There are few anime and manga out there that are as universally liked as Togashi’s Hunter x Hunter. Receiving two anime adaptations, one covering a vast majority of the manga content and even several movies you could say that this manga has been a massive success. I’ve heard people say that it could have been a rival to the big three for sure. And I don’t disagree with that, but it’s hard to find out if that was true.
The reason for this is that the author of Hunter x Hunter, Yoshihiro Togashi, has been dealing with health problems for a very long time. And you’ve guessed it, these health problems have resulted in longer and more frequent hiatuses as time went on, earning Hunter x Hunter the nickname “Hiatus x Hiatus.”
About a week ago, someone confirmed that the twitter account belonging to Togashi that started gaining traction fast was in fact the man’s twitter account and not some fake account instead. On this twitter account, Togashi has been posting images of what we presume are pages from Hunter X Hunter. This is signaling the return of a legendary manga and I couldn’t be more excited. Except, after a moment of excitement I wondered to myself; am I still invested in this story? Do I still care about Gon, Leorio, Killua, Kurapika and the spiders, Hisoka and the people on the boat, Beyond Netero and most importantly Ging Freecs? Has it been too long? Let’s dive into this, shall we?
I found myself hesitantly excited for this possible return. It’s not the first time there have been new chapters released after a while of not doing so. To give a quick bit of insight into the history of Hunter x Hunter publications I found this graph:
As you can see, all the weeks marked in blue are weeks where a chapter was released. After 2005, which is seventeen years ago at this point and that thought just made me feel so old, the manga has really only been released in small bursts of chapters, but usually with less than a year in between releases. The last break was more than 900 days ago. I’ve read so many different titles since then that it’s hard to remember what was going on during the most recent arc of Hunter x Hunter.
So with all of that said, I’m curious what everyone thinks about this return. Togashi has been very public about it, posting these pages on twitter. It makes me think that he’s planning to properly return to writing manga and I’m worried it’ll give me false hope. If this goes on another hiatus after a couple of weeks I don’t think I can find it in myself to keep reading it if it returns again. My personal hope is that, assuming these pages mean he’s returning, he gets a schedule that works for him. Whether this is biweekly releases, monthly releases or releases in short but planned bursts I don’t really care, as long as there’s consistency and we know what we can expect. I’m of the opinion that you can’t rush someone into creating something if they aren’t in the right mindset for it. But it’s also not okay for an artist to get people’s hopes up repeatedly only to then not deliver. Once you start making promises, or in this case hinting at promises, you have a certain responsibility to follow up on these promises.
As for me, I’ll re-read the entirety of Hunter x Hunter in the near future so I can properly enjoy any upcoming story bits. The succession arc was confusing enough on a weekly basis, so a reminder won’t hurt. But please, let me know in the comments down below what you think about these tweets and the (possible) return of Hunter x Hunter. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 