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.
Tillie Walden
While growing up, Walden read a lot of manga. From this, she gained a lot of major influence in her work, mainly on her artistic focus on line, more so than shape or color. The biggest manga artist that had an impact on her was Yoshihiro Togashi, creator of the manga "Hunter x Hunter". Additionally, in an interview, Walden has even said "Studio Ghibli has completely shaped my visual vocabulary and how I think about stories." Walden is said to have also been influenced by graphic memoirs, such as "Fun Home" by Alison Bechdel, "Blankets" by Craig Thompson and "Stitches" by David Small.