Jump Super Anime Tour (Jsat) 98' Hunter X Hunter Pilot episode

[TheAmericandream]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTbaUFgfxt4

Has anyone else seen this? It's a neat take on the first two chapters of the manga made by studio Pierot (animators of Yu Yu Hakusho and Naruto I believe) 1999 vs 2011? This lil' guy game first, the original gangster of HxH animation , it really reflects how different looking the first chapter of HxH look and the era this comes from. I think its actually pretty darn good and I'd personally hold this up as the best adaptation of the first chapter so far.

It never had a proper release outside of VHS in Japan I believe but if you poke around or note me you can find it subbed without too much trouble via the interweb. Shonen Jump does pilot episodes for a lot of their series to varying success at capturing the source material.

This is one of the few pilots where I actually like it as much as the two series we got in a lot of regards. The filler on the boat is kinda silly (and Kurapika's red hair oh my...), but I think it mostly falls in line with some of the other crazier animals in HxH. Just figured I'd create this post so people who didn't know about it can check it out, and those who have seen it give their thoughts on this quirky little pilot OVA.

[SHINOBI-03]

I saw it, and I thought the original story with the monster was weird and doesn't seem to fit with the HxH. Yes, we do see some bizarre creatures, but this one felt more magical or mystical and seemed out of place.

[TheAmericandream]

Yea it's really odd! Though we do have transforming creatures in HxH, I recently rewatched it. And seeing it again I felt, well...this could maybe happen given the context of the magical beasts we have seen. Still I mostly just take it as fun yet silly filler.

[thatguy3331]

oh yeah I remember this, I saw it while back when it was subbed on youtube, but it was taken down... lame...

Either way I thought it was a nice flick to see, and since this is only a OVA jump special I can easily see why they abridged the begining into having that seamonster. (I still found it kinda wierd though, I thought that would be a nen monster or something XD)

The design of gon here with his clothes and slightly his voice really made me think these people wanted to sell gon off as a succsessor to yuske from togashi's last work.

[Crude]

The giant tentacled monster was pretty weird, but overall the OVA was very enjoyable. It's always cool seeing how different people adapt a particular story. The animation was pretty great, but sometimes it was a little too fluid and the characters would go off-model (Leorio in particular). It's funny how different Gon is in all three Hunter x Hunter anime. In this OVA he's very much like your classic cocky shonen hero (he does remind me a little of Yusuke xD).

[futurefrog]

Ahh yes, seen this a fair while back, not too fond of the Boat sequences as I found the whole Kraken thing to be very generic shonen filler, didn't enjoy it. I did however love the Kite flashback, which was done superbly here, better than the 99 series without a doubt. I look forward to see how 2011 tackles it after Heaven's Arena.

[Netero]

I watched this a couple months back when it was subbed on YT. I loved the first half of the ova, and the animation was pretty good for it being made in 1998.

[chei]

Anyone has details on why studio Pierrot didn't get green light for the project, but Nippon Animation had gotten it?

[futurefrog]

Anyone has details on why studio Pierrot didn't get green light for the project, but Nippon Animation had gotten it?

I don't know the official reasoning for this but it most likely means that this pilot episode was poorly received which led them to hand the reigns to Nippon Animation instead of Pierrot. This is all speculation though, but that is usually the case in these instances.

[Uriel]

I saw it a few months ago too. I did not liked it, to be honest. I reminded me old movies which was cool, but somehow lacked completely the spirit of HxH. It was well animated and all that, but felt weird anyway.

[Refraction]

Here's the book (leaflet) dealing with the specials that aired at the Tour!

It's possible that Pierrot wasn't even in the running to animate the series in the first place, though it's tempting to think that they would've been the first port of call after dealing with Hakusho. Production IG did the ONE PIECE special for the event, for example, but I would express reservations that that particular studio would've wished to elect to handle something like ONE PIECE in an televised capacity: I just don't think it would be the kind of studio to grapple with a show of that length. I reckon that both studios were just elected to produce a short special to put in animation a couple of Jump's new manga that had started up recently; I don't think they were necessarily potential contenders, as it were. Poor old Takeshi didn't even get an anime in the end...!

Not sure how the whole process of bringing together a team to work on an anime works, but I guess Nippon Animation was already known to have dealt with long-running shows like Chibi Maruko-chan in the past--and it had at least one Shonen Jump property on its CV, like Captain Tsubasa--so it might have just been a fairly standard go-to studio for this sort of thing, back in the day, perhaps like Studio Pierrot is now.

As regards the footage, I know a few people here aren't that happy with the feel of it, but I have to confess that the whole atmosphere of it aligns pretty closely to my own reading of the comic when I picked it up 6 years ago. I'm really quite fond of that little session between Gon and Mito in the kitchen.

[TheAmericandream]

I think its my favorite adaptation of the first chapter of HxH (including manga, 1999 anime, new series so far (we havent seen this series kite to be fair) and I've considered showing it to my friends who are curious about the series first. The later half however is pretty lolsy though I still find it fun.