"Yet another excellent volume." by V. Krätke (Netherlands) on Oct 12, 2006

Hunter X Hunter has been running for over twenty collected volumes now, and it shows no signs of losing any steam. Few manga manage to stay as gripping for such a long time, but Togashi pulls it off with flying colours. This twenty-first volume is once again filled with surprising twists, nail-biting suspense and bursts of spectacular, incredibly violent mortal combat. Gon has to deal with bitter defeat and is forced to go on a date with the mentally unstable Pamu, while Kilua confronts his inner demons during some intense duels. This makes for some interesting new insights into our two leads - Killua in particular comes out as a much more developed character. But there's more going on than just that. The battle against the Kimera ants takes a turn for the worse as the king is born sooner than expected. His extremely brutal and tyrannic character, however, doesn't sit well with his underlings, who decide to abandon the nest and swarm out over the world in search of territories of their own to conquer. With so much going on, you'll be left desperately needing to read more at the end of this volume, just to find out what else is in store for Gon and Killua. A manga that can leave you so eager to read more deserves to be ranked among the very best of its ilk.
As a bonus, the French edition of volume 21 comes with a really nice mini shitajiki (also known as a pencil board; they're like large cards intended to be used as writing underlays). It features the cover art of volume one and makes for a nice, bright-looking little gimmick. I'm a long-time shitajiki collector as well as a long-time Hunter X Hunter fan, so I was delighted by this bonus. It's not often you get an absolutely stunning comic plus free goodies that actualy look good for such a small amount of money.