Will fans of the popular series be treated to new episodes before this year is over?

For an internationally well-known manga, Hunter x Hunter often attracts attention for less than favorable reasons — namely that the manga’s serialization in the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine is so irregular and interspaced with such long gaps in between that every time the series reappears in the magazine, it causes a huge “Hunter x Hunter is back!” buzz among manga fans.

In fact, series creator Yoshihiro Togashi is notorious for taking long time-outs from his work, so much so that the phrase “Togashi, get to work!” has become a long-standing  joke among followers of his manga.

This year, Hunter x Hunter returned to the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump in the magazine’s June 26 issue, but readers’ excitement was short-lived as once again, the series went dormant as of the September 4 issue. While disappointing for fans, such a development didn’t come as a surprise to anyone, as it was what we’ve come to expect from Togashi.

What was unusual, however, was that in the authors’ comment section at the end of the September 4 issue, Togashi mentioned that he would resume the series before the year was over.

This certainly was something to look forward to, wasn’t it? But now that we’re nearing the end of November, we were becoming a bit concerned whether Togashi’s words really will come true, especially since the series has been put on hold for close to a year at a time before — which is why we contacted Shueisha, the publisher of Weekly Shonen Jump, to see if we could shed any light on the situation.

Unfortunately, the only answer we were able to get was, “At the present, nothing has been decided, nor is there any information we can release.” Bummer!

▼ When the series returned back in June, a special site was set up
and advertised on Weekly Shonen Jump’s official Twitter page.

Togashi’s exact comment in the September 4 Weekly Shonen Jump issue was as follows: “Because Nisshin Foods have presented me with ‘Donbe’ instant udon noodles as a kind of incentive prize (for when Hunter x Hunter is resumed), I’ll bring back the series one more time before the end of the year.”

Okay, so we’re willing to wait a long, long time for the continuation of the series, but we’re also quite impressed that the Donbe instant noodles are supposedly providing an incentive for Togashi sensei to work!

So was Togashi’s comment simply a joke, or will we see a miracle happen by the end of the year? Either way we guess we’ll know in a little over a month.

Despite Togashi’s long periods of rest, readers always seem to be more than satisfied with how intensely entertaining the series is (and how amazing the fight scenes are) whenever it’s back in serialization, so we’re pretty sure fans are happy to wait as long as it takes for Togashi to get back into gear. But can you please see the story to its completion, Togashi sensei?

Photos: SoraNews24
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