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 Hell Teacher Nūbē characters
Hiroshi Tateno ("Tateno Hiroshi" 立野広) is the main male student character in the series and one of Nūbē's most active supporters. A transfer student who arrives in Doumori Elementary at the start of the manga, he is at first suspicious of his teacher's exorcism claims, but eventually comes around due to being saved from one spiritual problem after another. Typical of many young shōnen leads in manga and anime, he is the courageous, heroic male of the class who is always standing up to fight against any obstacle, whether they be human or yōkai or whether it makes sense or not. His favorite pastime is playing soccer for the school. Hiroshi's downside is his own stupidity: he has some of the worst grades in Nūbē's class and once even set a record for having a hundred 0s in a row on his tests. This lack of brains both causes him to have outlandish comments on simple ideas and leads him to many of his yōkai problems. He once even wet his pants after a ghost scared him in a restroom. His character's name is a tribute to the main male lead of Dokonjyou Gaeru, a classic 70s Weekly Shōnen Jump series Shou and Okano used as an influence for "Nūbē".