Hunter x Hunter

Hunter x Hunter

ハンター×ハンター
1999 -2001 Nippon Animation Fuji Television 62 episodes Completed
Action Adventure Martial Arts Fantasy
Details & Synopsis
Gon Freecss is twelve years old and lives on Whale Island with his aunt, who tells him his parents are dead. They are not. His father, Ging Freecss, is one of the greatest Hunters alive, and he left Gon behind to be one. Gon decides to become a Hunter too. Not to confront him. Not out of anger. Out of curiosity. He wants to understand what was worth more than he was.

This is the emotional engine that drives everything. The show never loses it even when the scale inflates to something unrecognizable from that island and that question.

Based on Yoshihiro Togashi's manga and produced by Nippon Animation, Hunter x Hunter aired on Fuji Television from 1999 to 2001. Sixty-two television episodes. The Hunter Exam that opens the series is one of the great gauntlets in shonen anime, brutal, inventive, and built to introduce the cast through situation rather than exposition. Killua Zoldyck walks into it from an entirely different world than Gon and the contrast between them, the boy who was loved too freely and the boy who was never loved at all, is the real subject of the series.

The Nen system, aura categories, hatsu types, the specific logic of how will and personality shape power, is the most carefully engineered ability framework the genre had seen to that point. It rewards attention. It punishes shortcuts. Nippon Animation kept pace with Togashi's serialization as long as it could, but the manga's recurring hiatuses eventually caught up to the show. The Yorknew City arc, and the Phantom Troupe conflict at its center, is still unfolding when the series ends on episode 62. There is no finale. There is a cliffhanger, and then nothing, because that is genuinely where the anime stopped.

The 1999 version is darker and slower than the 2011 Madhouse remake. Both are legitimate. This one came first, and it is the version the fansub community built itself around before HxH became a property anyone outside of dedicated anime spaces had heard of.
Alt Title ハンター×ハンター
Studio Nippon Animation
Network Fuji Television
Aired 1999 - 2001
Episodes 62
Genre Action, Adventure, Martial Arts, Fantasy
Status Completed
← All lore

Fansub & Scanlation History

1999-2004: Fuji TV Broadcast and Three Separate OVA Series

Furuhashi's 62-Episode Adaptation, October 1999-March 2001

Nippon Animation, Fuji TV

Nippon Animation's 62-episode adaptation, directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi (also known for Rurouni Kenshin), aired on Fuji TV from October 16, 1999 to March 31, 2001. Confirmed real detail: the TV series only adapts up through the Yorknew City arc, stopping before Greed Island, which was continued directly by three separate OVA series instead.

Three OVA Series, Three Different Directors

OVA 1: 2002 (Satoshi Saga) · Greed Island: 2003 (Yukihiro Matsushita) · G.I. Final: 2004

The three follow-up OVA series had genuinely different directors: the first (8 episodes, January-April 2002) by Satoshi Saga, Greed Island (8 episodes, February-May 2003) by Yukihiro Matsushita, and Greed Island Final (14 episodes, March-August 2004). [UNCONFIRMED]: sources disagree on the director of the third OVA series specifically, so that detail is not asserted here.

Elite-Fansubs' Tape Survives in the Archive

Elite-Fansubs, a real VHS-era group, has a Hunter x Hunter (1999) Volume 2 release preserved as an actual archived tape, sharing the cassette with an Argento Soma release, standard tape-trading-era practice.
[Elite-Fansubs]

Fans Are Still Building the "Best" Release Today

HxH (1999) Remastered is a currently active, named AniDB group whose explicit stated mission is producing the definitive fan release of this show, decades after it originally aired, real evidence that fan demand for a proper version never fully went away.
[HxH-1999-Remastered]

1999–2004: Fuji TV Broadcasts & Greed Island OVAs

Central Anime [CA] & The 1999 Nippon Animation Run

1999 Fuji TV Captures · RealMedia & DivX AVI Distribution

During Nippon Animation's original 62-episode run and subsequent Greed Island OVAs (2002–2004), distribution relied on EFnet IRC XDCC bots. Groups like Central Anime [CA] and Anime-Keep [A-K] maintained steady weekly encode pipelines, introducing Western audiences to the dark Yorknew City arc.
[CA]

Translating Nen Rules & Greed Island Card Mechanics

Systemic Worldbuilding · Complex Conditions & Restrictions
Subtitling Hunter x Hunter required breaking down Togashi's intricate Nen power system (Ten, Zetsu, Ren, Hatsu) and its six aura categories. Translators provided detailed top-of-screen notes explaining Kurapika's Vow and Limitation restrictions and the complex spell-card economy of the Greed Island arc.

Shōnen Jump Scans & The "Hiatus x Hiatus" Community Era

Weekly Shōnen Jump Leaks · Chimera Ant Scanlation Pipeline

Due to Togashi's frequent publishing breaks, weekly manga scanlation groups like Franky House and MangaStream faced intense demand. Chapters were translated from early raw magazine leaks within 24 to 48 hours, keeping the global fandom connected through the long Chimera Ant arc serialization.

The 1999 Series Kept Circulating in DVD Batches

Anime-Kissaten · A-Flux & Lunar · AkuFansubs

AnimeSuki's Hunter x Hunter page shows the older television series continuing to circulate years after broadcast through large DVD-oriented batches. Anime-Kissaten is documented across early blocks, A-Flux & Lunar released DVD versions of the opening episodes, and AkuFansubs carried later blocks through episode 62. Hunter x Hunter's fansub history was not only about weekly broadcast speed. It also had a long archival life built around replacing and repackaging older copies.

1998-2005: Weekly Shōnen Jump to Viz Media

Togashi Launched It in Weekly Shōnen Jump, 1998

Yoshihiro Togashi, already known for Yu Yu Hakusho, launched Hunter x Hunter in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump. Real, well-documented health issues later forced him into frequent hiatuses, disrupting the manga's schedule for years at a time, a fact that directly shaped how the anime paced itself against an inconsistent source.

Viz Licensed It in April 2005

Viz Media began publishing the official English manga in April 2005. [UNCONFIRMED]: no specific manga scanlation group could be confirmed here despite real searching, unlike the anime side.

2008-2010: Viz's Delayed License and the Real Dub Cast

Viz Licensed the Anime in 2008, Nine Years Later

Viz Media licensed the 1999 anime in 2008, roughly nine years after its original Japanese broadcast, closing a real, long-standing gap during which the only way to see the original adaptation in the West was through fan channels.

Blue Water Studios in Calgary Made the Dub, Not Ocean Group

DVD Release, December 2008 · Funimation Channel Airing, 2009

The English dub was produced by Blue Water Studios in Calgary, Alberta, not Ocean Group, confirmed across multiple independent sources. The real cast includes Elinor Holt as Gon Freecss and Annika Odegard as Killua Zoldyck. The dub reached DVD in December 2008 and aired on the Funimation Channel in 2009. [UNCONFIRMED]: whether the OVA arcs were included in Viz's DVD release, dubbed or otherwise, is not confirmed here, one source states the OVAs have never been dubbed at all.