Seeing as I'm watching the anime here and there with graycoin, I decided to reread the manga. Aside from having wanting to do so for ages now, I figured that it'd be interesting to spot all of the various changes between the manga and the anime.
…mind, the last time I watched the anime was back when it was running on Cartoon Network, but there's still some things that I remember here and there.
One thing that sticks out to me now that I've watched the 2011 version of Hunter × Hunter is how much better Togashi has improved as a writer. I still love this series (its characters especially), but there are aspects of it that I don't particularly care for.
Aside from me feeling that Hunter × Hunter having more unique setups and payoffs, Yusuke has the tendency to get lucky… a lot… especially in his earlier fights.
There's a book that I enjoy reading called How Not to Be a Writer, and one passage mentions that a writer's job is more difficult than God's. In a nutshell, it's very easy for thing for random coincidences and outlandish circumstances to happen in real life… but if it happens within the confines of fiction, then it's considered bad writing.
⒉ The Wire (which is still on my backlog) is a fictionalized version of real world events, and thus has some things that parallel reality. There's a character in one season that manages to jump off a third story building, and miraculously live.
Thing is, the actual person that character is based off of jumped from a four story building, but it was changed because the writer(s) in question assumed that the audience would find it too unbelievable that they'd survive.
As I've said before, I enjoy the characters themselves — they're honestly a good part of the reason why I devour-our-oured ten volumes in one day — but some of the fights and their resolutions… well, they could have been done better.
If you're familiar with Hunter × Hunter though, you can definitely see where Togashi started to come into his own… and honestly, I believe that it's somewhere after the "Beasts of Maze Castle" arc.
The arc after that is short, but is a nice setup for the "Dark Tournament" arc, and has some nice character moments — minus one very questionable moment that I won't get into here.
The Dark Tournament is a stock standard shōnen arc at its core, but provides a lot of interesting scenarios, and brings so many neat characters to the forefront that I can't help but to love it. To me, it's a case of an arc that has a premise that's nothing special, but has splendid execution.
And beyond that, into "Chapter Black" and the final arc, you can definitely see Togashi really grow as a writer, and the bones that would later form his next great series. It's definitely a shame that he got burned out and ended it after that; it would have been fascinating to see where the series could have gone from there.
I actually found the stupid luck things kind of added to Yusuke's character though - he's not some incredible badass for the longest time, he's a lucky, stupid dumbass
so before we get to the dark tournament there's always this huge chance he's just gonna get fucking murdered out of nowhere, because it's not entirely his own powers that got him there safely
Comics and manga
Yu Yu Hakusho [1990] {Vol. 01-10}
ᴇɴᴅ ᴏғ ʟɪɴᴇ
⒈ A person getting struck by lightning multiple times in their lives? Perfectly fine in the real world. If it happens in fiction? Utter bullshit.