Hunter X Hunter (Original + Remake)

[LumRanmaYasha]

I thought all the voices were very well-fitting myself, including Matt Mercer's Leorio, which honestly wasn't far off from the voice I used to imagine him having in my head back when I was first reading through the manga and hadn't watched either anime adaption yet. It was kind of surprising to hear Matt Mercer give such a light-pitched performance, though, especially considering his most notable roles have tended to be deeper voiced characters like Levi in Attack on Titan, Kiritsugu in Fate/Zero, Sinbad in Magi, and Jotaro in the Stardust Crusaders test dub.

But Erika Harlacher's Kurapika is definitely my favorite dub performance so far. She sounds very close to Miyuki Sawashiro's, but it still feels like she's giving her own take on her character all the same. I'll be keen on hearing how she handles his really dramatic parts, especially during York New.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I'm still sad Viz probably won't cough up the extra bucks to fly Justin Cook to LA for some Ging lines.

[VLordGTZ]

Erika Harlacher and Erica Mendez's Kurapika and Gon were both solid respectively.  While I was a bit iffy on Matt Mercer's Leorio voice when I initially watched the preview (especially since he usually voices much deeper voice characters), I have a very positive opinion of his performance after watching this premiere.  Overall, I feel that Viz and Bang Zoom have put a lot of effort into this dub and I have confidence that the rest of the castings will be solid (Hisoka already sounds perfect just from the small promo bits that have been shown).

I'm still sad Viz probably won't cough up the extra bucks to fly Justin Cook to LA for some Ging lines.

I'm pretty sure that Justin Cook works exclusively on Funi dubs.

[gunswordfist]

If all else fails, at least we already got perfect voice acting in the sub

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I missed the Toonami premiere, so I had to wait until the episode was available online in order to watch it. Maybe it's because I had my expectations lowered by Viz's previous (and awful) HXH dub, but I loved the voice-acting in this. Gon, Kurapika, and even Leorio worked for me, personally.

Now to see if the ratings manage to pick up enough to keep the show on air. While I personally disagree with Dalek that York New City is the only good arc (and it's certainly not the only arc that fans love by a long-shot), I do agree that the Hunter Exams arc is initially a hard-sell for most Toonami regulars. I believe that Trick Tower is where your typical shonen action fan would start getting into the series, mostly thanks to Killua Vs. Jones. But that requires sticking with the slower stuff for about 5-8 episodes.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm honestly pretty cool with Killua's voice. It isn't perfect by any means, but I can see his VA growing into the role over time.

On the other hand, Hisoka's voice doesn't sound nearly perverted/psychotic enough....but maybe that's for the best in the English dub.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Sorry, I just had to post this:

Meruem was a disappointing villain. So, he wants to turn the human population into Chimera Ants? Okay, how are you going to manage that, genius? The only known Chimera Ant Queen died giving birth to him. What, are all female Chimera Ants queens? If so, why does he have his female soldiers out on the front lines? The amount of male Chimera Ants drastically outweigh the female, so common sense would dictate that he'd keep the females out of battle if he wants to achieve his goal. His motive didn't make much sense. I don't like the "Genocide Solves Humanity's Atrocities" cliche. What's the logic in that? Wouldn't the mere threat of somebody like Meruem be enough to get humanity to comply with his orders? Not to mention his motive is also pretty cliched. He's a member of a race of powerful being that believes humans should be wiped out so that his race can be the dominant species. Yeah, that hasn't been done a million times before. He ends up being a total Villain Sue. The second he's born, he's already a genius with enormous power, and he survives getting nuked, which makes his death by radiation poisoning a massive cop-out. Finally, we're supposed to see his relationship with Komugi as his redeeming quality, but their relationship is many layers of creepy. For one, Meruem is a cross-breed of many species, and he was only a few weeks old when he met Komugi, so we get a combination of bestiality and pedophilia. Second, despite holding her hostage and threatening to kill her multiple times, she falls in love with him. Yeah, there's a disorder for that. It's called "Stockholm Syndrome." Finally, he makes no effort to make her leave when he contracts radiation poisoning. After one warning, he decides it's okay to play Gungi with her again as they slowly die together. That's not romantic. That's disturbing.

That's actually called "missing the point", but hey, what do I know?

The arc was almost garbage before he even showed up (and took a while for it to get better after that), so there are far worse parts of the Chimera Ant arc than Meruem.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Was that posted by Jacob, by any chance?

What's funny is that never once is it even remotely applied that the feelings which Meruem and Komugi have for each other are in any way sexual. It's the poster himself who assumed that, so the only disturbing thing here is his train of thought. I suppose it's too much of a foreign concept to him that love is an emotion that is in and of itself not sexual in nature.

Also, did the poster pay attention to the plot at all? You don't need female Chimera Ants to turn humans into Chmera Ants. Clearly we've seen multiple times in the arc that humans are mutated into Chimera Ants. The ones that were birthed by the queen were pure Chimera Ants. It was never part of Meruem's plan to birth ore of them. It was his plan to select those humans worthy to keep living through the selection process.

Now, don't get me wrong, the Chimera Ant arc is far from perfect and despite the fact that I like it, it has tons of flaws. However, this post addresses absolutely none of them. It's like the person who wrote this post saw something like YMS and wanted to sound smart by criticizing something popular and highlighting how stupid it is, except wasn't actually smart enough to even comprehend how to do something like that and distinguish between what separates a genuine flaw from flat-out not understanding something.

[gunswordfist]

I hate when people assume their relationship was sexual.

[gunswordfist]

How's the ratings?

[VLordGTZ]

If you're talking about the Toonami HxH ratings, they've been consistently above 1 million.  Personally, I think it would do even better if they would move it to 12:30, but it seems like Toonami wants to keep that as a rotating premiere slot.  In any case, HxH is not in any danger of going off air in the near future (or ever considering how badly it would need to bomb).

[gunswordfist]

Ha, looks like Hunter Exam is doing just fine.
Thank you.

[Dreamer2]

I'm probably going to be posting some of my random thoughts on HxH in here as I continue to move through it for the first time. I've already posted a bunch in the Toonami thread, so I thought I'd move my upcoming thoughts over to this thread. I haven't watched anymore today because I've been busy and now I'm kind of watching the game. I'm looking forward to the rest of the Chimera Ants arc, partially because of what Dr. Ensatsu-Ken said about Meruem as a character. I'm hopeful I'll enjoy it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'll warn you in advance that the arc is a bit lopsided in quality. Most people love the arc so I'm in the minority, but while I do like the arc a lot, I also find quite a few flaws with it.

What ultimately wins me over though is the characters. For a Shonen series, this arc has some of the most interesting character deconstruction that I've seen in the genre. I've already mentioned Meruem, but Gon also gets some much needed development here, and Killua is great as always. Actually, as you may have already noticed, Gon's highly idealistic nature and naivety have already come back to bite him in the ass in this arc. His insistence on tagging along with Kaito cost his life, which is a sense of guilt that will build up and weigh Gon down as the arc progresses. Togashi takes the characters in some interesting and unpredictable directions in this arc, which despite its faults is something that I really enjoy about it.

[Dreamer2]

Did two episodes tonight and I really enjoyed them. It was really cool seeing Killua overcome his brother's influence and then pull out that thing from his head. And then he took care of that annoying Chimera Ant. Good episode for Killua. Oh yeah Palm's nuts. Like really nuts.

I'm also happy that Knuckle and the rest of the Hunters are starting to grow on me. I didn't care for them much at first, but I'm interested to see how they all do against the royal guard. Plus, Gon coming face to face with Kite was well done. Good stuff so far.