- Joined
- Feb 4, 2009
- Messages
- 839
- Reaction score
- 2,420
- Age
- 37
- Gender
- Male
Well, I guess it's my turn to give my opinion on this...
For starters, I wasn't a HxH fan when the new series started, and therefore didn't have the nostalgia mask on me. Yes, I was aware of the series and aware of some plot point from random episodes I saw on TV back in the day, but wasn't that familiar with it until I decided to start buying the manga. I was going to start watching the old series, but the news of the remake changed my mind and decided to watch the new one instead as well as catching up on the manga.
Now, as for which one is better, here's what I say: Since I'm a guy who cares about the plot over anything else, I prefer the one closest to the original material and made the least amount of deviations or changes. Back in the day, I didn't really care that much about differences between adapted material and source materials and enjoyed some TV original materials, but there are two things that changed my mind and made realize the importance of sticking to the source material: Black Cat the anime and the Harry Potter movies.
Black Cat is one my most favorite shonen series of all time. Great story, great characters, and great art. It's so good that I went ahead and bought all the manga volumes. (It ranks 15the place in my top 20 anime and manga of all time). And when the sign that says a 20 volume manga is adapted to a mere 25 episodes, yeah... something doesn't sound right... and boy did I hate that anime!! The anime was total crap! They got the plot wrong, they got the characters wrong, they got everything wrong! And that pissed me off a lot! How could they destroy a great series to be made into a shallow anime like that?!
As for the Harry Potter movies, yeah, I know they are movies and they can't adapt everything from the books, but as of Goblet of Fire, I started to dislike them more and more. Not just with the plot, but with the characters. I wanted to see the house elves and they didn't bring them up. Not to mention the challenges in the maze that was looking forward to.
Thanks to them, I started to put the plot over everything in an adaptation. Hell, even Jurassic Park-my all time favorite movie I started to dislike after reading the novel. The Lost World even more because the novel and the movie are so different from each other.
Back to Hunter x Hunter, the old series made a lot of unnecessary changes in plot and characters, and I didn't like them. And not to repeat what everyone else has already said, but Furuhashi's direction felt like he didn't know what he was working on. He didn't understand the characters, didn't understand the plot, didn't understand the key elements and that's why this series did not appeal to manga readers who dis any changes from the original source material. Yeah, it got a lot of fans to the series and there are still who use the "Without the old series the new one wouldn't be popular" card. Yes, that may what introduced us to it, but the real reason for the popularity of the new one is this:
The new series got it right this time. They got the mood right, they got the characters right and know what they are working on. A lot of the negative views on it was because the old series purists didn't see the fake darkness they had in their series. Their series started "dark and gloomy" and din't like how happy and cheerful the new one is and called it a "dumbed down version for the kiddies" without realizing that the manga started that way. I mean, just look at the front cover:
Does this cover look like a "dark, edgy, serious and gloomy" series? No. It looks like a light hearted shonen series. The manga did get darker as it went on, but it did not start that way. But thanks to the direction of the old series it made it sound like HxH is dark beginning to end and all goofy moment in the new series are out of place and considered an "insult" even though the old series had its share of goofy moments as well. For example: Gon vs Hanzo fight. They didn't like the comedic aspect of the fight even though it was supposed to be comedic.
Now, is what I said means all changes are bad? not necessary. Sometimes changes are good if they fixed something. Most notably is Hisoka's massacre in the swamps. I know that a lot of fans didn't like how it was handled in the new series, but me personally, I prefer that change of the manga. In the manga, Hisoka started out as a psycho who wants to kill everything in sight. But after reading Heaven's Arena for the first time, I realized that Hisoka is not that psycho that we first knew him. He is cool headed, he fights smart, he doesn't go on bloody rampages killing everyone he sees. Here's another example of a change fixing something: Ninku. The Ninku manga didn't have the same story as the anime, but the anime did have a plot compared to the manga. That change made the anime a better version than the manga it was based on. Here's another example: Cell's regeneration ability from Dragon Ball. In the original version he says that as long as the nucleus in his head is intact, he can keep regenerating. But that contradicts how he regenerated after blowing off his upper torso. FUNimation's dub fixed this by saying having a single living cell in his body instead.
Is the old series complete sh!t? No. There are some good moments, but they are few and overlooked when you have the majority of the series wrong.
Is the new series perfect? No. There were some bad changes made and I didn't like them, but they are few and didn't leave much impact to the plot.
Now, as for which one is better, here's what I say: Since I'm a guy who cares about the plot over anything else, I prefer the one closest to the original material and made the least amount of deviations or changes. Back in the day, I didn't really care that much about differences between adapted material and source materials and enjoyed some TV original materials, but there are two things that changed my mind and made realize the importance of sticking to the source material: Black Cat the anime and the Harry Potter movies.
Black Cat is one my most favorite shonen series of all time. Great story, great characters, and great art. It's so good that I went ahead and bought all the manga volumes. (It ranks 15the place in my top 20 anime and manga of all time). And when the sign that says a 20 volume manga is adapted to a mere 25 episodes, yeah... something doesn't sound right... and boy did I hate that anime!! The anime was total crap! They got the plot wrong, they got the characters wrong, they got everything wrong! And that pissed me off a lot! How could they destroy a great series to be made into a shallow anime like that?!
As for the Harry Potter movies, yeah, I know they are movies and they can't adapt everything from the books, but as of Goblet of Fire, I started to dislike them more and more. Not just with the plot, but with the characters. I wanted to see the house elves and they didn't bring them up. Not to mention the challenges in the maze that was looking forward to.
Thanks to them, I started to put the plot over everything in an adaptation. Hell, even Jurassic Park-my all time favorite movie I started to dislike after reading the novel. The Lost World even more because the novel and the movie are so different from each other.
Back to Hunter x Hunter, the old series made a lot of unnecessary changes in plot and characters, and I didn't like them. And not to repeat what everyone else has already said, but Furuhashi's direction felt like he didn't know what he was working on. He didn't understand the characters, didn't understand the plot, didn't understand the key elements and that's why this series did not appeal to manga readers who dis any changes from the original source material. Yeah, it got a lot of fans to the series and there are still who use the "Without the old series the new one wouldn't be popular" card. Yes, that may what introduced us to it, but the real reason for the popularity of the new one is this:
The new series got it right this time. They got the mood right, they got the characters right and know what they are working on. A lot of the negative views on it was because the old series purists didn't see the fake darkness they had in their series. Their series started "dark and gloomy" and din't like how happy and cheerful the new one is and called it a "dumbed down version for the kiddies" without realizing that the manga started that way. I mean, just look at the front cover:
Does this cover look like a "dark, edgy, serious and gloomy" series? No. It looks like a light hearted shonen series. The manga did get darker as it went on, but it did not start that way. But thanks to the direction of the old series it made it sound like HxH is dark beginning to end and all goofy moment in the new series are out of place and considered an "insult" even though the old series had its share of goofy moments as well. For example: Gon vs Hanzo fight. They didn't like the comedic aspect of the fight even though it was supposed to be comedic.
Now, is what I said means all changes are bad? not necessary. Sometimes changes are good if they fixed something. Most notably is Hisoka's massacre in the swamps. I know that a lot of fans didn't like how it was handled in the new series, but me personally, I prefer that change of the manga. In the manga, Hisoka started out as a psycho who wants to kill everything in sight. But after reading Heaven's Arena for the first time, I realized that Hisoka is not that psycho that we first knew him. He is cool headed, he fights smart, he doesn't go on bloody rampages killing everyone he sees. Here's another example of a change fixing something: Ninku. The Ninku manga didn't have the same story as the anime, but the anime did have a plot compared to the manga. That change made the anime a better version than the manga it was based on. Here's another example: Cell's regeneration ability from Dragon Ball. In the original version he says that as long as the nucleus in his head is intact, he can keep regenerating. But that contradicts how he regenerated after blowing off his upper torso. FUNimation's dub fixed this by saying having a single living cell in his body instead.
Is the old series complete sh!t? No. There are some good moments, but they are few and overlooked when you have the majority of the series wrong.
Is the new series perfect? No. There were some bad changes made and I didn't like them, but they are few and didn't leave much impact to the plot.
Last edited:
.
