narutojunky
Member
OP is certainly a super critical piece of fiction that folds in many critiques of power and has addressed very deeply many issues including those listed above as well as gender and otherness and other things, the list is simply too long for this conversation.It's good but nowhere near the best. It's pacing and animation is indeed top notch. But storywise it's honestly lacking seriously. Yea u have different arcs that each has an objective to fullfill but on the grandscale the main plot is too underwhelming.
The world of HxH also feels so small, it just can't compare to the worldbuilding in One Piece or Naruto of FmaB.
Themed wise it also is nothing to brag about, compare it to op which has a washinglist of it, like slavery, child abuse, drugs, territorial desputes, gambling, genocide. Good animation and top pacing is not good enough to even stand a candle against a lot of other shounen.
I'm still wondering why it gets so much praise. I hope someone can enlighten me on it one day.
The Impel Down Arc was a post modern masterpiece. The idea that a bunch of people who freely exchange gender but are considered criminals are sent to a literal hell and within that hell manage to build their own world of paradise! Beautiful.
However HxH is great because of the story involving the super killer ant colony. That arc allows for the introduction of a sympathetic humanism to be applied to essentially a non-human character. This is a common strategy in manga to flip the villain, but the way that it is handled is masterful and fully shows how far our empathy as people can grow all without being impressed by super cool explosion powers (like Vegeta or Piccolo...)or a need to have the villain prove themselves in service to another ideology.