Island arc. There's a plan to defeat the Bomber (who is equally silly) but let's not follow it and lose an arm first before following the plan. And then the arm regrows because magic!.. And then when he becomes angry and big, the consequences of doing that are alsog one because of... MAGIC! Or well basically because of magic. Everything he experiences and mistakes he makes are without consequences, even what happens to Kite is reversed in the end...
Gon doesn't grow, he's equally stupid and irresponsible during the entire anime. Also his early defining traits are totally gone later in the anime. First of all, his fishing rod is magically gone after the Heaven's Arena arc which was one of the things that made him unique. Secondly his ability to hide due to his upbringing in the nature is non existant after Yorknew City. You could at least make him enhance his fishing rod.

Then there's Killua. I actually like Killua, he's actually thinking. He actually grows a bit, learns about friendship and how to take risks (or at least they say). However like Gon he begins to lose his individuality, just not as much. During the Greed Island arc for instance he pulls out his yo yos which we've never seen before. Then after he learns to use his lightning properly then RIP yo yo's. His past as assassin doesn't influence how he fights during the later parts of the series which I think is a shame. He was exposed to electricity torture as a kid so his power is electricity! Feels a bit silly imo. Also why not like use the lightning with the yo yos?

And then we got the rest of the cast where most are irrelevant to anything besides the single arcs they got any real screen time.

I think a lot of potential was wasted overall with the characters.

Enjoyment: Some parts were more enjoyable than others. During the especially bad parts I had to look actively for bad stuff to be able to find any kind of entertainment or enjoyment in the anime.

Extra stuff: I read a lot of people say they enjoy the strategy in the fights, but having the characters/narrator explaining what happened after the action doesn't make it into strategy/tactics.

This anime was the most extreme case of people explaining their abilties, strategies and etc. to the enemy. There was even a character with an ability which required to know the name of another's ability. Why would you even need to name your abilities?

Also the anime even encourages to defy logical solutions and plans. The characters might say their plans are super important to follow and should be priority but pretty much all characters don't follow the plan and act on emotion.

Overall: Well since the worst arc (Chimera Ant arc) imo filled around 40% of the anime I would say overall Hunter x Hunter is bad 3 or 4/10. If we talked about actual content and not in terms of amount of episodes it would be a lot higher. Aside from that arc I would say HxH is alright, but definitely not a masterpiece. It is everything I see people complain about when it comes to other anime. If you think it's a masterpiece, you're not wrong, I'm just unable to understand why.

To sound like a review I would recommend this to people who like Index. It shares a lot of the same problems imo but a lot of people also like index so maybe what I consider a problem is a virtue to others.

First of all I would like to say that this was probably the most enjoyable anime movie I've ever watched.

Secondly I would like to say this movie is probably not for everyone. It's a teenage drama! It depicts high school students with their seperate issues who are randomly put together in a group and their development. The movie could be considered quite cheesy, contains (possibly stupid) drama and would probably considered boring by abig part of the anime community.

That being said I think this is more or less a model teenage drama movie.
It's not super innovative and contains a lot of what you would expect ... in a teenage drama but it performs it incredibly well. Despite not being super different from many other teenage dramas it still managed to surprise me while still keeping what you would expect from the genre.

I'll go through my impression of the different aspects of the movie below
I'll generally not have any real spoilers and just have annoying vague indications of what will happen later.


Story: 10
Without spoiling too much, the story revolves around a girl called Naruse Jun who "spoke too much" as a child. Because of the trouble she caused she met an egg which cursed her to be unable to speak. And then in high school she is put into a volunteer group to make a event. Rest should be watched!

I just thought it was very interesting from the start as this was I wrote to a friend: "A little girl dreams of going to a love hotel with a prince because it's formed like a castle. And she sees her dad leaving the love hotel with another woman" (This is basically the first 5 minutes of the movie)


Art: 9
The same studio as behind Anohana. The backgrounds were very pretty and were really good at setting the atmosphere but it was not like breathtaking or similar.
The character designs were generally good but sometimes slightly inconsistent especially with the guys from the baseball club. It's apparent that it's made by the Anohana team but the character designs still differs a bit.


Sound: 10!
The sound is soooo good even though the majority of the songs are basically parodies of already made songs. I loved the voice acting, especially Naruse Jun's. The way her voice shakes when she tries to speak both touches you and may cringe you! When the characters sing in casual it actually sounds like people singing without studio editing without being horrible. However when the songs are performed it sounds sooo good!
Minor issue may be that I think the tones of the "egg song" are a bit off but that might just be me.


Character: 9
Most of the characters are archetypes without really falling into heavy stereotypes so this is a good thing. Pretty decent character development as well. However I think that the only character who truly grew and built upon the archetype was the main character Naruse Jun, so I think it was great but not outstanding :>


Enjoyment: 10
As the review might reveal, I greatly enjoyed this show. I've watched a lot of ghibli studio films and many of the "must watch" stand alone anime movies such as Summer Wars, Paprika and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and I think most of the movies in same genre pales in comparison. This movie simply delivered everything I wanted for a teenage drama. The only movie I can think of in similar genre which can compete is 5 centimeters per second.
I also think that this show is superior to AnoHana in every aspect besides art while they also have somewhat similar themes. (Also it probably won't make you cry I think)

Overall: 10
I think this was a masterpiece of a teenage drama anime movie. All the flaws that I've noticed were faults I could easily live with and they don't affect the enjoyment of the show.

If you were a fan of AnoHana then watch it! If you're a fan of stuff like Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, watch it!

Watch ittt...

This review is my very biased opinion. I am a huge sucker for redjuice and EGOiST and it will be apparent in the review.

Let's start with the good point(s).

Art: 10
The art and animation is amazing. Redjuice has provided the movie with some great character design followed by incredible backgrounds, animation of scenes and effects.

Story: 3
The story is hugely inspired by Frankenstein. This might be due to me not being able to understand the story, however it mostly seemed like a mediocre fanfiction which includes major characters from many classic western novels such as Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes books and more. This might be due ... to the fact that this is a movie adaptation from a novel. With knowledge of all the characters (I only knew about 30% beforehand) this might be an interesting approach.
The movie has a lot of plot holes, pretty much nothing is explained or showed (unless this is caused by my lack of understanding) and the story pretty much uses the most cliché plot twists to a point where it's not even surprising at all. In the same way action scenes seemed hollow and seemed to follow some kind of cliché setup taken directly from the worse end of Hollywood action movies.
The events defy common logic and the choices made by the characters makes no sense but this is something you'll see in many old novels (in my very biased opinion).

Sound: 9
Soundtracks wasn't used a lot (unless I failed to notice) which in my opinion was a nice decision which made the movie feel closer to the time of the events (19th century).
I was quite impressed by the sounds the zombies made and the sound effects in general were nice.
The 2 ending themes, Door by EGOiST and another one was quite nice and fit the movie really well, but they were the only clear instance of music or soundtrack (I might be very bad at noticing soundtracks).

Characters: 5
Even if the art of the characters are 10/10 the characters themselves are quite mediocre. The characters don't seem to resemble the source material (how they are in their respective books) and seem to fit a stereotype quite well. Without spoiling too much, the sidekick Barnaby (I'm pretty sure it's Barnaby) is basically random sidekick nr. 1.

Enjoyment: 8
This was quite enjoyable to watch as the art (backgrounds, characters & animation quality) was so good that I could fap to it. The story was interesting, as it used tonnes of references and had some really great ideas, but it wasn't good enough to keep me hooked. Questions I wanted answered during the movie was usually like: How are they going to explain this? The answer was it wouldn't be explained. The characters, while not being unique, they weren't terrible either so just mediocre.

Overall: 7 (I allowed myself to vote 8 on it for bias)
Quite similar to Guilty Crown by having superior art and bad story.
Also had other Guilty Crown feels and elements (Guilty Crown haters shouldn't watch this imo :>)
Might not be the movie you remember as the best but it is definitely enjoyable as you watch it.