Yoshihiro Togashi's Hunter x Hunter is one of the best-written series from Weekly Shonen Jump. The depth of its character, story, and themes is something most mangaka can only dream of achieving. Togashi's hiatuses could afford him the benefit of time to plot out his stories more thoroughly than other mangaka, who must improvise every week. Either way, Hunter x Hunter fulfills a need most Jump readers don't even realize they have; most read the magazine for cool fights, wacky adventures, and imaginative world-building (which HXH also delivers on). With all that said, if there were one arc the majority would point to and call the best, it would be the Chimera Ant Arc.
The Chimera Ant Arc is considered the series' best for several reasons. It has the highest stakes, the most action, the best character development, and the most carefully planned and executed story arc. The other arcs leading up to this one, while brilliant in their own right, pale in comparison (though the Yorknew City Arc is often considered a close second). This arc represents the culmination of many story elements, character arcs, and narrative themes leading up to it, and it left fans excited to see how Togashi would surpass himself in future arcs. It has a lot to praise and only gets more brilliant when reviewed.
The Stakes of Hunter x Hunter Arcs Before the Chimera Ant Arc
The Main Storyline Was Gon Searching For His Father
One of the main changes to how things played out in the Chimera Ant Arc is how the stakes were altered and raised. In previous arcs, the stakes were relatively minor. They all involved Gon's quest to find his father and the challenges he faced along the way. These challenges weren't always matters of life and death, and the need for Gon's success or failure depended on what he was aiming for in each situation. There might not even be a fight for Gon and his friends to win or lose.
This lack of danger would turn most viewers away from another anime, especially one marketed as an action-adventure battle shonen like Hunter x Hunter. The idea of such a series, where the arcs conclude without facing the central antagonist in a final battle (or even facing his top-ranked underlings in one-on-one battles), sounds lacking in theory. Another work would be accused of having nothing happen and quickly lose the audience's investment. However, people remained invested because it's Hunter x Hunter.
This series knows that the audience will want to know whether the main character achieves their goals as long as that character wants it and gets excited over accomplishing it. This way, the goal can be anything from winning a battle to saving a friend to getting better at fighting. These kinds of stakes unrelated to the outcome of a match happen all the time in stories, but Togashi does this more than any other battle shonen author. This unexpectedly satisfying payoff in a series like this is one of many reasons even casual audiences purely hoping for more action will stick with it.
That said, there were enough high-stakes situations to keep audiences anticipating them. In traditional shonen fashion, the fights would grow more intense as Gon and his friends powered up and faced increasingly dangerous situations and powerful opponents who matched or, in many cases, severely outclassed them. However, even this wouldn't prepare anyone for what happened in the Chimera Ant Arc.
The Chimera Ant Arc Heightened The Stakes
Many Characters Met Their End in The Chimera Ant Arc
The casual, battle-starved audience's patience was ultimately rewarded once the Chimera Ant Arc got underway. The most significant stakes in prior arcs came from conflicts involving Gon and his friends. There might have been something more serious and dangerous brewing in the background that was relevant to many people, but it only mattered to the audience if it pertained to the main cast. Gon and his friends' conflicts were relatively minor and personal compared to an arc's overarching conflict.
However, the Chimera Ant Arc compelled audiences to care much more about what was happening in the background. The arc's eponymous antagonists would threaten the human race with extinction if they weren't stopped. Their goal was to consume any other species they could find and assimilate their traits, and humans proved particularly appetizing. Even if Gon only took a passing role in the fight for humanity (which he ultimately did), the fate of humanity is too great a stake for anyone to ignore.
An added tension in the conflict came with the Chimera Ants' rapid evolution. The species develops by assimilating other life forms they eat. They started with animals like fish and other insects. However, they became much more dangerous once they began eating humans. Eating this intelligent species raised their intelligence, made them do deplorable things only humans would think of, and made them hungry for more. Encountering Hunters led them to develop efficiency with Nen, which made them dangerous even to the most skilled Hunters.
This unimpeded growth created an urgency that forced the main characters to do everything they could to confront these monsters before they became too powerful to stop. The Chimera Ants showed how dangerous they could be once they started killing people. They began with locals in their area. However, they eventually moved on to others. They killed soldiers and even got the upper hand on Hunters.
Most importantly, they began racking up kills among named cast members. Their kill count included older characters like Ponzu, Pokkle, and even Chairman Isaac Netero, one of the best Hunters alive. They also "killed" Gon's close friend Kite, which is what got him so invested in this crisis. The Ants would even kill each other depending on the circumstances. This arc made it clear that everyone was susceptible to what these creatures could do.
The Character Arcs and Development in the Chimera Ant Arc
Gon Went Down a Path of Darkness in the Chimera Ant Arc
The Chimera Ant Arc was surprisingly fascinating for how it developed its characters. Changes in a story that profoundly affects the characters and how they act are some of the most engaging in a story, and the Chimera Ant Arc is filled with them. This arc started with the standard development of the new supporting cast members, the complex and engaging people Gon would meet along his journey. However, the arc surpassed these expectations to bring audiences something truly memorable.
One of the most significant developments of this series was that of the main villains, the Chimera Ants. They started the series as monsters who acted primarily on basic physiological needs and survival instincts. Their acquisition of human intelligence was unsettling because it gave them traits indicative of an intelligent species, like critical and strategic thinking. This initially makes them cruel and sadistic because they don't understand empathy, but that slowly changes as the species grows and interacts with more humans rather than eating them.
Even the Ant King Meruem, who deliberately killed his mother during childbirth and beheaded anyone who mildly irritated him, gradually developed into someone who could humble himself and consider the needs of others. Unfortunately, the Chimera Ants remained a consistent threat to humanity. Even if they wanted to negotiate a truce, the human side couldn't accept anything where more people would be eaten and killed. This led the Hunters to use whatever means they could to kill the Ant King and his Royal Guard, including the HXH world's equivalent to a nuclear bomb.
Netero even gloated about human "evolution" (read as "malice" in Japanese) when bombing the Ant King. It created a surprising parallel where the villains were developing their morality and the "heroes'" were degrading. It was as though the monsters were becoming more human while the humans were going in the opposite direction. The humans' moral degradation was most visible through the series' protagonist, Gon Freecs. After losing Kite to Neferpitou, he went from upbeat and friendly to cold and spiteful; he embodied the human malice Netero mentioned.
His descent parallels Meruem's ascent to humanity. The best part about this change is how it's technically in character for Gon. The series up to this point did well to illustrate Gon as unhinged and sociopathic, but his positive, shonen protagonist traits made audiences dismiss the negative ones. This made Gon's "descent" a welcome surprise. Incidentally, other well-established characters in this arc received dramatic developments in their story arcs, especially Netero and Killua. These shifts in how the main characters act are what some people live for.
The Chimera Ant Arc's Unbelieveably Complex Story
The Chimera Ant Arc is also praised for the complexity of its narrative. Knowing what's going on requires keeping track of the characters, ther motives, their various abilities and the power system that governs them, the setting, and several other plot devices, the pressure-sensitive elevator that emits sleeping gas, a broken board for an in-universe strategy game, the layout of the Palace grounds, etc..
Every anime has plenty of these, but the Chimera Ant Arc has ridiculous amounts of moving parts acting simultaneously. It sounds overcomplicated, but it's done in a way that maintains the story's flow; the audience can keep track of what's happening and stay invested in the plights of everyone involved. Nen adds to the complexity of this arc. In most anime, a character's powers are only integral to understanding how they fight. In Hunter x Hunter, everyone has wildly differing powers that can influence the overarching plot.
Such abilities include Knov's teleportation powers, Neferpitou's puppet-themed powers, Welfin's Missileman, Knuckle's Hakoware, and many more. This arc also introduces a new facet of the power system by introducing Nen abilities that grow after the user dies. Anyone who wants to keep track of this arc must know who has what powers, how each power works, and how they could be used as the story progresses.
Luckily, everything audiences must know to follow the final battle, the palace invasion, is carefully set up as the arc progresses. The story sets up its most important plot devices through engaging developments through everything that happens. By the time the climax comes around, audiences should have plenty of information to understand the palace invasion's chaotic series of events.
The palace invasion craziness is best emphasized by its rapid succession of events. In only ten seconds, the series covers what's happening to various characters in different places, what they're thinking and feeling, and how each move from everyone impacts everything else that's going on. Even if things slow down after these first ten seconds, it shows how much thought was put into this arc. The only thing that might surpass it is whatever Togashi has planned for the Succession Contest Arc, which has more moving parts but has yet to conclude.
