It's impressive that it takes the basic idea of life energy to be the primordial power of people and use it to the extent it does.
It's a bit weird that he didn't go full on with it or that there is this weird disconnect between nen aware people and normal people.
Or you could answer the question he asked you instead of this passive aggressive attitude.
I guess your point that one liner are awesome is sound though.
Not every time but still.
Look in the past I gave my opinion as to why this show is just mediocre at best here in GAF, stating facts, and things that happen from episode to episode ( I watched 120 episodes of this show). Instead of open discussion people just bash, so I'm really not going to go into detail.
The first reply from eGruntz pretty much explains the way I feel about the power system.
Nen is so stupid with how it it actively bends it's rules crazily.
Don't get me started of their being two copying powers.
One that just requires knowing the ability and writing it down and another requiring you to do a favor for someone have them say I owe you and get a ticket to use said power once.
So the OP says it's great because it puts limits in place... Then one of the limits is "Specialist," which means screw the limits?
Ok...
I like the show but think that its "power system" is just like most. Fun to watch, can be broken at times, and ultimately doesn't matter much: it's just a tool to show the characters' progression.
Look in the past I gave my opinion as to why this show is just mediocre at best here in GAF, stating facts, and things that happen from episode to episode ( I watched 120 episodes of this show). Instead of open discussion people just bash, so I'm really not going to go into detail.
The first reply from eGruntz pretty much explains the way I feel about the power system.
I would agree the show has problems and actively disliked it for entire arcs. Not sure when it clicked with me exactly but I think it was the Greed Island arc. The show takes a long time to coalesce into something great but when it does very few shounens can match it. I will say it's sort of like FMA VS FMA Brotherhood.
FMA takes its time to handle the earlier events and character building better bit doesn't end strongly while FMA Brotherhood skimmed through early events people had already seen to get the end game stuff.
Obviously this doesn't quite match up with the two HxH series but I found the original anime handles the early story much better than the 2011 version by Madhouse. However the Madhouse version starts knocking it out of the park once it gets to Greed Island.
I've watched the first half of the hunter exam and from the Gon and Killua tournament bit to the part where Kurapika gets to Yorknew City.
I always hate when they introduce chi/spirit power/whatever into these anime. They always feel like bullshit magic asspulls to make things happen for the story. I almost rolled my eyes out of my head when the tape Gon was listening to rewound and recorded over itself BECAUSE NEN
Been watching the Dressrosa arc with my brother, and the pacing really is horrendous, but I'm still enjoying it. The music really is a factor, shit like Spirited Swordsman really hypes up some scenes. Still miss the old One Piece anime a lot though.
Look in the past I gave my opinion as to why this show is just mediocre at best here in GAF, stating facts, and things that happen from episode to episode ( I watched 120 episodes of this show). Instead of open discussion people just bash, so I'm really not going to go into detail.
The first reply from eGruntz pretty much explains the way I feel about the power system.
Except eGruntz didn't understand the system well.
And that's really not the question you were asked either.
You can keep deflecting all you want though, that's entertaining too.
Nen is so stupid with how it it actively bends it's rules crazily.
Don't get me started of their being two copying powers.
One that just requires knowing the ability and writing it down and another requiring you to do a favor for someone have them say I owe you and get a ticket to use said power once.
The bold is either patently false or I missed a minor character somewhere.
It's ridiculously more complicated than that.
He's not free to use it as he want either.
It's not Bleach.
The 2nd is also more complicated than it looks.
He has to force a certain sentence to be said to him THEN he can use the skill for a few minutes and by fulfilling more conditions. It's also not a skill he earned himself but something a Royal guard (who is already broken beyond belief) bestowed him with.
egruntz is correct in some way, Togashi uses the skills for the story rather than the other way around.
He still manages to be incredibly consistent with it.
I'm not up to date (stopped watching sometime during Chimera Ant), but I always thought the drawback/restriction system was too abusable. Like Kurapika with his ridonculous anti-Phantom Troupe tech. Frankly most of what Kurapika did vs the Troupe seemed broken. Dude's a Conjurer, which means he conjures stuff, but he conjures chains with their own super powers (eg lie detection).
But for instance, what's to stop an Emitter from saying "I have a Red Beam Blast Attack. It's way more powerful, but I can only use it on Sundays. Meanwhile I have this Orange Beam Blast Attack for Mondays, etc." Or "I have this super-powerful attack, but I can only use it against people I really hate!" Considering how few people exist that one "really hates," that should be a huge multiplier, but those are the only people you need the awesome attack against. Or swap out "really hate" for "am fighting right at that moment." Once again it's a very specific restriction... that's actually no restriction at all.
Reminds me of the custom magic item creation tables in D&D 3.5. You can make your item less valuable by putting restrictions on it like "only usable by an Elf" or "only usable by a Wizard" or "requires 18 Int to use," which yes logically makes the item cost less on the open market (since there are fewer people who'd want to buy it), but the system also means it costs less to create that item. So if you're crafting or commissioning stuff for personal use, and you're an Elf Wizard with 18 Int, you can slap those on to get your gear at a fraction of the cost. Note that in practice a real DM wouldn't allow such munchkinnery.
Plus I always think it's weird when you've got a flexible system like Nen, and everyone does something so completely different with it. I'd expect people to hear "Hey, that Kurapika guy's a Conjurer with this cool Dowsing Chain ability" and then copy it to some extent. Like how every car manufacturer doesn't decide on a completely different frame/body type/number of wheels. Seems like you'd have Nen masters teaching their techniques to newbies, rather than everyone rolling their own.
Anyway, best magic system in fiction that I've read is in the Mistborn novels by Brandon Sanderson. Hands down, no contest. First one's called The Final Empire. It's a lot simpler and more well-defined than Nen. It doesn't allow for the craziness of "and then I conjure a vaccuum cleaner out of thin air to eat your face off," but it has its own subtleties going on that keep getting more and more awesome.
HxH is one of the great fictional works I've ever experienced. Watching it as a nearly 40 year old man was like Star Wars was when I was a kid. The Nen system is pure genius.
I'm not up to date (stopped watching sometime during Chimera Ant), but I always thought the drawback/restriction system was too abusable. Like Kurapika with his ridonculous anti-Phantom Troupe tech. Frankly most of what Kurapika did vs the Troupe seemed broken. Dude's a Conjurer, which means he conjures stuff, but he conjures chains with their own super powers (eg lie detection).
But for instance, what's to stop an Emitter from saying "I have a Red Beam Blast Attack. It's way more powerful, but I can only use it on Sundays. Meanwhile I have this Orange Beam Blast Attack for Mondays, etc." Or "I have this super-powerful attack, but I can only use it against people I really hate!" Considering how few people exist that one "really hates," that should be a huge multiplier, but those are the only people you need the awesome attack against. Or swap out "really hate" for "am fighting right at that moment." Once again it's a very specific restriction... that's actually no restriction at all.
Reminds me of the custom magic item creation tables in D&D 3.5. You can make your item less valuable by putting restrictions on it like "only usable by an Elf" or "only usable by a Wizard" or "requires 18 Int to use," which yes logically makes the item cost less on the open market (since there are fewer people who'd want to buy it), but the system also means it costs less to create that item. So if you're crafting or commissioning stuff for personal use, and you're an Elf Wizard with 18 Int, you can slap those on to get your gear at a fraction of the cost. Note that in practice a real DM wouldn't allow such munchkinnery.
Plus I always think it's weird when you've got a flexible system like Nen, and everyone does something so completely different with it. I'd expect people to hear "Hey, that Kurapika guy's a Conjurer with this cool Dowsing Chain ability" and then copy it to some extent. Like how every car manufacturer doesn't decide on a completely different frame/body type/number of wheels. Seems like you'd have Nen masters teaching their techniques to newbies, rather than everyone rolling their own.
Anyway, best magic system in fiction that I've read is in the Mistborn novels by Brandon Sanderson. Hands down, no contest. First one's called The Final Empire. It's a lot simpler and more well-defined than Nen. It doesn't allow for the craziness of "and then I conjure a vaccuum cleaner out of thin air to eat your face off," but it has its own subtleties going on that keep getting more and more awesome.
What's to stop you from making an oath that you will only use this ability for the particular person you're fighting and that you can't use the ability with anyone else? Just make up new abilities.
Because that's what Kurapika essentially does. Except he has broken abilities on top of super-saiyan on top of his broken Anti-Spider abilities.
Nen is brilliant. It made fights a lot more unpredictable and tactical because it isn't a straight cut power level where higher "number" or more strength/speed equals automatically stronger but instead more about how each nen user approach their battles with their unique abilities and how well they understand and use their technique.
Nen is brilliant. It made fights a lot more unpredictable and tactical because it isn't a straight cut power level where higher "number" or more strength/speed equals automatically stronger but instead more about how each nen user approach their battles with their unique abilities and how well they understand and use their technique.
I'm not up to date (stopped watching sometime during Chimera Ant), but I always thought the drawback/restriction system was too abusable. Like Kurapika with his ridonculous anti-Phantom Troupe tech. Frankly most of what Kurapika did vs the Troupe seemed broken. Dude's a Conjurer, which means he conjures stuff, but he conjures chains with their own super powers (eg lie detection).
But for instance, what's to stop an Emitter from saying "I have a Red Beam Blast Attack. It's way more powerful, but I can only use it on Sundays. Meanwhile I have this Orange Beam Blast Attack for Mondays, etc." Or "I have this super-powerful attack, but I can only use it against people I really hate!" Considering how few people exist that one "really hates," that should be a huge multiplier, but those are the only people you need the awesome attack against. Or swap out "really hate" for "am fighting right at that moment." Once again it's a very specific restriction... that's actually no restriction at all.
Reminds me of the custom magic item creation tables in D&D 3.5. You can make your item less valuable by putting restrictions on it like "only usable by an Elf" or "only usable by a Wizard" or "requires 18 Int to use," which yes logically makes the item cost less on the open market (since there are fewer people who'd want to buy it), but the system also means it costs less to create that item. So if you're crafting or commissioning stuff for personal use, and you're an Elf Wizard with 18 Int, you can slap those on to get your gear at a fraction of the cost. Note that in practice a real DM wouldn't allow such munchkinnery.
Plus I always think it's weird when you've got a flexible system like Nen, and everyone does something so completely different with it. I'd expect people to hear "Hey, that Kurapika guy's a Conjurer with this cool Dowsing Chain ability" and then copy it to some extent. Like how every car manufacturer doesn't decide on a completely different frame/body type/number of wheels. Seems like you'd have Nen masters teaching their techniques to newbies, rather than everyone rolling their own.
Everything as a cost in HxH.
the emotional cost for Kurapika is quite enormous, on top of that the stronger the strain you put on yourself the bigger the payoff.
He can change the restriction but he probably would lose his power in the change (I think he said so himself).
The idea is not to put a restriction but to put the penalty in case you don't follow up to it.
If your condition on red sunday beams is no Nen ever in case of mistake it could be pretty powerful, otherwise the power you get from it would be kinda like you did nothing at all.
It's also very dependent on the personality of the user.
Someone with a great experience fighting all types of guys can make a skill that leverage his knowledge of various type of fighters like that dude in the ant arc.
Or the guy with the best lung capacity will have a smoke skill to produce as much smoke as possible or something.
End ant arc spoiler below
the president skill is a statue that appears on his whim and can basically overkill with 1000 different forms, utterly unpredictable.
And yet his skill is not from his martial art proficiency but really about his faith and how that affected him in his training.
It's interesting because the characters are interesting.
Anyway, best magic system in fiction that I've read is in the Mistborn novels by Brandon Sanderson. Hands down, no contest. First one's called The Final Empire. It's a lot simpler and more well-defined than Nen. It doesn't allow for the craziness of "and then I conjure a vaccuum cleaner out of thin air to eat your face off," but it has its own subtleties going on that keep getting more and more awesome.
Gon lost his ability and his body.
He regained his body but his ability is still locked, he can't use Nen at all.
There's even a conversation with his father about it.
Kurapika cheated and pay a price for that.
Gon's trainer even commented on that not being the correct road to take to be strong.
there's nothing free about Nen.
The only irritating thing about Nen is how it doesn't make sense that its existence is this huge secret the public isn't aware of. Meanwhile, Heavens Arena broadcasts high level Nen battles on a regular basis and a bunch of other stuff I forgot.
The only irritating thing about Nen is how it doesn't make sense that its existence is this huge secret the public isn't aware of. Meanwhile, Heavens Arena broadcasts high level Nen battles on a regular basis and a bunch of other stuff I forgot.
Yep, that is actually a legit inconsistency that confused me. When I reread that arc recently it really stood out. Nen should be somewhat known, on the Internet at the very least, because of that arena.
Yep, that is actually a legit inconsistency that confused me. When I reread that arc recently it really stood out. Nen should be somewhat known, on the Internet at the very least, because of that arena.
I get why he went that route. It's so that the viewers discover Nen at the same time Gon does and we get introduced to new layers of it as he's advancing his training, but it'd be more elegant to just say Gon doesn't know about all of this because he lived on an island for most of his life.
I'm not up to date (stopped watching sometime during Chimera Ant), but I always thought the drawback/restriction system was too abusable. Like Kurapika with his ridonculous anti-Phantom Troupe tech. Frankly most of what Kurapika did vs the Troupe seemed broken. Dude's a Conjurer, which means he conjures stuff, but he conjures chains with their own super powers (eg lie detection).
But for instance, what's to stop an Emitter from saying "I have a Red Beam Blast Attack. It's way more powerful, but I can only use it on Sundays. Meanwhile I have this Orange Beam Blast Attack for Mondays, etc." Or "I have this super-powerful attack, but I can only use it against people I really hate!" Considering how few people exist that one "really hates," that should be a huge multiplier, but those are the only people you need the awesome attack against. Or swap out "really hate" for "am fighting right at that moment." Once again it's a very specific restriction... that's actually no restriction at all.
Reminds me of the custom magic item creation tables in D&D 3.5. You can make your item less valuable by putting restrictions on it like "only usable by an Elf" or "only usable by a Wizard" or "requires 18 Int to use," which yes logically makes the item cost less on the open market (since there are fewer people who'd want to buy it), but the system also means it costs less to create that item. So if you're crafting or commissioning stuff for personal use, and you're an Elf Wizard with 18 Int, you can slap those on to get your gear at a fraction of the cost. Note that in practice a real DM wouldn't allow such munchkinnery.
Plus I always think it's weird when you've got a flexible system like Nen, and everyone does something so completely different with it. I'd expect people to hear "Hey, that Kurapika guy's a Conjurer with this cool Dowsing Chain ability" and then copy it to some extent. Like how every car manufacturer doesn't decide on a completely different frame/body type/number of wheels. Seems like you'd have Nen masters teaching their techniques to newbies, rather than everyone rolling their own.
Anyway, best magic system in fiction that I've read is in the Mistborn novels by Brandon Sanderson. Hands down, no contest. First one's called The Final Empire. It's a lot simpler and more well-defined than Nen. It doesn't allow for the craziness of "and then I conjure a vaccuum cleaner out of thin air to eat your face off," but it has its own subtleties going on that keep getting more and more awesome.
Since nen is supposed to reflect the personalities or characteristics of people I assume people just trying to emulate other people's more complicated powers means they wouldn't be very powerful. That's why Nen teachers just teach the principles to their students and let them come up with their own hatsu. Nen reflects the person, if they are trying to copy someone else rather than coming up with something that reflects their own ideas, its very likely that the restrictions they put on them won't really mean anything to them, and thus would result in a much weaker power.
Gin can copy simple abilities like Leorio cause he has a huge understanding of how Nen works, and there doesn't seem to be anything convoluted about that ability.
Anyway, how does the magic system in Mistborn works? Magic systems can be very interesting, like how Unsounded's magic is a bit like programming, with the rooms for errors, and potential glitches included.
The only irritating thing about Nen is how it doesn't make sense that its existence is this huge secret the public isn't aware of. Meanwhile, Heavens Arena broadcasts high level Nen battles on a regular basis and a bunch of other stuff I forgot.
Yeah its a very big plot hole, one of the many reasons I don't like that arc despite it being the one that introduces Nen, the whole thing was just a big set up for introducing Nen, but it didn't feel like it flowed well with the narrative, I feel the same about the chapter where the spiders battle the ants, felt like a forced chapter to just demostrtate everyone's nen abilities.
I get why he went that route. It's so that the viewers discover Nen at the same time Gon does and we get introduced to new layers of it as he's advancing his training, but it'd be more elegant to just say Gon doesn't know about all of this because he lived on an island for most of his life.
That would make sense but again Killua and the rest don't know anything about.
It's really weird for Kurapika as he should have awakened it on its own.
I would agree the show has problems and actively disliked it for entire arcs. Not sure when it clicked with me exactly but I think it was the Greed Island arc. The show takes a long time to coalesce into something great but when it does very few shounens can match it. I will say it's sort of like FMA VS FMA Brotherhood.
FMA takes its time to handle the earlier events and character building better bit doesn't end strongly while FMA Brotherhood skimmed through early events people had already seen to get the end game stuff.
Obviously this doesn't quite match up with the two HxH series but I found the original anime handles the early story much better than the 2011 version by Madhouse. However the Madhouse version starts knocking it out of the park once it gets to Greed Island.
That would make sense but again Killua and the rest don't know anything about.
It's really weird for Kurapika as he should have awakened it on its own.
He'd have to tweak some other things too. Like Killua not knowing about Nen while his entire family is composed of Nen users that obviously all have special abilities doesn't really add up too.
What do you mean free? Gon lost ALL his nen for abusing his body, forcing pre-mature growth out of it. He suffered heavy consequences for abandoning his humanity, and he didn't get to keep the power like say Goku after turning into SSJ. Chimera Ant was also a huge arc, and there were a lot of buildup and tension within Gon ever since they left Kite alone. Togashi foreshadowed Gon's descent into madness various times, one when he was asked by Morel to prove his ability to join the group, and he nearly killed Morel for it, when they were ready to invade the palace, and Killua saw Gon's face and his eyes completely sank and finally Netero pointing Gon the direction of Pitou, Gon's anger is starting to be even more apparent.
Gon was also mentally tortured multiple times throughout the arc. First is when he found out the state of Kite, next is when he learnt about Pitou wanting to heal and protect Komugi despite her brute nature, and finally learning Pitou cannot recover Kite. Remember, Gon was still a kid. That was just too much of a mind abuse for Gon to handle, which leads him to utterly lose his mind and him not caring whatever happen next, other than to kill Pitou.
Now, regarding Kurapika, I do agree he's quite overpowered in general, but his most threatening ability, Emperor Time can only be used when his eyes turn scarlet, and that only happen when he fight against Phantom Troupe and related foes, and it drains energy like mad, and Judgement Chain, his 1hko secret technique can strictly be used on the Troupe alone, or else, he dies.
Bringing age into discussion of these nature where people can do things well beyond normal human could do is a bad argument. Please don't do that.
I'm not up to date (stopped watching sometime during Chimera Ant), but I always thought the drawback/restriction system was too abusable. Like Kurapika with his ridonculous anti-Phantom Troupe tech. Frankly most of what Kurapika did vs the Troupe seemed broken. Dude's a Conjurer, which means he conjures stuff, but he conjures chains with their own super powers (eg lie detection).
But for instance, what's to stop an Emitter from saying "I have a Red Beam Blast Attack. It's way more powerful, but I can only use it on Sundays. Meanwhile I have this Orange Beam Blast Attack for Mondays, etc." Or "I have this super-powerful attack, but I can only use it against people I really hate!" Considering how few people exist that one "really hates," that should be a huge multiplier, but those are the only people you need the awesome attack against. Or swap out "really hate" for "am fighting right at that moment." Once again it's a very specific restriction... that's actually no restriction at all.
Reminds me of the custom magic item creation tables in D&D 3.5. You can make your item less valuable by putting restrictions on it like "only usable by an Elf" or "only usable by a Wizard" or "requires 18 Int to use," which yes logically makes the item cost less on the open market (since there are fewer people who'd want to buy it), but the system also means it costs less to create that item. So if you're crafting or commissioning stuff for personal use, and you're an Elf Wizard with 18 Int, you can slap those on to get your gear at a fraction of the cost. Note that in practice a real DM wouldn't allow such munchkinnery.
Plus I always think it's weird when you've got a flexible system like Nen, and everyone does something so completely different with it. I'd expect people to hear "Hey, that Kurapika guy's a Conjurer with this cool Dowsing Chain ability" and then copy it to some extent. Like how every car manufacturer doesn't decide on a completely different frame/body type/number of wheels. Seems like you'd have Nen masters teaching their techniques to newbies, rather than everyone rolling their own.
Anyway, best magic system in fiction that I've read is in the Mistborn novels by Brandon Sanderson. Hands down, no contest. First one's called The Final Empire. It's a lot simpler and more well-defined than Nen. It doesn't allow for the craziness of "and then I conjure a vaccuum cleaner out of thin air to eat your face off," but it has its own subtleties going on that keep getting more and more awesome.
My interpretation of the Nen conditions was that they are essentially a deal you make with yourself, and the higher the penalty, the higher the payoff. There's no external authority regulating these conditions, it's just you, so the condition has to be something that is a big sacrifice by your standards. In your example of the emitter with the days of the week beams, that's a weak bullshit condition and it probably wouldn't make their attacks very powerful unless they were actually crazy and somehow believed not being able to use one of their 7 beams on each day was a huge consequence.
Nen is great and probably among the most intricate and coherent of the systems in mainstream shounen, but within the entire genre? I'd disagree with that. I'd put the mystickers from Blazer Drive or Stands from JoJo above nen.
This freaking overhyped show, specially by gaffers. The Power Systems is simple, but they just try to overcomplicated it so damn much. Thank god I stopped watching.
The show does off start off slow and only gets going once the tournament starts. The series peak was the Yorknew City arc and then it goes downhill. Greed Island was pretty good, but that Ant arc was pretty awful.
What's to stop you from making an oath that you will only use this ability for the particular person you're fighting and that you can't use the ability with anyone else? Just make up new abilities.
Because that's what Kurapika essentially does. Except he has broken abilities on top of super-saiyan on top of his broken Anti-Spider abilities.
I'm ony quoting you but this is for a bunch of people in this thread. After thinking this over some more I have to point out you guys forget a few important details about Nen. Why doesn't Hisoka make chains? Why doesn't Kurapika make gum? It's because there is a hard limit to how you can experiment. Once you choose the manner in which Nen is manifested you have to continually hone it to make it better. If you abandon the usage of that craft it's like doing a respec in an RPG you lose all your abilities and have to retrain yourself at a much lower level.
You can't just make up anything without high switching costs.
But for instance, what's to stop an Emitter from saying "I have a Red Beam Blast Attack. It's way more powerful, but I can only use it on Sundays. Meanwhile I have this Orange Beam Blast Attack for Mondays, etc." Or "I have this super-powerful attack, but I can only use it against people I really hate!" Considering how few people exist that one "really hates," that should be a huge multiplier, but those are the only people you need the awesome attack against. Or swap out "really hate" for "am fighting right at that moment." Once again it's a very specific restriction... that's actually no restriction at all.
As an emitter though you are now restricted to beam attacks. You are constantly bench pressing beams and forgoing other aspects of emission such as leg pressing illusions, aerobic pulses and crunching energy transference.
P.S. - Yes I'm deliberately drawing parallels between different forms of real life strength training with different forms of manifesting your Nen affinity to make it easier to understand the limitations of training a specific aspect.
By focusing so much on beams you are vastly more predictable in how your attacks work and the outcome becomes a lot more binary.
I suggest you rewatch Hunter Hunter again after Gon is healed and rethink what you assumed. At no point did Gon use Nen because he hasn't needed to so far.
Huge spoilers. Don't click the second line if you never intend to read the manga.
Actually Gon lost the ability to use Nen completely.
Figured I might bump this topic that we actually know exactly what's going on with Kurapika and Emperor Time. Gotta say I don't think anyone can call it overpowered any more considering the absolutely insane condition he put on using it. I'll spoiler it for those who aren't caught up on the manga,
Kurapika's condition for using Emperor Time is that for every second that he is in ET, he burns an hour off of his life. So if he's in Emperor Time for an hour that equals 3600 seconds which equates to 3600 hours that will be burnt off of his life or 150 days or nearly half a year off his life. So that fight with Uvogin might have only taken a half hour to start from their meeting to Uvo's death but that would still be about 75 days off of his life. So ET being so powerful makes sense and is by no means an ass pull or anything like that, its Kurapika killing himself, albeit methodically for incredible power.
Not too mention that he was in ET in other parts of the York New arc. It might explain why Kurapika was out of commission for several days after he put the judgment chain on Chrollo's and Paku's hearts as he'd been using it for a very long time, no clue but it could have and probably was hours. Its also good to point out that what Kurapika is doing with the condition on Emperor Time is a much more thought out and calculated version of what Gon did against Pitou except he burned every bit of his life energy in a form of suicide that gave him a momentary but massive power boost.
