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 second youngest sibling of Killua. While the other members of the Zoldyck family refer to Alluka as male or as an object, Killua, who is the closest to Alluka, states that Alluka is female. Alluka is a dark child with the ability to grant wishes and a second personality, named by Killua. Once a person grants three requests made by Alluka, Nanika grants their wish. The bigger the wish, the bigger Alluka's demands will be for the next person. If four of Alluka's demands are refused in a row, at least two people, the refusee and their closest friend/love, will die. A larger wish requires more deaths in the next round when the demands are refused; dying in the order of the amount of time they have spent with the refusee. Once people die in refusal, the demands "reset" to the lowest difficulty level. Because Alluka's power is considered too dangerous, Alluka is locked up alone in a room full of toys. Fearing that Killua will ask Alluka's help to save Gon's life, Illumi asks for Hisoka's help in searching for and killing Alluka, as Alluka poses a grave danger to the entire Zoldyck family in the case of Killua getting killed by Alluka's power. Killua eventually has Alluka cure Gon without consequence, this is because Killua can make demands of Nanika without paying a price. After Gon is healed, Killua demands Nanika not grant anyone else's wishes and starts traveling together with Alluka. The caption to a standalone illustration of Alluka in Volume 33 of "Hunter × Hunter" reads "Ai. I'm from the Dark Continent.," suggesting that Alluka's power is due to the Gaseous Life-form: that humans brought back from the Dark Continent.