After an 18-month wait, Hunter x Hunter is finally almost back. The series will return to serialization next week on June 28 in Weekly Shonen Jump Issue #31. The manga’s most recent chapter (410) was released roughly a year and a half ago on Dec. 9, 2024. After leaks all but confirmed the return of the manga, the magazine shared the official news and released a promotional video to celebrate the series’ return.
Hunter x Hunter is an action manga by Yoshihiro Togashi (Yu Yu Hakusho) that began its run in 1998. It stars Gon Freecs, a boy on a journey to find his absentee father while he attempts to become a Hunter (licensed professionals who act as explorers and mercenaries). The series is one of the bestselling manga of all time, with over 84 million copies in circulation, and is considered by many to be one of the best, if not the best, battle shonen series.
Manga trailers are always fun to watch, and this time Shonen Jump overdid it. It starts with a glimpse of Beyond Netero and the Black Whale ship headed to the Dark Continent, before focusing on the Succession War, its participants, and Kurapika, who is caught in the middle of all the chaos. We even get a good look at the Phantom Troupe and the unhinged, but always popular, Hisoka, before the crescendo that leads to the big announcement of the series’ return.
The manga received two separate anime adaptations. The first was helmed by acclaimed director Kazuhiro Furuhashi at Nippon Animation, running from 1999 to 2001 for 62 episodes. The second, from studio Madhouse, ran from 2011 to 2014 for 148 episodes. Madhouse’s series covered the story up to chapter 339 and, thankfully, ended on an emotionally satisfying note.
While Togashi’s output on the series was relatively consistent from 1998 to 2005, since then the author has suffered from illness, lower back problems, and other undisclosed issues that have led to frequent hiatuses. This has earned the series the not-so-polite nickname “Hiatus x Hiatus.” In recent years, the series has returned to semi-regular serialization multiple times, publishing 10 chapters in a row before going back into hiatus to give the author time to work on new chapters at his pace.
The series is currently in the middle of the “Succession Contest” arc, a multi-stage death fight involving approximately a bazillion characters that has been running since chapter 340 in 2012 (or chapter 349 in 2014, if you consider the “Dark Continent Expedition” arc its own thing). The point is, while the series has been dropping in ten-chapter batches for quite some time, the long gaps between releases (particularly the several-year break between chapters 390 and 391) can make it difficult to keep track of what’s happening.
Hopefully, the series’ latest return lives up to the considerable wait. Fans of Hunter x Hunter have mastered Enhancement Nen a long time ago, and nothing will ever deter them from waiting enthusiastically for the next chapter, no matter how long it takes.