Writing a review about something you like THIS much is... Very hard for me.

A lot harder than taking the time to absolutely shit on something you hate for a few paragraphs of text, explaining the many reasons why you hate it. Which is why i've basically never seriously attempted it until now.

Conveying to anyone why i love something feels like it can't be done with just the words in my own vocabulary, but nonetheless i hope this review can express to everyone reading why i think Hunter x Hunter is Yoshihiro Togashi's most successful work, not just in terms of the number of copies sold but also in terms of the authors own artistic expression.

To me, the most intriguing aspect of Hunter x Hunter as a story is the sheer variety of settings, themes and tones it has from moment to moment while still feeling as if it all belongs together. This is something i feel was missing from Togashi's second most well-known manga, Yu Yu Hakusho (which i also love) due to his turbulent history with it as it was still being published. On principle, Hunter x Hunter is an action adventure manga targeted towards young japanese boys just as Yu Yu Hakusho was, but in practice, i'd say what Togashi actually did with Hunter x Hunter was use what his audience and editors expected and wanted from him as tools to create whatever he wanted instead of viewing them as limitations. Everything in this story, from the beat-by-beat action to where and why anything happens at all, are all completely subservient to Togashi and whatever he feels like doing at that moment in time.

THE ACTION
I'd say almost every action scene here after a certain point early on in the story serves an extremely introspective character based purpose, since Togashi tends to put a lot of focus on the many thoughts every character involved in any given conflict has as the action progresses rather than purely focusing on their physical, tangible actions. Even when the character's inner monologues don't seem completely relevant to what is currently happening or in some cases where we know for a fact that a character's thoughts and assumptions of a situation are completely wrong due to information that was given to us prior but not to the character, Togashi makes sure we know the thought process behind everything, because that way Hunter x Hunter always manages to feel like a coherent, living, breathing world. It's also very common for fights to be a lot shorter than one would expect or want, and even more common for fights to be completely one-sided beatdowns, as if the other side never really had a chance of winning as opposed to the usual desperate struggle until one of the characters finally proves that their power level was superior afterall.

THE ADVENTURE
The "adventure" aspect of this series basically serves as a way of removing all the main players from any given setting and inserting them into another whenever Togashi decides hes done everything he wanted to do there. Even when a setting has almost infinite amounts of potential for further elaborations and adventures, it's not all that common to get a second glimpse at any place that the characters have moved past with one of the only exceptions to this being the island in which the main character was raised in. Since the main players are in a constant search for a specific person/item, there is always a perfectly understandable reason for the characters to simply move along without being stuck on one place for longer than what Togashi wants/needs.

THE FANTASY
Another thing that makes Hunter x Hunter a lot different to Yu Yu Hakusho is that Hunter x Hunter goes a lot harder in the fantasy elements. Instead of taking place in "current year, Japan", Hunter x Hunter takes place in a pretty chaotic and completely made up world while still being heavily based on our own planet earth. By creating this incredible world with just the amount of fantasy elements needed, Togashi basically guaranteed himself that he could never run out of usable ideas for both settings and characters. Bounty hunters, genocidal gangs, killer clowns, kings with super powers, multifaceted political conflicts involving those same previously mentioned lunatics, alien man-eating ants and reincarnation is all fair game.

CONCLUSION
Basically this story is so unpredictable that it feels like a child getting distracted every few minutes by the new cool thing it just found, someone who is just happy to be there at all, and i can't help but feel the same whenever i read it. But at the same time, it's so intricate and seemingly planned out far ahead of time that you can't help but try and see where it goes next even though you fail at doing that every time, the gift that keeps on giving...
Except for when its on hiatus.
It's very well known at this point that since 2006 the publication for this series has been very inconsistent due to Togashis poor health to the point where, even though it's only one year younger than One Piece, Hunter x Hunter currently sits at 400 chapters as i'm writing this.
But i have to say, this doesn't really discourage me as much as i know it does for a lot of other people.
At the end of the day, Togashis health matters more than anything else, and i feel like i would be plenty satisfied with the 400 banger chapters we've already gotten, and Togashi seems very determined to actually finish this story despite his condition.
So all we can do is pray that he is okay and wait for another batch of chapters to eventually drop on our laps.

I'll be there no matter what.