Hunter X Hunter Returns (Again)! And Some Older (but new) Naoko News!

What you are seeing here is a scan of an official advertisement found in last week's Shonen Jump magazine in Japan. Yoshihiro "Mr. Naoko" Togashi's Hunter X Hunter will resume weekly publication on October 6th. As of this writing, we are unsure how long it will return for, but we would not be surprised if it was only for 10 weeks. On October 3rd, the 26th volume will be released. We're a little surprised there's been little news coverage of this in the Japanese media, we've had to rely on blogs and 2channel to bring this story to you. New-Akiba says that many fans are in disbelief and also don't think that the manga is back for a long run. We've also read many opinions that hyping the manga's return like this is a strategy to bring in new readers , so that those who have not caught up to the new chapters will go out and buy the previous volumes. If this is so, we think that this stunt can only work for so long. It would probably be better if Yoshihiro could think of an ending already and finish the series, putting his fans (and possibly himself) out of misery.

And we have a piece of old Naoko Takeuchi news that is new news to us! Not a big piece of news, but this one comes to us a fan who got this from another friend, an artist on deviantArt named KinnoHitsuji. Blessings is a "publication for friends and supporters of Catholic Charities and its programs". In April of 2004, four students (two elementary, and two high schoolers) from St. Veronica’s After-School Academy's Kids of America Youth Journalism Club had the opportunity to visit Japan for a week to participate in an international youth reporting trip. They were lucky enough to convince Naoko to break her moratorium on interviews and meet with these students. One of those lucky students, Keisha Miles, said "She was nice and gave us autographs, journals and drew a picture of Sailor Moon." There is even a picture of her in the issue meeting with the students. This took place during the midst of PGSM, and doesn't really give us a clue about what she is up to now. Though we do find it a little strange that she held a moratorium on interviews during the run of PGSM. Why wouldn't a creator who had a huge hand in the production of a TV show want to talk about the show and help promote it? In any case, this was a neat find, and fans who want to read it can go read it here.