Anime 11061 Hunter X Hunter 2011 Reviews Filter Check 3

HxH is one of the many overrated shounen anime out there and I can summarize my review with one sentence: „If you became kinda interested in HxH, because you have heard it’s so much more than just a shounen, don’t believe it, because it is exactly that, just another shounen." Now I’m not a fan of shounen, and if you read this review you will find out why, so this anime is not made for me, but just for more diversity in views I will analyze this anime a bit closer.

HxH is one of those anime where you can literally see the quality dropping, with ... the earlier episodes being made nicely and at the end it has one of the longest pacings I have ever seen. Since the artstlye isn’t in any form detailed and costly they can’t tell me they ran out of money. I assume they just wanted to milk the cashcow to the end and stretched it out as much as possible.
Like I said before the start of the show was quite nice. It had a few things which didn’t really make any sense, especially the riddles, but it had a nice build up and a good pacing. It seemed to me as if the start also really wanted to surprise the viewers with something unexpected, regardless of how illogical it was. It also didn’t do much good in terms of atmosphere, in some cases it even destroys the atmosphere it built up just for surprise reasons. The main characters are also unexplained overpowered, sure there are a few stronger but that alone doesn’t justify a little kid being physically stronger than a well-trained grown up man, just because he “grew up in the woods”, which is btw contradicted later on. But besides a few negative things to say, the start (first 17-20 episodes maybe) was ok. It had a goal and set motivation from the character side, the main story kinda made sense (more than the rest of the show) and they had some kind of, what the fans claim as “tactics in fighting”.

In the second arc the terror already begins. Motivations from the character were completely forgotten and not even mentioned in order to have a little conflict for the goal of this arc. The reason for the first arc and what they have achieved was completely pointless and even contradictory as explained in the later arcs. The following arcs shine with, not knowing what to call somethings. For the show an assassin is someone who is physically strong and can endure much pain instead of being stealthy and deadly, the so called “mafia” is a bunch of unorganized idiots who apparently have a lot of power (they at least have a lot of money) which is contradictory in every way and let me question the whole world building of this anime and we still don't know what a Hunter is and does. The writers have no idea of how money works, which wouldn’t be a problem if they hadn’t dedicated a whole arc just for money getting purposes, which later on is also completely useless. Not to forget the story is full of convenience, which goes beyond the acceptable amount. Some of the arcs are complete filler since they either are pointless or have nothing to do with the final goal (the motivation of the main protagonist). There is even one arc were the main protagonist is inside a video game and literally the first thing he hears there is that being here is completely pointless, but he doesn’t care and goes on anyway, which makes the whole arc pointless and questions the existence of the build up to it.

This show becomes less endurable from arc to arc, with the mafia arc being an exception but still not good. It’s like comparing a pile of shit with a pile of shit which has a cherry on top of it. Seeing the later arcs lets you remember the earlier ones as if they were in any way good, that’s how horrible this show gets.

HunterxHunter also likes to copy or inlcude everything that was or is popular it seems. That goes from character design (Robocop) even to whole story arcs (the video card game arc which included cardgames like magic the gathering).

A thing that really bothers me as well is the fact that this show has no scale what so ever. The abilities and the strength of every character are so completely random and out of order. It even shifts during the whole anime, making character who should be strong considering their rank utterly weak and character who should be weak unnecessary strong. Its like as if one writer wrote the hierarchy of all the characters and their relationship and then another decided, because how much he liked their appearance how strong they are.

All of the above was pretty much the first half of the show. The show was like I said very bad but had at least some arcs which were watchable and had a decent pacing. From episode 80 onwards the chimera arc takes place. This is basically the main difference between the original version of the HunterxHunter anime and the 2011 version.

The chimera arc is the worst thing I have seen in a long time in terms of writing. You can’t take anything they say and do seriously, since the character design is so freaking retarded. They say they are ants but then a penguin and a pink panda in a suit is sitting there with them. The writers wanted to make this arc dark and mature but only present it in such a childish way.

In this arc HxH really shows how little time they spend with thinking through the whole thing. Where villains came from and what their motivation is was never a thing HunterXHunter spends any time in but in this case it makes absolutely no sense that some ant-people who just came into existence are able to be as strong as one of the strongest person in the whole anime. So again.. no scale existend. And with no time spend with motivation and personification the writers now believe they can put drama in the show when the villains die. Are you freaking kidding me? Yeah the ants just killed hundreds if not thousands of people and now I should feel sorry for them? The drama in this whole anime is the worst sort of melodrama, forced and reliable so much on double standarts.

In the last arc the tactics really shine, in terms of sucking. In the last 50 episodes there is only a handful of fights anyways, so there is not much to talk about, but the tactics there is so utterly idiotic. There is so much bullshit that happened during this arc, there was not 1 episode where I wasn’t facepalming.
But all of the above would have been minor points if it wasn’t for how boring this whole arc was. The reason I criticize their “tactics” is only because they spend so much time with talking and every fan thinks the tactics are so great. 90% of the time they talk about irrelevant stuff and when it comes to real tactics they are utterly bullshit, convenient or deus ex machina.

Characters of this show are not in any terms special. Have you seen either Naruto, One Piece, Bleach you know the personality of the main character. Add a bunch of extra typical side characters and you got them all. It’s just the typical teenager character who is strong enough to change the world stuff. In HunterXHunter they at least didnt go full overpowered with the main character, but considering the age of the protagonist and the enemies he is fighting later on I would say its pretty unrealistic (also there are some moments later on were our MC goes into deus ex machina overpowered mode for some reason). He is a very wish-fulfilling character and not that much of a role model (so instead of giving him realistic trades he is super positive all the time and strong etc.). I think there is nothing really wrong with this wish-fulfilling kind of anime, but they just feel very childish. So saying this is more than a shounen is really wrong.


Music is also pretty bad. All the good songs were copies of famous classical songs, such as Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem, the rest is rather forgettable boring background music. Artstyle is simple and character design in the WHOLE show is the worst I have ever seen, but that’s ofc only my opinion. I found it to be nice to see no cgi, if I remember correctly.


So overall: This show is not more than a shounen and I might add the worst written shonen I have ever seen, but I am not into that genre so I only saw a few of them. If you are a person who likes more mature stuff and think there is something behind this anime, otherwise it wouldn’t be so popular, don’t fall for the trap and stay away from it. At the end you will just regret it.

After years of everyone from personal friends to random internet commentators imploring me to watch Madhouse’s 2011 adaptation of Hunter x Hunter, I finally got around to it. I was told that this was the best long-form battle shounen out there, avoiding all the sins of mediocrity other Shonen Jump titles like Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach commit. I was told Hunter x Hunter did not constantly try to implausibly escalate the stakes of each battle, didn’t rely on boring cliché motivations of characters just wanting to get stronger for no reason, did not draw out its battle sequences for outrageous lengths of time, did ... not include random unnecessary filler. When I looked more into it I saw that its animation was far superior to anything I’d seen of a similar length and that it was in the all-time top 5 on MAL. I came into it with somewhat high expectations. I was not expecting a masterpiece, but at least a competently written and directed series that would outpace the mediocrity I’ve come to expect of this genre.

It turns out, I must not be in on some elaborate inside joke or meme. After sitting through 148 episodes of this I do not see how anybody over the age of twelve could impartially think this series is anything special. The bottom line is this is one of the most completely incoherent, unevenly paced, poorly thought out, and generic series I’ve ever seen.

I suppose I’ll start with my positive notes about the series. First, the animation is noticeably better than just about any series of this length. It got a little slipshod for moments around episodes 100-120 with ill-fitting CGI thrown in now and then, but started and ended strong and was never unnervingly bad. My biggest complaint about the artstyle, which has way more to do with the source material than Madhouse’s animation quality, is that the character designs are not coherent with each other. With a few exceptions (eg., Hisoka, Biscuit, and Palm) they look fine, but it looks like they were all ripped out of completely different series. However, I suppose that’s a sign of things to come as the plot is also an incoherent mess that feels like several different series randomly crammed together. Another positive note is that the soundtrack is actually rather exceptional, almost ill-fittingly so considering how weak the series itself is. However, various tracks were over-used and ran somewhat hollow towards the end. Overall, the soundtrack might have been the best point of the series. The voice acting is mostly adequate, with Mariya Ise’s performance of Killua really standing out. I would recommend avoiding the English dub for the most part (I watched about half of the series dubbed) as some side characters have really shoddy and obnoxious actors.

There are also redeeming aspects of character development and plot progression. For the most part, all that stuff I was told about it avoiding the sins most other shounen commit was true for the first sixty or so episodes. The first few “fight” scenes actually felt like refreshing deconstructions of what is so annoying about most shounen fight sequences. For an example, a character would start up some annoying cliched banter about how powerful he was and how he couldn’t be beaten like most scenes from Naruto only to be shut up by a punch in the face. It felt refreshingly well-paced in the first three or so arcs, the main cast of characters were rather endearing, and there was little in the way of boring filler.

However, even in the early episodes, it never felt like anything special. I was enjoying it well enough and could see why some people really liked it, but it was somewhat generic and far from a masterpiece. The first arc was a fairly typical exam-style arc, very similar, for example, to the chunin exams in Naruto. It revolves around our main character Gon trying to get a Hunter license through an extremely difficult exam involving a wide variety of off-the-wall, unrelated tasks. The main point of this arc was to acquaint viewers with the main cast of characters and introduce the notion of what a “hunter” is.

There’s Gon, a rather endearingly naïve and ambitious 12-year-old trying to earn a Hunter’s license so he can meet his father who abandoned him as a child; a clichéd lead for a shounen, but adequate. Kurapika, a somewhat ill-tempered but driven character bent on getting revenge for the murder of his people. Leorio, a stock comedic relief character with a somewhat compelling backstory hinted at early on but never explored. Easily the best character of the series is Killua, a 12-year-old former assassin who becomes best friends with Gon early on who is trying to escape his family’s will to turn him into an assassin. Killua and Gon’s friendship (that, at times, arguably verges into canon romance, at least from Killua’s perspective) is really the highlight of the series. Killua’s dark and brooding demeanor, as well as his high skill-level, acts as a perfect counterbalance to the charming but comedically stupid naivety and innocence of Gon. The way Killua is constantly trying to prove to himself that he’s good enough for Gon was the only consistently good character dynamic that kept me watching through this series’ most painful moments. The last notable and memorable character from this early sequence is Hisoka, a wildly underdeveloped possibly pedophilic clown who seems only motivated to someday fight Gon because he wants a challenge (we’re already getting into boring shonen clichés) and acts as the series' only consistent antagonist, even when he helps the main protagonist. But at least he’s somewhat entertaining with how off-the-wall he is.

Towards the end of this arc, though, you realize that it accomplishes almost nothing in the way of interesting world-building. You realize about fifteen episodes in, with some dismay, that “Hunter” is just a term for a generic action-hero mercenary. It mostly turns out this exam is little more than a disconnected variety game show. But, hey, at least the characters are somewhat compelling, if a little bland, and the games are somewhat interesting. At this point, I was still optimistic and thought if they flesh out these main characters other than Killua a bit more this could get good.

As you get into the second arc, the series begins to go a little stale and it becomes really clear just how lazy and bland the supposed worldbuilding for this fictional setting is. After a few episodes of rallying Killua back from his family, which served for some interesting character building, the main four characters split up. Killua and Gon participate in another shonen cliché of a battle tournament to get money, as well as pawning some antiques on the side, to obtain a video game that somehow has some hint as to how to find Gon’s dad. The main point of this section is to engage in some worldbuilding around the use of aura and nen—the main fighting mechanic of this series. It renders the first arc mostly useless since it turns out obtaining the Hunters license didn’t mean anything, meaning the notion there is not any unnecessary filler here was a lie. The fighting mechanics are overexplained at times and is a rather typical plot device for a shonen, but it gets the job done. This is one of the more boring and forgettable sections of the series, and that is saying something considering the tedium to come.

More interestingly, Kurapika begins to try to enact his revenge plot against a gang called the Phantom Spiders and we get some interesting development of his character. Eventually, the two subplots of Gon and Killua training and Kurapika getting revenge dovetail as they try to stop the antagonists from robbing. The video game angle is forgotten for about twenty episodes, just one of many times a key plot point will be randomly dropped. Oh, and now Leorio is mostly forgotten, a sign of stupidity to come as he and Kurapika—two of the only compelling main characters—are about to be completely forgotten for nearly 80 episodes.

When Gon and Killua finally obtain their video game, the “Greed Island” arc starts. Here, it becomes clear that this is far from what I was promised. Greed Island is easily the worst arc I’ve ever seen in any shounen anime. The basic premise of this is basically the bastard child of Yu-Gi-Oh and Sword Art Online but somehow manages to be worse than both. Almost everything that happened in the first few arcs is completely forgotten, Gon again gets completely distracted from the goal of finding his father and gets sidetracked with the game and another random unnecessary training sequence. Killua acts completely out of character throughout this arc and is almost as naïve as Gon suddenly. Almost every other character from earlier in the series is entirely absent, and an entirely new cast of characters is introduced as well as an overexplained, convoluted new plot device of a stupid card game. The phantom troop from Kurapika’s arc shows up for a minute for no good reason and is then promptly forgotten and Hisoka plays a big role but acts way out of his previously established character.

The early part of this arc is a bunch of boring exposition spoon-fed to the viewer through badly written explanatory dialogue that needed to be done because the arc had nothing to do with anything before it. This really points to the problem of having such a completely incoherent, unrelated set of arcs: the viewers’ time is wasted with a bunch more exposition when nobody really wants tedious explanation 60+ episodes into the series. It is really reminiscent of how dreary the filler arc at the end of the original Naruto was. But at least those filler serials made some sense, most of the time, this arc was as convoluted and nonsensical as it was dull. The worst thing is during one of the most outrageously stupid moments in the history of shonen, a battle revolving around (of all things) dodgeball, all the worst clichés of mediocre shonen I was told Hunter x Hunter avoided were on full, proud display. The basic rules of dodgeball are boringly overexplained through narration eight times, the fight scene drags on for far too long, an emotionally-driven power-up by Gon is what ultimately won it, and the antagonist for the fight was built up using boring tropes (such as defeating other characters previous built-up as strong instantly to build up a new character's perceived powerfulness). The main antagonists for the arc were completely boring, unpredictable, and underdeveloped. I barely made it through this arc and almost dropped the series altogether, but was told the next arc was better.

Like the theme song I was now growing weary of told me, “there definitely is a good reason to persevere,” so persevere I did. Turns out, just like my friends did when they told me this was the best shonen ever, that was mostly a lie. The Chimera Ant arc—which takes up about 40% of the series—was better from the start, but wound up being so horribly executed that it was really frustrating to watch. Killua’s character got some important development with his relationship to Gon. A new rival for Gon’s attention acted as a good foil to Killua. A little bit of somewhat interesting world building is accomplished, but I was now really noticing how horridly lazy the worldbuilding was. Apparently, the world map is just a flipped version of a real-world mercatus projection. But, hey, it’s something.

Again, this arc has almost nothing to do with anything that came before it, an entirely new cast of characters are introduced, and we’re exposed to even more exposition. But at least the exposition is somewhat enjoyable this time around. The premise of this arc is that a bunch of humanoid ants are killing everyone in one country to try to give birth to a new king, and Gon and Killua join some old friends of Gon’s father to stop it. The antagonists this time around are by far the most interesting and dynamic of the whole series and provide interesting external commentary on human societies. The premise is interesting, it was paced slower but felt well-executed, it was thematically interesting. Around episode 95 I was thinking this series might redeem itself.

Then, the main battle sequence starts and the so-far passable Chimera Ant arc completely jumps the shark. A whole bunch of characters we only got vague backstories on twenty to thirty episodes earlier are suddenly super important so it's hard to keep track of what’s going on. The battle sequence is now so drawn-out it makes Dragon Ball battles seem snappy. Seriously, a good twenty episodes into the big important climatic attack on the antagonist, the narrator announces only three minutes have passed.

Speaking of the narrator, that’s the worst part about this arc. Almost every damn moment of episodes 100-120 is taken up by horribly written, contrived narration. Every move in the battle, every psychological state of every character is just spoon-fed by the narrator. It’s not like the directors were incapable of subtlety, most of the narration was completely unnecessary since Madhouse actually did a decent job at subtley portraying battle techniques and emotional dispositions (although the animation through this arc was the worst of the series). The moment you almost get into the atmosphere of a scene during the battle, the narrator’s there to break the fourth wall and ruin everything, destroying any emotional depth that could be salvaged. The whole point of a visual medium like a television series is to show us characters’ dispositions, motivations, and beliefs, or even the basic events of the plot, not just tell it to us. Otherwise, we might as well forego every single film adaptation of novels and stick to audiobooks. For the most part, this sub-arc felt more like an audiobook than an anime.

Worse yet, the events at the climax of the battle are as implausible as they are ridiculous. Gon’s happy and naïve character fantastically changes way too quickly into a bloodthirsty sadist during another revenge arc (because Kurapika’s been forgotten for about 80 episodes) as he seeks vengeance for another minor side character we’ve barely gotten to know. The battle hilariously escalates into ridiculousness. Character designs become downright stupid (at one point the antagonists turn into chibis and Gon looks like handsome Squidward with impossibly long hair), fights between minor side-characters we do not really care that much about are drawn out into three episode sequences, and things escalate beyond credulity.

When all the dust is settled, eight or so episodes are spent on the resolution to this arc. There are flashes of brilliance here and there, and you’re thankful the narrator has finally shut the hell up. The most notable moment is the finale for the main antagonist of this arc, Mereum, which was probably the best-directed scene of the series. It was so high-quality it felt out of place since the animation quality dipped during the battle. Other than that, there were a bunch of scenes that were supposed to be emotionally charged, but so many characters were introduced 30 or so episodes ago with little development in between, the viewer is mostly spent struggling to remember who was who and wondering why she should care.

It’s a shame, this arc had a lot of potentials, but it was wasted on fantastically dumb battle sequences and contrived narration to shoehorn in as many new characters as possible rather than actually focus in on the few compelling characters and events in the arc. The most notable half-delivered promise of this arc was the rather rushed development of the main antagonist Mereum which was incredibly compelling before the battle. It’s amazing how the most drawn-out section of this anime managed to rush even the most important parts, like Gon’s dynamic change in his quest for revenge or Mereum’s battle between being an ant and a human. But hey, at least they didn’t just randomly forget key characters and plot elements from this arc like they did everywhere else.

The final mini-arc is when this series just got extremely tedious, boring, and entirely unenjoyable—even more tedious than the drawn-out battle sequence. Gon is injured from the big fight, Killua needs to go retrieve his sister who has some special power to heal him—who at this point we’ve never met and have no clue why Killua cares so much for her if he’s never mentioned her, but I guess expecting basic narrative coherence was out of the question at this point. This would be fine, except it keeps getting sidetracked with this tedious political drama about the Hunter organization trying to run an election which is mostly extremely dull bureaucratic dialogue with a bunch of crudely designed characters we’ve never met before who are introduced in a rushed fashion. Remember that infamous scene from the Phantom Menace where they sit in the Galactic Senate talking for too long? Imagine that for about six episodes worth of content. It’s miserable to watch.

It ends on a higher note. The stupid election bureaucracy fizzles out and it turns out to have mattered even less than we thought it did. Gon gets reunited with his father, which is nice enough. There’s a lack of satisfying resolve in Gon and Killua’s friendship, but after the 90 episodes of garbage, the last 3 or so were stronger. I suppose Madhouse deserves some credit for wrapping up an unfinished manga with a plausibly fulfilling ending.

Honestly, I do not really know why anyone takes this series all that seriously. This only deserves a small fraction of the hype and critical acclaim it gets. Maybe people are so desperate for a competently animated long-form shounen that is less than 500 episodes they’re willing to overlook the deep flaws in this show? It feels like a completely incoherent Dungeons and Dragons campaign run by a bunch of ADHD 11-year-olds on crack. Maybe you like the off-the-wall style of storytelling and the way it constantly and implausibly ups the ante on your willful suspension of disbelief. But even if so, it is downright frustrating when key characters and plot points are completely forgotten, when you have to sit through exposition after exposition, or when battles get as drawn out and cliché as they do in this series. The only reason it’s not getting a lower score is because Killua is a uniquely memorable and well-developed character, the first 50 or so episodes were at least enjoyable, and it does deserve some credit for being much more visually polished than most of its peers.

Consider how Hunter x Hunter compares with other long-form battle shounen that are notable for their mediocrity even during its most successful arcs . Compare it to, for example, Naruto or Shingeki no Kyojin. What keeps me hooked on a series like Naruto or SnK despite how deeply flawed they are is that they have coherent, well-defined and interesting worlds into which I can get somewhat immersed. If I’m investing more than 100 episodes in to a series, I want to get lost in the world. I can tolerate implausibly high-stakes battle sequences where the main character is just screaming like in SnK if the setting is interesting and the premise is compelling. I can sit through bland exposition of a new larger cast of characters 200 episodes into Naruto Shippuden if I get a sense of how they fit into the larger narrative in world.

Sure, when Hunter x Hunter is at its best in the first third of the series it avoids some of the most glaring flaws of those shows with ridiculously drawn-out battle sequences, spoon-fed explanations, and constant escalation issues. However, it has no sense of immersion or coherent world-building at all since the setting and premise is so generic and never fully fleshed out. When there’s an attempt to give a sense of setting, the elements are randomly pulled out of someone’s ass on the spot with contrived narration and it usually contradicts whatever came before it. Even the city names are generic, lazy knock-offs like Yorknewcity or Pajing. Gon’s main attack is based off rock, paper, scissors, for Christ's sake. The result is when the few interesting main characters are absent and I’m forced to sit through more exposition of new characters and battle techniques or when it begins to fall into those bad shonen battle clichés during the Chimera Ant and Greed Island arcs, I just lose all sense of interest and watching the series becomes a dull exercise in perseverance. Ultimately, that lazy world-building and lack of coherence makes Hunter x Hunter even worse than most of the mediocre shounen to which it is favorably compared. Paired with the way key points are just dropped and forgotten for good and the cast of characters becomes so large and rushed, the whole series becomes downright frustrating.

At its best, Hunter x Hunter is a rather unremarkable battle shounen with a handful of memorable characters. At its worst, it’s a completely incoherent, tedious, barely watchable mess. At any given moment, it could be anything between those two extremes. Even though there are a lot of enjoyable moments and some good characters to salvage from the series, I have a hard time recommending this to all but the most hardcore of shounen fans.

Story: 1/10
Art: 6/10
Sound: 7/10
Character: 3/10
Enjoyment: 3/10
Overall 4/10

Firstly , I cannot forgive the god-awful character designs in this show , these ugly characters are the reason as to why Itachi went blind . I mean how do they expect us to take this show seriously with these awful designs , It was also one of the main reasons I hated the Chimera Ant Arc because it allowed Togashi to roam free with his ugly ass seizure-induced drawing.

Another thing is the art style , I found the 1999 version to be more mature , whereas the 2011 adaptation looks cutesy and childish for my taste , another reason I can't take it seriously.

The ... only good , enjoyable and watchable arc is the Yorknew City Arc , all the other arcs are ass

Gon's abilities are also boring , predictable and lack any sort of possible development

This anime only has a couple of good characters ( Killua , Hisoka , Feitan , Machi and Leorio) the rest suck ass

Feitan and Machi are also the only good phantom troupe members , the rest are boring and lack and depth. I mean even the cut from the blade Kurapika put on Uvogin's heart had more depth than them

The Hunter Exam Arc is a boring and bootleg version of the Chuunin Exams ,and I'm not the only one who agrees with that , there is plot convenience all over the goddamn place , how can a Fat shit like Tonpa and a skinny shit like Leorio run 80+ km it makes no goddamn sense.The only good thing to look forward to in this arc is Killua and Hisoka

When Gon and gang went to save Killua , I was interested because I thought something interesting was gonna go down but no , Togashi just pulls conveniences out of his ass left and right , I was facepalming every episode , so much so that my face has my full hand-print . You mean to tell me that a 12 year old kid with a broken arm , which magically got healed thanks to the power of plot , a 17 year old and lanky malnourished boy in a suit managed to individually put 1209 kg worth of force into opening the door they were struggling to carry a 20kg cup. If you ask me , PLOTTTT!!!!. The soundtrack in this arc made by ears burn and there was also absolutely no suspense , I mean I had a higher chance of finding Gon's hairline , than I did of finding any suspense in this arc.


The Heavens Arena Arc also sucked ass because there is no balance between whether this is a training arc or tournament arc . The idea for heaven's arena was alright but it turned shit , As expected. Now , the only thing AND I MEAN THE ONLY THING GOOD ABOUT THIS ARC was Hisoka and his fight with Kastro , they truely displayed the power and potential of , they should've also gotten rid of those 3 nen users Gon and Killua were fighting.

The OST's are decent , especially Hisoka's and Kurapika's (Kusari Yarou)

The Greed Island Arc has to be the most sleep-inducing arc , I had to take meth , coffee and adderall to stay awake , It cured my brother of insomnia , he watched 1 episode and he was dozing off. If it hadn't been for the dodgeball game I probably would've dropped the arc there , it is completely pointless even Gon said it himself , the card-gathering moment was extremely unbearable to watch especially since it served no purpose at the end. The bomber is also the worst written villain and he also should've killed Gon but no Gon was saved by OH WAIT , ITS A BIRD , ITS A PLANE , NO , It was the god awful plot convenience from the unexplained cards

Now , Onto the most overrated arc ever , The Chimera Ant Arc (CAA)

The CAA has to be the most overrated arc ever to be made , the only good thing about this arc was killua and feitan , this arc was also incredibly dragged out it probably could've only been 30 episodes had they not put money first

The idea of Chimera Ants also makes no sense , since they're suppose to hold more than 2 different genes but none of them look even remotely like ants and they somehow in an isolated nation happen to have so much resources and it also makes no sense how the latter generation (Pitou , Youpi , Meruem and Pouf) were so strong compared to the previous generation (Welfin , Meleoron etc) when there was nothing that happened inbetween their births to contribute their increase in power , people use eating Pokkle as an excuse but when Pitou was born Pokkle was alive

This arc tries so hard to be dark and mature but fails in every way , Gon's transformation against Pitou was an asspull and also made no sense as he only knew Kite for 2 weeks yet he was crying like a bitch and we were all supposed to like that hell no.

Netero vs Meruem was also a bad fight , it was just Netero slapping Meruem and Meruem getting back up and talking about some Gungi bullshit yet people suck off this arc. The narrator is especially annoying I mean that guy had more lines than the actual fucking VA's

Meruem is also the worst villain , he has no personality , he is just the cliche "I want to rule the world for the sake of it" villain , he also has no special techniques and he is incredibly strong which made no sense and in the end he became good guy , yep like that has not been done before.

Now , I actually liked Nen as a power system because it was really balanced . but then Alluka shows up and the word 'balanced' is thrown out of the window , Alluka is a living deus ex machina that can grant any wish but somehow wasn't used in the CAA because Killua doesn't want to abuse her which is completely contradictory.

This show also has the worst reunion if I've ever seen it , Ging just shows up in front Gon , which is annoying because what purpose do the previous arcs serve.

Hunter x Hunter is the most overrated anime series I've ever watched. I've never seen a fanbase more toxic and elitist than Hunter x Hunter fans. All of these people just constantly praise this anime and talk about how well written it is, but in reality that isn't true. In reality this is just another garbage battle shounen series like the rest of them. It isn't complex, it isn't well written at all, it's nothing but complete and utter dog shit.

Hunter x Hunter is about a kid named Gon Freecs that becomes a Hunter and wants to find his dad someday. This is the worst ... story I've ever seen in a Shounen anime. I'll be explaining why I say this later on in this review

Hunter x Hunter has one thing going for it, the Yorknew Arc. Every other arc in this show was complete and utter garbage and I'll explain why. First we have the Hunter Exam arc. This was just a pathetic version of the Chunin Exams. It just feels way too slow and boring. This was the first arc in the series and it just failed to get me attached to any of the characters. There was just no reason to like any of these characters at all. Gon was the typical generic shounen protagonist. Killua was the typical edgy kid. Kurapika was the cliche revenge character. The only character that was interesting was Leorio. All of the trials in this arc were boring to watch and that's pretty much it. The mini tournament was also uninteresting/boring

Next we have the Zoldyck Family arc. Ahh what a waste of time. I actually thought something big would happen in this arc, but this unfortunately wasn't the case. They just go into the mansion and then get Killua and then leave. This arc should've been longer and actually gave more depth to Killua's family, but it didn't! In the end I didn't give a single shit about his family and any other character involved in this arc. And as usual, we get that stupid friendship/nakama bullshit in this arc. This is why I say that Hunter x Hunter is nothing different from the typical shounen, because it still has that nakama bullshit.

Heaven's Arena was just so boring it nearly made me fall asleep multiple times. Togashi actually made an interesting concept for an arc, but then completely ruins it. He ruins it by making the whole arc a damn training arc. This just doesn't make sense to me. This arc was way too focused on training instead of the actual fucking Heavens Arena. This is one of my biggest problems with Hunter x Hunter in general. This series just has way too much training and less story to it. None of the villains were interesting at all. They were just the typical cliche villains you'd see in any Shounen. The fights were complete and utter garbage. It's funny how they spend so much time training yet when Gon finally fights Hisoka it's nothing but hand to hand combat for the most part. So much training yet he doesn't even know how to use real techniques. Infact he doesn't even know how to use real techniques until like fucking 60 episodes!

Next is the Yorknew arc. a very good arc. Almost everything about this arc was actually phenomenal, but there are some problems. Firstly, the main two characters are so fucking annoying I just couldn't stand it. Uvogin was a very generic character and just not interesting to me. The rest of the phantom troupe all lacked any depth to them so I just didn't find them to be good villains. The best thing about this arc was Kurapika and his character development. Kurapika is the only character in Hunter x Hunter with good development. The rest of the main characters are complete and utter garbage with no redeeming qualities. Also the fight between Uvogin and Kurapika was pretty cool.

Greed Island is one of the most pointless and boring arcs I've seen in a Shounen. Once again this arc is filled with boring training that nobody gives a shit about. Togashi made an interesting concept for an arc just to ruin it by making it a training arc. He just doesn't know how to balance things out and this arc is the perfect example. Them collecting cards was painfully boring to watch. The card system wasn't explained in detail so that was boring. We don't know what any of these cards are or do, so I got bored with all the card collecting bullshit. The main villain has got to be the one of the worst villains I've seen in a Shounen series. No depth whatsoever. He's just the typical one dimensional villain that's evil just for the sake of being evil. See it's funny how Hunter x Hunter fans talk about how well written this anime is, but I just don't see it! Characters like Genthru clearly contradict that statmement, and there's no debating about this. The fights in this arc were really bad. Gon vs Genthru was filled with plot armor it was just laughable. He should've easily lost that fight, but he just wins because of 100% plot armor. Greed Island could've been a good arc but it was ruined by many things. Bad villains, boring training, and barely any explanation to the card system. The world of Greed Island had 0 detail, none whatsoever. This just feels like a filler arc overall. One of the worst arcs in Shounen.

The Chimera Ant arc has got to be the most overrated Shounen arc I've ever seen. This is the most boring arc I've ever watched in an anime. The first 20 episodes of it were extremely slow paced and dragged on WAY too long. There was just far too much underdeveloped characters getting screen time so it was just ridiculous. The narration was the worst part about this arc. It completely ruined this arc in many ways. Firstly, the narration happened in some of the most important parts in the arc. When they where raiding the palace I just completely lost interest because of the fucking narration. This man was narrating for almost the entire episode it was just ridiculous. The fact that there needs to be narration in order to have people understand what's happening is just stupid. Firstly, it's an insult to the viewers. It's like they think the viewers are too stupid to understand what's going on, so there needs to be narration all the time. That's the impression I'm getting from this. Secondly, there's a lot of Shounen out there that don't need narration to tell a good story.

Now when it comes to fights, this arc had some of the most overrated fights I've ever seen. First we have Gon vs Neferpitou. Gon gets a random asspull powerup and beats the shit out of her. It was really fucking stupid to see Gon so mad about what happened to Kite anyways. He barely even fucking knew him yet he's crying like a bitch when he dies. This just made no sense whatsoever, and this was just bad writing at its finest. He only knew him for two weeks and he went ape shit when he found out what happened to him. This was just pathetic writing. Next overrated fight, Meruem vs Netero. Imagine hyping up a villain for 50 episodes just for him to have no cool techniques or anything. His fight with Netero was so boring. He just gets smacked away and flies right back at him. The only good thing about this fight was the animation. Everything else was complete and utter garbage as expected.

It's funny to me how this anime tried to have strategic battles in its early stages. Later on it just becames the typical battle shounen with power levels. Gon vs Hisoka and Gon vs Genthru had some strategy, but Meruem vs Netero was a terrible fight and was just about who has the higher power level. There's no good reason why Meruem is that strong either. He has no techniques or anything. That's why that fight was complete trash.

Now lets talk about the battle system in Hunter x Hunter. The battle system is actually pretty good. Togashi puts so much detail into the battle system, but there is a problem here. The problem is that a shit ton of fights in which the battle system doesn't even fucking matter! Like why put so much detail into the power system when the fights just end up being the typical shounen fights! Meruem vs Netero is the perfect example of this. This fight was just another typical DBZ type of fight you see in anime. All I'm saying is, if you're going to spend so much time putting detail into the power system, at least make it important in every fight.

Rememeber how I said Hunter x Hunter had the worst story I've ever seen in a Shounen? I'll explain why I said that right now. Gons goal was finding his dad right? SPOILER: After the death of Netero, everyone Hunter has to attend the election. This is when Gon meets his dad....This is the most garbage thing I have ever seen. After all those arcs trying to find clues to know his dads whereabouts, this is how they meet. What was the point in Yorknew? What was the point in Greed Island? This was the most unsatisfying thing I've ever seen in an anime. After all that hard work, Gon ends up meeting Gnig in the stupidest fucking way possible.

Speaking about the Election arc, this arc was complete trash. The only interesting thing about it was Leorio and what he said about Ging. Everything else was bad. Alluka was a terrible character. She was just a living plot device and that's all there was to this character. Nothing about this arc was good and that's all there is to it.

Now lets talk about the characters. There's only one good character in Hunter x Hunter, and that would be Kurapika. He's the only character with interesting character development. Gons character development was complete trash, specifically talking about when (spoiler) kite died. THat was just awful development. Killua had some development, but I disliked him due to his constant change in personalities. One second he's the typical 12 year old, the next second he's edgy as hell. His character development is very basic aswell. Leorio could've been a good character, but unfortunately he was neglected for like 90% of the anime. It pisses me off how the only decent characters barely got any screen time at all. Meruem is incredibly overrated. He's just the typical "I want to rule the world" type of villain. His character development was very basic and nothing special at all. His development is pretty much him becoming more of a good guy due to Komugis influence. Oh wow, a villain that becomes a good guy... wow that's such great writing isn't it.... -_- I've seen character development like his in a lot of anime, so I don't get why people suck him off so hard. Overall, Hunter x Hunter has bad characters.

Hunter x Hunter has terrible art. Not only in the manga, but in the anime aswell. This anime has some of the most ugly character designs I've seen in a shounen. There's just way too many ugly looking characters it just looks so childish. There's nothing interesting about the music or animation either. The music was very unmemorable to me, and the animation isn't anything special.

Overall this anime was horrible. The only enjoyable arc in this anime was the Yorknew arc and that's it. Everything else about this anime was boring and painful to watch. I don't recommend watching this anime. There's just so much other anime to watch that are much better. If you're looking for a badass shounen with awesome fights and great characters, go watch Yu Yu Hakusho. They were both written by the same mangaka, but at least Yu Yu Hakusho is enjoyable to watch. The Dark Tournament and Chapter Black arc are both better than anything I've seen in Hunter x Hunter.

Dissapointment: the anime.

There are some anime with concepts or characters doomed to fail from the start, but that is not the case with Hunter x Hunter, however everything it could made wrong it was made wrong, it takes the award of how much screw up it made with its concepts.

Story 2/10:
Each arc consistently feels different and distinguishable from one another, which is good, but it also consistently has a lot of build up to a very dissapointing ending, every conflict is solved by the dumbest reasons, which can be unpredictable, but unpredictable bad in a sense of how will they ruin this arc this ... time? Problems are solves by luck, mercy in the part of the enemies, plot-conviniences, opponents giving up, random interruptions, random ways, ect...

Characters 0/10:
The worst part of the anime by far, going by the main ones:
Leorio - used mostly for the unfunny joke of being an useless adult-looking guy compared to the rest of the children, has no plot-relevance whatsoever and it feels it was created (and given a lot of screen time) just for this 1 moment later on that has no impact whatsoever. Was expecting them to make him a zero-to-hero kind of character, but nothing interesting was made out of him.
Kurapika - the best out of the bunch, he started out good, then was forgotten, then had an arc dedicated to make him shine where they gave him only 1 fight, after that he went back to being useless and forgotten again.
Hisoka - a pedophile clown loved by everyone in the anime community, doesn't have much of a personality outside of being 'horny for children', he does its job at being a creepy villain until later one he doesn't do that anymore.
Killua - He started as an awesome character, edgy and ruthless, demostrating the violence and harshness of the hunter world, so much so that in this 2011 version they had to censor some of his actions. When he started hanging out with the Main Character Gon, his character just went downhill, all his cool traits were left behind and he just became the annoying brat nº2, since the annoying brat nº1 was
Gon - the MC, a kid that behaves like a kid, for a harsh a violent world it is portrait on, this kid gets out with a lot scot-free, having a happy-go-lucky attitude when its no place for it. When having a kid as a MC, the show has to make ways to make them work, like having the intelligence to maneuver the others, but Gon is also as dumb as it gets, every problem he has to face he doesn't have to struggle for it, it is resolved by luck, avoiding it altogether, or mercy from the opponents. When he started he had a very interesting way of fighting style by using a fishing rod from a distance, but even his only interesting feature was removed later on, now he solves his problems by brute force alone, which for a kid, he shouldn't have.

Conclusion:
I gave it a 3/10 rating but that feels too generous, I'm struggling to find any positive points to justify it, the 1st ending was fire, the character Melody was very well done, and the Kurapika arc... had a good concept but was handled very poorly, at least started decent.

"I can see people calling it a fun guilty pleasure, but one of the highest ranked anime of all time is a catastrophic crime"

Hunter X Hunter 2011 is one I have heard of for years. In fact I caught up to the manga many years ago during one of the many hiatuses. I remember thinking the manga was pretty good. Anyway my brother told me it was his favorite anime. He is not usually into anime so I thought it would be a great thing for us to bond over if I watched it again. And so I started.

At first things seemed good, ... Gon and Killua, Kurapika, and Leorio and the rest of the cast seemed interesting. The world intrigued me. The Hunter Exam was fun. The Zoldycks were cool and even the arena was kind of entertaining. Yorknew was fine. Greed island was fun though a little elementary. But more and more flaws started standing out to me. In the storytelling, the ability to utilize multiple characters at a time, to give a compelling story without insulting your audience or pulling bs. I stopped caring for any of the characters pretty early as they just didn't feel worthy of investment or all that compelling. I mean Leorio is maybe in 10 episodes and yet you can tell he's considered a main character. It felt like an anime for 10 year olds the way characters speak and act at times.

Every arc drags just a little more than the last one until the chimera ant just puts you to sleep with an asmr narrarator who needs to recap for 5 minutes what you just saw 2 minutes of in real time. I am sure people hear a lot of negatives about the chimera ant arc and think, "It's just one arc it can't sink the whole series". Unfortunately, Chimera ant is nearly 50% of the entire anime runtime. It is horrendously long and dragged out. It dragged more than the 4th great shinobi war, which had dozens of more characters to balance to flush out and was about 4 times longer.

Ultimately Id give the first few arcs a generous 6.5-7 but the Chimera ant arc should have been a 7 if it was 1/3 its length. Unfortunately for that I have to take off 3 points for 40 episodes that felt like someone put me in time-out. When nearly half of the anime is a 4/10 I can't really justify more than a 5.

All in all, Hunter x Hunter is the single most overhyped anime I've ever seen.

I fell asleep to it many times, which is very unusual and I had to force myself to start the next episode on multiple occasions just because I wanted to talk to my brother. It felt awful. It has it's moments but they are very far between and don't justify themselves when there is so much better out there.

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.

well, this anime is rubbish, first, the story is something pointless and almost disgusting and offensive at times, do you want an example? at one point the main character is on a quest to find his father and dps is about a gangster criminal gang , which is literally very poorly developed, chrollo? a dead character with nothing, feitan? literally nothing, any other member of the gang? i have a power and steal things, besides a dragged and shitty narrative, nothing makes sense and always introduces new things without explanation (like greed island) now the art, it would be good, if it weren't what you'd ... see in any other anime and also if the designs weren't like "a loli" dps "a clown" dps "tomas Shelby", literally sucks ok, this eh admit it is good, but i don't like it and for me, the moments they are used are rubbish characters, some like chrollo and kurapika are just empty, others are boring, like gon and half of the series, and it goes like this, the only acceptable one is killua but even so, he is still uninteresting well, if the anime didn't start to decay in script and production I would give it a 4 for that part, but the tower's dps was literally almost asleep, the greed island shouldn't exist, and the chimera ants is a poorly made normal shounen bow that by cause of 2% of it is acclaimed, even though the Hunter exam is the best arc but well, this anime wasn’t for me, it’s a boring shounen with something else that made people say it’s good, but it gets lost and becomes cliché note 1

I have heard many times about the anime Hunter X Hunter and every time, wherever the title of this title appears, only praise and praise for this work sounded. After a while, I myself had the pleasure of evaluating this "masterpiece" after which one single question “Was it a joke?” Stuck in my head, if so, then I did not understand the humor.
I've seen a lot of anime like this, some were really interesting and some are better forgotten. I would love to forget this piece of animation. I honestly tried to see at least a bit of what I was promised by numerous reviews, ... tops and reviews. Several times I dropped and resumed watching this episode, cherishing a faint hope “It will be better further! A couple more episodes and I will see those exciting battles that I have heard so much about, another episode and the main characters will begin to really open up, change and move on. A couple of minutes more and an interesting monologue, a thought, at least a word, will sound from the mouth of another ripped-eyed character! ". Yes, powerfully I was so wrong, it’s just a shame.
The first thing I want to do is go through the characters:
Main characters:
1) Gon - When watching the first thirty episodes, I got a clear feeling that the author periodically forgot about this character. This little boy (super creature, mega talent, one in a billion, but that's not the point) from the point of view of the banal logic of behavior, jumps back and forth like a table tennis ball. At one moment, he does not tolerate murder, at another, with a perky smile, he asks to teach him how to pull out the heart at lightning speed. Either he can calmly watch the death of other people during the qualifying tournament, then he is turned back from it so that he cannot watch. At certain points, he is ready to forgive even a maniac killer that a minute ago he wanted to cut a little girl into pieces with scissors (even if she was not defenseless and in fact was much older than the villain, which he did not know), then he smears the killer of his acquaintance into mush (the fact that he spared the maniac demolition that during the whole story arc he blew up people in batches, some of whom were also Ghosn's acquaintances, purely for fun, a separate article altogether). I would also like to note as a separate point that his initial motivation (to find his father) cannot justify the risk to which Gon exposes himself and his friends, since he and his dad are essentially not connected with anything. At the beginning of events, Gon has no idea what his father is like, other than the fact that he abandoned him as an infant for the life of a hunter.
2) Killua - Gon's faithful friend and partner, who shared a similar ailment, his character throws from side to side like a boat in the middle of a storm. Unlike his partner, this ailment is justified by the plot. For the most part, the character is not bad, there is an interesting internal conflict, development and, in general, a memorable appearance. This character is also remembered for me by the fact that at one point he himself draws attention to the truly incredible number of pianos in the bushes, which the main characters stumbled upon.
This creation has a rich caste of minor characters of varying degrees of quality, from so-so to "damn it, why the story is not about them?" Most notable:
• Kurapika - “Hey! I have motivation, character, development, rich backstory and incredible potential for disclosure, and my storyline can be safely turned into a separate series, but I’ll probably stand on the sidelines, or rather drop out of the narrative altogether! ".
• Leorio - “When I was a child from the slums, my best friend died of an incurable disease, which prompted me to become a hunter because for people like me this is the only doctor with an education! Hmm! To grab a prisoner who is clearly deceiving me and risk the dream of my life or act smart and achieve the intended goal, which I have been striving for from young nails? Madam, my name is Leorio! "
And there are similar characters here in a wagon and a small cart from the pretentious head of a dynasty of the world's best assassins to a huge ant-man-alligator in wrestling tights (This guy didn't surprise anyone? When I saw him, I whinnied for thirty minutes and didn't care about giant cannibal beetles. By the way, do they take clothes?)
Logical holes at the level “Even if the devil himself appears for the exam, he has to pass all the tests, and he will receive a hunter's license” a few episodes later “The hunter exam is designed to weed out weak participants and prevent the hunter's license from falling into bad hands (Three professional killers in the room is probably good people, the one with pink hair is probably just a magician at children's matinees) ”occur so often that it is more difficult to remember the place where the plot begins to follow at least a ghostly logic.
Remember the episode where the queen of chimeras died? There, the Hunters were almost crying looking at her dying body, SERIOUS? LOOK AROUND THERE ARE NOISETTES OF PEOPLE WHICH SHE EATED LIKE SEEDS AND MOUNTAINS OF HUMAN SKULLS ARE YOU SAD ABOUT HER DEATH? And the king's guard does not matter at all, only Neferpita was shown from several sides, and the other two can only indulge in orgasms looking at how good their King is.
Well-staged fights? There were a couple, but I’m not lying, even about six, but for one hundred and fifty episodes this is not enough.
Now the fight of the King of Ant, having forgiven the head of the hunter's association, what abilities have we shown? YES, NOTHING BUT A MANY-HANDED STATUE NETERO and the fact that the king of ants can tolerate well and that's it! 0 hariography 0 tactics. And in the end, SUDDENLY we are faced with the fact that Killua has a sister (brother) who knows how to fulfill wishes! WHAT A TWIST! Do you realize what it is? IS ABLE TO FULFILL DESIRES! DESIRES! That is, you can wish anything!
The result is a dull under-anime with a lot of potential for horrific performance. There are so many jambs and missed opportunities in it that there are so many pages for ten handwritten text, from which high marks from viewers and critics seem incomprehensible to me.

I'm not a fan of long reviews so I'm going to keep this short and to the point.

Actual waste of time.

Never have I ended up watching a show so boring for more than 2 episodes. After 12 episodes of hxh, it was still extremely boring and unentertaining. Everyone keeps saying "oh it gets better after the first arc" so I ask how many episodes it is, and they usually say around 30, which is more than a season of any seasonal anime, which are more fun to watch than this.

The art ? I cant call anything in hxh art, there was none, it ... was all just lines with some colour, it was extremely basic and boring. Non of the characters were appealing in anyway.

The story was just a generic shounen kid looking for his lost dad and gets attacked by a pedo clown which is horny over Gon.

The characters were so boring they made me fall asleep, even the fights were boring, nothing was fun to watch. Every character was poorly made and had terrible personalities.

I will never be able to understand how this is an enjoyable show to watch.

I've left my first review to save even one person from watching this downright terrible show.

Reasoning:
1. MC sucks. Just a stubborn, one-dimensional kid.
2. Pacing sucks. Half of every episode is repeated dialogue. You can skim through every episode and still pick up the general idea. Most long animes are because of filler, which you have the option to skip. This anime is long because the episode time distribution is terrible.
3. You have to wait for the 3rd arc, around 37 episodes for things to become interesting.
4. It doesn't matter if it's interesting, because everything in this show is anti-climactic. They build up villains for ... no absolute reason. You have to wait dozens of episodes of buildup for a fight that lasts less than 5 minutes.
5. You think that its going to be an adventure with friends? Nope, main characters dissapear for arcs.
6. The supposed "best arc in the anime history" is over 100 episodes in.
7. Overhyped main villain.

This anime is like an expensive dish you bought that tastes terrible. Even though it's terrible, you committed too much into it that you feel like you have to finish it. You then tell yourself that the dish you ordered was good, in denial that you wasted so much on it.

[Part 1: Introduction]

As the dwindling wine swashes to and fro in my glass, I struggle to find a uniting thread atop which Hunter X Hunter's myriad arcs can be described. The series is a jovial but deeply confused hodgepodge of conflicting themes and narratives, some so starkly different from the last that they'd be better suited for an entirely different series rather than a single continuity.

This may be less noticeable when watching week-to-week as originally intended, but when binged, Hunter x Hunter is not unlike a train wreck - except instead of being over in a flash, the viewer must watch in horror as ... each train-car crashes into the next in agonizing slow motion, eventually coalescing into an infernal scrapheap from which the original shape of the story can no longer be divined. Just when you think the blaze is past its zenith, another train-car comes careening into the fray, exploding the shattered remains of the story all over again.

To accurately summarize Hunter x Hunter as a complete work, we'll need to backtrack all the way to the beginning and appreciate the series for what it was before it meteorically spun off the rails and hurled itself towards an excruciating demise. It won't take long since Hunter x Hunter was only good for a short time.

[Part 2: When Hunter x Hunter Was Good]

Hunter x Hunter, as any narratively-educated person would tell you, was best before it introduced the bullshit anything-goes superpower known as neen. Simple in form but satisfying in execution, the series originally focused on boy-genius Gone Freecss striving to follow in his mysterious dad's footsteps by acquiring a hunting license; a privilege also coveted by the initially strong supporting characters, Kurapika and Killua. Using only their natural aptitudes and signature tools (fishing rod, glowing eyes, and skateboard, respectively), Gone and co. set out on a varied adventure full of interesting challenges and encounters.

What any seasoned anime viewer will immediately appreciate is the relatively grounded action and progression. Without getting overly specific, Hunter x Hunter diligently ensures that each enemy and obstacle is overcome diegetically, utilizing the environment, the tools available, and the characters' inherent wits. From Gone outplaying Hisoka with his trusty fishing rod, to Killua utilizing his past as a skateboarding mercenary, everything in the first arcs of Hunter x Hunter feels earned. Abilities and talents remain strictly within the universe's realm of probability, and the power-scale develops organically as our characters progress through the Hunter Exam by the skin of their teeth. THIS is how you write Shōnen.

Watching the tension developing between Hisoka and our main cast was an absolute joy, and experiencing the theatrics between the Hunter Exam and the Heaven Tournament arcs left me consistently surprised and delighted. All of this eventually culminates in a beautifully animated fight between Gone and Hisoka, which I wholeheartedly recommend as the 'true' conclusion to the series, because it all falls apart shortly after.

[Part 3: When Hunter x Hunter Went Off the Rails and Exploded]

Everything you just read gets thrown out the window when neen is haphazardly conceived and shoved into the story out of nowhere. With no previous indication of its nature or existence, this half-baked power infects the characters at every turn and transitions the story from a sensibly-scaled adventure into an unholy whirlpool of tropes 'borrowed' from other series (especially Alien). Over the show's infuriatingly prolonged run-time, our characters will slog through battle after battle with other neen-users, most of which utilize wholly silly and unsatisfying abilities.

(Kurapika is the biggest offender here, utilizing immensely powerful magic to summon, wait for it... chains. CHAINS. Tell me with a straight face that somebody who uses reality-bending magic to summon run-of-the-mill chains is cool. You can't, because they aren't.)

What follows is simultaneously everything and nothing, because each subsequent arc is little more than a contrived set-piece without any real purpose or thoughtfulness. One arc will feature our characters entering a video game (not a joke), the next will have them fighting a xenomorph/Cell knockoff in a fictionalized rendition of Australia, and so on. Each previous arc is immediately forgotten upon the introduction of the next, and with that forgetfulness often comes abandoned characters and unresolved plot threads. One of the worst examples of wasted potential in serialized history.

I would elaborate on the voice acting or soundtrack, but there's really nothing of note in that department except for Hisoka's performance.

I can strongly recommend the first three or so arcs to anyone. I can only recommend the others to someone who is hospitalized and has nothing else to do (but only if you're not in critical condition because this trash could kill you.)

Let me start this review by saying that this is one of the worst, if not the worst anime shows I have ever seen. My attention was stretched so thin by the end that I quit before watching the last arc. I am going to try and keep the spoilers at the absolute minimum. I can already imagine how many Hunter x Hunter (2011) fans are going to be mad at me for saying this. (I'll just refer to Hunter x Hunter (2011) as Hunter x Hunter from now on. The show is lacking in many different departments. The story is bland and standard, the ... art is decent, the combat being pretty good, the sound felt out of place many times. The characters were stale and bland with no development, and it really wasn't enjoyable at all. Overall, a solid 3.
story:3
art:5
sound:3
character:1
enjoyment:2
overall:3
Let us start with the story category:

STORY (3):
The plot of the story takes up many forms and tries to mix up different genres during the arcs. Some of the core ideas are pretty interesting like the first arc, but the execution and pacing were extremely lacking. There were 4 episodes of the characters just walking and getting through just the first section of the tournament. I wouldn't consider this as well-executed. The plot seems so stretched out to the point that I think that the first arc could just be condensed into a few episodes.
The story itself seems very unrelated between the sections of the show making it feel more like a separate show every-time always switching out the characters, I'll get back to that in the Character section. The plot wasn't really engaging as I only found it intriguing when it was introduced and I began to become tired of the plot and core idea of it. Also, I really felt no journey watching the story as nothing progressed and they were just distracted with something else.
Overall, if executed properly, it would receive a better score, but it felt way too stretched without the parts being connected in any way.

ART (5):
The art was pretty good during the battle scenes, character design, and scenery, but I felt like it was lazy in the other parts of the anime. Even during fight scenes, the background was completely forgotten about and was blurred out. Especially during useless, boring scenes not even during the battles, all the attention was drawn to the characters, and only the characters not on anything else. This made the scenes even more unbearable as there was nothing cool to look at except for the characters which you have scene so many times before. I don't blame them for doing this during the battle sequences because the attacks were the main focus. The background always seemed bland not fitting for the situation. The show obviously wanted to focus on the characters, but they themselves were really bad.
Overall, the art was the best part of the series especially during the battle sequences making it interesting and captivating to watch. Everywhere else, I felt the art was lacking and was too focused on the characters.

SOUND (3):
The sound really didn't fit in during many scenes. I felt like some of the instrumental choices weren't fitting as well. Also, a quick statement, do you hear the laziness during the OPs? The melody is the same and the only things that are altered are the notes by a bit and the words. If you take the OPs of a show like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, there is a very big diversity between all of them. There is a good balance between sad parts of the OP and epic music. Though the OP of Hunter x Hunter is pretty catchy you get tired of it after watching a couple of episodes. The actual soundtrack doesn't really stand out at all, and seems unnecessarily loud or quite at times drawing away attention, or not having enough of a presence. It felt bland at times.
Overall, the soundtrack was misplaced/misused, and it didn't fit the situation.

CHARACTER (1):
The obvious let down to the whole show. The characters were really bland and unchanging and I felt that most of the characters were left out after being important for a few episodes. The characters were like disposable tissues which only lasted a few times before being thrown away completely. Some of the most memorable and interesting characters were present for only a couple of episodes and didn't come back until a couple dozen episodes later.
Now let me talk about my biggest problem, Gon. This character is so bland, so unchanging, it ruins everything. I can't see a single thing that changed for Gon during the whole series. The reason people like him so much is due to his personalities which don't ever determine whether or not the character is great. Here, the main character who we have to put up with (with his annoying personality), has no change throughout the series remaining the friend-loving, and friend-caring person he is. The only possible thing I can see, is he became less and less naive throughout the series. This is just a feeble excuse for change in characters, and in no way should this be the only changing part of the character. His main personality traits stay the same throughout making you feel less and less related to the the character, and in result not caring for them, or anything that happens. The complexity of the character is awful.
Now, Killua, another horribly made, and non-changing character. Killua really doesn't change at all, as he is always serious and only undergoes change during the Zoldyck family arc which is quickly reversed after the arc. I can't stress enough how little these characters tend to change being unaffected by the current situations. The complexity of Killua was mediocre in the terms of this show. The complexity is important for the watcher to feel relatable to the characters, or to give them something to think about.
Now, Kurapika and Leorio. What can I say, we got way too little of them as they completely vanished from the series after a couple of dozen episodes. The themselves are decent people to work with, giving more opportunity for change. It's such a shame that every side character was thrown out of the window every few episodes creating a place where it was virtually impossible for the characters to undergo even the slightest bit of change. Leorio wasn't that interesting of a character, and didn't change at all. The complexity of his character was really bad as he had only one or two defining traits and that's it. Kurapika is such a stereotypical survivor of a traumatic accident concerning his village. His personality isn't explored other than the fact that it is given his tendency for revenge is very high. I don't think that's enough to create a character to sympathize for. The complexity, very bad.

ENJOYMENT (2):
While watching, I felt bored and really felt like everything was stretched out. Especially during certain parts where all they did was talk about how to do things. (I'm not being specific because of spoilers). These talking scenes are done in a very bland and a very un-intriguing fashion causing the scenes to feel unneeded, and boring all of the time. If there was something you could look at that caught your eye's during these scenes it wouldn't be as painful. The plot was moving at such an incredibly slow rate that feeling like you are wasting your time was inevitable. The characters make the show even more unbearable to watch as there is nothing interesting to learn about them, or their personality. These personalities are so bland and unchanging, which creates no interest in actually watching it. By the end my patience was cut dry and I quit after watching a large chunk of the show.

OVERALL(3):
I really didn't like many aspects of the show, especially what I find the most important, story and character. These really brought down the series and I must admit, the potential was there. The execution on the other hand was surely lacking. The sound felt out of place in many sections, but the art was truly the best part, though it didn't do that well. I feel like the story was stretched out so much, making it feel like the average shounen like Naruto or Dragon Ball Z which have hundreds of episodes, and from what I heard no change in anything. The art was good, but lazy at parts when drawing the background itself. It drew away the attention to the characters. The sound was fine it just felt out of place. I think the basic mentality in the heads of the people in charge with the sound track just thought, "Let's just put epic music during fight scenes". This doesn't always work like this because the choice of instruments is essential in creating music that blends with the scenes. The sound just felt way too out of place and not thought out. The characters was the obvious weak part as there was nothing interesting to learn from the characters, and no change to observe other than an increase in strength. Also, the characters that have the potential to change and could be interesting are just thrown away after a few episodes of being used. The ones left are always Gon and Killua making you feel very tired of them. they themselves had no interest in changing and stayed the dull characters they were. They really only had one or two leading character traits and had nothing else to them.

I wish to tell everyone, that if you look closely, this show is pretty bad. It is lacking in many different parts, and there are so many other shows that handle these problems in a much better fashion. The characters are awful, and the plot is way too stretched out, which causes boredom while watching. Just think about the series after watching and realize how bad it is at handling these categories.

Thank you,
TrumbuRunda

After Togashi wrote his more traditional Shonen series with actual climaxes and arcs, Hunter X Hunter is largely nothing but constant subversion with a refusal to bring anything to a satisfying conclusion. Characters and villains are constantly tossed aside after having been built up with no conclusion to their arcs, such as the majority of villains and even half of the so called "main characters".

If villains are ever actually addressed and defeated, the majority of the time it will be done without any kind of fight in a blatant cop out. Most of the arcs have little to no continuity between each other as they ... get rid of early side protagonists, and any instances of recurring villains such as Hisoka and the Phantom Troupe are irrelevant to the plot.

The only constant characters available to follow are Gon and Killua. Gon is largely just generic while Killua gets most of the characterization. His character consists of being incredibly edgy due to his upbringing who wins practically every fight effortlessly, while still trying to appeal to viewers as an arbitrary "cute" kid interacting with Gon. It takes over 30 episodes for Killua to even be hit by any kind of attack, and over 40 for him to actually lose.

Only in the Chimera Ant arc, which starts in episode 76, does the series actually begin to resemble a traditional Shonen and manage to build up some good and interesting characters. Almost all of these characters are completely new or had very little appearances, with the only real carryovers being Gon and Killua who aren't particularly relevant to the plot anymore, with the best episodes being ones where they barely appear. This arc has actual good fights and interesting abilities used in clever ways, after the series has been doing its best to avoid them for the past 75 episodes.

While I could recommend this series for the first half of this arc, at the point where the heroes invade the villain's palace the series slows to a crawl. From this point on, the series has terrible pacing issues with an obnoxious narrator going over everything in grating detail, and regularly cuts to irrelevant characters such as Ikalgo and Welfin. The series has a highly subverted anticlimax after hours upon hours of great build up, so shocking that I stopped watching the series before the final epilogue episodes in disgust.

First of all, I'm giving this a 1 because it is GROSSLY overrated.

HxH starts off well and is actually an interesting story early on. But the quality in story falls off horribly and enjoyment becomes extremely low (I'd rate it negatively if I could) once the chimera ant arc starts and from there on.

It drags and drags and drags and drags and drags (you get the point) and drags on. I can't enjoy a story like this, especially if it's boring on top of being super long. If you like unnecessarily long plots, then boy are you going to enjoy this. I prefer stories that tell ... themselves with ease and wrap things up nicely as opposed to making you wait and throwing in a whole bunch of filler. I prefer other high quality stories in 20-40 episodes as opposed to the large quantity of BS that HxH progressively throws at its audience.

This overrated crap doesn't deserve recognition and certainly not the rating.

I just don't understand. Every time I see people talking about hunterxhunter, or "hxh", I only hear positives things. they talk about their two favorites arcs(which btw is york new and chimera ant arc), and the fleshed-out characters, and the well thought of the power system, and so on. While I see a clusterbomb of a series, that spares us no time to throw up. Whenever I say this to my friends, they try to protect their oh so beloved show with stupid excuses. There are 3 main things that the hxh fanbase loves to talk about, and that is, character development, the stupid ... nen power system, and their 2 favorites arc that they just won't shut up about!! firstly, the character development is too slow and sudden, trash and fake. It's like really bad actors in an average stereotypical movie. Secondly, the nen system is trash and doesn't take its principles seriously. people say that this system is perfect because of how fair and strategy-based it is. If this were to be true, I would at least be able to understand the hype about this show just a little, but it's not. In the chimera ant arc, We experience the difference of power, between the humans and the royal ants. if the battle system is supposed to be fair and strategy-based, why are the ants so strong? Netero literally said, that one pitou was almost too much for him. If this is true, then how is anyone supposed to beat the Ant king with strategy, if the ant King SERVANT was too much for the STRONGEST human to handle? If the author was going to make such a half-assed power system, he might as well have added some more stuff into the show. Thirdly, the two arcs that everyone is talking about are trash. let me start with the york new arc. you can tell how half-hearted and uncreative this arc is, by just looking at the title of the arc. It's literally new york but the words are switched. It's actually funny how accurate this describes this arc. The author just wanted to introduce a lot of characters at the same time, so the series didn't look as bland as did before. and oh boy, was that a bad decision. Not only that, but he made Kurapika the main focus in the arc. kurapika is the most uninteresting and bland character, a person has ever created. He is just a bad copy of the already bad character, Sasuke. Now, to the chimera ant arc. this arc is just too long and is filled with the boring narrator talking about some unimportant shit. not only that, I was forced to look at the horrible character development, of this too op character called meruim. And whenever an emotional moment was supposed to happen, everything just became gibberish. So the overall rating is trash, and this show is overrated.

After hearing how great and perfect of an anime this was, I was very excited to watch it and join the ELITE club of those who had the PRIVELAGE of watching HxH.

DO NOT BELIEVE THE HYPE.

This was false advertising. I never wanted to stop watching an anime so much. It was literally so boring and felt like filler episodes the whole time. I forced myself to keep watching this horrible story because I wanted to get to the "good part" that put this anime at such a prestigious title among all other shonen... It never appeared.

This was absolutely the most overhyped anime ever, and it ... was horrible. You couldn't pay me enough to watch this show.

The characters were superficial; there was no depth in any of them. The arcs were supposed to be amazing but each one didn't even connect with each other. At one point, the anime turned into a card game to "catch them all". These arcs, the building blocks; THE FOUNDATION of an anime story; just felt so random and very filler-like.

Here are some problems I had with it:

They didn't push the main story.

There was no real in-depth character development throughout the series.
- This was especially annoying when we were supposed to understand the weight of specific moments in the show about characters in which we knew NOTHING about, except the fact that they had less than 20 minutes of combined screen time???

After each arc, the characters basically disappeared from the story (Kurapika??? Phantom Troupe???)

The fights were not great at all in this show.

And the most annoying thing, the arcs were HORRIBLE.

- Hunter Exam arc: 99 cent store Chunin exams but ON SALE without anything exciting. First, they walked for a few episodes, and then they ran for a few episodes. After, they cooked. Then they play mini games. Lastly, they play a game of hide and seek with no interesting encounters.

- Zoldyck Family arc: They went to Killua's house to pick him up.

- Heaven's Arena arc: Just trained and barely even covered the actual heaven's arena tournament.

- Yorknew City arc: Cool "bad guy group" was on the loose. They had some cool interactions. Kurapika, someone we were supposed to feel bad for, had some cool screen time. However, in an arc where background, character development, and an in-depth understanding of Kurapika is crucial, it was lack luster because we never learned anything about him. The Phantom Troupe was a cool idea, but they just disappear after this. They don't have any depth to them. They're supposed to be super powerful but never really do anything. Overall, this was the best arc in the anime, but it was below average (AT BEST) in general. If you didn't find this arc interesting, you definitely won't like anything else here-on-out about this anime.

Greed Island arc: Worst arc in the anime. The characters move to a new area where they really just collect cards. How is this interesting at all? No connection to a story. They jump in a PC, collect cards, and then jump out.

Chimera Ant arc: Overhyped and super random. It starts out with no context and just a sudden problem for some reason. The main bad guys (chimera ants) were super random and just became a problem in the story for no reason at all. There was a super important connection the audience was supposed to feel but the main character, Gon, literally just met these characters; how are we supposed to fall in love with characters we barely know? The pacing was horrible. There was like 4 episodes for 4 steps at one point. The main bad guy (the king guy) looked promising but played checkers the whole time. Very boring fights. (Spoiler maybe?? Doesn't matter, don't watch this anime) Gon has his big moment with a generic power-up that literally looked HORRIBLE. He was supposed to be feeling super angry with intense feelings of darkness, revenge, and PURE RAGE of violence and betrayal.... and all he did was grow a few of feet and grew his hair out. If pure rage, hatred, DESTRUCTION, is supposed to look like Gon on this power up, then we have to move away from random evil power ups in the industry. In the end, there was no point of this arc. Just super random and very superficial.

Hunter Chairman Election arc: The arc really just covered some rigged voting system.

In a story where it's about Gon trying to find his dad, he barely gets any clues at all; just at the end of the show (last arc) for the most part. There was no flow at all to the story. It seemed like 6 filler arcs put together to make the "best shonen anime ever". I really have nothing good to say about this anime. It never got really good; I sort of just pushed through because of the hype that just led to disappointment. It was the most boring thing I've ever watched. Watching paint dry would be more interesting than watching HxH because at least the paint would dry quicker, and you would be done within a few hours.

Basically, this 9+/10 rating is not doing the actual show justice. If anything, it's lucky to get a 4/10. I do not recommend watching this show.

I hold the unpopular opinion that Hunter x Hunter is awful. Most of the reasons people praise it, I believe, have a weak basis due to generalizing events and cherry picking as well. For example, Gon. People like to paint him as a conflicted character, but he has mostly bland characterisitics with some inconsistencies thrown in.

The Yorknew City arc helps illustrate my point. Most of the internal monologue and dialogue is hamfisted (like when Kurapika first explained Nen contracts), as it seems Togashi doesn't know how to deal with exposition. It also doesn't help that he is terrible at tone shifts; the tone is all ... over the place here and mostly comes off as edgy(Feitan likes to torture people for fun and it is thrown in the viewers faces a lot).

The Chimera Ant arc is extremely flawed. The largest issue is the narrator. It is god-awful writing skill if you have to directly explain what is happening to the viewers, especially when we can see it for ourselves; the narrator explains things that we can see on screen. There are also more terrible character cues here, like when the narrator had to flat out explain Shoot is a coward. Direct characterization is an awful writing practice since it is lazy.

Togashi does excessively explain. It also happens in the manga haha!there's like pages of literally paragraphs in each text bubble. HxH also does not seem to know what it wants to be. It does not have a clear concept or something. It does not have it's own characteristic. Does not have a novelty aspect about it. Sure naruto has it's flaws but you get a gist of their world, their ninjas, and whatnot but HxH is like sorta a mix of things and u don't really know what a hunter is until way way later on where they briefly touch on it.

There is a lot more flaws.

"HxH has to be one of the most overrated shonen anime out there if I've ever seen it , there are many reasons as to why I rated this show the way I did and soon you'll find out why.

Firstly , I cannot forgive the god-awful character designs in this show , these ugly characters are the reason as to why Itachi went blind . I mean how do they expect us to take this show seriously with these awful designs , It was also one of the main reasons I hated the Chimera Ant Arc because it allowed Togashi to roam free with his ... ugly ass seizure-induced drawing.

Another thing is the art style , I found the 1999 version to be more mature , whereas the 2011 adaptation looks cutesy and childish for my taste , another reason I can't take it seriously.

The only good , enjoyable and watchable arc is the Yorknew City Arc , all the other arcs are ass

Gon's abilities are also boring , predictable and lack any sort of possible development

"This anime has no good characters, they all suck ass"

Feitan and Machi are also the only good phantom troupe members , the rest are boring and lack and depth. I mean even the cut from the blade Kurapika put on Uvogin's heart had more depth than them

The Hunter Exam Arc is a boring and bootleg version of the Chuunin Exams ,and I'm not the only one who agrees with that , there is plot convenience all over the goddamn place , how can a Fat shit like Tonpa and a skinny shit like Leorio run 80+ km it makes no goddamn sense.The only good thing to look forward to in this arc is Killua and Hisoka

When Gon and gang went to save Killua , I was interested because I thought something interesting was gonna go down but no , Togashi just pulls conveniences out of his ass left and right , I was facepalming every episode , so much so that my face has my full hand-print . You mean to tell me that a 12 year old kid with a broken arm , which magically got healed thanks to the power of plot , a 17 year old and lanky malnourished boy in a suit managed to individually put 1209 kg worth of force into opening the door they were struggling to carry a 20kg cup. If you ask me , PLOTTTT!!!!. The soundtrack in this arc made by ears burn and there was also absolutely no suspense , I mean I had a higher chance of finding Gon's hairline , than I did of finding any suspense in this arc.


The Heavens Arena Arc also sucked ass because there is no balance between whether this is a training arc or tournament arc . The idea for heaven's arena was alright but it turned shit , As expected. Now , the only thing AND I MEAN THE ONLY THING GOOD ABOUT THIS ARC was Hisoka and his fight with Kastro , they truely displayed the power and potential of , they should've also gotten rid of those 3 nen users Gon and Killua were fighting.

The OST's are decent , especially Hisoka's and Kurapika's (Kusari Yarou)

The Greed Island Arc has to be the most sleep-inducing arc , I had to take meth , coffee and adderall to stay awake , It cured my brother of insomnia , he watched 1 episode and he was dozing off. If it hadn't been for the dodgeball game I probably would've dropped the arc there , it is completely pointless even Gon said it himself , the card-gathering moment was extremely unbearable to watch especially since it served no purpose at the end. The bomber is also the worst written villain and he also should've killed Gon but no Gon was saved by OH WAIT , ITS A BIRD , ITS A PLANE , NO , It was the god awful plot convenience from the unexplained cards

Now , Onto the most overrated arc ever , The Chimera Ant Arc (CAA)

The CAA has to be the most overrated arc ever to be made , the only good thing about this arc was killua and feitan , this arc was also incredibly dragged out it probably could've only been 30 episodes had they not put money first

The idea of Chimera Ants also makes no sense , since they're suppose to hold more than 2 different genes but none of them look even remotely like ants and they somehow in an isolated nation happen to have so much resources and it also makes no sense how the latter generation (Pitou , Youpi , Meruem and Pouf) were so strong compared to the previous generation (Welfin , Meleoron etc) when there was nothing that happened inbetween their births to contribute their increase in power , people use eating Pokkle as an excuse but when Pitou was born Pokkle was alive

This arc tries so hard to be dark and mature but fails in every way , Gon's transformation against Pitou was an asspull and also made no sense as he only knew Kite for 2 weeks yet he was crying like a bitch and we were all supposed to like that hell no.

Netero vs Meruem was also a bad fight , it was just Netero slapping Meruem and Meruem getting back up and talking about some Gungi bullshit yet people suck off this arc. The narrator is especially annoying I mean that guy had more lines than the actual fucking VA's

Meruem is also the worst villain , he has no personality , he is just the cliche "I want to rule the world for the sake of it" villain , he also has no special techniques and he is incredibly strong which made no sense and in the end he became good guy , yep like that has not been done before.

Now , I actually liked Nen as a power system because it was really balanced . but then Alluka shows up and the word 'balanced' is thrown out of the window , Alluka is a living deus ex machina that can grant any wish but somehow wasn't used in the CAA because Killua doesn't want to abuse her which is completely contradictory.

This show also has the worst reunion if I've ever seen it , Ging just shows up in front Gon , which is annoying because what purpose do the previous arcs serve.

Overall : If you want a better show , check out Berserk , Dororo or Yu Yu Hakusho , they're all way better"

Sorry for my bad english
1. Meruem - "best antagonist in the word" just edgy copy of Buu from Dragon Ball Z. Buu=Meruem, Satan=Komugi except Satan is a prescribed character and Komugi just plot device.
2. Alluka is just a slap in the face of the audience in an "ingeniously written" work, after which Togashi wipes your face with a handkerchief, saying that he fulfills desires only for a great price, like the life of the person who wants. And now your face seems to be cleaned, but Togashi immediately spits at him because this time he will grant the wish just like that.
3. This applies ... more to fans who go everywhere and talk about the current that there are no villains in Hunter. According to these people, the gang that slaughtered an entire clan or killed people at an auction for the sake of money are not villains. After all, HxH is so deep and adult in their head, it's a pity that not in reality.
4. Most of the characters do not have a single dialogue except how to explain something. Great writing btw.
5. Logical holes in the world. As an example, we have a group that will do anything for the sake of money, but right in front of these Togashi presents us with an arch in which our main characters, twelve years old, have become millionaires in the arena in a month.
6. The main characters of the genius are chosen one in a million, which is said right in the anime.