Yoshihiro Togashi

[Spark Of Spirit]

Before I forget; best moment in the entire arc so far and not really all that spoiler-iffic:



I swear to God, Knuckle better not get shit on or nerfed by Togashi after this arc ends.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Third hiatus at 290.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So a few chapters into the Chimera Ant arc and he's not only casually killed off several characters from the early part of the manga, and basically referred to a "guard" level character above two of the strongest characters in this manga. On top of it, there's even more pointless slaughter and most of the enemy characters are so boringly generic that I'm not even intrigued to see where this goes.

I'm sorry to say that I'm not really that impressed, EK. It's pretty much everything I didn't like about earlier arcs rolled into this one.

The arc starts out pretty slow and boring, picks up around the middle, and then plumets down in quality again right about after Togashi's 2nd big hiatus.

If you read any of my thoughts on the Chimera arc then you wouldn't need to explain to me about the mass mudering thing since I myself have already complained about that to no end on other forums. Its just Togashi making for a cheap ploy to make things seem dire and grand in scale by killing off a bunch of minor or no-name characters. There is some great character development in this arc for both Gon and Killua, and there are some fun and interesting new characters introduced in this arc like Knuckle who I swear is HXH's version of Kuwabara (except he's actually treated with way more respect as a character).

On the downside, the arc is really only good for 30-40 chapters before it goes seriously downhill again, You'll see what I mean after about chapter 260-270....yeah, this shit goes on for over 100 chapters, and its STILL not finished yet.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh, heh....I didn't even notice all of your other posts.....I sure feel silly.

Anyways, Knuckle is by far my favorite new character of this arc. He has all of the awesome elements of Kuwabara mixed in with some more emotional character traits that really makes him feel like a really fleshed out character. He's also easily one of the most likable characters in this entire series.

I pretty much agree that most of the villains are one-note and pretty lame, but I do at least like how the main Chimera Ants get some pretty decent character development. Werefin and the others start getting memories of their lives as humans and start showing signs of changing and having more well-developed thoughts. Nef and the Meruem's 2 other loyal servants show a lot of blind devotion for him, but I find it to be an interesting twist that in this case they aren't the ones who start changing their attitude towards his actions or questioning him, but that Meruem himself is the one questioning himself. He doesn't know why but he won't allow the only human who could ever beat him at anything (the blind girl) to be killed, and has obviously developed some sort of feelings about her that he can't explain. His servants are aware of that and while Nef tries to keep her alive trying to be as loyal to Meruem as possible, the other 2 want her dead because they feel that she is poisoning Meruem's mind. That's some REALLY interesting chemisty between the main villains.

Where the arc falls apart is with just about everything else. Togashi tries to cram way too much shit into the arc at once, making it drag out far longer than it should have. For someone as experienced as him I wouldn't have expected him to fall into this trap and continue going down this route. He should take cues from his earlier manga, Yu Yu Hakusho, to remember how to properly pace a story without having a single arc overstay its welcome for WAY too long.

[Spark Of Spirit]

The thing is... There is absolutely no reason why this arc needed to be so damn long. The Ryodan part adds really nothing to the overall story, the humanization of the Chimera starting with Colt and his small pack of allies isn't explored again for a ridiculously giant amount of time. While some fights were interesting, they were really scattershot all over the place with the best ones being all of Knuckle, Killua, and Morau (or Morel, however they want to translate it) having the best fights by far. While I still miss Kurapika and Leorio, those guys were by far the best part of the arc. Welfin really grew on me once he started spilling his past,

Killua's family is totally wasted again, the old man jobs pretty hard, and... other than the Youpi Vs Knuckle/Shoot/Morau/Meleoron fight these "final fights" (Dear God, this must be near the end, right?) are pretty badly paced with too much happening and outside pacing interfering. It would have been nice if that fight ended with their strategy succeeding, but I don't actually hate what transpired at the end of it since every part of the fight was actually really interesting, nail biting, and satisfying. Ikalgo and Welfin's skirmish was entertaining, however. But still, watching Gon sit angrily is getting old.

I still think Hisoka would have fit a lot better in this arc than he did in Greed Island, but considering how pointlessly the other Ryodan (well, yeah he's ex, but you know what I mean) were shoved in for filler it's probably good that he didn't.

I really hope he finishes it when he comes back. Every single hiatus in this arc is placed in the worst possible parts of the story.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

If news of the new anime turns out to be true, then Togashi will probably be forced to at the very least finish up this arc.

Also, as far as Knuckle vs. Yupi goes, I LOVED that fight....up until the end where Yupi held Morel hostage. It just pissed me off to no end that a fight that one of the good guys finally fairly had won through good strategy and endurance still got shoved in their face when some other unofortunate incident caused them to be set back. There's such a thing as going too overboard with making the situation way too hopeless for the good guys, and Togashi crosses that line. Its not even as entertaining or tense as much as it is downright depressing (and in a bad way).

The fight between Netero and Meruem also pissed me off to no end. I mean, REALLY TOGASHI? REALLY!?! He had it clearly won when he sacrificed his own life and you still come up with a bull-shit reason to allow Meruem to live. That just pisses me off.

I love Togashi's work on YYH, Level E, and previous arcs of HXH, but right now he's pretty much almost as bad as Kubo with how he needlessly drags out his own story and makes it a total cluster-fuck by cramming in way too many ideas and losing the coherency of the story. There are some strong points to this arc, especially on the side of character development, but the plot just turns to crap by the final third (of what's CURRENTLY out of the arc, anyways, since its STILL not finished). Really, Togashi needs to end this arc and save the series while there's still time by starting a new arc that does what he should have done A LONG-ASS TIME AGO, he should reintroduce Kurapika and Leorio back into the story and start up a stand-alone story arc from scratch with interesting villains and a well-constructed plot. Either that, or continue the plot with the Ryodan as they are the only genuinely interesting villains in this series aside from Hisoka, IMO.

Either that, or Togashi can go for the traditional shonen time-skip (though do it in his own way), and start up a sequel series from scratch. That'd be pretty practical in this sort of situation (especially since he wrote himself into a corner in that he needs an excuse for the characters to get exponentially more powerful in order to even mean anything in this series anymore).

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, I'm right by the end now and that sacrifice was freaking annoying. I'm not anticipating where this is going because the good guys literally have NO ONE who comes close to any of those Chimera any more short of a random cameo.

I can't see this arc ending in anything but a cop out, and that's really annoying.

Unless of course he really DID write himself into a corner with this arc and can't think of any way to finish it off to a point where it works logically. If that's the case, then for what reason did he make them so powerful in the first place? Who did he think was actually going to beat them?

[Spark Of Spirit]

That's it?!? What the heck did he end it there for?!?

All the good guys who can fight are down, only two bad guys left (who are probably about to fight), a main character left in a totally ridiculous situation, and yet he just stops???

Why?




Uuuuggghhh, Togashi.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I have long since-suspected that Togashi secretly hates his own fan-base....

[Spark Of Spirit]

Other than Meruem (pre-macguffin) and Youpi (but ONLY during the battle royale before he became a retard), he hasn't written a good pure bad guy since York Shin.

Pitou, for instance, is probably the worst villain Togashi has ever written. And for some reason is more powerful than everyone else in this manga.

While we got some really good characters eventually (Hell, Werefin killed Youpi which probably means Pouf is now useless) out of the enemies, most were pretty one dimensional and starting out the arc by making them seem stronger than people like Hisoka or Kuroro is fucking insulting.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Pitou isn't the worst villain. He/she (yeah, the various manga translators are never clear on Pitou's gender) is just Meruem's loyal servant. There's nothing downright stand-out or terrible about that villain. Its all those needless, minor, 1-dimensional Chimera Ants that are Togashi's worst written villains. Instead of having a bunch of shallow minor villains that serve as useless fodder, Togashi should focus on just a few of them that are actually interesting. To be fair in the latest parts of the arc it really has just been focused on the main villains, but its too little too late. By now the damage of how much Togashi has messed up this arc has already been done, and now it just needs to come to an end as soon as possible.

[Spark Of Spirit]

It's back!

And it looks like it won't be long before the end since the king doesn't have much longer to live according to Palm. I'm guessing the possibility is that the life restoration they gave the king is only temporary, since it isn't like there is anyone who could kill him right now. That's pretty much all I got. The rest of the chapter just seemed weird.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It didn't seem weird to me at all.

Really brilliant chapter, in fact. It felt like pure Togashi. I loved how Ikalgo pointed out that they are just as cruel as the Chimera Ants in the methods that they have to resort to in order to outwit them. There was no generic action in this chapter, but instead interesting dialogue and a Chapter Black-esque feeling of how humans are just as shitty as any of the monsters in this series.

I really liked this chapter. I sincerely hope that Togashi maintains this sort of quality from now on, and also wraps up this arc as soon as possible.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I think it is going to end soon. The chapter seemed to go out of its way to make the point that there's only a few "hours" left, so as long as he doesn't dawdle like he did when they stormed the palace, there probably won't be much left.

As long as he doesn't go on another break in 10 chapters, anyway.

[Spark Of Spirit]

It's not looking good for Werefin. 

It also looks like Pouf isn't much longer for this world judging from what happened to Youpi, really leaving me to wonder what Togashi is planning to do to finish this off.