Yoshihiro Togashi

Exactly.

So let's look at the masterpieces of constraint, starting with a titan of the genre, Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi.

This series is legendary.

It began running in 1998, and it is technically ongoing, though it is famously prone to very, very long hiatuses due to the author's health.

It's finally here.

After months of delays from Togashi himself.

Thanks, man.

Really appreciate it.

never know

So, yeah, we're just going to casually talk about it, work our way through it, whatever pace we want, just talk about the volume.

And to start, I would like to read Togashi's blurb at the beginning, if you don't mind.

Yeah, no, I think it's a great idea.

You really can't.

Our source notes the recent incredibly tragic passing of creator Akira Toriyama, and it is genuinely hard to overstate his footprint on global pop culture.

For millions of people, DBZ wasn't just an anime.

It was a daily ritual.

It's not?

No, it is the central architectural feature of the show.

The author of our source argues that what creator Eiichiro Oda has done is fundamentally different from a standard linear story.

What did he do then?

But I think I, I still fall on the other end.

I think Togashi...

Yeah, I think Togashi's material just hits different for me.

Uh, one more name I was, I just kind of remembered, um, which I excluded because, again, I've not read the manga, and I do intend on reading it, but I'm actually somewhat scared of reading it, um, and that's Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, and that's because it's one of my favorite anime of all time.

Oh.

See paypal.com slash protection terms.

yeah didn't really kind of dawn on me till just now that these episodes now the final two episodes are going to come out on mondays so that also demonstrates another thing of what i'm talking about regarding taking breaks so if the final episodes and if they're actually referring to like not the japanese schedules or whatever if that's the true you know release date or whatnot that also means more than likely because of the delays they probably lost that time slot that they had initially for the bleach episodes to come out and probably had to settle for some mondays at 12 o'clock basically so again yeah if you need to take a break or your project needs a break whatever the case may be i'm not going to stop you from taking a break but this is the consequences of taking a break you know what i'm saying like people always try to avoid that but that's the reality of the world that we live in you know reality is taking breaks affecting and if you have a goal an objective it negatively impacts you when you take major breaks so just want to put that in there but on top of that the two silhouettes that they put out is like come on bro that's clearly kazooie and ichika and i guess again it's up to the people how they feel regarding like is that a big spoiler considering the spoilers been out or you know keeping it vague like that it's not going to spoil people anyway i mean the names considering in the official press release they didn't put out the names or whatnot so that's a good deal but the silhouettes and whatnot yeah i'll just say that they knew what they were doing they knew that they were going to increase curiosity and make people kind of want to talk about this some more and yeah i guess kind of curious to see who's going to be voicing these characters and on top of the fact this also hints at something even major like i said we're going to talk about it let's talk about it now that you know that whole hell arc thing that we've been talking about that was rumored the big rumor came out a Taitei Kubo was going to be launching a sequel to the Bleach manga and it was going to be in Weekly Shonen Jump yeah he's probably gearing up which also makes this great promo to make these two characters very prevalent in that sequel series which can't be mad at that at all not gonna be mad at that at all really hoping to be honest with you that this thing goes for quite some time because again more manga means more anime down the road now i'm not expecting taitei kubo to spend the next 20 years doing a weekly manga or whatnot but even if he does it in batches like yoshihiro togashi maybe you get like three or four months and then he takes a little break and comes back i'm sure most bleach fans will be okay with that because again that would just mean more anime down the road and in general with the source material being a tree that in and of itself more bleach so yeah them doing this them making this major push it could be that they want to make sure that they're prominent because there's going to be a lot more from them down the road regarding bleach's future because i'm sure they're thinking about bleach's future understanding how relevant and how profitable it probably is at this stage that even down the road it's still going to be a big deal so they're probably trying to promote it again i want to throw in something a little little side thing that just hoping that when the hell arc returns or whatnot that they don't decide to go the route of making these two characters the main focus or whatnot the way that it was handled with the one shot and if they're not going to you know if they're going to remake that or exclude it whatever they're going to do or whatnot they need to stay to the way that did it and what i mean by that is the one shot hell art sequel chapter that they put out a few years back that mainly focused in on still giving you all of the characters the captains ichigo As the center focal point.

But still having Ichigo's son.

And Renji's daughter.

I'm pretty sure they don't enjoy it because they realize how rushed and not great it was.

I mean, Togashi himself even saying, yeah, I mean, I wanted it to end sooner, but obviously they kept having him make it.

I think it's sufficient, but you as more fresh into it, what do you think? I

was going to say, I feel like, I feel like they explored what they needed to explore.

Yeah, there's a few things we can at least look for now that we know a more general idea of the pattern of how these things go.

I think the real telltale sign that it's coming will be Togashi tweeting about doing a color illustration because that usually means, okay, they're talking about publication again because a volume will come out and color page, yada, yada.

Uh, but I would not expect it to happen this year.

Even if like, if we get a 429 done this week and 430 done the week after, it's still not happening this year.

But just wanted to get your thoughts on that as well.

I'm inclined to think that it would not be a whole volume simply because that would mean that we're going to have an entire batch without progressing the succession war at all.

And I just can't see Togashi doing that in the modern climate.

But you never know.

There's no long-lasting impact of that encounter though, you know what I mean? Meruem, the overarching villain of this arc supposedly, had no interac- no interaction with any of our main cast.

You understand what I'm saying? So it's like Togashi does the effort to build these characters so that they stand individually, but sometimes in the flow of a story, it messes with a lot of the emotional weight that I feel villains have over characters.

Um, and One Piece just does that better.

I'm gonna use Doflamingo again.

Hmm

...

Togashi tried to force, he tried to force character development on Gon, I feel like near the, uh, uh, the end with the Chimera Ant arc and all of the Kite stuff.

But I, I think we were lacking a little bit of that gradual buildup for me to really feel like it was worthwhile.

Oh my God.

Okay, that one was like, that one I bet Togashi was punching the air.

[laughs]

He's like, "I can't believe I didn't think of that shit."

[laughs] I was having a look at this and I was like, "I think I get it.

No, I, I don't really get it."

But also I do think that was like a Togashi style ability-

Yeah

Apparently this hiatus is going to be shorter.

I can see it being shorter because it looks like Togashi updates us via Twitter.

He like posts his progress constantly and he's at least done the manuscript up to 430.

He's just got to do all the inking and all that stuff.

Yeah.

when he's used it so i wonder if that's because there's definitely a level of perception that goes on with theta and i think he's solidified it with hisoka that you can perceive it in some way shape or form you know i don't think he gathered exactly what it is maybe you just like feel the presence of saraydnik or the presence of the nen beast but yeah i don't know there's obviously no answers yet.

And I think maybe, I think maybe Togashi is just building up.

So right.