Hunter X Hunter

Hunter x Hunter Volume 1 Anime Review & Giveaway

By: Robert Prentice
Hunter X Hunter Viz Media

Young Gon dreams of following in his father’s path and becoming a Hunter, an elite class of adventurer with legendary skills. But to make the grade he’ll first have to pass the extremely difficult and danger Hunter Qualification Exam.

His journey leads him on the shared path of the Hunter’s exam, to lands beyond imagination and to friends who grow closer with each new trial. As the difficulty of the challenges mounts, will Gon and his friends prevail or will they wash out like so many others?

In 1999, Hunter × Hunter was adapted into a 62-episode anime television series produced by Nippon Animation. The series received a second run, starting from the beginning and re-telling the story more faithful to the source material then the first series. The second series was produced starting in 2011. Shortly after Viz Media announced their license for the english dub of the series, Adult Swim announced the Viz Media english dub would start airing on their Toonami block starting in April 2016.

Hunter X Hunter – Review

As I got into this anime watching the english dub episodes on Toonami, I found myself asking why I didn’t catch this one sooner. Sure I was new to anime if you think about when this originally came out in 2011 but still. The characters are the draw here and I cannot help but move the dynamic between Gon, Killua, Kurapika and Leorio. I hate to use this comparison but I am going to, it reminds me a bit of Team 7 from Naruto. With Leorio as the odd man out of the group. Though I could see them fitting better as the Fairy Tail gang.

Volume one covers the first 13 episodes of the series as we end right in the thick of the hunter exam. Leorio and Kurapika fit well together as you have the hot headed and level headed mind sets between the two of them. Gon and Killua are another story. Gon is naive and determined to find his father, plus make friends. Killua is cocky about his skill, and rightfully so but you can tell Gon catches him off guard. The two of them make for a great pair. Killua tends to be the level headed one thinking things out, while Gon is impulsive but the two of them together get into a lot of trouble later on.

You can tell from just the first 13 episodes how large the world is and I do enjoy the effort made to explore each characters back story and give us a more 3-dimensional prospective of them rather then just throwing 30 characters at us that we simply don’t care about. Can we talk about Hisoka now? Between the clown makeup and his twisted sense of honor you can’t help but want to see more as much as you want to look away. His weird and sometimes creepy obsession with Gon only continues to grow as he watches Gon grow into a better fighter.

The hunter exam is brutal to say the least. However Gon and his team seem to be breezing through most of it without much trouble. The prison tower phase of the exam revealed a lot about the abilities and backstories of our main characters which was nice to see. Killua is a bit too powerful for his young age.

Right Stuf is still listing Hunter x Hunter sets available that have a collectors replica of a hunters license with the set, I got one with mine and its made of thick plastic and the size of an actual credit card. It’s a neat collectors item.

My favorite arc of the series is in later episodes once they hit Heaven’s Arena but for now you should pickup this english release by Viz Media over at RightStufAnime.com.

We give this series a 4.5/5. Check out this unboxing video for Volume 1.

Hunter X Hunter Giveaway

Want a chance to win a copy of Set 1 on Blu-Ray? Share this article and comment below on why you love Hunter x Hunter!

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