Japanese Game Show Made A Hilarious 'Hunter x Hunter' Prediction Last Year

Hunter x Hunter is on the cusp of an official manga comeback, but many fans didn't expect to see the series return any time soon. The series has become infamous for its multiple hiatuses, and has even become such a running gag within the fan community it has even reached larger circles.

A game show in Japan made an educated guess as to how many chapters Hunter x Hunter would have by 2017, and luckily their end result is far from the actual truth.

Predicting that there would be zero chapters produced in 2017, they were wrong in that case but the final count is not much better. There were 25-30 chapters released over 2017, and fans have been waiting for its return in a few weeks. The hiatuses are around for a good reason, however, as series creator Yoshihiro Togashi often takes these breaks for his health rather than run himself ragged and decide to abruptly end his series much like his previous work Yu Yu Hakusho.

For those unfamiliar with Hunter x Hunter, the series was originally created by Yoshihiro Togashi. The story follows a young boy named Gon Freecss, who discovers that his previously thought to be dead father is in fact alive. Not only is he alive, he is a famous Hunter, a professional traveler who specializes in finding rare treasures, exploring unidentified lands, and hunting down dangerous individuals. Gon then decides that in order to meet his father he has to become a licensed Hunter, but in that journey gets wrapped up in way more strangeness than he ever could have anticipated.

The series first ran in Shuiesha's Weekly Shonen Jump in March 1998. Unforunately, the series has gone on a number of hiatuses ever since 2006 which were most likely incurred by bouts of illness Togashi experienced when publishing his last work, Yu Yu Hakusho. The series has run for 360 chapters, and been collected into 47 volumes as of 2017. It's one of Shueisha's most successful selling series with over 66 million copies sold in Japan.

Hunter x Hunter was then adapted into two different anime series. One series ran from 1999 to 2001 from Nippon Animation and lasted for 62 episodes. The second adaptation, produced by Madhouse, ran from 2011 to 2014. The Hunter x Hunter manga has just announced it was returning from its most recent hiatus in January 2018.

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