Togashi Makes Update on Hunter x Hunter and His Health

Recently, Togashi gave some updates regarding Hunter x Hunter and his health in general. Hunter x Hunter has been running on Shueisha’s Shonen Jump since 1998, and the story has been compiled into 38 volumes so far.

Despite Shonen Jump being a weekly magazine, it’s been a few years that Hunter x Hunter has had an irregular publishing schedule. This is mostly due to creator Yoshihiro Togashi‘s health problems, especially regarding chronic back pain, that makes it hard for him to draw new chapters.

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Anyway, he posted on his social media that he finished the name (as the original manuscript of a manga chapter is called) of two new chapters. He also stated that he went through medical surgery with local anesthesia and that the experience was valuable (apparently, the doctors explained to him what they were doing while they were doing it, since he was awake): Togashi didn’t explain what the surgery was for:

Here’s the translation:

Finished two chapters.

I had surgery. Local anesthesia.

It was for medical treatment reasons, so they explained everything.

It was great to learn it.

So I think it was a valuable experience.

Thank you very much.

Hunter x Hunter Latest Chapters

The latest Hunter x Hunter chapters were published this year. Chapter 400 was published in 2022, then the series went into hiatus once again. On October 7, 2024, chapter 401 was finally published, and now the series is getting weekly chapters since then (the latest one is chapter 408, published on November 25).

Generally, the chapters are published in “blocks”. Togashi prepares and then serializes around 10 chapters (the average number of chapters in a Hunter x Hunter volume) and then starts a new hiatus to prepare more chapters. It is not confirmed if the series will follow this pattern once again, but he has been working on chapters lately.

Togashi’s Back Pain and Health

Togashi has suffered from chronic back pain for a long time. This pain sometimes reaches a peak (“crisis”) in which he cannot do routine tasks. A few years ago, he even commented on Shonen Jump that he had trouble getting out of bed and going to the bathroom, and sometimes it’s such a hard pain he needs to call an ambulance.

It is not uncommon for mangaka to have pain in their backs and in their hands, so it is likely this problem came or was aggravated due to Togashi’s work routine. Since the pain is so hard, he cannot do trivial things, he also stops drawing manga during these hard times. Also, for a long time, Togashi didn’t have assistants (because he’d rather do all the job himself) but he recently hired a few of them to help him with Hunter x Hunter serialization.

Source: Official Togashi Account on X (Formerly Twitter)

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Hunter x Hunter

Release Date

October 2, 2011

Studio

Madhouse

Creator

Yoshihiro Togashi

MyAnimeList Score

9.03