Is that the one with the dude perving on little boys?
A friend who likes the series said I just gotta be able to look past that and idk, but then again I still watch dandadan after that awful first episode so maybe I'm not in a place to judge.
Is that the one with the dude perving on little boys?
It's not explicit, but yes the sort-of queer-coded serial killing clown villain who's really obsessed with Gon in a way that vacillates between "frenemy wants the target of his obsession to reach his full power level out of platonic interest in power levels" and "licking his lips while he threatens to murder the child he is obsessed with" really sucks as, like, a narrative decision the author made.
It's not the only problematic thing about the series either, it's just the most egregious and persistent part. It's really not worth looking past either, tbh. The best the series gets is just like generic shonen fight arc slop interspersed with generic shonen training arc slop in a setting with some interesting worldbuilding. I think the series is kind of historically important in the same way DBZ or Sailor Moon is, but tbh the things it does well JoJo does better and in more interesting ways, and for the anime at least the HxH pacing is terrible to the point that it becomes an agonizing slog to get through.
generic shonen fight arc slop interspersed with generic shonen training arc slop in a setting with some interesting worldbuilding
Hunter x Hunter definitely isn't generic. Nen is a really interesting narrative device that Togashi uses to make the fights in HxH have more layers. Also HxH doesn't have to stop every few seconds to remind the audience that the protagonists are Good(TM) and they have to kill the villains and save the world like other Shonen. The worldbuilding of HxH actually is the weakest part for me especially with the chimera ant arc being set in Togashi's liberal imagination of North Korea. Like "Yorknew city" isn't very subtle. Togashi is definitely better with writing/developing existing factions and character dynamics rather than world building.
What other problematic aspects does the series have? I'm interested to know.
Hunter x Hunter definitely isn't generic.
I'm comparing it against the peaks of the genre, like JoJo and Kill la Kill where every fight is basically calvinball but they make it compelling anyways. I get the feeling HxH was genre-defining when it was written, but it just feels kind of standard now.
The worldbuilding of HxH actually is the weakest part for me
I was including stuff like Nen and the weirdness of the Hunter Association as worldbuilding. All the mechanical bits of how the world works, the factional landscape, whatever story is implied to be going on when the camera isn't looking, I'd put all that under the umbrella of worldbuilding.
What other problematic aspects does the series have? I'm interested to know.
You pointed one out yourself: the way the second half of the chimera ants arc took place in a racist caricature of the DPRK. I'd add onto that the way the first half of the same arc took place in a racist caricature of Latin American revolutionary states/movements that it portrayed as being some sort of anprim narco cartels who only tolerated technology when it had to do with selling drugs.
There's also some generic transphobic gags in the first season during the prison part of the hunter exam arc. Gon at one point casually mentioning having been hired as an escort/prostitute by female sailors was weird and felt like a pointless and creepy random throwaway line to put in. That's all that stands out in my memory, but it has been a long time since I saw it so there could be other things that I missed or that I've forgotten.
Gon at one point casually mentioning having been hired as an escort/prostitute by female sailors was weird and felt like a pointless and creepy random throwaway line to put in.
Killua only interprets Gon as being an escort, there's no actual confirmation of anything. The weirder part was the stuff around it like Palm wanting to date Gon.
took place in a racist caricature of Latin American revolutionary states/movements that it portrayed as being some sort of anprim narco cartels who only tolerated technology when it had to do with selling drugs.
The setting was kinda indecipherable for me when I first watched it but I see where you're coming from. HxH definitely reeks from the lib early 2000s brainworms. The caveat I'd like to put is that Togashi doesn't think liberalism is the answer though
chimera ant spoilers
The arc ends with the V5 (basically the world's NATO/Western hegemony) covering up everything and creating a huge refugee crisis (so instead of ants it's just that the racist caricature of Kim Ill sung wanted to do a mass murder-suicide still yikes but not as bad as other shonens that don't question the status quo at all). It's also implied that had the hunter association not stepped in that other countries would just nuke the ants and everything else out of existence.
The very next major arc is where its revealed that the ants came from the V5's illegal expeditions into the Dark Continent (very much a nod to how Europeans sought to colonize Africa) and that all these catastrophes that happen are because the imperialist ruling class only seeks to elevate its own power rather than deal with the contradictions of neoliberalism.
It feels like a very post-soviet era story that's very nihilistic about humanity. Still a lot of Japanese brainworms though.
generic transphobic gags in the first season
Which sucks because Togashi really does make an effort to draw gender-nonconforming + trans characters. The final season of the anime is centered around helping a trans girl get away from her terrible family so it's not all lost.
The final season of the anime is centered around helping a trans girl get away from her terrible family so it's not all lost.
The girl with the wish magic powers? Somehow I either missed that she was trans or forgot about it, though my memory of that season is pretty hazy because I both had sort of mentally checked out after slogging through the chimera ants arc in a couple of days and because I switched from the dub to the sub partway through because the dub was something like five or six episodes behind at the time.
It's a gag where Hisoka (the dude) sees fighting as pleasure. It's problematic in the first few arcs (the 1999 anime removes a lot of the Hisoka perviness while the 2011 is more "faithful" to the manga), but it disappears after a certain point. The idea is that other characters enjoy fighting/hunting while Hisoka's whole life revolves around it and he's the driving force for the first part of the series for the main characters to grow.
If I'm not mistaken, this is the same person who did Yu Yu Hakusho and I loved watching that as my first anime watch through with my wife. Came to Hunter a little bit later and it didn't hold my interest. Character design seemed bland, IIRC.
They killed off my problematic fan fave so I'll never forgive it
spoiler
Pitou 
Hisoka need to stay his freaky ass inside
That and Killua might actually kill a mf why are these lil 8-year-olds on so much actual motion
I'm surprised more people here don't care about the part where they go "THIS FICTIONAL COUNTRY IS NORTH KOREA" "NORTH KOREA IS BAD", maybe there are other series that do this, but one of the worst ones I've seen
It's funny in a morbid way because there exists a South Korea type country in HxH but literally no time is spent on it/I doubt people know it exists.
Oh yeah and the capital of the fake DPRK country is called "Pejing". If Togashi went full liberal and said that the world brought democracy or something then I would have dropped HxH. But really I can only see it as a product of writing during the Bush era and the axis of evil rhetoric. Japanese society has just as incoherent politics as the yankee one.
I've seen the DPRK slander raised in almost every discussion about hxh I've read on this site, I don't think each commenter needs to relitigate it because it's kinda assumed after one poster brings it up
Edit: changing tone of my comment because maybe tok antagonistic
That's fair enough, my bad lol
All g and sorry for my initial 
comment jf you read jt I was walking and just shat a comment out and hit enter too soon
no worries at all, I did not take offense 
Gon's a pretty interesting alternative take on a character like goku where his reckless abandon and naivety of the world is actually examined instead of just treated like character quirks.
chimera ant, election arc
I do like that Kite ultimately reincarnates in the end and so Gon's sacrifice and nen contract was ultimately for nothing. Gon throws away his entire potential and couldn't control any of his emotions which makes him feels so much like a real person rather than some destined superhero of the world. Gon couldn't forgive himself and because of that he essentially quits being a hunter (since being a hunter means having some sort of mastery of nen) so it's a comeuppance for the audience feeling that Gon is speeding through everything and not actually maturing (because you can argue he never matured because you can't in just 2 short years).
I love the idea that Gon just becomes a kid in the end and lives with his adoptive mother which I think is a valuable message (also Killua spending his life with his trans younger sister and protecting her). That even at the end of the anime Gon is so far removed from people like Hisoka or his dad who "inhabit different worlds"
Hunter X Hunter is an anime
Source?
Slop, offensively mediocre looking characters. Couldnt get past the first episode
Most "X wants to be the greatest Y ever in the world of Z to ever do it."
Bait used to be believable.
Im serious though, I dislike shonen anime HxH seems like its universe is shonen.
The side characters look so insanely bland too.
My opinion but my opinion is also very good all the time.
Most "X wants to be the greatest Y ever in the world of Z to ever do it."
Fun fact: There is no character in HxH whose motivation is to be the greatest X ever.
The main character wants to be a hunter to be like his dad or something. It doesnt matter i dont like it either way.
Is this a hunter Biden porno?
No the other one.
I've already seen the Frank Biden porno
I've only seen the (second?) anime, and that had its highlights but serious pacing problems throughout, especially in the chimera ants arc. The generic shonen tournament arcs were fine, if drawn out, but the chimera ants arc felt like a whole lot of jumping back and forth between way too many ongoing individual stories most of which were usually treading water waiting for something else to happen or other parts of the plot to progress - the whole arc could have reasonable been like 12 episodes long with some montages and it wouldn't have lost much of anything.
Actually the second anime's pacing in the beginning was incredibly quick (at least compared to the 1999 version) and basically speeds through the source material until the Chimera Ant arc where it slows back down. It's definitely a slow-burn arc and part of Togashi's anti-shonen writing style where characters and events are in no way predictable, but I think the chimera ant arc benefits from that slow build-up since its highs are really high.
Chimera Ant spoilers
I really like the twists the arcs had though. There's no happy ending to the arc where the heros get everything they want. Supposedly Togashi wanted chimera ant to be the final hxh arc and end the series with Gon meeting his dad and we basically get that with the election arc where Killua and Gon split up to take their own paths in life and considering where the manga is going it's probably going to stay that way until the very end of the series.
The idea that even with all the psychic martial arts energy in the world that Meruem was no match for a single dirty bomb and that hummanity had 1000s of these bombs ready and that the Hunter associations whole goal wasn't to eliminate the ants but to do so with the least amount of casualties.
Gon becoming a normal kid again and staying with his maternal aunt and going to school is something I really enjoy. His whole drive in life was to find his dad and once he did that there's not anything left for him to do, he helped Killua find a purpose in life (protecting his trans sister from his horrible family like Gon did with him).
Chimera ant feels like to book ends HxH and the manga transforms dramatically afterward as we shift protagonists from Gon+Killua -> Kurapika. I think Togashi enjoys writing Kurapika more than Gon and I do consider Yorknew City as one of my favorite arcs. The Succession Contest is gearing up to be my favorite arc though, it's so intricately planned and executed.
it's good
Uh, not a frequent watcher but Hisoka sus... rest is fine.
At least it's not like One Piece where we get fan service literally every arc where Oda draws women like โ and literally admits that he only draws women like that. The lack of fan service slop in HxH is one of my favorite parts about it.
The lack of fan service slop in HxH is one of my favorite parts about it.
Seems refreshing, at least ๐
The anime is pretty good right up until the endless slog of Chimera Ant. It's like 40% of the show and it's also where I started watching at 1.5x speed just to get to the end.
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