Cloudex

I Finished Reading the Chimera Ant Arc

I'll be going into some specifics, so skip this one if you don't want any spoilers on the Chimera Ant arc.

Depression and anxiety continue to take a lot out of me in the evenings, but I had a good night this week and spent it reading Hunter x Hunter. Specifically, I finished reading the Chimera Ant arc, THE arc for a lot of HxH fans if the Internet is to be believed. I get why - there are some high-highs! - but by the end I was asking myself if I am done with the comic.

I chalk that question up to two things - the length of the arc and its decision to become a techno-thriller. I counted after I finished reading, and by volume-count Chimera Ant makes-up over a third of the manga's run to this point. That's over ten volumes, and is such a long time to focus on one storyline. It pulls together by the end - the way Mereum and Komugi pass away quietly playing gungi as the panels go black is very affecting, as is seeing Mereum's growth as a person. But it still was over ten volumes, and that's a lot for any comic. Especially for a techno-thriller comic.

From the investigation piecing together what's going on with the Chimera Ant sightings to the way the Ants are described as an extinction-level threat to how a lot of the plot hinges on political maneuvering, this arc was Michael Crichton by way of Shonen Jump. I think Togashi tackles this fine (though I suspect at least some of the arc's length comes down to this kind of story needing more time to breathe than, say, the heist arc of York New), but it's not so spectacular as to overcome my disinterest in the genre. It definitely doesn't make me confident that the politicking promised by the Chairman Election arc that's spinning up will recapture my interest.

Where I think the arc works for me is seeing how it lets Togashi flex his muscles as an artist. Especially by the end, where he's getting into linework and action sequences that evoke Bill Sienkiewicz in the 80s, I am just left awed. And the way he plays with empty and filled space consistently left me leafing back and forth to read pages several times.

So yeah! That's Chimera Ant to me. Great art in service of a genre I am not the keenest on, and which tested my patience several times with its length. As I type this, I think I'll see Hunter x Hunter through the next arc, because everything I've heard or read suggests its a good stopping point. If the arc piques my interest, I'll keep reading. If it doesn't, I'll break with the comic feeling good.

#chimera ant #hunter x hunter #manga #togashi #yoshihiro togashi