Blair Loveday
It can be fun to go back and watch an anime series you missed. In the early 2010s Hunter x Hunter became an iconic show, and I completely missed it. Now the series is being released in parts on Bluray and if you haven’t seen it yet either, now might be that time.
Gon is a young boy whose father abandoned him at a young age to become a Hunter. Instead of harbouring anger towards him, Gon is eternally fascinated by what is so interesting about being a Hunter that made his father leave.
As such Gon has decided to leave home himself now, even though he is still young, to go and complete the Hunter exam and become a Hunter himself against his mother’s wishes. A strong boy and a gifted fisherman, he finds himself a couple of companions in Leorio, a teenager who looks like an adult, and the super smart Kurapika.
They meet en route to the exam and after some early arguments, they all work together to save a life and discover they are a good team. This results in some interesting personality challenges throughout the show which makes the team as flawed as it is brilliant.
Part 1 of Hunter x Hunter covers the show until soon after the end of the Hunter exam. The exam itself is a bunch of physical and mental tasks that actually makes for some engaging episodes. The prospective Hunters are regularly in competition with each other in the wild, and as death is a real possibility in the exams the show winds up not feeling like the set up, but rather its own excellent series.
Some fantastic animation and voice acting helps nail home the show. The wide selection of characters, some which are strange at the start, winds up coming together at the end with some truly sinister characters and motives.
Hunter x Hunter Part 1 is an excellent 26 episodes, and I can’t wait to see what comes in Part 2. Don’t be caught off guard by the nu-metal closing theme which caught me and my son off guard as we had the volume a touch high.
