Re: Hunter x Hunter by Togashi Yoshihiro
Depends. Are you comparing magazine versions or the tank versions? There's quite a difference. And the artwork in the Chimaera Ant tankouban has been quite awesome. Major difference from the scribbles that were released in Weekly Shounen Jump for those same chapters.
I've seen few manga series with artwork as bad as the first few chapters of Hunter x Hunter. And you can't blame it on him having to get used to it, as you can with other manga series, because he was already a veteran mangaka at the time, with more than fifty volumes published... You'd think a guy knows how to draw properly by then. But yeah, Togashi's art style had changed with every few volumes, from the very beginning. Both the ratio of realism against comedic stylisation and the sheer 'quality' of his artwork have been going up and down throughout the entire series, at random.
During most of the Greed Island Arc, Togashi had been drawing in a very cutesy big-eyed style, with very awkward facial expressions en body shapes, and spent a lot of time drawing (and after a while, simply photocopying) trees for the background.
Then at some point he had been cheating most of the time with the backgrounds, scanning and stylising people partying (after Gon won Greed Island) and foresty landscapes (Killua's solo antics against the Ants come to mind), and with the current design of the palace, he was saving himself all that trouble, and creates a very clean and straight environment, so he'd spend most of his time drawing straight lines for the backgrounds. 'Get out your ruler, and do what any assistant could've!'
During the course of the arc, though, as the settings have gotten simpler and more urban, his characters and their designs have greatly improved (well, his human designs that is, the ants are all random and awkward, but that's what they're supposed to be, is what I keep telling myself...).
When he draws clothes, he uses quick scribbles on just the right places so you can see all the folds and strains on the fabric, without it becoming a mess of black stripes or anything. That's not something you can put on paper just like that: it means he knew exactly how he wanted them posed, and how their clothes would fit their bodies at that moment. This is especially notable for Shoot's garb, or for Morel's shirt. The man can't draw muscles though. He knows where they should be, and it's anatomically correct, but the proportions are all wacky (talking about all those shots of Montutyupi and Knuckle's torsos here, ughhhh).
But the greatest improvement has been facial expressions. It took him more than twohundred chapters, but Gon and Killua's faces during this last arc have been amazing. For example, take chapter 265 [Netero flashback, Netero vs Nefelpitoh, the encounter with Montutyupi on the central staircase and the dragon dive]:
- p01 -> awkward muscles are awkward
- p15 -> great facial expressions: Yupi, surprised but not startled. Morel, showing no emotions, appearing at ease, yet obviously isn't. Shoot, nervous but concentrated. Knuckle, scared but eager to go at the same time. Meleoron, nervously anticipating Yupi's actions. Flutter, emotionless, he's dead after all, just a puppet. And then Gon and Killua: if you look at their faces, they appear quite similar. Same glazy eyes, similar eyebrow shape, same mouth. But still, you can see they're both quite calm on the inside, but beneith that you can see Gon burning, and Killua concentrated to the extreme. It's subtleties like these that I enjoy greatly, when reading this manga, despite the fact that the plot didn't move a single inch with this page!
- p16-17 / p18-19 -> pay special attention to the posing of characters like Shoot and Knuckle, and the effect this has on their clothes. Or Gon's and Killua's shirts, for example. I especially love Shoot on page 17. At first his left foot seems kind of awkward, but then you notice he's bending his legs, and is actually sliding into place, since he's still in motion from the sudden burst into the room. All of this, and the awesome movement between the less-than-a-second that time moves forward between those two doublespreads look so awesome that you'd almost ignore that the stairs just grew about one and half times in size! (Seriously, take a look at the backgrounds, and compare it to the size of the characters, hahaha). Also, the background of those central stairways looks mighty impressive like that, but is all pretty simple to draw. Clearly some time was saved on all this.
But yeah, uhm, I was just saying, you don't see this kind of motion and emotion in the character art of Greed Island, especially with some of the characters (Biscuit, Genthru, to name a few) not even having shown more than two or three different facial expressions throughout the entire arc. In the aspect of character art, York Shin City was a lot better than Greed Island, you could say. And in the current arc, Meryem, ugly as his design may be, has at least shown to be a much more intricate character in both personality, character developement, and expressions than any Greed Island character I can remember... Moreover, we're actually delving into the psyche of the enemies this time again, which hasn't really happened since the spiders.
TL;DR: I love this arc. Characters and character artwork are great. >_>
(Also, just for the record: I'm a great fan of Greed Island as well, moreso than any part of YorkShin City or any of the earlier arcs, it's not that I'm specifically calling it bad.)
edit/ I was taking a break from writing a paper due monday, and during said break, I typed in more words than I had left to write for said paper...
That's a great surprise
, Well that is only beggining so who knows , and btw YEEEEAAh finally hunter is back !!
but a good color page!