First off everything prior to Meruem being born was fine, after that's when I start getting my gripes.
Reason of hate:
The Meruem and the Komugi scenes are by far the worst anime scenes I've ever watched. Both characters are uninteresting. Komugi is a pile of sadness that they really push hard on you, to the point of caricature. Meruem is a standard "Oh I learned to love" character which is pretty damn cliche. That cliche alone isn't bad, but they didn't really do a good job in selling it imo. This all wouldn't be a big deal if there wasn't so much screen time devoted to them together or if the viewers could follow along with their games. You get to watch them play a fictional game that they never tell you the rules, so you never get any frame of reference as to why she so great at the game. Establishing a game with a set of rules the viewer could follow along and feel more invested in the characters would of been great. Instead you watch the same scene over and over, Meruem loses, monologues about how he could lose to a human while Komugi blows snot everywhere trying to remind you how pitiful she is.
The Mereum and Komugi scenes gave the Ant arc a lot of depth for me, and really played into The King's character. Because of their interaction Mereum was constantly being tugged between his ant and human halves. It was very interesting to observe. The game served it's narrative purpose for me as well. I never even cared that I didn't understand the whole rule-set, it didn't matter to me. The character development that was fleshed out while they played the game.
The heavy handness of the whole military regime, atom bomb, and emotional pandering. No subtlety at all. I mean the best fight in the arc ends with "nuclear bombs are bad" Really?
Didn't feel heavy-handed to me at all. And the message was not "nuclear bombs are bad". The message conveyed was mankind's overall capacity for cruelty and violence, and the fact that we as a species reign supreme as far "the worst". I just don't really agree with you here, II loved how all this stuff was handled.
The royal ants were horrible. Menthuthuyoupi was boring, Shaiapouf was anime cliche humor 101, and Neferpitou the only good one was pitifully underused. She was puffed up to be a badass but she's reduced to playing doctor and being the punching bag to one of the worst anime powerups I've ever seen.
The Royal Guards were all great characters for me. I really enjoyed each one for different reasons. Youpi's rapid evolution as a person was fascinating to me. Shiapouf's insane devotion to the King, and emotional instability was surprisingly relateable to me. And Neferpitou getting curb stomped is one of my favorite things ever, so we're really not going to agree there. That was pure distilled catharsis. And that transformation is one of the BEST I've ever seen in a manga/anime. It was setup throughout the entire series quite well, and made sense within the rules of Nen.
The final "fight" between Gon and her was an extreme let down. Besides it being one sided (and one sided fights are never fun), but the actual power-up felt extremely lazy, uninteresting, and honestly looked incredibly stupid.
Agree with none of these points. It's the best moment in the whole series for me, the power-up was not lazy, and design wise I actually really like the transformation. I especially think it looks badass in the manga panels.
_/¯
