Hello everyone, before I start this review, I would like to sincerely apologize for my absence, as I have been occupied with other things and admittedly a bit of procrastination. From now on, I’ll try to make consistent content every week expanding on this blog site, as my sites title suggests.
So to start off the volume, Hisoka suddenly appears before Kurapika, Leorio, and a few others examinees to “test” them so to speak. He does this by killing the ones that he deems as unworthy, and only a few others are left remaining after Hisokas assault. Kurapika, Leorio, and another examiner come up with a plan to escape Hisokas wrath, but Leorio stubbornly refuses to retreat, and charges at Hisoka. Meanwhile, Gon hears the screams of his friends, and abandons Killua to go save them. He arrives just in time, hitting Hisoka in the face with his fishing rod right before Hisoka could attack Leorio.
This to me is the most important part of the volume, because it officially establishes Hisoka as an antagonist, as he attacks the protagonists with seemingly no logical rhyme or reason. As for the rest of the volume after Gon saves his friends, everything seems to take a more lax approach to the upcoming dangers in the hunter exam.
For example, the third phase of the exam is a cooking competition, that doesn’t have any of the life or death stakes the previous phase had, which is obviously intentional. I thought this phase was a nice. change of pace, and gave off a sense of peaceful entertainment that I believe was a needed to give a breather to the protagonists, and even the reader in some cases from all the action and death taking place.
The art in this volume also took a significant leap in quality compared to the previous volume. As were in the last volume the art quality felt a bit sketchy, the art in this volume feels much more polished and refined.
After the second phase, there is quite a bit more that happens (specifically for the main characters) but I don’t have enough room to fit that into this review, therefore I will finish up volume 2 next week, and also begin volume 3 next week as well.
So to sum up the volume, I would say the art is most definitely much more consistent, the tonel changes feel much less drastic, and the characters mental psychology is touched on quite a bit more, which hints at the series being much more mature then one would expect
So to conclude, I would rate this volume a solid 8/10
Please leave your thoughts on this volume down below!
Kurapens expanse 