Enjoy The Side Trips - Hunter x Hunter ep. 146-148: Media Club Plus S01E47

Speaker 1 I think I remember hearing recently that, like, Avalon, the production studio that does Taskmaster, also represents a lot of the people who appear on it. Like, when you talk about it being like a.

Speaker 1 Oh, that is interesting. Yeah.
Although, with the in the UK, so how many, how many

Speaker 1 different even places are there? How many people could there be? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 About seven of us. Um, yeah, it's like a bunch of a couple hamlets, and that's about it.

Speaker 1 That was Denmark. There's the Danes Sylvia.

Speaker 1 I'm putting you both in the crystal.

Speaker 1 Alright, let's get going because we're going to want to talk for fucking ever.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Is that not what we meant? It is now. Yeah, that's what I meant.

Speaker 1 No, I thought we'd just do a clap or something. But yeah.

Speaker 1 I'll do a clap at the end. Okay.

Speaker 1 Going out the way we started.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And this season, we watched 2011's Hunter Hunter based on the manga by Yoshikir Tagashi. My name is Keith Carberry, and you can find me online at Keith J.
Carberry.

Speaker 1 You can find the let's plays that I do at youtube.com/slash run button.

Speaker 1 You can watch all of us in various configurations along with the rest of Friends of the Table at twitch.tv/slash slash friends at the table and you can find

Speaker 1 us next week doing a q a about the second half of hunter hunter uh starting at greed island and all the way through to the end and you can send us an email at friendsofetable at gmail.com with

Speaker 1 media club plus media club plus in the subject line thank you sylvia i was trying to be consistent and remember what i said last time i believe every time we've said media club plus

Speaker 1 as long as you put Media Club Plus in there, it'll get through. If you don't do that, then we will probably miss it because I'm going to search for subject line Media Club Plus.

Speaker 1 So if you have questions or comments or anything to say, then you can send that to us for our final episode covering Hunter Hunter next week, which will be a Q ⁇ A.

Speaker 1 And then we are going to follow that up with six months of M-Night Shyamalan movies before starting our season two proper. Um,

Speaker 1 oh, let's see, is there anything else to say about the M. Night Shyamalan stuff?

Speaker 1 Except for now is the time to like make a bunch of noise about Media Club Plus and how much you like it and how much you think other viewers watch it. Please do.
Uh, especially

Speaker 1 as we transition from anime to movies to American movies, American live-action movies, it would be great for people to still listen and for people who didn't watch cartoons to start listening.

Speaker 1 With me, as always, is

Speaker 1 Jack DeKeith.

Speaker 1 Hello, I'm Jack. You can get any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.

Speaker 1 My celebratory finishing hunter-hunter outfit that I am, the costume that I am wearing, we all came in costume, is the

Speaker 1 board attendant in Heaven's Arena.

Speaker 1 Who signs everybody?

Speaker 1 I'm also the board attendant.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, keep it. I'm looking around the table.
Oh, my God. We're all the board attendant.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 I thought we talked about this.

Speaker 1 Shit. Podcast off.
We fucked it at the last hurdle.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm deleting it. I'm deleting the whole thing.
Yeah. The whole series.
No more. The entire.
Yeah, I was going to say, one day. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Burn the earth. Salt the salt.
Salt the RSS feed.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I'm going to get them to delete the show to Hunter Hunter, too. They're going to delete it.
Sure. I'm going to make some calls and I'm going to change someone's name randomly.

Speaker 1 And I'm also going to get them to delete the show, the whole show. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just tell Max to buy it. Jack, sorry, do you have anything else to say?

Speaker 1 No, I don't have anything else to say. Okay, Sylvie Bullet.

Speaker 1 Hey, I am Sylvia.

Speaker 1 You can find me on the internet at Sylvie Bullet on a couple places. Also, importantly, also happening the day this comes out, my band has released an EP.

Speaker 1 So if you like Screamo music, go to gutmachineband.bandcamp.com. EP, it stands for especially powerful.
Go listen to Sylvie's especially powerful music. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 Also, you should check out sidestory.show if you want to hear. I think, yeah, no, we've definitely all appeared on it by now.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 All of us, all of us in different configurations on different topics talk about video games.

Speaker 1 That runs in the alternating weeks of this show. So

Speaker 1 Dre just recorded a side story yesterday about that came out today, today being the eighth,

Speaker 1 about sports, which of course means uh uh uh uma musume

Speaker 1 NBA 2K games

Speaker 1 MLB the show

Speaker 1 Pokemon in general Pokemon

Speaker 1 I saw KOTOR in the Discord but I wasn't sure if that was making it on the episode or not I just remember looking in the channel Keith brought it up I did bring up I wanted I needed a way to say

Speaker 1 I needed a way

Speaker 1 I needed a way to say that um Cliff the the quirky lawyer from Veronica Mars, plays a bunch of different voices, including one of the companion characters in Kotor 2. That's really funny.

Speaker 1 But didn't have an avenue for it, except to bring it up as part of a different bit.

Speaker 1 But I believe that the link that was in the Discord, that was like from During a Break.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.
I just thought it was funny. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And Interlee Swan.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 I don't think there's anything left to plug.

Speaker 1 So hi. The YouTube, youtube.com slash friends of the table.
Oh, yeah. And hey, I don't know.
At some point up there, Keith and I will have a stream archive up there soon. That's true.
I'm catching up.

Speaker 1 I'm catching up on that. Yeah, Maxie Driver.
Maxi Driver, yeah. I'm catching up on Twitch stuff.
So that'll be up relatively soon when you hear this.

Speaker 1 There's only a handful of things that are going up before it.

Speaker 1 And of course, there's also a new merch somewhere. Friendsofetable.shop.
Friends of the table.shop. Does anybody know the day that that's actually dropping? For certain.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you can go to friendsofthetable.shop. There's new stuff there there should be and i'll there should be another shirt i'll clean this up to to reflect the truth when i'm editing it

Speaker 1 damn bro you're just like gene i'm just like

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 uh hunter hunter related uh sometime in the next few days after this airs we'll be probably streaming some non-impact just uh so if you want to oh true you want to see what that's like come come hang out i'm so excited how do we first real hunter hunter game how do we feel about hunter hunter we finished it we finished it i was so sad finishing it honestly and i am every time i finished it i don't know this is like my fourth time finishing it probably uh-huh uh and i'm sad every time it's really sad to me the ending's really like beautifully executed i think i really like the ending of the anime yeah i've never been like we can talk about this when we get to it i've never really been too upset that it ends there um i think it really it nails closing the arc of gone and kilua on a very like sweet but i remembered the word a bittersweet moment bittersweet moment yeah and coincidentally gone and killua might as well not be characters in the manga after this

Speaker 1 that's my awareness they yeah they appear like in They appear on like one or two pages each in the next 11 years worth of manga.

Speaker 1 Which is fascinating. Fascinating.
By the way, I have read exactly one chapter of the manga now. Wow.

Speaker 1 I did it while I was eating my dinner. Oh, so you, you, you went straight from one to the other.
Yeah, I was curious. That's why

Speaker 1 I messaged the chat, and we will talk about it later. I have the first

Speaker 1 frame, the first panel after the end of the 2011 anime screenshot and ready to set up.

Speaker 1 Please. Is it a map? No.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Is there a map in the first chapter?

Speaker 1 I don't remember one.

Speaker 1 There's like a little one. There's a little one.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I think that so much of how I feel about the ending, and I would put money that so much the way that you three feel about the ending is

Speaker 1 not necessarily reliant on the fact, but in conversation with the fact that we know that there is 11 years of manga that is about to happen.

Speaker 1 I think that

Speaker 1 the manga was already further than this by the time the last episode is released. Yes.
I don't say this to be like that

Speaker 1 does reparative work on a bad ending because I don't believe that's the case. Like you, Sylvie, I feel like this is a really good way of closing off this story.

Speaker 1 And if, as the anime, as the adaptation team did, you had to say, all right, we have to end this story somewhere. Where and how do we do it? I think this is the right choice.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, so much of the promise of this ending, so much of the like weird sort of feverish excitement and also like pathos is about, and we'll talk about this more as we get into what actually happens, is about the idea that there are more stories out there.

Speaker 1 There is more world out there. The adventure is not done.
And there's two ways that that works, right?

Speaker 1 You, you know, if you are only approaching this as the anime, you get to say, and there go our characters, off on an adventure that we we will not see.

Speaker 1 And, you know, with the fact that Goan does not really appear in the manga after this, we don't see those adventures.

Speaker 1 But we do know that there is more Yoshihiro Tagashi coming, as do a lot of people who finish the anime. So I think that watching this ending,

Speaker 1 the thing I was constantly thinking was, all right, fine, this is the end of this project and this is the end of this anime, but this is absolutely not the end of Hunter Hunter.

Speaker 1 And I think that dovetails really well with what the show is actually saying in its kind of last moments. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Apology City. Population, everyone we've ever met.
This whole arc is Apology City. I like

Speaker 1 it.

Speaker 1 It crystallized so much in this. Sorry, I immediately interrupted the kids again.

Speaker 1 We go on a mad tour of people apologizing to each other, setting things right, pledging friendship and loyalty, except for one, the big one, the one you've been waiting for.

Speaker 1 But don't worry, it happened off screen and it was good. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had Gone and Kiluwa send each other off brave-faced before turning, sadly, towards a future without each other.

Speaker 1 But Kilua has Alika for now, who he owes his time to, and Goan has Jing,

Speaker 1 who owes him his time.

Speaker 1 To your point about apologies, Keith, and Sylvie, you're saying, you know, everybody's apologizing to everybody. So much of what charmed me about this ending

Speaker 1 is that in a lot of ways,

Speaker 1 this is going to sound like a dig. And I promise that I do not mean this as a dig.

Speaker 1 I think that children's fiction and I think that like different kinds of children's fiction is like vitally important to storytelling and has been forever and will continue to be.

Speaker 1 So much of this ending feels like a

Speaker 1 good, natural way to end a children's adventure story in terms of the themes it works through, in terms of its like individual blocking of scenes, in terms of the things that it says about characters' relationships.

Speaker 1 It is, in a lot of ways, how you would end a children's adventure story. And then

Speaker 1 it's also

Speaker 1 insane.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1 He can't do anything normally because he is normally.

Speaker 1 And that's why I love him. Yeah.
Yeah. He devotes

Speaker 1 15 minutes of his final. I mean, he doesn't know this is the final chunk.
That's the other important thing to say. The animators devote 15 minutes to an extended monologue by a koala bat.

Speaker 1 Who you probably forgot was in the show. Who you probably forgot was in the show.
Pete, that's.

Speaker 1 Hello? It's Pete.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I was miming, picking up a phone, but nobody saw me doing it.

Speaker 1 It's really weird. It's really weird.
And I love it.

Speaker 1 I forgot that it happens in the very last episode because when the koala shows up the koala is never by the way koala is an ant in case you forgot uh

Speaker 1 and by ant i mean he's a koala yeah

Speaker 1 and by hand claws i mean chimera ant claws right uh when koala first shows up and he's never even really in the show he has like a couple scenes as a background character and then one unbelievably cool scene with

Speaker 1 Melioron.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 when that happens, I'm like, he has a great scene later. In my head, being like, I know what the scene is, forgetting that it's like almost the last thing that happens in the show.
It's wild.

Speaker 1 I also was thinking of, I thought this happened like during the

Speaker 1 Like at the like 10 episodes ago, basically, like when CAA first wrapped up. Yes.
And I tried to get Allie back for that for for the episode with the koala in it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 instead, she said, I don't want to be in the finale because it should just be the four of you.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's very silly.

Speaker 1 I said, I don't care about that.

Speaker 1 But we need you here to talk about this koala there. Damn it.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it is the final cap on,

Speaker 1 you don't know this yet, listener who doesn't watch Hunter Hunter, but it's the final cap on the kite thing, basically.

Speaker 1 So I was going to say, as the viewer who doesn't watch Hunter Hunter but has been listening to the show,

Speaker 1 I would hope that by now you,

Speaker 1 dear listener, move at Yoshihiro Tagashi's rhythm. So, even though you have no idea why the koala is here, you're thinking to yourself, okay, sounds about right.
But yes, he's here to talk about kite.

Speaker 1 Don't worry, because it's 80% of what happens in that whole episode, I figured that we'd just read

Speaker 1 most of it because

Speaker 1 nothing happens except the koala monologues for a very long time and then kite replies.

Speaker 1 But King of cutting away from action, Yoshihiro Tagashi, has decided to pick up the episode exactly where he left off as Jing turns and says, hey, to Goan. What's going on? Oh, that's funny.

Speaker 1 In mine, he says, yo.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 that seems more fitting. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And how does Goan respond? Tears up and starts just telling him about everything and apologizes for Kite.
Yeah, immediately apologizes. His first line

Speaker 1 outside of an apology is: because of me, Kite turned into a little girl.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, I did write down Gon's new net ability, woke mind virus.

Speaker 1 This is actually,

Speaker 1 I do, I do have this scene.

Speaker 1 This is my only non-music button for today.

Speaker 1 But this,

Speaker 1 I feel like this episode, these episodes are great because it's really trying to, do you ever like you play with Silly Putty and you can pull it and the slower you pull it, the longer it takes to snap.

Speaker 1 And you can kind of just pull it and pull it and pull it and pull it. This is the like.

Speaker 1 They're pulling good guy Jing, bad guy Jing very slowly into two halves of Silly Putty

Speaker 1 because he simultaneously is such a bad father that he has to beat up every hunter at the same time in order to defend himself from people's anger at how he's treated Goan to also like giving good advice, listening, laughing, giving Goan like the day with his dad that he really wanted.

Speaker 1 And you're really getting...

Speaker 1 of very mixed messages about what kind of guy Jing is in these episodes. So good.
And I do think it lands more positive than it's been by kind of a long throw. Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We're going to listen to Goan crying and Jing's sort of response to this.

Speaker 1 He's so uncomfortable and flustered with all the sudden fatherly responsibilities, but he's a he's a fucking, he's a rock star hunter. He's got it in him to tackle new situations.

Speaker 1 It's not fair. If anyone had to die, it should have been me.

Speaker 1 Goan.

Speaker 1 That's not true.

Speaker 1 There's a reason he took you along. Because he thought you could handle the mission.

Speaker 1 He underestimated the enemy. That's why he told you to run away.

Speaker 1 He thought he was up to the task from the start. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have taken you no matter what.

Speaker 1 He just misjudged the enemy, that's all. Yeah, but...
Yes, I know. You just weren't strong enough to help him.
So you can take some responsibility for that.

Speaker 1 Don't make the same mistake again. And if there's anyone you should apologize to, it's Kite, not me.

Speaker 1 From what you said, I'm not sure he's dead yet. Just go! Apologize!

Speaker 1 But friends apologize differently. Do you know how?

Speaker 1 Tell me.

Speaker 1 You have to make them a promise. Tell them what you'll do next time.
And then, you keep that promise, no matter what.

Speaker 1 Now, get going! Right!

Speaker 1 Gene?

Speaker 1 Can we talk more later on?

Speaker 1 If you can.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that might be kind of tough. I'm a pretty busy guy.

Speaker 1 We're missing rap, G. You call yourself a father? Yeah, come on, you heartless jerk.
I know all about Greed Island. You never went to see Gone after he cleared it.
What's the deal?

Speaker 1 Hey, shut up! It's none of your business! You're the worst game!

Speaker 1 Uh, that's the voice of Frieza there at the very end, Linda Young. I just love that

Speaker 1 through. I was like, wait, is that Frieza? That is Frieza.

Speaker 1 My favorite background line from the Angry Hunters is, you should let Leorio punch you again.

Speaker 1 We've talked so much about characters being audience surrogates. It's rare to get an audience to be in the audience surrogates.
We have a literal audience here.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think that one of the most important things, and I tried to sort of sneak in like this in earlier episodes where Jing appears, but I think that one of the most important things that Tagashi tries to get across about Jing at the same time as having him be irresponsible and kind of difficult to pin down and

Speaker 1 unfocused, and that sort of is like he's so focused that he's unfocused,

Speaker 1 and how he leaves a wake of angry people behind him. The other side of that is that Jing is a good friend.
He makes friends. People like being his friend.
And he knows how to treat his friends.

Speaker 1 Not his son.

Speaker 1 No. But his friends.
I'm sure there are a lot of other 34-year-old men like this out there. Like, just blah of averages, you know.

Speaker 1 It is really weird, though, I will say, and like kind of nice seeing Jing

Speaker 1 parent his son in a way that I'm not like angry at.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about this. And I think there's part of the way that I want to talk about this is that the reunion immediately gets rendered out through the kite situation.

Speaker 1 That is the first thing that kind of on meeting his dad, Goan brings up is that like I fucked it up with kite. This is all my fault.
This all happened because of me. Well, he's been in a coma.

Speaker 1 He has been in a coma. This is the most kind of pressing thought on Goan's mind right now.
And it is also kind of like the animus that drove ghan

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 kill pito right you know like

Speaker 1 to a certain extent ghana still in that headspace albeit not quite in that destructive a headspace still in that place of blame yeah and processing all the stuff that happened yeah and then also i think ghan's quest for his dad has been

Speaker 1 Goan is such a weird little guy, but his, like,

Speaker 1 his wrapping up of his own self-worth with whether or not he's sort of like worthy to meet his dad is, I think, a fairly normal part of a dad plot and a fairly normal part of human experience, one way or another.

Speaker 1 And so, I don't think it surprises me terribly that on the reunion, the thing that kind of comes bubbling out of Goan is

Speaker 1 a sort of unprocessed, I'm not worth meeting you here. You know, I fucked it up with Kite.

Speaker 1 But then, like you said, Sylvie, Jing

Speaker 1 actually

Speaker 1 offers, maybe for the, you know, I could count it on one hand, good advice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. It's extraordinary.

Speaker 1 Togashi's control over this scene is kind of masterful because

Speaker 1 Tagashi knows what a deadbeat Jing is. He has the entire hunter organization as a fucking Greek chorus, you know, yelling.
But at the same time, he gives Jing

Speaker 1 kind-hearted, useful advice. He's like, I think that the like,

Speaker 1 first, you know, this wasn't your fault. And then we have the kind of like, well, you know, you, you weren't strong enough to help him.

Speaker 1 I suppose that's one thing you can take responsibility for, which is true. It's a little hard.
I don't know that I'd say it that way, Jing.

Speaker 1 But by the time he moves on to like, friends apologize differently. Do you know how you have to make them a promise, tell them what you'll do next time, and then you keep that promise no matter what?

Speaker 1 It's not the worst parenting. No, and imagine if Garn had known about this earlier.
Yes, that is unfortunately.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 that is unfortunately the

Speaker 1 that to me is is every time we see jing be like this good of a parent and kind it just like twists the knife further yeah for me oh he's like oh he's met so many surrogate parents and none of them did anything for him for him no that's very weird

Speaker 1 no they taught him nin and how to punch good yeah they instilled the the belief that uh

Speaker 1 power is uh good and you should achieve it through violence yeah His at any cost.

Speaker 1 His. Is there something going on here where the show is like there is no replacement for real parenting?

Speaker 1 You know, what does it mean when Jing Freaks shows up and actually gives some thoughtful advice?

Speaker 1 It's hard to tell, kind of.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of stuff about parenting in the show that, like, I obviously don't really know how to speak to.

Speaker 1 But, like,

Speaker 1 bring them on. Hey, hey, I can professionally speak to it.
What do you need to know, Sylvie? Well, you know, there's just something about. Oh my God.
Sorry, Sylvie. Go ahead.
It's okay.

Speaker 1 There's just, I'm just, it's hard to talk today. So like, I'm doing my best here.

Speaker 1 There's something about,

Speaker 1 I was thinking about it since Greed Island in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 There's something about like this feeling like something Tagashi wants to say to his kids sometimes, where it's like just him parenting coming through.

Speaker 1 And like, I think a lot of Jing's absence and stuff can also be interpreted, especially with Greed Island being this this sort of like fantastical world that's been created for his kid to like go through that like he kind of working through his own feelings about working hard on manga and not being there for like his kids and stuff.

Speaker 1 There's a degree I might I'm you know I don't want to like put that on him and say it's like 100% the truth or anything, but it is

Speaker 1 yeah it is something that pops into my head a lot with this stuff.

Speaker 1 Because I don't know if we mentioned that, like, he's his second kid was born during the Chimera Ant arc. We did talk about that.
Oh, wow. We did talk about that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so, like, I just think a lot of the stuff with

Speaker 1 Jing following his dreams and then, like,

Speaker 1 like, missing out on his kid growing up can be projected a little bit onto it.

Speaker 1 Weirdly enough, we will be talking about this during our M. Night Shamalan miniseries as well.
Oh, we will. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like what Trap is about.

Speaker 1 God, Trap's so good. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Drake, did you have something to do?

Speaker 1 I was just going to say, I think Sylvia, I'd be interested to like, let's bookmark this, and I would like to return to this conversation when we get to the World Tree stuff. Yep.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I probably should have saved it till then. No, no, no, no, it's fine.
I think it sets the table very well.

Speaker 1 The other thing that I want to just put in here is that

Speaker 1 not everybody's cut out to be a parent.

Speaker 1 In some ways, it's a very responsible thing for a maniac like Jing to be like, I can't handle this.

Speaker 1 Well, it would have been responsible before.

Speaker 1 It becomes less responsible after you have the child. It's pretty irresponsible for him to use this pregnancy stones card on Green Island and not be there when his kids go.

Speaker 1 Well, the thing is, something happened to Goon's mother. And so Jing had to bring the kid to Mito,

Speaker 1 which is...

Speaker 1 There was a moment when I was like, are we going to get some Jing's mother stuff? No, absolutely not. She is not in this show.
No. She

Speaker 1 told us as much when

Speaker 1 Gone skipped that part of the tape.

Speaker 1 She almost literally closed the book on it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 who that? She doesn't matter. But let's, you know, let's just imagine for a second, you're an insane hunter.
You have a kid. you're either happy to leave your kid with

Speaker 1 this woman, or you're doing some very bizarre, hands-off co-parenting, and then she dies, and then you're like, fuck, who's the other woman I know?

Speaker 1 I know two women. I know two women.
Oh, the one I abandoned.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 who like doted on me?

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 like, you know, a lot of people talk about Hunter Hunter Hunter and expect want

Speaker 1 Jing to have not abandoned Goan, which I think is great as an as a, you know, an abstract idea. But I do, I do think that is Goan better off without Jing?

Speaker 1 He could have been.

Speaker 1 Good question.

Speaker 1 Keep in mind

Speaker 1 by the end of this episode. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And who knows, you know, like it's very easy to say, like, well, Jing should have quit his job. And it's like, well, that he didn't quit his job is evidence that he shouldn't be raising a kid.
So

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 Friends Apologize Differently line really reminded me a lot of the scenes between Kilua and Ikalgo, where they were talking about thanking people. Do you remember that?

Speaker 1 And then latterly with Palm, this idea that the show has sort of been like working through one way or another, sort of like sending little tendrils out to sort of like

Speaker 1 pick apart this idea of like

Speaker 1 sort of like acts of speech among friends, among close friends, are different. There are different kinds of responsibilities that you owe your friends.

Speaker 1 There are different kinds of ways that you relate to your friends than the way you relate to the rest of the world.

Speaker 1 And I think it was really interesting that killuas, you don't have to thank friends because they just do it, which was this sort of like very, I mean, well-meaning, but sort of like very hard-nosed approach.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Kind of gets rendered out through jing into this sort of reparative um friends apologize by making a promise um kind of thing which is much less uh sort of hard-nosed than killow is i'm trying to remember how the thanking stuff with killua ended up with palm at the end of chimera what was that final dualogue about so killua thanks palm as a way of introducing by the way i don't need to thank you anymore because we are friends now so like yeah this is the last time that I'm going to do this.

Speaker 1 But again, you could see it was very difficult for Goan to like be upfront or for Akila to be upfront with his feelings that way. It's very convenient.

Speaker 1 It was very, it's very convenient to be like, you know, by the way, friends don't need to thank each other. They can just do things silently in the background.

Speaker 1 and appreciate each other and not look at each other and not say anything and not talk about ourselves. On both occasions, the interlocutors have kind of like rankled at it, though, right?

Speaker 1 Like first, Ikalgo was like, I don't know about that. Yeah.
And Palm said the same thing, right? Palm was like, that's nonsense. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then I think that the end of this sort of like little emotional arc is

Speaker 1 Kilua

Speaker 1 demanding an apology from unconscious going. I'm going to make you apologize.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Which is sort of like,

Speaker 1 you know, maybe having your friends constantly doing things for you and then you not acknowledging them for their help isn't isn't a good way to have a friendship that so that thrives

Speaker 1 uh there is one more little thing here with uh with gone and jing as uh jing is leaving or as gone is leaving jing opens the door two audience members who were booing him foaming at the mouth being strangled by jing it is so funny and

Speaker 1 everybody jing introduces a plot point by the way i taught kite nen so i know all about crazy slots He has a special number that he only pulls when he really doesn't want to die.

Speaker 1 So it sounds probably like that's what happened. He has some sort of Nen ability to cast his soul into another body or something.

Speaker 1 We do not get this cleared up. We don't get this cleared up.

Speaker 1 And then he says,

Speaker 1 I think I can't remember exactly what he says, but he's like, so go apologize and make it good or, you know, he'll beat you up again. And Gon's like, okay.

Speaker 1 And then as he's running away, he realizes like, oh, my dad's been like getting info on me and he's very happy about this they don't like talk about it but you just see he like thinks about it for a second and then looks back at the door and smiles he's like oh my dad does know about me

Speaker 1 but before gun leaves we have to wrap up the election yeah oh my god

Speaker 1 yeah in the funniest way so funny it's so funny angry angry angry hunters during your dead beat you should let the punch you again poor peon and cheadle

Speaker 1 who are now, I think, maybe the only people in the world who care about the Hunter election,

Speaker 1 say, listen, we have to vote. A new last chance has appeared, thinks Cheadle.

Speaker 1 And Pariston takes the mic and makes Goan cast his vote in front of everybody.

Speaker 1 Cheadle is like, all right, he's going to vote for

Speaker 1 Leorio because he's his friend, and that will kind of galvanize.

Speaker 1 This is Cheadle's last chance. That'll galvanize the crowd against Pariston.

Speaker 1 Instead,

Speaker 1 wait, can you explain? Jack, I'm confused. Why would Ghoan just pick Leorio? Because he's his friend.
Oh, because he's his friend. His good friend, even.
His good friend.

Speaker 1 Also, firstly, Pariston tells Goan that Natero is, quote, on extended leave after defeating the Chimera Ant King.

Speaker 1 Incredible. It's so funny.
In the same way that Goan

Speaker 1 in the last episode, I described Goan returning to the story, like warping the reality of the world around him, you know, and that kind of working through the election.

Speaker 1 We get another little bit of this here where, like, Ghon's people

Speaker 1 are so sort of like innately desperate to manipulate Goan

Speaker 1 that like Goan's presence in scenes causes the facts about the world to shift. Chamanotaro is on extended leave.

Speaker 1 I will say, this is what Netero officially says about himself, which is

Speaker 1 also strange. All the hunters know he's dead.
All the hunters know he's dead, yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes, this is a random, meaningless, pointless lie.

Speaker 1 Cheadle Yorkshire

Speaker 1 has vastly underestimated Gohan's big brain.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And in a weird way, he does.

Speaker 1 Underestimating right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no.

Speaker 1 She

Speaker 1 points at Parison and says, I'll vote for you because Leoria wants to be a doctor. And if he's the chairman, he can't be the doctor.

Speaker 1 Giant Boulder appears and smashes cheetah the top of the head. Looney Tuesday sucks.
It's such a girl failure, and I love it.

Speaker 1 It's so funny. Yes, at every

Speaker 1 tortured dog. At every turn, failing at every turn.

Speaker 1 Brief,

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 put the label on the thing as it comes up. Jing Freaks has once again sent Gon off on another task.

Speaker 1 You know, that is the way he operates. This is perhaps his least Byzantine task, but on some level, Go and apologize to someone you've wronged.
That's, again, some pretty good parenting there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I also don't really think that Gon has wronged Kite really in any meaningful way. But he has a lot of guilt.
He might as well just apologize. He has a lot of guilt.
And we're also in Hunter World.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Am I also misremembering that Jing mentioned apologizing to Kiloa?

Speaker 1 No, I don't think.

Speaker 1 They talked about that with Leorio. Leorio and Goan in the car talk about apologizing to Killawa.
Okay. Sorry, I got the damage.

Speaker 1 That is like, I think, yeah, right after what happens next, which is there's an implied second vote or implied final vote. Pariston wins and then makes his first and second acts as the 14th chairman.

Speaker 1 Who wants to say what those acts are?

Speaker 1 First act, appoint Cheadle Yorkshire vice chairman. I was thinking to myself, okay, interesting.
This is classic Pariston.

Speaker 1 You know, we know that Pariston sort of wanted that back and forth, the sort of one person irritating the other person. Second act, immediately resigns and leaves.

Speaker 1 It rules. It's so good.
It's one of my favorite things that happens in the whole show. Have you guys seen the very famous Magic Johnson, I'm not going to be here, clip? Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I'll send it to you guys because that's what Pariston does here.
100%.

Speaker 1 Really funny.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 Cheeto furiously chases him out, demanding to know

Speaker 1 how he can still be making a mockery of this whole thing. How are you still fucking with everyone all the time?

Speaker 1 And then Tagashi does something that

Speaker 1 Jack has noted a lot of times, which is just out of thin air spinning up massive amounts of sympathy for a character. Absolutely nowhere.

Speaker 1 He says, when I became vice chairman, it wasn't because I wanted to become chairman. I just wanted to toy with the chairman.
Whenever I said silly things to try to get under his skin, Mr.

Speaker 1 Netero was always so happily bothered. I just wish we had more time to play.
I recommend you reform the Hunter Examin bylaws soon.

Speaker 1 Miss Cheadle, if the Hunter Association becomes a dull place under your leadership, next time I'll pull your leg for real. And he is

Speaker 1 a tear. Yes, he's wiping a tear from his eyes while his back is turned.
Genuine. It seems absolutely genuine.

Speaker 1 But it is parents.

Speaker 1 But how for that old man?

Speaker 1 But what would it,

Speaker 1 what could possibly be the motivation if it's not genuine?

Speaker 1 So, okay, two things here that I love. Firstly, pointless election.
That was a pointless election. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 The person who most wanted to be the chairman became the chairman after fighting and losing over and over and over again, just gets it. This is made all the funnier by how long it took

Speaker 1 and how consequential the surrounding apparatus was.

Speaker 1 The business with Ghoan, the business with Aluka, the way it interwove with the election, the aftermath of the Chimera, and all of this is like genuinely compelling and narratively consequential stuff.

Speaker 1 Of course, all of the rest of it is hogwash.

Speaker 1 It is such a beautifully executed anticlimax.

Speaker 1 And the show has...

Speaker 1 I don't think we've talked about it in these explicit terms before. We have talked a lot about the way the show likes to cut the camera and subvert expectations.

Speaker 1 I think in general, Hunter Hunter is so good at like working interesting anticlimax and kind of like making it go, making it funny, playing with the irony of it.

Speaker 1 This also cements Parriston Hill as one of the greatest fucking weirdies that we've seen. Yeah.
Yeah. God, I like it.
Like the full revelation that it's kind of just empty.

Speaker 1 And he also seems to be, he talks about irritating people and like getting under the chairman's skin and toying with him with so much like love and reverence for the craft of it that you get the impression he might be like an annoying hunter.

Speaker 1 That's like his

Speaker 1 annoying.

Speaker 1 And reverence for the chairman. And it's exactly what Jing said.

Speaker 1 That no one is more like Netero than Pariston.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. But like reverence for the chairman as a sort of like

Speaker 1 sin-eater for being annoyed by Pariston. Yeah, and, you know, happily bothered.
I think that's such a great choice of words for it because you know it's true because Netero said those same things.

Speaker 1 He likes being fucked with. He picked Periston to fuck with him.
Yes. And Pariston, I will happily oblige, Mr.
Netero.

Speaker 1 And it just,

Speaker 1 you're right, Keith. He spins up the character so fast.
He makes it go. The scene is great.
And

Speaker 1 the casting team...

Speaker 1 and the writing team have just gotten this moment down perfectly. It's a lovely performance that was probably quite a tricky sell that sold really well.
But also, it reveals Paris

Speaker 1 to be sort of so pristinely empty as a character. Just so

Speaker 1 like a still lake. No,

Speaker 1 it's a it's it's um uh

Speaker 1 it's the it's the exact same thing

Speaker 1 as

Speaker 1 building greed island as a training ground for gone.

Speaker 1 He's

Speaker 1 in the same way that Jing was trying to explain to Cheetah what she needed to do to win, Pariston was being her obstacle.

Speaker 1 You've got to fight me in politics to get the job.

Speaker 1 Jing believes that there's like worth in strength or there's lessons to be learned. I don't think Pariston was trying to teach Cheetah a lesson.

Speaker 1 I think he was trying to be a fly. Well, the last thing that he says is: if the association becomes a dull place under your leadership, next time I'll pull your leg for real.
That is like.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I think he's like, I will actually be, I pretended to be a fly in the ointment, but actually, I was just, I was like, you know, it's when you're in the car and you're like, you know, I'm not touching you.

Speaker 1 I'm not touching you. It's

Speaker 1 he was doing that, but the next time, like, I really will, I will show you what being annoying really is.

Speaker 1 He's a professional pigtail puller.

Speaker 1 It's a beautiful ending to an arc that has not been one of my favorites, but I think, I mean, all together, all told, I think that this kind of closing arc was really great.

Speaker 1 The election stuff kind of went around in circles. The revelation that it was a game about going around in circles and genuinely was nothing more is really good.

Speaker 1 It turns it into like a Dadeist election. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's

Speaker 1 so funny because they're so sure that he would be a nightmare chairman. They're so sure he's evil.
He's killing hunters.

Speaker 1 He's trapping people into like debt contracts and forcing them to be his like, you know, his like weird little voting crew because he'll do something bad to them if they don't vote for him.

Speaker 1 And the whole time he's like, My plan is to

Speaker 1 win by being too good to lose and then quit. I'm going to blow up and act like I don't know nobody.

Speaker 1 You get the impression. And all those things that he was accused of was doing them.
Yeah. Absolutely.
True. Yeah, he was doing them.
He doesn't want to run the Hunter Association.

Speaker 1 He just wants the Hunter Association to be fun.

Speaker 1 Yes, you get the impression that he is a bad dude, but he sees doing bad things as a way to his true goal, being a little stinker, rather than like he's like an Axis mafioso or something he's just out there pulling levers to see what they do right and it's like what jing says um you know when when he's giving her advice earlier he's like figure the rest out for yourself you are a hunter aren't you and then like uh uh you know i i really like the sort of uh symmetry of them coming together to challenge cheetah to be better

Speaker 1 their version of better not better in any way that matters to anyone outside of hunter hunter but like you need to figure this game out or you're going to ruin what we like about this place.

Speaker 1 So is Periston's election scheme? I mean, I guess you said this, right? This is, this is Periston's Greed Island.

Speaker 1 This is Pariston's Greed Island to train cheetah about like to learn what she needs to know. That's what I used to be to be the,

Speaker 1 yeah, no, I think you're right. And while also warning her that it has to be a good time.
Right. Sure.
Like Greed Island. I know Goan could have died in Greed Island.
So yeah, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 And like Greed Island, it was something he wanted to do anyway.

Speaker 1 And by being a good multitasker, he's like, well, I can do the thing that I want to do and make it,

Speaker 1 you know, an obstacle course that a good hunter should be able to pass.

Speaker 1 Now that we are at this point in the project, we can start saying things like this. Man, I hope we see Parriston again.

Speaker 1 I don't know what he's going to do. From what I know, I think that I have good news for you.

Speaker 1 Excellent. Well, but you know, the thing is,

Speaker 1 because we've been talking about it essentially the whole time, I've mostly made my peace with not seeing Gun and Killer again, although I do feel very sad about that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But there are characters on the list of characters who I'm like, I don't know if we're going to meet you again. That's what a thrill.
Will they show up? Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 1 It is very sad. It also feels kind of essential to the whole thing, you know.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, 100%. It's 100%.

Speaker 1 You,

Speaker 1 it's the, it's the inherent sort of quality to a coming of age thing. You run out of childhood too soon.

Speaker 1 You have a, you, like, you have, don't you just want to see Gona Kilua having a good time, a low, a low-stakes, non-ant good time? Can't they do something again, sort of like Heaven's Arena?

Speaker 1 Can't they go rescue someone from somewhere? And it's like, yeah, we all wish we had more time having fun as kids, don't we?

Speaker 1 I think I'll have more to say about this when we hit the actual ending, but I think I really appreciate you bringing that up. Leorio is in a car.

Speaker 1 Where's Kilo?

Speaker 1 And Leorio says, oh,

Speaker 1 well,

Speaker 1 who could say? Who knows? I think he said he was going to try and see if he could heal you, but I don't know. Well, he'll get into contact.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Leorio

Speaker 1 covering for Moral, who asked him not to reveal that Kilo was the one that healed him.

Speaker 1 Gun says, when I fought the, I need to apologize to him. When I fought the enemy, I got really confused and I said terrible things to him.
Um, tragic, it's really tragic, so sad.

Speaker 1 So sad, it's like kid language, he doesn't have the words for this. Well, he gets to, when I fought the enemy, I got really confused.
This is what you get when you make child soldiers, hunters, yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's even the other sad thing is like

Speaker 1 how hurt Kilua was by this, that and how

Speaker 1 wrong-headed he felt Goan had become, that he was prepared to force Killua or force Goan to apologize to him. And it's like, no, Goan got there on his own right away.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you just have to go through a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible process.
Yeah, to get there. Yeah, terrible, even more terrible than we know yet.

Speaker 1 I've also been thinking about how

Speaker 1 Killua's wish to Alaka was very broad. He said, please heal my friend Goan.

Speaker 1 And I am really curious about what Alaka's remarkable demon world brain interpreted that as. You know, whether there was a

Speaker 1 sort of like a resolution. Aloka provided Ghon with the kind of resolution that helped get him to that point.
You're saying

Speaker 1 Nanaka could have fixed Goan's bad brain.

Speaker 1 Maybe Nanaka did fix Ghan's bad brain. Yeah, that's totally possible.

Speaker 1 And I I don't necessarily mean that in the sense that, like, Goan's brain was changed by magic, and more that, like, Killua had a sincere wish for Gohan to be healed, you know, for Gohan to be able to work through the stuff that had been plaguing him, that had caused him so much pain and so much harm.

Speaker 1 And the demon ghost heard that and said, okay. The demon ghost who's highly motivated to do a good job for Killua.

Speaker 1 Yeah, was like, all right, we got it. We got it.

Speaker 1 But I don't know.

Speaker 1 I think both of these or rather, I don't think either of them take away from

Speaker 1 Gonzalez here in recognizing the need for an apology.

Speaker 1 Ilumi is also thinking about Aluka,

Speaker 1 thinking very hard about what the deal with Aluka

Speaker 1 Nanika is.

Speaker 1 He's walking through the makeshift hospital, killing guards without like that we don't even see what he's doing to them. I don't know why there are still guards here.

Speaker 1 I don't know why he has to kill them. They weren't.
They probably, like, I assumed that there was some degree of security being left by, like, Moral and the people that were helping.

Speaker 1 It's true, but they weren't trying to stop Illumi from going in when he killed them. I think

Speaker 1 based on

Speaker 1 Zelda butlers. I saw like one shot, which makes it all the more sense because the Zelda's kind of treat the butlers like a renewable resource.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's worried. He's thinking a lot about the binary choice wish, which is a thing that they've only, I think, just started calling the thing that Kiluwa did where he tells Nanika to

Speaker 1 kill their mom if they don't make it out of the

Speaker 1 mansion within 15 minutes.

Speaker 1 And so that is the binary choice wish, which had no cost. And his idea is that, well, maybe it wasn't a wish then.

Speaker 1 It does make sense that an order would work differently than a wish upon completion might not require a cost to be paid. Well, that's my theory, anyway.
Am I right? The Zoldic family needs this.

Speaker 1 Is more Ilumi being like totally out of whack with reality and how people perceive him and how he perceives himself. The Zoldic family needs someone who could use Olaga's power safely and effectively.

Speaker 1 We've seen that this is Kilua.

Speaker 1 The show proved that that's Kilua to us. Ilumi says, and that person is me.

Speaker 1 It's such a good moment. Yeah, so he suspects that, you know, he's like,

Speaker 1 remember that when

Speaker 1 she pointed at him and said, you know, play dead, and then they had the hug and the word games and stuff.

Speaker 1 Ilumi's like, well, it's weird that Nanika asked for fingernails or Alica asked for fingernails from there. So it's probably the case that those weren't the demands for those wishes.

Speaker 1 This is where he got to like the binary choice wish didn't require a payment.

Speaker 1 Ilumi has also figured out the big brother killer name thing.

Speaker 1 This is a thing that we've known for a long time, but watching him kind of figure it out, you know, was does Kilua not explain this to Ilumi when they have their conversation in the forest? No, okay.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 No, Killua explains it to the listener at one point. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it seems that Kilua can order Nanaka to do things rather than wish for them, which circumvents a whole lot of wish logic.

Speaker 1 This is also another kind of play on the anticlimax and the show's skill with anticlimax that I was talking about earlier. First, the if you ask for nice things, there is no cost.

Speaker 1 You know, we set up this immense, what is the game of cost going to be, only for Killiwa to say, you idiots, you little babies, you didn't even test this one. There is no cost.

Speaker 1 And then for

Speaker 1 orders,

Speaker 1 circumvent a lot of the wish logic as well. The wish logic that was kind of built up so intensely in the first part of this arc.

Speaker 1 Go on.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, you go ahead.

Speaker 1 Ilumi makes the case

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 he is offering to bring Kilua back in the family to essentially act as Alaka's kind of keeper.

Speaker 1 At which point he says that she will be allowed a certain degree of freedom. Otherwise, she will just be a, quote spirit locked in a room.
This is when we get the really good

Speaker 1 image of Killua puppeteering Nanaka and being puppeteered by Ilumi, who's basically like, Look, if I can

Speaker 1 control Kilua, who is controlling Alaka, we'll be fine. Killua demonstrates his kind of power alongside

Speaker 1 Nanaka by immediately ordering Nanaka to wake up.

Speaker 1 Well, actually, first, first,

Speaker 1 Killua says, don't worry about it.

Speaker 1 He calls Ilumi Big Brother for the first time, which is interesting. He says, don't worry about it.
I'll protect Alaka.

Speaker 1 And he orders Nanaka to wake up and orders her to take Ilumi and send him back home. She does this instantly.

Speaker 1 It's really funny when Ilumi pops back up in... Cougar Mountains, just like he appears in the room.

Speaker 1 All the Zelda's are watching. And Maluki responds where he's like, teleportation seriously, which kind of implies that, like, you can't teleport in this world, or it's a very rare thing.

Speaker 1 And it's funny because it's just a weird line because they know that Nanak can do anything.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I think it probably feels different when you see it happening. Yeah, I think true.

Speaker 1 If you said to me, there's a wish-granting thing that can grant any wish at all, I don't think the wishes would lose their shine. I think I'd still be like, holy shit, teleporter.

Speaker 1 Yeah, each time you see a new one. Now, this is fascinating.
This is, I can't say anything about the

Speaker 1 manga text or the different versions of subtitles or the English dub with any real certainty. But something I did notice

Speaker 1 about the

Speaker 1 dub script versus the like Blu-ray subs that I have is that when

Speaker 1 Ilumi is making this request of Kilua, Like, we'll bring you back into the fold.

Speaker 1 You can be the sort of go-between, you can get Nanaka to do whatever you want, and I'll be the one who's pulling the strings, which is, by the way, a bad deal, Ilumi. Get a clue.

Speaker 1 Uh, this is the first time anyone in that family uses uh, she/her pronouns for Aluka, and then as soon as he gets teleported back, he switches back to using he/him pronouns for Aluka as a sort of manipulative move to sort of seem more like

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 Aluka's side, I guess. I don't know.
It was really slimy and gross. That was in the

Speaker 1 dub, I noticed.

Speaker 1 I also got that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It turns out that

Speaker 1 Ilumi's response to this as usual is, that's amazing. He's invincible after he gets teleported back.

Speaker 1 The like Illumi immediately being like, oh, right, I can use this. It seems like there is no depth to Kilua's and Aluka's power together that he's not immediately like, I'm not owned.

Speaker 1 This is actually good for me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He says out loud in front of the whole family, like, I'm going to make them my little puppets.

Speaker 1 He does.

Speaker 1 Nanaka asks Kilua to tell her that she did good.

Speaker 1 And speaking again in that kind of like internal voice that we noticed in the last episode, Kilua says, Nanaka only does this because she wants me to praise her.

Speaker 1 He could just keep issuing orders, but he, quote, doesn't want to use her like that.

Speaker 1 She's tugging on Kilua's shirt. It's so sweet.
She says, Tell me that I'm good, okay. But Kilua doesn't.
What does he do? That's right. Tells her that she can't come out anymore.

Speaker 1 Which was his plan that

Speaker 1 he talked about this in the last set of episodes. He was like, I'm a plan that Jack fully endorsed, if I remember correctly.
Piece of shit.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about this to you.

Speaker 1 I'd like to address something.

Speaker 1 Her face falls.

Speaker 1 And then Tagashi twists the knife because she kind of like recovers. She smiles in this sort of like, kind of like desperate bid for, like, surely you don't mean that.
And she says, I love you.

Speaker 1 And there's like a real moment of shock from Kilua. But he persists.
He keeps saying, you know, you have to go.

Speaker 1 And she keeps telling him that she loves him. And she starts starts crying and says, Kay.

Speaker 1 And Kilua is really shaken by this.

Speaker 1 But he says to himself, There, now Alaka can be free. I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry, Nanaka. And then Alaka wakes up.

Speaker 1 She is

Speaker 1 furious. Immediately furious.

Speaker 1 Alaka's kind of immediate

Speaker 1 righteous fury here.

Speaker 1 The scene where Nanaka is telling telling Killua that she loves him is so bone-shakingly sad and is so awful.

Speaker 1 And Alaka waking up and immediately being angry kind of really comforted me in terms of the pacing of the scene in a lot of ways because it was such an immediate like Alaka is coming out of the gate fighting for Nanaka and Killua is in a place where he is going to listen to this.

Speaker 1 So as soon as I heard Alaka's anger, I was like, oh, thank thank God. Because what she says is she says,

Speaker 1 you made Nanaka cry and Killer is wrong footed. And she says, she's all curled up now and crying her eyes out, which is such a lovely line, this idea that there is a kind of

Speaker 1 like an inner place, an inner place, like a, like a space, like a demon world or something. But like, Alaka has.
Damn. Alaka has access to this place.

Speaker 1 You know, she can, she can see Nanaka all curled up and crying. And she demands that Killua apologize.

Speaker 1 Again, with the really cool space language here, she says, go say you're sorry, which I think is great. Nanaka comes to Killua, not the other way around, but Alaka is

Speaker 1 using go say you're sorry. She says, if you're nice to me, that means you have to be nice to Nanaka too.
I'm telling you, you have two little sisters. You have two, and they're kind of sort of one.

Speaker 1 If you want to protect me like you say you do, you have to protect Nanaka too. If you're going to be mean to Nanaka, I hate you.
And Killua's response is so sweet.

Speaker 1 He likes to claps his face in his hands in like absolute shock and realization. And he says, Thank you for saying that.
I guess Big Brother 3 was somewhere in my head, but everything is okay now.

Speaker 1 This is just such a good character writing. This is incredible.

Speaker 1 I think those subtitles are Big Brother Ill, like Illumi.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I thought it was Big Brother 3 because

Speaker 1 of the uh Killua is Nanaka's big brother one, Miluki is Nanaka's big brother two, yeah, and Killua, and uh, Illumi is Nanaka's big brother three.

Speaker 1 I thought it was like a way that he spoke to Nanaka, but that makes a lot more sense. In the dub,

Speaker 1 he does say he calls him. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 it's really funny because I think I have called Killua kill in my notes for 200 pages now, but I think I have always called him Illumi because he's evil. He's evil because he's not your friend.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 He doesn't deserve a nickname.

Speaker 1 He says, please bring Nanaka back. And the stakes of this, he is prepared to make the apology.
And Aluka is prepared to,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 bring Nanaka back.

Speaker 1 So this is much, this is less begging. This is less, please, please come back.
And more, we have to make this right.

Speaker 1 And I think that, you know, this is part of the apology tour 2025.

Speaker 1 He says, Nanika, I apologize. What I did was wrong.
I'm sorry. I've been afraid of Brother Ill for so long.
Three.

Speaker 1 Big Brother 3 for so long, doing what he said. I hated every second.

Speaker 1 And now it's not me. He wants to force you to do things against your will, too.
And I got scared. I convinced myself it was for Alica.
And I was so mean to you. Forgive me, please.

Speaker 1 I promise I'll protect you. I won't leave, but don't grant other people's wishes.
I'll pat you on the head whenever you want. so please come out just for me one more time.

Speaker 1 She appears. She says, Kay.

Speaker 1 And then Kilua asks for forgiveness. He says, forgive me for being such a bad big brother.
And she says, okay.

Speaker 1 And they hug. And then what else happens?

Speaker 1 Kikyo

Speaker 1 tells, that's the Zeldic mother, tells Tsubone. that Killua has been released from his precaution level.
Tsubone is crying.

Speaker 1 She was kind of like standing to one side to give them some privacy but she could clearly hear

Speaker 1 which also means kikyo can hear right which also means kikyo can hear i what's happening here ulterior motives has to be i don't trust her as all no like no

Speaker 1 no i barely trust tubone tubone is so weird because she has the butler cuss tubone's heart is in the right place but she is so loyal in the sense that she wears the fucking eyepiece that she is a compromise she makes koala's mistake

Speaker 1 i'll talk about what that means in a second. Yes,

Speaker 1 classic koala's koala's mistake.

Speaker 1 The trolley problem and koala's mistake. Everybody knows these.

Speaker 1 This ending made me cry. This is just so really well done.
It's so well done.

Speaker 1 For a show, oh, God.

Speaker 1 It comes out of nowhere because I don't believe that

Speaker 1 the show

Speaker 1 spends enough time to equip you with what you need to catch on that getting rid of Nanika isn't what Aluka wants.

Speaker 1 I think that that is part of the game. I think that they're doing that deliberately.
Yes, I totally agree. That otherwise, there would be no tension there.

Speaker 1 It would just be we'd all just all expect, oh, next episode, Kiloa will make a mistake. But we don't see it coming, you know,

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 the show has centered this around like Kilua's ideas and Kilua's feelings about protecting Aluka and Nanaka as like

Speaker 1 a troublesome piece for Aluka's life to like be a healthy, normal kid.

Speaker 1 And to be fair,

Speaker 1 Nanaka kills hundreds of people.

Speaker 1 This is part of the way they do do it, right? Like the way Nanaka is introduced is with the spines and stuff.

Speaker 1 Well, that's Alika asking, but you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 No, that's Nanak asking.

Speaker 1 Is it no? In the last seven episodes, Nanaka is present for every wish. We spend less time with Alika than you'd think.
And that

Speaker 1 unless the person

Speaker 1 that you made a request of disappears, then it's Nanika from the first wish all the way through to the resolution and disappears until the next look

Speaker 1 just looks like Aluka. Yeah, the eyes mode that is like

Speaker 1 that is wish-granting mode.

Speaker 1 The Nanaka character design is extraordinary.

Speaker 1 Oh, she's so expressive.

Speaker 1 It's such good,

Speaker 1 I mean, it's beautiful animation, but this is also Tagashi's skill as a character designer, right? Nanaka is a child's drawing of a face, and

Speaker 1 the amount of expressions that he can put her through are fantastic. She also, um, she gets the

Speaker 1 like sorrowful eyes that you see drawn occasionally in anime and you see drawn uh several times during Hunter Hunter, which is just like the yum

Speaker 1 squiggled swirls. We saw this with um Shidore when she met her mom.
This idea of someone who is so sorrowful and is so like bound up in that that their eyes kind of are no longer defined as eyes.

Speaker 1 And I think seeing Nanika with that face was really sweet as well. You know, um,

Speaker 1 it is amazing for a show that uses as its narrative engine so often people's unwillingness or fear

Speaker 1 or clumsiness to say what they mean to the people they love in the moments when they need to say it. It is really impressive how

Speaker 1 when he needs them to, Tagashi's characters can speak with such clarity and emotional intelligence and

Speaker 1 they're written down by other people, but you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 Well, they can express emotional intelligence. They can express emotional intelligence.
I think Kilua's apology to Nanaka is such a beautiful apology.

Speaker 1 And it's really beautifully written. And I think one of my favorite things of this scene is how clearly difficult it is for Alika to stand up to her brother.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yes.
But that she comes out swinging. That this has been, this is, this is such a,

Speaker 1 this is something that she feels so strongly about, that the moment that Nanaka Nanaka has been banished and Alika returns, she is immediately

Speaker 1 um you can tell that she is really deeply hurt by this and we've got almost no characterization of Alika because she spends a lot of time as Nanaka being pulled around um you know being in danger being quiet being asleep after being Nanaka yeah and but there is there is like

Speaker 1 you know two big things that we get the first one is like when Kilua shows up They immediately play and they're playing games and you can tell how much they care about each other and then the second thing is when Subone shows up and is being very serious to Kilua and Alica immediately like

Speaker 1 separates the two of them and is like angrily standing up for Kilua and like we know that this is something that she is willing to do. She's like, I'm going to like protect people

Speaker 1 when I think that they're in trouble.

Speaker 1 But it was so much easier to protect Kilua from Tsubone than it was to protect Nanaka from Kilua.

Speaker 1 I don't want to come out like I'm making a defense of my position on Alica or Nanaka prior to this point. But I do think that what has happened is over the course of this project,

Speaker 1 I feel like I've been engaged in a series of bizarro games with Yoshihiro Takashi.

Speaker 1 And I'm like watching a like one of those massive swinging balls that comes down and hits you in the head in Tagashi's castle or something.

Speaker 1 I'm like, Tagashi's castle.

Speaker 1 Tagashi's castle. Which way is this going to swing?

Speaker 1 And I could see kind of two avenues ahead of us with the Aloka and Nanaka plotline that I knew would have to be resolved pretty quickly given the amount of time that we had. left in the show.

Speaker 1 And both of them struck me as really interesting. And I had faith that

Speaker 1 there would be like a degree of deafness or character writing to pull off either of these options.

Speaker 1 The one that I think made the most sense to me, based on what we just said about what the show was kind of like leading you to believe in order to make the dramatic tension of this really great scene with Alaka and Nanaka work, was that the thing that Tagashi was trying to say was

Speaker 1 the sort of the broader metaphor of the Zoldic family has something evil inside it. There is like a sort of like a rotten core in there or a manipulative core.

Speaker 1 And I'm not saying that Aluca is where the Zoldic's evil comes from. Far from it.
I'm saying that

Speaker 1 Nanaka was a way of talking about something that is used for violence. Nanaka was the nuclear bomb in the heart.

Speaker 1 is the initial reading of that, right? Like that there is something bad beating in the middle of the the Zaldic family.

Speaker 1 And the conclusion of this Nanaka-Aluka plotline is freeing the abused sister from the worst aspects of her family.

Speaker 1 And part of that was going to be kind of like rendered out through the separation of that like demonic entity

Speaker 1 that she was sort of saddled with. That was one way I saw it going.
And Nanaka kind of like compressing people into like wet dish rags

Speaker 1 kind of made me think that that was sort of the way we were going.

Speaker 1 The other way that it could have gone, which is the way that he did it, which I think is

Speaker 1 great, is

Speaker 1 Nanaka is not a weapon. She was something that cruel people were pointing at.
their enemies or were pointing at their test subjects or were pointing at undeserving others.

Speaker 1 Like your original metaphor, radioactivity is also not a weapon.

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly. In the same way that they were pointing Kilo Zaldic at people.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 rather than it being a story of the kind of

Speaker 1 escape of an abused child and sibling from the evil things that surround her, it becomes this sort of like...

Speaker 1 total acceptance of Alika and Nanaka's personhood and a recognition that the Nanaka entity is not

Speaker 1 a weapon to be pointed at somebody.

Speaker 1 And I could kind of see those two paths ahead of me as Alaka and Nanaka were introduced. And then when there was all the fingernail stuff and there was all the

Speaker 1 reducing people to dishracks, I was thinking to myself, okay, right. So it seems like we're getting Alaka out of this.
We are getting her out of that destructive life.

Speaker 1 And as it went on and on, what eventually became clear, right, is that you can't have Alaka without Nanaka.

Speaker 1 Nanaka is, you know, just as much of a, just as much in need of escape, just as much in need of liberation as her sister is.

Speaker 1 Or, I don't actually know what the relationship between Alaka and Nanaka is. I would consider them sisters or, you know, alters.
It's, yeah.

Speaker 1 Is he doing lunch?

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, that, that took me a second.

Speaker 1 I like know that lunch is a thing, and I can't remember what it's a thing. Dragon Ball Z.

Speaker 1 Dragon Ball.

Speaker 1 I've forgotten about. Oh, right.
Well, very briefly in Z in a very funny way, but yeah, in Dragon Ball

Speaker 1 with

Speaker 1 the woman who sneezes and turns evil.

Speaker 1 But, you know,

Speaker 1 yeah, I think that this stuff with Alec or Nanak is so great. And as we get into the later episodes, I have some more stuff that I want to talk about there.

Speaker 1 But I think that can wait for now, and we can move on to... I closed my notes.
The penultimate episode. What is that? 147?

Speaker 1 Yeah, just so that you know, when I asked you last week what you thought about Kilo's plan, I wrote in Pedo Bricks, I'm setting a trap. So this was, I, this was an intentional gotcha.

Speaker 1 I did this on purpose to be mean.

Speaker 1 I, you know,

Speaker 1 this has been the whole game.

Speaker 1 I feel absolutely fine about this. I've gotten things wrong before in the world, and I'll get them wrong before.
Well, we have a word for this. It's Tagashi's trick.
He's been doing it the whole time.

Speaker 1 Yes, absolutely. He's been doing this whole thing.
So to go like,

Speaker 1 you know, this is a problem. This is a problem.
We're trying to solve the problem. We're trying to solve the problem.

Speaker 1 And then at the very last second, to rug pull and go, the problem was something different.

Speaker 1 If only you'd have, you know, if only you'd had heard what this character was about to say, you'd have seen it the whole time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is how you make stories go.
Yeah, right?

Speaker 1 But yeah, it was great. And also, I think I put in the

Speaker 1 Media Club Plus chat, what did I say? I said,

Speaker 1 that shot of Illumi puppeteering Kilua, puppeteering Nanaka, except as me cherishing and protecting Kilua, who is cherishing and protecting Nanaka.

Speaker 1 That is now

Speaker 1 the party line, as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 1 How do we want to do this?

Speaker 1 I think that we throw back.

Speaker 1 like we took a break, which we did, and say that we took a week-long break, which we did, and then get back into where we left off, which was the start of episode 177. 47.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're right into with koala, right? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I have notes on

Speaker 1 stuff we talked about that we have a couple, yeah, want to come back to. Yeah, I have a few of them as well.

Speaker 1 So that's useful. I think they could be the same things because I listened to us say we should come back to this.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about

Speaker 1 Keith finding the ending sad.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about the fact that Goan's apology is missing. I feel like the kind of natural place for that is probably towards the end of 147, beginning of 148.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 Dre and Sylvie want to return to whatever's going on with Jing being the only one giving good parenting advice by the time we get to the

Speaker 1 world tree. Yeah, and Jack, you wanted to talk more about wishing we had had more time to have fun as kids.
I wrote down.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We actually came off the thing on me defending my terrible Nanaker opinions.

Speaker 1 You were tricked. You were set up.
It was just set up. Tagashi got you again.
I'm saying that we're back. That's it.
We're back. Congratulations.
Hi, everybody. We're back.
We're so back.

Speaker 1 We're so fucking back. We're so back.
We're so back after one week of away. We're back to talk about episodes 147 and 148

Speaker 1 of Hunter Hunter.

Speaker 1 The very last bit.

Speaker 1 I thought, I never thought in my life last week that I would say again, we're talking about Hunter Hunter for the last time. What do you mean last week? It was five minutes ago.
No, it was last week.

Speaker 1 I don't do that.

Speaker 1 I don't

Speaker 1 this isn't friends of the table. I don't pretend like we did to go away for two weeks.
I sound exactly the same. Jack's feet are fine.
Jack's feet are fine.

Speaker 1 That's going to make no sense to anybody.

Speaker 1 We talked about it.

Speaker 1 my ankle. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was actually

Speaker 1 standing up now instead of sitting down. It's all, everything's different.
One of us always has to be in the gone portable hospital. It was me last week.
It was John. It was Jack this week.

Speaker 1 Who will it be next? Who will it be next? That's what the movie Gone Girl is about, I think. Yeah.
Yes, but it's spelt G-O-N, and Gone Freaks is in that movie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Herc in a hospital.

Speaker 1 Worth saying that

Speaker 1 we stopped last recording because Sylvie was ill and we didn't want to push her through an episode. And I am in perfectly fine shape to record today.

Speaker 1 If we were not healthy to be recording, we would not be recording. Yeah.
We like you guys, but we like ourselves more than

Speaker 1 creating content. Speak for yourselves.

Speaker 1 I will, man. I am.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so my first note here in 147 is

Speaker 1 it's three questions written back to back. Okay.
Question one. So we're coming back to Kite? Question two, is this how the story ends? Question three, why wasn't he in the anime from the start?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. That is the constant.
That is, I think, the,

Speaker 1 we've probably said this before, I think it is the biggest misstep with the 2011 anime. Yeah, for sure.
Like, I've tried to

Speaker 1 even another contender. No, I, I, yeah.
Um,

Speaker 1 specifically, you mean kite not being introduced the way that he is in the manga? Okay. Because it's really the only big pacing change I can think of them making.

Speaker 1 Everything else fe or like maybe that's not true. There are some pacing changes in Chimera and Arc that I think we talked about, but I think it's the only one that doesn't work.
Right. Um

Speaker 1 uh like I think didn't we talk about there's like a difference of order with the invasion stuff? I think there is. I don't know.
It doesn't matter anymore. Um

Speaker 1 there's some slightly different

Speaker 1 the NGL boss, whose name I'm forgetting right now. Diego.
I believe there's also some Karapika stuff that just disappears that, like,

Speaker 1 Tagashi wrote that is not in the anime. I mean, Gyro.
Gyro, not Diego. Gyro.

Speaker 1 Oh, Gyro. Yes.
There's like, are you thinking of that? Like, there's like a two-chapter, like, standalone Karapika prequel. Is that what you think? I think that's what I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's in, that's in a really cool movie called Colorado.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 It's not even out yet or didn't even come out until around the time that the anime was ending.

Speaker 1 Jack and I can talk about this because we peeped a little bit of the manga just out of curiosity, and they're promoting it in the prints of the movie, the volume. Oh, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So you are correct that it is kind of just

Speaker 1 not

Speaker 1 contemporaneous with York New and stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think the anime team can kind of tell that they have made a a mistake here.

Speaker 1 And I think you can feel them moving heaven and earth to make this Goan and Kite stuff, the intensity of Goan's feeling and his anxiety about

Speaker 1 Kite, about letting Kite down, all this stuff through Peto.

Speaker 1 This stuff is some of the best and sharpest writing about Goan. And I kind of don't want to take away from that.
I think they're doing a really good job.

Speaker 1 But I think they are really trying to swing for the fences

Speaker 1 because they don't have the first few steps of the

Speaker 1 staircase built, you know, if that makes sense. I don't know why they have, I mean, I could make an argument for why they've cut kite, which is um time

Speaker 1 pacing early early early show pacing. Yeah, I strong after I've seen the beginning of the um

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 the 99 anime and

Speaker 1 they get to

Speaker 1 the be like the hunter exam

Speaker 1 multiple episodes later, like three episodes later. It's but forgive me, it's been a while.
I don't have exact, like, like it, it takes so there's a whole episode that happens on Whale Island.

Speaker 1 There's a whole episode that happens in like the market town that they go to

Speaker 1 after the boat. Um, there's like a whole cut character where Gone had been raising a fox bear cub.
Oh, yeah. Uh, like that character, there's a whole that character has like like a four episode arc.

Speaker 1 Wow. So I can understand not wanting to do it like the 99 anime.
And I can see a bunch of ways to get kite in there without doing that.

Speaker 1 And they, and instead they took another route, which was just like, get to the hunter exam, get to Kilua as fast as possible.

Speaker 1 I think it's hard to argue against without seeing the results. Yeah, I think that this

Speaker 1 adaptation's tone is so singular and is kind of

Speaker 1 the best string at its bow, you know?

Speaker 1 Sorry, there's one more thing. Oh, go on.

Speaker 1 Especially because

Speaker 1 when they're starting to make

Speaker 1 the 2011 anime, I don't know how much kite

Speaker 1 content from Chimera Ant is out.

Speaker 1 It's like most of it, right? But

Speaker 1 like, I don't know, like, do they know how important Kite becomes?

Speaker 1 They might not. And they might have asked Tagashi.
But A, I think that trusting Yashi or Tagashi on specific plot details, unless he is like, listen to me, you have to do this.

Speaker 1 I think that's kind of a fool's game.

Speaker 1 And secondly, even if Tagashi had said, Kite's really important, but I'm not really quite sure how I want him to be important yet, you have to go with the information you're given as the animation team.

Speaker 1 And at that point, you're so deep in pre-production pre-production that you're like, all right, fine, you know, we're gonna do what we can.

Speaker 1 I think getting to the Hunter exam, the Hunter exam off Whale Island,

Speaker 1 the speed of that maneuver,

Speaker 1 looking back on it, is so

Speaker 1 pleasant and is so characteristic of the kind of like fast and loose,

Speaker 1 weird gestural maneuvers that the show takes and that kind of runs all the way through Hunter Hunter, that I see why you don't want to be on Whale Island.

Speaker 1 Like, arriving at the Hunter exam, you know, first with that great boat sequence and Leorio and Kilo and Krapika showing up.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, when we're down in the tunnel for the first time and we meet Tonpa and we get to see just the parade of strange-looking people, Gitaraka shows up, Hisaka immediately takes off that guy's arms, or maybe just Arm, I don't remember.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then Satoats shows up.
You know, we've gone from this sort of like pastoral slice of life,

Speaker 1 blue sky,

Speaker 1 rural boy on an island to, you know, like the Dadaist squid games, like within an episode, essentially. And that feels really good.
And I think that it's with that pace that the show continues.

Speaker 1 But still, I see this with Kite, and it works for me. The On and Kite stuff, I think, does land, but I'm just like, oh, I could have really

Speaker 1 gone.

Speaker 1 I want to erase what I added because I've looked it up, Jack, while you were talking.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I would say that by 2008, it already extremely clear how important Kite was.

Speaker 1 In October of 2008 is when

Speaker 1 Zeno

Speaker 1 uses

Speaker 1 Dragonhead to transport Netero and Merrim away from the palace. Oh my God.
And the show debuts in 2011? Right. So, okay.
So there's no sense of, like, we've already seen zombie kite.

Speaker 1 We've already, we already know how by the

Speaker 1 in

Speaker 1 2010, at the beginning of 2010, we're already at

Speaker 1 like Goan sort of freaking out

Speaker 1 has been waiting with Pito for multiple chapters. Like,

Speaker 1 we're at APR on

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 Menthitho Yupi.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Kite is sitting with the koala. We talked about this koala at the beginning of the episode.
It was nevertheless

Speaker 1 shock among shocks to see this fellow reappear. Brief note.
And to like take up 10 minutes of that. It's so good.
It's such no one is doing it like him. And no one,

Speaker 1 something that we've kind of gestured at, but I think is worth saying right into a microphone kind of as we come to the end of this project.

Speaker 1 We've talked about when we think the anime team has specifically done really well, or when they've misstepped, or when Tagashi has done really well, or when he has misstepped.

Speaker 1 Something that I think must have required an immense amount of trust and is carried off, you know, perfectly is that the adaptation team is very content to adapt Tagashi weird moves.

Speaker 1 They are, they are almost never out here saying, like, well, you know, let's make this kind of 15-minute koala monologue. It is, I changed the episode.

Speaker 1 Um, it does, it goes from the end of the opening, which is two minutes in, to the, uh, to 11 minutes in. So, this is a nine-minute, essentially a monologue from a

Speaker 1 chimera ant that we haven't seen in,

Speaker 1 what do we think, 50 episodes?

Speaker 1 Okay. Kite is now a like a teen or like a young woman.
It's not clear. Chimera ants age very quickly.
That's they sort of reach chimera and maturity, sort of, you know, within days, right?

Speaker 1 I think that I think that they are born fully grown, and then humans are not. And this is a compromise between two systems.

Speaker 1 Yes, you ever think about how, like, baby animals can get up and walk around and do stuff immediately, and humans are born, and they're just like a fat grub for months before they figure out the best.

Speaker 1 But if you're a horse, if you're a horse, you've got to be in there for like 14, 15 months or something. Is that true? That's true.

Speaker 1 Next time Art shares images of his child, I'm going to say, Grubb's looking great.

Speaker 1 Vestation for a horse is 12 months. Shout out to the Grub.

Speaker 1 12 months is too much.

Speaker 1 A whole year. Tell it to the horse.
I don't know. Tell it to the horse.
Tell it to the horse. Tell it to the horse, bub.

Speaker 1 The koala begins a classic Chimera Ant style monologue. We sort of moved out of Chimera Ant storytelling for a while

Speaker 1 in the election arc, you know, in terms of Chimera Ant's extensive psychological monologues, characters trying to figure out what other characters are thinking, characters meditating on life and death.

Speaker 1 But the koala has returned, and the first thing he tells us is that he recalls killing a red-headed girl who looked a lot like this current form of kite.

Speaker 1 And he makes the claim immediately that he killed her because she would have been tortured to death by another ant.

Speaker 1 This is how we open the penultimate episode of Hunter Hunter. It's worth noting we've wildly changed settings.

Speaker 1 Kite and their crew have moved to like a manor in a wooded place. This is where Colt was raising her, I think.
Yes, right. Yeah.
So Colt is there, and then the whole Kite crew is there.

Speaker 1 The gang.

Speaker 1 It's really reminiscent of Hunters, yeah. It's really reminiscent of the place in Greed Island where they would jump into the game.
Oh, Baterra's mansion. Baterra, that I was quite a big remember.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's the same place or anything. I just was like, oh, it looks like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this has happened a couple of times in the show. The show has a real

Speaker 1 sort of capital R romantic sensibility of being able to conjure a secluded, wooded mansion, sort of whenever it needs to for the plot.

Speaker 1 You know, when sort of like vaguely consequential, sort of whimsical stuff is happening at a remove they can just summon like Neusch Vanstein out of nowhere and put the characters into it um that would be a great nen ability

Speaker 1 we we gotta talk buddy okay

Speaker 1 castle appears the the vast majority of this monologue uh slightly edited i think uh written out because it is the biggest thing that happens and i thought that maybe i could just read it and then we could hear kite's reply and then just talk about it sure yeah i think that's a good idea

Speaker 1 This is for anybody not watching, it's worth googling koala. He is a little purple teddy bear looking guy,

Speaker 1 you know, teddy bear koala style. He's got big ears.
He's in a,

Speaker 1 what I can only describe as a nicer suit than you would think a koala would own.

Speaker 1 You're not wrong.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it starts with him, like Jack said, talking about having killed the girl that looked just like

Speaker 1 who Kite is now.

Speaker 1 And there's a very nice shot of him taking a sip of his like tea from a very nice teacup, and it sort of morphs into his

Speaker 1 water gourd that he used to fire water, spit out of his mouth like a bullet.

Speaker 1 That was his like, I think pre-Nen power is he could take a sip of water. and shoot it like a bullet.
And that's how he would kill humans.

Speaker 1 I shot her because I knew that the scumbags pursuing her enjoyed keeping their prey alive to toy with. After my rebirth as an ant, I realized that I was doing the same things I'd done before.

Speaker 1 But it didn't matter what I did. The queen still ate hundreds of humans.

Speaker 1 And when they were reborn, only a precious few could remember their prior lives. But I suppose it might just be possible that most of the human souls managed to escape.
safely.

Speaker 1 But I wanted to do something. I wanted to feel like I was helping them escape.
But you're inside the body. Then, of course, she isn't.
It must mean that she somehow escaped.

Speaker 1 And though I keep looking, I've yet to run into an ant who told me that I killed them before our transition.

Speaker 1 I wondered, did they all escape? Before all this happened, I didn't believe that souls existed. I didn't think humans were worth any more than flies or fleas.

Speaker 1 They lived, they died, and that the ego was nothing more than a glitch, a side effect, because the human brain was a complex thing. You die, and it's over, dust to dust, scattered to the wind.

Speaker 1 I believe those those tiny fragments serve no purpose whatsoever. Yet here I am repeating the cycle.
And although I look totally different now, I'm still doing the same stupid things I've always done.

Speaker 1 It seems that small things, infinitesimally small things, aren't meaningless. They're needed to build the space known as the universe.

Speaker 1 Just because something is small doesn't mean it produces any less energy, not by a long shot. The soul is probably pretty small, but it still contains enough energy to reincarnate itself.

Speaker 1 Something inside me is saying I need to stop repeating myself.

Speaker 1 If I had to guess, I'd say that I'm forced to live this over and over because there's something I failed to feed my heart the first time around. I know it isn't right.

Speaker 1 I'll repeat the cycle once again, and I'll keep thinking I'll have to change things because I always made the wrong choice. I shouldn't have shot that girl.
I should have shot the ones chasing her.

Speaker 1 It's no big deal, really. It just means I was the biggest scumbag of all.

Speaker 1 I shot her to protect myself, and now I'm trying to save myself yet again by confessing my sins to you just because you look like her

Speaker 1 what the hell is going on what the hell is going on

Speaker 1 kite then delivers a

Speaker 1 an almost unhinged reply to this um

Speaker 1 i think sylvie it was you last week that said that you had a kite's reply to this written out yes i do uh you'll stay with the person you shot living a life you believe is right this is an order i'm not giving you a chance no one will allow you to take your life and hit the reset button.

Speaker 1 You must live and apologize every day. I'll work you so hard you'll never have time to worry about what's right or wrong.
You will apologize to me. You'll do as I say and you'll live for me.

Speaker 1 Also, making up for what you've done. If you forget your current resolve and slip, I'll kill you.
You can live in peace knowing that. What the hell is going on? It's great.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think this is great. This is healthy accountability, Keith.
I don't know who you are.

Speaker 1 Y'all think

Speaker 1 I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 Briefly, so we can kind of point it and move on. In the first recording, Keith talked about how Tsubone made, quote, Koala's mistake.
And I think it's pretty clear here what he was referring to here.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 the Koala's mistake was shooting the girl instead of shooting the people who were hunting her. Tsubone reports things to Kikyo while still sort of ostensibly being pro-Kilua.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, crying for Kilua instead of stopping the things that make her have to cry for Kilua.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I mean, these things are happening closely enough that it is clear that there is some sort of

Speaker 1 echo or mirror being drawn here. The thing that this reminds me the most of is actually a much more involved, much more fleshed out version of that poem that Diego read at the end of Chimera.

Speaker 1 Not necessarily in that they are saying the same thing, but in that Tagashi Tagashi has just given the microphone to somebody who is making a kind of artistic thesis statement.

Speaker 1 And trying to untangle exactly what is being said here, I think is fascinating. And I am so excited to talk it through.
But there are so many things

Speaker 1 also,

Speaker 1 in the same way as the Diego poem, it almost feels like Tagashi says, I need someone to come in and say something that I think is true.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes. And I mean, there's such a, there's a really good tradition of like theatrical monologue, right?

Speaker 1 Of like delivering a soliloquy because of a particular kind of emotional register or a particular kind of narrative goal, kind of like seizing a character in a moment.

Speaker 1 And I think that that, that is absolutely what's going on here. But, you know, there are bits of this that feel like they are doing character work.

Speaker 1 You know, we see that before he was an ant, he was, what have I written down here? He's a film noir hitman.

Speaker 1 He describes himself as getting orders, pulling the trigger, with what little time to myself I had, I yelled at people. It was a job anyone could do.
And it's kind of this

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 starts getting him to think about this cycle, right? Even pre-ant, he was out here, you know, performing this cycle, and then he performed a cycle again. He calls it this stupid cycle.

Speaker 1 And he said, he claims that he wanted to give the girl an escape from the endless cycle. Although even by the end of his soliloquy,

Speaker 1 he's kind of backed off that position or he's accepted the cowardice of that position.

Speaker 1 I think there's.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Jackie, can you finish?

Speaker 1 There's character work happening, but then there's also stuff when

Speaker 1 he says things like, it seems small things, infinitesimally small things, aren't meaningless. They're needed to build the universe.

Speaker 1 Just because something is small doesn't mean it produces less energy. And there's a way you could read that as something that the show has been trying to tell us forever, right?

Speaker 1 And gets even clearer as we move towards the end of the show and have characters start talking about

Speaker 1 stopping at the side of the road to look at things

Speaker 1 rather than your main goal.

Speaker 1 This idea of like stopping along the way is going to become really important in 148.

Speaker 1 And sort of warming up to this with like small things aren't meaningless.

Speaker 1 The universe is built out of a variety of tiny things feels like a pretty straightforward breakdown of the way Tagashi has been writing the show forever, right?

Speaker 1 You know, things are high detail, tiny coincidences, one piece being in the wrong place at the right time, etc.

Speaker 1 You know, our protagonists, almost all of our protagonists are children who are swinging, you know, the great levers of the world around them.

Speaker 1 This, this feels like it is being output kind of completely

Speaker 1 in this moment.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Before we move on to the next part of this, I did just want to revisit

Speaker 1 my half-joke, but like kind of half-serious case for this being a form of accountability.

Speaker 1 Unless you needed to get something else in, Keith.

Speaker 1 I just wanted to say that

Speaker 1 to give Koala here some grace and also Subone,

Speaker 1 this is very much a perspective that comes from

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 real belief in reincarnation.

Speaker 1 Like it's very easy to blame yourself for not risking your life to save someone else if you've died and been reborn and know that that is a

Speaker 1 an extra life pattern, you know, of the world and maybe not even just of yourself, but a place where

Speaker 1 you let evil keep happening because the consequence to doing something could have been your own death. Like, do I, I don't think Tsumone could really do anything to stop the Zoldics.

Speaker 1 You know, maybe a very long project, maybe a little bit of leniency here and there while pretending that there is none, you know, but if Tsubone tried to stand up to Ilumi or to Silva, I think she'd be dead.

Speaker 1 And so it's very easy, you know, if you've lived a thousand lives to

Speaker 1 see those mistakes laid out in front of you and been like, wow. Because at that point, you know, life and death become just

Speaker 1 the end and start of a new opportunity to not make that mistake.

Speaker 1 And so, like, Kawal is able to be hard on himself because he's able to remember. This is sort of, you know,

Speaker 1 there's almost like this sort of like

Speaker 1 a pre-bodhisattvan

Speaker 1 aspect to this where it's like, I'm not enlightened. I've just seen that there is enlightenment.
You know, he talks about something that he needs to feed his heart in order to end the cycle.

Speaker 1 I guess ending the cycle would make him an arhat. But anyway,

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 Koala has become someone who can see distantly down the road a version of him that isn't trapped in a wheel.

Speaker 1 A wheel that he feels like he built by not giving himself for someone else, uh, which is like, you know, it's not necessarily a perspective that a, that a normal person

Speaker 1 can be always expected to have,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah, for sure. I think, I suspect that dovetails with what you're thinking of, Dre.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, especially, you know, what Keith, you were saying about how Koala's like big realization is that this thing that he is trapped in is of his own design. And like

Speaker 1 just watching this conversation made me think of a lot of conversations I've had in my job,

Speaker 1 you know, both with

Speaker 1 people who have done bad things. Thankfully, I have not worked with a mafia hitman in my job.

Speaker 1 I can share that. Yet, hey,

Speaker 1 this is the worst day of my life yet. You know what? Hey.

Speaker 1 Of course, people who know Dre knows. Tell me what your rate is, and I'll get back to you.

Speaker 1 People People that know Dre know this is a cover for the fact that they actually are doing that. And so, if the FBI is listening, know anybody who's one of Dre's patients, no need to look into them.

Speaker 1 Dre doesn't represent any mob bosses, they just work in sanitation.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 these are union guys, these are family men,

Speaker 1 hard-working, blue-collar, salt of the earth, murderers.

Speaker 1 Please continue.

Speaker 1 Anyway.

Speaker 1 So yeah, I mean, I've had a lot of conversations with people who have done things that they regret.

Speaker 1 And I feel like bouncing back from that, the metaphor I use a lot, because I'm to probably no one's surprise, I am a therapist who uses metaphors all the time, is like.

Speaker 1 The thing I use that I both tell clients and students who are having trouble like empathizing with clients who have done stuff

Speaker 1 is like, imagine that every day you woke up and you ate like two bananas.

Speaker 1 And instead of throwing those banana peels away, you just threw them into a closet and you just did that every day for your life.

Speaker 1 And so the longer you do it, the worse it is when you have to go back in and clean it up. And probably after like two years of throwing these bananas away, you've realized, oh, this sucks.

Speaker 1 I don't really want to do this anymore, but it's what I do every day. And like, stopping it is too much hassle.

Speaker 1 So there is like this weird place of like, you kind of need some like harsh accountability, but that also can't like be too much shame.

Speaker 1 And then I think the other part of this that isn't as explicit is

Speaker 1 one of the most common responses to trauma, our brain.

Speaker 1 The way I think of it is it's our brain trying to reassert control, but a lot of people who've been through trauma blame themselves for it.

Speaker 1 Even though it's like almost rationally, that person can know this thing that happened to them wasn't their fault, but there's like a part of their brain that just will not believe that that isn't true.

Speaker 1 And in my eyes, it's because if we think, if we can convince ourselves we could have controlled something, then we could have stopped it from happening.

Speaker 1 So I think also in this too,

Speaker 1 I hear a little bit in kite saying like, okay, you're saying you want to be a better person. I'm going to make sure you have to do the things to be a better person.

Speaker 1 Now, do I think the best way to do that is to say, hey, do everything I say or I'll shoot you? Right. No, that part's not great.
But, you know,

Speaker 1 we're talking process over content here. Yeah,

Speaker 1 there's also a little bit of a hunter. You have to insert

Speaker 1 a lot of weirdness to it. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. I mean, the way that Kite delivered that isn't that different from like a lot of stuff that Morrill said.
throughout the chimera and mark

Speaker 1 because they're the same team you know or should they the way kite said things right when he was telling gone Goan and Kilo that, like, from here on out, it's hell. Like,

Speaker 1 it's the same guy. Yeah, yeah.
No hesitation. You know, you have to kill these ants.
Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Jack, were you going to say something or did you get it out just now? I think there's a lot of really good, you know, I describe this as being like Chimera ant

Speaker 1 affect or like a chimera ant arc sort of like style, but I think it really is reworking a lot of fascinating post-Chimera ant stuff as well again.

Speaker 1 You know, we are right back into the soup of like, hey, what is a chimera ant and where do chimera ants come from? And what do we mean when a person gets reprocessed through a chimera ants?

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you become a chimera ant, can you still be a member of the mafia community? Can you still be a member of the mafia community? There's this great moment where he's talking about the soul.

Speaker 1 He's talking about, you know, I died and my body was torn up and digested into molecules. The soul is pretty small, but it contains enough energy to rebirth itself.

Speaker 1 And I think all that stuff is is is true the mechanism of the chimera ants it enables you to

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 start telling these kinds of stories about reincarnation and and rebirth um but at the same time as keith you know is always quick to remind us during the chimera ant arc they're describing a biological process of the chimera ants

Speaker 1 what's that called Phagogenesis oh it's called phagogenesis I wanted to say it just one last time for the road also right after I'll say that I'll say this hi mom you've thanks for listening

Speaker 1 You know, I described this whole, like, the world is composed of small things, and small things can make a difference. This is fairly standard, sort of, like,

Speaker 1 this is a fairly standard storytelling theme

Speaker 1 you see pulled through, especially in children's fiction. I think it's amazing that this...

Speaker 1 Not only is it a character that we've never really spent any time with delivering this message, it's also a Chimera ant delivering the message in the context of having killed a girl in cold blood.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You know, it would be one thing to have Karapika say, you know, Goan, the world comprises many small things, but lots of small things can add up to make a big thing.
Okay, fair enough.

Speaker 1 It's a Chimera ant saying, I shot a girl in the head. In a head.
I shot a girl in her head. And I'm having like a series of spiraling existential crises about that.

Speaker 1 And out of that coming this kind of embroidered thread of talking more about the Chimera Ant arc, of talking more about how the show kind of thinks about the world.

Speaker 1 That's some real top-tier Tagashi crazy dialogue and pacing. And I want to be clear, I said at the beginning of the episode, I think bits of this ending are really, really weird.

Speaker 1 I don't want to diminish their power or the way they worked for me by saying that they're kind of crazy. I think that they're good because they're kind of crazy.

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 1 what has happened to Kite? Truly.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, I don't think that that really affects what Koala is saying here, but Jing said something like, Kite can kind of cast his soul out with crazy slots, you know.

Speaker 1 But they don't know what

Speaker 1 does that even mean.

Speaker 1 We said it earlier, but it bears repeating. We don't learn that in this show.
We don't learn what that means. But there's this kind of like triple-A thing happening, right?

Speaker 1 Where Jing says one thing about Kite's Nen, you know, through crazy slots kind of casting itself out. And then Koala is talking about, first,

Speaker 1 the kind of reprocessing of a soul through a chimera ant. We've talked about this a lot during C, our discussion of the Chimera Ant arc.

Speaker 1 And then thirdly, he's talking about this sort of like spiritual, you know, like the wheel turning thing going on. So there's like three different swings at rebirth happening in one situation.

Speaker 1 It's it's remarkable. And it's really efficient

Speaker 1 like story writing to like

Speaker 1 it's so fun to see Koala after 50-60 episodes out of nowhere. But one of the things that lets you do is you get to invent his entire perspective because we know nothing about him.

Speaker 1 He doesn't have to have anything that agrees with anything else. Like the first time

Speaker 1 Koala shows up,

Speaker 1 he's

Speaker 1 with this new information, we know that he's putting on a front, a tough guy front

Speaker 1 to Melio Rone in order to explain why he's killing people. And so you have to figure that one of these two things is a lie.

Speaker 1 Either he's still making excuses for himself now, he didn't really kill that girl to help her.

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 before

Speaker 1 he was trying to fit in, stay under the radar, and you know, get in little victories where he could, i.e., killing this girl instead of letting her be tortured and then eaten by the queen.

Speaker 1 But because there's nothing in between those two things, you just get to pull this character in and have 10 minutes of fun inventing a perspective.

Speaker 1 This is, um, I'm going to shout out a mangaka I really like that this is super reminiscent of is Naokirasawa will just derail his story.

Speaker 1 And I say this positively for like three chapters or three episodes of an anime adaptation to have this sort of self-contained talk about human nature or like the cycle of violence or everything anything that basically koala covers here um

Speaker 1 there's like specifically a little arc in monster that i'm thinking about that this feels really in conversation with um

Speaker 1 where a character is learning how to kill from a profession a retired professional killer and like the toll that takes on people.

Speaker 1 And I really like that they get into

Speaker 1 they tie this all into the sort of I we talked about it last week

Speaker 1 slash five minutes ago like I said

Speaker 1 the sort of this last arc feeling like it's about atoning for like everyone's atoning in different ways or trying to apologize in different ways and then Tagashi's like here have the most extreme example of it.

Speaker 1 This is someone like giving up their life so they can forgive themselves. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And before Gona writes, you know, Spinner, do you remember her? She's the, She's from the

Speaker 1 expedition team. She was popping bubblegum.

Speaker 1 She told the really great story about the swans. It'd be weird if that came back up, wouldn't it? It'd be weird if that came back up.

Speaker 1 It'd be weird if that came back up and made me cry. Huge tears.
Let's continue.

Speaker 1 Before Goan arrived,

Speaker 1 I found my notes on Koala's last appearance. Oh, wonderful.

Speaker 1 It was in a different dock than the one that I've been using since episode 89. So pre-episode 89 of Hunter Hunter is when we last saw Koala.

Speaker 1 Uh, he, I, I, I remember now, there's that, uh, human that he's like berating because he's like, fucking humans think they're better than me because I'm an ant,

Speaker 1 but you're the bug, not me. He says, Don't move a muscle.
If you, uh, if you die, it won't be my fault. You're just an animal.
You shouldn't be bossing a superior humor around.

Speaker 1 Me or animal, why don't you explain how you feel you and I are different? Uh, humans like that one irritate me. He kills the human.
Uh, they should be put in their place.

Speaker 1 I much prefer to see them running, terrified for their lives. And then Meliron says, Yesterday you shot a kid in the back while he ran away screaming, didn't you?

Speaker 1 If you enjoy killing so much, you should volunteer to be a feeder.

Speaker 1 And then they find, there's another scene later where they find Koala killing for fun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he sure does do that. Yeah, so this must be a later version of Koala that we didn't see, who has like

Speaker 1 remembered more things about his human life.

Speaker 1 He was also, wasn't he there there for the like religious experience that was hand baby or am I misremembering? Was he

Speaker 1 hand baby?

Speaker 1 My last pre-koala note, sorry, pre-1940

Speaker 1 is talking about him deciding to stay. He says,

Speaker 1 so they're talking about

Speaker 1 the king being born and the king's born and immediately leaves.

Speaker 1 And my notes here say hundreds of ants pouring out of the castle, leaving to join the other kingdoms. Koala Koala has decided to stay.
A medical team starts work on the queen.

Speaker 1 Regular doctor talking to octopus man. And then my immediate follow-up notes,

Speaker 1 Colt offers all his organs and blood. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know what? I've been there.

Speaker 1 Staying with the queen was the like pro-social, pro-human position for the ants. So that does speak to some change in koala, I think.
The ants.

Speaker 1 This is also kind of like a dorm room conversation like we talked about early on with the

Speaker 1 kind of

Speaker 1 i do i just like how koala the little particles were made of

Speaker 1 koala like koala's two big scenes have been used to

Speaker 1 say like really big sort of existential things about the differences between humans and ants

Speaker 1 yeah i won i it makes me think wonder if like there i mean i haven't read the manga i don't know if koala comes back or if there are bigger plans for koala but it does seem like it's a character that Tagashi enjoys deploying

Speaker 1 for this sort of thing. I mean, one of my favorite ants for sure.
I thought so, yeah. Great that in that first appearance, in that first appearance, he's talking to Melioron, too.

Speaker 1 The kind of the ant that comes to define himself by taking small and personally risky steps against the ants that eventually cause him to kind of eventually join the humans. Right.
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 When he says, don't move a muscle,

Speaker 1 if you die, it won't be my fault. It sounds like he's talking to the human, but then later it's revealed that Meleorone is invisibly watching him.

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 1 before Ghan arrives, I want to talk about

Speaker 1 what this monologue means in the context of Kite's reincarnation and Ghan's apology and the sense of the cycle, right? Like, Kite died and then was brought back as a like ravaging, awful entity.

Speaker 1 I think about the great scene with Goan hugging him

Speaker 1 by Pito. And then Pito had that lovely, simple exchange of dialogue where they were like, he's dead.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 You know, this man is dead.

Speaker 1 And then that drives Goan to this to this awful, self-destructive and Peto-destructive path of, you know, unbelievable violence and self-destruction.

Speaker 1 And now our first, you know, lengthy scene with Kite returning is being set up. You know, Goan is on his way to apologize,

Speaker 1 and the koala is talking about the cycle, turning around again and again, kind of like desperately wanting to escape that. I think there is something there.
It's kind of clammy and weird and sinister.

Speaker 1 What did the death of Peto mean if Kite was just going to come back anyway? What does it mean when the ant talks about, you know, completely unnecessary killing killing to do what you think

Speaker 1 is the right thing to do, but actually you're kind of making an excuse. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Well, the other half of Kite coming back is that Pito would have willingly died with the king

Speaker 1 had Ghon done nothing.

Speaker 1 Like the other royal guards did.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, would have died, would have died by the radiation. Right, would have been poisoned by the rose from the king and the other guards and then just died.

Speaker 1 So once again, in the sort of last cycle, as we view it, the last cycle for Kite, the last cycle for pre-Aluka-healed Goan, there was this completely unnecessary act of violence taken.

Speaker 1 With an enormous cost.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then Goan shows up.

Speaker 1 He says,

Speaker 1 sorry, I'm just scrolling back through my notes. Kite turns.
Kite's whole affect is really different and really interesting.

Speaker 1 Kite was previously defined by being kind of like very tall, very pale, like sweeping, arcing lines.

Speaker 1 You know, Kite was almost drawn in the same way that his scythe was drawn when Crazy Slots manages to summon that awful moon scythe. The new kite is like wearing black and red.

Speaker 1 She has dark skin and freckles. She has a kind of like angular face.
She's sort of short. She doesn't speak very much.
She moves very little.

Speaker 1 She turns around and says,

Speaker 1 she just turns and Goan immediately apologizes. And Kite is very calm until she gets up in Goan's face and says, Sorry for what? I think that's very interesting.
You know, first,

Speaker 1 you can't just apologize, Goan. What exactly are you sorry for in this moment?

Speaker 1 I also think

Speaker 1 there's a

Speaker 1 there's a part of it to me also, and I think that that

Speaker 1 it sort of is both things of like, what are you apologizing for? And also, what are you apologizing for? I think it's that, I think it is cueing him almost to be like,

Speaker 1 you know, there's no apology that needs to be made here. Right, really.
I'm an adult. I brought you there.
I couldn't handle my shit.

Speaker 1 We both need to get stronger, Hunter World. Yeah.
But once again, it's kind of what Jing said, right? Yeah. It's more or less exactly what Jing said to Goan.

Speaker 1 Yeah, although Jing was still very much like

Speaker 1 go and apologize. Although, like he said earlier on, it was kind of like, maybe it'll just make you feel better.

Speaker 1 I do think that as soon as we are outside of this show's weird frame of Jing Freaks is currently the only one able to offer anything close to resembling good parenting advice, I think that while Kite maybe feels this way, Goan, you don't need to apologize, it was me, this whole conversation is this kind of like weird, stilted, awkward

Speaker 1 like orbiting around Goan's apology. Goan says, you know, he left them to fight all alone.
He was too weak. He says, next time, I swear I'm going to protect you.

Speaker 1 And Kite sort of moves pretty quickly on to,

Speaker 1 she says, I heard you did some crazy stuff to defeat Pitu.

Speaker 1 That's such a funny way to put it. Yeah.
Yeah, I did some really crazy stuff. It was, it was.
It sure was. My life a movie.

Speaker 1 It's true.

Speaker 1 Well, it says, I think it says something of like, what does a hunter at Kite's tier think

Speaker 1 really crazy stuff is? Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 Goan says, I almost died.

Speaker 1 Kite thinks that Goan defeating Pitu means, quote, I was right about you. So that's something I suppose.

Speaker 1 That's what Kite says? I was right about you, so that's something I suppose.

Speaker 1 You see what I mean about how, like, Kite is clearly working through some stuff that I don't think is ungenerous and I don't think it's unwarranted. Right.
But they are not. They are not.

Speaker 1 Kite is currently being an adult

Speaker 1 man and also

Speaker 1 a teenage girl at the same time. So that's weird.
That's the difficult position to be in, I think.

Speaker 1 Also, Kite is one of the per the show's characterization, Kite has not always been one of the most clear-headed guides to Goat Freaks. True.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And I think that maintaining that, rather than having Kite come to like a perfect come to Jesus, I treated you badly moment, having Kite clearly sort of feel this way, but like

Speaker 1 shudderingly inadequately outputting it is really good. What do you think, Jack? What do you think that Kite means by that something, I suppose? Like, who is it something for?

Speaker 1 I read it as

Speaker 1 this was futile.

Speaker 1 I read it as Kite

Speaker 1 sort of making themselves feel better.

Speaker 1 I think so. You know, being like, because I fucked up so bad, but at least I wasn't wrong about you.

Speaker 1 Say that, though, Kite. Yeah.
Yeah. Because Goan is not

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 a great listener, or he's a very literal listener.

Speaker 1 You don't say, he's a very literal listener. He will hear exactly the words you say and no more.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 And sometimes he'll make his own wild assumption.

Speaker 1 See, Leorio wants to be a doctor, so he can't be the chairman. I see, I disagree.
I think he was right. Perfectly right.

Speaker 1 Because the whole time

Speaker 1 Leorio's are like, I don't even fucking want to be the chairman. What am I doing here?

Speaker 1 And then Goancho's like, well, I know that Leorio wants to be a doctor, probably doesn't want to be here right now.

Speaker 1 And he's like, Yeah, shit. I would maybe, I would maybe ask Leorio who I had access to if I was there.
I would say, Leorio, what do you want? Should I vote for you or no?

Speaker 1 And that's what he'd say. Yeah.
And then I think, yeah, Leorio would just say, Don't vote for me.

Speaker 1 Goan emphasizes that he didn't do it by himself, but with Killua, and he mentions Killua's name specifically, and the others.

Speaker 1 This is

Speaker 1 one of the pseudo-apologies that we will get. As we have said, there is an apology missing from this, and you sort of take it where it comes, I suppose.
That's something, I suppose.

Speaker 1 Goan saying to Kite, I didn't do it all by myself. Killua and the others were always there.

Speaker 1 You know, there's something there, Goan.

Speaker 1 And weirdly, the thing that he's talking about, he did do by himself.

Speaker 1 He did.

Speaker 1 It was one of the big mistakes he made.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.
It was, it was Goan's mistake. He, he also, um,

Speaker 1 he has a history of saying,

Speaker 1 I was helped by others, Killiwa helped me, often in the context of having immediately put Killiwa or others in like violent danger.

Speaker 1 I'm thinking about like the post-dodgeball scene where he was like, I couldn't have done this without you, Kiloa. And it's like, yeah,

Speaker 1 you ruined that poor boy's hands. This is in Sineki how adults treat Goan.
So I understand where this comes from.

Speaker 1 You know, adults saying, we couldn't have done it without you, Goan, as they point the child soldier towards yet another opportunity for him to ruin his psyche. Well, and how are Kilo's hands now?

Speaker 1 Kiloa's hands are absolutely fine. So there you go.

Speaker 1 Problem solved.

Speaker 1 I mean, when you put it that way, yes. It's hard to argue with.
Kaid says, I hear you met Mr. Jing.

Speaker 1 Kite has apparently already talked to him. This is such bullshit.

Speaker 1 Between Gohan saying, like,

Speaker 1 Goan picking up on Jing's use of the word again last time, showing that Jing has been keeping tabs on him the whole time, it's some real, like, all the fucking adults are talking behind the children's backs at all times in situations when much better things could be being done.

Speaker 1 But I thought it was a fun, sweet moment of just like, you know, Jing and Kite are still going to be Jing and Kite. Kite.
Yeah, I have a feeling, you know, we talk,

Speaker 1 we'll get a lot about Jing saying like, yes, I have a huge network of people who are my friends who also give me information about stuff.

Speaker 1 I imagine that Jing is getting, is hearing about Goan all the time. That is just how I feel about it.

Speaker 1 And I think he's set things up in a way where he never has to ask. This is total imagination on my part.
He has found the people who will tell him what's up with Goan. Because he's too proud to ask.

Speaker 1 He's too proud to ask, and he's too embarrassed to ask. So he figures out, well, who will tell me about Goan whether I ask or not?

Speaker 1 And that's how he hears about Goan. And Kite, I think, would.

Speaker 1 This show is so weird. It's so weird.
And is so, like, gleefully, joyfully inhuman in so many respects.

Speaker 1 But stuff like that, with Jing Freaks, the greatest hunter who ever lived, maps so well to like real-world avoidant behaviors of people, right?

Speaker 1 Like, I don't want to ask about this, I'm going to surround myself with people who'll just start telling me. And he's also, he's like,

Speaker 1 the next episode is about how he's Mr. ADHD, is the other thing.

Speaker 1 Like, literally, though.

Speaker 1 Awesome dad

Speaker 1 has diversions. That's what it stands for.
ADHD.

Speaker 1 Okay, he said, uh uh kite says, I'm really glad you came to see me. If I need help, I promise that I'll let you know.
Tell Killua I said hi, you're part of the gang now.

Speaker 1 Oh, buddy. On the one hand, nice.
Yeah. Yeah.
On the other hand, uh-oh. Yeah.
It also is really...

Speaker 1 They're so good, these three episodes about being like, oh, that's nice. And then you think about it and you're like,

Speaker 1 you're freaking out like Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner 2049.

Speaker 1 Although, the thing that's nice about Kite, though, is that, you know, until the trouble,

Speaker 1 from Northern Ireland?

Speaker 1 No, this is only one trouble.

Speaker 1 Good point. Good point.

Speaker 1 The thing that felt nice about Kite is that he felt like well adjusted. He felt like he had found a slot, like a place in life to do the things that he wants to do, like Jing, but

Speaker 1 he had surrounded himself by friends who had like immediate access to him in a way that Jing avoids.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that he had like maybe learned something from how Jing treated him, where he both highly admires Jing, but also

Speaker 1 doesn't want to like create a network of instrumentalized acquaintances, instead, wants to have a room full of pals who are, for some reason, just off-screen playing with children's toys.

Speaker 1 They're playing with the toys that she played with when, yeah, but why are they so invested and why now? Are they pretending to not want to know what's happening? Is that what they're doing?

Speaker 1 I think it's that, and also we want to see them all so that we can say the ganglion. Everybody wanted to raid.
We all need to see Banana Cavarro.

Speaker 1 Yep, one of Yoshihira Tagashi's racist caricatures next to another one of Yoshiro Tagashi's racist caricatures.

Speaker 1 But the thing that

Speaker 1 makes me sick to think about is

Speaker 1 good, sick, bad. Bad, sick.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Like, I feel so bad for Kite for being emotionally invested in a relationship with Jing.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 In a way that I don't for Goan for some reason. Like, it's worse because it's something that Goan never has and wants to find.

Speaker 1 It's something that Kite found and wants to keep, and that's harder.

Speaker 1 It is sad. And once again, it's like the wheel turning.
Are we in this stupid cycle? And so. Oh, yeah, he's Mito.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 Everyone Jing's ever met is Mito.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And

Speaker 1 the thing thing that makes me so sad, it makes me feel sick, is like when Kite invites Goan into the gang, it is the proximity,

Speaker 1 you know, the proximity light of Jing's presence to like promise

Speaker 1 that you could be, like, by being near us,

Speaker 1 you could be almost near Jing.

Speaker 1 And once again, that's adults sublimating out their desires onto our protagonists one way or another, right? But then, but the thing that I think is beautiful is that Jing erases this.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's up to Goan to take it or leave it. But Jing, he totally erases this.

Speaker 1 Jing's last action in this show is kind of extraordinary given the way we talk about Jing. And I think we will save it.
until the moment but yeah we should because we are talking for

Speaker 1 noting here that that to me that's what happens is that like all of this like you know tension and anxiety that is produced by not being near Jing, and I, and it is like a, this is sort of like almost like a feedback.

Speaker 1 It's like a negative feedback loop, or it's two feedback loops, a negative and a positive one together.

Speaker 1 Like, all of this tension by not being near Jing and wanting to be near Jing gets erased by Jing's words, what he says, how he says you should live your life.

Speaker 1 If I live my life like this, then maybe you'll want to live your life like this. And it erases the anxiety produced by Kite's version of that, which which is you should hang out with us.

Speaker 1 You'll be in the gang. You'll be in the near Jing gang.
But then,

Speaker 1 that is so ameliorative that it then remakes you want to be near Jing.

Speaker 1 Yes. Jing's great.
God, what a wild character. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Blue Sparkling Water. Sorry, someone clip that? Someone clip Jack saying Jing's great

Speaker 1 and send it to CNN.

Speaker 1 We need this everywhere. Do not stop spreading this.

Speaker 1 I think I have said that every wildly repulsive Hunter-Hunter character is great at some point. I think that's how they are.

Speaker 1 Blue Sparkling Water, the gang waves going off.

Speaker 1 This is the opening salvo of an extraordinary maneuver that the show makes in its final one and a half episodes, which is that with all the skill and energy that they have gained, the momentum that they have gained over 147 episodes, they capture the energy of episode

Speaker 1 8 flawlessly.

Speaker 1 As we move into 147 and 148,

Speaker 1 we are back in a style of Hunter-Hunter that we have not seen for

Speaker 1 years

Speaker 1 and that felt like it had disappeared, except it is more than just a sort of hollow pastiche of that style. They are carrying the characters that they have built back into this world.

Speaker 1 and i think the first salvo of that is the hunter sorry is um kite's gang waving gone off as that um

Speaker 1 what's the music called keith boys morning song i believe boys boys

Speaker 1 um it is uh these so there's a i i was looking for a great uh a good place to talk about this um and i'm glad that we have it by the way uh invaders is the song that's playing with um kite and gone having their conversation And Jack, you've pointed it out before as having like a really incredible bass line.

Speaker 1 The normal song sounds like this.

Speaker 1 It's sort of like kind of these tense little oh, I love this. This is like an ant tension song.
Yeah, this is an ant tension song.

Speaker 1 But hidden within that song is like two other songs that show up, and one of them is this very cool bass track.

Speaker 1 It's really good.

Speaker 1 Could you imagine Hirano, who I also want to give a specific apology to? I had never seen Hirano's name written down, or if I had, I'd forgotten it.

Speaker 1 So for the last hundred episodes, I've been calling him Hirano.

Speaker 1 H-A-R-A-N-O.

Speaker 1 It is not that. H-I-O.
Even writing that phonetically.

Speaker 1 H-I-R-A-N-O, Hirano.

Speaker 1 For what it's worth with your accent, I couldn't tell that you weren't saying Hirano.

Speaker 1 As soon as I read it, and I, because now that I'm finished with the the show, I've been able to be doing some Hunter-Hunter googling. It's a lot of fun when you can.

Speaker 1 Sometimes the audience is mid, but it means that I've seen his name right now. Yeah.
So

Speaker 1 the hockey player who passed away, Yoshihisa Hirano.

Speaker 1 We talked about this during Chimera End, but holy hell, what a composition challenge. I know.
And the way that he responded to it by writing themes like that is so cool.

Speaker 1 But then we do get right back for the next one and a third episodes to a bunch of old tracks from like the first three, four episodes of the show. These songs make me

Speaker 1 genuinely, intensely emotional to hear. Like

Speaker 1 just hearing them is enough for me. I didn't even, I didn't even cut to a specific part because I like...
Couldn't even figure out which part of it to show.

Speaker 1 So we're just going to listen to Boy's Morning Song from the beginning until it feels right to end it. I pressed it by accident and it was really loud.
So I turned down the volume.

Speaker 1 Let's see how that sounds.

Speaker 1 Perfect.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's that's the wrong one. We're looking at this morning song.
Here we go. Well, the volume was good.

Speaker 1 This is the track that you're talking about, Jack.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 Did this play when Gone was leaving on the boat? Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is like such a smart move from the theme.

Speaker 1 There's like four distinct horns in this, and they just kind of repeat this line along with the strings.

Speaker 1 And it's so pretty and nice.

Speaker 1 I just love it. This is like some really nice, straightforward, like pastiche of

Speaker 1 a particular period of classical music in the, I want to say

Speaker 1 early to mid-1800s. I'm not exactly sure.

Speaker 1 But I mean, this is, this is, this is why you do the job, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 The power of good composing and good music supervision is that after all this time, you can do something as simple as, and it sounds so reductive when I say it like this, but

Speaker 1 it's so much more like joyful and

Speaker 1 you just play the song that gave the people the feelings the first time. And they've had a whole load of feelings in between.

Speaker 1 And they put the feelings that they had in between when that song wasn't playing they bundle them up they like tangle them all up in the feelings they had the first time it is the oldest trick in the book it's lovely there's no place for subtlety in television if you're not going to have

Speaker 1 uh the depth to reach it You have to start from the top and go down.

Speaker 1 You can't like start with something extremely subtle and then sometimes have you need to be broad and also have have the depth to reach the subtlety.

Speaker 1 There's no point, I think, in a, in a, in a soundtrack that isn't going to try to take advantage of people's emotions. That's what it's for.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's, it is like, this is literally preying on nostalgia in the most literal sense.

Speaker 1 Like, it is that, like, feel, like, no, but like, like, literally, it gives you like a pang in your heart because you're thinking about the beginning of the journey and like things cannot go back to the way they were.

Speaker 1 Like, things are forever. Like, you're like, oh my God, he is not the little boy who left Greenland, who left Whale Island.
He's not the little boy who left Greed Island either.

Speaker 1 But he's not the little boy who left Whale Island.

Speaker 1 That kid is still in there as part of it, but he's changed so much and he's grown up so much. And like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 This was one of those things that got me to tear up a little bit was just like, oh my God. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That is the,

Speaker 1 that song first plays six minutes into episode one of Hunter Hunter. Now, I do want to say, it is very possible.
In In fact, it occurs most often to do this badly. You can screw this up in a big way.

Speaker 1 And I think that, especially when you're writing themes,

Speaker 1 one of the fastest... Sorry, I have...

Speaker 1 I have pretzel in my throat. I sound like I'm choking.
These pretzels are making me thirsty. These pretzels are making me thirsty.
Hang on, I'm going to cough.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 1 When you are writing these kinds of themes and when you're implementing them, you have to go with such a gentle hand, even when you are aiming for an unsubtle piece of emotional manipulation, because it needs to be unsubtle enough that it works, but it can't be too subtle.

Speaker 1 It can't be too unsubtle that your listener listens to it and goes, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah.

Speaker 1 They're playing the Avengers Got Back Together theme again.

Speaker 1 Are you telling me this? You say this, Jack, and I do agree. And I think that most things are bad.
People who've heard me talk for any amount of time would know that. That is just true about you.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But on the other hand, I've been listening to

Speaker 1 Star Wars play like the theme of the force for my whole life, and I never get sick of it. So here's the thing.
John Williams is a genius. Right, but he's very good.

Speaker 1 John Williams is not in charge of every stupid game and TV show and movie. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 No, you're right. But the thing, the thing that John Williams did was he wrote the theme that conjures those feelings.

Speaker 1 So every time you hear it, even when John Williams hasn't put it in there, you're remembering the times that he did put it there. And I also carry it forward.
I even carry a sort of resentment because

Speaker 1 the original title of that song, The Force Theme,

Speaker 1 or is what's used as the Force theme was the binary sunset, you know, I'm about to leave tatooing theme from A New Hope.

Speaker 1 You know, Luke looking out across the horizon and seeing the twin sons of Tatooine slowly setting and being like sad about having to take the hero's journey.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then it gets rendered out into

Speaker 1 I think he's still doing it too, right?

Speaker 1 I'm no I'm no huge fan of the new Star Wars movies, but like that that like mystical sort of like broad possibility flute theme that he gives Rey in the new movies, movies. It's lovely composing.

Speaker 1 It's really good, yeah.

Speaker 1 So even with a hammer, you can get stuff done.

Speaker 1 Also, I

Speaker 1 really

Speaker 1 narrow my eyes at the kind of reductive thinking that you see sometimes where people say, oh, all art is just about manipulating people's emotions. What do you expect? And it's like...

Speaker 1 What the fuck are you talking about? It's like, okay, on some level, but we sit down to try and get people to feel things, you know? This is

Speaker 1 well, this is the game we're playing, and we're making those choices because of like a weird complex web of the things we feel, the things we want to try and make, what we ate that morning, how much time we have between the next job, you know.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to imagine a person who's like, oh, this thing, this, this piece of art is manipulating my emotions. No, you're just feeling something.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 I, I, I would like to say I do believe that, but like, not in the cynical tone of voice, in a sort of matter of fact and like one of the yes the primary person whose emotions are being manipulated when you create art is the person who's creating it yeah

Speaker 1 they're figuring their way into yeah i think that's just what that's the joy of making an experience or you know it's also

Speaker 1 the only thing that you do in life is also the other thing it's like yeah the life is a series of

Speaker 1 of

Speaker 1 leading letting your emotions lead you and leading your emotions emotions and bumping them up against other people.

Speaker 1 What else are you thinking when you make a TV show?

Speaker 1 You might think that those schmucks on Media Club Plus are saying that it's important to be kind of emotive, but not too emotive that you come across as emotionally manipulative.

Speaker 1 And it's important to be unsubtle so that you can really carry a feeling through, but you can't be too unsubtle that it comes across as mawkish. How do you know where the line is? That's the game.

Speaker 1 That's the game. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Just be good at it. Yeah.
It's vibes in it. It's vibes in it.
There's

Speaker 1 one.

Speaker 1 I've never listened to This American Life once in my life.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Some of it's good, and lots of it isn't.
Sure.

Speaker 1 But the thing I have heard is people, other people who have listened to This American Life talk about a thing that IR Glasses said about like being disheartened by your own lack of ability in the artistic endeavor of your choosing because your taste is better than your ability to.

Speaker 1 to think about this all the time. And that's a really useful tool, mental tool for creation.

Speaker 1 Is like

Speaker 1 there's a period where you make stuff that is not going to, you know, maybe you're a fucking genius and, you know, you're Paul McCartney and you're writing smash hits when you're barely not a teenager.

Speaker 1 But for most people.

Speaker 1 For most people, you're going to be have better taste because you don't know how to do the thing. You just know how to watch it and like it, which is a much different skill.

Speaker 1 Paul McCartney also writes Bing Bong the Milkman Comes. Yeah, he wrote that fucking turtle song.

Speaker 1 He did write

Speaker 1 a million dollar check for Skype for anything.

Speaker 1 The joke I was going to make, Keith Ruchilly, was Paul McCartney also wrote the song about how he wants to kiss the queen, but that's a really sweet song. I love that song.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a really huge fan of that song.

Speaker 1 Before we continue with the plot of the episode, I I need to derail us, not derail us in the sense of we're not making Media Club Plus. This is not a tangent.

Speaker 1 Can we talk about gender for a bit, please?

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 1 On Media Club Plus? Why? What possibly could you have to say about that here?

Speaker 1 What's going on? Truly, what's going on?

Speaker 1 We have trans Alaka that I'm already writing down what's going on about.

Speaker 1 And now we have Kite, who is, for all intents and purposes, trans.

Speaker 1 They have been rendered out into

Speaker 1 the body of a young girl. This is what

Speaker 1 Auntie Woke thinks being trans is, is like being forced into a girl's body.

Speaker 1 They think you get fed to the big bug and then you come out of the world.

Speaker 1 Listen, I just know Kite went on a field trip with his liberal environmental friends and he came back and suddenly is a girl. Also, they detonated a nuke.

Speaker 1 This is what happens when people go to Asia.

Speaker 1 This is what conservatives actually believe.

Speaker 1 Jesus Christ. Okay, but like, so I am so curious.
Is there something about the truth of the soul happening here? Is there something about

Speaker 1 is the way into talking about this? Why is Aluka trans?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I think that just like...

Speaker 1 Tagashi is very interested in the soul soul of a person being at odds with the

Speaker 1 materiality of a person, I think. I've written a whole lot about that.
Yes, right? Like, I think that is mainly why this keeps coming up, is that it is a way for him to explore that.

Speaker 1 And, like, honestly, it does a pretty all right job, I think.

Speaker 1 I don't feel bad about it. Yeah, there's a lot of people who do things like this where I will just be like, I think you are like completely whiffing.
There are fastballs flying past you right now, and

Speaker 1 nowhere you're not anywhere close to it.

Speaker 1 But Tagashi, his on-base percentage is pretty good to continue with the metaphor. Yeah.
Yeah. That's the right stat, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably. Yeah.
Cool. Batting average on baseball.
Everyone here knows more about baseball than I do.

Speaker 1 Well, I think on base percentage works because sometimes Tagashi is taking walks. So it does,

Speaker 1 he's not always hitting the ball. He's just getting on base.
Fair enough. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Maybe hit by pitch.

Speaker 1 That's a skill.

Speaker 1 With Alaka, there are a couple of things going on, right? There's the complete misunderstanding from her family as to the kind of person she is and the kind of potential that she carries, right?

Speaker 1 That seems like the most straightforward thing. And then there's also the play that the Zaldic family, as a unit, prizing their

Speaker 1 male lineage of killer assassins, has failed to recognize that they have a daughter.

Speaker 1 And then with Kite,

Speaker 1 it's more complicated with Kite. I'm not sure what is happening there.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Jack, you say that again? It's more complicated with Kite.

Speaker 1 I don't know. The understanding of why

Speaker 1 Tagashi has written Trans Alaka is much clearer to me than of why he has had this transformation kind of worked on Kite. Because I think something that Tagashi, just going through Chimera Ant

Speaker 1 as well, something that I think Tagashi finds very reprehensible is any sort of like

Speaker 1 denying a person's like

Speaker 1 who they believe themselves to be, their sort of like for lack of a better word, their soul. Yeah, their soul and their selfhood.

Speaker 1 Like we see it so much with, we talked about it so much with Poof and Merrowim, for example. Like it is, it is working within the same themes, but just using different tools to sort of talk about it.

Speaker 1 And then Ikalgo, and then even

Speaker 1 Layle.

Speaker 1 Yeah, all of it. Like, he's really,

Speaker 1 it's something that he's really interested in. And, like,

Speaker 1 again, there are a lot of people who, when they're interested in this sort of thing, handle it very disrespectfully or like turn it into some weird, like, like, talking about the worst thing you can do is deny someone's, like, selfhood or, like, the person they are is also kind of like, could be a talking point against, like,

Speaker 1 like, could be.

Speaker 1 I fumbled at this sentence a little bit, but like, it could come across way more reactionary

Speaker 1 and has come across way more reactionary in other media than it could in Hunter Hunter. This isn't

Speaker 1 reactionary in

Speaker 1 Yu Yu Haka show. There's, you know, there's a lot.
Probably, not a lot. There's more trans stuff in Yu Yu Haka Show than you would expect.

Speaker 1 And one of them is like a very,

Speaker 1 a very bad scene of

Speaker 1 the main character checking if someone is trans

Speaker 1 physically

Speaker 1 in a really gross way.

Speaker 1 Like Leorio.

Speaker 1 And then, yes, like Leorio. And then,

Speaker 1 you know, and then being like

Speaker 1 delivering this like really strange-headed pro-trans monologue that is like very, it is like, it's very weird.

Speaker 1 The message like boils down to like, you should be whatever you want to be, but it is like somehow being delivered angrily at her.

Speaker 1 I've been there. Yeah, I was going to say, it's

Speaker 1 shame if that happened

Speaker 1 in the real world. It's, yeah, it's very weird.
And, and it, and

Speaker 1 Tagashi has come, has

Speaker 1 taken a lot more swings since then, and there's been a lot of

Speaker 1 interesting stuff instead of that, which is like

Speaker 1 maybe

Speaker 1 there's some intention of doing something

Speaker 1 right, but it comes out all wrong, and he could have just quit trying, and he didn't, and that's interesting in itself.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think there's also, you know, kite who has spent their whole life

Speaker 1 as a,

Speaker 1 I mean, kite's like a quarantine specialist. He's like, hunts down dangerous animals, right?

Speaker 1 He's a magical beast hunter. A magical beast hunter.

Speaker 1 And the latter part of their life was defined by this like absolute hatred and fear and anxiety about the chimera ants getting rendered out.

Speaker 1 I keep saying rendered out because that truly is the way chimera ants kind of work.

Speaker 1 Your selfhood and your body kind of goes through the chimera ant process. Phycogenesis.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like grilling a fatty steak it's like grilling a fatty steak um

Speaker 1 and so and then they come out completely changed but at the same time still like

Speaker 1 in contact with the thing that makes them kite their their devotion towards jing their having the gang together there is no

Speaker 1 you're a girl now scene which is great God more people should have a 15-minute monologue by koala than some shoehorned in now I'm trans speech.

Speaker 1 I think that should just be be the rules.

Speaker 1 A 15-minute monologue about me. I recall.
No, no, I talked with a koala. Oh, I see.
I see. Tilvy speaking with a koala.

Speaker 1 Anybody living near a zoo can talk to a koala at any time. He was my endocrinologist.
So it's like, I have a lot of.

Speaker 1 You have a chimera and endocrinologist.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I don't really like airing out his business or anything. Oh, sure.
Pretty sure.

Speaker 1 It was a difficult arc for them.

Speaker 1 At the hunter.

Speaker 1 Are you trying to say entomologist, Tylie?

Speaker 1 God. Venn diagram.
Entomologist. Venn diagram endocrinologist.
Babe. Hunter Hunter Chimera and Arc in the middle.
They use mosquitoes

Speaker 1 to extract the blood that they checked that your horse is. This is more.

Speaker 1 I'm just describing normal. I'm describing

Speaker 1 weirder ponzu is what I'm doing. Yeah, that's weird ponzu.

Speaker 1 Gon has returned to the arena to see jing is jing there

Speaker 1 no no just just beans sad solo beans who says i i tried to keep jing here i'm sorry jing has left gone another treasure hunt but this one is really simple this is clearly jing like um going against his best nature you know being like i have to leave the boy but also i we do kind of need to talk so i'm gonna write him this note he says meet me on top of he says i'll be waiting on top of the world tree the note the map is so funny it's like a picture of a a tree and then it says world or it says world tree

Speaker 1 or i'll be waiting at the world tree and then like an arrow pointing to the top of the tree the very top it's not really a map it's just like a picture of a tree arrowed to the tree here

Speaker 1 find me here

Speaker 1 Two things. One made me think of classic post from a friend of the show, Jackson, head falls off.
Does anybody know any JRPGs that feature the world tree or Yagdressu?

Speaker 1 But also,

Speaker 1 the second time I watched through this, I actually kind of had a softer

Speaker 1 point of view on Jing going to the World Tree and leaving that little map. Because we've talked about how Goan does not,

Speaker 1 he doesn't accept like

Speaker 1 victories that don't feel earned. He doesn't like, like, we talked about it.
It came up during um,

Speaker 1 it came up when he was in hospital. I remember that.

Speaker 1 It came up during Greed Island, and I think it also came up, like, him refusing to lose or whatever, and when we were talking about his fight with Hanzo.

Speaker 1 But there's like a part of me that's like, Jing is like, okay, I need to give him like some hurdle to get over. So he doesn't feel like this was given to him.
because he got injured. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I'm not like, I don't necessarily know if it's good parenting or not, but I do think that it is a, it is a

Speaker 1 point in Jing's favor to at least know that about his kid.

Speaker 1 I think that like the thing with Jing is that we can always

Speaker 1 we can always bet that he'll he's probably doing some 3D chess.

Speaker 1 And so like whatever there's this fun thing where you get to like map a little bit of Tagashi's intentions for what gets shown onto Jing where it's like Jing Jing is a character who's dictating this stuff to the world.

Speaker 1 And so I can imagine him going,

Speaker 1 Well, I'm going to be talking about this sort of the land beyond the land thing to Goan today because Goan's totally going to ask me, why was I such a shitty dad?

Speaker 1 And I'm going to have to say

Speaker 1 he's setting it up for him to succeed. And then the second thing that it does is it gives

Speaker 1 Goan one last little adventure with Killua.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which is really cute.

Speaker 1 Goan in funny Goan mode, where he's this funny, silly guy and he's allowed to be 12, is some of the show's funniest and like most well-observed stuff. Beans says,

Speaker 1 I did my best to stop him. The note that I've written down here is Goan, impossibly frustrated, but trying to play it off, says, That's okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love him. He did.
He said he needs me here.

Speaker 1 Yes, he's just like, ah, this guy.

Speaker 1 I think that maybe the smartest thing Tagashi does, and we can talk about it more as this next episode and a half goes on, is making, reminding the audience that Gon and Kilua are still little kids despite everything they've gone through.

Speaker 1 They are writing, like, they're written as

Speaker 1 they're written as like believable 13-year-olds again. Who needs that

Speaker 1 to happen to make the ending work? It's amazing. It is like so well done.

Speaker 1 Really, like, really, I think the

Speaker 1 load-bearing

Speaker 1 structure for these episodes is the fact that we get one last bit of Gone and Kiloa being the kids that we saw at the beginning of Heaven's Arena and

Speaker 1 during the Hunter exam and stuff like that. It's really amazing, even down to being on a tour of a town and not really paying attention.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 Peggy's doppelganger is showing them around i peggy's twin brother the one of the things i love about hunter hunter is that it proves how durable a plot is and how like um

Speaker 1 uh how much you can do to an audience to

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 uh without like losing their interest or their the the believability of the story yes that that goan and killua can be whatever however mature they need to be for the scene to work, and it all comes together into a delicious stew,

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 very difficult to do, but it's also like a great proof of concept.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 1 This is where they play, sorry, Jack.

Speaker 1 This is where they play the

Speaker 1 next of those songs, is Beyond the Seas, which was played right after Boys Morning song in episode one, seven and a half minutes in.

Speaker 1 The song is also great.

Speaker 1 My god,

Speaker 1 this is like absolutely the hunter-hunter cue for me. Yeah,

Speaker 1 as this big these horns come in, yep,

Speaker 1 and the drums like timpanies

Speaker 1 These are songs that like I wanted to make sure that we played because I wasn't playing songs on the show when these songs were really important to the show.

Speaker 1 So I think some of these like never got any airtime. And because they're finally being brought back after multiple seasons where they were kind of thematically irrelevant,

Speaker 1 it's a treat to get to, you know, hear them in the show again. So I want to make sure sure that we give them time.

Speaker 1 Even we're atoning. Even we're atoning.
Media Club Plus is also apologizing. We're breaking up.
I apologize to Hirana. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 You also apologize to Nanaka. I did also apologize to Nanaka.

Speaker 1 I'm not apologizing to Jing. I'll give him credit for some things, but I'm not apologizing.
Goan, Aluka,

Speaker 1 and Killua are walking through a forest.

Speaker 1 Classic Hunter-Hunter one, except Aluka is here now. You know, the sort of the loop of

Speaker 1 Killua's liberation from the Zaldix is complete. Not only is he out and his precaution level has been lifted, but he's got his sister out.
I wrote down here.

Speaker 1 I love it. I wrote down, where was the reunion?

Speaker 1 Now, this is

Speaker 1 Heritage's MO. Fucking hell.
I love it.

Speaker 1 And Gonan and Kilua's last moments together are so well drawn and are so well observed that they feel absolutely in context with the fact that we didn't get a reunion.

Speaker 1 But I wrote down, we got your Mr. Riolio, but not this.
You remember when they were like hanging out in the park and Garapica showed up? I think it's one of the best decisions they've made. To not

Speaker 1 show it, genuinely.

Speaker 1 It's so good. I really like having that be...

Speaker 1 Something out of sight for the viewer. I really like that being...

Speaker 1 You can assume it went well, given how they interact afterwards.

Speaker 1 They are really back in their dynamic but then we get to the end of it and there is still some distance there it goes so well though that that that killua's like openly teasing him about it well yeah because killua is also just in a better place now too because he has alika as well like

Speaker 1 there's there's a lot of kilowa's uh like

Speaker 1 i don't know His growth also coming to the forefront here of like

Speaker 1 he i don't know i guess his foundation is stronger is more it was really important for him to have a second friend it was

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 that's cruel to ikalgo but like it's it's also it was he yeah it is cruel to akalgo apologize to akalgo another one on the list i'm sorry

Speaker 1 this is thank you it was the start of killua's change

Speaker 1 uh it's a shame that we didn't get more ikalgo in the in this arc uh we do see him with an ipad though we do see him with an ipad i

Speaker 1 and he's at, we see him, he's helping guard the hospital. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I, while saying that, actually did also figure something out, had a little, I mean, mini Eureka.

Speaker 1 Alika being out there with Kiloa is also very symbolic of him getting out from under the yoke of his family in like a non-insignificant way. Like,

Speaker 1 they're not gone. They still cast a shadow over...
like his life and to some degree, but they are not the domineering force that they once were. And I think that's another reason why he's able to,

Speaker 1 I don't know, take things in stride. We didn't, like I said, we didn't see the apology.
We can only assume.

Speaker 1 He got rid of the needle in his brain, but he's still working on getting rid of the needle in his mind. In his mind.
Whoa.

Speaker 1 Whoa, Keith.

Speaker 1 You ever think we're in a big wheel of rebirth?

Speaker 1 Koala passed that shit.

Speaker 1 No, I think we're in a computer. Oh, stop all the downloading.

Speaker 1 the promise of this ending is that

Speaker 1 there is going to be something that we are not going to see. You have to say goodbye to Goan Freaks.
That is what the ending says. Goan is going to go and do things that you're not going to see.

Speaker 1 And they kind of tee us up for that by making this massively consequential, this kind of like essential apology. happen.

Speaker 1 You know, we don't we don't see it. That's that's for Gohan and Killer.
That's not like that them reconciling is not going to evoke the important emotions that we're like that Tagashi is trying to

Speaker 1 manipulate like we said earlier. Yeah, like

Speaker 1 there is are

Speaker 1 things that need the screen time more, and I think they get them.

Speaker 1 This tree is unbelievably big. It is biggest tree in the world, 1.2 miles high.
It's the biggest tree in the world. This tree looks like a tree that Nintendo make you climb up in one of their games.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm not talking about a specific one. I'm talking about, you know, you ever play a Nintendo game and they're like tree level.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're climbing up a tree and you're jumping on leaves and stuff.
Yeah, like that Rescue Rangers level.

Speaker 1 See, yeah, I haven't played that. I think there's one of these in that

Speaker 1 Astrobot game. I can't stand that game.

Speaker 1 Really? I killed Japan Studio for this. Oh, it's how I feel about it.
I'm glad to hear this because I saw that game and I saw how everybody loved it. And I was like,

Speaker 1 that game looks loud and annoying to me.

Speaker 1 It is probably very well made and feels good as a platformer because of the pedigree of the people making it, but it also bums me out that a lot of that Japan studio basically got closed to make marketing shit for

Speaker 1 Austin and Janine once as like,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 it's this unbelievably competent 3D platformer that is wrapped in this wildly sycophantic PlayStation Funko Pop aesthetic. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I said that, you know, how sometimes you give a dog a pill wrapped in ham because you want them to take the pill? Sure.

Speaker 1 The experience of playing Astrobot for me was like taking ham, but it'd be wrapped in a pill.

Speaker 1 I knew that it was coming.

Speaker 1 It's really funny. So that's really funny.
The second you said pill wrapped in ham, I was like, this is about hit like a truck. I've only seen 15 minutes of that game played in person.

Speaker 1 I haven't played it myself.

Speaker 1 But what I saw, it was like the whole level was singing at you gleefully. And it was like, it made my skin crawl.
I should play Loco Roco. Loco Roco is great.

Speaker 1 All right. Anyway, I play Chibi Robo.
Chibi Robo is great. That's a game that's extremely cute without having to have the entire world

Speaker 1 seem so fucking good. Everybody who's played Chibi Robo and loves it, which should be everybody, should play Tinykin.
I feel like I'm always on the fucking Tinykin parade. You should play that.

Speaker 1 Not enough people are playing it. I have not played it.
And you should play Tinykin. It's really good.
Is it on the

Speaker 1 C computer? It's on everything. Okay, good.

Speaker 1 It's on the Super Nintendo. Ooh.

Speaker 1 I'm going to get a Super Nintendo so that I can get Tinykin on it.

Speaker 1 Because this is Hunter Hunter, not only is this tree taller than any man-made structure on the planet, it is also a massive tourist destination.

Speaker 1 There is a town built around this tree full of tourists. The three kids have a tour guide who's giving them all this information.

Speaker 1 They are not listening to a word and they are just doing scene after scene of cute background detail. They are eating tourist biscuits with the tree printed on it.

Speaker 1 They are looking at a map of the town with Tagashi's dog. We do get one more kitty cat killowa for the road when he eats the donut.

Speaker 1 He is very happy.

Speaker 1 Tagashi's dog appears on the sign.

Speaker 1 It's Hunter-Hunter, so it's like always...

Speaker 1 The dog that represents Tagashi when he's writing his author's notes, we should say. It's not just his shooting dog.
Yeah, he's not doing like shootakumi stuff where he puts his dog and everything.

Speaker 1 God.

Speaker 1 There's also all the fun, weird infrastructure around this stuff. Climbing the tree isn't forbidden, but you do have to pay a fee and sign a waiver.
You get some stats. You get some stats.

Speaker 1 30 people make it to the top a year. If this sounds like early Hunter Hunter, this is like pristine early hunter hunter.
It's remarkable.

Speaker 1 It's crazy to be like, yeah, I can still do this after everything we've been through. What does it do besides

Speaker 1 serve to make you want another hundred episodes of this?

Speaker 1 Even though we know what the cost is, we're being shown it again. And it is being presented in a way where it's not like

Speaker 1 the world is rotten and cruel and there is a facade painted over the top of it. It is saying the world is rotten and cruel and you can still go out there.
You know what they're saying?

Speaker 1 They're saying this is why cigarettes are good.

Speaker 1 Do you remember way back at the beginning we said Hunter Hunter is a show about a man and his dad goes out to buy cigarettes and never comes back and it's about a boy's quest to figure out why cigarettes are so great.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is us seeing, you know, you can ruin your whole life.

Speaker 1 Even more tragic. I think that the show, in a lot of ways, is being like, cigarettes are good for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 1 A lot of different reasons. Everyone can have their own reason why cigarettes are so good.

Speaker 1 You could be a cute hunter. You could be a gourmet hunter.
You could be a sea hunter. You could be a magician.

Speaker 1 These are all different, beautiful types of cigarettes that you can spend your life smoking. You could be a Virginia Slims hunter.
This is my my

Speaker 1 uh my new hunter hunter oc uh zaza newport uh this is why this is why when uh when go and get to the top of the world tree uh uh jink says you've come a long way baby

Speaker 1 i don't know that i get that is this

Speaker 1 tagline to virginia slims that is their that is their sexist cigarettes for women uh tagline oh my god

Speaker 1 mad men we should watch madmen uh although although we say this as though the show is saying this, and then also we began with the extremely violent and kind of like emotively fraught koala monologue.

Speaker 1 It's saying that the, you know. Well, cigarettes do still kill.

Speaker 1 Right, right. But

Speaker 1 no matter how cool you look when you do them, they do still kill you.

Speaker 1 There is something really going on here, right? With the koala talking about the endless cycle of death and violence, and then Kite saying, you know, I am not going to let you escape.

Speaker 1 You are going to work for me. You are going to be good.
You're going to apologize. If I see you backsliding, I'll kill you.

Speaker 1 And then out of it, out of it, kind of like triumphant, come go and kill your and Alaka after their awful lives, re-entering the

Speaker 1 bright blue sky, blue sea world of Hunter Hunter. It's really wild.

Speaker 1 Jack, you saying that. Sorry, Sylvie.
Do you want to go ahead? No, no, no, you go ahead.

Speaker 1 The way you framed the Kite Koala Man conversation just painted a very clear parallel to me to of the Periston

Speaker 1 conversation with

Speaker 1 Cheetle, yes, where he, you know, at the end he says, like, hey, you should probably change these bylaws, like talking about an important change that needs to be made, like Koala Man.

Speaker 1 But then also saying, hey, and if this place sucks, I'm going to come kill you. Yeah.
Or I'm going to come and mess with you

Speaker 1 to a permanent end.

Speaker 1 No, actually, go ahead. The three take a photograph together.
This is lovely.

Speaker 1 This is, this is also like well within what I talked about at the beginning of this episode: of, you know, like how you wrap up a piece of children's fiction.

Speaker 1 We have the, like, the hull, the, the vacation photo that we can leave our characters with. Goan, Killier, and Alaka smiling.
It's, it's brilliant. Killua and Alaka

Speaker 1 are

Speaker 1 waiting, going to wait at the bottom.

Speaker 1 Um.

Speaker 1 And Goan says, be careful, okay? Killiwa, thanks a lot for everything.

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 1 and then killiwa blushes bright red it's really cute

Speaker 1 oh that's weird has killua ever blushed when gun said something before i can't think of a single time i think he he must have done right a hundred thousand times i i couldn't remember whether he's been doing a lot of blushing he does do a lot of blushing

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 he says that's okay the truth is after you told me you were going to defeat pito alone not to mention that it was none of my business i got pretty depressed

Speaker 1 I don't remember. The only note I can hear is

Speaker 1 really depressed. Yeah, the dove is like, I got pretty depressed.
He's really trying to rub it in. He's, I mean, this is classic.

Speaker 1 This is classic Kilua, right? I knew the game, kitty cat Kilua. This, like,

Speaker 1 it is that. He's like, He's like coming obliquely to his own feelings and going, glancing off.
This is, on the face of it, kind of sad because I think he can tell.

Speaker 1 We know Kiloa has the capacity to speak right from the heart while making eye contact with people. But here with Goan, the place he takes is, you know, oh, that's okay.
You know,

Speaker 1 you said things to me that hurt me and I got pretty depressed. My note here is, um, Kiloa is erating.

Speaker 1 He is like, he, like, goes off on a tear, but yeah, in this very sort of like forcedly light-hearted way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is the scene where I was like, I'm glad we didn't see the apology because we instead get them being them again.

Speaker 1 Like, we get the Gon Killowa friendship being like front and center in a positive way after it being kind of a downer for a long time. And like,

Speaker 1 here is my apology. I'm sorry to Gone for talking down on him so much

Speaker 1 during the Chimera anarch.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't think I was unfair necessarily, but I also did not need to make the 12-year-old seem like Satan now and then.

Speaker 1 You accept a certain amount of responsibility when you have Satan powers. Yeah,

Speaker 1 sure.

Speaker 1 I think, like Keith said to me when I said some rude things about dear Nanaka, that's the game.

Speaker 1 You are being led to feel certain ways and think certain things. And I think, you know,

Speaker 1 there is a lot to be said for

Speaker 1 the way Goan treats Killua, but i think there's also a lot to be said for the way the world treats gone yeah you know yeah i i think that we were we were not uh not even-handed but um uh we were

Speaker 1 all we were always accurate about what was happening and how the things that gone was doing was a result of how he had been taught to be by other people right and and how even in his worst moments you know the the story really centers killua's perspective on what's happening,

Speaker 1 sort of making you feel totally outside of Goan for many, many episodes. And for as bad of a friend as Goan was to Kilua,

Speaker 1 Kilua's relationship to Goan was also unhealthy and untenable. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 And so it's easy to sideline the fact that like Kilua needs to chill and not be obsessed with his best friend. I agree.

Speaker 1 I think we just ended up, we really did end up coming at it from the other side of Gone needs to be nicer. Yeah, that just really was like

Speaker 1 that.

Speaker 1 I think that really happens in the late middle to end points of Chimera where like Ghan is losing his mind. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Also, dodgeball.

Speaker 1 Oh, also, dodgeball.

Speaker 1 I was just thinking. Oh, sorry.
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Goan apologizes here very briefly and kind of lightly,

Speaker 1 in the face of Kiliwa's oratorio.

Speaker 1 It's really sweet. I think you're right, Sylvie.

Speaker 1 We didn't see the apology, but something has happened here that they can have this kind of conversation. Defined lightly, because Goan is melted into a pile.
It is going on. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 Yes, although,

Speaker 1 okay, hang on. I do just want to briefly...
I want to do our due diligence here.

Speaker 1 Do we think that the reunion and the apology happened? Or do we think this is the apology? No way.

Speaker 1 No way to believe the apology. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because Olika looks at Kilua when he's teasing Goan

Speaker 1 and is like,

Speaker 1 you know, stop it, cut it out. And then Kilua is like, yeah, you're right.
He already apologized. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think we had to have explicitly about a different apology that happens later. I just really wanted to make sure that we weren't doing some kind of reparative reading that wasn't there.

Speaker 1 You know, where we were like, I want want there to have been an apology, but you're right.

Speaker 1 I trust Tigashi to have not gone from, like, I'm going to make him apologize to happy Kiloa having fun. Yeah.
And it is the, it's the beauty of Tagashi's writing that he

Speaker 1 tells us that that happened, but that we don't get to see it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yoshihiro Tagashi and Katigukabra, it's the fucking best. It is the best since season one.

Speaker 1 Alaka also makes fun of Ghon, apologizing briefly, or is she making... I've written down here, Alaka makes fun of him.
Is that the cut it out, Kilua? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Alaka, like, sort of chastises Kilua for holding it over Goan's head. And then, but then, speaking from the heart, Kilua says, I'm only with Alaka now because of the time I spent with you.

Speaker 1 There we go. It is spoken into truth.
Well, the first thing that happens is that,

Speaker 1 oh, wait, no, maybe.

Speaker 1 no, no, you're right. That is, that is what, what is said here.
And then Kilua reveals that, uh, Killer reveals that, oh, yeah, by the way, Alika is the one that healed you.

Speaker 1 And Goan takes this really hard. He throws a really sweet tantrum.
He's like, why are you just telling me that now? It really would have helped if I'd known a lot sooner.

Speaker 1 To which Killua says, it's sort of a complicated family thing.

Speaker 1 And it's at this point that Alika brings out Nanika. Goan's

Speaker 1 distaste for having not known is immediately replaced. Goan freaks experiencing one thought at a time, coming down a tube like those salmon.

Speaker 1 Goan's like, whoa, shit.

Speaker 1 Demon girl.

Speaker 1 Demon girl theory. Demon girl theory.
And Killer says, so now you know. She has the power to grant any wish I make.

Speaker 1 She was locked in our house for a real long time for the crime of being too awesome, but she's out because you gave me the opportunity to help get her out.

Speaker 1 Now I'm going to protect her for the rest of my life. It's really, it's like, it's very rare that you hear Killua making like an outright joke.

Speaker 1 You know, he usually is just like either sarcastic or there's a lot of physical humor with the way that Killua kind of like moves.

Speaker 1 And, you know, he will, he will deliver put-downs, he'll deliver zingers.

Speaker 1 But I feel like she was locked in our house for a real long time for the crime of being too awesome is a real like two-clause Killua setup and punchline.

Speaker 1 Also something i bet he just believes

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 um it also i think i like this because it um

Speaker 1 this is then the this is the other evidence i think that killua got the apology that he was looking for because he tells

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 moral to tell everyone to not tell gone what really happened And I, you know, this, it feels like

Speaker 1 that the truth of what happened to Goan is sort of locked behind that proper apology. Like a gone that wakes up and is like, I, you know, fuck you, Kiloa.
I'm not apologizing to you.

Speaker 1 You know, things are just going to keep on going the way that they've always gone. I don't think that this, that this scene, that we get the scene of like,

Speaker 1 I'm with her because of you, you know, so thanks to you also.

Speaker 1 Without that apology, like, this is a

Speaker 1 trust thing.

Speaker 1 And then the tone changes fractionally

Speaker 1 as they begin to realize that they have to say goodbye to each other.

Speaker 1 Gone smiles and says, Kiloa says, to be honest, we owe you one. Thanks for everything.
And Goan thinks that he should be the one thanking Kiloa.

Speaker 1 And then there's this long pause, and the boys look at each other.

Speaker 1 And then, I don't remember who speaks first. I didn't attribute it, but someone says, no good.
If we stay much longer and trails off, that's probably Kilo. That's Gone, actually.
That's Gohan.

Speaker 1 And then Kiliwa says, you're right.

Speaker 1 Because my dad will leave.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they sit there in that moment. My dad will leave, or we will have to confront the feeling that

Speaker 1 we are saying.

Speaker 1 If we stay much longer is so sad. That line coming from Killiwa would make more sense because it's Aluka and Killiwa, if we stay much longer.

Speaker 1 But coming from Goan, it's if we, Goan, and Killiwa, stay much longer.

Speaker 1 This show

Speaker 1 is so good at capturing the feeling of like

Speaker 1 drift kind drifting away like amicably from a friend drifting like drifting away like the friendship weakens i don't necessarily agree that i don't necessarily think that it's like weakened or anything like it's friends going to different colleges very much so it's like like you still love this person and like you'll be friends forever like

Speaker 1 You were completely inseparable. That phase of your life is over now.
That's just growing up. But the next time you see each other, you'll be right back into the flow of things.

Speaker 1 Like, because you're so

Speaker 1 like, because that, that relationship is strong enough, because that friendship is strong enough. It again comes back to the bittersweet, like,

Speaker 1 I don't know, that sort of bittersweet tone that has been weaving its way through pretty much all of these episodes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 They should listen to Jeff Rosenstock.

Speaker 1 And then after the little moment, after this moment of like, we're going to have to part, they sort of like dodge back. They like juke back onto like, we can stay a little longer, you know.

Speaker 1 Kiloa says, I'll be traveling to all kinds of places with Alaka. I'll try to text you, which is really sweet.

Speaker 1 And Goan says, if anything comes up, let me know. To which Kilo says, yeah, I definitely will because you owe me a lot.
It's really good.

Speaker 1 Say hi to your dad for me. You deserve a chance to talk alone.

Speaker 1 And then Aluka starts planning a play date between gone and killua

Speaker 1 cute she knows how important gone is to killua

Speaker 1 uh twitch kilua says i think this is so lovely she says he says sorry but you can't really compare to her you know like um he's he's t he's teasing gone and it's also like this um

Speaker 1 it's a little bit of a knife twist the it's a little bit of a knife twist but it's also the like the reuniting of him with his sister who he's been he's he first he he didn't know about, and then has been spending his life desperately trying to get out from the yoke of her family.

Speaker 1 And then they have to say goodbye. Gohan turns and walks away through the gate as the siblings watch.

Speaker 1 And before Gohan kind of crosses the threshold, he turns around and says, no matter where we go, we're part of the gang, like Kite said.

Speaker 1 And then... Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. We'll always be friends.

Speaker 1 Both. We'll always be really good friends.
Garnick freaks is pop punk as fuck. He loves his friends.
He hates his hometown.

Speaker 1 Both turn and walk away. And I looked this up in the manga because I was so curious about how Takashi had done this.
Because the actual moment

Speaker 1 in the anime is a little lengthier than Tagashi. For Tagashi, this is two panels.
It is a shot of the panels are... side by side.

Speaker 1 It's Goan facing to the left and walking off with a kind of look of determination in his eyes and Kilio facing to the right and walking off with a look of determination in his eyes.

Speaker 1 Here is what happens in the show:

Speaker 1 There is a tiny moment of sorrow on each of their faces, intercut, and then that sorrow forms into resolve on Ghun's face, but kind of remains sorrowful on Killio's face.

Speaker 1 But then Ghun's resolve kind of gets increasingly melancholy.

Speaker 1 He has this moment of like, off I go, but it feels a little bit like the end of the graduate to me. You know, that famous shot of Dustin Hoffman and

Speaker 1 fuck, I can't remember her name, sitting in the back of the bus with the look of joy on their faces gradually being replaced by like, all right, now this is the world that we inhabit.

Speaker 1 I've seen that movie, but I don't remember the very end.

Speaker 1 It's got me thinking of the end, the last shot of Michael Clayton now.

Speaker 1 What's the last shot of Michael Clayton? It's him in the taxi, and it just lingers on his face when you feel really good. It's really good.
It's like, that movie is incredible.

Speaker 1 We should just watch that for no reason.

Speaker 1 That's a Tony Gilroy film, right? Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 Please let him make more of those, please. Please.
But yeah, I really liked the nuance across the expressions. You know,

Speaker 1 both kids starting in sorrow, going moving through sorrow to resolve, and then out of sorrow to a kind of melancholy, but Killio's face kind of remaining the same.

Speaker 1 I found this goodbye to be deeply sad. Yeah.
It's so sad.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, Sylvie, you describe this as like

Speaker 1 amicably drifting apart from a friend.

Speaker 1 I don't know if they're going to see each other again. No, I don't either.
But like, everyone's got a friendship like that, right? Like,

Speaker 1 there are people that I said goodbye to fully expecting to be like...

Speaker 1 We'll see each other soon. And like, we haven't talked in years.
And like, they still have a place in my heart, but like, that just happens.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's um.

Speaker 1 Because we get a sense of what is going to, what Goan is going to do by the end of 148, the episode we're about to begin.

Speaker 1 He's just sort of gestured at.

Speaker 1 And we know what happens to Freaks Senior and Freaks Jr. when they get an idea in their heads.

Speaker 1 Freaks Senior and Freaks Jr. are Toby Fox characters.

Speaker 1 One speaks in Futura and one speaks in.

Speaker 1 And then as the credits play, we see memories of Goat and Killua throughout the adventure.

Speaker 1 This is nakedly sentimental. I love it.
My emotions are so manipulated.

Speaker 1 But it is, it's wildly sentimental, but it's great. This is, this is the, they have, they have turned their backs on each other for now.
Who knows when they will see each other again?

Speaker 1 This is the journey that they went through. This is, this is what is being carried in those looks.
It's really fun.

Speaker 1 I like it a lot. And then as the episode ends, we hear, oh, I think just over the like closing company titles, we hear Goan say, see you, and Kilua finish it by saying later, and the episode ends.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think that it's so noteworthy how

Speaker 1 much

Speaker 1 of the Kilua and Goan

Speaker 1 like relationship you get between panels of the manga in the animation. Yeah.
It is so it's such an obvious thing that the mang that the anime focused on early on to expound on.

Speaker 1 And it really feels like the heart of the show.

Speaker 1 It does.

Speaker 1 It does. I also can't, I cannot,

Speaker 1 I've been doing this now for so long and feeling this way for so long that I can't read

Speaker 1 Killiwa as not being romantically in love with Gun.

Speaker 1 That is why you even bother.

Speaker 1 But I mean, this is the world that we live in, right? Yeah. And so the only way I can read this ending, not the only way,

Speaker 1 ever present in these final moments between them is Killiwa thinking to himself, I just have to say it.

Speaker 1 This is it. This is the moment.
I just have to say it. And instead, they turn and walk away from each other.

Speaker 1 And which is part of why it's so important to not get the big moment, you know, cutting away from that and not giving it to you, is it creates even more tension in the goodbye?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah. Um,

Speaker 1 I don't know, I don't know what Tagashi thinks Gun and Kilo's relationship is, I don't know what the directors think Gun and Kilo's relationship is.

Speaker 1 Doesn't matter, they have they have played with the way that they feel for each other in ways that I think are genuine.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 I'm wary of saying, and my all of my analysis is based on the fact that they they want to kiss.

Speaker 1 But I don't think that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 But I do watch this scene and think Kiliwizaldic is feeling something in his heart and he is not saying it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I wrote on my notes when they said, like, no good if we stay too long. I just wrote, dot, dot, dot, you'll kiss?

Speaker 1 But I mean, this has been the space that the writers have been in with Gunn and Killiwa

Speaker 1 forever. And they are really good at it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it was one of the most important things about doing the show to me was to propagandize my idea that this is basically explicitly a show about unrequited love.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that that, I think, Keith, that you made that argument effectively enough, and then we picked up that argument effectively enough. That I think that is what the show is about.

Speaker 1 Or it is what the relationship between God and Keller is about. Yeah.
Killu's feelings are so powerful, like thinking about the,

Speaker 1 like, from all the way back to their visit to Whale Island to,

Speaker 1 you know, the

Speaker 1 stuff

Speaker 1 from the end of Greed Island to the beginning of the Chimera Ant arc to like the turmoil that's going through Killua when Goan is changing. Like, this is,

Speaker 1 you know, childhood is full of big stuff. feelings, etc.

Speaker 1 Yes. I mean, like,

Speaker 1 that is, that is, to me, that is like an admission. That's a scene that you write when you're admitting

Speaker 1 what this is about.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so, this parting is deeply sad for me. This parting is deeply sad.
And because I am

Speaker 1 as anybody who has listened to Friends at the Table knows,

Speaker 1 I trend towards

Speaker 1 upsetting, and nobody gets out of it feeling good.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I want Goan and Killiwa to see each other. It's so good if this is the last time they see each other, you know?

Speaker 1 As far as I know, it technically still is.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 which means it's going to be great when they do see each other again, if that happens. I think what I'm trying to say is, I read this scene as Gone and Killiwa saying goodbye, and I think that's good.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You don't

Speaker 1 like Sylvie said,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 friends who they haven't grown apart, they still love each other, like, we'll always be friends,

Speaker 1 you know, and they're going off to different schools or whatever. Like, that's not always true, you know?

Speaker 1 Sometimes you reconnect with a friend that was your best friend and you feel

Speaker 1 nothing

Speaker 1 or you feel

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 you've changed. You know, I've changed so much, I can't, this isn't a part of me anymore.
Yeah. But sometimes it's the opposite.

Speaker 1 If they do meet, I do want them to have a great time. But then the other thing is sometimes you never hear from those people again.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It just, it's just, life just doesn't happen. There's a lot of ways that it could end.
You know, you might.

Speaker 1 I've met up with friends who I haven't seen in 20 years and been like, wow, it's like no time has passed. And then I've had the exact opposite feeling.

Speaker 1 It's great. It's really, it was, they really figured it out when they decided that they should tell stories about human experiences and use that as a way to connect people.
Good idea, Cavemen.

Speaker 1 Good idea, cavemen. Although I bet those first stories were awful.
Absolutely no understanding of structure.

Speaker 1 I killed an ox.

Speaker 1 Okay. You know, we look back at

Speaker 1 the train in the movie theater and people screaming like the train is coming right at them and we go what silly people how could they have possibly thought i'm sure those cavemen loved their terror

Speaker 1 stories

Speaker 1 what they actually don't tell you about that movie theater screening keep is that then a train did crash through the screen and they killed them all except the ones who'd run and then who looked like the goose um

Speaker 1 and then who looked like the goose

Speaker 1 Could we take five minutes so that I can grab some soda? Sure.

Speaker 1 And then we'll do the...

Speaker 1 Oh, actually, wait, before we break, is there anything else we want to make sure we hit on

Speaker 1 this farewell, on the end of 147?

Speaker 1 The art is really good. The way that they make, especially Kiloa's face change with just a couple lines, is really...

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 third and fourth most recent pictures that I linked in the chat of like the only thing that happens to Kiloa is that his smile goes from happy to sad. It's nothing else happening to his face at all.

Speaker 1 It's really good. This whole scene has really, really effective

Speaker 1 facial expressions, which has always been, I think, a hallmark of the show.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 soda, soda, soda.

Speaker 1 We see the logo over the hunter-hunter logo. So, 148 begins with no title sequence.
The show's done this before when it wants to break my heart.

Speaker 1 That's its consistent MO for not showing me the title sequence.

Speaker 1 We see the logo over Whale Island

Speaker 1 and the sound of water. And I wrote down, are we not going to get the scene with Jing? I thought I was about to be Tagashi's tricked.

Speaker 1 The ultimate trick. The ultimate trick.

Speaker 1 But instead, we see a flashback to Goan's reasoning for leaving. You know, cigarettes must be cool.
I think his exact words were, which is so sad in retrospect.

Speaker 1 It must be so cool to be a hunter to leave your kid. Or like, I wrote it down verbatim, but it's that, like, being a hunter must be so cool in order for you to leave your kid.

Speaker 1 Being a hunter is so great that he was willing to abandon his own kid, I believe, is the exact wording. Yeah,

Speaker 1 it was sad then, it's sad now.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I gotta remind you about who Jing is one last time, especially you know, when we will learn about the like Jing's origins as a hunter, and it sounds like he had such an easy time with it.

Speaker 1 He was doing, he was doing so much more responsible stuff with his time.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He cuts a goad like running miles and miles and miles in the dark, dodging a frog that's shaped like a raspberry.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Then we also hear Kite's words about hunting for Jing. And then we hear Mito saying, he never actually told me what he wanted, you know, like out there in the world.
Yeah, because he says something.

Speaker 1 He says like, there's something I want when he's leaving Whale Island, and that never gets explained.

Speaker 1 And it does get explained in kind of the funniest way. We'll hear Jing basically say like, the thing I wanted didn't matter.

Speaker 1 It didn't matter. It could have been anything.

Speaker 1 I just wanted to leave my kid that badly.

Speaker 1 Gohan wakes up in a dorm.

Speaker 1 This is like the hostel where they're staying, presumably.

Speaker 1 Killa and Alaka are asleep holding hands. It is so sweet that like the inseparable Zaldic siblings that have emerged in the last two episodes of the show.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Killua looks, sorry, Goan looks up at the tree in the dark and thinks, Jing.

Speaker 1 And I wrote down in my notes here something that, you know, you discussed earlier, Keith, and I'm so happy that you brought up, in part because we don't need to go over it again here.

Speaker 1 But it's that sensation that like the first encounter with Jing, the encounter in the election, didn't really count. Like this, Goan is seeing this as the true reunion or the true meeting.

Speaker 1 That wasn't me. I don't remember who that was, but that was a great point.
Whoever said that. Was it me? I don't think so.
It was you.

Speaker 1 You were talking about how Jing staged the now come and meet me on top of the tree because he knew that Goan wouldn't take meeting in the election as like a W.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I accept that. Yeah, right.
I'm not going crazy, right? That wasn't Sylvie Ordre.

Speaker 1 I accept it.

Speaker 1 I say a lot of words on here.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I think it was Sylvie. I'm going to say it now.
What? I'm going to say Sylvie said that.

Speaker 1 I'm not being.

Speaker 1 I really don't remember saying.

Speaker 1 I remember this conversation as if I was listening to it. I don't know.
I just got a text at an inopportune time, which is why I don't know what quote we're discussing. Oh.

Speaker 1 Talking about

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 meeting on top of the tree. Who was the one of us who said Nanaka was definitely evil? Because we've got to put that in the middle of the case.
We've got to put that person in some sort of prison.

Speaker 1 Oh, that the meeting in the tree was like Jing trying to

Speaker 1 give one turtle forgotten.

Speaker 1 That was me. Yes, I did say that.
I'm glad I was. That was you? Oh, I'm so sorry.
I misattributed that to Keith. That's fine.
Okay. I got my credit eventually.

Speaker 1 I really started to believe that it was me because Sylvie wasn't saying, no, that was me. Yeah, no, sorry.
It's okay. It's okay.

Speaker 1 There is no title sequence. We move straight into the episode.
It's the next day. People climb up the tree on big rope bridges.
This far down the tree, it's like a fun hike. Like, families are out.

Speaker 1 There are people backpacking. I don't think we see anybody, but you get the impressions people are out here like walking their dogs.
I'm not saying we don't see any dogs. We do see people.

Speaker 1 We do see people, but no people walking their dogs. Oh no, we actually do see someone walking their dog.
Oh, really? As you were saying that, I saw a person with their dog pop up on screen.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's great. I'm glad that I got the vibe through and through.
This.

Speaker 1 Every time. So

Speaker 1 I only play Pokemon games. I've never watched the Pokemon anime of any kind.
Here is when I watch Pokemon anime. When I am

Speaker 1 in a hotel and I turn the hotel and it's on. And it's in German.
And it's German. It's mostly Japanese.

Speaker 1 When I turn

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 hotel Pokemon, there is always the coolest, most beautiful lyrical, like nature shit going on, or two animals beating each other up. It's one or the other.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But when they are beating each other up, it's because of friendship. It's because of friendship, but it's usually on the background of this beautiful lyrical nature scenery.

Speaker 1 Whenever I play the Pokemon games, I never get to see half the cool shit that I do in the anime.

Speaker 1 I have to assume this is a point of contention for people who have played both, and I'm coming at it for the first time.

Speaker 1 But, like, they're doing cool shit in the Pokemon anime and the movies that you never even get half a chance to do in the games. Anyway.

Speaker 1 I bring this up because climbing this cool tree and there's like hundreds of people all on a fun day out on the bottom of this tree, this is what the Pokemon anime looks like to me. It's true.

Speaker 1 And that's the world I want to live in, but without the blood sport.

Speaker 1 Go.

Speaker 1 There's a beautiful string arrangement here of departure, of the main theme. Yes, it's true.

Speaker 1 Do you have that on the board?

Speaker 1 I didn't get it. That's okay.
This has only happened a couple of times.

Speaker 1 He's done it, I think, once or twice before, but Hirana will very occasionally adapt the main theme, which I don't think he wrote. did he?

Speaker 1 This is Hiri Itai, by the way, not departure. Oh, it's Hiraitai? Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's like an orchestral arrangement, and as Goan climbs, he thinks back first to the Hunter exam and then onward through the show.

Speaker 1 He moves through Chimera Ant, including the most traumatic parts of Chimera Ant, fairly quickly, with a look of like calm and resolve on his face as he continues to climb. Yeah, very resolute.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And excited. I think, you know, he's on a.
I'm going to see my fucking dad.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go see my fucking dad.

Speaker 1 The look on his face is very similar to that kind of like febrile thrill that we saw on Killua as he was bringing Alica into the hospital, where he was sort of like, you know, you could tell he was just like buzzing with the energy of

Speaker 1 Guns About to Come Back.

Speaker 1 We also get here, or just past here,

Speaker 1 the first real track that gets played in all of Hunter Hunter, which is from Whale Island.

Speaker 1 This is the track. I'm in the pit doing the windmills right now.

Speaker 1 This is like the fucking track. This sounds so good.

Speaker 1 Can you believe how good?

Speaker 1 That is just, I'm constantly just being like, can you believe how good about Hunter Hunter? I know.

Speaker 1 It's just so beautifully written, and it's so beautifully played. And the music supervisors holding off on it for this long.
Ugh, it's...

Speaker 1 Tremendous. Yeah, I wonder when the last time

Speaker 1 it was.

Speaker 1 Also, we say it every single time, and I feel like I say it three times as much as the next person who says it the most. Hirano can write drums.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 At the end of the rope bridge, there is a man reading manga.

Speaker 1 Next to him is the statue of Tagashi's dog, the little

Speaker 1 caricature that he draws. And the man basically says, No one under the age of 18 is allowed past this point.
You'd need a special license or certification for that.

Speaker 1 And then he sees the hunter license and his eyes pop out of his head. And he goes, wow, he's

Speaker 1 blubbering

Speaker 1 and making excuses.

Speaker 1 Even a president would have to sign the waiver still.

Speaker 1 He describes the waiver as a standard, you don't care if you die during the climb sort of thing. Very routine.
This is just the show in Synecto Key.

Speaker 1 This is the coming up against the a child can't do this, you producing the card that you won through difficult, through in Gert's case, having all your arms and legs broken.

Speaker 1 and then the person's like, Wow, okay, but you just have to sign a waiver to say you don't care if you die. And God's like, Love it.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 um,

Speaker 1 this is uh, yeah, this is the 500-meter mark. This is where people hike to this part, I guess, and then turn around and go, Okay, that was fun.
We saw the world tree, let's go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, uh, at this point, the man starts offering advice, and the world tree

Speaker 1 really begins to cement itself as metaphor, just really straightforward thematic metaphor.

Speaker 1 The man's advice is: don't trust the grips or footholds left behind by previous climbers. It sounds strange, but the ones up there usually free climb it.

Speaker 1 Goat is given a little bracelet that will summon a rescue team and then appears to, like, if he's in trouble, you know, push the button.

Speaker 1 And then he appears to fall from the platform.

Speaker 1 The guy has such a good line reading. He's like, oh, he fell.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but he's already go-cooed his way way up he just jumped yeah

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 this is great i mean the show has such an intense

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 like uh split between

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 friends are important and help is crucial and if you don't do things on your own like rugged individualism you'll fail and it won't count and it's like

Speaker 1 it's so whiplashy between these things.

Speaker 1 Like, you, you can't, like, there's all it's difficult even to read into it because, like, all of the most important and successful characters have this individualism about them.

Speaker 1 But then they also always say, like, well, the most important thing you can do is have good friends.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, I guess I read that as like, you can't reach the peak as your individual self without like having those people around you.

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 i guess is how i understand it or make sense of it yeah and they also like pull the rug when um when jing has his most like do it on your own or it doesn't count moment he gets immediately called out by elena for not really believing that uh and that he's only doing it because he'd be too awkward to meet anyone that goan would bring with him which is very funny uh and then time and again you know goan not involving killua or goan saying i'm gonna do this alone just leads to violence and difficulty, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think maybe the way that I would read it is like, it's not about doing things on your own, but it's having the judgment to navigate the world.

Speaker 1 Like, you have to be able to figure out what's a good and what's a bad idea, or you won't be able to climb the tree. Sure.
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 But I don't know, it just feels like I'm making excuses for the show, which is often producing an evil world full of bad things.

Speaker 1 Goan, meanwhile, is enjoying the adventure. He is climbing higher and higher.
He says, This tree is incredible. Again, this is called a world tree, you know?

Speaker 1 He says, This tree is incredible. I can just trust myself to it.
He feels life inside the tree, and he says he can feel everything connected through the entire tree.

Speaker 1 As long as I don't go against the tree's guidance, I'll be fine.

Speaker 1 And then we get this beautiful series of like wider and wider shots showing Goan becoming more and more invisible on the tree's bark as he climbs.

Speaker 1 He finds

Speaker 1 an almost dead guy who's too weak to even press his little help me bracelet. So he takes a quick break to make the chute.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just about a gone like feeling the tree and like feeling, we see him like feeling the like aura in it, basically, like the life force of it.

Speaker 1 And I like that they are

Speaker 1 one getting back to a really really crucial Gon trait, which is being like really in tune with nature. Like, that has always been his thing.

Speaker 1 He's always been very instinctual and like very aware of the world,

Speaker 1 aware of the natural world around him. It's the tragedy of Chimera and it's a it's an arc that makes him have to try to kill nature.
Yeah, and nature itself is you know

Speaker 1 turning him into a weirdo, yeah. And I like that,

Speaker 1 before we go, like before Gone's story wraps up for, you know, the foreseeable future,

Speaker 1 it's we get both a little hint that Gon

Speaker 1 can still sort of feel Aura. Like, he's not necessarily using Nen, but he's able to at least sense it.

Speaker 1 And also that we get another little like return to sort of like foundational Gone before

Speaker 1 this is all over. I don't know if this is Nen, and I don't know if it is Aura.
I feel like it's weird.

Speaker 1 I feel like this scene with Goan climbing the tree is like some of the closest we get to Goan's sort of like speaking ideology.

Speaker 1 Goan is so

Speaker 1 intuitive and kind of like instinctual in the way he thinks about the world, as opposed to someone like Karapika or Kilua, or even someone like Krolo, right?

Speaker 1 Who is just sort of like outputting how they feel about the world, what guides them in their decision making. Goan is just sort of like, I like people, and I, you know.

Speaker 1 Um, but I feel like Gohan saying, I can trust myself to it, I can feel life inside, and everything feels connected throughout the entire tree.

Speaker 1 As long as I don't go against the tree's guidance, I'll be fine. Almost feels like the closest we get to, like, um,

Speaker 1 like a statement of purpose that has guided Goan this whole time. You know, being connected to the thing, feeling the connection to the people around you.

Speaker 1 I love as long as I don't go against the tree's guidance, I'll be fine, because in the context of Goan taking in like a sponge every single piece of bad advice that has been given to him for 148 episodes, that has a particular resonance to it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I can create his own good advice by feeling nature.

Speaker 1 This is, I think, like,

Speaker 1 um, over the course of this episode, we are going to get some more insight into what the Jing freaks kind of like philosophy is and where that springboards Jing and Goan

Speaker 1 out into the world. And I think that this is a pretty clear statement from Goan about what it feels like to be Goan.
I read a really amazing piece once that was about

Speaker 1 insect cognition and about what it feels like to be an

Speaker 1 insect, or if it feels like anything at all. And, you know, the piece was basically like, it is so difficult for humans to look at an animal and go, what...

Speaker 1 is it like to be that but the the like concluding line of the of the header for this was like um scientists agree it is something to be a bee.

Speaker 1 Like, it actually.

Speaker 1 You can't do a little dance to tell your friends where the flowers are. It is something to be a bee.

Speaker 1 And I think that in climbing this tree, we get a real, it is, we can't be sure exactly what it is, but it is something to be gone freaks. And it kind of looks like this.

Speaker 1 Then he rescues a man who's dying. He arrives and he pushes his little button.

Speaker 1 A very cute little helicopter shows up. Listen, motherfuckers will see a palette, a pastel mixed with some dual tones color palette set in nature, and they'll hear

Speaker 1 pastoral romantic music, and they'll start comparing things to Studio Ghibli fucking left and right, even when it's not warranted. But this is very evocative of Studio Ghibli's work.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They're like resting on the leaf, the guy who climbed and is like out of it, the weird little contraption that arrives.

Speaker 1 It's like a helicopter that is just two chairs, one on top of each other, and then a helicopter blade on the top. It's great.
This is also Toriyama to me.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 The weird little device. What were you going to say, Dre? I was just going to ask, do you know about the beach

Speaker 1 in Michigan that you can get rescued from for $3,000?

Speaker 1 I do know about the $3,000 rescue beach. Yes.

Speaker 1 I am

Speaker 1 fairly

Speaker 1 reckless, but I am not that reckless. Well, certainly not right now.
Why do you need to be rescued from this beach? I know. I've got other beaches where you need to be rescued.
Like, isn't that a big?

Speaker 1 It's an unbelievably tall sand dune that looks gigantic. It is gigantic.
And because of how hills work, it's much, much easier to get down than it is to get up.

Speaker 1 And there are all these like really, real Hunter Association style posters everywhere being like, this hill is bigger than you think it is. Going down will take you 20 minutes.

Speaker 1 Climbing will take you like four hours. If you go down and we have to rescue you, it will cost you $3,000.

Speaker 1 Let's see if I can picture it. You carry on.

Speaker 1 Dredd, did you have something else or just wanted to tell about this? No, I just wanted to talk about the hunter piece. You can have

Speaker 1 that vibe or like you can also be paid to be rescued off, you know. Mount Everest or whatever, different mountains.

Speaker 1 Kilimanjaro maybe has a big

Speaker 1 I mean listen if you fuck it up badly, but not monumentally badly, they'll rescue off any off any mountain. Right.
True. Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is the last song that I wanted to play from the beginnings of Hunter Hunter. This is maybe the one that we've heard the most throughout because it's a very

Speaker 1 bombastic.

Speaker 1 But this one's called A Voyage. I love it.

Speaker 1 I mean, you can imagine climbing a big tree to this.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is a stylistic mirror to

Speaker 1 the one we just played. The last track we played.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they often will play at the beginning and the end of the same scene.

Speaker 1 But it's really good. That one plays

Speaker 1 in episode two for the first time. Oh my god.
I know. That's wild.
I know.

Speaker 1 He had it from the start. Hirano, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 Higher and higher up into the canopy. It has gotten dark.
Gohan notices that the top of the tree looks weird because it's kind of like pushing out into an overhang.

Speaker 1 I did not know what this was going to be. I thought the tree would have like a weird thing growing on the top, and it sort of does.
He climbs up, and he is met by a huge beeping egg.

Speaker 1 Right up to the buzzer, doing weird shit just for fun. This is an egg that is maybe

Speaker 1 15 to 20 times the height of Goan.

Speaker 1 It is brightly colored. It looks like

Speaker 1 candy chalk.

Speaker 1 It has eyes, a beak, and it is meowing. And also, there's six of them or something.
Yeah, there's five, yeah.

Speaker 1 All the eggs look at Goan. And you'll never guess what this thing will look like when it's older.

Speaker 1 Goan greets the eggs, and my subtle word said, birds meowing. Jing is up here, and he's eating an apple.
He says, I got tired of waiting, and asks Goan how long it took to climb.

Speaker 1 And Goan said, About 20 minutes. And Jing says, not bad for your first time.

Speaker 1 And tosses Goan his half-eaten apple.

Speaker 1 It's important to note that Goan doesn't say, but I stopped for five minutes to help someone.

Speaker 1 No, he does not. He just

Speaker 1 accepts

Speaker 1 the unofficial time of his climb. From his dad.
The asterisked climb time.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 they just sort of get into it. They look out over the world, and Jing says, when it's overcast, it's like a sea of clouds.
This is Jing's opener. And as they go, it's not bad.

Speaker 1 Jing's number one activity, abandoned sun. Number two activity, annoy the zodiacs.
Number three activity, awkwardly battled through conversation with Sun.

Speaker 1 And here, with his opening line, when it's overcast, it's like a sea of clouds. It's like he's finally realized, like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 Tell him about things I like, and he might also like. Well, that's the number four thing:

Speaker 1 or did you already did you get to four? Was Zodiac four?

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, what were you going to say? I was whatever the one after you said was, is admire the beauty of the world, the mysteries of the natural and man-made world.

Speaker 1 This

Speaker 1 raison d'etre. Goan asks if he can ask him something, and Jing says, Sure, don't count on an answer, though.
And Goan says, Tell me what it is that you want, really.

Speaker 1 And Jing, to his credit, does actually pause to think about this.

Speaker 1 You know, it might be that he's trying to find the words, but there is a beat.

Speaker 1 I just want to make sure that as we describe these scenes, sort of like this touching connection between father and son, you know, that one has been avoiding and one has been seeking for years.

Speaker 1 These big fucking egg birds are in the background of it.

Speaker 1 Yep. And it's

Speaker 1 been yelling the whole time.

Speaker 1 Until Jing yells at them. My note here is, though, Jing responds very simply.
He says, I want whatever I don't have, I guess. And he will spend the last...

Speaker 1 15 minutes of the show really trying to pick that apart. But my notes here then say, the birds meow into the ad break and then meow out of the ad break.

Speaker 1 Something really funny about the meowing, then, presumably, a short period of commercials. Then we get back to Hunter, Hunter, and it's these birds yelling.

Speaker 1 Um, Jing wanted to become a hunter because, and then he says, Shut up, and all the birds are going quiet. He says, At the time, it was the most realistic way to get to a place I really wanted to see.

Speaker 1 Oh boy,

Speaker 1 what is that place?

Speaker 1 It's a tomb

Speaker 1 that is secret, that you can't get into.

Speaker 1 The only expeditions into it are very secret, it can't be explored, and there's sort of like no monetary value to it, so no one's willing to fund the expeditions.

Speaker 1 This is in character with kind of one of the first pieces of concrete information we got from Jing back from Satoats at the end of the hunter exam, you know, that he was sort of like

Speaker 1 an old buildings hunter. Yeah, that he restored monuments and,

Speaker 1 you know, historical sites. And I love the way that that story kind of tantalizes us with a version of Jing that this story kind of pulls apart.

Speaker 1 Jing,

Speaker 1 age 15, sets up a non-profit to restore the tomb. Yeah, I wrote he creates an NGO, which is later he will get his son's name by doing what he did for his Greed Island name.

Speaker 1 NGO's son. NGO's son.
NGO's son.

Speaker 1 Let's move this N around. G-O-N son.

Speaker 1 It's what I'll do. I'll be gone.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He says, to create the non-profit, I needed about 10 eccentrics. This is the closest that we will get in fiction to Tagashi saying it's time for me to introduce a new gang of freaks.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Even though he doesn't actually introduce a game.

Speaker 1 Right. But I know.

Speaker 1 It's a world so rich with freaks that the characters in the show can be like, and then it was time to find the freaks.

Speaker 1 Time for me to

Speaker 1 dial about pee-pee pee-pee 1-800 freaks. And it's the lady from...
The freak scatter is the lady with the demon from Demon World who says to Karapaka that he can't get a job. I totally missed that.

Speaker 1 That's really great.

Speaker 1 Wait, so she works for Jing? No, no, no. I'm saying that that's the person in the world who would be designated to get freak.
Designated freak getter.

Speaker 1 Because they do a little bit of montage, so I thought maybe she showed up and I missed her.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Jing says, I'm always going after everything I want in the moment, no matter what. I'm so focused that I will completely stop caring about the object of my desire.
To which Goan says, hmm.

Speaker 1 And Jing says, still don't get it? Well, I guess I'll keep going, I guess. And we hear about how he recruits some people online.
He makes some friends.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 After I told them about my background and plan, they helped with all kinds of tasks to create the non-profit. They even gave donations from what little money they had.

Speaker 1 When our dream was realized and we stepped inside for the first time, I couldn't hide how happy I was. But what made me happiest wasn't what I saw, when I saw the truth inside the tomb.

Speaker 1 No, it was when I looked at my colleague's face and we shook each other's hands. They still work for the nonprofit to this day, pro bono, providing me with viable information.

Speaker 1 The secret I got from the tomb was nothing compared to the people I met. The most important thing by a long shot, I already had.
And then I wrote, It's friends.

Speaker 1 The thing Jing was searching for that Goan wanted to know about, he also already had.

Speaker 1 And this is

Speaker 1 basically it. This is basically all we get from Jing.
Jing is a

Speaker 1 the real treasure was the friends you made along the way type of guy.

Speaker 1 He even literally says that, though slightly reworded.

Speaker 1 And this is part of what I meant when I talked about how this is a really nice, straightforward ending to a piece of children's fiction. I think that this is good.

Speaker 1 Jing keeps talking, but he doesn't necessarily

Speaker 1 ideologically go further than what he has said here.

Speaker 1 His one little story about finding the tomb and then realizing that what it actually was about was the connections and friendship that he had made along the way.

Speaker 1 This is consistent with what he says about

Speaker 1 the best bit was meeting that Mr. Leorio guy.
You know, he has that reassurance that Goan has that in his life. He can look at Goan and see that he has kind of achieved the thing that Jing

Speaker 1 sees as the most important in the world and kind of

Speaker 1 gets him off the hook for having to take care of Goan.

Speaker 1 But But the thing that's really strange is that in telling this story and kind of in outputting his philosophy very simplistically to Goan, the real pirate treasure was the pirate treasure in your heart all along.

Speaker 1 The pirate captain tells the sad first mate as they look at the empty treasure chest.

Speaker 1 You get the sense that Jing recognizes that Goan has kind of passed this test, has kind of recognized that this is what is important.

Speaker 1 And so he gives Goan a gift. And it is this gift that is going to catapult us out of

Speaker 1 the Hunter-Hunter anime and like into the distant mists of what are these people doing, we will never see. Because then he says,

Speaker 1 the truth is, is that this tree is a young sapling, one that stopped growing. It didn't get enough nutrients and it wound up a lot shorter than it could have been.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm ringing the metaphor bell.

Speaker 1 Makes you think. Who does that remind us of?

Speaker 1 It's hard to know if Goan sees the meaning in this. Jing almost certainly does.

Speaker 1 Yes,

Speaker 1 Jing is someone that can read the same metaphors that the audience can read. Jing is very clearly talking about the tree, but he is also talking about Goan.

Speaker 1 I don't know that it matters that Goan doesn't see this, but I like, I thought this was a rare Jing freaks L, which is that in the the climb up the tree and in this first conversation around the beeping birds, the meowing birds, Goan and Jing are like two tuning forks that have come into alignment.

Speaker 1 And we have kind of known this was true all along, right? We've talked about the wild similarities between the two of them. We've talked about how Jing's...

Speaker 1 like stubborn bullheadedness and ghan's like bizarre shattered obstinacy in the vacuum that his father left behind are sort of the same thing we've talked about the weird horror of like, what does Goan look like growing up?

Speaker 1 It's Jing. Here in these final moments, the show kind of begins to sit them next to each other in a way that makes us go.

Speaker 1 It's one part they deserve each other, and it's another part, having found his people, Leorio, Kilua, Karapika, Aluka, Morel,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 Goan has achieved that sort of like capacity for selfhood and is now now able to move into the circle with his father.

Speaker 1 This still feels kind of weird and fraught and sinister, but we're watching these two, this father and son, on top of the tree, and we're watching Jing being about to say a big truth about the world.

Speaker 1 And you're kind of like, yep, that's the freak's father and son. There they go, out into the wild blue yonder.

Speaker 1 Can you say more about the rare Jing L?

Speaker 1 I think I meant rare Jing W, but I said L. Okay, okay, I was waiting for the L.

Speaker 1 This is a rare Jing L. I fucking did it again.
What the fuck?

Speaker 1 I tried to get a clean take. This is like in those Taskmaster outtakes where Greg is just taking the piss out of Alex all the time.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 To be clear, the W is bringing his son into his wildlife. By his own rules, Jing is

Speaker 1 full of W's.

Speaker 1 By his own rules. By his own rules.
The show takes a moment to emphasize how big big the tree is already. It is

Speaker 1 toweringly big.

Speaker 1 Just as Goan is. Listener, you don't need me to spell out the metaphor, but I'll just say it down the microphone.
Just as Goan is toweringly powerful, it's this glittering figure of like

Speaker 1 experience and pain and joy and discovery. Jing is saying, this is just a sapling.
It didn't have the chance to grow. The real trees are so much bigger than this.
etc.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the tree roots in the tree. And they reach into

Speaker 1 the atmosphere. Yeah, the tree roots in magma, it grows out of a mountain and is taller than anything you've ever seen.
It reaches out of the atmosphere. In short, it's outside this world.

Speaker 1 At least, outside the world map you're familiar with.

Speaker 1 Then things start getting strange. Black and white footage of the ants and the fight with Peto.

Speaker 1 And Jing calls the ants a non-native species from outside this world.

Speaker 1 That's the truth they don't teach you in school. Adults know better than to open Pandora's box.
And in case we're not sure about what Pandora's box is, we see a really frightening looking box.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 scary.

Speaker 1 Jing hits the homer, the homer that is going to take us out of the season. He says, the world that we know is nothing but a small part of a much bigger world.

Speaker 1 And then there is an insane zoom out to a remarkable map.

Speaker 1 You might hear him say the world we know of is nothing but a small part of a much bigger world as a metaphor in the same way that we talk about, you know, the ocean is unexplored. No.
No.

Speaker 1 He means that the tree stretches out of this world and into

Speaker 1 a much bigger world. We see like a medieval map.
And by medieval map, I mean like it's crazy and it's also full of wild shit.

Speaker 1 Sea monsters. A crab skull spider, spiky trees, this thing extending out towards the horizon line, like, you know, the curve of the earth.
Big mushrooms, dinosaurs are out there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Can I give you... I don't know where this map comes from in the manga.
I assume it's relatively early on.

Speaker 1 I've seen this map. Have you seen this map?

Speaker 1 Please share it again. Keith is showing us a map that kind of the manga interprets as the.

Speaker 1 Oh, there's another map in the bank out. This is a different one.
Yes. The known world of Hunter-Hunter

Speaker 1 is a series of tiny little islands in a massive world lake. It's surrounded by an unknown continent.

Speaker 1 We are on an island in a duck pond.

Speaker 1 And you thought we were back with Demon World with Oliga.

Speaker 1 This is, I mean, it's tiny world, or I guess giant world theory.

Speaker 1 Giant world theory, yeah.

Speaker 1 We have, you know, Jing says says that the thing that makes him a leave is that he always wants what he can't have.

Speaker 1 But here we have kind of, like, had demonstrated to the viewer, as compellingly as Yoshi Hero Tagashi can make it, this is the carrot that drives Jing freaks forward. This idea that that

Speaker 1 how do you how do you make Jing have something that motivates him that makes both Goan and the viewer go, whoa, yeah, looks about yeah, looks about right.

Speaker 1 Um, you got any other sons you want to abandon? And we can we can crack on. We can we can go look at this.
Um

Speaker 1 this is also the uh uh back to koala, right? Saying that like the world is the world comprises lots and lots of little things all coming together to make a whole.

Speaker 1 Because as much as we say, all right, Jing, let's go crack on, let's explore that, all of the pain and suffering, all of the connection, all of the

Speaker 1 the like interlocking relationships that we have seen so far are just a speck on a speck on a speck of the world.

Speaker 1 This is true about the human earth that we live on. You know, we will spend our lives in

Speaker 1 infinitesimally small configurations compared to what is out there. But in true hunter-hunter style, Yoshiro Tagashi has taken that idea and exploded it out.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 1 the world of adventure is revealed to us with a capital W on world and a capital A on adventure. And it's the last thing we see in the show.
It is.

Speaker 1 It's not literally the last, but like, this is how they end. Yeah.
And even, you know, taking into account, this is part of why it's so sad, you know, like

Speaker 1 even knowing how much manga there is, one of the last things that the show does is like Chimera Ant ends, and you're like, well, where can we go from here?

Speaker 1 And then the very end of this one is like, look how much, look how much there is to go from here. And then they don't give it to you.
You don't get it. Yeah.
Because it's for Jing and Gung. Because

Speaker 1 it is

Speaker 1 for them. Yeah.
It's not for us.

Speaker 1 The thing we get is, as I understand it, and you know,

Speaker 1 we'll invariably end up talking about this on some sort of Media Club Plus bonus in the future, but we get like Internecine Freak War, right?

Speaker 1 That I think that is the official name. Yeah, it's the Internecine Freak Arc is what it's called.

Speaker 1 Jing says about this

Speaker 1 world outside of their world. You know, that's where he wants to go, but there's things that you need in order to get there.
Means. Because it's a quest.
It's a game. It's a game.
Yes.

Speaker 1 He has to, in order to get... I've been playing MLB the Show for 10 hours a day for the last three days.
Holy shit, does that have a massive world outside the world?

Speaker 1 No, but it has the stupidest version of that that you could possibly have.

Speaker 1 Which is that you really, really, really want the 99 Ted Williams card, but in order to do that, you have to have all these other cards.

Speaker 1 But in order to get those cards, you have to have all these other cards.

Speaker 1 And so you're like, well, I have to play, I have to fill out this map of baseball points so many times so that I can get the right amount of cards to get the cards I need to get the card I want, which is, to Jing,

Speaker 1 means permission, qualifications, and a contract, of which he has none. He says, hate to say it, but I don't have any one of those yet.
Well, I'm not in any rush. I'm just enjoying the journey.

Speaker 1 So, if your chosen destination is the same as mine, which is an explicit invitation, then

Speaker 1 enjoy the side trips a lot, okay? Things that are more important than what you're hunting for could be right there by the side of the road.

Speaker 1 That again feels like Tagashi just talking to the audience, too. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And also, is he asking them to not worry so much about the pace of the show? He absolutely is.

Speaker 1 so much

Speaker 1 can you go out and enjoy your old life a little bit so that i can

Speaker 1 go down

Speaker 1 well but then he also dodges left onto internecine freak war immediately right which is he's saying that's the other kind of thing about the world yeah either the world is astonishing blue sky adventure game that we go journeying into or it's like atoms ping-ponging off each other in this like incredibly complex series of

Speaker 1 wants, desires, ambitions, etc.

Speaker 1 Now that we're at the same level of knowledge about Hunter Hunter, basically, I'm fine saying that my impression of what happens next is that they set up that Jing is about to become the main character of Hunter Hunter only to hard pivot into a thing you've never heard of that Karapika is doing as sort of a follow-up to York New.

Speaker 1 No comment. No comment.
No comment. I think I know very slightly more than that.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Crazy to say i also know slightly more than that

Speaker 1 as long as everything i said is right i do also know slightly more than that do you know about the boat um i know about is the boat piloted by a relative of someone we know i don't know who the boat is piloted by but i know a cool fact about the boat oh what's the cool bigger than a normal boat

Speaker 1 no way well wait until you find out who captains that boat i believe all right and we will another time yeah but we will

Speaker 1 not almost 11 p.m Yeah.

Speaker 1 The sun sets. The birds go hog wild.

Speaker 1 A big cat bird lands holding a huge fish.

Speaker 1 A cat platypus bird.

Speaker 1 A cat platypus bird. And then we have some like classic father-son time.
Goan gives Jing back his hunter license from kite,

Speaker 1 shows Jing the scar on his shoulder, and starts telling the story about, you know, Chimera Ant. We're just getting this montage of like little fractured bits of the the story he tells

Speaker 1 brilliantly jing starts telling bits of his own story this to me is like this is when i describe the the twin tuning forks kind of like resonating together um jing is recognizing that uh

Speaker 1 his son is is a person

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 and not something to be afraid of yeah i know a lot of people who grew up with like terrible relationships with their parents and then event

Speaker 1 yeah hi also hi. Well, here's where, here's where my story changes.
Those people then develop really good relationships as adults with their parents. Um, and, uh,

Speaker 1 and it's always seems very confusing and very difficult and heartbreaking to be like, I'm an adult.

Speaker 1 I have to put aside the fact that I had a really bad or troubled upbringing and like understand that my parents were not capable of raising me as a child, but are capable of keeping me as a friend.

Speaker 1 I don't think I could do that personally.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Me neither.

Speaker 1 But I do think that it's a very interesting kind of relationship that I see in the real world.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 it shouldn't be on Gone that Jing is able to,

Speaker 1 you know, oh, now that my kid's like an adult, we can be pals.

Speaker 1 But it's true. And Goan seems willing to accept it.
And I don't think Jing would have made a very good father anyway.

Speaker 1 You know, there's plenty of people who would have been better off without the dads that they had in their lives. I can see Jing being one of those.

Speaker 1 I think there's a lot of people that have good relationships with their parents that really wish for Goan to have had a Jing in his life. And I just don't empathize with that position.

Speaker 1 Like, I see Jing as someone who's better off away from his son.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Except for the accident that he turned his son into a wind-up toy that couldn't stop marching towards him.

Speaker 1 You know, but it was sort of like a, I'm giving, I'm gifting you two paths. You can, you can come to me or you can live your life.
And Goan said, well, I guess I'll go that way towards my dad.

Speaker 1 And that's what happened. And I went that way as effusively as possible.
Yes, yes, to the detriment of myself and others around me. My other loved ones will suffer for my choice to follow you.

Speaker 1 But, you know, I think this is a very relatable

Speaker 1 father-son thing of like, you couldn't handle me when I needed you, but we have something now, and that's fine.

Speaker 1 It's especially interesting given the way that they are going to go off into the sunset, and we are not going to see them again. Yeah.
You know, how that breaks is unknown information to us.

Speaker 1 I wrote down the bit of the story, the tiny fragment of story that Jing tells Goan. He says,

Speaker 1 he's midway through a story, and he says, what popped out out was another coffin. Like, yay big.

Speaker 1 I looked this up. This is an anime original.
Tagashi does not have Jing saying any dialogue here. It's just him moving.

Speaker 1 I think that that is some really good improvised Tagashi writing. The idea of the thing inside a coffin is another smaller coffin.
Yeah. Great.
Yep.

Speaker 1 Jing has given Goan a way into thinking, a new way into thinking about the whole world. But for once, it is not a find me thing.
It is not a, I'll give you information.

Speaker 1 It's not a, your understanding of the world is predicated on you solving this weird test for me here. It is that the world has opened up one way or another.
And

Speaker 1 this is the kind of reconciliation that is important to the kind of person that is Jing and Gohan Freaks. You get the sense that

Speaker 1 this would not be satisfactory reconciliation for me.

Speaker 1 I would want more.

Speaker 1 But you do get the impression that for Jing and Goan Freaks, saying

Speaker 1 the world you know is 1% of an even cooler, wilder world, and I might invite you to come and explore it with me. That's like A-tier reconciliation for these weirdos.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 The sun rises over the mountains, and as the title theme begins to play for the last time, hundreds of swans fly over the sun. It's so pretty.
It's so good. It is so beautiful.

Speaker 1 This is an expensive shot, and it is clear that they are spending money on it because it is one of the last things you will see.

Speaker 1 It is just, it is a beautiful crowd shot of birds crossing the sun, kind of rippling.

Speaker 1 This is obviously a reference to Kite, the story that Spinner told.

Speaker 1 Swans,

Speaker 1 it's the same thing. It's Kite doing to his crew what Jing did for Satots,

Speaker 1 not Satots, yeah, oh yes, yeah, Satots, um, and what Jing has now done to Gun, yeah, this this revelation about

Speaker 1 your place in the world, and then a montage begins. How else could you end Hunter Hunter except cutting beautifully between a series of

Speaker 1 and Tigashi agrees because this

Speaker 1 montage is straight out of the manga, yeah, this is a manga montage,

Speaker 1 and it's beautiful in the manga, too. Yeah,

Speaker 1 first, we see a mailman delivering Mito a letter from Goan. She smiles.

Speaker 1 Nove pays Morel money

Speaker 1 to be distributed to the extermination team.

Speaker 1 Morel. It's their bet, right?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's their bet. But it's the best.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I thought it was their bet.

Speaker 1 It's the fucking bet. And it's so good.
It's worth saying this is silent, but there are sort of like Sims style speech bubbles appearing above above people's heads sometimes. Just like

Speaker 1 a picture of some money, and yeah,

Speaker 1 that's such a good catch, Sylvia. I had not thought of that.
Does he buy expensive wine with it?

Speaker 1 He buys a massive bottle of champagne, and the two men drink to Chairman Natero in front of Notero's shrine. Knuckle and Shoot, Palm, Ikalgo, and Melierone watch the birds crossing over the sun.

Speaker 1 In an airship flying over weird lands, it's like a cool, spiky desert.

Speaker 1 Killiwa and Aluka watch a video from Goan. It seems like they're also watching the birds.
I think that's what the video is. Yeah, they're all watching the birds.

Speaker 1 Everybody's watching Hunter Hunter, even the characters in Hunter Hunter.

Speaker 1 Leorio. Everybody should be.
Everybody should be watching Hunter Hunter.

Speaker 1 Everybody. If we haven't made that clear by now.

Speaker 1 Leorio is in an office looking at a picture of the gang on the shelf.

Speaker 1 He calls Karapika

Speaker 1 an establishing shot of a dark alley. Karapika, exactly as we saw him before, silent, the phone ringing in his hands.
And then we get a reverse shot to see what he is looking at.

Speaker 1 What is he looking at?

Speaker 1 He's at... Is he at a funeral? Where is he? Oh, he's

Speaker 1 at the eyeballs.

Speaker 1 Of a shelf containing like nine sets of kuta eyeballs. Yes.
So kind of a funeral.

Speaker 1 Like, in a way. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Karapika is doing great. Karapika is once once again in the feeling of indescribable emptiness.
Yeah. Although he's about to enter the war, the internission war.

Speaker 1 We all know this. Karapika is the protagonist of succession, which is, you know, insofar as Tagashi does protagonists.

Speaker 1 I'm sure the protagonist is going to be like a dog dressed as a man, dressed as a cow.

Speaker 1 And then there will be 34 other people. I love all the scenes with Kieran Culkin when he was starring in Succession.

Speaker 1 We get a wild reveal at the like a

Speaker 1 horrible fake-out reveal. Yeah, Amane and Subone are crying at the grave of Goto.

Speaker 1 Amane and

Speaker 1 Canary, sorry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what's fucked up, Sylvia? Yeah, well, Goto walks up and they're like, what? We thought you were dead. We're pointing at the game.
They're at his grave. They're at his grave.

Speaker 1 And then it's like, well, that's actually one of the shape-shifting

Speaker 1 Kirikos

Speaker 1 just playing a funny little prank. What the fuck, dude? I believe the implication is: don't tell because we see Kilua and Aluka, and they put their finger to their lips.

Speaker 1 And the implication is, like, maybe don't tell the kids that Goto died, which is fucked up in a different way. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, but also, it cuts to Kilua explaining everything to the Kiriko. So maybe this was Kilua's Kilua's idea.
It might be to keep it from the rest of the family. Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 1 It's not terribly clear what's happening there.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you what is clear is essentially the penultimate shot of the show. The ruins of the palace, the tunnel down in the depths,

Speaker 1 the fake village, the dark room, and visible just through a door,

Speaker 1 the pale hands of Komegi and the claw of Meroem with two

Speaker 1 Gungi tiles labeled Shinobi and General. And then out of that shot, just this rush of the birds flying over the sun.
Can you believe what they did to us in fucking Chimera Ant Arc? I can't.

Speaker 1 You know why? And I thank them for it. Can you believe they did that to us?

Speaker 1 Ah, fuck. I can't believe you've done this.

Speaker 1 God, it's so great that we have all these scenes of like winning the bet,

Speaker 1 Leorio calling Karapika, and then just the two bodies down in the hand in hand in the dark. It's really good.
We get another shot of Karapika being kind of surprised by something. Well, yeah, so

Speaker 1 the team,

Speaker 1 we're always part of the gang, that group.

Speaker 1 What are they called?

Speaker 1 What do they call the team before they become the extermination team? Aren't they called like the expedition team? We just called them the undergrads, I think.

Speaker 1 They were called, like, they were named after the mine that they had done the work in it was like the something something mine expedition team or something

Speaker 1 The team plus kite and the koala are watching the birds and then just like a flurry of like absolute final shots of the crew Karapika turns in a beam of light looking surprised Leorio asleep on his desk wakes up suddenly Killua and Alika open a box smiling I don't know what that's about but it's it's a nice shot

Speaker 1 Goan smiles, and then the final image is a still frame, like a painted frame, of Jing turning and walking away, and Goan facing the camera with a huge smile on his face.

Speaker 1 As once again, we hear Jing say, Enjoy the side trips a lot, okay? Things that are more important than what you're hunting for could be right there by the side of the road, and the show ends.

Speaker 1 It barely even qualifies as

Speaker 1 an important message, but it still makes me very emotional.

Speaker 1 It's great.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it is a fairly tepid message. However, it is random.
You see that home beautifully.

Speaker 1 I guess Hunter Hunter is a show that's able to back up its, you know, its sort of cliche message with a ton of substance.

Speaker 1 Do you remember when I said the thing I really don't want to see is the king plays Googie with Kobagi and it teaches him how to be a good person? Yeah, that was I was like, I don't want to see that.

Speaker 1 And then the show was like, I'll do it good. And I was like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 Fair enough. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 This has been such a treat. This has been a blast.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Thank you all for doing it.
Like, this has been great. Yeah.
And thank you, everyone, for listening. I'm glad that we got to do this.
I really love Hunter Hunter.

Speaker 1 Doing this has only made me like it more. Yeah.
I didn't know that was possible to like it more, but I like it so much more than same. Like, it's so good.

Speaker 1 Uh, I'm glad that we got to show it to Jack and that Jack really liked it. Um, yeah, what do you think?

Speaker 1 This would have sucked if Jack was like, I'm not, I don't, I'm not feeling it. I don't think it would have been a very different show.

Speaker 1 It would have been a very productive show, um, but I don't think it would have been as nice. Um, uh, you know, it was a very nice time.

Speaker 1 We've already started recording the M-Night mini season that's coming after this. Sylvie and me and Allie and Art recorded us talking about the Sixth Sense.
So after

Speaker 1 the QA episode, you can expect that to hit your feeds. It was really fun.
We really liked the Sixth Sense overall.

Speaker 1 I was like surprised by how good it was.

Speaker 1 Great movie. Honestly, I went into it thinking that

Speaker 1 there's no way that a guy whose public opinion went so hard downward really had the juice to begin with.

Speaker 1 What was wrong with this show? He had the juice. You're going to have fun with this show.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But we should probably say one more time. I know we said it at the top, but we should say it again.

Speaker 1 If you have questions for us for next time, the QA, the last bit of main feed Hunter-Hunter content for, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Until we all have time to do manga stuff, anyway. Yeah.
Send an email to friends of the table at gmail.com with Media Club Plus in the title and your question in the body.

Speaker 1 You can have part of the question in the title too, but make sure Media Club Plus is there or else we're not going to see it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is there anything else before we go?

Speaker 1 I have two things I want to do before we go. Okay.
One of them is just read a review because that's just like what we do here.

Speaker 1 Are you going to tell us about the first panel? I'm going to send the first panel of the manga and I'm going to spoiler tag it so we can all click it at the same time. right?

Speaker 1 Uh, but first, I'm gonna read this review. Oh, wait, I'm gonna send it.

Speaker 1 Oh, before you say that, I have like a final, like a tiny final thing I want to say, please, which is that I really want to, you know, I said that I had a blast doing this, and I really want to stress that it is

Speaker 1 the thing we have made is a very odd show.

Speaker 1 The idea that we have made a show about Hunter Hunter that vastly outnumbers Hunter Hunter in time, runtime

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 it double?

Speaker 1 And it's also, it's really conceptually odd as a critic to have the privilege to spend so long looking at a single work with such a fine-toothed comb

Speaker 1 for the first time with people who are here to guide me through it.

Speaker 1 It is a real treat to get to like slowly work out all the weird gradations of a group of creators or or the feel of a piece of media.

Speaker 1 And I wanted to thank, obviously, the three of you for doing it with me because it has been the most fun. And also, thank you, the listener, for sitting with us as we go through a piece of work

Speaker 1 by picking up one grain of sand with tweezers and putting it in another pile until we have moved the whole pile across the room and gone, whoa, whoa, look at sand. Look at sand.
But yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much for listening. I had a great time.
Yeah, if you had a great time listening and you haven't gone to contentburger. No, not that.
You haven't gone to friends of the table.cash,

Speaker 1 then

Speaker 1 you should please, yeah, please do. Please consider subscribing to support the show that is free that you liked.
And there's a bunch of extra stuff there for people who want that.

Speaker 1 And that's all I'll say about that. All right.
I'm going to read one of these reviews from Andy Pology on July 4th. Okay, okay, you've caught me is the title.
Hi, it's me.

Speaker 1 The most resistant guy who listened to every episode of MC Plus for two years and didn't write a review. Congratulations on becoming three-star me hunters.
Also, congratulations on an amazing season.

Speaker 1 Fingers crossed for so many more that you double back to anime and do Utena brackets. Think about it.
I'm sure we will. I'm sure we'll think about it.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. And I'm sure we'll be back to anime at some point.
Unfortunately, you're wrong. You are not the most resistant because there's still thousands of people.
People who haven't done it yet. Yes.

Speaker 1 But I do like being a three-star

Speaker 1 iTunes user hunter. I do feel like we are three-star review hunters.

Speaker 1 We're five-star reviews. Sorry, Hunters for five-star reviews, but three hunter-stars.

Speaker 1 No, they made

Speaker 1 extra ranked. We're five-star hunters.
Okay, great. That's great.
Now

Speaker 1 we've reached that point.

Speaker 1 Okay, I'm hitting send on this.

Speaker 1 Okay, but we'll be in the middle of the morning. In 3-2-1, we will click the spoiler tag, and you will see the very first frame of the very first first chapter after what the anime covers.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Ready? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Three, two, one, click.

Speaker 1 Keith, Keith, as the

Speaker 1 Keith, the rules of change now.

Speaker 1 You are now in unknown territory, and Sylvia and I, and maybe Dre had seen this panel before. Keith,

Speaker 1 do you want to do some ways of seeing on this panel? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 So this is a man in a suit. I could only describe him as a jelly bean man.
There's no way to know what color he is.

Speaker 1 He has, he's a gas. He has a big,

Speaker 1 do you remember the egg birds from before? He's got one of those, but with no eyes or beak for a mouse. Yeah.

Speaker 1 A big egg-shaped scream of a mouth and a sweat drop coming down his cheek.

Speaker 1 He slammed something, probably a door. Slam.
Big trouble, everyone. Four exclamation points after two after big trouble, two after everyone.
Something has gone wrong for this beam. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's wearing it. I think it's supposed to be everyone.
Big trouble because it's right door. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 Big trouble, everyone. Also, valid read.
Does he usually wear a bowsai or is he in fact? I think so.

Speaker 1 He has been in a suit before, but in the manga recently, he's been wearing that little hunter suit with the H's on it.

Speaker 1 I've also seen Otto Karapaka wearing a hunter suit like that, so that's interesting. I describe this to Sylvie as like the joke you would tell about how to pick up a story again.

Speaker 1 It's just like someone walks into a room and goes, oh no, you won't believe what's happened. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would love to talk about the way that they introduced this arc at a later date, possibly behind a paywall. Who could say? Who could say? Who could say? Who could say?

Speaker 1 Friendsofthetale.cash. Then you could say.
Then you could say.

Speaker 1 Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you, everybody, for listening.

Speaker 1 It's been a treat i'm glad that we are ending with perhaps the longest episode that we've ever done this is going to be five hours long as a consequence it's not quite because there was actually only a just over an hour of content in the last uh okay four hours foreign change yeah early fours or five star runtime hunters yes yeah i mean if any i uh look i've been five star runtime in my whole career i feel like that's true so

Speaker 1 um But yeah, this is great. Thank you, everybody, again.
And we're going to go. I'm going to have dinner.

Speaker 1 Same.

Speaker 1 I'm going to dinner. Enjoy the side trips.
Enjoy the side trips, everybody.

Speaker 1 Wow.