Finally Someone Has Walloped Him - Hunter x Hunter ep. 140-142: Media Club Plus S01E45

Motherfucker.

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

As always, we are brought to you by Friends of the Table, and this season, we're watching 2011's Hunter Hunter, based on the manga by Yoshikira Tagashi.

My name is Keith J.

Carberry.

You can find me online at Keith J.

Carberry.

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

Um, and you can find all of us in various ways at uh twitch.tv slash friends of the table, and then the VODs for those at friends of the at youtube.com slash friends of the table.

With me, as always, is Andre Lee Swan.

Whoa, I'm first this time.

Hey, you can find me on Blue Sky at SwanDerry3000 over there.

I forget what you plugged already, Keith, because I wasn't paying attention.

So I don't know what to plug.

Just the Twitch.

Oh, that's what you plugged.

Just the Twitch.

Just the Twitch, baby.

You can check out our merch store over at friendsofthetable.show.

Oh, yeah, we don't talk about that often, but you can and should do that.

Also with us is Sylvie Bullet.

Hey there, gamers.

If you want to listen to another show we have sidestory.show.

I'm not going to start saying hey there gamers on every episode.

That was just for the plug.

You can also find me at Sylvie Bullet on most social medias.

Just enter it.

Sylvie, we were just, we were both just on Side Story, and that was fun.

Yeah, we were.

We've been on a

no, I've been on a, no, you've been on a couple times now, too.

I have, because you were on the fantasy, the really fantastic fantasy life episode.

The really fantastic fantasy life episode and then blueprints.

Yeah.

And the blueprints spoiler cast, which I definitely recommend checking out.

It was a very fun time.

And also, Jack Dakeet.

Hi, you can get any of the music on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.

This is a great season.

It's tough to follow Chimera and Ark, but

it does.

Yeah.

It's weirdly.

It doesn't try to match it, though.

No.

It is very smart about the stakes that they are working within.

It's simultaneously back to form, like, you know, Tagashi going back to his roots, but also working with all of the material that he's accumulated over the time

doing, you know, bigger, weirder stuff.

And I appreciate that.

Sorry, my phone is.

It's rung three times in a row now.

It's all spam ows, I believe.

Ugh.

Stop calling me.

That's their thing.

They try to trick you into thinking it's important by calling and then calling immediately.

And then you go, oh, it must be important.

It's not.

It never is.

Any broad strokes about these episodes at the beginning here?

I mean, I like what you said about returning, like, going back to form.

This feels very, like, early Hunter-Hunter to me in a lot of ways.

I mean, obviously, really evoking the

Zoldic, like, rescue arc for Akilua.

Yeah, and Heaven's Arena.

Yes.

But also, like, it's really good about bringing, like, like you said, there are so many more ingredients that Tagashi can throw into the meal.

It's a tasty scene.

Moral is there now.

Moral and Lee.

Sorry.

Spoilers.

Moral and a friend have a scene together.

Moral and a friend.

Moral and

a wonderful friend have a scene together.

And it made me really happy.

And I like them together.

They're fun.

Yeah.

These are very these are episodes in which a lot of sort of disparate stuff is happening in different places.

This is, I think, notable in contrast to the very slow sort of

internal discussion among the zodiacs that we saw in previous episodes, or the kind of laborious,

faintly ritualistic working and reworking of Aloka's rules that we saw in the last chunk.

And also, you know, when Tagashi spent 60 episodes across 10 seconds of time at the end of the Chimera and Arc.

I mean, here we have like

lots of little, little, we're traveling from place to place, we're in a lot of unique new sets,

we're in lots of little different matchups, we meet some new characters.

Hilariously, in 141, we meet a shit ton of new characters in one of my favorite Tagashi jokes that we've had in a long time.

But yeah, these really felt like, like Sylvie said, like early Hunter-Hunter episodes, but kind of informed by

what it takes to make Chimera Ant

go.

As usual,

I'm ringing the bell for Jack's complaint.

I spent 140 going, all right, come on.

But this blog was fun.

I had a good time.

Yeah, if the first three episodes of this arc struggle with anything, it was wading through lists of rules and relationships and watching the machine at the end of the lane set the pins back up, which we've talked about before, is a Tagashi classic.

But also, like usual, I think these episodes sort of take all of that stuff and are able to put together like well-executed,

you know, take advantage of that setup.

They're pretty tight, Jack.

I want to, I'm curious about what you think about 140.

I didn't really feel like there was that much setup to them.

But the

focus here is largely on Kilua, with one major exception.

And maybe one smaller exception.

But the focus is on Kilua's journey back to Gone, carrying Alika, trying to escape the Butlers, and everyone, including the Butlers, trying to escape Ilumi.

And a very important friend is back.

It's Leorio Parody Night.

If you haven't been watching Jack's

subtitles, this would be the first time that you heard his name ever.

Leorio Parody Night, and he's getting political.

Yeah,

when I learned about Leorio...

Mr.

Leorio goes to the hunters committee.

When I heard about

his name, you said the circumstances in which you learn Leorio's name are going to be really funny.

And I didn't quite know what you meant at the time, but it turns out what you meant is Leario is in the running to become the Pope.

Number three.

Yeah.

Number three.

He's right behind the famous dog.

He gets almost 10% of the vote by the end of the first episode or whatever.

Yeah.

Oh, it's really good.

In short,

here is where I felt 140 kind of dragging a little.

Killua's triumphant escape from the

mansion at the end of 139 and Alaka's kiss on his cheek felt so good

and was presaging a kind of

you've escaped, but you're going to get into trouble.

You know,

the stakes of Alaka's wishes are, oh, sorry, the stakes of Alaka's demands are immense.

The Zaldeks are a dangerous foe that you have now crossed.

And I think there was a bit of me that felt a little bogged down in how quickly we get into butler procedure.

It turns out the butler procedure is great, especially once Illumi starts getting involved.

Illumi goes mask off in a big way.

Yeah, although showing his mask is mostly what they do.

Yes, they do mostly show his mask floating in the dark.

But

we

get this moment of, and you know, it makes sense in retrospect that it's like actually wriggling out of the Zaldic's grasp has been Killua's project his whole life.

It is never going to be just as easy as, you know, taking Alaka off the mountain.

But there was a little bit there where I was like, oh, God, right?

This is like a rule for precaution or whatever.

With that being said, I think this all snaps into place in some interesting ways that we can discuss.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of Killua's thing has been like, like, he understands that his relationship with his family is this like tete-a-tete thing where like there are these rules and he's going against them in a way that is like fair game, but which leaves him open to go against him.

So when he gets saddled with the butlers, I think there's just sort of this, there's this underlying thing of like, I could have made a better wish about not being followed.

And I also think that in the same way that we spent so much of this massive show wondering what the hell is going on with the hunter organization, and then the monkeys paw closes in a really funny way, and it's like would you like a whole arc about how how the hunter organization is even stranger than you thought yeah getting into like zaldic procedure also feels really interesting here we've we've seen the ways that the zaldic uh um

parents and Ilumi's abuse of Killua has kind of like been written out through his character arc across this whole thing but here it's being even more explicit right in that like there are these systems of very um sort of like prosaic control that are put onto him when he tries to do something as simple as leave the mansion.

But we don't quite start with Kilua leaving the mansion.

We actually start in Goan's hospital room for the first time.

He's looking good.

Yes, it's filled with machines and doctors.

We see an apparent Nen exorcist approach, and we get our first look at him.

He's covered in bandages.

He has an oxygen mask, and he's like leaking black aura, like this sort of smog sort of running off from his body.

And just being in his presence overwhelms the exorcist.

She calls, she says that it's a burden and it's insurmountable.

And that's where...

Oh, go ahead.

One of my all-time favorite motifs in horror is the exorcist arriving in the house and saying, no, and fleeing, you know?

Yeah.

Saying, this is too much for me.

But this is where Knuckle gets a call from Killua, or like from it's Moral gets the call, but through Knuckle

from the phone at the butler's house.

And then Moral explains that a bunch of friends came by to speak with Goan, and he's unresponsive.

And Kilua is like

kind of makes Moral think that he's off to do something drastic.

And Killu has to explain, no, no, the thing that I'm doing is like, it's not even a plan.

It just will work.

Don't worry about it.

The problem is that we have to get to you.

Which is when Goto hangs up the phone.

And I have a lovely moment.

They do like the classic rom-com

split-screen talking on the phone thing between Killewa and Merle.

And when Goto cuts the line, the left-hand side of the screen just goes black for like three or four lines of dialogue until Goto comes back in.

Goto, in case you don't remember, is the.

Is he explicitly the head butler?

He is the head.

He's not the, it's weird because I think that they do call him the head butler, but he's clearly not the most important butler.

Yeah, I read the

butlers who show up later as being like personal butlers for specific members of the family.

Yeah, maybe he's in charge of the subordinate butlers.

That is the impression I got.

He's sort of like the house manager for the butlers.

The butlers

have so much more,

there's so much more going on with them with the context that for a while the Zelda's were basically feeding butlers to

Alaka.

And probably the dogs too.

And probably the dogs too, yeah.

Also learning stuff like, you know, Zaldic butlers are trained in an academy on site.

If two butlers fall in love, they're both killed.

Occasionally, what's that tweet?

It's like, I said it sounds like he might just be feeding butlers to the demon child and his girlfriend started started crying.

So you don't forget about this tweet?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Somehow I'm blanking on those two, even though that's the exact shit that I'm on.

Oh my god.

Keep talking, I'll find it.

Oh, don't.

No, yeah, sorry.

I'm like, I'm I got a little flashbanged by that.

Goto hangs up the phone and says that he's done this on the grounds of secrecy.

At the moment, you are still barely within Zaldi property, but outside the boundaries, you are already at alert level four.

So please be careful.

Killiwa knows all about alert level four.

This is the first time we're hearing about levels of alert.

Hopefully, though, we get a little PowerPoint to help with that.

Yes, we get a little PowerPoint.

First, Killiwa

kind of thanks Goto

by insulting him, saying you're way too soft, you know that.

Realizing that Goto is on his side after, like, he only hung up the phone after letting him get a clue out about about what was going on

and this is sort of the mode that killowa inhabits for most of these episodes which is like analyzing everything that's happening to try to make sure that he understands who's on whose side based on

like basically micro expressions and yes and gut instinct um

and you know history with his own family also It is subtle, weird writing that mostly sounds like making work for yourself as a writer.

I mean, this sort of realization that, like,

Canary, who will be reintroduced in a second, and Goto are ostensibly on Killiua's side, but the boundaries of that loyalty are not exactly clear.

Right.

And it's not terribly clear when they are acting deliberately to like sabotage the other butlers or give Killiua a leg up.

And like you said, Killua spends the thing essentially trying to piece out, am I being helped right now?

And if so, am I making the best use of the advantage I'm being given?

I think this stuff is really, really pleasant and elegant.

I briefly found the tweet.

The tweet is: My neighbor told me coyotes keep eating his outdoor cats, so I asked how many cats he has, and he said he just goes to the shelter and gets a new cat afterwards.

So I said, It sounds like he's just feeding shelter cats to coyotes, and then his daughter started crying.

Oh my god.

Just my joke about

feeding butlers.

That's great.

Thank you so much for finding that.

That was genuinely for sure.

There's no character available to PowerPoint 2, so the narrator takes over the duties and does a little PowerPoint himself explaining level 4 and level 5 of the Zoldic out precaution levels.

This is great.

The Zoldics are weirdos to their own family all the time.

We have known this.

This is kind of the means by which the Zaldics work.

But learning that they essentially have like a

DEF CON level or like a series of quarantine procedures for when their own members leave the family members leave the mansion is absolutely in keeping with these weirdies.

This is also, we're entering a Yoshihiro Tagashi game.

There are now like rules in place.

Yeah, these are the rules.

Basically, level four means you are being watched all the time for slip-ups.

You cannot talk to anybody on a cell phone or in person.

You cannot reveal any of the secrets that you know about the family.

And if you slip up, you're captured by the butlers and immediately brought home.

And your threat level is raised to five, which means that you are quarantined on the Zoldic grounds.

Yeah, you're under, you're under martial law.

And then

Goto explains these precautionary measures are recommended due to removal of family valuables as well as rebellion and hostility towards your parents.

Kilua takes exception to the description of Aluka as family valuables,

which Goto ignores.

And then

explains that his rules that he cannot break are: outside contact strictly forbidden, you must remain one meter within a one-meter radius of Aluka, and Aluka's ability must be kept confidential.

The one meteor meteor, the one-meter radius of Aloka thing is a really lovely contrivance.

It just gets us straight.

I mean, you can see that they make the rule because it's like we don't want Aluka wandering off, right?

That would be extremely dangerous.

But it just produces a really clean Yoshi Heritagashi game at this point, right?

Where it's like, under no circumstances are you allowed to get further than a meter away.

So much of why the Zelda's work as a plot

has been the kind of blending of them as professionals, as like deeply fucked up professionals and deeply fucked up family members.

We talked in the last episode, um, in that great scene with Silver, about how it's clear that the Zeldics are often trying to teach Killua something, and Silver, in particular, is interested in listening to his son.

But unfortunately, the lessons that they are trying to teach and the kind of person that they are trying to produce, in the sense that the project of a parent is to like be involved in raising a child um is to produce the the most effective zaldic family leader rather than you know like a happy person or whatever and i think that we can sort of see this happening here as well with these rules being again a kind of like professionalization or literalization of a lot of common like mechanics of abuse you know like you you can't talk on your methods of communication with people who are close to you you can't tell secrets about the family situation etc etc.

Um, but this being spelled out as like this is for the good of the assassin project is

really nice stuff.

Um, and then on the other hand, he is being allowed to do this.

Yeah, this is a really good tension.

I had sort of thought they were going to be like, all right, this is war.

It's it's something much subtler and weirder, right?

It's not war, it's that war is allowed.

Yeah, yes,

and so they have a name for this, they call call it

intra-family mission.

Yeah.

Intra-mission, I think it gets called later too.

Yeah, yeah.

Which has its own rules that we can talk about.

We can talk about it in an hour before.

We could save it.

But yeah, there is this, there is this like tension of like

Silva doesn't want this.

Zeno doesn't want this.

But they also trust Kilua.

But they also let their kids fight.

And by fight, they mean fucking like

do missions on each other.

They mean crash trucks.

Like, and then there's a, we'll talk about it later, but there's a moment where it's like, is Silva dropping hints for Kilua like Goto sometimes is?

Or is he like warning him?

Or is he sort of pre-justifying what Illumi is about to start doing?

And it's sort of, it's all of it because like if Kilua can pull this off, then he's allowed to pull it off.

And so you have to allow for the future where either one of them comes out on top.

It's sort of like the caricature of Sparta that we often see, right?

Where it's like, well, you know, there's a strength that can be gained by just letting these fuckers go at each other.

And, you know, best one wins.

And there's another way where this is like the unreformed Hunter Association, like in a micro.

Yes, it is.

The sort of Netaro's sort of dream of a place where the strong go and their will becomes the will of the organization, and that that will lead to positive outcomes generally, is sort of ultimately tested by the Zoldics who have no interest in that dynamic resulting in anything positive except like for the Zoldic legacy.

Like Nettero, I think, believes that there's something about strength that, like, makes you good.

I don't think Sino believes that.

No.

I think it's also notable that the Zoldics don't seem.

There's a way that you could write the Zoldic family of assassins as being extremely money-focused.

They're not really that.

They're sort of like legacy.

They're sort of like, we're the greatest assassins in the world.

Right.

And we always have been.

At some point, though, we have to keep it going.

The money is sort of a um it's sort of a consequence of that that attitude like yeah who else is going to be the zoldix but the zoldix they don't have to worry about the money because it comes with the legacy so you could maybe you could fit it in that way but maybe they just don't care maybe they just care about the legacy i also feel like the only times we've really seen the zoldix ever care about money is when it's maluki like complaining about a new pc being too expensive or something but then on the other hand they have so much money they spend it so frivolously.

I mean, Kilua has

a city.

They own a mountain.

They own a mountain.

They just go like, like, they, they, they go to rent an airship later, and then Kilua's like, what are you talking about?

You need to rent eight airships.

And it's just not, like, there's not even a consideration about like how feasible that is or isn't.

They just do it in five minutes.

Um, but this is where we cut to, it's kind of it's a really funny cut.

It's like, it's basically Killua inside talking to Goto being like, well, I guess I have no.

And then it cuts to all of them outside, choice.

And it's him with

Goto and Canary being like, This isn't really what I thought

just a second.

Yeah, there's some really good, silly Tagashi in these episodes.

Yeah, um, I think, like, goofy Tagashi is a mode that we didn't get to see a ton of in Chimera, and we saw some of it.

Um, there were actually, you know, there are some really funny moments throughout Chimera and, um, but uh, Tagashi is

being loose and weird and funny, and setting up visual jokes

is him kind of at his best.

And

we are now introduced in the distance as two figures come towards us.

They're both running.

Are they running or are they just taking huge strides?

They might just be taking huge strides.

Jimone, who is extremely severe

and gigantic.

And gigantic.

And they

keep like doing sort of like abstract sort of compositions with them where like she appears bigger and bigger as she kind of looms over Kilua, becoming essentially a giant.

She is accompanied by a character who we will eventually learn is her granddaughter.

Yes, Amane.

A woman called Amane.

These two Zelda butlers are great.

Yeah, they're great.

And it's immediately like, it's kind of a relief that it's Goto and Canary for Kilua.

But as soon as they see Tsubone in the distance, everyone is tense,

including Goto.

There's like a sweat drop coming off of Goto's face, who is, and like up to this point, one of the most intense and severe characters we've seen.

And Goto's unflappable.

Yes, and unflappable.

And Goto's like, uh-oh, Tsubone is bad news.

Flapped right now.

Oh, shit, I'm flapped.

Girl, I am crazy flapped right now.

She is Silva's butler, it seems.

Or at least close to Silva.

Because Because Killua says, dad's even more pissed than I thought as she approaches.

She is huge.

She is like muscle-bound.

She has two big white braids on either side of her face.

She is wearing what I thought was a monocle, but is actually half of glasses.

It's great.

It's really good.

And she is playing the like classic trope of the steely, dangerous old woman.

I think about the pirate queen in

God what Ghibli film is that the castle in the sky maybe I haven't seen that this woman oh it's it's a great film

the the is it castle in the sky Sylvie I haven't seen that one either oh she basically like runs a gang of sky pirates and they all think of her as their mom or as their as their grandmother

no because I haven't seen pork roso

maybe hold on that wait maybe these characters could be castle in the sky wait that's what you said.

That is what I said.

There's another one that I haven't seen that I think also involves the sky.

That also isn't

for us.

It is.

It's Castle in the Sky.

Castle in the Sky, yeah.

Captain Dola.

Yeah, she's fucking brilliant.

And Tibone says, if you think I'm as lenient as your father and Goto, you're mistaken.

Time and again, we keep coming back to like Silver both being a real figure of authority and a figure of fear and danger for Killua, but also Silver is lenient.

You know, Silva is listening to you.

And we talk about this every time he appears in the show.

We come out of Silva scenes as being like, I didn't like that.

That was weird.

It's fascinating.

Silva is one of the most interesting characters in the show to me

in a show that's like obsessed with like fathers and parenthood and authority and charisma and people who have

people who have people.

You know, like, and very few people are in command of other people like Silva is.

And the, like, the devotion of the butlers that is, it's so,

um,

so I'm gonna talk about, like, you know, you know how everyone always has bad experiences with doctors or nurses?

Yeah.

Um, the thing, uh,

the thing that I always say is like,

you know, especially talking to like Isaac or whatever, like when Isaac was having surgery and was like, oh my God, these fucking doctors are driving me insane and they won't help me.

And, you know, I'm ringing my buzzer to get like a nurse to come and nobody's coming.

And now he works like at a call center for a hospital and is like always mad at all of the nurses for like just not picking up the phone.

And it's like, I'm having, I have someone with a medical emergency and they just aren't on the phone lines.

It doesn't matter where you work.

Everybody hates their job.

Nurses hate their job, like librarians hate their job, like someone at CVS hates their job.

Everyone hates their fucking job.

These butlers love,

they love the Zoldics.

Like, Canary has kind of maybe misgivings about what's, they all have misgivings about how things work, but they are devoted in like a really bizarre way.

Yes.

And part of this is a synthesis of like a lot of classic like upstairs downstairs fiction right like a lot of the power of upside upstairs downstairs fiction you know uh fiction about the interplay between the uh wealthy and the people who work for them the butlers the servants etc is like the butler who has like a an unerring loyalty to the family over the well-being of the rest of his staff etc and this being played out here where the zaldics really just seem to have like flattened the hierarchy completely there are zaldics and then there are butlers.

You know, it's not like there are cleaning stuff or whatever, right?

Right.

It's like an entire class of devoted butlers.

Right.

And there's not, and like Goto is the one who's seen as like the rebel.

And it's like, Goto will snatch Kiloa up so fast if he slips up.

Like,

they're kind of the.

The dissenting voice here is canary, and by dissenting voice, I mean absolutely not voice, just sort of

in a monologue.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She has an inner monologue saying, you know,

basically saying, I'm on Kilo's side.

I don't care if it costs me my job or my life.

I'm going to help him do this.

And they've really set that up going on 120 episodes now.

Isn't that nice, Hunter Hunter?

Maybe you could have done that with kite.

They did.

They did.

You can't blame Hunter Hunter.

You can only blame television.

But it's great, right?

Because, like, yeah, you're right.

This canary stuff works really well.

Because it has been front-loaded really elegantly.

Yes.

You know,

pointing at the longhead.

Canary, who has the worst Gadar in Hunter Hunter history, which we'll talk about later on.

We'll talk about this later.

Yeah.

And then, you know, Goto, we don't get the internal on this, but it seems to feel the same way.

But like, they're not going to do shit to actively,

like, they won't disobey their orders.

If Kilua breaks a rule, they'll bring him back.

The best that they can do is, like,

not be 100%.

Yes.

Sort of like

malicious compliance.

Right.

Yes.

Two nice little notes here from Tsubone.

Tsubone is the only person in the whole household who can call Kilua Kilua Deer.

This is more play on the

using people's names in specific ways that the show has been doing.

You know,

Nanika calls Kilua Kilua, and Aloka calls him Little Brother.

Little brother, Big Brother.

And now we have, you know, Tsubone is the only person who we can call Killua, who can call him Kilua Deer.

Kilua says, I think I have a problem with old women.

I think Kilua just has a problem with women.

Kilua just has a problem.

Yeah.

But also, but also another iconic Kilua quote, at least in the dub version of this, is: hold on, let me find it.

I wrote it down because when he said it to Goto, I laughed my ass off.

When he's saying, you know, you can't take care of Alica, he says, Do you really think a stupid dude like you can take care of all her needs?

Ladies,

ladies,

if you wanted to, we would.

We have some classic.

Kilo is posting reels that are like, hey, period, Chram, send me a sandwich.

And it's him putting his fist between two pieces of bread.

He's an ally now.

Tibone is also playing very softly, softly with Aluka.

She says,

maybe I just wrote down here.

She's playing nice with her.

She has like a classic sort of like grandmotherly intro.

She's like, Aluka.

Yeah, well, what happens is that after being extremely stern with Kilua, being like, I will fucking wreck your shit if you break one rule.

You better not forget that.

She's so funny.

Alicia throws her arms in front of Kilua and says, don't bully him.

And then this is where Tsubone is like, oh, you're so kind and sweet.

You got to listen to your big brother, okay?

Everything's going to be great.

And then what does Alica do?

Oh, it's so good.

After having spent the whole last three episodes having the rules explained again and again alaka suddenly making a demand out of nowhere something we knew would happen still feels scary she just says give me your fingernail the pinky one yeah um everyone is like oh fuck yeah and then tsubone makes a pretty smart move i think given her like her a difficult move

it's difficult but it's also

She is here to do a job, and the job is pretty, has a pretty broad purview.

So she removes her fingernail and hands it to Aluka.

This is obviously very gross and is a sign of strength and devotion from Tsubone.

Yeah.

I think the ballers are so tough.

Yes, the butlers are so tough.

We saw how it went for Canary

when she met Goan.

Now, it seems like what Tsubone has done, Sabone is then immediately like, all right, I'm kind of going to go into hiding now.

I think she says that explicitly.

Yeah.

So that Aluka can't make more demands.

She She is essentially like locked Aluka, right?

Totally.

100%.

Yeah.

The shock on the bloody fingernail, by the way, is so good and scary.

Let me see.

Did you put it in the thing?

I did not put it in the thing.

I didn't take screenshots yet.

I have to go back and do it later.

It's great.

And, you know, this scene has again been played as a sort of like an upstairs, downstairs comedy.

up to this point and Aluka making one of her demands is super good.

Just making sure I understand this right.

Once Alaka starts making demands of somebody, they will be the demand's target.

Yes.

Until...

That's my understanding of it.

That's totally correct.

And this serves two huge purposes, or maybe even three.

Because Killua is not happy about this, but

I got outflanked.

He has to take the time to ground himself and say, I still have the advantage.

Because this almost feels like a tactic by Tsubone to prevent, you know, to prevent Alaka from doing this to someone else or to prevent including Kilua.

So it's sort of like A and B.

And then also

Kilua's

like, this needs to let Killua tease a rule that he knows about that the other Zoldix and the viewer don't know about because he says, okay, it's fine.

I can't make the wish like I wanted to, but I can still make a command.

Yeah.

That is not even the same.

We don't know what this is about.

That is not even touched on for the whole rest of this set of episodes, but there is something about Killo being able to make a command.

The previous new Aluka rule that we learned is that you're able to do sort of like if-then statements, which they had never tried before.

Right.

It's funny how many people they killed to do experiments with Aloka's thing.

And they still came away without a really good understanding.

Yeah, what we've got going on here is a real when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail type situation from the Zelda's, I think.

Um, remember that they don't know that she can heal people, right?

Yeah, the thing we talked a lot about on the last episode is how, like, all it would have taken would be for them to try to heal someone to learn a little bit more about the rules, and it never even came up.

They just sort of the platonic ideal of murderers, yeah.

Well, because Alec is like

what a beautiful sentence.

Thank you.

They're the platonic ideal of murderers, and for their sins, they have been cursed by this demon who like.

And it's only a curse insofar as your own imagination limits you from

experimenting with anything positive about the world.

It's time to go.

And we learn.

probably the most important thing yet about Aluka and Kilua, which is that they are iPad kids.

Yeah, they are iPad kids.

They're in the back of the Zoldic limo.

Again, the Zelda money on display here.

There are a lot of Zelda cars and airships in this episode.

Yeah, but yeah,

they have a Taylor Swift level ecological impact.

Yeah.

Derogatory.

Yeah, because Aluka kills six billion people or something at one point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think he's doing that in all the massacres all the time.

Another minor display of how things have changed a bit is

Leorio and I believe Goto are talking to each other on iPhones, what is clearly iPhones.

I know.

I wrote down Kiloa, get iPad, but also Leorio get iPhone.

Like, that's a huge, that's crazy.

Yeah.

So this is where Leorio appears, and he appears in the most...

Can I check?

When was the last time we saw Leorio?

At the end of

York New.

Yeah, we didn't see him on Michael.

He was not in Greed Island at all.

Yeah, not in Greed Island, not in Chimera.

It has been a hundred episodes almost that we've seen.

I guess we've technically seen him in that the camera showed him when they like

did whatever montage they were doing, be like, oh, where are our friends at?

And learning Nin now.

Yeah, they like cut to him like wordlessly, but he hasn't been in a scene or had any dialogue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My note here says,

Leorio is leaving to take a doctor exam.

Everybody is splitting off again.

When the Phantom Troop finish a job, they scatter to the four winds.

Yeah.

This is the most Leorio entrance of all time.

It's good.

He's so good at being Leorio.

Who wants to talk about how Leorio re-emerges as a character in Hunter Hunter?

Of course, Leorio re-emerges as a character by screaming in a telephone so loud he shoves the entire thing in his mouth.

All I need is money.

Hold on.

Oh, do you not have it?

It's his chain bastard, you know?

That's true.

Yes, I'll just.

The way this is phrased is: Goto is on the phone to someone, and he is stonewalling them.

He's saying, you know, we only hear his huff of the conversation.

He's saying, I can't answer that question.

You know, I can't answer that question either.

No, I can't put you on to Mr.

Killiwa.

And I think he ends the call.

He hangs up.

And the person immediately rings back.

And as Goto picks up the call, we hard cut to Leorio in the hospital room.

Yeah, like you said, Sylvie, screaming so hard, his eyes are becoming bloodshot.

Yeah.

The visual comedy on Leorio is so funny.

We're

so nice to have him back.

We're a half step away from the cartoon trope of like you can see the screaming lips coming through the receiver on the other side.

His like head's gonna come out of there and scream in Godo's face.

Leorio does have Looney Tunes energy in there.

He does.

He does.

Yeah.

Does the sub deliver his like screaming line in the like bizarre sing-song-y way that the dub one does?

Okay, excellent.

Perfect.

Goto kind of keeps his cool for a while.

He says basically, you know,

Leorio is saying, you know, you got to get Kiloa back, put him on the line.

I'm the real, I'm the real deal.

And Godo says, no, you have to understand, we're the ones who make requests.

At which point, Kilo basically says, oh, come on.

And Godo says, well, okay, and hands over the phone.

Goto is a softie.

Yeah, he is.

It's really cute.

There is some like genuinely because it you're there is not a moment during this where I'm really there like, oh, Godo's here to fully stop or in impair Kiloa in any way.

Like he is

clearly on his side from the get-go and is just sort of playing like

stoic dad vibes, like, or stoic uncle, I guess.

The classic trope of stoic uncle.

Everyone learn is secretly on your side.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That is absolutely what's going on.

Mr.

Feeney.

What is Feeney?

Mr.

Feeney is from

Boy Meets World.

Boy Meets World, yeah.

Okay.

he's also he's assistant director Skinner.

Oh my god, he is.

He is.

He is Assistant Director Skinner.

I don't know who that is.

From the X-Files.

That's from X-Files.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Someday.

Someday.

I've seen three episodes of The X-Files.

I had a really good time.

And then I was watching Shogun or something.

I fell off.

What happens?

Liorio

is being badgered on the other end of the line by his own unfortunate situation as Morel, who is still wearing a hospital gown and I think is still connected to an IV.

He totally is connected to an IV still.

Is

kind of demanding the phone.

Leorio is such a good character.

At this point, he has the line, it's my phone, I'm talking to my friend.

A thing that is objectively true, but is delivered so snottily by Leorio that I wrote down here, Leorio is such an idiot.

I am so happy he's back.

It's my phone and I am talking to my friends.

That's my goat right there.

It's perfect too, because Leorio

does not have the context that we have, not just for Moral and Moral's deal, but for

anything happening in the Hunter world at all.

No.

Did we mention who else is with Leorio and Moral?

Just hanging in the background.

Melody's here.

Yeah, Melody.

Melody's here.

This scene made me, like, kind of made me feel like one of those like morons who's really into the mcu like laughing when the guardians of the galaxy show up in fucking adventures and infinity ward or whatever um that that's the call of duty guys um

but she's got a she's got a new outfit she's so cute she looks like she's a fantasy life farmer she does

she's kind of always had that vibe to a certain extent um biscuity's also here in the background of some scenes so is earlier when people were going to try and come and sort of like wake Gon up, we saw Wing, we saw Hanzo.

That's right.

Send the guy who broke the boy's legs to the hospital.

Hey, he cares for that boy.

He is, doesn't he, isn't he like banging on it or something, the wall or something, like trying to talk through it?

Or am I wrong about who he was doing that?

They all are, yeah.

Morel says, give me the phone.

And Leorio says, no.

Morel says, Listen, they're about to ask you for something and you're going to say, no, that's impossible.

I'm the guy who can get it done.

And Leorio, in classic Leorio style, just sort of says, Oh, no, okay, I'm going to continue on my own.

Goto makes a demand.

There needs to be nobody in the hospital

when they arrive.

Leorio says, This is impossible.

Morel gently puts his hand up with a phone, picks it up, and says, Yep, we could do that.

Sorry, Jackie, I believe what he said is, That's impossible!

Yes, he does.

There's sick people here who need help.

I love this.

I think that, like, I obviously, we as people did not need a reminder of who Leorio is, but thinking of the TV viewer who has been watching Hunter Hunter for like

however many years between seasons.

Hundreds of hour podcast about it.

Yeah, and not constantly thinking about

their four friends and where they are in the hunter world.

It's like a it's a really just quick way to remind you of everything you need to know about Leorio.

he's a really passionate hothead who is super rude but also deeply cares about people and their well-being yeah especially when it's related to their medical well-being um he's also a comedy character so we're gonna hilarious yeah a bunch of jokes um it it it hits great

uh he's specifically um

upset when before talking to kilua about this concept of having conditions to save a friend uh like which is what goto when go Goto tries to say, like, we have conditions, he's like, you can't have conditions to save a friend.

This is where moral, or no, sorry, Go, I think it was, is it Goto?

Uh, yeah, Goto has is explains, like, Kilu is risking his life to do this, which I think

was,

I don't think it was that explicit before.

Like, of course, there were risks, and we know about the Lumi at this point.

No, I mean, I think that the stakes are so high anytime you involve Alaka.

Sure.

And also whenever you make a play, you know, in fiction of like, I'm putting my life on the line to save the life of my friend.

I d it maybe it wasn't made explicit, but there was no doubt in my mind that Kilua was risking his life for this.

Yeah, I feel like also the reputation of the Zoldex, like Kilua, I think, was pretty clear about that he's moving against his parents' wishes.

I can see why Moral would assume the worst,

given everything going on with Kiloa.

That's fair, but the I don't think that the

I don't think anyone thinks I don't think any of the butlers think that the parents would kill Kiloa.

No, I so maybe it is an Alica thing, maybe just like maybe everyone is worried about Oluka instead of no, but Ilumi, like Illumi is out there, also the big thing.

Like, we cannot ignore the brother in the room.

Yeah, like this is also

a scene before Lumi sort of reveals himself,

yeah.

Um, um,

Morel calls Nove.

They're trying to sort of like reverse engineer what exactly Killer is planning.

Morel is like, they sent in an exorcist and it didn't work.

He's the only non-exorcist in the Hunter Association.

So I guess they're extremely rare, which was implied, but now we know.

You know, one out of 700.

Who was our previous exorcist?

What was his name?

I don't remember his name, Worm Guy.

Oh, yeah, Worm Guy.

Gosh,

well yeah because the worm would

win and hang out on his shoulder

so he's not part of the association i guess he's just like a person but i also was like oh what i didn't because i was under the impression a lot of people well i guess they mentioned i was gonna say i was under the impression that the people hunting for like doing greed island for what's his name

were pro hunters were pro hunters but i guess there are they have also mentioned before like freelance hunters and unlicensed hunters, right?

All they had to do is pass the test to kill.

You're right.

It's not a, it's not a like show your card thing.

Right.

Yes, that makes sense.

Um,

I like this little detail as well.

You know, not only are they rare, over and over with the exorcists, you sort of get the sense that there's something kind of wrong.

about them something sinister

um and i suspect that it's not that they are sinister it's a stigma associated with their profession you know when you need a nen exorcist, things are really bad.

You know, they're like

coroners or like funeral directors or something.

They are a profession that is sinister or unsettling, even if there's not actually anything really sinister or unsettling about it,

culturally.

Leorio agrees to let Morrow handle the conflict or the contact with Kilua.

And then just

sort of fucks off.

He says, there's some people I need to have a word with.

The first person is Karapika, and he does not get that word.

He calls Karapika on the phone.

He's angry that he won't pick up.

He's like, Your friends are in trouble.

Why don't you pick up your phone?

And we get one shot of Karapika in a dark room, wearing a suit, sitting with his phone in his hands, and his eyes are red.

It's really funny for somebody.

Aura farming.

Just aura farming.

There's a couple people who are farming aura in these episodes.

That's sure.

What is going on here?

Are we ever going to see this?

See why?

See what is going on with Karapaka?

I mean, I know we are in the manga, but

we are totally not going to see what's going on.

Yeah, I didn't think so.

That's so cool.

Just being like, and it's great because, you know, we got to the end of York New and we were like, this has not really resolved anything.

for Karapaka.

Karapaka is having a bad time.

The wages of revenge are not buying him good things.

And this is just the ongoing confirmation of that.

So long after York New City, we cut back to Karapika.

He is isolated.

He's wearing the suit, which was the outfit we associated with him during the hostage situation.

And his eyes are red.

And it's an extremely famous shot, I think, too, of Karapika.

I see that picture all the time.

And if you go to...

the Hunter Hunter

like wiki page for Karapika, that is his headshot that they use.

A lot of of

I constantly see it with the caption, waiting for the next hunter-hunter chapter.

But that I love the just the detail that the phone is in his hand ringing.

Yeah, no, it's not good.

It's like, oh, what's going on?

Yeah, why can't he do that?

We talked a little bit about what might be going on with Karapika in the

towards the end of the

Ant arc.

I have no idea.

I mean, I have, sorry, I have like super high-level plot

idea, but I could not tell you in a million years why he's not picking up that phone.

I mean, I can, right?

He's Karapaka.

He's in the middle of something awful.

Damn, that's so true.

You know, Karapaka is someone who is there for his friends, but he's also just like...

Remember during the hostage situation where he essentially just sort of became this like this machine for a perfectly engineered nen situation?

Yeah.

It's a mononym, right, Karapica?

As far as we know, there's no canon surname as far as I'm aware of.

Yeah.

Krapaka.

Takashi likes giving people

a game.

I think that's what a lot of fans do when they're trying to find a surname.

Pariston is wearing an incredible suit.

Remember, the election is still happening?

Yeah, have you heard about the election?

Appears in, I think, a different suit every time he appears in these episodes.

By the way, do we know the name of the city that we're in?

Oh, we learn it later.

It's called Parasta.

I think it's called Swardani.

Oh.

Oh, it is called.

Hang on.

They mentioned going to Parasta or

the hospital is in Swardani.

Maybe?

I think Parasta is at the Cundranos Airport.

I think it is in Swardani.

It is.

I'm looking on the wiki now.

Yeah, I am also doing this.

It's in Swardani City, yeah.

Good names.

Parriston's suit is made of gold sequins.

And Parasta is the town with the airport that they leave from.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

Did you hear that, Sylvie?

Sorry.

I might have, but I also, my mic's been sensitive lately.

I might have not been up on it enough for people to hear me.

He is making the sort of like classic

center of the board pitch for liberal democracy.

This is.

And everybody loves it, right?

This is Parriston's signature style, as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, he is essentially saying, I didn't even write notes here because you know what he's saying.

He's saying things like, even if your opinions aren't popular ones, you won't be ignored.

This is an opportunity for you to make your voice heard, etc., etc.

Well, he makes a really funny case for this.

He says, in fact, Jing here is a prime example.

He's committed more violations than I can count, and yet look where he's sitting.

He's still here among us, a proud member of the Zodiacs.

If you're thinking about abstaining, why not vote for him instead?

And then he quickly realizes, weirdly, and for the first time, that he's made a mistake.

And so he goes, I'm just kidding about that.

Don't do that.

He's so funny.

He's hilarious.

I was.

I was

not as warm on Pariston when he appeared because I had met...

I had been spending so long with Hunter Hunter's greatest mealy-mouthed idiot, Shire Poof.

For some

shirepoof is explicitly cooler than Pariston, but now I'm getting distanced from Poof and spending more time with Pariston.

He's a great little worm, having a lovely time.

I'm going to say, you know, just to nitpick semantics here, I believe that Chao Poof, despite being a better and more interesting character, maybe than

Pariston, is much less cool.

I can't think of a less cool person on earth than Poof.

Extremely uncool.

Oh, God.

Poof was so good.

Hey, you ever think about how good Chimera Ant was?

Every day.

That's why this podcast exists.

Jing takes this shot pretty stoically.

He is so sick of this shit.

He wanted to have an election to put the cat among the pigeons.

But you get the impression that he's sitting here in his chair at this meeting, like, oh, come on, really?

Remember last time someone took a shot at him during the Zodiac meeting and he said, I will kill you?

He's not doing that.

Yeah, right now.

Someone that threatened his son?

Yes, yes, it was.

No, no.

The I will kill you was someone who was just like, Jing sucks.

It was like the first Zodiac meeting.

Do you really think Jing Freaks cares about his son?

Okay.

Wow.

Speaking of,

Pion,

who is sort of MCing this,

Bunny Girl.

The Bunny Girl, invites everyone,

you know, raise your hand if you have something to say or if you want to make a speech.

They're, they're, they're sort of inviting anyone.

This is the chance for anyone who thinks that someone might vote for them to talk if they have ideas or anyone.

Speak now or forever, hold your peace.

Yeah, I mean, like we talked about a lot, like they're still kind of on this whole the election is open to anyone thing, yeah, understanding that eventually someone's going to get enough votes to cause a runoff.

Um, uh, and the first person with their hand up, the

the big guy in the dark suit is Leorio Parody Knight who

walks slowly down to the mic takes it in his hand and says why haven't you visited Goan yet you've got to know what condition he's in

and this is

it's been heavily teased this is the second of the two moments in Hunter Hunter where while watching it I stood up alone in my office and pumped my fist in the air and cheered yeah

no this you if you don't clap you got no heart.

I have the whole thing to play.

There's a lot of uh

musical build-up where we hear the excellent song Sprint, but I'm gonna trim that so that we just get sort of the ends of it.

But I'm gonna play the whole thing here if nobody has objections.

Yeah, hit it.

Who are you to go?

His friend.

Oh,

I appreciate that.

I hope you'll stay friends with him.

That's all.

So, you didn't answer my question.

Just visit him!

Go before it's too late, damn it!

Well, from all the stories I've heard, he has quite a few friends like you.

And what I'm saying is that that's enough.

This is not the time to mess around!

Don't you care?

Do you even have any idea how much Golfs wanted to see you?

If you would just go and talk to him, who knows?

Maybe that might help him start to recover.

Did he say he wanted me to come?

Did he tell you that?

He said those words.

like he's in any condition to

bastard

he punches the podium here

and then the punch zooms across

and lines up right under

the chin of jing

and socks him right in the fucking dead fist busts from the grab from a bull

Everyone

loves this.

It is the funniest fucking shit in the world.

It is one of the most hype moments in the entire history.

It's unbelievable.

You love to see it.

It's so good.

We didn't even know that Leorio knew Nen.

No.

He debuts a power by punching Jing Freaks in the chin, and the hunter crowd goes nuts there's no like oh my god there's violence on the on the floor this is the hunter organization created by isaac the tarot so they're like 0% gasps 100 cheers this is ah this is just so charming um

well and also it's it's the hunter exam it's the hunter association you know uh

It's Netero's Hunter Association, but also these people know and largely hate Jing Freaks.

Yes, I was going to say, this is like, fuck this guy in particular.

And finally, someone has walloped him.

I did not know this was going to happen.

Leorio's nen ability was spoiled for me by a figurine in a window in the small German town of Seega.

Not in Japan where you just were?

That's crazy, actually.

Wow.

So,

on an overcast afternoon two weeks ago, did German SpongeBob show him to you?

German SpongeBob did not show you.

Sorry, where did you say that you were?

I was in the small German town of Siegen.

Oh, wow.

I was walking past a shop.

It had a bunch of

manga figurines in the window.

I was like, I wonder if there's a Hunter-Hunter one.

And it was Leorio with his fist alight in green Nen and a fist coming out of the ground in front of him.

And I was like, oh, no.

But this was great because one episode short of

getting through there with no spoilers.

The beautiful taste of what his nen ability is was spoiled for me.

His initial wonderful deployment of it, I had no idea.

Yeah.

Even when he first punched the podium?

No.

It is excellent.

This is.

Jing has opened himself up to this by becoming real.

When Jing, when you are not real, when you're doing things like riding a dragon on top of a frog on top of a dragon or setting your son up a mysterious nen box.

Your son's friend can't punch you in the jaw.

But as soon as you show up in the show and you get into funny little games about an election, you try and do a weird little magic trick with beans, you have a fight with Pariston.

By staking your claim on reality, on sort of mundanity, on like trying to be involved in anything other than

involvement with your son, you are opening yourself up to the blood.

Well, let's put a pin in that too, because that's, let's remember that.

Let's take that and put it on the this will this will be important wall.

Keep will remember that.

Keep will remember that.

And speaking of things that I'll remember.

Yes, I'm so curious about this.

In episode 12,

I said

these words.

There's going to be a time where we're going to have to talk a lot about Jing.

And I'm saying now that there's going to be a way to hear what I have to say say about Jing that's like, he's defending this guy.

And I'm telling you now, I'm not.

I'm not defending him.

He sucks.

He sucked shit.

But also, Hunter Hunter is a very weird world with a bunch of very weird people in it.

And the thing is episode 12, which is very funny.

And the thing that the things that is going on in the show is bizarre.

And I cannot wait to talk about it.

But I'm telling you now, if you hear, if you're hearing what I'm going to say, and then saying he's defending this guy, I'm not.

This is your warning not to think that.

This is the day.

You really teed that one up.

I really do.

You really, you walked in from the back of the stadium arena saying, I'm going to sing a song one day.

Yeah.

Because there's, there, there, all the way back then, you know, there's things that you want to say about Jing, and there's still things that I want to say about Jing, but can't.

But there's a very interesting

read that on this that I don't see a lot of people talking about because, on one hand, the thing that he says is so audacious and so cruel and so uncaring about his son and the state that his son is in.

But there's a second side to that, which is that Jing is right.

No, he is unfortunately right about Gone.

Gone does not want to see him.

He would never forgive himself if he got himself hurt by being stupid and he won.

the dad chase by default.

He would go insane.

It would break him.

It's the perfect victory thing from Greed Island.

Again, they're working in everything.

I mean, think about how, as far back as Hisuka's tag, how all-consumed Goan was by returning it and by getting it for real, by earning the badge the way that he wanted to earn it and not by default.

We're really drawing parallels between those two guys, huh?

Yeah.

And here we are at the very end.

So much, it's, and it's not just like a thing that happened in a game you played.

This is like your life's work.

My life's work is to win the game against my dad like Kite did.

And if Jing showed up and was able to stir him from his coma, and that is how Goan wins, it would destroy him.

Now, he was created to be destroyed in this way by Jing in the long run.

Yeah, that is.

That's important to mention.

This is the bridge that Jing built.

But still,

Jing knows the thing that Leorio does not know, which is that Goan doesn't think like you.

He thinks like me.

Yes.

And in fact, I think

this is

the perfect mirror of Killua saying to Silver,

you know we're so, you know, I'm your son, right?

You know, we're the same person.

This is the father saying of his son to somebody else, he and I are the same.

And,

you know, ultimately, I made him that way, but Silver made Killiwa this way.

And Kilua acknowledges that when he says, you know, you know, I'm your son, Dad.

I find this to be so fascinating.

What a fucking weird guy.

Really interesting.

I hate him, but like, to be clear, I think he is a great character.

I feel about Jing the same way that I feel about Revan from Kotor 1.

Which is,

okay.

There was a time in my life where I was obsessed with Revan, not because I thought Revan was awesome, but because I thought Revan was so interesting and cool.

And like, what is he thinking?

What is he doing?

Why is he doing the things that he does?

Like, the plot of Kotor only ever and Kotor 2 only ever hint at what this guy's real motivations were.

And he is surrounded by people that he, that, that,

depending on how you play, that he uses as tools or that use themselves as tools for him.

And Jing is the exact same way.

This is not the first time that I've analogized

the code dark games with Jing specifically.

It happened,

not shocked.

It happened either in Greed Island or towards the beginning of the Chimera Ant arc.

No, I remember this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And,

you know, for fear of saying too much, I think I didn't spell it out in as much detail.

But I am just, what is this fucking guy thinking?

I'm obsessed with what this guy's thinking.

What is he thinking?

Also, I do think people do that.

Whenever we see Jing, he is this sort of like unkempt, taciturn

weirdo.

When we see Goan,

Goan at his best, Goan at his most charismatic and compelling, is this kind of like burning ball of energy and light.

You know, that's the thing that Killer always says.

Jing is a guy with messy hair.

He's a small man with messy hair

sitting in a chair at all times.

He's a short little

short weirdie.

But you know what I mean, right?

It's like

he's nowhere near as he has no panache.

Oh, I think he has panache.

We get a glimpse of it when we get that kite flashback, right?

Sorry,

when he...

Like, it's not to say that we haven't seen it.

We just like when we get that, like,

when he's in the sewer with all the animals waiting for kite and they have that little bit there, like, because I remember it because I think it was Keith or Austin that pointed it out, that he sounds like Goan in that scene.

Yeah, he does.

Like, when he, when he says, wow, that's cool.

You live down here?

Or whatever.

I think that that's, like,

it's, it's kind of interesting to think about him, like, what he's like when he wants to be somewhere for

how we see him 90% of the time.

Yeah.

And yet, yet, even in that low mode, low-energy Jing, he's still capable of wielding an enormous amount of power and influence.

Even as people hate him so much that when a stranger arrives and punches him in the chin,

they go nuts for it.

Maybe

there's two things I think because you say, how can he do this?

I can't spoil the A More Civilized Age Kodar 2 podcast.

So

part of what I want to say, you'll have to listen to all of that.

Episodes that aren't even out yet, things that I know that will be talked about that haven't, that'll, you know, it'll be

in months.

And the other half of that is like, you know, they are constantly saying that Goan just like shines like the sun.

Yeah.

And, you know, you go further back and you're like, oh, Jink sort of reminds me of Goan, you know, in small little ways.

And then like, you just have a sun that gets older and older and dimmer and denser and smaller

until it's a black hole.

Yeah.

Have we ever seen Jing's nen?

No.

No.

Okay.

No.

Yeah.

It's time.

I don't even know if we've had someone say, like, what type of enhancer, like, enhance.

I was.

I guessed enhancer and then said enhancer.

What type of nen user he is?

No, I don't think we have either.

I don't even know if anyone knows.

Yeah, I don't know.

The last note that I have here about this confrontation with

Jing

that is definitely in line with what I was saying about

the ways that Jing puts himself in the world, opens himself up to this, is like it is so great.

And it is so Hunter-Hunter that all of the dad stuff and mystery, remember the Nen box with the Nen writing on it, standing on the top of the tree.

This is not necessarily coming down to, because we we have more story to tell, but we have now transitioned into a state where we just have Leorio in a town hall meeting being like, go and visit your son in the hospital.

You fuck.

I hope you die.

You fuck is really important.

You fuck.

I hope you die is super important.

Super important.

That is the crux of the message.

It's time for the results.

And finally, we have reached Quorum.

It has taken us

five votes.

Yeah, no, four votes.

Four votes of the entire hunter organization.

We're at 97%.

And when we hit 97%, do you remember viewer?

We cull the herd down to 16 and do it again.

Now, a lesser storyteller would say, there are 16 candidates.

I'll tell you about maybe two of them.

No.

We are not dealing with the small mind.

No.

You're dealing with a guy who wants to show you 16 people.

I have got them written down.

God bless him.

Yes.

Would you like to go through all of these names?

Boy, would I.

Yeah.

I've also got them written down, Keith.

Do you want to alternate?

Sure, yeah.

This is fun.

Do you want to go first or second?

I will go first.

I've also written down broadly what people say about them.

Can I pick the last one?

Yes, you can.

You can.

Thank you.

Okay.

Number one, Pariston.

he's number one right now.

His platform is, quote, a kinder, gentler hunter association.

Another

fuck.

God, he's, and

the thing I love here is the number one is like on the like knot of his tie because the, the way that this scene, for anyone who's not watching along, yeah, it'll show a number of like where they are in the standings, and then it'll fade in an image of them, and the number will be there somewhere, like diegetically, maybe not diegetically, but overlaid somewhere on an image of

the the candidate

um cheetah yorkshire a triple star hunter like parrison hill and the brains of the zodiacs uh and her motto is i will expel all corruption he's gonna drain the swamp gonna drain the swamp

there's a cheetah in the wios

number three leorio paradonite Punched Jing freaks.

This is his star after punching Jing is such a good line.

He's currently studying to become a doctor.

And he's a

thud.

Remember how we talked about how this whole election is a farce?

Leorio is now

too viewed.

That is a sign of a working democracy.

Two views.

Votes behind Cheetah Yorkshire.

57 to 55, and then Pariston is at 259, I believe.

Yeah,

he's doing well.

Yeah, he's got a heavy lead.

So what I had written down that Pariston gained about 10 votes.

Cheeto also gained about 10 votes.

Leoria went from zero to 55 overnight.

One punch.

One punch.

11 votes for each knuckle that collided with.

I'm going to use

the dubs pronunciation for this next name.

Botobai Gigante.

A triple star hunter and advisor to the Zodiacs.

He was very close to the previous chairman.

My note for this guy is literally snoring.

Yeah.

Number five, Mizaistom.

This is the cow.

He is a crime hunter.

Double star crime hunter.

Now, you might think that this means someone who hunts for crimes to do, but we will learn later.

Would you?

I would not have assumed that, Jack.

We will learn later.

He is, in fact, a cop.

He is a cop.

And then a lot of times they call him the zodiac's conscience.

Yeah, really weird.

And this is going to become important later.

Before you mention the next one, Keith,

it is so Yoshihiro Tagashi to do what he does now.

One way of doing this would be like you'd pack all 16 and they would all be characters we know.

No.

No.

Here comes number six.

Ikshampe Katocha, a single star hacker hunter and a netizen who even now is still refusing to vote.

He's absolutely the like libertarian candidate.

He is.

He looks like evil Mickey Mouse put a

paper bag over his head and drew a nasty face on it.

I love

his hacker gear.

Yeah.

Number seven, Terridin Neutral.

Terridine from human.

Teridine.

He is from Human Resources.

Yep.

And he wants to reform the Hunter exam.

I will say, I think I probably support this platform.

Yes, there's three characters who the camera sort of treats as sinister but whose goal is like maybe hunters shouldn't be so nasty yeah maybe we should do background checks before we just let anybody in here this is a hunter association broadcast you know you have to look at who's sending the message out there beans is narrating all this right right maybe just saying yeah um

this is this is like uh

noam jomsky reading the financial times that's his favorite newspaper

I don't understand this one.

It's like Noam Chomsky reading the Financial Times.

It's his favorite newspaper.

Is that true?

It is true.

Yeah, that's totally true.

The Financial.

Oh, I see.

Because it just tells Noam Chomsky everything he needs to know.

Because the Financial Times is.

Exactly.

Because it's for people who actually need to know what's going on.

You know, it's highly colored by propaganda.

But if you can read through the propaganda,

there's a lot of information in there.

And Noam Chomsky is immune to propaganda.

He was immune to propaganda until very recently.

Did Noam take a turn?

I'm not exactly surprised.

No, he's just extremely sick.

Oh, no.

Oh, you hadn't heard.

He's so old.

He's like 700 years old.

Yes, it's weird at 700 that he finally started not doing well, but he is 96.

Biblically old.

I think he's been in the hospital for like, you know, 18 months or something.

My God.

Yeah.

The photo of him on the wall.

He got him in the gone room on his Wikipedia page was taken in 2017, and he still looks phenomenally old.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, for what it's worth,

I'm probably going to cut all the Domjopsky stuff out except for my one joke.

Okay.

But

he did take a turn.

And the turn was.

I've been telling people good ideas for 70 something years and nothing's worked.

So you might as well just vote for the Democrats.

Who cares?

Oh, my God.

He gave up.

He gave up.

He did give up.

I think when you're 96,

you're kind of a lot of people.

He's like, they're terrible, but you should still do it, you know, which I think is arguable.

I think it's an arguable position.

Number one.

Is it me or you?

It's you.

Okay.

Morrow McRanasse.

A single star sea hunter who defeated the ants.

What does that mean?

He's a ocean.

He's He's

S-E-A.

He does ocean stuff.

I see he was able to hold his breath underwater

because he's an ocean man.

He's an ocean man.

I thought that was because

he was like a.

That joke's not going to scan for anyone who doesn't listen to the clap cast.

Doesn't matter.

Pay five bucks and you'll get that joke.

It's a dollar.

One single bucket.

That's one buck, yeah.

Pay one dollar.

But pay five.

But pay.

Number nine.

Satcho.

This is the horse.

Yeah.

Do you remember him?

He's busted.

Satcho Kobuyokawa.

Yeah,

what's his platform?

He's a double-star hunter, and he's an advisor to the Zodiacs, and he seeks to reform the association from behind the scenes.

I don't know what that means if you're the chairman.

I don't know what that means.

I have no idea what that means.

If you're the chairman, he's posing with a subwoofer.

He is posing with a subwoofer.

I also don't know what that's about.

He's all montage.

Takashi's really just trying stuff, and it's great.

Biscuit Krueger, a double-star gemstone hunter, and the association's mother, a sister figure.

Let her live.

More and more people want her to scold them.

Okay, there you go.

Says beans.

Says beans.

Says beans.

Look, he's on the he's just reporting the news.

These are the facts.

That's true.

He's just the best.

These are the facts are.

The facts are: everyone's horny for our friend.

For our mother, sister.

Cousin.

11.

Sambika Norton, a doctor whose platform is please don't vote for me.

Yeah.

I nearly wrote don't hunt for me.

Please don't hunt for me.

And what?

I like this design, by the way, just of like a it evokes ninja and doctor at the same time.

Yeah.

One of my favorites, Lynn Order,

a double-star gourmet hunter and the oldest hunter in the association.

I missed her.

No one has heard her speak in five years.

That's

it.

Was when Lynn Ordov showed up that I really started cracking up.

Yeah.

Number 13, Bushidora Ambitious, who is part of the Hunter Disciplinary Committee.

Yeah.

He's hated by Laws.

Yeah.

He's got a bad vibe.

He looks like Captain Falcon.

Well, now he does.

Now, this is the thing.

He does have a bad vibe, and so does Teradane Neutral.

And I love that they're neutral and ambitious.

And they team up.

They team up to be like, we shouldn't let hunters be mass murderers.

That essentially is their platform, which is like hard to argue.

Yeah.

Also, we should stop killing young people in the hunter exam.

Yes, that's yeah.

Yeah.

They sort of go one.

That is Teradane's thing.

Is like the hunter exam should filter out bad people.

and

also we shouldn't let mass murderers in.

Loop Highland, a lost hunter who can find anything from missing contacts to missing persons.

This dude's in another manga right now.

He is.

They mentioned that he's trying to track down the missing hunters.

And I'm like, this is like a 230-chapter Naoki or Nasawa banger happening right now.

Like, I want to know what's going on with him.

Oh, congratulations.

We do, unfortunately, I get a letdown reveal of what he's up to, but I want to see the mystery of the missing hunters.

Congratulations, Jack.

You get my favorite reveal.

I think this is the one that Sylvie wanted to read.

Oh, I thought that's the first one.

Yeah, that's the last one.

Jing was the last one.

No, the last one is Jing.

Right.

Oh, my bad.

This is the one I wanted.

Go ahead, Sylvie.

Cutie Beauty.

The cute hunter who wants to make a cute association.

She's a fucking diva.

I love her.

She's also the leader of the vice chairman's fan club.

Yeah.

And she can't account for taste, unfortunately.

Not just a cute hunter, a single star cute hunter.

This is a recognized cute hunter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Betty Boop of the Hunter Association.

Yeah, she sure is.

The leopard print from head to toe.

She's had the girls done for sure.

This is sort of like

somewhere between Betty Boop and cigarette aunt.

Yeah, I love it.

I am here for it.

Yeah.

cutie beauty, I think, is like another one of those moments where you've got to go, like, wait, what are hunters?

What do they do?

Like, it's sort of the natural

end point of learning about gourmet hunters in the hunter exam arc, where it's like, oh, I guess you could just be a hunter of anything.

And then cutie beauty goes, like, yeah, you can be even a hunter of cute stuff.

I go to remote villages and use their claw machines to get little-known plushies.

Oh, my fucking God.

I want to see

the manga with cutie beauty in it.

I also do.

This is the thing.

There's a few of these guys that I'd read like whole arcs about.

This is why Tagashi has the stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then finally, Jing Freaks, a double-star ruins hunter and vagabond of the Zodiacs.

Was it pity votes that put him back in the running?

Says Beans.

Beans, two days ago, you said, why don't you just take over?

Here's my theory.

Beans rigged it.

Beans is the voice.

Beans is the eight vote.

Yeah.

Why go on the news and slam him?

You know, cover his tracks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Never let them see your next move.

Never let them see your little bean tracks.

Dude, it is.

I'm always saying that, dude.

Beans feet like the repo robots.

I believe that.

Oh, just sort of like little rounded, pointy things.

I bet you can pull up like Mr.

Krabs' feet.

Oh, like

he's Mr.

Krabs.

Yeah, yeah.

In case this doesn't appear in the Clapcast, I watch SpongeBob for the first time, but only in German.

Yes.

It has to come up, but it says, I'm going to have to say

Alley.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kilua, Alica, and the Butlers are catching up on all this news.

They've been watching all the stuff we just watched, they're watching on their iPads.

Kilua noting that people must really fucking hate Jing and also sort of calling out Leorio for using his Nen power publicly.

He goes, I guess he's an emitter.

It's really funny.

Didn't we, bro?

Didn't he do a water test and we knew that?

No, I'm wrong.

Oh, I don't know.

No, but

the last time Leorio was like, maybe it didn't.

The last time Leorio talked about Nen, he had only ever heard of 10.

He was like, oh.

Oh, yeah.

He was like, I know what Nen is.

I know what Nen is.

It's 10.

And they're like, no, you fucking fucking cat.

You know what?

I bet I had this exact confusion during the York New Arc where I thought, oh,

I think they mentioned it.

And then one of you was definitely like, they don't mention it.

Don't say anything.

It's totally possible that it happens at some point towards the end.

I'm just forgetting.

But the last I remember, it's he's like, I know about Nen.

It's when you manifest your aura.

And they're like, you're an idiot, Leorio.

Shut the fuck up.

You don't know shit, dude.

You don't know shit.

Does anybody want to give a rundown on Killua's internal analysis of the Zoldex and their feelings about alcohol?

Oh my gosh.

I have things to say about this.

Okay.

But I also, I have

a, I have a document here.

Let's see.

Oh, the touch.

Do you have the thing?

I have the thing, and I got the manga version of it with English.

Oh, that's English.

Oh, perfect.

Perfect.

This is what I wanted to talk about.

And

Goto has a tense conversation with this person before letting slip deliberately this is one of these moments where you know uh it seems like goto is is throwing people a bone that the person on the other end of the phone is ilumi this causes amane the uh granddaughter of tsbone to visibly tense up the the mood changes kilua visibly slumps down in his chair and takes the phone from ilumi sorry from Goto kind of reluctantly um he has been trying to work out how every family member feels about Alaka.

And because nobody in this family says a goddamn thing to each other, but is constantly trying to like outmaneuver each other,

he's kind of having to do it through these like little

subtle means.

He can intuit that Goto is probably on board because of the clue that he just left.

He sees Amane tense up, which suggests that she is also

on the anti-Ilumi faction.

The parents, he's like,

Where does he sit with the parents?

Who?

Where does how does Kilua feel that the parents feel about Alec?

Respects.

Oh,

Kilua respects Silva, and Silva has high hopes for Kilua, and then

Silva wants to control Aluka.

There is no relationship between Aluka and the mother.

And Keith is reading out these specific specific words because on screen at this point, we get to see Sylvie's shipping chart.

Basically,

hold on.

Hold on.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

That's not what it is.

Do you want to know what it is?

What is it?

It's a genogram, which is a document that we use in systemic therapy to track intergenerational family cycles.

Wow.

Oh, my God, Dre.

Wow.

This is such a good poll, Dre.

This episode is wild because I'm pretty sure Tagashi just like

because Tagashi is so into games and he's so into rules and how like systems within games work, I think he just kind of accidentally intuits some templates of Boinian family therapy.

Maybe he's maybe he's been in family therapy.

Maybe, but it's just, it's so.

I don't know.

As far as I know, I don't know what the scholarship of family therapy, like specifically Western scholarship looks like, you know, going over to Japan.

But I don't know.

It doesn't, it's, it's very uncanny.

Look, it's a man who's a man who knows

family dynamics.

No, absolutely.

And it's, it's, it's just crazy.

It's so cool.

But yeah, no, this is a real thing.

We use genograms as a way to help people kind of like make sense of their life and how they got there to figure out like patterns that exist within their generation of a family or like even previous generations.

It kind of comes from an idea of like your job as a therapist to basically help someone become like emotionally resistant to the toxic cycles within their family.

And that's how change can start to happen, which is

basically what killer was doing.

Yeah, this is an outward-facing document, then Dre?

Um,

I would say yes.

Yes.

Do you mean like as in like you share it with like the client or the family that you're with?

Yeah, 100%.

You could write for yourself to make your work easier.

I mean, obviously, you know, yeah, you could, but no, it's very much meant to be like a shared living document.

Right.

Yeah.

And, you know,

Keith will probably put this in the thing, but we are looking at something that sort of vaguely resembles a family tree, but with a series of relationships

labeling each

series of relationships between each person.

So we can see that Kilua is bad against Tsubone and Amane, and they are responsible for, yeah, we

are responsible

Kiliwa.

Silva and Ilumi have a give-and-take relationship, which is so interesting.

Tommy Pickles is here, and he's described as basically untouched.

I don't know what that's about.

He's just an island.

Nobody knows about him.

What do you know about Tommy Pickles, by the way, Jack, at this point?

Do you mean in the Rugrats, or do you mean

in Hunter Hunter?

I was going to say both.

I know that he is a Zoldic who is like older than Zeno.

Or about the same.

Oh, sorry.

Yes, he's older than Zeno for sure.

I'm happy at this point just saying who this is, unless someone wants to stop me.

This is Maha Zoldic.

I don't know anything about him except that

I think that he's Zeno's grandfather.

Yeah, he's...

He's old.

He's what he does in the manga.

I mean,

he shows up in Yorknew in the manga, briefly, I believe.

Oh, all right.

We talked about that, I think.

Yeah, and he doesn't show up again, except

I think that his son is involved in the...

So Zeno's father is in the post-anime stuff.

Right.

And there's just some really nice stuff here that is

stuff that we have sort of intuited, but haven't really had make clear.

For example, Zeno favors Killua.

Killua wants to be free of Ilumi.

Illumi wants to control Killua.

Like I said, Killua and sorry, Illumi and Silva have a give-and-take relationship on both sides, which is really interesting.

And then there was one other that I...

I find this one really interesting.

So first of all, there's only three hearts on the whole thing.

Silva and

Kikio share a heart.

Kikio and Kaluto share a heart.

And

Aluka and Kilua share a heart.

The only other line coming from Kaluto is that he envies Aluka.

Which is

that about?

What is that about?

The girls are fighting.

The girls are fighting.

I mean...

yeah.

At least someone is looking at Alicia and going, yeah, you can be a girl.

College has not gotten that from anybody.

Despite trying pretty hard.

Yeah, no, I know.

Something I really like about this is we talked a little bit about the chain of command for

the butlers, and we find out this says Zeno is the one who supervises Goto and Canary,

which...

I kind of love as a detail for him.

I've been a big Zeno fan, I think.

I I don't think I've hidden it as thinking.

Yeah, he's definitely the nicest of the elder Zoldex

towards Killua.

But the idea that he is to keep an eye on my grandson is cute to me.

It is very cute, although I will never forgive him for turning away from Killua in that moment.

He did abandon them there, but

that's Zoldeck.

I know, I agree.

I agree, Sylvie.

I'm a Zeno head.

Yeah, it's like

he's like

top four Zoldex for me, you know?

Yeah

one and two kilo Dalika like the and then it kind of flip-flops between Paulo Toe and Zeno for me and number three He just seems to have the softness of a grandfather.

You know when a bad dad becomes a grandfather and they like kind of fix themselves in a way because they're they're no longer bound by the constraints of being in a father-son relationship and they can just like be nice to a baby and it's easy and they sort of get out out scot-free.

That's sort of what it feels like to me, which is like maybe 40 years ago, Zeno was a Silva, but now he's a grandfather.

And it's like easy to just be like, yeah, just let the kid do what he wants.

One kill a day.

One kill per day.

Love that.

I just love that.

Killua also intuits that Silva has sent the two butlers

not only to kind of keep the family safe, to avoid Killua breaking the precautions, but also to get clues on how to better use aluka this is such a like a real um capable zoldic mind at work being like well this situation sucks but i can exploit it just a little i can i i i might not have to feed some tourists to my evil daughter can you imagine the mental strain of being a zaldic and like constantly not only having to be an assassin but also having to like constantly be against your whole family like in this weird

like it produces those kind of electric moments like when illumi was confident that killua loved him the most i think it's that kind of stress yeah comes out when you are a zeldic yeah this is a family disagreement thinks kilua an intra-family mission when zaldics disagree rather than coming to a consensus or talking it through they are instead encouraged to all simultaneously do things their own way not allowed encouraged

this is crazy.

It is crazy.

It's crazy.

Hey, Key, who better to train a Zoldic than another Zoldic?

Who could compare?

Who could possibly

keep you as sharp as another Zoldic?

Well,

yes, but I think this is within the world of Tagashi's heightened storytelling.

Because there is no way you could build an effective legacy of lethal assassins if every time they had a disagreement, they all went to war with each other.

I think that you can if the parents stay on top and kind of cultivate it.

Yeah, right.

Like, because this is sort of, this is a, this feels like a brother's thing to me.

This isn't like, you know, Killu is going to go to war with Silva.

Yeah.

Right.

It's the children are fighting each other.

Yeah.

This is, this is Boy Fights from Arrested Development.

This is Boy Fights from Arrested Development.

Silva's Silva's there with the camcorder.

God.

Instigating.

Yeah, I am.

I am.

You know me.

The other day I thought I should re-watch Arrested Development, but I have so much stuff to watch at all times.

And that is a long show.

It couldn't be better.

I mean, it's unbelievable.

Season four, highly underrated.

I gotta rewatch Arrested Development.

Ilumi over the phone to Kiloa says, you removed the needle, didn't you?

And Kilio says, Yes, I feel better now.

To which Illumi says, Then I won't have to hold back when I kill you.

This is, of course, a funny little Illumi joke, because family members can't kill family members during an intra-family conflict.

However, Ilumi does not consider Aluka a family member.

And Kiloa says, if that's the way it's going to be, okay.

To which Ilumi's face appears like a white mask in a single dark shot.

This is all taking place in a tunnel as the car is driving through a tunnel.

And Ilumi says, Okay, let's begin.

And as they leave the tunnel, there is immediately a massive car wreck.

Like a semi-truck hits the Zoldic car and is also hit by another car.

Every driver has one of Gitaraka's needles.

Or it is a dozen

needles.

Yeah.

Or a dozen.

And this is like

a full, full-scale car action sequence that then plays for the next minute and a half.

It's great.

The cars go off the side of the mountain.

There's a part during the phone call where Kilua flashes back to Silva saying

it's not a member of the family.

And then Kilua is like, uh-oh, this means that Ilumi could kill Aluka because I've been told by Silva that she doesn't count.

Fuck.

Yeah, it's fucked.

yeah very very which is i think we i mentioned at the beginning it's sort of at the same time it is sort of like a um

a sort of pre-determined justification for letting alumi kill alika but also a hint to killua alumi's going to try to kill alika because she's not a family member

um oh i think they'd all be so much happier if they all talked to each other about their feelings

i think that i i don't know

Damn.

Let's see.

This car wreck is great.

It's shot really well.

Two things about this that I thought were fantastic.

The first is that the Zeldix have one of the most sturdy cars I've seen in my life.

He gets basically compacted, falls down a hill, and explodes.

And every single person in the car gets out.

Like, that sucked.

Nen protection.

Also funny.

Yeah.

Nen protection.

At one point, Aluka begins to tumble down the car, and Goto verbally reminds Killiwa as they are falling that if Aluka gets more than one meter away from him, Amane is ready to enforce level four.

This is to Keith's point about how the Zaldic butlers are devoted to the methodology of the Zaldic clan, and even in a car wreck, are like watching out for their opportunity to

get Killua.

Oh, at one point, the car gets impaled by like 15 pieces of rebar from a truck.

Yes, yeah.

No final destination.

Yeah,

these are like construction girders.

Like, these are huge,

huge bits of metal that just like totally impale the car.

Watching from a cliff, Hisuka sees the car explosion and says, Oh dear, Hisuka has some really good

phenomenal

set of

lines here, here and later.

Yeah, Hisaka is being given instructions by Ilumi.

Hiseka has been sent to kill the butlers while Ilumi is going to focus in on Aluka.

We described it earlier, the mask being off.

Ilumi is now off to kill Aluka Zaldic.

We have a brief mention here that Ilumi has a spy.

This is interesting.

Goto talks about this later as well.

He's like, Ilumi is moving very, very confidently in a way that makes me think someone is leaking information to him.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

Um,

Ilumi says, there's something that doesn't add up.

Kilua has been hiding rules from me.

And as such, based on the fact that Kilua has been kind of keeping information secret, Ilumi sees no value in

like parlay.

Yeah.

There's, you know, there is no need to talk this through.

uh or negotiate kill if killua is keeping secrets this is war yeah because he if if he doesn't know the rules, then he can't

keep himself from accidentally playing into what Kilua wants.

And I love this because it's just like more sort of set up that, like, we get so much of Kilua thinking about his family and being tactical and trying to figure out everybody's relationships and deducing.

Killa's always deducing things.

Like the Chimera Ant arc, every time Kilua showed up, he was like deducing some insane thing.

And like Alumi is doing all that just off-screen.

Yep.

And at some point, Killua did something that let it slip, that

let it slip that Killua's hiding rules.

And if I, and I don't remember what it is, but I have a guess, but because I've seen it, I'm not going to say what my guess is because I probably just interesting.

At this point, Hiseka says, if I see Killua and there's a chance, can I.

At which point,

Ilumi becomes the most evil.

Yeah, the Zelda Zelda theme starts playing at high volume.

Crows fly up behind him.

He gets this awful, like, jagged mask on his face, and his massive eyes burn.

He says, I think he says, if, does he say anything, or does he just

say, I will kill you, Hisuka?

Yeah.

Yes.

And Hisuka says, that was just a joke.

And then we have these

great...

So funny.

Bro, I'm just kidding.

Like,

you know,

Hadada does this sometimes.

You know, you see it in other anime.

They're like changing the drawing, the style of the character to indicate that they are embarrassed or that they are silly.

But we get this in like a shot, reverse shot where we have Hisuka looking silly saying that was just a joke.

And then we have Illumi looking silly saying, did you do that on purpose?

Because down in the valley, Kilua looks up and sees Illumi's evil men.

There's an hold on, I think I have it written down, an insane line from Hisuka here where he's like, Your bloodlust is spilling everywhere or something.

That's how that's what he says.

Yep, and that's when Kilua looks back, like he heard of gunshot to be like, Oh, Lumi's back there, losing bloodlust all over the place.

Is that cool?

Just kidding.

Quit oozing bloodlust everywhere.

Now, Hiseka Moreau has joined the game of giving Killua information stealthily.

It's really good.

um it's impossible i mean there's so few characters who don't get drawn into killua's whole deal everyone's always trying to help killua

and we get that all the way back obviously all the way back from like him meeting gone during the hunter exam but as soon as we get let into the zoldex world during the um

uh

the arc after the hunter exam and it's just like all of the butlers being like, Boy, I hope Kilo is okay.

Let's try our best to let's try our best to help Kiluwa without getting in trouble.

Yeah, even Subone gets a moment of that later.

Actually, she gets that in just one second.

But the reason Hisako wants Kilua to succeed is, of course, he wants Goan to live.

And he has the line, the more toys you have, the more fun, right?

Which would be a fairly hackneyed line, made so much better by the fact that we get this great illustration of all the characters as

Aluka style toys in a toy box.

Kimmel uses God speed to escape from the Butlers, except for Subone, who,

you know, sort of Jack, like you were saying, is like sort of having part of her internal thoughts about Kiloa come to the surface.

She finds it hard to like Ilumi and, you know, doesn't think that Ilumi really has what it takes to to catch Kiloa.

Yep.

Yeah, she says, I find it difficult to like Ilumi and Miluki.

Now then, time to set aside personal opinion.

Meanwhile, Hisuka is squaring up against the butlers in the scariest introduction to Hisaka that I've seen in a long time.

He's probably having Serena, which is terrifying.

The hallway.

Yeah, there's sound moving in the forest, and then over a completely black screen, we just see Hisuka's face, uh, and then he walks slowly out of the um

out of the forest towards them, you know, burning with Nen.

I'm sure Keith will put this single shot of Hiseka's face appearing in the dark because it is really distinctive.

Yeah, um,

then we have a sad moment as Aluka stops Killoa and says, Do you want me to go?

Would you all get along better if I went for good?

This is

so sad and is so

illustrative of the way the Zaldics work, of the way Alica thinks of her position within the Zaldics, even just thinking of it as like, I want the family to get along better.

And Kilo says, if I were the only person who loved you in the whole world, would that make you sad?

To which Alaka says, I think I'd be so happy about that, I'd never stop smiling.

She also turns into an adorable blob.

She does.

She

pushes a blob of love.

It's so cute.

They are very good at making making her just like

an incredibly cute round blob.

But also, she asks for fingernails and then is not.

No, I know, I know.

That's why it's good.

That's why it's

part of her cuteness.

I'm agree.

Yeah, she asked her.

The thing about Nanaka that's really interesting is that, like, it's Nanaka that asks for the fingernails, but then it's Alaka that has them.

You know what I mean?

And, like, there's never a thing about, there's never part of Alaka that goes

ew i didn't want i didn't want this fingernail no no no aluka asks for the fingernails nanaka grants the wish no it's that's nanika in there that's doing that

it's you think you don't get the face but it is nanaka is is the one that makes the demands and and it's nanaka's desire that you know speaks through aluka to speak the wishes uh or sorry not through the demand i mean uh but then like but it is it also it is like alias not phased by this when when at the when this happens with the nails to when he hops away and alika goes uh oh no no i wanted more things

yes yeah she's just built different but then you know and then is like a cute blob about in like yeah you know what i mean like it's it is wild she's literally nice like it's good

And also, she's lethal.

She can be both.

Yeah.

That's part of her being nice.

Killer promises to be there for her.

He says, don't worry about anyone else.

It's just you and me.

There's something so sad about the.

Aluka is able to intuit, even if she doesn't know it directly, that she is being

mistreated by people who should be taking care of her, right?

You know, she has the...

She has the, would you all get along better if I went away for good?

lion first and then when killua says if i were the only person who loved you in the whole world would that make you sad to sort of like test the waters of like, what if it was just me?

You know, would you feel like abandoned or sad by the world?

But Alaka can intuit that the only person out there looking out for her is Killua.

It's sad.

Yeah.

It's good stuff.

And it's, it's so Tagashi to just like put a little

conversation like that in the middle of an episode like this.

And I also think that there's a the

other side of it that's sad is that it's indicative of the Zoldic style of affection that is like so totalizing.

Like, of course, Kilua, who's been looking at Goan like the only star in the sky for 140 episodes, who is like,

like, Alica, is it okay if only one person loves you, but that person loves you a lot?

Yep.

It's really good.

The character writing's great.

Hiseka approaches the butlers and they say, who are you?

And he says, I'm a magician who prefers anonymity and throws out a a fan of cards.

We are teeing ourselves up for a classic Hisuka magic trick.

I love that line.

I'm not disappointed.

I think that's really fun.

And it's a joke.

It feels like a joke to me that Hisuga cares about anonymity.

That doesn't seem

that

it's just

more game.

He's just playing more games, mind games.

He's fucking with people.

He's a jester.

He's a jester.

He's a jester.

Literally.

He's holding the Joker card at the end of this.

He is.

Yeah, when he's aurap armor, yeah.

Oh, he's the jerker.

he's the jerker.

Um,

I don't like that one.

Uh, Goto sends Amane and Canary

uh after Killua.

Smart.

Uh,

Killua immediately begins a magic trick fight.

Uh, he lets us know, and I don't know if you've heard this, that his aura has qualities of both rubber and gold.

It was such a joy to me again.

Say this!

I cheered, I cheered.

He said the lion, yeah.

Oh, every The more he says it, the clearer it becomes.

This is like

an earworm for him.

This is something he just loves to say.

He loves to say that.

I wouldn't love to say it.

I would not put it past Tagashi that like...

There is at some point there is like a fictional like justification for this where it's like, well, actually, it's part of Hisuka's Nin contract that in order for his thing to get powerful enough, he has to explain how his power works.

That would be interesting.

So there's two things i remember someone telling us all the way back in

it was either greed island or uh heaven's arena that the manga has him saying that line way fewer times and that's funny it's potentially something that the the anime adapters picked up on that was funny to have him keep saying that um they're right which i they're totally right it totally works it's such a but it is also just

it's yeah it's such such good shorthand for his character, too, right?

Because he's the guy who's like, he's the guy who goes on to say, well, I don't care if I tell you anything, you're dead.

Dead people can't share any information.

And it's so, they, they, even that, that first

conversation between him and Machi, where Machi is like,

your power is so good, it like doesn't even hurt you to tell people what it is.

And then he's like, yep, and I tell, I tell people all the time, rubber and gum, rubber and gum.

I love to tell them about the rubber and the gum.

Actually, he switches it up.

He says gum and rubber in this one.

Gota calls him.

You gotta keep it frustrated.

And I get the impression that this cheap conjurer line does actually rankle Hisuka briefly

because he says something like

he lashes out.

He says,

Yeah, like Dre said, what's the point in hiding things from the dead?

As the episode ends.

142 begins in the fight.

Hisuka is blocking and catching coins with bungee gum.

The coins carry momentum with them, causing Hisuka's arms to twist up around his head.

But he's got line.

It reminds me of the dodgeball game when Hisuka gets fucking mangled by catching a

but he's already he's got bungee gum in play as usual.

I feel like Hisaka's big trick is not just I have bungee gum, it's I can make it invisible and it's doing something weird.

Yeah, so he sort of catapults himself back.

He's

stage magician misdirectioning constantly.

He does flight of hand.

He takes advantage of

people

underestimating

the possible applications of it.

Like he shows you it working in a very literal way.

And then

like when he starts using it in abstract ways, like he really fucking tricks Goto into being so concerned about

the coins catapulting back to him that he leaves himself totally open.

Yeah.

Because the fight ends really very quickly.

Yeah.

As Hiseka appears hanging upside down above Goto and cuts his throat with two playing cards.

Two Jokers.

Two Jokers.

He talks to the corpse and it's like, no one's, you don't need to be doing all that.

And he kisses the card, the bloody card.

He does kiss the card.

It's great.

Yeah, no, it's great.

It's really fun.

Tsubone is in pursuit of Alika and Kilua, and he turns on Godspeed for a second time, much faster than the original one,

sort of leaving Subone behind as a human.

So she transforms into a motorcycle.

Yeah, no, obviously.

She transforms into a motorcycle.

Oh, yeah.

How does that motorcycle work, Keith?

So, first of all, it looks a lot like a normal motorcycle, except that it has Subone's face but as a clown it's in the front thomas the tank engine motorcycle it's very thomas the tank engine her her very

i think she has very goofy hair her very goofy hair sort of becomes the detailing that runs along the side uh of the motorcycle and the way that it works is it eats the rider's aura in order to

um

ride at i don't know what do you want to say like 4 000 miles an hour you will yeah well it goes it i think the speed changes depending on the

riders.

Oh, maybe I shut it

aura at a constant rate

and it would go as fast as it can go until it runs out.

But I don't know.

We don't know how it works, really.

It's the oldest, it's the oldest rule of the road.

You know, it's ninet zin or

diner.

Nobody runs, nobody rides for free.

Yeah, nobody, nobody rides for free.

Nailed it.

Yeah.

Lovely anime pacing happening here or adaptive pacing where Tubone phones for help from Amoné and Amoné has a little conversation with Canary basically being like, We have to go see my grandmother.

And I think they've mentioned the motorcycle briefly.

And I had thought to myself,

the grandmother has a cool motorcycle.

Of course.

She rips out a capsule like from Dragon Ball Z and throws it and becomes a motorcycle.

Because it's a motorcycle.

She's a cool old lady with a motorcycle.

Wrong.

She's a cool old lady who is a motorcycle.

She is a cool old lady who is a motorcycle that isn't cool.

The motorcycle is not cool.

It is oof.

Hey, hey.

It has a big clown nose.

Then we have a sort of lengthy discussion as the Zaldic butlers try and figure out what Killur is going to do next.

Canary and Sabone have worked it out, and they immediately intercept him in the airport.

This is when we discussed earlier that

the Zaldics, you know, they are essentially planning to send Killur Killua to the hospital in an airship, but they actually end up commissioning like six airships to, you know, lead Ilumi off the chase.

There is a lot of bickering among the butlers, which initially just seems to be, you know, bickering between Kanary and Amane, but is revealed to be, again, Canary deliberately slowing Amane down so that Killua can board an airship and escape with Alaka.

This is so funny when Amane calls Kinari out and Kanary's like, whatever do you mean?

I'm, yeah, Canary's not a great liar.

She also, as you say, Keith has the worst radar gets hunter

gets two for one wrong.

Because Amane's freaking out and Canary says, you look cute when you let loose a little.

I'm sure Master Kilua will like you more that way.

Yeah.

These are two gay people.

You've got them both wrong.

I do need to read the Yuri about these two, though, just to be clear.

Like, just to be crystal clear with everybody.

The vibes are good between these two.

Yeah.

Amane blushes immediately.

It's very sweet.

Canary fails to contact Goto.

Yeah.

I wrote down here, there's a little bit of the leaping around on Greed Island going on here.

Do you remember the extensive sequence where everyone's leaping around in Greed Island?

yeah where

shots of people jumping and following and jumping yelling a company off i don't think it's i don't think it's nearly that bad um

uh but we we do get canary and moral both trying to call go it's a little sad we like go

yeah

yeah goto's goto is a good guy he's trying to help kill a he's trying to do what he can within very limited bounds

uh he was sort of um

he was one of the first true hunter hunter weirdies i feel like the moment that goto like was like welcome to the mansion here's my game and he pulled out all those coins i was like how strange little did i know little did i know there was a lot of weirdies of the well we were digging there's a lot of well forget about monkey man who had a man monkey yeah he dropped her was in there

The Blowjaw Brothers was in there.

The Blowjaw Brothers.

They're not that weird.

I think that's their problem that they're not weird.

One of my favorite

Hisuka lines happens here.

The two of them get to the airfield.

He's here and Ilumi.

Yeah.

As the ships are taking off.

And Illumi's like, ah, there's eight ships.

We need more people.

And then Hisuka says, Are you calling in friends?

To be honest with you, I'm pretty shy.

To which Ilumi says, so funny.

What's Illumi's feel?

Illumi says, I don't have any of those.

I don't have fun.

Oh, I don't have any of those.

How inconvenient.

He's kind of a loner.

Yeah.

Which is also not true because he's with his friend.

That's true.

Yeah.

It's just two sigmas, you know, they don't need anybody else.

We're just packing in Hisuka and Illumi characterization, you know, every scene that we get here because Hisuka being kind of shy

is exactly fits so well with his like weird slimy character.

Do you think he's shy?

I think he's lying.

I I think he's fucking with Illumi.

Maybe he is no I think he is actually kind of just like

kind of like a clammy weirdo who who

is very good when it's on his own terms, but if it's like, you know, go and find people who you're close to who like you.

He was not really hugely charismatic among the spiders.

The troop.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was mostly sitting in a windowsill.

He has power when he's like on stage, you know?

Yeah.

Oh, and also I think about all the stuff with Krolo.

Like, I actually think it fits really well with his like inability to restrain himself when he's like, oh, I really want to fight that guy.

His like look of shock when Krolo is like, it won't be a good fight.

You'll kill me.

Kilua calls in Morrow for a favor.

Can you get a bunch of hunters to hunt down my brother?

Don't worry, it's legal because of the hunter rule about hunters shall not target other hunters except

exception shall be made if the hunter to be targeted has committed heinous crimes.

Yeah, where's this rule been literally the whole fucking show?

When the crimes haven't been heinous enough, we couldn't get a look because

hunters have been hunting hunters the whole show.

They really, what?

They really have.

It's a great title again.

It's because Natari doesn't give a shit.

It's true.

uh

well i think it's i think it's one thing for hunters to hunt hunters

it's another thing especially if none of them are like like in on the whole hunter association thing it's another thing to like organize the hunter association like resident cops to go out and like form a search party

this is all very silly i like it a lot um

Because Ilumi and Hisaka have essentially made themselves a private army.

They have gone into a town square and shot a bunch of needles at people, which cause them to become these sort of

puppets.

Yeah, they actually call them needle people, which is great.

My sub calls them needle needlemen, one word, but Kilo calls them needle people.

Yeah, needle people.

The show gets a lot of play with a sort of

hypnotized, depersoned person as being like one of the most frightening things that it can think of, right?

We have

Poof's scales falling on the crowd.

We have Pito's puppet corpses.

We have Flutter's.

Sorry, we have Ikalgo's corpses, which are not necessarily presented as scary.

In fact, they are presented as very normal.

But we also have the transformed ant people in

zazan's castle right oh yeah it's like an image that the show keeps coming back to right

like someone who has had yeah an anika too um a sort of like an emptied out person

is as far as the show is concerned you know terrifying um

also

different flavors

of zombies you know it is different flavors of zombies yeah um Re Morel getting involved.

Morel is getting a lot of like structural play in these episodes.

Not a ton of characterization from him, but he is very load-bearing in terms of like what is happening to whom and when.

He's a guy that can get stuff done around town.

Yeah.

Really good mirrored shot of the hunter kind of like, uh, oh, it's worth saying, because Tagashi is very clever.

Now the plot lines are converging.

Because the way that you get the hunters to hunt for Ilumi is that you essentially start, you create a voting block within the election of the like legal reformists.

So this is when the three that we discussed earlier really start kind of coming together.

This is explicit in Highland, please.

Neutral ambitious and highland.

Yeah, this is made absolutely explicit, both in terms of Killiua being like, I can work the election in my own favor and this voting block being like, this is an opportunity for us to assert ourselves.

The way this is being essentially played with the cards being played like open hand, you know, both Killiwa and the hunter organization know that they are each using each other for their own end.

It's really nice, really lovely weaving together of the story.

And once again, we have hunters just like making the most opportunistic political plays that they can.

They've also explicitly sort of made the rule not even to go after Ilumi because he's too dangerous.

So they're just going to try to like whittle down the needlemen.

Yeah,

it's really good.

This is also deep in Papal Conclave territory again, right?

Oh, yeah, when they were hunting the zombies in Conclave.

I thought that movie.

Rick Vine sent out those death squads.

He did.

A plot point in the recent film Conclave, but also something that

has sort of been understood to be a part of Papal Conclave since time immemorial, is the like attempting to read and exploit the current political situation, even as the Papal Conclave is supposed to be a behind-closed doors, nothing gets in or out type beat.

Speaking of the politics here, I think this is really fun.

We get like one line from each of the three men.

And it cannot be overstated.

The camera is looking at these guys like the bad guys.

But here's what they say.

I always knew that Article 4 was fundamentally flawed.

We can't just wait for a crisis like this to appear.

That's ambitious.

Neutral says the problem is that the exams need to be more selective if good behavior was a prerequisite for joining well we wouldn't have this problem and then uh hylan says uh the time has come for we three members of the anti-netero faction have more poll in the association uh uh to have more poll in the association and then they deliver a press release in front of like cameras this is like a commercial that's being aired on hunter tv that's really funny that they want to reinstitute a defunct group that the chairman was a part of.

They say, look, people call us the anti-chairman faction.

And in fact, off camera a second ago, we called ourselves that.

Specifically, we said we are anti-Netero.

But no, no, it couldn't be further from the truth.

We want actually to follow in Netero's footsteps by reforming his

siren group or the legendary Pure Paladin Squad

to do away with evildoers.

And our first act will be going after a hunter guilty of egregious crimes.

Listen, I'm a Democrat, but I have respect for Nixonian principles.

Let us come together to rebuild the Hunter Association with wisdom and integrity.

And I think that this is why these guys are shown as slimy, even though the thing that they're saying is technically good and they do seem to be genuine in their beliefs that they're just like, also they're doing politics

uh which i don't know if that's enough the show looks down on yeah i don't know if that's enough to make you actually slimy i think it actually is better to be slimy and want to stop people like yusuka from being hunters than it is to be squeaky clean and not care

well or to sort of like masquerade at politics

while just doing like naked um uh manipulation These guys have a platform.

They have a platform.

Yes.

Yes.

There is stuff that...

Pariston has no platform.

He wants to be in charge.

Oh, sorry.

He wants a kinder, gentler Hunter Association.

His Pariston is so cool.

And cute.

Yes.

He is doing something.

Pariston, remember that he's got the Association dogs, and he's also disappearing hunters left and right?

Yeah.

Like, Pariston is working some sort of angle that the show is, I think, cleverly hiding hiding from us.

And I don't say this because there's going to be like a twist, but there is something really good and scary about Pariston in that it's not that he doesn't have a platform, it's that he has goals that are completely opaque to us.

Can I tell you that when we sort of see him aiming?

When you see what he does, it's going to blow you away.

It's going to blow you away.

Not to say that you're going to love it, although I think probably you will.

But you're going to go, holy fucking shit, I cannot believe that was what was going on this whole time.

Oh my God.

I'm so excited.

I'm so excited.

There's a beautiful music cube playing during this scene when they're discussing putting together the legendary pure palette squad over the end of the episode.

It's like a fully orchestrated, like syncopated waltz.

Do you have any new music in this episode, Keith, or is this probably an excerpt from something else?

This is an excerpt from something else.

So there were two new songs briefly played in the last episode in 141, one called Reunion and one called Battle Olympia.

And I didn't play them because right before they play, we did that really long one with the punch.

Reunion is good.

If you want to look it up, it's a very sort of fanfairy sort of thing.

It's a recolor.

It plays over what Sprint was in the episode before.

It plays over like the second time they show Leorio punching.

And then Battle Olympia is like a very rah-rah.

It's more fanfare.

These are two fanfare tracks.

So I was like, okay, whatever.

The thing that you're talking about is probably Boys Be Courageous.

My favorite K-pop boy.

We're always

that one?

Is that what we're talking about?

Yeah, I think so.

Oh, I'll link it.

This one might even be the name of the thing, but.

Very pretty arrangement of it.

And as the episode ends, the narrator, who has largely disappeared, where's the narrator being?

True.

True.

He talks about how the alocus situation has grown so big that it is starting to bleed into the elections.

Right.

Right?

You You know, there's a real sort of like

the biggest possible caricature of like the personal is political and vice versa happening here where like an internal family drama is you know reshaping.

The Sholdix conflict with Alica intensifies so much so that it reached beyond the scope of one family and seeps into the Hunter Association elections.

You can do a really good English narrator.

I barely listen to the English narrator except in the clips that you share.

He's got a very distinctive voice.

How does the

Dragon Ball narrator also have a very, very distinctive voice, right?

Dragon Ball Z.

Doesn't he also say other shit too?

Isn't he like Goku has arrived on the planet?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

But during the commercial

has gotten worse.

I liked it in the episode when he was.

Cell is making everybody angry.

Does he say that?

No.

All the people on Earth are mad at Cell for being so mean and strong.

Which one's Cell?

Cell's the green one.

Oh, the Chimera Ant.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Cell is the green Chimera ant, not the purple Chimera ant.

That's Frieza.

That's Frieza.

That's Frieza.

Who is my favorite of the aliens?

Oh, speaking of aliens, when they were talking about famous sea hunter Moran.

Oh, you're right.

Yeah.

Yes.

They say he did well in the Ant incident, and he's also basically like looking out to try and safeguard against future alien attacks.

Okay, huge spoiler.

That's what every single manga arc post-anime is about: alien invasions.

Aliens.

The aliens are kind of shot.

I'm waiting to now I know it's not true.

Oh, wait, but I don't know it's not true.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I can't say anything.

It's actually actually Karapika joins forces with the aliens.

Have you read any of the Mangadre?

Yes, I'm not caught up at all, but

I know enough to know the broad strokes of what the next big arc is.

Oh, exciting.

Exciting.

No, this isn't Boys Be Courageous Keith.

I'll figure it out.

I'll send you the clip and we'll find out what it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And as the closing credits begin to play, Alaka is seen sleeping on the airship.

I really appreciate how for the last few episodes we have had uh killua and alaka running but they've also spent time being like they are uh alaka is like resting for the first time outside of the bunker um on several occasions which is really good um alaka's costume design is fantastic i think we talked about this a little in the previous episode but now we're actually seeing her out and about uh the anime team and i suppose tagashi in his original Costume design have always been really good at giving people costumes that move in interesting ways or can draw out interesting silhouettes and stuff.

Alaka is no exception, you know, with her

big wide arms asking for a hug or for asking for someone's fingernail or whatever.

She has this her outfit lends herself really well to the kind of shapes that they like to draw her in.

She's dressed very formally.

Yeah, I don't know why she dresses like that.

She has this weird

like

circlet on her head

that has a lot of smiley and angry faces on it.

Also on her hair, she has the same thing as beads on her hair.

Yeah.

I don't know what that's about.

Beans on her hair?

She has beans on her hair.

Yeah.

I think it's very funny that either she dresses herself like that or her family dresses her in essentially what is a visual metaphor for nothing.

Yeah, I assume it's the latter.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know what's going on.

I think it might be her.

Yeah, I am going to let her have credit because it's cute.

We saw her in one other outfit, which was when she was a child, and she was basically just wearing like toddler clothes.

Yeah.

Which is why I think probably

she's dressed.

Kaluto also dresses very cute.

Can any of them be fucked to be helping her pick out the colours?

No, but they have butlers for it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, she's wearing very traditional clothes, very formal.

You know, muted colors,

smiley and frowny faces everywhere that are creepy.

She's creepy.

She's a creepy little kid.

She is.

Miluki and Kimmy.

Literally nice.

She's most normally dressed.

She's literally nice.

She is literally nice most of the time.

She always says please.

She does, unfortunately, always say please.

Do we have some reviews?

Yeah.

Totally.

Nice.

I have a review that I can read.

Please.

Because I saw that was interesting.

During the last episode, I speculated about the Zaldic children's names as puns and we got a five star review from Aloka's New Dad

uh

subject line Zaldic names this is really cool I I this is one of these things that like I could kind of feel something going on here but did not understand it as it was explains two things in one which is great aloka's new dad says this I don't know if the Zaldic children's names are also meant to be puns, but their naming convention is this.

Ilumilu kilu aru karuto.

They're based off a Japanese word game called Shiritori, wherein players say a word that begins with the final kana of the previous word.

So each kid's name starts with the last character of the next oldest kid's name.

So for example, we have Ilumi, Miluki,

Kilua, Aluka, Kaluto.

Each kid's name starts with the last character of the next oldest kid's name.

The disconnect between Kilua and Kaluto's names clued manga readers into Aluka's existence and gave them her name far before she was ever revealed.

I believe this is also the word game that Aluka asks Killua to play in her room.

So excited that you all finally got to the election arc.

It has such a special place in my heart.

Long live Demon World theory.

The fact that there was a hidden Zoldic that people knew and that they could find out her name and that they found it out by solving a word game is the most hunter-hunter shit shit in the world.

Oh, Tagashi.

He can't help but make games.

He's making games left and right.

He's the games that are the games are seeping out of

the media.

It's great.

Oh, your games are getting everywhere.

There's never been a better time to be a gamer.

You're oozing games.

I'm oozing game lust, bro.

Chill.

I don't like that.

That was a big problem at Summer Games Fest.

There were too many people.

I was not here for it.

Get the cube out of my goddamn face.

Okay.

What are we watching next time, Keith?

Next time, we're watching three episodes.

Episode 143, 144, 145.

Those are titled Sin and Claw,

Approval and Coalition,

and Defeat and Reunion.

That's our second

episode of Hunter Hunter.

It is our pen ultimate episode of Hunter Hunter.

Yes.

Crazy to think about.

It's crazy to think about.

You know, I really hope people stick around for what comes

to Hunter Hunter, even though it's not anime.

I know that there's...

Sorry, go ahead.

I know that there's people who listen to this who are specifically anime people.

Yeah.

And,

you know, I hope you keep listening.

It's going to continue to be a good show.

We're going to do a mini-season with some movies, and then we're going to do another full season about a different TV show.

And I still

think that we have unfinished bonus episodes.

Yes, we do.

You guys need to watch that goddamn Phantom Rouge movie I watched.

It was really bad.

We want to watch

the Phantom Rouge movie.

We have to watch the Yu Yu Haga show

and we have to watch Sailor Moon.

Yeah, definitely.

So

we have unfinished anime business, so you're going to want to stick around for when we do that.

Another sooner random later.

It's not like we're never going to get back to anime.

No, we do have a long list.

We have an internal list of things we want to do.

Right.

And

we also have,

I'm going to say, vague

manga plans, I guess.

We don't have anything.

But nobody doesn't want to read this.

I will be as clear as possible just to

deflate any hope that you might have as a listener.

we are not going to be making media club plus about the anime sorry about the manga with the same detail and intensity as we do about the it's it's gonna be double

yeah

triple

six hour long episodes but we are gonna talk about it i think um yeah

uh i cannot wait to read it um and i also can't wait to open the envelope that austin gave me that says do not open until hunter hunter finishes god i can't either I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

Wow.

I don't remember what's in there, even.

I remember what's in there.

It's a

in Peto Bricks.

Yeah.

Yes,

it is a small ant.

It's going to eat you.

It's the washed up.

And then it's going to turn.

It's going to have babies that are 10% jack.

Oh, dear.

Terrible.

Just before we go,

I have.

When I was in Japan, I don't think I said this because I was so jet lagged last time.

Oh, and I'm also jet lagged this time.

Wow.

Yeah, I know.

If you're thinking, why is Jack jet lagged?

Back to back.

Good fucking question.

When I was in Japan, I bought a lot of cool Hunter Hunter merch, and I'm going to give most of it to you three.

And hopefully, I want to give it to you by the end of the season so that we can have a fun

like everybody opens their Christmas stockings at the same time and we see and we see what we got.

But I'm going to turn my camera on and show you three things that I got for me.

These are, these are mine.

Oh my god.

Let me pull Discord back up.

This is like pre-Christmas.

This is like when some families have that thing where they open a gift before Christmas.

Right.

Yeah, Christmas Eve.

Yeah, a lot of people do that.

Yeah, that's very my wife and I open our presents to each other on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve.

Yeah.

Huh.

All of them are not

All of our gifts for each other, specifically.

Yeah, my, my,

the spirit of my family is that when my mom was a kid, her, her dad, my grandfather, would literally just keep them, all the presents in a room that he had, only he had the key for until Christmas Day.

And that spirit continues.

What's that second guitar?

What are you doing with what is that second guitar that I don't know?

What guitar?

You have two guitars there.

What's the second one?

Yeah.

Oh, it's your your acoustic.

It's a seagull.

The bridge, and then it's narrow.

The neck is so narrow, I thought it was an electric guitar.

Oh, look what I do have, though.

I don't think I showed any of you this.

Oh,

very nice.

Ska season.

Ska season.

Ska season.

It's a trombone.

So I got this.

Sorry, I'm lying.

It's not a trombone.

Tuba.

Oh,

so scary.

That's our friend.

That's our friend Gone.

It's our friend in his second scariest moment.

This is going

sitting with his hand over his knee waiting for Pito to heal.

And then

I have.

A little killer.

Kind sitting instead of sitting here sitting killer.

They can fit together.

It's all he wanted.

Literally.

And I found this.

This is a Hunter Hunter trading card.

I found it in a shop.

This is a Hunter Hunter trading card that was in like Raman or something.

That's the back.

And this is the front.

Ooh.

Oh.

Oh, from the Whale Island episode.

It's Goan and Kilua looking at the stars together.

I got that to remind me of their friendship even when they're in hard times.

Yeah.

That's my haul for now, but I have a bunch of other really good stuff.

That's great.

Can't wait

that it's going to get distributed to y'all in the mail.

I really wanted to get some of the video games while I was out there,

but I couldn't.

Get a Wonderswan.

Yeah, could I get a Wonderswan?

Yeah.

The Wonderswan sounds like a fake video game console.

It does, but it's as real as it could possibly be.

It was invented by the father of the Game Boy.

God, imagine making the Wonderswan and it fails.

Which should he make first?

The Game Boy?

Well, the Game Boy, of course.

Yeah, the Game Boy.

Gumpei yokoi was sort of fired from um nintendo because

um the virtual boy was rushed and he sort of lost a lot of internal stock and then he left and he did two things before he was tragically killed um in a car accident uh as a pedestrian he um helped develop the tomogachi he invented the teapot wow and he made the wonder swan and not only was the wonder swan not a failure, in Japan, it was able to take like 10%

of the Japanese handheld market in a time

when Nintendo was the only game in town.

And really, it was because he died that he wasn't able to keep developing and

making consoles.

Wonder Swan released an update called the Wonder Swan Crystal.

And then sort of never did anything else, as far as I know.

Wow.

I have no idea.

Shout out to Gunpei Yokoy, a real genius.

He was also the

creator of the Game and Watch before the Game Boy.

And he also was the guy who

coined the Nintendo design philosophy of,

I think, what he called withered technology, or at least that's some weird translation of it, which is like, fun isn't graphics.

You can make fun systems systems without advanced technology.

And that has been Nintendo.

It is right.

That has been Nintendo's sort of hardware design philosophy for decades and decades.

The Game Boy was built on like discarded

graphing calculator parts.

Oh my God, man.

They just got like the craziest deal of all time on a bunch of recycled graphing calculator parts and made Game Boy.

The most important handheld system of all time.

Jeez.

Hey, it's Keith.

I'm issue we get correction.

It was actually the Game and Watch screens that used surplus calculator L C Ds.

The Game Boy screens were made by Sharp Electronics.

They were a super twisted pneumatic display that were secretly developed.

Media Club Plus the Invention of the Game Boy.

It's not media.

We're just going to do like a blowback style podcast about the invention of the Game Boy.

Listen to to Run Button.

Run Button talks about Gunpetio Koi all the time.

I don't know why.

How?

He started.

He started as a

assembly line.

He maintained the machines that made Nintendo's Hanafuda cards.

Wow.

Okay.

And he made toys in his spare time.

And like the management at Nintendo was like, you got to show my friends your toys.

And they just hired him as a designer.

And he invented the Game Boy.

And then he invented the Game Boy.

It's fucking sick.

Yeah, that's sick as hell.

Well, have a good night, everybody.

Yeah.

Watch this basketball.

What number is this?

Good luck with basketball costs.

Can we clap a little?

I'm not stopped recording yet.

No, no, you don't have to clap.

It's fine.