Hunter x Hunter is a shonen series based on the manga by Yoshihiro Togashi. Hunter x Hunter follows Gon, twelve-year-old boy following in his father's footsteps to become a Hunter, Killua, another child who is from a family of assassins and is himself an assassin trying escape that life, Leario, a young male who wants to become a doctor and Kurapika, a person who wants revenge on a group who killed his clan (Kurapika's gender is never made clear. The anime leads one to believe Kurapika is a male, but there are also several scenes where they contradict it).

Box set 2 is a three-disc set that deals with multiple Hunter exams. Three exams are completed in the box set while it finishes off a fourth.  The box set starts off at the end of a tower to test their skill as a Hunter applicant where the four of them are forced to team up with Tonpa, an applicant whose goal is to eliminate as many newbie candidates as possible. After beating the tower the group moves to an island where they are forced to work together to survive a unique weather phenomena that brings a tidal surge high enough to engulf the island. After this the group is brought to another island where they are pitted against each other in order to capture their badges. Finally, the set ends with a one-on-one fighting tournament, but with a twist. Instead of defeating your opponent, you must get them to admit surrender and the loser advances, so that only one will lose in the end. However, killing your opponent disqualifies the participant.

Hightlights


While the anime really has a lot of great conent there are two scenes that really stand out in this box set. The first is in episode seventeen. The group is still in the tower where they meet their final challenge: a set of doors where the group must decide whether to pick the short road that will leave two of the five members behind or the long road that will allow them all to continue, but for which they don't have enough time. After things come to blows, Gon figures out that they can choose the latter and break through the wall allowing them to all make it safely and in a much shorter time..

The second disc which mostly contains the badge collecting test has the best highlights dealing with Hisoka, a somewhat insane jester has a problem controlling his bloodlust at times. He makes Joker from Batman look sane. Gon had the unfortunate luck of having to go after Hisoka's badge and he had to figure out get it from him as Gon knew he was too weak for a frontal attack. After watching a bird catch a fish who was trying to catch a bug, he waited for Hisoka to launch an attack with his fishing pole. That climatic moment when it snagged the badge was one of the best on the whole box set.

Overall

While I have not been a fan of some of Togashi's other work (notably his other famous work, Yu Yu Hakasho) as being too focused on the combat and losing the comedic elements, especially in the anime, and some of the secondary characters were relegated into irrelevence (my favorite from that series being Botan who became relegated to side character at best), Hunter x Hunter knows when its gone too far in one direction. Yes, it has intense fighting, but it keeps the twist and turns going and does not lose its soul like some of his earlier works did. The anime keeps this alive by not removing those more light-hearted elements and the filler episodes it has are more light-hearted, perhaps because of the main character's young age. Box set 2 is really divided in such a way that each disc is its own little mini-arc and has a completely different tone and than the others. The first one deals with teamwork, the second deals with survival and fighting others and the third is a one-on-one battle, but rather than skill it's about determination.

Of the three discs, the first one is probably the weakest. The first two episodes finish up the previous arc and the next three are filler episodes (the anime makes light of this by having the Hunter examiner stating the stage was a “bonus”). While I really liked the final two episodes from the tower arc, I felt it would have been better had Viz put them in their first box set allowing the arc to wrap up nicely.  Since the series has sixity-two episodes, I feel the first box set would have been the best to add two episodes to so that arc would have been completed. The other three episodes, all filler eisodes, were not bad, but they introduced character inconsistencies that were directly opposed, some of them in earlier episodes. For example, Leario gets motion sickness while riding a blimp when one of the first pre-exams was to make certain everyone could cope with motion sickness and he was completely fine. This kind of regressing, which often comes from filler episodes like these, spoil otherwise decent plot ideas.

The second disc was by far the strongest as it dealt with the badge hunt. As previously mentioned, the  battle with Gon and Hisoka was the highlight, but the whole disc was great except scenes dealing with Tonpa. Although even that has one exception. It is one of the funnier scenes from the box set. Tonpa wanting to pass the examine happens upon Ponzu, a female applicant, while she's knocked out from sleeping gas. As he tries to grab her badge in her hand, she wakes up and finds her own badge that had been hidden in her pocket missing as it had previously been taken by Leario so he could advance. Seeing Tonpa nearby she clobbers him thinking he stole it. A fitting end to that joke character and also makes it so she shouldn't hold resentment against Leario.

The final disc is the tournament and while it had its moments, especially the ending to Gon's battle, it was largely not as great. I remember when I read it I was more impressed with that part than I was watching the anime. Still it was far from dull and I still thoroughly enjoyed myself. My only complaint is that it ended in somewhat of the middle of the arc. While the tournament had been resolved and the Hunter licenses issued, it still left in what felt like the middle of an arc. However, unlike box set one, this one had somewhat of a conclusion.

ComicsOnline gives Hunter x Hunter: Box Set 2  a 4 out of 5 new Hunters.