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Hunter X Hunter

 Author: Yoshihiro Togashi

Volumes: 37 English & Japanese (Ongoing at 400 Chapters)

Publisher: Shonen Jump [click HERE for digital chapters]

Hunter x Hunter, where the x in the name is silent; is one of those series with an incredibly loving fan base, who are very quick to tell you just how deep the magic system is!

It definitely is too. Togashi comes across as somebody that wants to make a comic series that he can be proud of from a narrative perspective more than anything else. He can definitely draw and render when he wants to, but a lot of the time it’s his characters that bring his series to life.

World building less so, and for the longest time Hunter X Hunter didn’t really have a world map… and even when it finally got one it was revealed to be a fraction of the whole in service of more existential threats to come. In fact I have a feeling the dark continent surrounding the main map is purely there to make sure the chimaera ant arc doesn’t have trouble explaining why these bigger threats weren’t at play then.

If you’re interested in finding out whether or not this series is for you, I guarantee you’ll know by chapter 3, which incidentally is one of my absolute favourites in the entire story. Our protagonists are taking the hunter exam, and as part of it the way forward is blocked by an old lady with a question, a test of character. The question being a type of trolley problem requiring an answer, and it’s how each character comes to their conclusion that first told me I was in for something great.

In every arc, what defines the characters, defines where we go and what they do, it’s for that reason that I think the magic system stands out so much, as it’s the one exception to this rule. Unlike everything else in Hunter X Hunter the magic system, Nen, is allowed to have just as much meat to it as the character development does.

There are 5 (technically 6) Nen types, Manipulation, Emission, Enhancement, Transmutation, and Conjuration. The order of which I’ve listed them can be grouped clockwise from south west to south east, with the very southern most spot being left for the Specialist type, a typing which more often than not is there for when the hand of the author needs to ignore the strict set of rules the other 5 groups have.

The reason you group them clockwise at 6 points is because with the exception of Specialist, a type next to your own can still be implemented pretty well, where as a type farthest is near impossible to make good use of, and this ensures that the complexity of the magic system isn’t so rigid that specialists show up everytime we need something more to play with.

Also you can see Nen’s influence on future shonen genre comics, just look at binding vows in Hunter X Hunter and Ability Explanations in Jujutsu Kaisen, while being different enough to one another, to link between the two’s practical applications of increase risk for greater reward are clear as day.

There’s only one magic system I like just as much if not more though, and it’s still to come in our list!