Wow, this is definitely going to be a hefty write up for sure. I have a lot to say about a show of this magnitude, especially because I have never watched something of this length and on that note nothing really as shounen-y as this so I'm framing this review with those factors in mind. I'll overview my opinion on each of the aspects that I do not like about the anime first followed by an opinion of each arc because I feel like that's the best way to summarise my thoughts on the series. I do have an overall positive opinion of this anime but it definitely has points that were really hard to get over for me personally because of the prior expectations set by my perception of the anime going in. I think these expectations are a key reason as to why my rating is as low as it is because Hunter X Hunter is definitely not your typical battle anime or shounen to be fair and I went it without knowing that information.

There are some reasons as to why I intrinsically do not enjoy the anime as much as others, these reasons stem from the show's world building, character designs, power system and character development as well as the pacing of character arcs. There were a lot of questions I ended up having about the consistency of these various elements and I think watching this as someone who is super neurotic contributed to having the perspective that the show is inconsistent and thus ruining some key moments for me.

Just a short note about the music - I don't really have much to comment on. The tracks were solid albeit overplayed sometimes and a little inconsistent with the tone at others. I guess that's all I have to say.

Nen doesn't feel like a totally coherent power system because of the materialisations of some of these random things which conflicts with the later segments of the show where Nen users are conjuring things that feel a bit too abstract for the simplicity of Nen. Obviously not thinking about the specific limitations of Nen isn't necessary to an enjoyment of the show but feigning ignorance to it is something that I wasn't able to do. Getting confused represents to me, as an audience member, that the shows power system is inherently flawed where it is overexplained early on in the show and underexplained in later parts of the show. This does make sense as a whole, but at the same time, the detailed explanations of the Nen power system at the start sets expectations that it is going to be an intricate system rather than a system that is wholly dismissed with the introduction of the more bizzare Nen abilities. You could argue that this is my fault for misunderstanding the Nen power system to begin with, but it is not my job as an audience member to be studious with the power system of a shounen show as I feel like its the show's responsibility to be able to establish a system that does not need to justify itself.

I'll be leading into my opinion of the world building in this anime from the Nen segment with a small tangent. Okay, so there's this part of the anime where Gon and Killua are reviewing with Wing where they use Gyo to observe a fight where Hysoka is using his Nen so that they can see what is going on. My only problem here really is that they can see Nen through the television which I know is completely trivial. Nevertheless it bothers me that I have to play dumb to the rules of the world and accept that Nen can be broadcast on TV and just appear to the characters as if the technology of the TV magically can display the Nen pixels after characters use Gyo to observe it. It makes me question the state of technology in this world, which is something I shouldn't need to do when world building is done correctly. It's similar to the feeling of how jarring it is to see characters in Boruto using a cell phone or video game but it's even more egregious in this case because of the fact that this occurs so early on, basically establishing to the user that you should ignore these aspects of the world. This small tangent leads into a bigger problem I have with the world building where its hard to get a grasp of where exactly you are in the Hunter X Hunter world and the places themselves leave much to be desired, not necessarily contributing to a nice feeling of adventure and exploring this exciting world presented to us. In fact, at the end of the show it really only feels like the show just got started with what it wanted to build with its world and it's because of how self-contained the arcs are to a point where the world never gets build up until the very end which I will mention later. I think personally that it's a cop out to use such an world-shattering expansion of the world's scale where the World Tree at the end turns out to be sapling and the Chimera Ants are nothing more than a small species in the whole scale of things. It's definitely interesting, but by choosing to neglect the Known World, Hunter X Hunter lessens the impact of this scale expanding knowledge.

Hunter X Hunter is inherently a character-driven show so this doesn't necessarily diminish the strong parts of the anime. However, these moments of strong character writing are sometimes few and far between depending on the segment of the arc and as such when you have fairly low quality world building the anime has nothing to rely on to help the audience through the slower parts. World building, I feel, can act as padding for moments where pacing is off or characters don't exactly get nicely paced arcs because it plants seeds of hope for the audience to hold onto at least that's how I treat it. So when the world-building is razer thin, it doesn't help that I have nothing to hold onto when character writing is weak in the show.

Again, the show is hyper-focused on character building in all arcs. But what this leads to is cycle where the arc builds up these characters, introducing us to a new environment and set of rules to then finally resolve them only to move on to the next arc without gaining much from the previous one in terms of sustained characters. In my opinion, longform series like these should have a good balance of recurring characters and fun, new characters wherein recurring characters are responsible for the big moments of pay off. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is able to get the massive pay off that it does solely because of the recurring characters, where new characters only play a role to change up the formula or introduce conflict with the recurring characters. I know in Hunter X Hunter all of the characters have their own agenda but when those characters comprises the main cast I just feel like that is poor planning because it divides the time up even further trying to introduce so many new concepts and characters to the point that the main characters receive less love than they should really for the pay offs to matter as much. This is the most apparent in the Chimera Ant arc where Meleoreon and Ikalgo are introduced as somewhat important side characters when really they were just ass pull characters that weren't developed properly to reflect how important of a role they played in the Chimera Ant arc as characters. Gon and Killua befriending these two Chimera Ants was just so poorly done that it was baffling to realise that they would end up garnering a lot of screentime. Ultimately, this is why I had such problems with the pacing because the show was focusing on characters that I didn't care for because they were being introduced so late into the development of the show that I kept having to stop and start my investment into characters. This is due to how often the screen time shifted from one character to another sometimes leaving large gaps between the characters that you care the most about and so you're stuck in side character hell, especially when they are focused on developing the Ants.

I guess that is why the last arc is so rewarding where new elements of Killua's family pop up and Killua is getting development because his sister acts as an extension of Killua's character rather than characters being arc-specific. I do realise that certain characters do fit within the narrative and have a logical reason for being there, however it does ruin the pacing and I think that's the issue and it's the way the characters were introduced or how they overstayed their welcome in the anime during the arc. Hunter X Hunter in its introduction of so many new characters without good foundational development makes the show feel very scattershot.

The final element of Hunter X Hunter I would like to cover before I get into the arc overview is the narrator. I personally felt like the narrator added next to nothing whenever he spoke where the things he was saying could have easily been inner character monologues. I suggest this because the moments that the narrator goes on recounting literally everything that the characters are doing, ruining the impact of certain scenes and dragging them on longer than necessary. Most of my distaste for the narrator arises in the Chimera Ant arc to be honest, with slight annoyances other arcs as well. In fact I never really noticed the impact of the narrator before the Chimera Ant arc in general but with the amount of things happening in the Chimera Ant arc, I guess the anime deemed in necessary to include a narrator to completely avoid any possible ounce of confusion as to what is happening since the Chimera Ant arc has a lot going on. The problem with that is that I want to hear the characters and their actions speak for themselves, I don't want to be told what just happened. I never once found the narrator to be useful in that arc where he was assumedly there to provide clarity on the events that were occurring. It would have been better if he wasn't there at all.

Okay, time for the arc overview. Starting off with the Hunter Exam arc, I feel like this was an okay arc. Somewhat of a weak introduction to the series and it felt pretty grindy to get through but it got me hyped for what was to come with the establishment of the cast and everything. What didn't really get me hyped was the art style and character designs. I think from the get go, especially in this Hunter Exam arc where there's so many characters on display, the character designs were just so horribly inconsistent that you wouldn't even be able to tell that these characters were from the same universe. This sentiment really feeds into my stance on world building as well because of the fact that this character design further detracts from the weak world building because how do all of these characters fit into the same world really. There's no consistent aesthetic theme with the world of Hunter X Hunter where the characters look like they're all from different anime and the state of technological development is vague as hell.

Anyways, back on the topic of the arc itself, Killua was the most interesting to me and I guess continues to be throughout the whole series and to be honest he feels like more of a main character than Gon really. Gon really just feels like a way to push things forward, not even meant to insult to his character but his general innocence makes it hard to relate to him and I think that's why Killua and Gon from the onset are established to be an interesting duo. I don't really have much to say about Leorio and Kurapika at this stage, I guess Leorio is just a nice comedic relief breather. Hisoka was kind of cool I guess,, just interesting to watch but I feel like the Illumi control pay off at the end was slightly jarring. I didn't really feel it in me that Illumi was controlling Killua until much later where it is shown that Killua is under a pretty strict regime as a result of his family. The subsequent Zoldyck Family arc was a nice bit of combined training and Killua characterisation which I actually quite liked as it built more on the dynamic of the gang as they got to spend more time together outside.

Heaven's Arena was quite the information overload because it serves as the introduction to Nen and its various sub-mechanics. This arc acts as the foundation both for Gon and Killua's improvement snowball to start rolling as well as Nen as a power system. It was interesting to see the mechanics play out in this tournament arc-style fighting system where Nen counter play was real and there was legitimate evaluations and strategies going into the battles happening with the fights being animated nicely. Hisoka vs. Gon was a satsifying pay off to the arc and I really had no complaints here I guess. I think this is what set my expectations for the power system to be more of a gateway into more strategic battles but the battles that show up in later arcs suffer from having too many elements going on at the same time, making it so that the strategy becomes the Nen abilities itself rather than the fighting that occurs. In a sense it becomes very mind games-y which is nice sometimes but I think that Heaven's Arena did this style quite well because it was a learning process for our main duo.

The Yorknew City arc was where I was expecting things to get kinda juicy because of the build up of the Phantom Troupe it left me somewhat mixed. Highlights of the arc for me: Kurapika X Uvogin, Zoldycks X Chrollo, Phantom Troupe's raid of the auction and the Gon and Killua escape sequence. I did not really enjoy the income games that Leorio, Gon and Killua were trying to get enough Jenny for the auction as it felt like mostly a side story to the highlighted Kurapika and Phantom Troupe conflicts and mostly dragged out this arc. The arc just kind of blue balls you, with Kurapika not really enacting upon his rage and instead having a character growth moment, only not to ever be seen again. It felt like all this arc amounted to was Gon and Killua being able to get access to the Greed Island game rather than developing Kurapika for the interesting character that he is and showcasing his torment with enough breathing room to actually have impact on the audience. Not to mention that this arc has no cohesion between the arcs that come before and after it and is, for the most part, self contained and that is the main problem with the narrative structure of Hunter X Hunter. The only thing that is carried over through arcs is Gon and Killua's progression as Nen users and I guess as characters because Kurapika's development is never revisited throughout the length of the show, not even glimpsed at. Leorio is understandable enough because his goals are so different, and you could argue the same for Kurapika's agenda, however it just feels like a waste of all of that build up. Kurapika was probably one of the characters that I wanted to see developed more and instead time was spent developing characters that really had no bearing on the narrative in the bigger picture. The Phantom Troupe themselves pretty much disappeared after this arc because of how isolated Greed Island is from the rest of the world, even having its own rules to introduce alongside the new Nen system which makes it a drag to have to be reintroduced to a new environment etc. the cycle essentially repeats.

Greed Island is pretty unique because the strength of this arc was actually the training that Gon and Killua receive from Biscuit leading into a great pay off in the dodgeball game. The downfall of this arc was the card game collection aspect as instead of adding to the strategic Nen battles element, it completely strips the conflict down to card rules, economy and management. Sure it could have been interesting if that was the main power system of the anime to begin with, but the fact that it isn't AND the fact that we're really only just getting a grip on Nen as a power system makes it a chore to keep up with what each card does as well as what the players of the game are trying to do with them. Genthru is an uninteresting villain that lacks presence and charisma with his only purpose being to give Gon a good highlight at the end of the arc which really detracts from the stakes of the arc in general. The dodgeball game made it almost worth it to grind through all of those card fights and economy management. It displays the fruits of Gon and Killua's efforts in training with juicy animation and a cool mini boss of the arc in the form of Razor, with him even overshadowing Genthru. I honestly wish that all of the build up was dedicated to a confrontation with Razor rather than with Genthru. The conflict between Genthru and the main two was still good but coming off the heels of the dodgeball episodes, nothing really was able to overthrow that. Goreinu had a cool teleportation ability that added to the depth of that dodgeball segment although this arc is start of the weird Nen abilities to be honest. Concluding on Gon progressing one step closer to finding his father, this arc as a whole had a good moment and training but is plagued by the slow pacing forced by having to introduce all these cards and weird Genthru subplot and Nen ability.

After moving on to the Chimera Ant arc which is what I was really excited for, the pacing once again slows to a halt and a lot of information needs to be provided to the audience so it was quite hard to get into really. When the ball started rolling and shit hit the fan the arc became pretty good and I kinda felt like I finally started to "get it" when it got to the Chimera Ant arc because I could see what they were building up. But at the same time this building up takes its sweet time to ramp up in pace and it is at the detriment of the show really because some of the things they build up are really trivial. To be honest, this arc went downhill for me when Kite died leading to Gon and Killua being trained by fighting Knuckle. Honestly, I didn't think that Knuckle or shoot were going to be major characters at all so I wasn't expecting so much screen time for them but I think that the characterisation they got was okay although they didn't even show the fight that they were building up the whole time during the training arc between Gon X Knuckle or Killua X Shoot which was just blueballs once again. The training arc in Greed Island was actually superior to be honest because at least there was tangible pay off there. If Palm didn't get so much goddamn screen time mabye there would have been time to actually animate the fight scene that the audience deserved for all the pay off. Palm is a character I despise the most, only becoming likeable when she becomes a Chimera Ant at which point it is really too late and is trivial to the whole series. The show acknowledges her being a shitty person judging by the reactions of everyone around her but that still doesn't excuse her even being in the show at all and it slows pacing down way too much having her fuck around with Gon and Killua. This is accentuated by the fact that there are these humanity-threatening Chimera Ants developing in contrast to the child groomer Palm having dates with Gon and threatening to kill them if they don't beat Knuckle and Shoot.

From a characterisation and pacing standpoints this arc just gets so messy in a bad way with the amount of characters that are introduced, even after Knuckle, Shoot and Palm. I've already talked about how stupid Ikalgo and Meleoreon are and they are really just one example of how bogged down this arc is. Most squadron leaders of the Chimera Ants gets their own screentime and it fragments the screentime between the main characters. I get developing the 'villains' alongside the progatonists but the execution of it really fell flat, especially because they were going for the animals can be humans too angle. Like, I can see what they were going for because the development that Mereum gets is actually pretty well written but for all of the other Chimera Ants I really could give less of a damn. It's like the show didn't know what to do with all of these extra characters and just decided to drag out the arc with all of this unnecessary characterisation when the show could have spent time cutting the fat and maybe developing the interactions between Gon and Meleoron or Killua and Ikalgo instead of containing that development in the one episode of foundational screen time that they got before becoming all friendly.

The pacing issues really start to come in when they start to execute the plan to raid East Gorteau because the build up to it was pretty cool I guess, although my dislike for the Chimera Ant squadron leaders getting so much screentime still stands. The Gungi and Komugi segments of the arc were kind of nice and seeing Mereum slowly consider human life to be worth something was definitely interesting. But, I think it's enough of a tell when the narrator speaks every second of the damn arc combined with the fact that 10 episodes only encapsulate like 15 minutes that this arc is just badly paced. I feel like a lot is didn't really happen, honestly you could have cut all of the Palm and Ikalgo shit out and you would have saved so much time because it's not like they actually did anything in the arc. I'm going to just get to the highlights and my main issue here. The highlights were Gon's pop off against Neferpitou (obviously) and Mereum X Netero. That is honestly it for me and these moments alone don't make this arc worth watching. These sequences were super well animated and choreographed and in isolation they were great but waiting so long in this dragged out arc for them was not worth it. I felt like Menthuthuyoupi's battle was trash because Knuckle decided to just stop his loan collector, literally making it so that all the effort spent on fighting him was a waste really because Youpi decided to give his life force to Mereum anyways. Literally like, Shoot, Killua, Meleoreon all got up on Youpi's shit and they couldn't do anything in the end and their impact was incredibly insignificant and you can really just forget about their contributions because that's it. I just have a massive problem with that because there is no pay off for all of this fighting, even Killua popping off amounted to nothing because Knuckle decides to wager that Youpi will abide by his promise. Sure it's about opening up the discussion that Chimera Ants can be humanised but considering the time spent on this shitty devlopment amounted in nothing really doesn't sit right with me. Honestly, Mereum's death was underwhelming because it took the narrator to tell the audience that there was poison in the Poor Man's Rose bomb and that was the only way we found out that the Royal Guard was going to die. I did like the contrast between Gon and Mereum's innocence in the regard that Gon losing his innocence and Mereum was understanding the importance of innocence. Arguably, this contrast should have been focused on more because there is just so much fat to cut in this arc. This arcs just ends up being generally underwhelming and dragged out only for the characters developed in the arc not to have any bearing on the plot after this. This arc was just too contained as a result of the place that it was set in as well as the fact that none of the characters developed from the previous arcs were involved at all.

The following 13th chairman election arc was honestly a nice return to form because the arc spent time developing Killua and Gon for once. However, the fact that this arc just appears as if the previous arc didn't just take 68 episodes to resolve felt like wrong and again it's to due with the isolated nature of each arc which plagues the whole series. I liked the Alluka / Nanika characterisation where we got to see Killua being a loving brother and friend. Seeing Leorio also was a breath of fresh air although seeing Ging actually appear in the arc was an underwhelming way for Gon to meet him considering that he was posed to be what Gon was trying to search for the whole time. The hug between Leorio and Gon was pretty satisfying though I have to admit as well as the time Gon and Ging spent together at the end on top of the World Tree. I liked the whole monologue about "it's not about the destination but the friends you make along the way" even though that's something I've heard before. Just hearing it after all this time, just purely from the time I spent with the series alone was somewhat satisfying.

Seeing how the ending went really made me realise how much wasted potential this show had because of how much I wanted to see the main cast again. The main four don't really even feel like a main four because of the Greed Island and Chimera Ant arcs having their own subset of characters which is a shame because without a recurring cast this show ends up feeling hollow.

I'm glad that it's over though, arguable if it was worth my time but I finally can have an opinion about it I guess.