Buhara

Buhara serves as one of the proctors for the Second Phase of the Hunter Exam.

He appears as a massively built, overweight man whose size matches his extreme eating capacity.

He is a professional Gourmet Hunter who specializes in food-related hunting and culinary challenges.

During the Second Phase, he works alongside his fellow examiner Menchi, who focuses on gourmet cooking evaluation.

In contrast to his brutish appearance, Buhara is intelligent, calm, and surprisingly reasonable.

He often acts as the voice of common sense, especially when Menchi’s temper flares and her standards become overly strict.

In the 1999 anime adaptation, he is voiced by Keiji Takahashi.

In the 2011 anime adaptation, he is voiced by Junichi Kanemaru.

Buhara is responsible for designing part of the Second Phase trial of the Hunter Exam.

Because he is a Gourmet Hunter, his test revolves around hunting and preparing food.

For his exam task, he assigns the candidates to roast and serve a whole pork dish, specifically a whole roast pig.

This is based on his own favorite food, which he enjoys to an extreme degree.

Buhara personally consumes the examinees’ dishes as the main judge.

He evaluates the pork based on taste and preparation, effectively using his enormous appetite as part of the exam system.

During this phase, another examiner, Menchi, later introduces her own cooking-based challenge.

When Menchi becomes emotional and overly harsh in her grading, Buhara tries to calm her down and restore fairness.

Although he attempts to persuade Menchi to be more reasonable with the candidates, she refuses to listen.

This highlights Buhara as a grounded, rational adult surrounded by more volatile personalities.

Buhara’s most striking trait is his incredible appetite and capacity for food.

It is stated that he can eat the equivalent of 70 whole roast pigs in one sitting during the first half of the Second Phase.

Kurapika even remarks that the amount of food he eats is larger than Buhara’s own body volume.

This extreme intake underlines both his comedic value and his superhuman physical condition.

Physically, Buhara possesses tremendous raw strength consistent with his size and status as a Hunter.

As a Hunter and implied Nen user, his power is considered naturally high, making his brute force “normal” for his profession.

Despite his gluttonous and somewhat goofy appearance, Buhara is actually quite intelligent and practical.

He understands fairness, exam structure, and the responsibility that comes with being an examiner.

Compared to Menchi, he is more tolerant and less temperamental.

His interactions show that he prefers reasonable standards, especially when examinees have already endured long hardships to reach the Second Phase.

In the original manga, Buhara appears during the Hunter Exam arc as a key figure in the Second Phase.

His exam and eating feats are faithfully depicted as part of the candidates’ trials.

In the 1999 anime adaptation, his role follows the manga closely, including the full food-based testing sequence.

His personality, gluttony, and relationship with Menchi are all given screen time and comedic emphasis.

In the 2011 anime adaptation, the sushi-related portion of the Second Phase is removed.

Because this entire test segment is cut, Buhara’s overall screen time and presence in the story are significantly reduced.

Even with the reduced role, he remains recognizable to fans as the massive Gourmet Hunter with a bottomless stomach.

His combination of gentle demeanor and monstrous appetite leaves a memorable impression in the short time he appears.

Outside the Hunter × Hunter series, “Buhara” is also the name of a city in Uzbekistan, often known in English as Bukhara.

Historically, along with Samarkand, it was one of the major political and cultural centers of Central Asia before the Soviet era.