Hunter × Hunter
The "Hunter × Hunter" manga has received much praise for its plot and characters. In his 2007 book "", Jason Thompson described its storyline as "an almost random collection of psych-outs, battles, puzzles, and trickery" that works on both a chapter-by-chapter basis and a larger scale. Thompson elaborated that with all the goals and subplots of each of the main characters, the story could seemingly go on forever and is unpredictable enough to hold reader interest. In a different review for Anime News Network in 2012, Thompson wrote that it was hard to summarize the story because it is every "shōnen" manga in one, with training sequences, tournament battles, a crime-mystery story arc, and a virtual-reality, RPG-style story arc. But unlike most "shōnen" manga, he called "Hunter × Hunter" "incredibly dense." Examples being its fictional nen ability, which is explained "so thoroughly that you almost think it could exist," and the little challenges and games the characters face; "Over and over Togashi invents some little closed system or rules just so the heroes can break them; if he ever wants to change careers, I'd suggest game designer." Thompson praised the character art as great, pointing out how instead of alternating between realistic and chibi like other artists, Togashi has cartoony and realistic characters interacting in the same panels. Thompson did note how the artwork during its magazine run is often "sketchy" and missing backgrounds, but that Togashi goes back and fixes it for its collected "tankōbon" release. Mentioning Togashi's love of gore he stated "the whole manga is about the mixture of childish adventure and creepy, adult themes" and noted how some panels later in the manga are apparently censored for gore by being covered with screentone.
List of Hunter × Hunter characters
is the founder and shadow ruler of the Neo Green Life autonomous region who is said to be someone that Gon is fated to do battle with, using the country's resources to establish a criminal empire through the black market. As a human born in poverty, he suffered an abusive childhood at the hands of an alcoholic father before murdering him upon reaching a nihilistic self-realization that he is not regarded as a person. Raised afterward by the father of his best friend Zaiqahal, Gyro became antisocial with a desire to drown the world in evil. When the Chimera Ants began plaguing the NGL, Gyro had his men fight off the insects before they ultimately fell. Though fed to the Chimera Ant Queen, his evil being an influence in her later offspring as consequence, Gyro's will and pride endured as he is reborn a Chimera Ant that refused to follow the Queen's command, with his memories completely intect. Concealing his appearance to avoid arousing panic, fully renouncing his humanity, Gyro is forced to abandon the compromised NGL and start anew elsewhere. After Meruem's death, Welfin and Bizeff seek to reunite with their leader, the latter assuming that Gyro would most likely rebuild his criminal empire in Meteor City.