#so points to hxh for making me feel physically tense

[seeyounexttime]

good night, Hunter x Hunter...  goodbye and see you next time

[baconpal]

Whats your opinion on the Monogatri series?

fuck man, i was gonna draw tonight, you cant just give me an ask that i could write for hours about

idk how long thisll get but just in case, usual read more time but tl;dr very very good series, absolutely recommend to any seasoned weebs out there

I fucking love the monogatari series for so many reasons. i’ll just shit out bullet points of cool shit

1. gigantic but segmented: it’s one of the longest animes i’ve watched, but if someone wanted to just watch some i’d just tellem “hey just watch bakemono and stop there for now” and they’d still watch some great content and be mostly satisfied as everything wraps up well and doesn’t have any kinda sequel bait or cliff hanger. You can watch as much as you want when you want, even down to the various arcs, even out of order if need be, so it’s incredibly convenient, which means a lot to me (i say as i marathon HxH and Ippo)

2. Fuck the Order: there’s about 3 main orders that people like to preech, novel order (the order the arcs were released according to the light novels), anime release order, and chronological order since the story isn’t told chronologically in either case, and that can get confusing on top of none of the arcs being numbered outside of bakemono and bakemono 2 (which almost nobody recommends you actually watch consecutively) BUT the part I love is ANY order works and is interesting in its own way, the order that events are presented to you can change the impact of various scenes and events, like the ending to koimono is a lot more terrifying if you have no clue that kaiki is a healthy happy boy a year later, and owari becomes a bit more confounding if you know ougi is also doing fine (even if a bit boyish), and when you watch kizumono can drastically change how you feel about araragi and shinobu’s relationship, like when they were super duper tense in nise i always felt kinda whatever, but now that i’ve seen kizu its kinda like “fuck man how arent either of you dead already”

Basically its cool as shit since everything is written without regard for order

3.Character Development (and lack there of): All the characters in the series develop pretty well, and sometimes experience multiple large character shifts that improve them from the absolute pieces of garbage they are in bake (lookin at you Hanekawa, though you were pretty alright in kizu) Senjougahara is also worth note as she’s the primary girl and is thus around a lot despite having very few arcs centered on herself

but one of the most powerful parts of all the characters is they all also never change their true worst traits, and those who don’t really are my favorite characters, and those would be Senjougahara, Hachikuji, and the main man himself, Araragi. Senjou never really is able to drop the autistic girl sitting on the fourth wall deep down within her, Hachikuji continues to constantly fill roles and play parts that don’t belong to her, up through the very end of the series where she becomes a fucking GOD for NO good reason but FUCK it i love you hachikuji, and lastly Araragi, one of the best protaganists ever, who matures quite a lot over the course of his life and all, but from the begining of kizu to the end of owari, he is just completely incapable of letting someone pathetic go without help, even if it means completely sacrificing himself and I love my stupid boy so much

4. Who’s the protag anyway?: So araragi is the protag, duh, but not all the time, and the differences in how the show works when it changes is always very interesting, as it reveals a lot about both araragi and the characters who take his role; namely, Hanekawa, Nadeko, and my fucking BOY Kaiki. Hanekawa interacts with the story much closer to a novel (to the point of analyzing chapters and such), Nadeko sees everyone around her as bubbly colorful nobodies, and Kaiki sees everyone as normal fucking people which is only strange and jarring because when Araragi is the protagonist, anyone who is unimportant to him literally does not exist or physically manifest on screen. Some would call it a lazy choice, and maybe it is, this is shaft, it wasnt the first time they did it and it wasn’t the last either (side note; i like mekakucity actors fight me pussy) but even moments full of “background characters” like Araragis freshmen highschool dilemma, everyone in class other than the 2 cute girls he knows are just depicted as names and random photographic images of shit and its very telling of his character despite never being directly said in the novels or script.

5. FUck man this shit looks good: Art is important shit dude, and monogatari consistently looks good, even if the backgrounds can be incredibly simple at times, they are STYLISH and effective and thats all they need to be, and despite being a show mainly about people talking, the characters will move and be in as many weird cool perspective shots as they need to in order to fill out a scene. Whenever the show ISNT just people talkin, the animation does not slack off. The few fights of the main series are absolutely to my taste, I love Araragi V rainy devil, and thats pretty much the only straight up fight in the show, but the Kizu movies are 3 hours of pure kino holy shit, even araragi buying some porn to beat he meat is animated excessively well and with cartoon abandon. 

I know that stylish substance is still just a shaft thing, but it’s always on point in monogatari, also NO CG CHARACTERS outside of a few random shots in Kizu, which is a definitely worth pointing out considering mekakucity’s original television run exists.

6. FUck man this shit sounds good: The voice acting is impeccable, I love everyones voice so much, but the music is also of very high quality, and guess what it does that thing that i always fucking mention cus it’s awesome and should be used whenever possible anywhere: Motifing. Every character has a theme in some way due to every major character having atleast 1 opening centered on them (there’s an OP for every fucking arc and its insane they’re all fully animated too its bonkers) and theres usually a couple remixes of each persons theme used at some point, especially as like, bittersweet slow classical songs at the climax of an arc being a remix of the OP for that arc. 

Kizu is also noteworthy for motifing the EDs into the other songs, remaking songs from the anime for specific classic interactions (looking at you, sharp and friend or foe) as well as just being super interesting in its use of vocal accompaniment, like the shoowap-doowap kind of stuff they throw in is very fun.

 7.FUck man this shit IS good: I said early that the show is mostly just people talking, but fuck man i love listening to these people talk to each other. Everything they talk about is super entertaining and full of multiple meanings and just so much to take in that any amount of rewatching will always have me finding more to love, but since its a weeb show with references and puns and stuff, I would recommend making sure you’re atleast a decently powerful weeb who can at least UNDERSTAND some Japanese and knows a bit about anime before getting into it, also make sure you can read decently fast. It’s not Tatami Galaxy levels but stuff can move quick. (bit far into a post like this to make a recommendation but hey)

oh no i wrote for an hour about this shit bless the poor souls of any mobile users who still follow me

[shimmy-sham-with-the-fam]

Hunting X For X Bruises Chap. 2

Prologue is here!

Previous Next

WOO~! This has been a lot of fun writing so far! (I just went through and corrected the typos. I posted this right when I got up this morning so my silly self didn’t even think to check over it before hand... Sorry if you read this before I corrected everything!)

There aren’t any bad things in this one. Just memories of the first couple episodes of HxH just flooding back up into my mind. 

Such beautiful, simple times………

As always, please enjoy! 

Also, Please don’t be afraid to leave a comment or a message about what you think or how it can be improved in upcoming chapters! 

Words: 1,655

Rate- T

Summary:  An AU where the bruises and cuts of a soulmate appear on the skin. Gon becomes increasingly worried about his soulmate as he gets tattooed with new marks everyday, and hopes to find the person soon. Killua, on the other hand, has been brainwashed by his family to believe that the spots on his skin are a curse from the person who plans to target and kill him, as they believe learning about a soulmate would make him soft during jobs.

Chapter 2: Promises X and X Kisses

Gon perched silently in the large tree rooted in the shallow depths of the lake. He shaded himself from the dangerous rays of the sun with a makeshift leaf hat, which cut to fit the shape of his head as many a leafs before it’s time. The fishing pole he sported bobbed a ball at the end of a line, which waited patiently for prey to snag it. The forest dwelling human was well accustomed to long periods of waits, and would spend hours at a time lost deep in his own thoughts. His mind swirled around aimlessly, but many thoughts would cause him to take a small glance at miscellaneous marks on his skin.

Today, he had decided, would be the day. The boy woke up in horror that morning with a wide bruised gash along the palm of his left hand. He was tired of waking up to the dark spots every morning. Yes, today, he had decided, he would tell Mito he wanted to take the Hunter exam.

He had heard all about it from his great grandmother; how his father had left Whale Island at an early age to take the hunter exam. Mito had been furious with him leaving her behind all alone. Gon knew aunt Mito harbored harsh feelings for her cousin, and it wasn’t exactly that she hated him. She was just upset that he would never bother to visit or contact them. Even when his father, Ging, had visited years later after he had originally departed, he had only stayed long enough to leave Gon in Mito’s care.

Gon’s great grandmother had explained to the bright eyed raven that his father had become a hunter because he wanted to find something. There was no specification, and Gon was not entirely sure if anyone really knew exactly what Ging really wanted to find.

But Gon could at least vouch for himself. There was no doubt in his mind that he wanted to become a hunter so that he could find his soulmate and figure out just what they had been experiencing all this time. Gon wanted to find them, and ask them why there was a sliver of deep cobalt that dragged across his left hand, why his thigh looked as if it might have been beaten down to the bone, why everyday he woke up and counted the number of new bruises in the collection on his sun kissed skin.

Chapped lips curled into a determined smile as his grip tightened on the old fishing rod. “I’ll find you…” his eyes shimmered when a tremendous tug drowned the red bobber into the lake water. The teen grunted, pulling and flexing. “I’ll take the exam-“ his voice rose happily. Gon pulled the rod and trailed around his tree perch; his leaf hat long gone when the tug had startled his body into action. “-and I’ll find information about you! And I’ll find you!” The excited boy finally managed to haul the enormous fish out from the depths of the water.

It was quite a gross looking fish really. The water creature had large white eyes with a dense, soulless pupil in the center of each. The mouth of the fist was lined with ivory jagged teeth, presumably for ripping into tender flesh. However, the most significant feature of the fish that set him apart from the rest were the large, almost insect like legs located at the belly. Similar to the fingers on a crane, the king of the lake was known for using it’s abnormal legs to grab ahold of a meal; making escape entirely impossible. However, all eight legs were completely useless on land.

Gon tossed the body of his prize onto to the ground far below him, and quickly set about packing his belongings to venture back to the bar that Aunt Mito dutifully managed everyday.

“Aunt Mito!! Aunt Mito~!” Aa giant blob of blue seemed to be calling out to the woman from far down the dirt path. It bounced up and down as it steadily came closer and closer to the young red headed woman. Hearing the calls from her young relative was relieving; she kept it to herself that seeing a giant fish with bug legs bouncing faster in her direction would probably have caused her to faint.

As Gon finally finished his approach, Mito spread the tips of her lips into a radiant smile. “Aunt Mito, I caught the king just like I said I would!” The giant body slammed down, finally revealing the small boy who was about a third of the size of the monstrous lake creature.

“I see that,” Mito chuckled. She faced back towards him for a moment, placing a pin on the freshly clean sheet she was hanging on the line to dry. “So now that you’ve finally caught him, what’s your big plan?” Are you gonna tell me or is it still some big secret?”

Gon had decided not to tell anyone his plan until he was successful in capturing the king of the lake; which not even five grown men who’d been fishing their entire life could manage to do together. The only one who had ever accomplished this feat was his father, Ging. Gon made it perfectly clear for himself: prove that you’re strong enough to take the hunter exam to yourself and everyone else. Once that’s been done, he’ll be able to take it.

His chest expanded proudly as he stood as high as was physically possible. “I’m gonna take the Hunter exam!”

“WHA-” The clip Mito had in her hand snapped from between her fingers. The towel she had been hanging over the line now slipped off, blowing in the wind. The teenage boy lunged out for it, and he successfully caught, he couldn’t manage to successfully  dodge the basket of clothing that he tripped over, which now spread clothing all about the dirty ground. Gon laughed lightly, realizing he would be forced to wash all the clothes that he just dirtied in his attempt to capture one piece of fabric.

In an attempt to make light of the situation, he held the towel he had caught out to Mito, who had been staring at him with a rather unusual look. Gon wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but he could feel the tension that began to brew around his caregiver.

“Ah, Aunt Mi-”

“Why?” She cut him off.

“Huh?”

“Why do you want to take the exam?” Her fingers tangled into the skirt of her dress.

“I…” Gon began, confused as to why she seemed angry at the thought. Sure his father had left to take the exam around his age but, Gon was at least giving a warning. His father just left on a whim, but Gon was telling her. Gon would never leave her without telling her… “I want to find them.” He pointed to the mark on his left hand. “I’m going to take the exam so that I can gain access to the information that only hunters can. And then I’ll find them.” His voice never wavered.

“Gon…” Mito’s eyes dig deep into his. She was silent for a while, then finally spoke softly. “So this has nothing to do with Ging?”

The boy shrugged. “Not really… I am a bit curious as to why he had decided to be a hunter instead of taking care of me. But I’m grateful for your care over his and now I just need to know that this person is in a safe place.”

“You have to promise me something then…” Mito sighed.

“Anything.” There was no hesitation.

“When you find them, you have to come back home safe with them.”

Gon’s face lit up, his grin practically filling his whole face. “I won’t let you down, Aunt Mito!” His jump pressed himself onto Mito’s stomach, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist. “I promise!”

Gon had one week before his departure. Aunt Mito had continued becoming tense as the days continued forward. Gon would have focused more on how she was acting of his mind wasn’t occupied elsewhere.

Gon had noticed the morning after he had caught the monstrous fish that there were no new bruises or marks. None. And when he realized this, part of him was ecstatic. It meant the person wasn’t getting hurt. However, he also felt a bit fearful for them, and was even a bit skeptical as this happened the day after it was confirmed he’d be taking the exam.

Why would they gain bruises everyday then suddenly just stop? Where they in some critical condition? Gon knew from other pairs of soul mates on Whale Island that if one person was severely ill or had a broken bone, the other person would be fine. The only thing that the two spirits shared were marks of the skin.

Which meant that there was a possibility that this person could be in a far worse condition than just scrapes of the skin.

Gon had to find them no matter what.

The morning Gon left sent him off with a soft breeze. The sky was littered with soft clouds, and the temperature was meant for a lazy day; warm, but comfy.

But Gon didn’t have time for a lazy day. He was staying his journey.

But not before saying goodbye to the woman he held closest to his heart.

He gave her a hug suitable to squeeze the life of someone, but not the love.

After they pulled apart from each other, Mito held her pinky i out to him. “You have to keep your promise.” She said sternly.

“Yup!” He locked his pinky with hers as they began the ritual of bouncing their hands while singing “pinky swear made! Whoever breaks their promise has to swallow a thousand needles!” Their thumbs lifted pressing into each other. “Sealed with a kiss!”