In the end, she ends up feeling bland, and you can tell she wasn’t written by Togashi, as Togashi always takes more care to make characters interesting and varied, which Retz is not. Retz isn’t a great addition to the series’ roster of female characters, despite the interesting attempt to live as she chooses rather than as her brother puppeteers her to live. Omokage is certainly not the series’ best villian, but he’s not as bad as the bombers in Greed Island.

The story enriches HxH lore and adds a level of continuity to the rather weird transition between the ‘York New City’ and ‘Greed Island’ arcs. She really has Kurapika’s cadence and emotion down to an artform, and I can’t help but want Kurapika to have more time in this as she’s just phenomenal. Kurapika’s VA in this and the ongoing dub is probably one of the best parts of the dub. All the voices sound natural, and they even transcended what I was expecting, especially coming from the VA’s for Kurapika, Hisoka, Omokage, and Killua. The voice work is similar to that of the ongoing Hunter x Hunter dub, and it’s nothing to sneeze at. I’m usually a sub kind of girl when it comes to anime, but I decided to go with dub for this watch-through because that’s really the selling point of this DVD release. The music used in Phantom Rogue is all just previous music from the series, but I always have to mention how great the score for HxH is.

Sometimes in original anime movies, that’s not the case (*cough cough* The Last Mission), but Madhouse remains one of the best animation studios in the business, and Phantom Rogue has many fluid and striking sequences. Visually, the animation looks exactly like the anime without any downgrade in quality. Taking place after the ‘York New City’ arc (that translates to season three for those who watched it on Netflix or DVD), Phantom Rogue centers around the fallout of that arc and brings into the fray a new character, Omokage, who was once a member of the Phantom Troupe. However, Phantom Rogue is not ‘canon’ - it’s an original story that is not adapting any of the manga, but unlike the other Hunter x Hunter movie, The Last Mission, it attempts to tie into the story to some degree. Hunter x Hunter is one of my favorite anime/mangas ever, so when I was given the chance to review the new English release of the first original movie, I jumped at it.

Hunter x hunter movie soundtrack