Question x Answer 2: Media Club Plus Bonus

Welcome to Media Club Plus, a podcast about diving into the media that interests us and the stories that excite us.

As always, we are brought to you by Friends of the Table, and for the last time, we're watching 2011's Hunter Hunter based on the manga by Yoshiki Tagashi.

My name is Keith J.

Carberry.

You can find me online at Keith J.

Carberry.

You can find the let's plays that I do at youtube.com/slash run button.

Uh, you can find all of us here, all five of us here at uh friends of the various friends of the table podcasts, uh, friendsofthetable.cash.

You can go there.

Uh, and with me, as always, is Jack Takeit.

Hi, Keith.

You can get any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.

And you can hear me, Janine, and Austin talking about V-Rising and Death Stranding on this week's episode of Sidestory at sidestory.show.

I have to listen to that because I don't know what V-Rising is except from people posting about it.

What do you think the V stands for?

Vampire.

Correct.

That's part of posting about it, as me seeing it.

That was the first thing I learned was that it's vampires.

I don't know anything about it.

I thought for a minute that it might be a menu-based game, but I think it's actually like a Diablo.

Sylvie Bullet.

Hi, I'm Sylvia.

You can find me most places at Sylvie Bullet.

You can check out

my band put out an EP pretty recently.

Go to gutmachine.bandcamp.com.

Check that out.

It's not, we're not on Spotify.

It's not going to be on Spotify.

So go to the band camp.

Why?

And why would it be?

Exactly.

For pennies, maybe.

For

literally, that's what it would be for is the problem.

It's for the pennies.

You should check out both.

If you want, you know, you've listened to the podcasts.

You've subscribed to the Patreon, as you should.

But you want more.

You want more friends of the table.

You want more in our...

For some reason, the only phrase I could think of was acerbic wit.

I don't even know if that's true.

Anyway,

go to youtube.com slash friends of the table or twitch.tv slash friends of the table and you can see us playing video games of all kinds.

Some of us can be acerbic sometimes.

I don't even really know what it means.

It's like

it's like acidic.

It's like

corroding, I think.

Andrew Lee Swan.

Hey, what's up?

You should go to friendsatthetable.shop and check out our new flag merch that just dropped.

Yeah, the flag merch is really good.

I've seen some flag merch in the wild.

Not in real life, but online.

I saw that people had it in their hands, which is really what I did.

The online wild.

Yeah.

The wildest place there is.

What did you say?

I said, the wildest place there is.

The internet.

The internet is pretty wild,

especially these days.

What?

That's the Acerbic Wit.

That's the one.

And here to join us talking about Hunter Hunter for the last time is Austin Walker.

First guest, last guest.

First guest, last guest.

Firstest guest, lastest guest.

Firstest guest, lastest guest.

Sixthest discussed now?

I was going to.

Sixthest.

Fifthest?

Sixthest.

Sixthest.

Sixthest.

It was fifthest last time.

Yeah.

I was going to plug the flag merch, but Dre had us covered.

We already did not quite real.bandcamp.com.

We already did Gut Machine.

We already did

Patreon, right?

We already did friends at the table.cash.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We did side story.

We did side story.

Twitch.tv slash friends at the table.

Yeah.

The other half of the YouTube part, the video part.

I guess that's it.

We're here to do our second QA.

We did a QA not halfway through

Hunter Hunter, but like kind of

halfway through its soul.

At the last point that it made sense to do one,

I would say.

Which was actually

when was it?

It was like episode 50.

It was in the 50s, I think.

It was after Phantom Troop Arc.

It was after York New, correct?

It was before Green Island.

Because

right before Greed Island.

Yeah.

Theoretically, we could have done one after Green Island, but that would have been too much.

It's between episodes 58 and 59.

Okay.

Yeah.

So like kind of like a third of the way through.

I'm not going to do the math on that.

That's bad.

Yeah, no.

That sounds right.

Austin, have you, have you, I know that you were sort of watching along with the show.

Did you finish up the show?

I sure did.

I had to make a decision.

Do I finish the show or do I finish the last podcast you released?

And I decided I should probably finish the show.

That's probably finished.

yeah, and the last show before it's really long.

It's really long.

I would have finished a normal episode of the podcast, but this is a really long episode.

So,

you know,

we like recorded a mini-episode and then I died part of the way through.

And then we recorded a whole full-length episode when I came back.

As the person editing that, I'll get you.

You died.

About a third of the way through and then was dead through the whole.

There is so.

I had no idea how bad you were coughing until I had the evidence in front of you.

I'm a mute button all-star.

That is the thing.

And the one thing that I forget is that only some of us have a mute button that mutes the actual track.

Yeah, no, if I touch anything on this, it'll turn my mixer off and it's a whole deal.

Or not off, but it makes it a whole deal.

Yeah.

Mute buttons are essential, I think, on mixers.

I wish that I had realized sooner that that was the case.

But

we've got a bunch of questions.

Thank you, everybody, for sending questions in.

We're not going to be able to get to all of them.

Some people were very excited to talk about

the future of Hunter Hunter, and I felt like I had to admit those, even though some of them seemed really interesting to not spoil us on the manga and also not spoil people listening on the manga.

There were also people who sent in several questions.

I tried to like pick from those

ones that I thought we could, you know, best address.

But thanks everybody for sending stuff in.

It was really great to see that people

still want to talk about Hunter Hunter even after got well over 100 hours of us talking about Hunter Hunter, which is great.

I wonder how many Hunter Hunters you could fit into the runtime of Media Club Plus.

We could loosely do math here based on how long it takes us to talk about it.

But

you could fit a lot in.

Yeah, I think you could.

Two and a half.

Yeah.

You could probably adapt Succession War and still not meet the amount of time that we.

Can I say it's crazy hearing you talk about the Succession War?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, this is a good.

Let's start off with this.

I have a cue that I would like an A.

Has anybody read any of the manga since ending

last week when we were finished recording?

I've read one chapter.

Okay.

I've read

a couple of chapters.

Yeah, I've read a lot.

I think I've read closer to what Austin's read.

Yeah.

And also, I will say I had been spoiled for a long time about what the next two arcs are.

That's the same for me.

I haven't read anything, but I do know some loose stuff that happens.

You know, I've talked about there's a big fight that I know about.

There's a few key characters that I know about.

And I know the names of those two arcs.

You knew someone was hiding a child.

I knew that someone was hiding a child.

Big one.

Oh, my God.

Big one.

I did a big one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

You read that one.

Kendrick Perkins?

I read that one.

Sorry.

Dre Dre probably hasn't.

Is Jack thinking of things that I don't know when the thing I know is revealed.

It could be in 15 chapters.

It could be in one chapter.

Right.

I only shared the one panel, huh?

Right.

So is a guy whose name starts with B in the chat?

Yeah, he's literally

beyond.

Yeah.

That is how that chapter ends and how that volume ends.

Hysterical name.

One of the all-time comedy names, I think.

Trey, this is what it means to go beyond.

And this is what it means to go beyond.

Yes, Jack, I do.

I haven't read anything since we rapped, but I have read

all of that first arc, the big fight stuff, basically, that Keith is talking about.

Oh, that's true.

And a little bit of succession.

Okay, that's fascinating.

That's interesting.

I am so curious to read more.

And I'm also thrilled that

Tawit on Blue Sky produced a Figma board to guide us through the succession.

We will talk about that because Tom sent in

a highly detailed email about some Netero stuff.

Oh, exciting.

Yeah.

So that'll be a good question.

Before we begin, probably be the last one.

Go ahead, Jack.

I would like to shout out Keith for making a lovely PowerPoint.

Hunter Hunter is a show about characters delivering PowerPoints.

Keith had no need to make this PowerPoint as nice as he did.

We're not live streaming this, but Keith's, but Keith's PowerPoint is blue and green, Gonan Killua themed, alternating with the questions appearing over Gonan Killua.

I admit that I think because the PowerPoint looks so nice, I forgot that we weren't streaming this

right up until you were like, yeah, okay, let's record and let's go.

And I like pulled up Twitch and I I was like, wait, where do.

Oh, right.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This was this was just because it felt a little plain

without it.

And, you know, when we did tips of the table, those always had like a little thing in the background.

I was like, that's nice.

And the Dreamcast PowerPoint has a little, has, you know, nice color.

And I was like, we can't, I can't just have blank

text on a background.

It felt wrong.

And it reminds us of our friends going and killer.

It reminds us of our friends going and killing.

Of course, like the show, it starts on a gone slide, but then ends on a killer slide.

Of course, that's not true of the show.

They should be like, like the literal scene-by-scene thing.

Okay,

we'll

maybe trade off reading these out.

I can start if we want.

Sure.

With Kaya, who sends in

Hunter Hunter is constantly introducing various games, but usually a very particular kind of game with defined winners and losers, even if the players sometimes decide what winning means for themselves, like Gon Netero's ball game.

E.G., from my memory, Killu and Gon never play an open-ended game of tag or roll up character sheets to play

D D, Dungeons Dragons, the Exis Island.

I can think of a few occasions that come close.

The troop playing Go Fish, the troop's a Requiem for Uvogin, and Killua playing with Aluka.

What's up with games and play in Hunter Hunter?

Good question, Kaya.

Big question, too.

Yeah, great question.

I feel like what's up with games is something we have been saying since the beginning of this show.

Yeah, we've been asking ourselves, and I appreciate the opportunity to come back to this specifically here at the end.

And I think it's interesting that when we do see,

I think that we get two examples of the troop who are like

feel so secure in their position in the world that

it's funny that they're the example twice of like characters who aren't playing a game to win, like to chase a goal,

they're just playing for the sake of playing, right?

Yeah, I don't know.

I feel like my first

feeling is that

we joked all the time, you know, like what actually is a hunter, and it seems like so much of the project of Hunter Hunter for Tagashi, and especially as it has been adapted, is to like create this type of person and show the truly bizarre way they exist in the world, and then also show the way that the world kind of orbits around them.

And I think that so much of the show is about how hunters move within this world and how hunters are incentivized or choose to or base their kind of philosophy on treating everything like

a game and not necessarily, I mean, they sort of see life as an open-ended game, right?

Hunters are like, well,

I'm pinballing from one exciting side quest to another exciting side quest.

I mean, this gets made text at the end, right?

With Jing saying, you know, the thing I really want to do is do the side jobs.

I've made my whole life side jobs.

And so I wonder if there is an open-ended game running kind of constantly, and it is the sort of

laws of physics of Hunter Hunter's world.

And it's only in the kind of like

choke points that

the game gets pushed into these sort of like

now it's greed island now it is a real task focused hunting game

yeah i go ahead no no no you go ahead um you know i think the the thing that gets tricky here is like um

i think that there are lots of times when you can see things that are not as open-ended as um tag or a tabletop role-playing game campaign but really broad goals that they then kind of gamify in some way, thinking here of, all right, we have to get a console to go to greed eye and a greed eye or a greed, they actually already have the greed island what memory card, but they don't have the copy of the game.

They already have the console.

They don't have the copy of the game.

So they're like, okay, how do we make a million dollars?

And that's the sort of like, that's not open-ended in the way that tag is.

But I don't know.

Growing up and playing tag,

I'm cautious of saying there are two types of games.

One set is is open-ended and one set is goal-defined.

Target-focused.

Target-focused, because a lot of people play DD with a goal.

A lot of people have, which is like, I'm getting through the campaign.

That's a pre-written campaign.

A lot of people play tag.

Everybody's playing tag with a goal, which is I don't want to be it.

Like, I don't, I want to get Jeremy.

Right, exactly.

And then I don't want to get caught back, you know?

Which isn't to say that I don't understand the framing of the question, which is like they keep getting put into very objective-focused and very competitive competition focused games with i mean that's the i think the thing to zero in on is like with a winner and a loser um in explicit ways and i think that that's that probably reflects um

i think it's very easy to be like this is a show about games i think it's also important to understand it's a show about like competition and what that does to you.

I think, Austin, actually, do you want to read the slide number two, which I've just reordered, is from Eric.

If we could add this to the games talk, to the bigger conversation.

I don't want to step on whatever Sylvie was going to say.

No, I think this applies to the game.

Okay, sure.

Eric says, Hello, club members.

Given how many games make up the show and the upcoming release of the fighting game, I want to ask your thoughts on the hunter life itself as a game on the macro level.

As far as I can tell, being a hunter is all about winning your game.

You know what your game is.

You can kind of figure out what another person's game might be.

And everyone has their own win condition they're working towards.

That idea is so powerful that playing with it has become a shonen style or a shonen staple.

Jojo's funky stands,

jiu-jitsu Kaizen's technique explanation fuckery, etc.

etc.

It's fun to watch and think about, but is it good game design?

Is being a hunter, being a hunter one big game or a collection of small games?

Does Jing think that he's winning?

Does he even think that other of other people as players?

Thanks for the wonderful excuse to revisit the show.

You've made this rewatch the most rewarding one yet, and I'm thrilled to follow you through the shyamalan season and beyond eric oh thank you eric

um um so what i was gonna say actually isn't it's close it's kind of like straddling the line between the two questions i think something to keep in mind when we talk about like

specifically competition is that it is and i'm not this isn't me just like shutting down any analysis of this but it is very like I don't know, endemic sounds more negative than I mean it to be, but it is very endemic to Shonen in general.

Like competition, because Shounen isn't just battle anime, we've, we talked about that a lot early on.

Um,

but like, I find that there is always

because it ties in with the sort of coming of age thing where some there's always a goal for your protagonist, because again, it's a young adult series, it's aimed at like,

I don't know, 10 to 14 year olds, probably wider than that, even.

But I'm just going off the top of my head about Shonen.

The official age thing on Shounen Jump is like 8 to 18.

Something like that.

But like, so you're targeting

a young audience who still is holding on to their hopes and dreams, I guess is the way I'd put it.

But like, there is, there's very much the sort of something that I think Tunder Hunter does that is very fun is playing with that idea and playing with the like getting

to the goal and realizing that it's not always great to get there.

Um,

but I think that this sort of like

constantly coming back to games is a way for Tagashi to explore a lot of the sort of

competitive nature and like sort of the rival-based nature of a lot of Shounen series in a way that doesn't involve Gon just beating the crap out of somebody, you know?

It allows Gon and Kiloa to, like, I'm thinking specifically about like early stuff like Hunter Exam or whatever, but it allows Gon and Kiloa to sometimes be

in like a light conflict with each other without it being out and out, like things going bad between them.

Being of stuff like when they are racing at the end of the

hunter exam, not the end of the hunter exam, but at the first part of the hunter exam when they both get to the finish line at the same time.

Right.

Where all of them are doing the kill is like, well, I'm definitely stronger than Goan.

Yes, yes.

Like doing the quiz

island.

Oh my gosh.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

There is an exception that I remembered and had to double check.

It's episode 37, Jing and gone it's when they go back to meeto's together and there's that little bit at the beginning where they rush off into the wilderness together and they're playfully racing um very clearly because um you know uh uh kilowa like tries to hop past gone at a certain point to like get further on but they're just running into the into the wilderness like they're not you know there's a bit where they come to a stop at like a cliff overlooking the sea and they both kind of stop to take in the vista and it's as if like the race is over and then gone dives in and Kilo dives in after because it's like, oh, I guess we're still racing.

I guess we're still like on our little thing.

And it's not a, no one says, you know, winner buys dinner or something.

You know, it's like they're just kidding.

Like Plina gets the key to the something or something.

There's actually another one, too, at the end of York New, or not

like the three-quarters of the way through, they're like playing during the picnic.

They have a picnic with

Leorio and Kropica, I think.

And they're like throwing food at each other and stuff.

Yeah.

Is that the last time everyone's together?

Yes.

Yes.

I think so.

I think there might be another scene with the four of them, but it's like really close to the last time.

Well, if you watched Phantom Rouge, you'd know that.

No, I won't go for it.

I would go for it.

One day, I will know.

We'll have to schedule Phantom.

I would love to watch it.

I'm ready to watch it.

Those are like very specific moments, though, right?

Like, I mean, obviously with

meet at on Whale Island, you know, as far as the show is concerned, Whale Island is not a place where hunters are.

We know that in Toronto, space it's already true in South Africa.

You can read it one of two ways, right?

Which is like you can read it as, here is what they're doing when the camera is somewhere else.

Of course, they're always racing each other.

Of course, they're always like rough housing and like playing the way that kids do.

The other way to read it is, it's only here where that's allowed.

And again, I think it's actually blurry for the reason that, you know, Keith, you just pointed out, they're racing each other in the hunter exam.

They're trying to compete with each other at the end of Greed Island.

So

you can go either direction with it, I think.

And both of them are pretty productive ways to answer it or ways to think about their relationships.

And I think that's a bigger, that doesn't really answer the Eric's part of the like, is being a hunter playing, owning your game.

Well, I think it goes bigger than being a hunter, right?

Because I think we've seen people who aren't hunters or like, I mean, it gets messy when you start being like, is every non-user a hunter or whatever, whatever.

But like, we've seen people who are like,

I don't know, want to

excel in some way over people.

And like,

we got the whole,

we had the whole bit with during before Greed Island, I think it was during York New when they're trying to get money.

The

arm wrestling tournament and the

fight ring or whatever.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

With the bets and stuff.

Yeah.

And it's like, I don't know.

I think it's just more something that Tagashi finds interesting that permeates the work.

And because most of the cast are hunters, it feels feels like hunters all love to play games.

Sorry, the auction.

It was not betting, obviously.

That's a different thing.

It was about a fight auction.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, conditional auction where the conditional auction

was.

Jesus.

There's something going on as well where, like, you know, when you make certain kinds of terraria,

I was about to say the plural of terraria.

is terraria when you make certain kinds of terraria for a particular kind of animal um you're also encouraged to get the right plants to fit into it, and then the weird little bugs that live on those plants, and then you put your prized iguana in the terrarium or whatever.

And I do sort of wonder whether or not Tagashi, in creating hunters, needed to build a world for hunters to

live in that would

cause hunters to thrive.

I think about how there was that village very, very early on that is part of the hunter exam, and they put on that weird like quiz show yeah um and similarly every non-hunter i think about the um any situation that we we've said in the show in the past that like the show doesn't really think that non-hunters are people or like not people in quite the same way they're not real in the same way that the hunters are yeah they're not being

able to focus on and then yeah yeah yeah

like peasants in crusader kings and it's like the

I

think that there is something to say that, you know, being a hunter is about finding your game and about succeeding in your game.

But I do also think that the world of Hunter Hunter is just this, like, designed to be this remarkable playground that whether or not you are directly involved with the hunters, you are constantly getting pulled into one weird game or another.

Even if your role in that game is to be the bug that gets squashed or, you know.

Right.

The NPC who has the question for you.

There's 20.

Sorry.

No, go ahead.

Mine's a diversion.

Okay.

The question is, having re-watched the very end of this, and something y'all hit heavy on, is that Periston and Jing and Netaro love games.

And so one of the things that you can ask there is, like,

is being a hunter about playing games because the three most powerful hunters are, or three of the most powerful hunters, are game lovers, or are three of the most powerful game lovers hunter or three or are three of the most powerful hunters game uh so powerful because they understand it's a games world right and they sort of see the shape of the world yes the second thing i want to say say really quick is in the first chapter after the book,

after the anime ends, you meet a guy who like learns about some rules and he's like, no, why would I play by the rules?

It's so stupid.

So I'm very excited to see where that particular line kind of continues, you know?

Especially because we know in part that the place Tagashi seems to be going is his biggest and weirdest game yet.

It's okay.

Can I talk about my little diversion for a second?

Because it does tie into the big and weird game.

Sure.

So we were talking about, oh, yeah, the world that hunters inhabit just ends up being a world where you get pulled into the game.

And then I was like, oh, yeah, kind of like Greed Island.

And then I was like, wait, Greed Island is a small geographic region that is enclosed in a world that is much bigger than it.

Oh, no, wait a minute.

Why did we just learn about the world of Hunter Hunter at the very end?

It's a literal microcosm.

Yeah.

You know, we talked about closed systems, you know, in Chimera Ant, how the games are also like, you're trapped in the game.

and it turns out the entire known world is that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's really funny.

I just had a Jimmy Neutron brain bust about it.

I'm going to share.

But I mean, like, that's the other thing about a game, right?

Is like a game is, one way to read games is abstraction of something else.

I don't know that you should reduce all games down that way.

But games, especially games that like, especially games like Great Island,

are abstractions or are filled with abstractions where like, oh, not everything I do is a one-to-one representation of what's happening narratively, you know, and in Greed Island, especially with the whole card system or whatever, right?

Um, and so it's not only like it's a microcosm, but there's a way to think about it like ontologically or metaphysically, where it's like, is the action happening inside of the whatever, what's the language they use for the world inside of the dark, you know, the world that we know?

Oh,

they describe our world or something, right?

Is

action outside of our world as different potentially as action inside of Greed Island is compared to our world?

Do you know what I mean?

Yes, like in Greed Island, you have to play cards to do things, you can't just like punch somebody.

In our world, you punch somebody.

What is happening in the dark continent?

Is there a similar two-dimensional space, three-dimensional space, four-dimensional space?

Four-dimensional space, yeah.

What's going on out there, you know,

and the answer is just going to be like demon world.

Because the answer is going to be,

Yeah, exactly.

We know the answers.

Well, do we?

I mean, yes, I suppose we do.

Jing said that in the finale, that the ants are a native species there, I think.

That's a bit like saying from there.

Aliens are from the universe.

Absolutely.

I mean, it is space, also.

I was thinking the exact same thing, Austin.

Yeah.

Tagashi wants to do a space exploration story, but terrestrially.

It's a really interesting take on it.

Yeah, instead of flat world, it's or flat Earth, it's like flat universe theory.

Yeah.

Mobius, is it called Mobius?

Is that what the known world is?

In Sonic?

In Sonic.

In the Sonic comic.

I know that it also is called that.

It's Sonic.

That's why I thought that it was in both because I sort of had this half memory.

I see.

Anyway, the last thing that I want to say is that I'm going to say that.

Sonic is in Greed Island somewhere.

I would love.

That's what's out there is like Green Hill Zone.

Yo, yo!

Sonic the Hedgehog's four movie idea.

I can't believe Shadow's the newest member of the Phantom True.

Oh my God.

Shadow is more like the Phantom True.

Yeah, he already does.

His name's Phaeton.

Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah.

The last thing I wanted to say about the game thing is I think one of the really interesting things about Hunters is

I can't remember who, Sylvie, maybe it was you that brought it up about the other kinds of people in the world that enjoy games.

And is it just, is it because Tagashi enjoys games?

And so like the gang,

the mafia community plays games.

And, you know, we saw Batera is, like, playing his own sort of game.

And, like, there's, there's, there, it's not just hunters that play games.

But I think one of the interesting things about like

what kind of person is able to play games with, like, the world, like, using the world as pieces in a game.

Uh, and it makes a lot of sense why hunters can do it because they have like literal power over reality in a way that a normal person doesn't, which means that the other kind of kinds of people people that we see playing games have their own kind of power that they use.

Like the mafia community has being a criminal organization, and the fake G7 people have like political power, butira has money, like all different kinds of people that are playing games, but all of them need hunters because hunters supersede them.

And I really like seeing hunters as like kind of this

overlay onto

real-world existing things

that supersede anything that we have in the world like what would happen to the billionaires of the world if you put on top of them a kind of person that was more powerful powerful than them just simply by existing but also what if they didn't really care about billionaires and mostly just cared about having fun um

like it's not

like we immediately get into debates about whether or not small nations should have access to hunters or if we should be trying to eliminate all hunters from existence.

But then it's like,

what can the armies of the world do against Napa and Vegeta?

Nothing.

They can't do anything.

The hunters are the

world.

I'm scarier than the nukes.

That's what I was doing.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, okay, okay.

It's scarier than that, though, right?

Because the hunters, all of Teradain Neutral and that crew's efforts against Ilumi at the end of the election arc,

there are hunters and there are hunters.

So, you know, hunters compared to your regular person are phenomenally powerful and are able to tilt the game in their favor.

But

it's almost like the world is also in the hands of like 14 guys.

Yeah.

Which, you know, that would be weird, wouldn't it?

But

yeah.

Especially because we see...

very clearly that it's like the hunters do not have a flat hierarchy among themselves.

You know, like pariston is a hunter who seems to also be rich right um what if a gun could be a billionaire right yeah jesus what if a nukes could hide from you or kill you with

right with yeah could kill you without blowing up right some hunters are nukes and some hunters are babies or crying babies yeah and then in the middle there's this sort of a kalashnikov coughing baby coughing babies yeah exactly if that baby was crying the nuke wouldn't stand a chance but unfortunately it's sick it's coughing.

It's sick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This next question,

Sylvie, if you could read from Mark, it includes a link to

the YouTube video where the palace invasion plays in real time,

which we all watched and talked about in the Peter Brooks chat.

But I think that because it took so long to get through, we forgot.

to show it to Jack.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I was remembering.

I've heard this before.

I have not seen it.

I believe that is the case because I think we were a little more focused on the manga comparison videos.

Before we read the question, Jack, can you just guess how many minutes you think this is going to be?

The whole palace invasion played in real time?

I have already clicked it, unfortunately.

I will say, my first reaction was, huh, longer than I would have thought.

And then I remembered the palace invasion.

And I was like, this is

essentially a four-minute video.

Yeah.

How long were we doing that for?

Like almost 30 episodes.

At least.

At least.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

Okay.

It doesn't go all the way.

It only goes, it doesn't go through

the whole invasion, right?

It only goes through.

It's the assault.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's the assault.

Yeah.

It's

the episode.

I know like 18 to 20 episodes.

Yeah, I think that that's right.

Yeah.

Though I don't know.

The first comment says Watcher.

It has been 30 episodes.

Narrator, 30 minutes have passed.

So

you're right.

Yeah, so where does it begin?

It begins with them entering the portals and it ends with Gonan Kiliwa seeing Pito.

And also this video has opening and closing credits.

So we need to take about a minute.

Oh, yeah.

It's wild.

Yeah, it's wild.

I really love it.

It's a great video.

I really love how they show,

you know, the simultaneous action as like different windows that pop up so you can see what's happening when other things are happening.

A ton of attention to detail.

I don't think we should watch this whole thing right now in the middle of the thing, but I did want to bring it up and show it to Jack as something to watch later.

I'm thrilled about this.

Yeah.

We talked about some P2 bricks.

Like as soon as y'all got there, we were all like, oh, we can finally show Jack the video.

And then we all went, wait, no, we can't because we have to wait 28 more episodes before we can do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

28 episodes later.

Yeah.

So we read the rest of Mark.

Hello, gang.

Long time friends, the table listener here.

First of all, I wanted to say that you folks are amazing.

Thank you.

I've watched Hunter Hunter and then watched it twice more, showing it to people who had never seen it before.

Getting to experience it for a fourth time with Jack going in blind has been a real treat.

Thank you for all of the work that you put into this.

You're welcome.

It's glorious, and I hope you are proud of yourselves.

I am.

Jack, if you could take some screenshots to show someone in a similar position to yours at the start, which screenshots would you pick?

And then for everyone, it's have you seen the video that plays the palace invasion in real time and the link.

Y'all are lovely, and I hope all of your projects work out super well.

Thanks, Mark.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm giving three, and they have very slightly different criteria than

you had, because you were trying to set up the full scope of the project.

I'm obviously going to try and avoid spoiling some stuff, but maybe I'm a little less spoiler-cautious than you are.

Number one, indoor fish getting the man.

Good pick.

I'm actually thinking you brought that up at the time, too.

Great pick.

I want

a reverse shot where we have the man with bits of him missing, but it doesn't look like he's like bleeding or anything.

Remember, he's just like being eaten away.

Right,

and the indoor fish in the foreground.

Shot two, I want to see Leol on the surfboard.

Yeah, that's a good one.

I think that would be fun because you would.

So the first one, you'd show it to someone and they'd be like, I have no idea what is happening here.

The second one, well, clearly it's a lion surfing, but they wouldn't be able to know that that was a chimera ant.

They wouldn't guess it's a bug.

Right.

No, they would, they would never guess.

Three, I would like a shot of

the world tree town with only Gon and Killua visible hanging out in the town.

Wow.

To fuck with the viewer, because they would be spending the whole show going,

When do they hang out in the town?

When do they hang out in that?

When is this happening?

And they would, it would be like the gorilla.

They would, there would eventually be a point where they would be like, oh my god, it's it's got to be the very end.

Um, but I would obviously not show the world tree or alaka.

Um,

I think those three.

I think there's a fun three.

When you said uh uh Leol, I thought that you were gonna say Leo on the news, like with the news catching up.

That's also a really good one.

That would be really good.

Oh, maybe um Chitu and Morel.

Do you remember when Chitu tried to trap Morel in Fun Prison?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was cool.

He was having Morel hitting that would be a good screencast.

Yeah, oh, yeah.

Well, the Morel was fun because the Chimera and Arc opening,

we had this flurry of brand new, fully featured characters for the first time.

And that was a really good sensation being like, oh my God, new hunters are appearing.

And of course,

new characters would continue to appear from that point until the end of the show.

But in something like

by the time Morel and Nov appear, you know that they are more serious business, for example, than Genthru or somebody, just in their character design.

And I wouldn't want to spoil that moment of the senior hunters arriving.

Is it Chi Tu who like is walking through the streets and like someone's recording him on the phone?

On her cell phone, yeah, great moment.

Yeah, Chi-2 definitely had like took the kill everyone path, but could have just been like the most interesting influencer.

Oh, Chi-2 getting killed in a half a second by Zeno at the end of Chinero is so funny.

That's funny.

Great punchline.

Just pancake in an instant.

What does he do to him?

He just says, fight me.

He's like, fight me.

And they're like, no.

And he's like, no, really, fight me.

And they're like, no.

And then he's like, come on, I want to fight you.

And then they say, okay, you're dead.

Does he like hit him or does he drop something on him?

I think Silva lands on him.

Silva plummets onto him and crushes him.

God, it's funny.

Yeah, it was barely even an attack.

It was just like, he fell down.

I landed.

Yeah.

It's like when a Titan takes out a person in Titanfall just just by walking over them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You just die because you cross, you turned a corner and someone's a giant robot steps on you.

Philip said mind if I drop them.

Dre, will you read the next real one?

That is for the real ones.

We are on okay, we should marks.

Yep.

It's from Xeno Fim.

I just made an Apple account specifically to leave a five-star review.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing it listed yet, but if you don't see a review from Alica and Nanika's new mom, just know that I tried my best.

Thank you.

My question for everyone except Jack, but also for Jack, if you've got a new one: what is your personal demon world theory, your wild theory about the world or the story of Hunter Hunter?

Thanks, Xenofem.

Oh, this is a good question.

It is a good question.

I have a theory

that

they're going to make it.

I don't, they're going to make it to the dark continent.

Oh, that's what the place is called outside.

I don't know if we've actually said that because it didn't actually appear.

I feel like we might have, but maybe I'm wrong.

Okay.

Eventually they're going to get there.

I'm pretty sure that they haven't done that yet.

I think that everyone

who goes except one person is going to die.

That's what I think.

Do you think that that is a condition of the dark continent or or do you think that that is just the plot?

I think that the plot is going to be like

it's going to be all about how insanely dangerous it is to go there.

And then they're going to go there and they're going to be like, oh my God, it's even worse than we thought.

That's what I, that is my prediction.

I think I have one, but I think it relies a bit too much on stuff that like would that hasn't come up.

Okay.

I think I've said mine already in that I think it's wrong, but but I made a made a really strong like narrative structure case for it.

And I'm just going to repeat it, which is the Kurda clan isn't the simple victim.

Oh, yeah, you have like a Kurta clan

what mine was,

basically, is that there is someone, someone else was involved with getting the Phantom Troop

to do that.

Yes.

And well, I guess my version of it was during the

York New arc, I made the case that

we were going to learn some some dirt about the Kurta clan, that they did something or were doing something that soils them and that Karapika is going to have to confront that

he doesn't come from this simple, pure, perfect place that was victimized.

He, in fact, comes from a place that he didn't know what his own people were doing in some way that makes that more complicated.

I think you could have a different one.

It sounds like you have a different one, which is that

the Phantom Troop was manipulated into

killing them for something.

i think i think the hunters did it but that's that's also me putting on a tinfoil hat a little bit yeah

i will those the phantom trooper hunters i mean a lot of them are a lot of them are

you know what i mean

the hunter government you think like yeah okay

association you know yeah someone who can god make moves if parriston did it i would go insane i believe it what a twist that would be parriston's gonna make a uh uh Chimera ant army?

I've been giving it to you.

God, Parison is the dude from Aliens.

Is Paul Riser's character from Aliens?

Have people seen aliens?

I have not seen Aliens.

I haven't.

Oh.

I love Aliens.

Maybe it's Aliens that never saw TV.

Paul Riser.

It's an aliens.

It's three.

Aliens.

Aliens.

No, he's an aliens.

Yeah, he comes from the company.

And he's like, I mean, this is part of the...

I'm going to keep saying the thing I've already said, I I guess.

He's like, we got to get these damn aliens.

They would be sick.

These guys would be sick to have.

Yeah.

He's from Wayland Utani.

That's correct.

But in that movie, they kind of saved the company.

Right.

Yeah.

If it was Paris, then he'd be like, I got to get these guys to sign up for my temp agency.

This is Alien.

Here are the.

I've only seen Alien, which is one of my favorite movies.

And

what's the one that people didn't like?

It's Dr.

the P, and it has Prometheus.

Prometheus.

Right.

And Prometheus, which I really liked.

Prometheus is underrated.

Prometheus, yeah.

Prometheus has a lot of cool shit going on.

David is an incredible character.

Yeah.

He's played very well.

I didn't see aliens because I just have a weird thing against James Cameron.

And so I was like, I don't want to see a James Cameron action movie.

That's fair.

Yeah, you don't like,

you've only seen Terminator and not Terminator.

I saw Terminator.

I really liked Terminator.

I have to rewatch it because I was falling asleep because I I was traveling all day when I saw it.

Right.

And that was that, that, that, that first one is Cameron, right?

Yeah, I think they both are, right?

Yeah, they both are so.

I know that he did a lot of sequels.

He did like the second Piranha movie and he did aliens.

He did a lot of sequels.

And so I sometimes forget if he did the first Terminator or just the second one.

I bring that up because I think it's a really common comparison point.

People talk about aliens and T2 in conversation to their relationship with T1 and Alien in terms of the move from sci-fi horror to sci-fi action with some scary elements, you know.

But yeah, you should see aliens.

It's not as good as alien.

Right.

But

a few movies are.

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So the connection is that Pariston is going to do the aliens thing of being like, maybe we should get these guys and have like an army.

And take

over the world, like the brains, picking in the brain.

But within Antony.

All right.

I don't know if this counts,

but I think at some point Alumi is going to try to make Kiloa have to fight his dad.

Ooh, that's fun.

It is fun.

I'd love to fight my dad.

Unrelated.

Just felt like

sharing.

It should be related.

You should show your dad Hunter-Hunter and then fight him.

I'd have to break a decade of not talking to them.

I'm doing this.

Yeah, it would be a long project.

I'm doing this because of Hunter Hunter.

Yeah, hey,

we're gonna mend our relationship by me.

If you watch this anime, I'll talk to you again.

And then afterwards, I'm like, all right, now let's scrap.

Could you tell me how to apologize to a friend?

He would not.

Yeah, no, yeah.

The

I think that the fun thing about Demon World Theory is how early it emerges as a

explanation for Nen and how totally out of left field it is for

people who have seen a lot of shonen and know like that spirit energy is so baked into the thing that you can have superpowers and not even need an explanation because it is it is just part of the genre.

And then because it's Hunter-Hunter,

the more things you learn, the more plausible it feels.

What was the cause for the arrival of Demon World Theory?

Was it Neon's power?

It was when, I think it was when you said, how does Nen tell people's fortunes?

Right.

Yeah.

I think around

I thought it was even earlier than that, but maybe you're right.

Because we hadn't known about Nen for very long.

It's possible it could have emerged during

Heaven's Arena, but I don't think so.

The only thing I could think of that would have that come up would be if, like, Hisuko was the catalyst for it, and I don't remember it being that way.

No, I called him a magician for a very long time.

I mean, he is a magician.

He is a magician.

I didn't have words for Nen for a long time.

Yeah, I think that you were all right.

I found from the wonderful transcripts.

Oh, that's where I was.

The episode Demon World Theory.

Well, that would make sense.

That would make a lot of sense, huh?

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

In which Jack says,

I'm trying to find...

I'm on this episode.

I'm going, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and so is Keith.

What's the actual question here?

It's not clear, but Jack, you say,

I think I know, I think, which is that Nen is an expression of the demon world.

What a good show we've made.

Yeah.

What a good show.

Episode.

Oh, that is.

Yeah, episode 15.

Yeah.

That's wild.

That's so long ago.

Wow.

But then the show would do stuff, for example, like Melody and Satan.

I see.

Wait, yeah, well, it's funny you say Satan because the line before this, Jack, you say, um,

uh,

the Tagashi that says that everybody has this latent sort of power for magical self-actualization is the same Tagashi who would say, you could make a contract with your heart, and it is yourself that holds you to that contract.

It is also Tagashi to say, it's the devil, it's uh, it's the devil or something, or like a spirit or something.

So,

God's Satan's theory

that you knew about Nanaka this whole time.

Yes.

Oh,

it's a secret, too.

Sorry, Sylvie.

It's so hard to keep it secret.

Do you know how much I wanted to scream about her?

She's great.

You kept the whole thing secret, and you all did a very, very good job.

But I mean, you weren't talking about Komagi.

You knew where we were going when Chimera Ant began.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that if there's, if anything is going to happen in the next set of arcs, it's going to be that Demon World Theory is going to feel feel continued to feel more plausible.

I figured out the exact reason you came up with it, and it's not neon, though neon does show up right after this as you talk about, you know, it's the same little freak that Miss Neon uses to tell fortunes.

The question that raises this from you, and I don't have the exact thing here, but I see what you're speaking to, which is who decides whether a nen condition is

being upheld?

You know, who is it?

And this is what you're talking about when you say, like, it would be very Tagashi to say your heart, your own heart arbitrates it.

But it would also be Tagashi to say there's a little guy, there's a little demon somewhere who's doing it.

Fucking love demon world theory.

Yeah, it's really fun.

And it's

it's fun at how absurd it was, but also how much there is, like, you know, it's so silly, but also Aluka and also this whole sex secret continent full of nightmares and also,

you know,

there was something out.

There's another big one.

It doesn't matter.

I'm sorry to say it, but I found more evidence that you knew this before this episode.

Okay.

Yeah.

I found maybe I named it Demon World Theory and then there was actually the episode before that was where it started coming up for the first time.

I think that that's right because I also have myself in this episode saying,

Jack, you told me this theory while we were walking in the woods in Michigan.

You sort of snapped out of a reverie and told me about demon world theory.

So

were we ever so young?

Oh, I didn't yet know who Meroam was.

The demon of our hearts.

How fucked up is it that they show us Meroam and Kobuki again in the final episode?

It's

evil.

It's such

evil.

knife is already in me.

Why are you spinning it?

Can you imagine being like, and make sure we remind everyone that they're still down there?

I had a sort of pang of anxiety that they were going to have the hand move or something.

That as part of this dark, as part of this montage, I was like,

oh, don't do that.

But going down that, because it's like four shots.

It like zooms slowly into the basement.

I actually, I am more grateful that they didn't put an exciting bumper on it and instead they just let it be an image.

Yeah.

Right.

That I don't feel too mad about it.

I'm sort of like, I'm relieved.

But it is very sad.

It would be very much like a shonen to have Merim come back and be like, look, I was dead.

I came back and I'm like, just, I'm just like plainly good now.

And I'm here to help you with exploring the new world.

Except Tagashi tried tried that move and he turned kite into a little girl

yeah

he just can do whatever he wants I don't really know how it works um uh

I have one more correction to make okay great about demon world theory two more one is

found the coordinates I literally I'm zeroing in like Ethan Hunt in Final Reckoning um you have to now you have to drop me into the ice water uh

one yes your initial thing was right the first real conversation about demons is you trying to work through what's up with Nen, with Neon's Nen power.

And,

you know, oh, is there a weird little demon that's doing this?

Obviously, we see the spirit thing, but you're already like in that space.

However, the earliest mention of a demon in this show is in the screenshot episode.

Wow.

And you are looking at the,

I think, Sylvie's image.

Sylvie, you put the the phantom troop image in presumably probably i'd believe that

and jack you're trying to describe what's going on um and and you say uh you know the nine people who are facing us are sort of like a crew that's been assembled by our heroes maybe for the purposes of this arc maybe for the purposes of this episode you know and some as a reminder krolo is facing the rest of the of the rest of the facing away from us facing away from us but they're all facing towards us maybe for the purposes of the art maybe for the purpose of the episode you know and something has gone down in a big way with the person with the upside-down cross on their back and our crew thinks they're involved in some you know scheme some sort of evil deed uh maybe they've been involved in an evil deed in the past but they need to get to the bottom of it so i arrange this very tense meeting you know it's like oh finally we can get a face to face with this person who's been a thorn in our side for so long and it's kind of climactic because you know um this is like oh oh right yeah it's like well they don't want to go talk to the demon you know not because demons you can't talk to them very often but because it's very, stuff has to be very bad or very tense or very interesting.

Maybe they're trying to recruit this person to their cause is the other thing.

So you were already there.

Like, well, the demons exist.

Krolo is a demon and they're trying to recruit demon or Crolo demon into their gang or whatever.

So I think you just had demons on the mind.

Always do, Austin.

Yeah.

Shall I read the next question?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

This question is from Ben, who says, hello, friends.

I started tra- This is a Goan question.

I started with Goan in the background.

I started training in martial arts at a young age.

When my gym closed, I transferred to a new martial art at a very traditional

gym.

I identified with Goan deeply in the way that he sought approval from his mentors through prowess.

Though it's something I felt for a long time, you helped me put into words the way Goan was conditioned to only see a certain type of success because of his mentor's expectation.

Here's my question.

Do you think Tagashi is intentionally having all of the adults in this story prioritize domination over mastery?

Or is a story like this the natural conclusion of someone whose relationship and understanding to mentorship colours their characterization of every role model that Goan encounters?

I cannot overstate how much I appreciate each of your perspectives on a show, and an artist I have enjoyed very much, Ben.

Thank you, Ben.

That's a good fucking question.

It is.

And I was actually really blown away at the idea of someone identifying with Goan in that way.

That was like not something that I'd considered about an audience that someone could be like, oh, I understand.

But then you go a little bit deeper and you're like, well,

I guess like

you're always

kind of

wanting to appeal to your mentors in the way that they seem to want to be appealed to.

It doesn't have to be about browse.

So then I circled back around to being like, this is almost a universal struggle of youth.

Trying to figure out how to, whoever your mentors are, your mentor might not be a traditional mentor, but whoever you've chosen as a mentor, maybe even someone who isn't actively mentoring you, but you've decided to model yourself after them, you're trying to live up to that.

You want to impress them.

And the way to impress them is to figure out what impresses them.

And I'm 10 or 12 or whatever, and I'm easily influenced.

And I want to do a good job.

And I've learned what a good job is from someone else.

And Ben is saying in this story, it's like it happens to be very close to

what all of them are about domination.

Yeah.

Over mastery.

Yeah.

You know,

just it's, you know, it's impossible really to say like what Tagashi is thinking about,

you know, adults and mentors and what they want from their their students.

But it is, so I do sort of think that the two options here,

intentionally having the adults prioritizing domination over mastery versus a natural conclusion of someone whose relationship and understanding to mentorship colors or characterization,

I do feel like you can easily, you can have one that emerges from the other.

You can have,

you can want to model something that you've found to be true,

or you can like

want to model something

that's from the stories that you admire, that those stories had.

And

I think that you can get the other outcome from either beginning, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think.

I think this is a show about, to me, a relationship.

One of the things that this show is about is about your relationship with your parent, right?

And I think that Tagashi is constantly trying to work through all these different kinds of

parenting.

Goan is someone whose parent is absent in his life.

Both his parents are, but Jing is especially absent, and Goan is kind of like seeking that absence.

And it would be one thing for Goan to sort of be looking to other people as...

as sort of replacements within the fiction.

And I think that that happens here and there.

But I think more importantly, Tagashi is sort of like constantly reflecting these weird new ideas about parenting.

You get all these sort of different approaches.

And it does so happen that a lot of those approaches are

prioritizing domination over mastery.

I suppose you have people like Biskey who are saying, Biskey is really the...

Is Biskey the best teacher that Goan and Kilo are have?

I think better than Wing?

Maybe.

Yes.

Wing was just like, oh my god, I'm going to give these children a gun.

Give them a gun.

Give them a gun.

Oh, dang, I gave them a gun.

If I don't give them a gun, they'll find a gun and kill themselves with it.

That is what he says, right?

Which is not necessarily the...

That does not mean this is the right option.

But

Biskey is better than Wing.

There's some stuff that Biskey is a very cruel teacher.

You know, Biskey's methods are very cruel, but there are lots of moments where she is talking about the process of learning and about the process of like figuring out what it is that you don't know, about what it feels like to push through things that you don't want to learn.

About, um, there are some, there are some really great interplay with some of Biskey's stuff between like forcing Goan and Kiriwa to work on the fundamentals, and also she has some monologues towards the end where she's kind of like, Also, people are going to learn in their own ways, and my job as a teacher is to kind of like figure that out per pupil.

Um, but I do think time and again we keep finding these

um

uh

instances of parenting that are

destructive or that are prioritizing a particular kind of violence or a particular kind of domination in Goan.

I think the other thing I wanted to say is I watched an episode of Jump Ryu, which is Shonen Jump's interview series.

It's really, really cool.

There's a subbed version of it on YouTube that Tagashi was a part of.

And it's like an hour-long episode.

And in the first, he just paints Karapika, like a color thing of Karapika from the start and you get to watch his whole process from like doing line work oh sorry doing sketches uh painting and then doing line work and he's talking about what he's doing as he's doing it and then the second half of the video they go into his studio and Tagashi kind of like introduces you to his assistants and the assistants are kind of interviewed about what it's like to work with Tagashi and Tagashi talks a bit about what he is making at this point which is at the time that they shoot this video he is beginning work on succession war and at one point,

the interviewer notices a Dragon Ball 30th anniversary book on Tagashi's shelf and asks him to speak to

what he thinks of Toriyama.

And at first,

it's such a Tagashi way.

He calls Toriyama a kami.

He says, like, he's a god.

And then he says,

he doesn't think of him as a goal.

Like, being like Toriyama is not a goal, but an existence that I want to get as close as possible to.

And I think that that like really subtle distinction between like thinking of someone's work as a goal.

I want to be, I want to, I want to be like Toriyama in my work and get to the place that he can.

And then the distinction to like an existence I want to get as close as possible to is really interesting.

He talks about Toriyama with such like fondness and respect and kind of awe.

Which I think is really interesting in this context about like, is this the natural conclusion of someone whose relationship and understanding to mentorship colors their characterization of every role model that gone encounters um since

since this is going to be one of the last times we talk about hunter hunter exhaustively for a minute uh while we were talking about this i was trying to figure out if tagashi had any like

you know because

You talked about the assistants that he has.

That's not uncommon for people who work as assistants to go on to create their own

manga series later.

I didn't find anything like that.

I was curious: did he work on some such and such with somebody?

Is there some sort of mentor relationship with him and Toriyama like that?

Nothing like that.

So that's my red herring.

What I did find out is that he was studying education at university.

Wow.

Oh, my God.

So this is deliverance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know if he finished it because the interview.

I was, I wanted to check the source, but it is a Japanese interview, and I am...

I am sadly not able to read those.

But yeah, apparently, Yamagata University for Education.

And I think that is really interesting given the way teachers are

clearly something he is interested in exploring,

the relationship there.

And I wonder how much of that is influenced by his background there, where he was going to be one.

I think one of the phenomenal things about Hunter Hunter is how consistently held in tension this sort of relationship with mentors is, where it's like, there's clearly a lot of love there between Goan and the people that have influenced him

and even other characters like

like

with everything Killua went through he still respects Silva

which is interesting

and

but also like the camera is is often more cynical than the like dialogue is like the characters are more forgiving and understanding and interested in their mentors than the, but also, it's also not hugely critical, kind of exists in this very weird space where like

bisque comes across as way too intense, but also we love biscuit.

I'm gonna, can I use this to like circle back to a thing from a previous, a recent episode?

Yeah for y'all, but I think it's still connected to the core question, which is

a couple of episodes ago, the the conversation came up around um i think this was two episodes ago but it might have been early on on the previous one uh about

you know

jing

jing as father versus all of the other people who never told gone like hey you got to apologize sometimes or you got to whatever that the little piece of advice about being a friend is right um uh yeah when you're a friend you know you have to promise promise them something that bit so maybe this was in the beginning of the most recent friends apologize differently, yeah.

Friends apologize differently.

And there, there was a kind of a conversation that was like, and fucking nobody else ever gave Goan this advice.

Yeah, Mito.

I think Mito, okay, I think Mito is the one person.

First of all, I guess we don't have a clue what Mito did, right?

Because

I think I am harder on Goan generally than most people are.

And I'm going to wrap back around to that at a future point.

What I will say is no one else is Goan's parent.

And I think part of

we're finding about Biscuit being really good as a teacher comes from the fact that she wants to be a teacher.

Wing does not want two additional students to show up and require immediate super training over a course of a few weeks.

Wing wants to train the most precious boy of all time slowly.

And he does not want to train more people than that.

Moral and,

oh my God, Knuckle and shoot, all that whole crew do not want to be mentors to these kids.

They are told to be mentors by their own mentor,

effectively.

And by their own kind of conscience.

By their own conscience, they don't want these kids to come along and die.

But apparently they're coming along.

So I guess we're going to try to do this.

Like being a parent, you are deciding I'm going to be responsible for this life.

And Mito didn't sign up for that either, right?

Mito takes on that responsibility as best as she can.

And, you know, does she do a good job?

I don't know.

But I want to make sure we don't forget that,

you know, part of the conversation was, you know, Jing realized he wouldn't be a good parent, so he left.

And so, you know, he gave it, he gave Goan to someone who maybe would do a better job.

And that kind of actually shows some degree of care in a way because it means that he didn't, he knew he wouldn't be good for Goan.

But nobody else signed up to be Goan's fucking dad.

And they all, he all, they fell, he fell into their laps because Jing dropped the ball on this and and so like I think it's fair to say none of them did a good job But none of them were supposed to do a good job right I think we're all supposed to do our best to care for one another But unless you've decided I'm going to take care of this other person who is a child I I I give a lot of leeway to people who have who've realized that they're not good at that and so don't do it.

They've all decided Morel wants to be a sea hunter.

He doesn't want to be a

as far as I know maybe he's he doesn't want to be the executive either or the president either that's right Exactly.

Right.

And so, and so, but I do think that we're, a thing that lines up here is what we were just talking about, which is like, Biskey is one of the few characters who seems to say, oh, I want to help bring the best out in young people.

I want to sharpen them.

And we can talk about, you know, sort of torture them.

Sort of torture them, right?

Sort of change who they are fundamentally.

But, but I do think that it's probably worth thinking about that, which is like, there are people who

have the

responsibility and duty to care for somebody in this particular way.

I think we see this in Kill, Kilua, and Alika in a real way, right?

Which is like, I'm going to take care of my little sister.

Like, the family has failed this, right?

And that's the other obvious example of bad parenting is the Zoldics, right?

Who have also, who are active in their child's lives and are terrible.

So it's not me saying, like,

you know,

you should, you know, Jing is specifically the most horrible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But like, I think you can start doing a schematic reading of the book or of the show and say, who here wants to be here?

And what sort of job do they do given that circumstance, you know?

Um, which again doesn't clear, for instance, Netaro and Morrel for wanting to use these kids like missiles to launch at the Chimera Ants, you know,

or kite for that matter.

But like,

They all just they fell into their laps and they've been at the we play games games and kill people party for 30 years.

And now they have like new, new, you know, kill people missiles to use that happen to be shaped like little boys.

I'm not surprised they did a bad job, you know?

Yeah, the exact Morel line here that I want to bring up is when Morel says, they're full-grown tigers now.

And the best thing about full-grown tigers is that they can take care of themselves.

He's wrong.

We know he's wrong.

Yeah.

But he's also not a dad.

Right.

But he is at that moment saying, I wasn't here to raise

that's right, yeah, yeah.

Um,

now there is a kind of responsibility that you have in that setting, but also absolutely, but it's it's to me, it's a secondary responsibility to Jings.

Absolutely, yeah.

Also, uh, senior hunters are weirdies through and through, right?

Yeah, sure.

The is there, is there

one of the weird things, though, about this is how

many people put themselves

in Gonan Kilua's path

to like to like it's you know Kite takes very seriously the like I'm taking these kids with me I'm going to teach them that this thing you know I know Jing I know this kid you know I even maybe started this kid on his journey yeah

you know Bisky finds them from afar and is like I'm going to fuck with them and then she's like no this is my chance to teach them and then Wing kind of is a less intense version of that.

You know, as much as they don't have a parental responsibility in the literal sense, they do like get heavily, put themselves involved in the situation out of a feeling of responsibility or a feeling of something.

Biskey, I'm not exactly sure.

Responsibility is how that starts.

Yeah, I'm much more skeptical of Biskey in general, but yeah.

I mean, remember how she joined joined the show, right?

What wonderful friendship between two boys.

I can't wait to ruin it.

Yeah.

But, like, it's lots of characters who are like, I'm going to teach these kids because they need someone to teach them and then not doing a very good job of it.

And Hisoka, obviously, also one of these characters.

Right.

He's like, I want to raise them to be as powerful as possible so I can kill them in

the most gruesome and self-pleasuring ways possible.

Yeah.

And then the ways that the hunter world is structured doesn't do anything to

slow down Hisuka's goal, and in fact, does the opposite.

Yeah.

New Hunter-Hunter spin-off, where the story is exactly the same, but you're not allowed to join the Hunter organization until you're 21.

Goin and Kaylee were trying to join, and they're just told, no, no, too not.

You're a kid.

Go be kid.

Are we ready to move on?

I think so.

Okay.

Actually, crucially, Heaven's Arena does not have the age limit, though.

The hunters

are right.

They're just like, go down the street.

Well, yeah, I mean, you got to make a living somehow.

Exactly.

This is from Molly.

Do you think that

the Goan episode in episode 131 is latent within Goan as we see him from the beginning?

And still, who do you think he might become after the show ends?

I like to think of him as a nenless regular guy, maybe working in construction or as an elementary school gym teacher and sending his wages back to his family on Whale Island.

That's really, it's really funny.

It also, should we talk about the like

not actually happening ending of Hunter Hunter that Tagashi put out there?

I've not read it first.

Do you want to bring that?

Do you want to, do you have that at hand?

I can get it.

It's

bad.

I would be fascinated.

Didn't he give...

So I didn't read it because I didn't want to know.

I'm fine to hear for the show because I think that it was.

very early on in the show when that came out.

But

my understanding is like, he's like, I have five endings.

Here's one of them.

And it's like

I'm giving you the bad one.

Yeah.

It's not even one of the ones he's actually considering.

It's like an illustration of what he means by one.

And he says, you know, if I, if I, if I don't, if I don't finish it, count this as the ending.

Yes, that is the big thing.

Do you want me to just read this whole thing?

This is a challenge to himself to end the show.

This is a translated.

I could not find

where.

I couldn't find where, what this was published in, but I've seen this quote in a few places, and

I believe it is basically what I'm saying.

Tagashi's ending.

For the ending, I have prepared three scenarios, A, B, and C.

When considering the proportional reaction from readers ranging from satisfaction to dissatisfaction, the ending A is deemed satisfactory by 50% and unsatisfactory by 20%.

I like that

we're getting the

PowerPoint right now from Sikhs.

Because he's a hunter.

This does not necessarily imply a high rating, but for me, reaching it will be secure in a way that doesn't complicate matters with excessive criticism, in my belief.

I'm going to kind of summarize the next little bit as he says, ending B, opinions will be divided similarly.

For ending C, I anticipate a satisfaction rate of 10% and dissatisfaction rate of 90%.

Why do I keep it present even with a high rate of dissatisfaction?

That is because it is my personal preference.

But fundamentally, I want to think to the utmost extent about it, an ending to the point where I might not choose any of these three and create what I find most enjoyable, which is my ideal and goal.

And then what he says here is, to give you a clearer picture, I will share scenario D, which fell out of the candidate scenarios for the ending.

So this is, this was basically passed around.

This is Sylvie now.

This was basically passed around by people being like, Tegashi put out an ending of Hunter, Hunter, and then, like you said, it was, it's more, if I don't get to finish it, you can envision this as and he discarded this one, right?

But not so much so that he didn't put it in share it.

He didn't share it.

Yeah, presumably, there might have been an E also.

We have no idea that, you know.

Yeah.

Right.

What he says is, if fate takes me before finishing the manga, consider it the manga's ending.

I would be happy if you forgive me for that.

Buddy.

Okay, here it is.

Next to the lake, a girl named Jean, holding a fishing rod, stands motionless.

Suddenly, the rod shakes violently, and Jean, this is J-I-N,

startled, exclaims, I got him!

I got the lake lord!

She skillfully lifts the lake lord onto her shoulders and stands before a woman, saying, as I promised, I caught the lake lord, mom.

Jean approaches the woman and passionately declares, you must not tell me again.

You must become a hunter.

The woman, with no tricks left, nods her head.

Jean still carrying the lake lord on her shoulder, walks away.

The mother comments to her husband that Jean's dream is to never leave the island and inherit their place.

The father agrees, laughing, and the mother expresses her dissatisfaction,

saying, perhaps her desires will change later, but I want to know, you and Jean, why are you like this?

Surely it's because of the blood of Grandma Mito and Grandma Noko.

The woman seems unaware that Grandma Mito and Grandma Noko are not related by blood, and the father smiles knowingly.

The woman,

expressing her unwillingness as a mother, adds, but Grandpa Goan was a famous hunter, and this girl will one day leave the island.

Jean insists, I will never leave.

Although she is no longer visible in the heart of the forest, she hears her parents' conversation and responds defiantly.

The father, amused, says, you have a sharp eye.

The scene changes to the shop continuing its work from Mito's days.

The lake lord has been cleanly cut and its internal parts sorted.

Jean thinks to herself while working, Mom never understands.

When Grandpa speaks joyfully about his memories of being a hunter, Grandma Noko quietly moves away from her seat.

Every time Grandpa Goan affirms her belief is heard from someone, she strikes the cutting board forcefully with a knife.

I'm tired of this.

To wait for someone's return after months and years of sadness crushes my heart.

I want to make someone wait for me.

Then the door opens and a warm voice echoes.

A chubby little child enters holding a plant.

The child exclaims, I caught the lake lord for real.

Let's honor the whole island with it.

Jean replies, I always, I always wanted to be with the person I want to be with, together, always.

The child agrees.

Yes.

Both of both of them, with broad smiles on their face, cook the food.

A bird flies away from from the island over a town and its people.

The son of one of them, the daughter of another, and the grandchild of another live in different places, exchanging smiles.

They might be the children of that character and the grandchildren of that character.

The bird flies away into the distance.

In the background, a figure watches the scene.

The end.

The end.

Yeah, okay, all right.

Yeah, so it's like, hey, do you want to hear about Gon's granddaughter who does not want to leave the island ever?

Uh-huh.

And wants to be a mom.

I'm Gon Skywalker.

That's kind of

that.

And I'm glad he ditched it.

Grandpa, can you tell me the story about the Gone again?

You know.

Gone Shepherd.

Yeah, I, you know.

Do I think that the Gone of episode 131 is latent within Goan as we see him in the beginning?

I like thinking of it as

who has

you ever doing handwriting and you like make a letter form slightly wrong and you go back and you try and correct it and then you've kind of made it worse and then you go back and you try and correct it a little bit more and then you've made it slightly worse and then you cross it out and you write the word again but you make the mistake in a different place and you know I sort of see Goan in 131 and the the like rising

um

horror of of kind of what he becomes there and then as being this process of accretion over the series.

I mean, obviously, I think that

Goan has a series of traits that appear very early on that lead very nicely into this.

And perhaps you could say that that is a sign that that Goan is latent.

But the apotheosis of that Goan for me comes from, and I think this is part of why the show is so incredible to watch, is you are seeing drip by drip, you know,

the thing fall into place, right?

Yeah.

I just don't think that

whenever we get into like, is that latent within somebody?

I'm usually like, no, I don't.

That's just not how I interpret it.

People are contingent and historical for you.

They have to be, they're made by their circumstances and their history and their choices.

Yeah, and we see that Gone being crafted throughout the show, right?

Like we see.

We see the slip into that.

We see the inciting incidents.

Like we

talked so much about Kite's death being the thing that that really cements a lot of what happens in 131

we've spent hours talking about how like gone gets to that point because of the people in his life that both failed him and like pushed him in directions that maybe shouldn't have or like pushed him in that direction I guess I'm not gonna get into the shoulda woulda whatever but like

We just spent a bunch of time talking about mentors and how they craft people and stuff like that and like how they affect, not how they craft people, how they affect people, how they someone's influence on you will affect you.

I think

to ignore all of that theming going on and all of that stuff within Hunter-Hunter is kind of doing it a disservice.

I think the tragedy of Goan is that it did not have to be that way and that it wasn't.

That's the thing for me is like, if you take Goan and Kilua,

and I think I'm going to push back a little bit, a little bit, because I think I agree, of course, the world could have gone differently.

That's what makes it a tragedy.

If there's no other version, then it's not tragic, right?

Like, that's kind of closed off.

Kiliwa is a character who everyone is trying to, who's surrounded by family that wants to shape him into something he isn't, right?

Which is like, we want him to remain, we want him to be the killer and the head of the family, right?

Silva wants that.

I guess Illumi wants his

Lumi wants Kiliwa to worship him as the best big brother in the world, right?

Yeah,

he wants a version of what Silva wants that involves him being the puppet master and also the object of adoration.

That's right, right.

And even Alica and Nanaka want something from Kiloa.

It's just that we like that part.

We like that a lot more, and so does Killua, right?

But everybody wants something from Killua.

And in fact, the thing that makes Alica and Nanaka work so well with him is like the thing that they want is also the thing that he wants.

He wants to be a big brother who protects someone he loves, right?

In a way, that's what he wants, you know, for

with Goan, also, is like, hey, let me be, let, be close to me.

Let me actually take care of you and be there for you and ask me for help, you know?

You know, ask me to pat you on the head sometimes.

And that's what he gets from Alica slash Nanaka.

Goan, I feel, has the opposite thing, which is Goan is on a path and no one gets him off of it.

Yeah.

In contrast to Killua, who everyone wants to divert from a good path.

For me,

I,

you know, Goan in 131 is one, is, is where the road from Goan

letting

Hanzo?

No, is it what's the no, not Hanzo, yeah, Hanzo.

Hanzo break his arm.

Yeah, right.

The arm breaking, the refusal to lose in at the end of um Greed Island.

Every time Goan does Goan's trick, right?

It is a version of this.

Um, I don't know,

I don't know that Goan loves anyone.

Um, I think that, again, especially in contrast to Kilua and Alicia, Kilua and Alicia slash Nanika, um, and like that is so clearly put in contrast, the way that Gohan

talks about kite at the end of the big at the you know the big final confrontation with Peto

feels to me like

his whole life, he has had a strategy for moving through things.

Um, and, and that strategy is about like

if I have the willpower to do something, I'll do it.

And he makes a promise to himself to undo one of his mistakes, which is, I got kite killed, right?

Which is, which is, he's obviously sad about kite, but I think he's mostly sad about

not winning

and not not and like failing at a task he said he wouldn't fail at causing a loss that someone else has to pay for has to pay for exactly not him it's not his arm that gets broken this time right it's someone else has to pay for it right and i i don't know that that to be again i don't know that that comes from love i don't know that that comes from he's guilty but i but i think it's caught up with this sense of i have been i intuitively know and no one has corrected me that this is what uh failure that that failure is a thing that just happens in life right no No one's taught him that.

He thinks failure shouldn't ever happen if you believe hard enough and if you care deep enough and if you will hard enough, if you want it enough, you'll win.

Like he really believes that.

And he confronts, he has to confront with Peto that that isn't true.

Sometimes the person is dead.

Now, we know.

That's not true.

We know.

But

I think that it is a confrontation with a worldview that no one has helped correct him of, which is that the

it's not kite being dead, it's that the way he sees the world is being stretched to its logical end point, which is not just becoming 30-year-old going with long hair, it's also

Kilua not being his friend, but just being a teammate.

It is like the willingness to consume everything that he has for an immediate gain, an immediate win instead of a long-term stability or something.

And so like for me, I can read retroactively, not that it's latent in the

we all have an essence that we're all destined to become, but that like the

it part of what makes it hit is that for you know 40 episodes, y'all were like, he's doing it again.

Here he is again.

He's gonna he's gonna insist on winning in a way that's kind of ridiculous.

And look at this.

There's no cost again.

He gets his arm broken, but then he gets his arm healed, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And so here we are again where he's going to insist upon it.

But this time the show says, like,

or, you know, Togashi in the manga says, this is where it's all going.

If he doesn't get off the road, this is where the highway goes.

He becomes like this, you know?

And someone has to get him off the road.

And in a weird way, Kilua says, not me.

I try.

Because

Kilua tries and keeps getting pulled onto that road himself.

100%.

Yes.

I guess, like, yeah, I I don't know if I disagree.

I just think that I've got, I'm like splitting hairs on this, where it's like, I think that the fault in a lot of that,

like,

lies with the people who kept coddling him in that way.

Lies with the

fact that his consequences did get kept taking away.

So he never got to learn the lesson, right?

He never got to learn the lesson.

Yeah, again, yeah.

Again, it comes back to a failing on, like, we can talk about parenting, we can talk about stuff like that.

It's like, what's so great about Hunter Hunter is like, I think that we've we've had, we had a very similar conversation back when we were watching those episodes.

And I think that it was, it was, the discussion was down this same kind of line, but it really is like a convolution between these two halves of like the path Gona's on and the path people want him to be on are similar enough that they multiply together and into a really, you know, he specced down

this path, you know, like

right on his own.

And then people noticed it and goes, like, why don't you keep putting points into being a fucking weirdo?

You know, the reason I say, like, I get it

soft latent, you know, not, again, not predetermined, it's because if Leorio did this,

instead of punching Jing in the face, Leorio had gone episode 131 mode, we would have all been like, what the fuck just happened?

But instead, we all went, oh,

yeah

you know um the the the Rube Goldberg machine had been set up and we watched it slowly be set up in order to build gone into that he had to have started as the right material and it's you can tell from the beginning that like one of the great things about you know Hunter Hunter it's something that I also love about Yu Yuhaka show there's lots of shows that do this I'm just you know crew of four different guys is a Tagashi special as far as I'm concerned

but it's like these are four people made up of like different percentages of the same stuff.

And like, Leorio is kind of

as temperamentally different from Goan as you can be

in this crew.

And

they all have these, they have these spaces where they overlap and where they're similar, and they have a lot of spaces where they're very different.

And it's like, you couldn't make Leorio into this because he's just a different guy.

His path

was becoming a doctor.

And, you know, nobody is stopping him from becoming a doctor because he wasn't strong enough to draw the evil eye of some weird creep.

Yeah.

And then, like, Kilua couldn't do it because Kilua's whole point is like, I was this.

Right.

I started already.

I have.

I'm taking people's hearts out of their bodies for fun.

Yeah.

The specter of potential has already damaged me.

Right.

That's right.

And to be clear, Sylvia, I think you could make the opposite case, which is like Goan starts as a more blank slate, and it's these experiences that slowly shape him into, which is, which I think is fair.

I just think we see this version of him so early that it's a blank slate that catches the lake lord.

That's right.

That's right.

Which is the lake lord minute one.

The show believes in a soul.

I don't believe in a soul.

And so I think the show gets to say,

well, maybe this was just in him.

You know what I mean?

He had that dog in him.

So

it's scary fellow.

Yeah.

No.

This next one wasn't.

It was metaphorical death.

This next one wasn't assigned, so I'm not going to say, I'm not going to just read the name just in case they don't want their, like, I think it was a username out there.

But thanks for the question.

Hi, all.

I want to start by saying how much I endore the show.

Adore the show.

Hunter Hunter is one of my all-time favorites.

And

listening to you all discuss has been such a blast and has done so much to deepen the way I think about fiction.

I'm so happy to have stumbled across this show.

And by extension, friends of the table, I'm really enjoying Perpetua so far.

Thank you very much.

You all do so much to enrich my day-to-day.

What's a part of Hunter Hunter that really stuck with each of you after the show for the first time?

Doesn't necessarily have to be your favorite part or a scene that really impressed you, just something be a moment or a character or anything else that you found yourself coming back to or that stuck with you as interesting or even frustrating or baffling, et cetera, about the series.

Thanks for all your hard work on the show over the past couple of years.

I'm excited to see where Media Club Plus goes.

Thank you.

For me, it is absolutely, and I think that this, I wouldn't be surprised if this was for other people.

So

I think that we could come up with a few ideas if everybody just agrees with me.

But it is Komugu and Merrowim.

Yeah, dude.

It is.

Every day of my fucking life.

It is so,

it is so intense and so like it is a you know, remember when uh he when Merim is imagining all the needles on the moon?

A thread went through each and every one of the eyes of those needles because I cannot believe that that is how the show went.

Like it you

it invents a whole new way of being like 70% through and then it's like we're gonna just do a whole fucking thing about that.

It's gonna be half the show and it's gonna be amazing.

Yeah, I think

i think

the ants arriving and immediately becoming a not ants like like straight away and then b just like full people bickering and like trying to figure out what it means to be a person suddenly in all these with all these weird different pressures pulling against them and that being the opening of the chimera ant arc was really impressive to watch and you know knowing where it goes

is even more impressive.

How, you know, we've talked in the past about Tagashi's ability to suddenly spin up characterization on somebody.

But watching him go from kite shooting an ant-looking Chimera ant on the ground to like Colt and Peggy discussing like, well, hang on, I think I've invented a new way I can manipulate squad leaders in like an episode and a half was really special.

I also think the entire assault on the palace, you know, that four minute video,

even by Hunter-Hunted standards, was really something.

Those sets are very

utilitarian and are very sparse.

And while there are a lot of characters in the Chimera Antarc, by the time the assault is happening, you're sort of focusing on this very small group.

And you just get to watch these characters in these very austere,

unpleasant sets

go through these various orientations.

I thought that was really, really special.

And then, in terms of an individual moment, I think the moment, I mean, they're all Camera Ant focused, and I don't necessarily want to over-index that, but I think that the moment

of the show.

Yeah,

the moment that Meroem has to have explained to him that a chess player would rather take his own life than play Meroem at chess, and Meroem's kind of reaction to that was such a good, like, two-line sequence in terms of speaking about how the humans respond to the Chimera Ants, how Meroem feels about games and his superiority etc

i'll do a non-chimera ant one

which is uh

chain bastard it's it's it's uh the unrolling

yeah

that i got that shit on my arm um it is it is karapika's unfolding of then conditions uh it is emperor time it is i don't remember all the rest of the movie this makes so much sense austin well and i'd already written realised no i know and so but but that was when i was watching it and went oh my god you know yeah um uh this is i i didn't know i was making a hunter hunter game but nen conditions are already in here we've talked about this before uh but that is like

that was also when like the I think people who listen to Francis Shall by Genre know that I'm like not a very magic systems oriented reader of fantasy fiction.

I don't really like it when there's lots of

like rules rules and it's not really the appeal for me.

And so I think Hunter Hunter Takashi threads the needle where there is a system.

This is the John Boyce of

manga where bringing to perfectly together the math weirdo and the narrative weirdo story to one

perfect kind of right

because

there are moments when like oh which are you a specialist are you an enhancer whatever can matter in a particular fight, but not really any of the important ones, right?

You know, imagine if in the Pito fight, it had been like, well, Pito was

an enhancer, and I guess Pito is probably Pito is a specialist, and Gohan's an enhancer, which means that, you know, it never becomes Pokemon typing, right?

In the important moments.

But they had that whole chart from Biskey about like a person who's an A can beat a person that's a B, but a person who's a DAO on their best day, a person with a D could beat an A.

But then, like, it doesn't come up in the most important arc basically at all.

Instead, it's about, I mean, we can talk about that.

We can, maybe it comes up in the background or in the way that Togashi is thinking it, but it is not.

Um, the viewer is not needed.

The viewer doesn't have to go, like, oh, right, Pikachu is an electric type, right?

And Pearl is a water type, right?

Exactly.

Um, uh,

so instead, but instead, we do get nen conditions as being a thing that is a complex idea that is so caught up in characterization all the way through the show and that's the point at which it starts when when karapica says if i make this condition with myself i can get all this power um and i'm gonna do it this kind of faustian you know not to bring the demons back in but this sort of faustian promise to myself that is that is it like i was like okay yeah this show is great i can't wait to watch the rest of it and then you end up with you know marrow and kamugi and you're like damn damn damn damn damn uh by the way here are the names.

I got spoiled for a future move of Karapica, so I'm not going to read that.

But here are the names of Karapika's

NED moves: Dowsing Chain, Chain Jail, Emperor Time, Holy Chain, and Judgment Chain.

And oh, is this?

I'm going to say it.

I think that we've seen this.

Steel Chain.

Whoa.

The Feeling Index Finger Chain.

Oh, it's S-T-E-A-L.

Yes, S-T-E-A-L.

Yes.

Interesting.

The one Keith didn't read was Succession Arc Speedy Conclusion.

I will post it in the thing if you want to see what it was.

Don't read this one.

You cannot read this one.

I don't want to know.

I don't want to know.

You do not see mad.

Yeah.

I don't know what it does.

I only saw the name.

I don't know what it does.

I'll be mad.

The name is crazy.

Yeah, I'm with you, Keith.

I saw it.

I'm with you.

And that's all I'll say.

Listen, I'll read the rest of the manga after we record this.

No, I mean in the night, Austin.

Tonight, yeah, good.

Steel chain is straight through.

Steel chain is what he uses on Krolo.

So that was in there.

You have no idea what I'm capable of.

I do know, and I want you to know.

You know, Dre.

No, I fully believe.

Austin knows Dre doesn't know.

Something happened where Austin knows what Sylvie's capable.

I'm just saying, I read manga too fast, some would argue.

You read manga.

Manga on three XP.

I bet I was going to end.

I read manga, which is like,

you don't know what I'm capable of.

I read manga.

I read manga.

Oh, man.

No, we got to save that.

That was my favorite shirt from Hot Topic.

Sylvie and Dre, are there any bits that really stick out to you?

Yeah.

I mean, first time for me was definitely Kiloa, just like Kilo's arc

and kind of like his arc going from

like a kid who basically like tries to act like he's better than everyone.

because he doesn't want to like get close to people to becoming a person whose primary like driving force is love.

I think it's just like really good.

And I think Tagashi does a good job of like realistically showing like what it is like for a person to try and like heal from what Kiloa has, you know, gone through.

That was, and that was like first time.

And I think second time, especially like towards this end,

has just been

how much Tagashi thinks about things and like how people work and their motivations in a way.

I talked about this the other week on, I forget which episode it was, the episode talking about Kilowa's like family chart, but it just blows my mind how much Tagashi just like thinks about people in the exact same way that like I went to grad school to learn how to think about people.

Wow.

Yeah, the his office,

he had a bunch of manga on the shelves,

but he also just had

what you would expect to be on Yoshihiro Tagashi's shelves, which is like, this is a book about how to draw guns.

This is a book that's just close-ups of people's faces that he can check for expressions.

This is a book about like ancient ceramic art, etc.

We know what he was reading during

York New.

Well, that's interesting.

Because that is one of the things I come back to a lot is thinking about the Tagashi just diversions.

I don't know if it's necessarily as weighty as some of the other things people have brought up here, but I love thinking about the like

the way that dude's mind works and the like way he will just pick up something that he's interested in and create like a whole reason to work it into his his art like i think that's cool that's like aspirational for me as someone who loves to hyper focus on things hell yeah um

and then

The other thing I think about a lot, and I think it's because

it is...

I mean, aside from things mentioned, Dre, I think about Kiloa all the time.

Everyone should know this.

I think about Komugi and Merrowim all the time.

But I also think that that is a pretty well-told story start to finish.

I think a lot about Gyro is the one that is not finished.

That like, that, like, I'm constantly like, well, what did he mean by this?

Oh, yeah.

And, like, will this ever come up again?

Is that Paris?

I have to believe it will.

This dumb fails.

And

I don't want it to come back up in the like Reddit poster way of like, did you know that Gyro is the main villain of Hunter Hunter after the succession art?

I don't need that at all.

I just need to be like, yeah, that fuck freaks out there.

Like, what's he up to?

But

I also trust Tagashi if that's where he wanted to take it.

And initially,

the idea of it would kind of make me roll my eyes.

I have to give it to him that

he can make that kind of move work.

Here's, I have another demon world theory, theory, another Sylvie's demon world theory, which is that I do think that Gyro would be the person to go over and try and take over Meteor City.

Yes.

Oh, for sure.

Oh, yeah.

Well, they sort of said that, right?

They sort of said.

Have they said that?

I just, that felt like, that felt like a heart.

That's part of what's the word.

Damn, did I just

remember something in the manga and then say it was my demon world theory?

That's so funny.

Yeah, Welfin and the

Welfin and Bizaf are going to go to

Gyro in Meteor City and take it over.

Like, make a new kingdom.

Yeah, new kingdom.

Yes.

Okay, so I never mind.

I just want that to happen, I guess.

Yeah.

Gyro versus the Phantom Troop for control of Meteor City.

Or like they need some members.

My site will.

Is there overlap?

Could it be that could gyro be connected to the Phantom Troop in some way we haven't considered?

I don't.

I don't know if they're from Meteor City there.

I don't know what the.

Is Gyro from Meteor City?

No, no.

Yeah, Gyro.

We don't know where.

Oh, no.

Gyro.

Yeah, we don't know where Gyro is from.

I'm pretty sure firmly from the NGL.

Well, he invented the NGL.

He went to the NGL and made it, I thought.

I think that is the only thing that would keep.

Damn, Gyro killed the Kurdas.

Like, I feel like that's the same thing.

That's what I'm saying.

It's possible.

It's possible, but I don't.

Given what we see of Karapika, where Karapika has.

Like, the last thing we see of Karapika in the show is them sitting there with a bunch of the Kurta eyes like

I feel like if if if the NGL and gyro were behind that those eyes would be in the NGL well and he does get got by the queen he just he does right so he's

so yeah he he's not off doing meteor city stuff until after he's caught by the queen yeah i think like crucially

doing it yeah crucially not an end user as far as we're aware.

And I think that like

because the idea that makes him so interesting to me that I keep coming back to is like

Tigashi invented literally the like

the most nihilistic character in existence, the like

ultimate black hole of hope, and then implied that he is now a

chimera ant with nen abilities.

And

the chimera, some of the chimera ants that we decided were like fun and cool by the end.

You know, maybe not the best ones.

We're not talking about like

Calgo doesn't go out after them, right?

It's it's Biz.

It's Welfin and what's the lady with the

is her name Harmony?

No.

No.

Hina.

Hina.

Kinina.

Kinina.

Hinina.

And

Bizeph

go off to go find him in Meteor City.

And not that they're like good people or anything, but like

markedly not.

Yeah.

Yeah, explicitly not.

But we do, we were big on Welfin at the end of that arc.

That's right.

We talked about how much we loved him.

And so to be like, well, Welfin's gonna go, we're gonna go find Jyra.

We can't wait.

It's like, okay, but he's the guy who said he wanted to develop a drug so bad that it would ruin the world.

Yeah.

He's the guy that you're like loyal to in this way after all this.

It's

seen in character, but who knows what becoming a Chimera ant does to your personality?

This is true.

The king said, go live a human life.

We know what Hunter Hunter thinks of humans.

That's so true.

Go live a you already you life.

You know what Welfin said.

You know what Gyro said because it's gyro originally.

Oh, he said.

Don't die until you're dead.

Don't die until he's died.

Another reason why I want to meet this guy, because I bet he's just got the most.

This will be my Hunter Hunter tattoo.

Don't die until you're dead.

Sylvie, do you want to read the next question?

Yeah, that's number nine.

That's from Dylan here.

Yeah.

Hello, first of all, it's really exciting to see y'all reach the end of Hunter Hunter as someone who has been following along since the screenshot stream and has never seen Hunter Hunter before.

Ooh, thank you for being such amazing guides for the series.

I have two questions for the QA episode.

One, what was your favorite of Jack's predictions through the series?

This could be anything as large as a formal prediction they made or a small guess they might have drafted a scene.

My friends and I were always so shocked at how close some of their predictions came to reality, and I wanted to see how you all felt now that the season is over.

Part two.

Part of the goal for this series seemed to be to give Jack some insight into the shounen genre.

So, these questions, these are questions primarily for them.

How do you feel about the genre now that you've watched Hunter Hunter and a few Dragon Ball slash JoJo's episodes?

And are you interested in seeking out other Shounen shows?

Thanks so much, Dylan.

My answer to the first one, before anyone else can take it, is when did Jack obliquely mention the nuclear bomb?

That was literally mine.

I knew it was, dude, because it's the funniest one.

So

it was like a week or two before we record that.

Recorded that episode.

And I'm even more

going

nuts.

And the best thing about this is, is we have a group chat where I posted Paul Dano making a face every time it happened.

And then we had to tell Austin what Jack said.

Yeah.

So.

I'm one of those things.

Every time I'm in there being like, what should happen?

Tell me what happened.

Yeah.

And

it would be huge stuff like that and also like the tiniest little thing.

I think that there was one where Jack was like just sort of

kind of

loosely trying to figure out like what would have to happen to Gonen Kilua like to make what was happening make sense.

And I can't remember if there was a like

there was like well they'll need to introduce another character to like kind of get in between them thing, which was before Ikalgo, but also way before Aluka.

And I think I thought that was a fun one

because they do it twice.

I will forget this consequences.

I'm looking at our chat, and a lot of it is just the nuclear bomb stuff.

A lot of it is nuclear bomb stuff.

A really good early one here is, I think, while y'all were watching JoJo's, and apparently, Jack, you said that if Togashi wrote Okiyasu from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, that quote,

he'd have a nen power that buries you in money,

which is basically what Knuckles' power is, and teeth notes that they share a voice actor, which is very funny.

That's my net ability.

Yeah.

So much of this stuff, though, is like,

you know,

knowing that there should be an element somewhere in the periodic table long before you know what the element is, right?

Yeah.

I have two arrows in my quiver.

The first is sort of like

Togashi is so particular in his storytelling that while you might not be able to predict what he's going to do, you can kind of splash around because he's also splashing around at the same time trying to figure it out.

And the other thing is the great, old-fashioned, wonderful power of hedging your bets.

Yeah.

I've just responded to a post from Sylvie in Pito Bricks.

By the way, Jack is in Pito Bricks now.

We should be clear about that.

And it's Sylvie

with like the traumatized soldier meme image.

Yeah.

Jack, you want to read the quoted sentence here?

Yeah, this is on.

This is the 28th of September, 2024.

And I'm saying, quote, the tarot is so cool, Sylvie, with the traumatized Sylvia.

Winston Churchill is so cool.

It's so funny.

There's also stuff in here that's like, oh, you know, Dre, you pointed this out at some point, that,

you know, Jack said that Tagashi is like incapable of writing a character who uh who isn't who's actually cold-hearted, and that like by the end, he will inevitably make him, you know, someone who has like a

heartwarming ending.

Yeah, here it is.

Uh, Jack's thing that they said about Tagashi not being able to write a cold-hearted character, that their arc would be the person developing a warm heart.

And, like, yep, uh-huh, that's kind of the whole final 30 episodes of the show.

Oh, it's good, yeah,

it's fun.

As far as Shounen is concerned, there's two answers to this, right?

Like, I've had a really good time with the Shounen that I've experienced, and I have had a good time watching the ways that Tagashi is different and watching the way that he's kind of like replicating Shounen tropes, sort of like pretty directly, just sort of like playing with the genre.

The thing that it actually makes me want to do is it makes me want to watch more Shoujo.

I'm a big Sailor Moon fan, and I want to expand my knowledge of that genre, but also I want to watch more non-shounen anime and read more non-shounen manga.

You know, I want to see kind of like what is happening in the broad,

like, formal space, if not the

exact genre space.

I've started reading.

You said that, and I tinted my fingers like a super.

Well, like, I've started reading City.

I'm having a really, really good time with that.

City is so funny in ways that

I was not expecting.

I really recommend the animation.

That adaptation has been going really well.

I'm really excited to see it.

And her color work is fantastic.

It's really funny.

But then I also want to read.

I mean, I want to read Berserk.

I want to

watch Utena.

I want to read.

Oh, God.

What's the manga about the megastructure?

Is that Blame?

That's probably Blame, yeah.

Which I think is pronounced Blam, actually.

Oh,

I think I remember reading something like that.

Huh.

Interesting.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe someone lied to me.

That artist has a new thing going out.

It's like fantasy, right?

Yeah, it's called

Tower Dungeon.

That looks incredible.

I haven't read Blame.

I haven't read Blam.

I think it is Blame.

I think it is Blame.

I think someone lied to me.

You got lots of meeting.

On the internet?

On the Internet.

It falls out that I fell for it.

In general, I was too toma Nihi.

No, no, look, look, is it Trash Blam?

Is that Trash Blam?

This is

shout outs to David Brothers.

David Brothers for Comic Alliance has some sort of...

Yep, Ahan Blame pronounced Blam like the gunshot.

This cancels out the shit where I thought gyro taking over Meteor City was my own idea.

I did it.

I said that.

This cancels out the shit where I pronounced it gyro instead of Euro.

Euro.

I tell you, the shonen that I am actually going to

probably read some of, and definitely watch some of, is Yu Yu Hakasho.

Oh, yes.

Yes, for sure.

I was going to say, you sent me a picture of the cover of.

Did you get it from the library?

It has arrived at the library, and I got a notification, and then I broke my ankle mega style.

Right.

This conversation's so dangerous because I just want to start recommending stuff to Jack.

Give me one.

Just recommend me one now.

I think.

Okay, this is tough, but I think I would say,

I just, I mentioned him last time you recorded, Naoki orasawa is just my favorite mangaka.

And I think either, and I'm cheating here, 20th Century Boys or Billy Bat would be fun for you to read.

That sounds amazing.

I think 20th Century Boys, you would be able to get through your library.

Billy Bat, I don't think has a official paperback release in the States.

Huh.

I think that one of the important things about Hunter-Hunter and why it's really, really difficult to go from Hunter Hunter to Shonen broadly and be like, wow, I liked Hunter Hunter.

It's time for Shonen, is that a lot of what makes Hunter Hunter go is absent from a lot of 10-pole Shonen.

Yeah.

Even the ones, and almost conspicuously, the ones that are openly inspired by Hunter Hunter and Tashi's work.

And like,

you can find some of the best,

like

sort of blatantly sentimental

emotionality in Naruto if you wanted to go watch Shonen or whatever, but you'd be missing a lot of what really makes Hunter Hunter special.

Like it is the fact that Tagashi will come up with these things that you never would have seen coming from the genre or even just from fiction in general.

Like he's very, very good at pulling really interesting things out of thin air, but also out of, you know, 50 chapters ago to go like, here, remember this, we're doing this now.

And you're like, holy shit, that's great.

And then when he hits you with something that is sort of like nakedly shounen, it feels like fresh and interesting and not like, here's Tagashi like rolling through.

genre conventions.

And I love shouen.

I really am a fan of the genre.

You know, I really like Naruto.

If anything, like, I think that Naruto exists in this weird place where the people who love it overrate it and people who don't care about it kind of underrate it.

Like, but it's really good.

It's fun.

But you can't find the same juice there.

And so I think that it's not unwise to be looking for things in other genres.

Yeah.

And I mean, I'll say this as well in terms of recommendations.

I would, I would,

I'm not excluding these genres, but I would love to read things that aren't fantasy or sci-fi as well.

You know, I would like to read

like memoirs or

like creative non-fiction, stuff like that.

I'm, you know,

what's the anime that you recommend to me several times, Austin, about jazz music?

Oh, is that Kids on the Slope?

Kids on the Slope.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's great.

It's good.

I've never heard of that.

I don't, I don't, it's what, Nabe.

It's

after

Samurai Shampleu, but before

Space Dandy and Carolyn, who's that?

Before Space Dandy, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And of course, Sylvie thinks that you should watch My Hero Academia.

I will kill you with my brain.

Like,

they'll never find the body.

It is exhausting to try to.

It is.

It is.

You know,

I work and live in the world of games, and it is exhausting over here, but every time I I dip my toe into like anime fandom culture on the internet, it's it's I am the coughing baby because like

I have to listen to people say that Aunt King from solo leveling is better than Merrow M.

I'm the coughing baby because it it stinks when I open the door to their room.

And I don't know.

I haven't, you know what?

Maybe Aunt King is great from solo leveling.

Maybe it's not just

someone who thought, what if Maro-M was more badass?

My impression is that is not the case.

We're running kind of low, so do we want to skip to page 12?

Austin, if you want to read page 12,

I will absolutely read page 12 from M, who says, hi all.

Excuse me.

Hi, all.

This is a question mainly for Jack.

Dorian the Heavens Arena arced.

You didn't like the pacing of Wing teaching Go and Kiloa about Nen.

Now that you've seen the entire show, how do you feel about that arc?

It seems like a lot of concepts like Ren-Gyo come up often, while others, like Nen-type compatibilities, haven't come up much since the Heavens Arena arc.

Has going through the show changed your opinion on Wing's introduction of Nen?

Thanks, M.

It's my least favorite arc,

and I think that the pace suffers.

And I think that the thing that I love to watch Tagashi do the most is

there are two things that I love to watch Tagashi do the most.

Obscure blue sky thinking about the world and people in it in terms of like big, you know, like the narrator says at the beginning of episode one, right?

Like fabulous monsters, all that kind of stuff.

The other thing is when he

bounces characters off each other and has these sort of like like Austin said earlier, like Rube Goldberg machines of character going together.

And you can see bits of that throughout the Nen Nen introduction and Heaven's Arena.

You know, the introduction of Nen is very cool, or rather, Nen is very, very cool.

And we do get to see bits of Goninkillu's characterizations kind of coming bubbling up through that introduction.

I

don't think it is generative to say, would I do it differently?

Because I was not the person staging that thing.

But I think that maybe

it comes as such a strange pacing block after what has gone before and after what comes after I will say that I

I was so anti-Nen and that dissipated very quickly as it became clear what Nen was

but I do stand by that feeling of like

oh god right this is gonna get explained beat by beat by beat.

There are some scenes where like we see characters fight and during the fight the fight is explained and then someone tells someone else about the fight and kind of re-explains it in much the same way.

But it's it's you know it's part of the journey in it.

I've realized in retrospect the thing that I really like about that arc which I think speaks to something, Keith, you said last time.

I think I was about to say this.

You go ahead and say it.

Let's see if we link it.

Okay.

I was going to say like it becomes part of the tapestry of like what you wish the show was still like when you watch Gon and Kiliwa going through what they're going through.

And you're like, can't they

be having fun?

Can't they just be kids again?

You know, they were, they loved each other when this was happening.

You need my veteran

so bad.

Yeah.

I fully believe that it is.

And, you know, this is what everybody was saying at the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

I suppose maybe the clearest answer that I can give to this question is: I wouldn't skip it on a rewatch, in part because the idea of rewatching Hunter Hunter, but saying, I don't want to see that bit, feels disingenuous.

But I do manage to see.

Yeah, no, I don't want to see that bit.

I can't.

Oh, because it upsets you?

No, it's just dull.

What?

That's what some people say about Chimera, too.

I think partly it's because it's a long show, but it's not a one-piece long show.

Right.

I could imagine watching the 1,200, 1,500 episode show.

I'm not watching those 150 episodes.

Oh, yeah.

I'm not going to be there.

I'm not doing it.

I remember when I was maybe someone who was going to watch Bleach

getting to the first filler arc and being like, I would never watch this again, even if I came back here.

It wasn't long after that that I said, I'm not going to watch any of this.

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of hay made about

one piece.

length and also one piece like skip guides.

You know, here is how much one piece you will watch.

Listen, if you made a 10 episode, you're not allowed to re-edit it, you're just allowed to say, Here's 10 episodes of One Piece.

We've cut it down to 10.

I'd watch that show.

I like Pirates, you know.

Um, I'm sure you could get 10 episodes of it.

Listen, I can't, I'm, I pretend I act tough because I don't like One Piece anymore, but I read 600 chapters of that bitch.

Like, oh, yes,

so I can't.

A friend of mine, who also doesn't much care for One Piece, pitched why One Piece could work.

Like, what might appeal to me about it to me once.

And it does appeal to me, right?

Which is like, you see a sail on the horizon, and that is the sail of a boat that is unique and distinct, and it's going to have a weird crew.

And then that boat shows up, and you're like, oh, my God, this is the boat that does X.

And then the next week you see another sail on the horizon.

That's lovely.

However.

Yeah, this is earlier today, Jack, we were

having a meeting about something very cool that we can't talk about yet.

And I was saying that.

We're going to send Austin to space.

That's right.

Bye.

I'll bleep that.

Thanks for stopping by.

Yeah.

The.

Did you just fucking

fucking reference hello, my future girlfriend?

Yeah, I did, of course.

I don't even know what that is.

Yeah, I'll link it to you later.

It's good.

It's very funny.

I was saying to Jack that I am a little embarrassed and ashamed and feel immature about not wanting to play the Donkey Kong game

because

I don't care about the ape.

I don't care about the ape.

I don't care about the plumber.

I don't care about mascot characters.

And I recognize that the games

have a lot going on in terms of ideas about gameplay design and I should get over myself.

But if they had lore, if they had characters, if they had stories, not lore so much.

I don't care about a lot of games that have lore.

but I do like games that have characters and have like

it.

It has, and that's a problem because, like, lore was one of the things I was good at for a while.

And, like, you know, it's tough.

But, like, similarly...

I feel bad because, Jack, the thing you just said, oh, wow, if, you know,

the new ship on the horizon sounds sick.

I don't care about pirates.

I don't like the way it looks.

I don't like the character design.

And if you told me that it was, like, set in a different, a different genre setting, one that like resonated with me, and it looked different, I would probably eat that shit up.

I probably would.

But I don't, and it's just not ever going to happen for me.

Sorry to again, I think that's a problem in me, not a problem in One Piece.

One Piece has problems.

One Piece has problems.

I have no idea.

Everything I've seen of it, I'm like, I just don't like to look at this.

Sorry.

And that's on me.

Yeah.

I mean, that's how I ended up feeling about

JoJo's, honestly.

When we watched JoJo's, I was like, man, I could see how much of this is good, but I just can't.

Yeah, fair enough.

That's just taste.

Taste is like, you know, and like, you know, you should do your best to broaden it and blah, blah, blah, blah, 100%.

But it's not like there's a limit of good stuff out there.

Yeah, it's.

Yeah.

I know there was in the olden days.

It's true.

Yeah, you used to be able to get all the good stuff in one lifetime.

That's right.

In Istanbul.

That's what makes me sad when people waste their time with so much garbage.

Like, you know, that there's actually infinite good stuff,

and I hate almost everything.

You do?

Yeah.

Except just how much my stuff you really like.

Yeah.

But even that, I don't know.

Like, I know people like

it.

Maybe it sounds funny coming from me on a podcast, but in real life,

I see how people will just watch the same show over and over again.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

There's like so much out there.

You're going to watch

even shows that I liked at the time.

Like, you're going to watch The Office 10 times?

There's 10 good shows.

Watch 10 good shows once each.

The Office could be one of them.

Yeah.

Like, I know that I've played Coach Or 2 a dozen times, but that's a dozen times in 21 years.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

What are you doing with

Sonic right now?

Look, that's different.

That's art.

That's work.

Warp AR.

That's art.

That is art.

Keep this remaking it into a 20-year lots play right now.

Yeah,

we played every Sonic game for Run Button, and then we're doing it again because of

remake culture.

It's fucking funny.

It's very funny.

It didn't make us popular.

I didn't think that it would, but I do think it was funny.

It did make you fabulously rich.

Right, yeah.

It made us unpopular, but extremely wealthy.

I thought that was just on the arms dealing, you two started.

We are on question 13.

13, Dre, if you want to read question 13.

I was a beefy email, so I've trimmed it quite a bit.

Yeah, this comes in from Joe Schmo.

Love the podcast.

Been listening for months.

Joe sent in brackets.

Joe sent in a bunch of questions, so I picked a couple for time reasons.

Question one.

Does Batera's 50 billion Ginny bounty make Greed Island more violent and dangerous?

Yes,

I think we see that.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Clearly,

I cannot think of a decision that billionaires make that don't make things more violent and dangerous why do you think death ru showed up yeah

uh okay in chapter 74 karapica identifies a similar problem offering a reward for the auction thieves will backfire ambition will override any cooperation between families uh butterra could have paid hunters regular salaries to work together with a small bonus for every hunter in greed island when anyone completes the game But if Vatera had created more cooperative and equalizing financial incentives, he probably would have lost Tezgera, Jackpot Hunter, Hunter, and his Greed Island liaison.

I think Tezgera selfishly advised Vatera to offer a huge bounty to attract talented hunters, but that backfired by creating the perfect conditions for the bombers to thrive.

Yeah?

Yeah.

It's also like Hunter World, right?

Like,

we spoke at the beginning of this Q ⁇ A about the way the world is warped around hunters to think about games and stuff.

And I feel like, yes, you could pay hunters regular salaries to work together with a small bonus for every hunter in Greed Island when anyone completes the game, but it is much more like ludically compelling for the hunters to be like 50 billion Jenny if you win.

That's like not how it would work in real life either.

They would still be like, this would still basically be a bounty system, I feel like.

I wanted to bring this up specifically to like

talk about how the extremely limited supply of Greed Island consoles being released into a world where hunters exist is almost a recipe designed for this exact outcome.

Yes.

Because even without

Batera's reward, really, what Baterra was doing, because there's one thing that this question doesn't include, Batera's reward is essentially to buy the magic item that you get to take out of the game.

So there is something that would happen if everybody worked together to get a small bonus, what they would be doing would be giving up the jackpot and giving it to Baterra.

And so, um,

this is the 50 billion, like, the the really valuable thing about Greed Island is having access to a piece of magic that you get for completing the game.

Yes, you get to take one toy out, yeah.

Um, a toy that can let you, like, literally do a miracle, bring, you know, bring someone back from the dead or whatever.

Yeah,

yeah.

Um, we read this next little bit, Dre.

Oh, yeah, Sorry.

What do you think Jing's nin type slash technique is?

Same question for Periston.

Okay, I think that Jing is a specialist.

I've given this some thought.

I think that Tagashi is not immune to making his.

Oh, well, no, because God...

I don't know.

Yeah, you're not.

I'm getting Tagashi's tricked right there at the end.

I think that he's an enhancer.

It's so fucking hard to tell.

What is the full nenwheel?

Great question.

Oh, wow.

We all made one in the wing, and I didn't give it because I thought that we didn't need it.

All right.

I pulled it up, so I can't play it in the game.

Okay, see if we can remember.

Specialist, enhancer.

We said those two already.

Emitter.

Emitter.

Transmuter, manipulator.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

They're both.

You're missing one more.

Yeah.

Conjurer.

Yes.

Yep.

Yeah.

Got him.

That's it.

I think that's all.

Jing is

And it's like using people.

He is transmuting one kind of person into another.

Yeah.

I wonder if he's a.

I think the Greed Island stuff is so tricky because it's right.

There's so many people that worked on that with him.

It's hard.

It's hard for me to like understand.

Exactly.

I kind of think he's probably a specialized or a specialist.

I think that the Hisuka's personality types might help here.

We have enhancers are simple to determine.

Manipulators are logical and do things at their own pace.

Transmuters are whimsical liars.

Emitters are impatient and not detail-oriented.

Specialists are independent and charismatic.

And conjurers are high-strung.

And so I think we get a couple really good options.

Specialists.

Or

what's the one that's like impatient and emitter, right?

Emitter is impatient and not detail-oriented, but I think actually Jing's very detail-oriented.

Yeah, he's super high-partially.

I don't know if we're going with that being a hard science, right?

I don't know.

Emitter was my, was going to be what I said, because I think I'm of the, it's not going to be anything anybody would suspect given what we've seen of Jing's footprint within the original run.

Right.

I have two thoughts here.

They're neither of them are about types.

They're about something else, which is one, he's Goku.

So that's like enhancer,

yeah.

Emitter, emergency,

right?

Which is like he he does fireballs, or he does like key blasts, and he does super punch, and he can fly and hasn't revealed that yet, or something.

Okay, the second one is: I think he's a, I think he steals powers from people because that's what he does like Crollo in some way.

I think he can take powers from people because he's already doing it, he does it by convincing them to work for him, right?

And so, I think that that could get literalized into

you know, if you oh, what was that?

Well, who was the Chimera ant who could do this?

Merim could do it.

Oh, Leon.

Leon.

If I do you a favor for you,

you have to say you owe me one.

You say you owe me one.

You say you owe me one.

I could imagine it being something like that, where it's like,

if someone agrees that they're my friend, I can use any of their powers that I've seen them use.

Or

like

Kiryu from Yahaza, you can tell, that's cool.

I saw someone do a thing, or someone hit me with the dragon uppercut, and now I can do the dragon dragon uppercut i would play the fuck out of that right honest to god uh and then parrison i think doesn't have nen or has the nen ability parrison has is either like projects like he has nen so that people think he's very powerful or is like he's invincible but he can't like hurt anybody directly he doesn't have like i i think i my read on him is i don't have he can maybe see he can do all the techniques but he has no he has no personal power he's just a little manipulative ass the best thing his ability is when you go to punch him glasses appear on his face and he goes no it's my birthday

the best thing about Parriston is as as like a totally unreadable bluffer who is also constantly double bluffing there's a line where he's like where he's talking about how like you need to have um

uh you know

combat skills and you need to have experience and you need to have, you know, the right stuff or whatever.

And he's like, and myself, I don't have any of these three being like, I don't have combat experience, which could be a you know, cheeky bluff because he actually does have what it takes, I think, to lead the hunter organization.

But also, it could just be totally upfront, said in a sort of slimy voice to make you think he's lying when he's not because he's a weirdo.

Right, he could have the power over life and death.

He sure has a plan for the Chimera ants,

and that's a difficult thing to do if you have no nen power

loyalty of other people who have nen power then it doesn't matter or it does matter there's a situation you can of course conjure a situation where it matters but that's what he does conjure you know lex luthor can't punch superman but he's still his nemesis rap well he could build a machine that could punch superman right i would not be shocked if he had an ability that just was like unrelated to what like if it's something like bisky's ability i was just gonna say that yeah i've been hearing something that is

sure but it's something that like personally benefits him but isn't necessarily going to be the um

something he busts out in combat like i agree that he is not a combat nen user but i think that he is to some degree a capable nen user because you would have to be i love that that's really good sylvie like like oh i can because because Part of Bisky's is like massage or something.

Yeah, she's like the perfect aesthetician or something like she she massages you she makes you feel a hundred percent i wouldn't be shocked if his is like his the ultimate secretary like right he's he's got someone to just manage all of his like businesses and stuff damn nan

chat gpt

we did also talk about i mean i wouldn't be shocked with him we did also talk about how people were disappearing after working for him and maybe he can open a pocket dimension like the possibilities are endless they're really endless yeah that's why i thought this was a fun thing to do just just make up some shit about the two weirdest guys.

Twice a day, I can make a candy bar for someone.

Yeah.

It turns out candy will get you a far away.

He's the paperclip guy here?

He is.

You did a paperclip up to be the vice chairman?

God.

Oh, so he's the assistant, actually.

His power is being the assistant.

That's.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

No, sorry, we're talking about two different paperclipclip guys.

Oh, okay.

Not Clippy, the the paperclip guy,

the one paperclip person, which I know you know, because I think you've referenced it before, Keith.

That's like a thing they teach you in school.

Oh, the guy that trades a thing for a thing for a thing to teach you about how the capital C.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

That actually did really come up recently.

Maybe on side story.

That actually did really happen.

I have no idea if it really happened.

They definitely tell it to you like it really happened.

He wrote a fucking book, but they can lie in those.

You can write a book about anything.

Yeah.

You can write a book about anything.

I think we should skip to the last.

Oh, actually, a couple quick things from Joe here, although I lost my page.

There we go.

Joe included the reason why Knuckle was strangling Hanzo in that scene, and it's because Hanzo was being a glory hound.

You can see the picture here of Goan sort of bashfully scratching his head, and Hanzo's like, we fucking did it!

And Knuckles behind him scowling at him.

So that's a mystery solved.

And then also

Joe also included a reminder of something that Goan said, that Mito said in episode one, which is if you want to get to know someone, find out what makes them angry, which is a great and foreboding line.

Yeah, I think I know Goan pretty well.

Yeah.

Yep.

Kill it too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I think we should move on to the last thing that we have,

which is

actually two emails that i'm gonna read together and it's quite long um this first one is from julius uh one part of what makes the world of hunter hunter so unique is the chaotic landscape of technological signifiers where medieval villages coexist with modern cities and warrior monks face off with computer nerds with apparently no incongruity this obviously is delightful um

all of which makes the miniature rose singularly shocking.

Unlike every other major plot device in the story, the miniature rose is fully mundane with no hint of nen involved.

It is depicted in stark contrast to the spiritual power of Netero and the alien power of Meroem as a fundamentally human power and greater than either for being so.

Notably, the bomb may be the only thing in Hunter Hunter that is clearly described in terms of industrial mass production.

Oh, yeah.

What does the narrative focus on a technological nature of the miniature rose say in a story where technology is otherwise relegated to aesthetics?

Is the commodity form of real expression or is the commodity form the real expression of the human's

heart's infinite malice?

I'm going to take that again.

Is the commodity form the real expression of the human heart's infinite malice?

Thank you so much for the show and all your hard work, Julius.

Do you have anything quick to say about this before I add Tom's thing, which includes a lot of similar ideas?

You don't want to just read them both and then

I'll read them both.

Hello, Media Club Plus crew.

Congrats on finishing an excellent season.

I wanted to write to share one of my favorite details from the Chimera Ant Arc that didn't make it into the recordings and get your reactions to it.

I actually think we very briefly did bring this up, but

this has way more detail.

The impossible to translate final lines of Chair Minetero.

I'll be speaking mostly about the manga here, as this is something that necessarily failed to make the jump to the adapted version.

First, we need a brief aside about written Japanese.

When iconographic characters, kanji, are written, they can be implemented by smaller characters, or sorry, they can be supplemented by smaller characters in one of the phonetic alphabets, hiragana or katakana, as a guide to pronunciation called for furigana, which I actually had never even heard of.

There's a panel of gone

roughly saying this time we'll have to be systematic about it.

Systematic has smaller characters to its right reading keikaku teki because it's a more complicated word that young shonen jump readers or novice Japanese readers like me might not have seen before writing.

You learn how to pronounce it via the furigana while also seeing the characters that make up the meaning.

Great for comprehension and literacy.

This is useful in Shounen genre comics, both because of their intended audience and because the genre fiction tends to make up its own words and you need to know how to pronounce them.

Of course, Tagashi being Tagashi has to make a game out of it sometimes.

The panel of Hisuka below shows one of his favorite tricks, and this is

Hisuka using bungee gum.

The kanji are saying elastic love.

And normally you'd write the furigana as

shinshuji zai no ai, which is the written out elastic love.

But it's not what it says here.

Of course, it says it in a more sounding it out characters of katakana,

which are banji-gomu or bungee gum.

Tagashi does this all the time with nen techniques.

This is why my specific sub always has two

titles when talking about nen powers.

I think your subs both had all all had just one thing usually, but mine would say both.

It would say elastic love, colon, bungee gum.

Tagashi does this all the time when talking about nen techniques, almost without fail.

They have furrigana that signal, actually, I'm using these kanji for flavor, and I'm going to name this with a dual meaning.

It means elastic love, but sounds like bungee gum.

English translations often try to represent this by formatting nen techniques like a title and subtitle.

It's a linguistic trick that's hard to translate to English and impossible to translate directly to audio in any language.

This takes us to the end of the Chimera Ant arc, where Nedero delivers his final taunt/slash warning to Merowam.

King of the Ants, you know nothing of the bottomless malice within the human heart.

The final word in the Japanese structure of the sentence is malice.

Tagashi writes the word akui, malice, then red below, R-E-D.

But instead of writing out Akui in the pronunciation key, he instead puts a whole separate word in green, shinka, or evolution.

So you could read this as mankind's bottomless malice or mankind's immeasurable evolution because he's kind of saying the meaning of both words superimposed on each other in a way that's impossible to do outside of print.

Even in the Japanese stub, the scriptwriters and the actors have to choose one or the other.

It's a question of format rather than language.

But in any,

but it's another nasty twist on the whole deal here at the end.

Humankind is evil.

Humankind is sophisticated.

The pinnacle of our technology is the pinnacle of our cruelty.

We have evolved to join in the hegemony of the food chain to flimsily disguise this as a question.

What are your thoughts about this as it's applied here and also

what it means that this is formatted in a way that calls back to the format used to describe everyone's iconic nen techniques?

Thanks again for a fantastic show and enabling many wonderful conversations about this work.

I love sincerely, Tom.

P.S., a small plug for any of you moving to the manga, I've made an elaborate read-along character relationship guide slash memory aid slash conspiracy corkboard for the current arc.

It starts at chapter 358, and the manga exclusive content begins in chapter 340.

So you gotta read 18 chapters to get to where this chart is relevant.

And it's designed to be spoiler-safe after you reach the chapters marked on each page of the document.

Oh, that rules.

Yeah.

So I'm going to link that in the show notes for this.

If any of you continue down this road, I hope you find it useful.

I think it's something, I think it's some of the most ambitious comic works ever done and deeply rewarding, but also it's a lot to keep track of.

Thank you, Tom, and thank you, Julius, for the questions.

These are great, really, really good emails.

I'm going to approach them in order.

I think Julius is kind of on the money in terms of talking about the link between like commodification and

spinning up mass production

as it relates to like the bottomless malice within the human heart.

But I will also say that so much of the way Hunter Hunter works and the way that like a lot of shonen works is it uses

um individual conflicts as the levers to like turn the the the um

like larger conflicts of the world on i mean the uh battle for uh the battle inside the palace is a battle for the future of humanity but at the same time it's like eight people doing it uh I think it is notable that while the eight people are doing it, like millions of amassed humans are kind of standing hypnotized and and passive outside.

But it really does sort of give credence to what Natero is saying there in his final moments.

Really, depending on either way you choose to read it after what Tom has said,

that then, you know, we have those remarkable like documentary footage shots of the bombs falling from planes and of being constructed.

It's that sort of like

like the camera lens clicking out one level further and saying what Natero said was true.

This is a story about eight people fighting for humanity, but it is also the broader scope of like human mass production and human like mass culture.

It's interesting because

there are a handful of other moments where mass production pop up.

And it's things like...

It's things like,

oh my God, what's the

gyro producing and distributing the drugs.

It's things like the NGL being like, no weapons, no technology is allowed here.

We have weapons and computers at our base, right?

That's not mass production, but there is a sort of control of production happening there.

Well, they also had like AK-47s down there.

That's right, as I said, weapons.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, and I think the other half of this that I think is probably important in any sort of reading of it is to complete the schematic, because if on one hand is the

rows, the poor man's rose, the other side, and if that's like the vision of

mass production, of

empire and capitals, control over technology, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Then we also have to account for, you talked about the passivity of the people there

in the kind of

big courtyard in front of the palace.

But that passivity kind of goes beyond that because there is also the sort of pastoral purity of the village where Shidori and

Colt are from.

There is the sort of purity of Whale Island separated from the world.

All of these places that are like

positioned as incorrupt or uncorrupt, or certainly not incorruptible, because they're certainly touchable.

The Whale Island feels like it's so removed from the world.

It's Arcadia, it's Eden, it's right.

And I think it gets complex when you start going down that road and you start asking who has agency and you start trying to figure out what happens there.

And

I don't know that it is as easily readable as a strong critique if you also have to account for there are these places where these people barely count as people right we this comes into the hunter hunt only hunters count as people thing to some degree right um i'm not saying you can't do that analysis i think you probably can but you then have to contend with these poor motherfuckers don't even know that what the world is right um right uh which is a this is like a classic problem of marxist cultural critique is

if you have to deal with the false consciousness problem, you have to deal with this notion that people don't understand what they're in.

And in doing that, you can often dehumanize the very people that you're trying to write in

defense of.

And so I'm just saying it's a complex thing to, it's a complex road to walk down.

I don't think that there's an easy read that doesn't end up stumbling you towards some other stuff unless you carve away and say, I don't want to talk about,

you know, here's another one.

Let's talk about Whale Island.

I don't want to talk about Whale Island.

I don't want to talk about there being a place called the dark continent that we're all afraid of, right?

Like, which we'll have to cross.

You know, I'm going to read and I'm curious where we go.

You know, oh, the chimera ants come from a place called the dark continent?

Weird.

Okay.

So like that, that stuff ends up getting naughty in a way that is

complex, I think.

So, but it's interesting.

And I think that there is something there to work through.

I just don't, I don't have it all yet.

I have to finish.

I got to read more.

Yeah.

God.

But good luck.

How would you instead like to read about Internecine Freak War?

Because that's what Tagashi decided to do.

As far as I am aware, it does seem to shift.

Be like, nope, we're talking about this for as long as it takes.

Okay.

A tiny note from the

Jump Ryu interview.

There were two things that I thought were so Tagashi.

The first is that tagashi's favorite part of making manga can anybody guess what it is

no

oh we're talking like splitting up writing sketching like the whole process yoshiro tagashi making manga what is his favorite part i don't think it's coloring i think i know it's not coloring

My, yeah, my instinct is you're you're you're fishing for one of two extremes, and one of them is like,

you know, outlining, like big picture plotting, and the other is like drawing plants you know like something very detail oriented and separate from the big oh yeah because you know toriyama was like yeah my favorite thing is drawing hands he would just draw hands all the time this is yes right exactly tagashi's favorite thing is coming up with ideas Okay, so it is.

It's outlining the big picture.

Yeah.

And no, it's not even necessarily the big picture.

The way he described it, he was like, I am happiest when he described it.

He had this great metaphor of like tension, the tension of the idea.

He said, like, I'm most excited when the ideas are just coming out and I'm just sort of like, you know, here's a fun nen power.

Here's a fun thing about the waste or whatever.

And he said that his whole job, his whole career as a mangaka has been about like tricking himself into maintaining the tension so that he actually makes the thing.

Which I think is fascinating based on...

based on the kind of manga that Tagashi produces.

The other thing is he's talking about succession war starting, it hasn't started yet, so he's not able to be specific.

And he picks up a

like a character sheet, which are these tools that mangakers use to

be consistent with what their characters look like, especially when they're working with assistants or they're working over a long period of time.

So, it essentially just looks like a grid of squares in which you're like, Morel looks like this, and you just have a straight-on shot of Morel's face that you can keep referring to.

And he picks up this character sheet, and he's like, This is a character sheet from, I wish I could remember the manga that he was talking about.

And he was like, It had maybe 14 faces on it.

And he said, This is often considered to be the arc in Shonen Jump with the most new characters introduced per arc.

And then the camera panned over to the other side of his desk where he just had like a stack of these character sheets with new people on.

And he was like, a secret goal of mine is to try and surpass that record in my new arc.

Was it one of his other arcs?

No,

it was not a Tagashi work.

But like going from like 14 or 15 faces to his thing where he's got like a three-ring binder of new characters is really funny.

I just feel like he's already it feels like he's already done that.

Could it be possible to not have more characters than that in a Tagashi arc?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it could.

Yeah, absolutely.

It could, right?

Because you have to remember that, like, because it's not just Shon.

Sorry, was this only in Shonen Jump or was it?

I believe it was just in Jonah.

Oh, okay.

Is the thing that I'm misunderstanding that that one page of 14 faces was not indicative of how many new characters there were?

It was just one page of it.

No, I believe that was the amount, but it might have been more than 14.

It might have been like, you know, 20 or 30 or something.

But it struck me as a small amount compared to the sheaf of paper that Tagashi picked up on the other side of the desk.

There's just so many new characters.

What you're saying is like Chimera Ann.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's got to be more.

Yeah.

It seems like there are.

It seems like there's no end to the new characters in succession.

Maybe some some of the Chimerian characters don't get that sort of important

specific treatment.

That's fair.

Because

they're registered as background characters or one-offs and not recurring characters who you need to have one of those prepared for.

I don't know.

Do we have anything else?

The three of you should open the little envelopes that I have sent you.

Yeah.

Oh,

there's a little note in each that is not for the episodes.

Not because it's

my social security number or whatever, but you just don't need to read out three little notes.

I sent Sylvie, Keith, and Dre a little present that I picked up in Japan.

Each, they're very small to celebrate finishing Hunter Hunter.

I think that the order doesn't matter, but Keith should go last because it will be funniest.

Otherwise, either of you are welcome to go first.

Okay.

I can go first.

Go for it.

Okay.

The first thing I'm pulling out of my little manila envelope is, oh, it's a sticker of Karapika.

The beautiful Karapika hanging out.

Yeah.

Okay.

I have a...

Oh, what is this?

It's the man who gives you the bad juice.

Tompa?

It's a little

Sandio.

Oh my God.

Where is he now?

Oh,

that's a hunter exam giving people bad juice.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's his

life.

I would love for Tomba to have passed the hunter exam to show up in succession.

That would be unbelievable.

It would be so good.

That's what he was doing.

What if he had been at the election arc?

What have he been voting?

Wow.

I mean,

he probably was.

He had to.

Well, no.

He's not a hunter.

He's not.

He's not a hunter famously.

Oh, he's not a hunter.

Well, that's what I mean.

He would have had to pass the rookie crusher.

He would have had to pass a hunter exam that took place after Greed Island, which may not have happened.

No.

Yeah.

Okay.

I have more things.

Ooh, I have another, a set of like two stickers, and it's a strip.

They're two different strips

with Gone, Karapika, Leorio, and Kiloaz.

Like, it's a head-up shot.

But one strip is like very detailed and nice, and everybody looks put together.

And the second one is more like sketchy, and everybody's exhausted-looking or stressed-out-looking.

Ooh.

is this?

Oh, I think this is just like a little another little like paper standy.

Uh, it is, it says Hunter, Hunter, the battle for the throne of the cock and kingdom.

So, yeah, this is oh, yeah, this is succession art.

It has Karapika standing in the front, like with like shaded blue, and then a bunch of characters from the succession art, like drawn in like this like weird, like yellow-orange-ish.

Yeah

Oh, this is a note

I Think I think that's everything Jack.

I think that is everything.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you my turn.

Oh I'm so excited.

Okay.

What have I got here first?

Oh A wonderful Leorio sticker.

That's my friend

Dear friend Leorio my dear friend, my buddy.

I love that guy.

My main

impact.

Oh, yeah.

You're like, Leorio is a killer.

That game is busted.

That's so funny.

Yeah, that game just seems busted in all the good and negative ways.

Unfortunately.

Is this...

Oh, I thought it was like a little key thing at first, but it looks like it's like a.

I don't know what it is, but I do know what it is.

Here,

I can pop on.

For the people in the call, I can pop on my video for a second.

Well, yeah, I could have done that, huh?

Okay.

Hi.

I waved even though you can't see me.

Tolbi's here.

It's like a little...

It's got Phaetan.

Is that...

Is that...

Oh, that's Shizuku.

Her glasses were throwing me off.

This is the little paper chain that Kalanto makes to track the Phantom Truth.

It's very funny.

Okay.

Also, I'll hold up the Leorio for everybody.

Oh.

It's a good Leorio.

Excuse the terrible laptop camera.

That's the note.

Oh, I got another Leorio.

Oh,

double Leorio.

Opening packs of cards.

Opening packs of cards.

I got a double Leo.

I think that, is that it?

Did I miss something, Jack?

I think that's it.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

I love them.

I'm happy to go last.

I know why I was picked to go last.

I cannot believe I found what I gave.

I'm so cute.

So first, I don't have a webcam, but I'm going to share the first picture here, which is a very cute sticker of

the whole gang here.

It looks like someone has hit Leorio in the mouth,

which is very funny.

And then, beside the whole gang is

Kropica on his own doing some

York New style stuff.

He's doing chain bastard moves on someone.

And then,

along with the sticker is

Gerenu and the two gorillas as a button.

Oh my god.

I cannot believe that this was just like made and in a store.

I know.

It felt like they made merch for us, not in the sense of merch for our show, but merch for this group of people.

They were like, oh, yes, they'll want the Gerenu and the two gorillas.

Correct.

There's like a little sign that drops down being like, first Gerenu sold.

Oh, I bet there's fans.

Yeah, I bet there's great events.

I wonder, I bet there is a Hunter X Hunter

fan.

What are these called?

And they like most popular, most popular characters,

polls.

This is like a classic thing.

All right, here we go.

What is this?

Is this from?

No, this is Reddit.

Bye.

Yeah, I want to reel on it.

Okay, here we go.

I found them.

I found them.

There's three of them.

Yeah.

There was one from chapter 56,

which is

volume 7,

which seems to be...

It's a week before, I think.

That's very early.

This seems to be.

It's like Heaven's Arena.

I don't even think it is Heaven's Arena.

It's at the end of.

It's the exam.

Yeah, it's going into Heaven's Arena, it looks like.

The second one is at the end of volume 12,

which is.

That's still not there.

That's York New, is what it looks like.

Yes.

Justice gorinu uh and then and then finally the third one is uh

where is this at the city open data book the data book i want to look at what 2004 2004 what's that mean um i'm gonna who could say yeah

uh any guesses as to who is popular hezuka so

yeah

i have them open as well they have the same top three that's right hezeka good killer.

Goan?

Is Karapika represented?

Yes.

I'm going to say, yeah, Hezekiakilloa Karapika.

Yeah, that's my three.

Also, it looks like

this is a post-Chimera ant because

just looking at the

description of what's in it, they have NGL stuff.

They have Chimera, the squadron leaders and stuff.

Yeah.

So Goreinu does not rank.

No, see, I don't see those in my heart.

I don't see Gorino.

If they took it now, our influence would have

you know,

it would shift it, is what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, top three in each the first, second, and third character poll.

Number one in each of all three, Kilwazoldic.

Yep, hell yeah, it's true, it's true, huh?

Yep, number two,

Karapika.

Okay.

Number three, Gone Freaks.

Wow.

Good for them.

I don't feel that for Leorio.

Leorio is up there in each of the.

Yeah, he's up here in each of these.

He's top 10 in each of the top 10 in all of them, yeah.

Yeah.

That's good.

Good for Leorio and good for people taking 100, 100 polls that I was wrong and he's just not in there.

He's a good number four.

Okay, well, he's not top three.

I got a little excited.

He wasn't top three.

Okay, he's cool.

He's top 10 in each of these artists.

I am looking at the numbers of votes, and

he beat Krollo in the third one, but Krollo got a lot more votes in the second one.

You absolutely do not have to hand it to Hisaka Morau, but I will say that Election Arc Hiseker is some of the most fun Hisaka funny.

He does lose there to, besides the top three, Kite, Leorio, and Nefro Pito.

Yeah, sure.

That sounds right.

Is Pito the highest-ranked Royal Guard?

God, highest rank.

Highest ranked ant.

Period.

Actually, you're looking at it.

The third character pool.

Highest-ranked antagonist, too, just in general.

Because the rest are all buddies.

Yeah.

I got a soft spot for Poof, the worst man in the world.

Why did Ponzu beat Melody?

Y'all are.

I don't know.

That's crazy.

Though Yoshihiro Tagashi got 24 out of the top 30, he beat beat Netaro.

Wait, as a person or as a dog, this is important.

I just see the names on the list, Dre.

I see.

Merowam is not on the third one.

I think this might be before the end.

I think it was.

Okay, that makes sense.

This is mid, mid.

No part of it is mid.

You're right.

I'm sorry about being too joking.

It's so good it doesn't have a middle.

I want to give a quick shout out.

Last year, Austin gave me a Christmas present that was an envelope that said, Do not open until Hunter Hunter is finished.

And as soon as I finished Hunter Hunter, I opened it.

It is fantastic.

It is a zine or like a piece of short fiction by Alex Seipel called, I'm looking at it, it's pinned up on my wall.

I think where I come from is leaving.

Now, here on Media Club Plus, we tend to be sad killer collectors.

This is a true sad gun.

Yeah.

And it is is a spectacular sad gone.

Just this like remarkable, like bright color gone being swallowed up in green and just like

bemoaning his loneliness and his absence, absences in his life.

It's really cruel.

I think that it

we saw

like a post sharing it like right as it went up and that's when That was bought.

Is that right?

Was it like brand new basically?

Maybe.

Yeah, because it was 2024.

That's totally possible.

I may have also just bought it around a holiday to give to Jack as that might be randomly.

A light Christmas.

A Christmas gift on a fuse.

Yeah.

It's so beautiful.

I cannot.

There's a lot of really great

Hunter-Hunter art.

I also think Jen Doyle has some really great art with Gonan and

Kilowa in it.

I think there's like fantastic.

There was a great piece a couple of days ago.

Was that also an Alex Sieple one of of Going and Kilowa that we

a lot of us retweeted on or reposted on their best friend with them hugging outside the ice cream shop?

Yeah, it's so good.

Yes, yeah, it is.

But I think the thing that I love the most about this is

the text,

which is this beautiful play.

You know, we read the letter from Tom before about how you cannot do the furigana tricks that

Togashi does.

But I think what Alex does with the language here is it's a different thing, but it's playing with ambiguity and language.

It's playing with the word gone and gone

with gone, you know.

It's just very good.

So

it's very, very good.

I think that that does it for season one of Media Club Plus.

It was a joy to do.

I love watching Hunter Hunter.

I loved getting to

talk about it with usually three of you, sometimes the four of you, sometimes a fifth fifth Allie, who was almost here in the last episode,

but will be in all of

the M-Night Shyamalan season that we've already started recording.

I'm not a natural host,

extremely, I'm an unnatural planner or an organizer.

So

doing

almost two full years, actually, yeah, two full years.

Media Club Plus and you know, scheduling recordings and being almost not late on uploading episodes.

As long as your Tuesday, like mine, lasts until 5 a.m.

Wednesday.

It's a Keith Tuesday, is what everyone needs to realize.

This show releases on Keith Tuesday.

On Keith Tuesday.

Yeah.

It releases on Tuesday.

I'll have to find the time zone that I live by.

I have like a Spanish Tuesday.

Oh.

Sounds sounds like a Spanish Tuesday.

Like that sounds like a breakfast dish or something.

Well, you know, they have, they have dinner at 10 o'clock, and then they're editing podcasts until 4 in the morning.

But it was great.

Thank you for hosting, Keith.

I was happy to do it.

I was happy to, you know, this is sort of a prove to myself I could do it, which I mostly, I think, did.

Absolutely.

That's a great show.

I listen.

I look forward to the show every other week.

Oh, I have no problem about me on the mic.

On the mic.

Yeah, okay.

Okay.

No, there's no, there's no doubt there, but it's the

other work.

It's the

managerial part of Media Club Plus that I like.

And it wasn't part of the calculus when we started.

And I grew to enjoy being able to do it, if not the actual doing of it.

Oh, yeah.

Smell good luck and true professional.

Yeah, anything else?

Yeah.

No,

I'm all done.

I'm all done with Hunter Hunter.

Yeah.

I'm going to do one more.

I'm going to do one more thing to take us out on.

Okay.

Yes, it is.

Yes!

Let's fuck her go.

Oh my god.

I actually heard my voice.

No.