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 Chimera Ant and the most powerful of the Queen's offspring as a result of her feeding on only humans, possessing the Specialist Nen ability to assimilate the aura of those he consumes and increase his power greatly. Forcing himself to be born at the cost of the Queen's life, Meruem was born arrogant with little sense of identity aside from his supposed destiny and preconceived notions of his kind's superiority over humans. Meruem leaves N.G.L. with his Royal Guards in search of a place to establish his colony while acquiring a mate outside his species to conceive an Chimera Ant queen. This led to Merum taking over the Republic of East Gorteau, having Pitou use the corpse of its dictator Ming Jol-ik to order a mandatory gathering of East Gorteau's entire population for a national rally to create a situation in which entire towns and villages could be secretly abducted for a "selection": the forcible awakening of Nen in order for Pouf to create an army of Chimera Ant-hybrid soldiers for world domination. The Hunter Association mobilizes an extermination team to raid the East Gorteau kingdom and assassinate Meruem, composed of a selected team of professional Hunters.