Hunter x Hunter prepares for manga comeback with first volume in 4 years

Following a four-year hiatus, Hunter x Hunter is finally making a long-awaited return to the manga world.

The official Twitter account for Weekly Shonen Jump confirmed that the next volume will be released in Japan on Nov 4, after author Yoshihiro Togashi was forced to stop producing his long-running series due to health issues.

There's no word of an English release date just yet, but considering how the last volume took around 10 months to arrive in US, American and chances are, international audiences, will likely have to wait for a little before they can get their hands on the new chapters.

The announcement comes after Togashi teased a look of an in-progress manga sketch on Twitter earlier in the year, which has since amassed 1.4 million likes.

It's not the first time that Hunter x Hunter has been in such a situation – from 2017 to 2018 alone, the manga title was forced into three cycles of hiatuses, and that's not counting the prior delays.

The return of the beloved battle series is certainly fantastic news for fans, and touches upon a common, deeply-seated industry issue: Health deterioration.

As creating manga is a labour-intensive process, a lot of professionals have been inflicted with back-related ailments while working on their craft, a consequence of spending long hours hunching and drawing panels in order to hit strict deadlines.

In Togashi's case, that has caused Hunter x Hunter to have fewer and fewer issues over the years, producing over 380 chapters in total so far. In comparison, Naruto, which began its run one year later, ended in 2014 with 700 chapters.

The manga was adapted into two television anime series, two anime films, and several original video titles. The second season premiered in Japan in 2011 and ran for 148 episodes, with the final episode premiering in 2014.

The story follows Gon Freecs as he strives to become a Hunter in order to find his father and to find the reason why his father abandoned him as a baby to become a Hunter.

ALSO READ: Hunter x Hunter creator teases comeback after 4-year manga hiatus

This article was first published in Geek Culture.