Hunter X Hunter Season 7 Release Date, Cast, And Plot - What We Know So Far

When the second anime adaptation of "Hunter x Hunter" ended its run with Season 6 in 2014, with the "Election Arc," fans were hopeful that there was more just around the corner. After all, series creator Yoshihiro Togashi continued to produce content for the celebrated manga of the same name in small increments from 2014 up to 2018. Why haven't those stories made it to the anime?

However, now that more than half a decade has passed with no real news, even diehard "Hunter x Hunter" fans on Reddit have begun to get discouraged. Many feel that there is a genuine danger that Togashi's health issues have ultimately gotten the better of him, and their favorite anime heroes will unfortunately never see their stories completed.

At least, that's how the community felt before a pair of mysterious social media posts went up, both from voice actresses who worked on the original Japanese dub of "Hunter x Hunter." One went up on the Instagram of Megumi Han, who played the main character Gon Freecss, while the other came through the Twitter account of Mariya Ise, who voiced Killua Zoldyck.

Unfortunately, both of those clues are a bit hard to decipher for anyone who doesn't speak Japanese, so let's dive into everything we know about the release date, cast, and plot of "Hunter x Hunter" Season 7.

The most critical holdup concerning the release of a new season of "Hunter x Hunter" is the lack of primary content from the "Hunter x Hunter" manga. The manga has always moved at creator Yoshiro Togashi's pace and has seen numerous significant hiatuses over the last decade.

However, what if the anime creators decided to take a "Game of Thrones" approach, building Season 7 out of an outline? If fans take Megumi Han and Mariya Ise's coded social media messages as an indication that work on the next chapter of "Hunter x Hunter" has begun, then this might be the case. The animation studio Madhouse, which produced the first six seasons, has demonstrated that they can put out content quickly. From 2011 to 2014, the company produced 148 episodes of the show, with three separate seasons premiering in 2012 alone. There is a significant gap between the Japanese version of the show premiering and the English version airing, but once the dubbed version got underway, it also put out multiple seasons per year.

As such, if work is underway, then a new season could premiere towards the end of 2021, and if it does, fans might see an English version by 2022 – but these remain purely speculative estimations.

At this point, all that fans have to go on as far as who to expect in the voice cast are the social media messages from Mariya Ise and Megumi Han. Funimation, thankfully, has translated these messages to give English-speaking fans an idea of what they might mean for the future of the series.

Megumi Han, who voiced main character Gon Freecss, posted a photo of a microphone on Instagram along with a caption, as translated by Funimation, that says she "is very happy to return to her 'starting point' and was recording alongside her 'partner.'" Besides some very minor parts, Han's most significant early role was "Hunter x Hunter," via IMDb. Meanwhile, Mariya Ise, voice actress for Killua Zoldyck, put up a post on Twitter that said, according to Funimation, that she was "recording for a project, and was happy to meet up with her 'partner.'" If these messages are referring to "Hunter x Hunter," then two of the primary cast members will return to voice the main characters.

If the Japanese production is making an effort to retain the same voice cast, there's no reason the English dub wouldn't keep the same talent. This means that Erica Mendez could return as Gon Freecss, Cristina Valenzuela could once again voice Killua Zoldyck, and Michael McConnohie might return to narrate Season 7.

As mentioned, the biggest hold-up for the next season of "Hunter x Hunter" is the unfinished source material, the "Hunter x Hunter" manga. The manga is notorious for being delayed, but the most recent pause, which has lasted since late 2018, is supposedly due to Yoshihiro Togashi's chronic health issues and, according to CBR, a possible obsession with the "Dragon Quest" video game series.

However, if Season 7 of "Hunter x Hunter" ever arrives, it will likely be the endgame for the story of Gon Freecss and the Hunters. In 2018, right before the manga went on its longest hiatus, Comic Book reports that Togashi told Weekly Shonen Jump, "I need to finish writing 'Hunter x Hunter.' It has come to the point where either the story concludes first or I die before that happens. But I do intend to finish it."

So while it might be tough for fans to say goodbye to a series as epic and elaborate as "Hunter x Hunter," they should probably be prepared to do so, whether Season 7 ever arrives or not. Hopefully, that ending comes with some more of the epic anime fights that fans have come to expect from the series.