Allow me to ask a rather pretentious question: what awaits us in the world? You could run the gamut of interpretations and answers. Depending on who is being asked, they might say that the world is a large, beautiful place, with endless possibilities before you. Others will respond with pessimism; the world will eat you alive. Perhaps one would instead opt for a more-indirect perspective, that the world is less about what is waiting and more concerned with what you make of it.

Entertainment has birthed more than its own share of inventive, wonderful worlds that viewers have sought to explore. But birthing a world is not enough; one must long to reside there, to get to know its denizens, to see its sights, and to discover the secrets that wait to be unlocked. Seeing something new is—even if just for a fleeting moment—to have the wide-eyed wonderment of a child.

Hunter x Hunter is like that. It delightfully plays into all the crazy fantasies of exploration, from the humble beginning to the blood-pumping clash. Who among us has not thought about how the tower must be ascended? The item that must be found? The fight to ensure that you survive? To delve into its world is to be taken in by a feeling familiar to those for whom imagination was their playhouse, complemented by an array of wondrous colors and sounds.

At its center lies Gon Freecss, whose vision for what the world has in store for him is set in stone right from the start. His father, Ging, left home to discover for himself what was waiting out there and never returned. He became a “Hunter,” a rare, coveted profession that involves passing its rigorous test. Hunters come in all shapes and sizes, as each one “hunts” for something in particular. For Gon, he hunts for his father.

But as so often happens in fantasies, things are never so straightforward. Finding Ging may be Gon’s primary motivation, but there are, as one might expect, numerous other things to find. Not long into his adventure, Gon runs into others who long to pass the Hunter Exam, and each for their own reasons. As the cast begins its first exam task (running down a seemingly-endless corridor), fighting exhaustion and possibly humiliating themselves in the process, Hunter x Hunter begins to work its magic. Mixing comedy with earnestness, its characters achieve a depth with much promise that, in time, richly delivers.

The essential ingredient of those promises lies in friendship. Utilizing its long episode count, we see Gon and his friends interacting in a myriad of ways. From the light-hearted sequences of trying to waste time to the serious moments, the sense of a true bond takes shape before our very eyes. The series does not forget that its characters are youths – youths that sometimes act beyond their age (and perhaps, on occasion, far too immaturely), but youths nevertheless. That youthful naivety exudes warmth that only succeeds in getting fuller and richer.

The warmth ties directly into the fighting sequences. The ever-rising “power ceiling” is the means by which shonen tend to convey danger and higher stakes. While interesting for a while, it risks becoming tired. Everyone gets so much stronger so quickly that it could burn through its own fuel. Everyone in Hunter x Hunter is indeed mighty, but fights are most often determined by the fighter’s ingenuity and quick thinking as opposed to a muscular tug of war. Because this feature ties so intimately to the show’s framing, it has no shortage of creativity. That alone is a monstrous feat given the show’s length. And since it is established early that no one is infallible, fights therefore carry a palpable tension because the risks are more real.

That risk of losing drives the drama. It is not simply a matter of losing one’s life, but the risk of losing sight of the other things they have. The wide-eyed wonderment I spoke of earlier begins the journey, but people change as they move forward on the long and winding road. As new paths are charted and new adventures lie along them, things will naturally diverge and seemingly come together later. We are forced to confront our own frustrations and triumphs, and the sun that seemed to greet the horizon becomes eclipsed with dread, only to brighter up again. As Gon and his friends realizes the beauty of what they have, and fight to keep it close or cast it aside on purpose, Hunter x Hunter reaches its greatest heights, never falling.

At the start, I asked what awaits us in the world, and offered three possible ways to answer that question. Hunter x Hunter celebrates all three of them. It indeed has a vast world, as beautiful and terrifying as dreams and nightmares made it out to be. And when left to think what to make of it, for Gon, it was to find his father.

For me, it could be summed up in one simple sentence from the introduction: “You can smile.” And I did smile, many times.