Hunter x Hunter (2011) is the second anime adaptation of the critically-acclaimed manga by the same name, produced by Studio Madhouse and airing in Japan between 2011 and 2014. This adaptation covers the first six arcs of the aforementioned manga, which was (and still is) the overwhelming majority of the source material available as of production.

Before continuing any further, I was to express that this review is NOT spoiler free. If you haven't yet seen Hunter x Hunter (2011), and like shounen anime, the only advice that I can give you is to go ahead and watch it. I hadn't read the manga before watching the show for the first time myself, there is no prerequisite at all to do so, so go head and dive into 148 episodes of brilliant anime (and if you make it as far as episode 59, do yourself the kindness of watching the whole chimera ant arc, which is the arc following the one starting with that episode).

I read and thoroughly enjoy the Hunter x Hunter manga, but I don't want to discuss here how good the source material is, how it compares with other shounen, or anything like that. What I want to discuss is how well Studio Madhouse adapted the source material into anime form. When I said in the review summary that HxH was the best anime adaptation possibly to date, I wasn't claiming that it's the best anime, rather I was claiming that it's the best-executed adaptation of an existing manga by an anime studio. I obviously love the characters and story of Hunter x Hunter, but what I think shines equally as brightly here is how lovingly the anime itself was crafted.

I'm not going to go through and rate every aspect of this anime (although I probably should), because honestly most aspects are a 10 for me, and even the aspects I think are weaker than others are still very strong in their own right - for example, I don't think every track in the OST is a banger, nor do I think every ending theme is great, but some of the music in this adaptation has persisted in meme culture long after the show stopped airing, and the first two ending tracks absolutely slap.

So in the absence of quantitative assessment, I'll briefly discuss the different things this anime does well: firstly, the animation is amazing. It isn't overstated when it needs to be, but it never feels lazy or lacking, even when minimal animation is needed in the scene. No long panning shots for no reason, or out of place zooms in and out, just effective animation used effectively, and brilliant animation when it's most needed (and above-average animation everywhere else). I'm not fluent in Japanese by any stretch, but the core cast all have really distinctive voices, readily identifiable, and emotionally charged in the relevant places. The story, as per the source material, is well paced and gripping, and the characters all have clear and believable motivations and development.

As I've said here already, I don't think this adaptation is without flaw or entirely infallible, but a lot of the weaknesses of the show either only exist because of it's other strengths, or because of weaknesses in the source material (for example, I don't find Genthru to be a particularly compelling villain, I honestly think the Greed Island arc might be better if he just didn't exist), but I'm glad that Madhouse only made very minimal changes to the source material (e.g. introducing Kite after Greed Island, instead of literally 75 episodes before we'd need to know who he is - and mitigating the walls of text that exist in the manga as much as possible), so I can't call this a weakness of the adaptation.

However I look at Hunter x Hunter (2011), whether strictly as an adaptation of existing source material, or as the whole package of an anime to be consumed and enjoyed, it's difficult to find much if any fault at all. This honestly might be the best anime adaptation of a shounen manga that aired prior to the 2020s, and by extension could very well be one of the best anime of all time. Considering that this show aired weekly during its production, and stands at a whopping 148 episodes long, I have no reservations in giving it a 98/100.