Hunter x Hunter — Gon Freecss adult form with fierce yellow eyes and spiky hair on red background

Hunter x Hunter

1998anime seriesclassic

Published August 29, 2026

Hunter x Hunter is a manga and anime series by Yoshihiro Togashi that debuted in Weekly Shōnen Jump on March 3, 1998, following young Gon Freecss as he searches for his absent Hunter father. The series built a devoted online fandom that turned Togashi's multi-year hiatuses, the Chimera Ant arc, and Hisoka's creepy hunt for strong opponents into some of anime Twitter's most reliable running jokes.

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Overview

The Hunter x Hunter fandom's meme output centers on a handful of running jokes. Togashi's release schedule is the loudest: years-long gaps between chapter batches turned 'is HxH back?' into a permanent question on Twitter and Reddit, and fans built a public tracker plotting every chapter released since 1998 to visualize the hiatuses3. Character reads supply another stream. Urban Dictionary jokingly sums the plot up as 'a boy tries to find his dad while running away from a pedo clown'5, which is fandom shorthand for how weird Hisoka's fixation on Gon plays.

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The 2011 Madhouse remake is where most reaction images and clip edits pull from, since it covers the Chimera Ant and Election arcs that the older Nippon Animation run never reached1. Killua's expressions, the Meruem and Komugi ending, and Hisoka's card scenes are the recurring visual sources shared on anime Twitter and Discord.

Origin & Background

Platform
Weekly Shōnen Jump (manga) / Madhouse anime (viral spread)
Creator
Yoshihiro Togashi
Date
1998

Yoshihiro Togashi, already known for YuYu Hakusho, began serializing Hunter x Hunter in Weekly Shōnen Jump on March 3, 1998, with Shueisha publishing the collected tankōbon volumes1. The story follows Gon Freecss, a boy who leaves his island home to become a licensed Hunter and track down his absent father Ging, himself a legendary Hunter5. Nippon Animation produced the first television anime, which ran 63 episodes from October 16, 1999 to March 31, 2001 and adapted the manga through the middle of the Yorknew City arc1. A pair of original video animation series later covered material up through the Greed Island arc3.

How It Spread

Madhouse produced a full remake that started in July 2011 and ran 148 episodes through September 23, 2014, adapting the manga up to the end of the Election arc and giving Western streaming audiences their first complete look at the Chimera Ant storyline1. Two theatrical films, Phantom Rouge and The Last Mission, were released in 20133. The remake's international streaming presence turned r/HunterXHunter into the main English-language discussion hub and pulled a new generation into the older arcs.

Togashi announced his return to the manga on May 24, 2022, ending a nearly four-year hiatus caused by health problems, and set up an official account at @Un4v5s8bgsVk9Xp to post work-in-progress pages4. On September 5, 2022, he posted a photo of nearly completed tankōbon spreads that racked up widespread fan reaction2. The comeback pushed Hunter x Hunter back to the top of anime Twitter's trending charts for days.

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How to Use This Meme

Online, HxH typically shows up as reaction images, screencap edits, and hiatus jokes. A common convention is to caption Killua's shocked or annoyed faces as reaction shots, or to post a chart of Togashi's chapter output whenever a new hiatus starts. When Togashi returns, fans often quote-tweet his account with celebratory 'HxH is back' posts.

Frequently Asked Questions