2012-02-09, 19:12
Daisuki-chan
Junior Member

Join Date: Jan 2012

Maybe the 2011 anime is more canon with some of the characterization (the various random magic Hisoka has no canon reason to be able to perform and how he was very much more just defending himself instead of proactively playing a murderous examiner earlier are for example quite stupid to me, and in this anime greatly hurt my enjoyment of his character, which I greatly enjoy in the manga and 1999 anime), but I find it hard to enjoy what characterization may be better given the poor music endemic to this series, and also because I care more about plot anyway.

Cutting Kaito from the beginning affects characterization regarding Gon's knowledge of his father/hunters and what that means to him as well, as well as being a large hole in the plot relative to the canon, which will have to be filled in later (and I really doubt a flashback will have the same impact as having this in its proper, canon place, especially given other issues I have), assuming this anime gets that far.

"Merging" Menchi's exam into Buhara's removed all depth from her character (not that I like her much anyway) and removed all subtlety and intelligence (on the part of the characters, who I much prefer to hear the thoughts of than a random narrator; this also plays into characterization for me) from her exam. The censorship of Killua's fight in Trick Tower retarded my enjoyment by a lot, too, as I greatly enjoyed the canon version in the 1999 anime.

Two of the issues (no Kaito, no real Menchi/her exam) I mentioned above make it irritating when time is wasted on filler (whether Gon and Killua being eaten by the frog...very stupid given their obvious superiority in canon over the nameless tards being trapped and killed at that time, or needlessly and painfully extending the time spent in the story on the time they had to spend in that room in the tower, and let's not forget the totally worthless clip show episode either) which has never been any good to me at all. The 1999 anime had some negative filler, but much of what was added worked well for me, of course very especially the two battleship island episodes.

I also can't remember anything more major than the showing of Hisoka vs. Kastro being cut due to censorship (something the new anime has much more of, and often in a way that stands out stupidly rather than blending in well enough) being removed in the 1999 anime, which I've watched four times, and even that was not actually truly removed from the plot, as what happened in relation to it came up normally right afterwards. Maybe these issues are few in number compared to all of the not infrequently highly subjective deviations from canon mentioned in comparisons, but they matter a great deal to me and thus can easily outweigh even hundreds of trivial changes.

Taking away canon and adding filler are simply not the same to me. I haven't watched much of it, but I know Naruto's [first] anime is nearly pure filler in the second half. Nonetheless if it included 100% of canon I would consider it more canon that an alternate Naruto that removes a "mere" 5% of canon and only adds a moderate amount of filler. The 1999 Hunter X Hunter anime didn't add that great a quantity of filler, and given that it wasn't all bad and even had amazing parts to it, in contrast to the solely useless or bad filler in the 2011 anime, it should be easy to understand that I don't honestly consider this new anime to be that highly canon at all.

The music in this version is just poor to me and really sucks the life out of scenes, and does so rather consistently. It also helps to enforce the high level of "shounenness" the time slot for this anime "demands", whereas the 1999 anime was darker, more subtle most of the time, and thus has more "seinen" appeal to me, something the manga also has quite a lot of; perhaps more and more over time. In contrast the 1999 anime had music I enjoyed a good deal, which I felt to express well a feeling of adventure (something I enjoy), among other things. I care about music a lot so this is one of the biggest factors to me for these anime, which contrast highly on this to me. The voice acting is also commonly clearly inferior to me in the new anime for side characters and also for Hisoka.

The 1999 anime also had suspense quite often, and maybe this was easier to accomplish due to drawing out the pacing for a fair while at first (including too much for me towards the very beginning, although me not much liking the filler then is the main factor in my feelings on those episodes), but what's there is there, and the 2011 anime simply lacks suspense over and over again to me, and when you combine this with crappy music and all the rest I simply find it hard to get into this version much anymore. It's been well over a cour's worth of episodes and improvement hasn't been nearly extreme enough to me, and most of that improvement is simply due to me enjoying certain exams more than others.

Last edited by Daisuki-chan; 2012-02-11 at 06:29. Reason: "most of that" --> "most of that improvement" for clarification