Title: Hunter x Hunter Volume(s): 22+ Creator(s): Yoshihiro Togashi Format: Unflipped; Right-to-Left Publisher: Viz Media MSRP: $7.95 Genre(s): Action/Martial Arts Rated: Older Teen (16+)

CONSUMER ADVICE

Parents preview this. There is foul language and violence here. Fans of Yoshihiro Togashi will find this series addicting. However, it is not the best action series in the manga universe and actually close to being the worst. I have warned you. Action fans, read the sentences about Yoshihiro fans.

You know what makes me mad when I read a bad manga. A publishing company could have used the money they spent on a bad series to license and translate a good one. Sometimes when this occurs it is inevitable, like some of the books in the Confidential Confessions series, but when it’s a series that reeks of bad quality, like Fruits Basket, it makes you wonder just who is picking the licenses. I picked up Hunter x Hunter because I had written too many good reviews and I needed to find a bad series to look at. (This was judged from Kevin’s review.) Before I give you my opinion, let me warn you: I am going to be kind to this series as much as possible, but when it’s confusing or when the first volume sucks, I am going to slam it down hard. The second thing you should know is that I have only read the first volume.

Hunter x Hunter starts out with a young boy named Gon who lives in an island village with his aunt. Gon is a cheerful optimistic boy who wants to become a hunter. (I’ll explain what a hunter is later.) Why? Because a long time ago, a man named Kite rescued him from a monster and told him that his father was a great Hunter. “He taught me everything I know,” Kite says. How did Kite know who Gon was? We don’t know. The guy’s never laid an eye on the kid before and you wouldn’t expect great Hunter’s son to feel pity for a beast’s orphaned cub and rear it like a pet, which is what Gon does. The reason is because a Hunter’s job is to slay these beasts whenever encountering them. Despite the fact that Gon likes his cub as well as most of the animals on the island, he still wants to become a Hunter to be like his father. I don’t care why he wants to be like his father (sorry, Kevin) but I care why he wants to be a Hunter when it would mean having to kill his pets. Now that I’ve gotten that discrepancy out of the way, let me continue. Gon applies for a Hunter’s application against his aunt’s wishes and ends up qualifying. Before he leaves, his aunt tells him that his father didn’t abandon him; she made him give Gon to her. By now we learn that she’s lied a lot to her nephew, including what happened to his father. I would be pretty peeved at her, probably as much as Thorn was peeved at her grandmother for lying to her in Bone, but Gon just smiles and said that he knew. If only all boys were like this kid. (Not to mention that his aunt acts like a stereotype. She is given little to no character development in the few pages with her.)

His test begins as soon as the ship carrying him sets off. He meets two other guys, whose names I can’t recall. One who looks like a lawyer says he wants to become a Hunter for the money while the other says he wants to become a Hunter in order to avenge his family. Because these guys have great skill and knowledge, they pass all the tests in order to get to the hall where their final test is. Along the way they meet plenty of other characters. One is only doing the tests for the thrill of it. One is determined to crush everyone else in his journey to become a Hunter. One is a repeated flunkey who cheats a lot. How in the world will Gon and his new friends pass the test with all these challengers? Maybe due to more great skills and dumb luck. I admit that this series is addicting. I found some of the tests interesting and revealing potential. The problem is that Gon and his friends are too good at these tests. You’d think that a kid who grew up on a island and who is probably no older than twelve or fourteen shouldn’t be able to hone his skills as well as he does. Gon rarely breaks a sweat and that means we get little to no tension as he fights. We can hardly identify with him. A battle scene with him lasts only two pages at the most. His two friends are more interesting, but only slightly more so. Their bantering reminds me too much of Kurogane and Fai from Tsubasa and that Tsubasa is a better and funnier ongoing action series. Everyone in this series has a one-sided personality and shows no unique characteristics.

The series I was thinking of while reading the first volume of Hunter x Hunter was One Piece. One Piece, after all, is about a nineteen year-old boy who can stretch like rubber and desires to become the King of the Pirates since he befriended a friendly and inspiring pirate. Hunter x Hunter is about a kid who wants to be the greatest Hunter because his father was a great Hunter. Luffy is as confident about winning his battles as much as Gon is, but the difference is that Luffy actually experiences difficulty while fighting. And when Gon’s friend Leorio (I think that’s his name) reveals why he wants to get money, I couldn’t help but think of a certain thief named Nami . . . Either Yoshihiro-sensei tried to get away with a poorly-done copycat of One Piece or Eiichiro Oda took the elements of Hunter x Hunter and integrated them into a better series. Someday I am going to review One Piece for the site, but until then all I say is drop Hunter x Hunter and pick up the first volume of One Piece. Don’t even get me started about the artwork. Character designs are meh, enough said. The same goes for the backgrounds. And there are some confusing panels that only serve to make the series worse. I give credit that the action sequences and the final test scene where all the students have to run for a long time without collapsing are entertaining. If only it were enough to save the series.