Hunter x Hunter Movie 2: The Last Mission

I can't believe I am giving such a poor score for one of my favorite shounen series, but this score will do justice to this film. Like most anime movies based on a running TV series, the trailer and the first five minutes of the film is unfortunately better than the rest of the film. A lot of your favorite characters and some current characters in the arc will make an appearance, but most importantly you hope the film will reveal some interesting information about the Hunter x Hunter universe that the TV show didn't get a chance to show. Well if you were expectingfor anything like that, then turn away fast because you will be very disappointed. The story is about the return of the bitter cofounder of the Hunter association and "On" user Jed, who seeks to eradicate every Nen user in the world because he was defeated by Netero in the past. So he comes back with three naive children with a poorly explored background story and a bunch of mindless prisoners he brainwashed to kidnap Netero. The rest of the film follows Gon, Killua, and Kurapika fighting Jed's underlings with occasional cutscenes from the antagonists explaining why they hate the Hunter Association so much. Apart from Gon, the main characters weren't acting like their usual self from the TV show. Gon was still a peacekeeper who wants to protect everything in his sight. Killua was acting like Gon's bitch (literally), Kurapika was acting like an emo, and I honestly don't know why they listed Leorio as a main character in the film because I seriously felt like some of the supporting characters got more screentime than him. As for Hisoka, I assume he was placed in the film so he could appear in the trailer to generate more revenue for the greedy producers. It was fun to see his spiderman skills, but really he does nothing in the film other than make some obvious remarks. The animation was not very good. Some of the faces and body seem distorted sometimes, but the colors were sharp and you could see what is happening in the dark. This was good because a lot of the fights occur in the dark. Most of the soundtracks (if not all) were borrowed the series, I didn't pay too much attention to the background music because of all the action going on. I honestly think the story could have been a good arc in the anime provided they expanded on the characters and this "On" business. Since the TV show is about to end, I do not recommend you watch this immediately because in all honestly you are going to feel like you just watched a Naruto movie. Wait a few months and when you feel you want to see some "refreshing" Hunter x Hunter material apart from the TV show, grab this, but lower your expectations.

It may be true that the two movies representing the TV show are far inferior to its parental installment, but I'm going to disagree on the fact that most people here are bashing this movie for being extremely clichéd and mundane. To start off this review, I'll let you know that I am a huge fan of the series, but this movie was on the disappointing side. The plot is set around somewhere after the Greed Island arc and the beginning of the Chimera Ant arc after both our protagonists Gon and Killua have met up with Kite and take a detour from their journeyto visit the Heaven's Arena to cheer on for their friend Zushi, who's taking part in the fight. Whilst they're on it 4 mysterious group of people enter the arena to fulfill their ulterior motive; The demise of all the Hunters with the use of "On" which is exactly the opposite side of "Nen" and which derives it powers from pure hatred. While the premise of the movie is not put together to be quite a blockbuster ride, it does set up an intriguing following. The characters are all and the same except for our new 4 antagonists who are trying to kill the Hunters once and for all. They are not worth remembering for a long time as well, like Omokage from the first Hunter x Hunter movie. The little girl from the 4 villains has no character development at all and we are left with absolutely nothing regarding to her past only besides that they all were refugees once who escaped from the Hunters who were trying to cleanse their Shadow Clan. Considering the art, this was the most disappointing factor of the movie. While nowhere near being appalling, it was very, very bad compared to the TV series. You'd expect better with all the budget put into the franchise. All in all the movie doesn't leave you satisfied a lot. If you had watched this after completing the series it makes it all the more displeasing. It does not have the charm and excitement as its series and it's just an average installment. But on the other side it does have some pros as well. It does well with the premise it's given and doesn't do anything reckless from its timeline and that doesn't have any effect on the original series at all, meaning you won't miss anything if you watch it after you finish the series. To end it I'd say this was the least pleasing movie of the two and the franchise combined. But it's not completely horrible and still a lot of fun to watch if you're a Hunter x Hunter fan.

Hunter x Hunter, a series renowned for its unique and intelligent battles, is one of the best lengthy shounen/action series I've ever seen. However, this movie throws all of that out of the window of an extraordinarily tall tower and prefers to use more senseless, "beat-em-up with the power of friendship" tactics. The story is pretty basic: A small group of refugees band together with a powerful rival of the Hunter Association in order to get revenge on them. The story takes place at Heaven's Arena, the tower where Gon and Killua fought while learning the basics of Nen. It brings back some characters from previousarcs who all gather in the Arena to watch a tournament which happens to be the target of the group of refugees-turned-terrorists. Their goal is to defeat the chairman, Netero, and spread On, a rage-based counterpart to Nen. The story seems good enough at first but eventually ends up being solely driven by the power of Killua and Gon's friendship and nothing else. Side events like what the Hunter Association is doing during the turmoil go absolutely nowhere, and most of the side characters are just there for people to enjoy seeing them again. Even Hisoka does nothing but add a little card-related symbolism into the mix and use his spidey-powers to transport Leorio to the fight. As for the new characters (which are just the group of antagonists), the minor villains are fairly interesting. Their reason for fighting is believable and churns up some good emotions along with the battles. Mainly the guy with the mohawk stands out, as his battle with Gon and Killua is done pretty well and lasts the longest. However, the main villain is about as boring as you can get. Considering how excellent the main villains in the series are, he just has nothing to back him up aside from showing one moment of genuine compassion for his underlings. The animation is surprisingly no better than that of the series, which is a letdown considering movie budgets usually allow for better animation than TV shows. The soundtrack is still the same good soundtrack from the show as well and even uses "Hyouriittai" once again for the ending theme. While this film is certainly not as good as the show, it's still something worth checking out if you're a fan of the series and want more. Like most of HxH, it focuses mainly on Gon and Killua even though Kurapica and Leorio return for a bit. The movie takes place sometime around the very beginning of the Chimera Ant arc, so I would not recommend to this anyone who has not at least gotten that far.

Story - 5/10 Art - 8/10 Sound - 7/10 Character - 6/10 Enjoyment - 7/10 Overall - 7/10 Near the beginning of the movie, Gon says something along the lines of "this feels nostalgic" as he sees the towering Heaven's Arena. I actually think that was my general impression after watching the movie. The art and sound were good, but the story and characterization honestly was rather lacking(that's putting it lightly since the plot was probably as cliche as you could get). Yet, it was probably nostalgia (at least in my case) that made the movie still enjoyable to watch. What kind of nostalgia am I talking about? I'm talking about thatfeeling you get when you see Zushi(OSU!! kid), Wing, and Biske(I miss Greed Island @_@) again at Heaven's Arena . It's that feeling you get when you see Leorio being the butt of the jokes once again (I think all the gloom and doom of the Chimera Ant arc made me forget how funny he can be sometimes). It's that feeling that you get when you see Gon use a fishing rod again (man that feels like such a long time ago). To be fair, most of these moments are as brief and as inconsequential as Pariston's cameo in this movie. But for die hard Hunter X Hunter fans and even semi-casual fans like me I'm sure will be entertained enough by these moments to walk away from this movie with a positive feeling. If you like Hunter X Hunter a lot, I'm sure you'll enjoy this movie. Just don't come in here expecting the epic narrative of the Chimera Ant arc condensed into a nice one and a half hour movie. *** IN-DEPTH REVIEW BUT WITH SLIGHT SPOILERS *** Art - 8/10 I actually though the art and animation was a big plus in this movie. I liked the character designs of the villains (those eyes). I thought the animation of the new aura, On, accompanying these villains was rather nice too (especially that one scene where Jed destroys all those blimps. You have to admit that was pretty awesome). The battle animation, in my opinion, was nice and fluid (mostly referring to Gon & Killua vs. Gaki). Maybe I have low expectations and/or was more aware of it since it's a movie, but I felt the animation was great and definitely movie quality. Sound - 7/10 There were a LOT of recycled songs from the TV show all throughout the movie. The ending song of the movie was actually Hyouriittai (ending song for the Chimera Ant arc). Overall, the songs were appropriate though, and I was actually impressed by their orchestral arrangement of Hyouriittai. Besides the song sounding nice, they somehow made it fit both the joyful mood at the beginning of the movie and the bittersweet mood of the end. That was a big plus for me, but then again, I always thought that ending song was pretty catchy. Story - 5/10 Pros of the movie in this department were probably... 1) They established the context of the movie early in the movie with a quick flashback (to see how poorly flashbacks can be utilized, go watch Road to Ninja, ughhh). 2) Pacing, for the most part, felt okay. And...that's pretty much it. Seriously, for an anime that has stories that often think outside of the shounen box or takes creative licenses, the plot for this movie was probably as bland/ cliche as it could get. I mean, just look at the name for the group of villains (the Shadow >_>). Not to mention the whole aura of hate and anger (On) vs. the power of friendship and compassion. The fact that you can sum up the plot of the movie with "a group of evil, vengeful guys attack Heaven's Arena and hold Netero hostage, leaving Gon and friends to save the day" is disappointing. Characters - 6/10 For Gon, I really liked what they did to reinforce his character from the moment where he saves the balloon for the little girl at the beginning of the movie to the moment where he willingly uses On to save his friends (that is honestly such a Gon thing to do). For the others, Killua was Killua as usual, shining the most during the elevator scene vs. Gaki where he comes up with a clever plan to trap Gaki. Leorio did not really have a big part in this movie, but he added some comic relief which I rather enjoyed. Kurapika had an interesting dynamic with the villains since he's also in this hate-filled vengeful state as they are. Though they touched on this issue, I really felt like they could have explored it a bit more thoroughly, and I was disappointed with his role in this movie. (I think Kurapika using On vs. the others is definitely something they could have written in). Hisoka, though, was probably the biggest disappointment in this movie as he pretty much does nothing in it besides add some interesting symbolism to the movie. There was that one scene where he tells Gon that to beat a royal flush (the villains) with a four of a kind(Gon + friends), you need a wild card. I thought that was Hisoka's way of making his brilliant entrance into the battle grounds but noooo. In the end, I'm guessing he was just referring to friendship as the wildcard -,-. The fact that he just sits out of all these fights is honestly out of character for him to begin with. I would have appreciated him not being in the movie at all then seeing him act this way. The villains, sadly, were not as developed as I would've liked them to be. My favorite villain was actually the girl who I thought had a lot of potential from the moment she smiles at the kid who bumps into her. We all know how her character got butchered -,-". Overall, I just wish they delved more into how the schism between Jed and Netero developed. I felt like Netero's motivation for destroying the Shadow and the Hunter Association's reasoning for moving descendants of the Shadow into concentration camps was never fully explained. If they had at least spent a little more time explaining basic thing like those issues or how Jed even came back to life instead of scenes like the one where Gaki destroys all the tanks(what a waste of animation/time), I would have been happier with the characterization (and probably the story) overall.

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