The structure of this review is completely basic and hardly a proper review, and I may add to it over time, but as it stands it is a simple list of positives and negatives because I don’t feel like I can write a full-blown review on something I didn’t finish.
For context, I watched up to the end of Greed Island and dropped the anime.
The positives:
Nen is the best power system in anime. Most other power systems in shounen are imitations of Nen that aren’t as effective or revolutionary as Nen was.
The Phantom Troupe is a pretty good villain group. I think there are a few too many that I don’t really care about, but the relationships and teamwork of the Phantom Troupe was interesting and enjoyable to see.
Each character having their own motivation was cool because it often led to unlikely groups working towards a common goal only to be enemies again soon after (mainly talking about Hisoka here).
The pacing is good and never feels slow or fast (I didn’t watch the Chimera Ant arc so this does not include that). I had no problem with how fast things were moving, more just with what the things were.
The Negatives:
Way too many characters. By the end of each arc I am barely invested in a set of characters, and then they’ll suddenly introduce 10 more and leave some of the old ones behind. I think I only felt a connection with the few main characters (Gon, Killua, Leorio and Kurapika).
The content of the episodes often consists of mundane tasks and minigames, rather than interesting plot and good fights using the power system with so much potential. The Hunter Exam and Greed Island arcs are the worst offenders here. As the first main thing of the anime that happens, being the Hunter exam, the main characters figure out a few novel tricks, and then the first main challenges are to run in a straight line for 2 episodes, and then to cook food. This just isn’t what I find entertaining in anime. It took a jump up in quality in the Yorknew City arc and that’s because there are actual things happening, like character development, fights and progression of the plot, but all of this (including Kurapika’s interesting character development) is thrown away for the entire next arc, which consists of card games and dodgeball.
The battles. I’ll call them battles because most of the time they aren’t fights, they’re minigames. The problem here is that you always know who will win every single battle, so there is not much tension, and you’ll often be waiting 2 or 3 episodes to find out what you already know will happen. To comment more specifically on fights, there are a few really good ones like Gon vs Hisoka and Kurapika vs Uvo, which both use really interesting Nen techniques that make for a great fight. However, in the fighting section of the Hunter exam arc, which is built up for several episodes, Gon just falls asleep and we get a narrated flashback of what happened, which I felt was very underwhelming.
I also felt that the main plot was weak. It’s all about Gon looking for his father, but this main plot moves forward one step every 30 episodes, interrupted by random stories about new uninteresting characters to the point that I was no longer interested in seeing what happened and dropped the anime after the Greed Island arc (I know people will say this is a mistake, but I don’t think I’ll ever continue it).
If I were to rank the arcs, I would say:
- Yorknew City - 7/10
- Heaven’s Arena - 6.5/10
- Zoldyck Family - 5/10
- Hunter Exam - 4/10
- Greed Island - 4/10
I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but when I look at HxH I see an anime that’s not bad, but I didn’t find it all that good either.
If you like the anime, I only hate you a little bit and I don't think you're entirely stupid, just a little bit more than me (I'm not serious).
I get why people like it, but this was just my quick take on this anime from episodes 1-75.