Dog Cheadle - Hunter x Hunter ep. 137-139: Media Club Plus S01E44

Uh, hit the button.

No.

Wow.

There you go, found it.

I sat here and didn't open up the notes.

I was just listening to the song.

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 at the table.

This season, we're watching 2011's Hunter Hunter based on the manga Yoshi here at Tagashi, and we are so close to being done with it.

Oh my god, we're so close.

We haven't really talked about what's happening next because we haven't like a thousand percent decided, I think.

Um,

but uh, but there will be a mini in-between season.

I think I heard someone talk about it a little bit, but I guess I won't say anything more, uh, except that we're doing a handful of movies just as a little uh

uh

uh palette cleanser in between seasons.

That's right, Media Club Plus watches Ingmar Bergman, yes, you're watching all of Ingmar Bergman

going straight into the Herzog unit.

Followed by the Michael Hanukkah.

Don't tempt me.

I was going to say John Casavetes.

Is John Casavettis good?

He's supposed to be fantastic.

I haven't seen a single Cassavetti's.

You should watch A Woman Under the Influence.

It's his most famous one, and it's also really good.

With Gina Roland.

That was a school movie for me.

I saw the movie in school.

Sometimes they show you good movies in school.

I've seen

bad movies, but sometimes they show you good ones.

What's the best movie you saw in school?

Mine's Clue.

Wow.

We saw that.

We watched that in French class.

Genuinely underrated.

Genuinely underrated movie.

I love that movie.

Wonderful.

People hate that movie for some reason.

I don't understand.

What?

I feel like everyone I know loves that movie.

Really?

Because you hang in good circles.

Yeah, I guess so.

I guess so.

I don't know what the best film I saw in school was.

Holy shit.

I saw, I mean, I saw Women of the Influence in school.

That's a really good movie.

I saw Rules of the Game in school.

I saw

Casablanca in school.

I saw.

Casablanca's fucking great.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I saw Casablanca in school too.

No, I didn't know.

I didn't see Casablanca in school.

I think if I'm talking about the family, I'm talking about grade school, too, because if we get into the stuff I saw before I dropped out of film school, then it's maybe weird stuff.

Because I was including that.

I don't know.

It would just completely drag the podcast to like a, like a I'm so sorry.

I thought it would just be like a fun little thing.

The problem is that we all have brainworms.

Yeah.

Yes.

We all have to think about it a lot and give a very earnest answer.

Oh, I saw 400 blows in school.

That's.

Is 400 blows good?

It's really good.

Yeah, it's really good.

Who Who made that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like that.

400 Blows.

It's a good joke in Clerks.

I haven't seen Clerks.

That's not the Blowjob Brothers Nen power when we see them in this last

when we see them in this last season.

They've learned Nen and they've combined their...

They have one

Megazord attack, and it's called the 400 Blows.

That's fucking insane.

All right.

You know who we are by this point.

I don't think we need to do intros.

Do we need to do intros?

I don't think we need to do intros.

We could do little ones.

No, we had such a long intro in the last episode.

I was so annoyed listening to how long it was.

Damn, get our ass.

Yeah.

I am jet lagged.

I'm saying this now.

Yeah.

So everyone, watch out.

This will become clear as we start going through my notes for 137,

which I wrote immediately after having gotten off a plane from Japan.

Wow.

It does fucking suck.

It sucks so bad.

I've been trapped in the U.S.

for so long and I've only been flying, you know, domestic that I have forgotten jet lag.

Yeah, yeah, because you could, just three hours, it's not quite enough.

Ah, yeah, no, it is what it is.

Yeah, it's

a little bit of a weird.

I've never had jet lag because I've never flown.

I think you'd feel worse.

I think you'd think you were dying.

Well, I'm so used to, depending on where I was flying to, it may fix my sleep schedule.

You'd think that, but it also fucks with like when you're eating and what you're eating.

So you'll be like hungry at weird points or like nauseous at other points.

You'll feel like you're like in a migraine.

It's really unpleasant.

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe it would suck.

Keith's saying

I'd be fine.

I think I'd be fine.

Keith is like, I already eat at weird times.

If you just like, if you subtracted eight hours from my day, I would be going to bed at midnight, eating at 8 a.m.

Huh.

Hmm.

Do we have a recap?

Yes, we do have a recap.

You got a friendsetable.cash.

That's the only plugin on the table.

Hey, listen to Side Story.

Listen to

sign up for the Patreon.

Did you enjoy the Chimera Ant arc?

Why don't you consider funding Friends of the Table with your dollars as a reward for how much you liked the show?

If you've never signed up to Friendsofetable.cash,

that's the offer.

You liked it, then you can pay for it retroactively.

It's actually very funny that we're just like, fuck the intro this week.

It really feels like we've got itis after the Kieran arc.

We were just kind of phoning it in.

We've had a warning.

We've got two, you know, we don't, it's been a while since we've done this.

Yeah, we did go in a little bit.

My name is Keith J.

Carberry.

With me is Andrew Lee Swan.

With me also is Sylvie Bullet.

And with me is Jack DeKeet.

Hello.

Behind the scenes, it appears that Isaac Netero has completely neglected the association aspect of the Hunter Association.

This is subtextual,

but he's left, it seems seems like, the political aspects of his political organization up to a man named Periston Hill, a conniving little rat to fill the power vacuum left not by Netero's death, but by his much earlier indifference to, seemingly, the day-to-day activities of running an organization like that.

In these episodes, we meet Periston.

uh who talks a lot uh and we meet jing freaks and the rest of the zodiacs as they each or mostly each try to finagle their way into the position of chairman.

Meanwhile, Killu is off trying to save Goan, and he's doing that by finding his sister, Aluka.

And she is

a

interesting.

The word is transgender, guys.

It's fine to say it.

It's not a dirty word.

She's a cursed.

A cursed child, is how I would put it.

A cursed child.

You know what?

I had that experience too.

Who can grant any wish by following a set of of complex nen physics uh

and those nen physics also as a consequence cause mass death hey uh demon world is back everyone yes every time you've said demon world um this is what we've been thinking of Demon World is, it's so fucking funny to me.

Yeah.

Okay, so firstly, these episodes are fantastic.

The revelation of what has been going on inside the Hunter organization is even weirder and more Byzantine and kind of dull than you could possibly have imagined.

The arrival of Pariston, as Keith described, is like a weird little rat, it is so funny that, I mean, firstly, he's just arrived from nowhere.

Yeah, yeah.

And

he's the rat zodiac, of course.

He is, and he is an ass.

He's just the worst.

Imagine the worst guy you've ever met.

Oh,

smarmy,

like oozing smarm and slime with a big, awful smile.

He's like from Ace Attorney.

And if no, literally, Jack.

I don't have that written down.

I thought you were going to say Ace Ventura.

Somebody stop him, please.

He is kind of like Ace Ventura.

And then the other chunk of these episodes is devoted to Alaka.

The last anime Zaldic, even though as we've talked to the past, the manga has some bonus Zelda's that do not appear.

Tommy Pickles, please.

Tommy Pickles.

Yeah, Tommy Pickles.

Alaka is extraordinary because she is essentially, and we'll get further into this,

like the purest form of instrumentalized nen that there could possibly be.

And Tagashi goes hog wild in like designing a nen power that lets him.

It's Alaka is remarkable because after the Kimera arc, where he is just firing on all cylinders, you know, this elaborate dance of characters around each other of this massive cast.

He sort of gets to the end, decides to do a reset, and then puts all that effort and energy and experience into crafting like one perfect nen ability that will let him talk about everything he needs to talk about.

Yeah.

And that is Alaka.

And then the like the second social underpinning to this is like all of the weird, like latent gender weirdness that's been going on.

in Hunter Hunter is like extremely literalized in Alaka, who like Sylvie says is transgender in a, in like a not a joke.

It's not a joke.

It's not an exaggeration.

This is a character who's like the fact that the Zoldics

talk about her as like the youngest brother is like a huge part of like dehumanizing her as a weird demon character.

It's kind of insane.

Like Tagashi like kind of nailed the vibe of your parents hating you for being transgender, but also they hate you because you can grant wishes that

you're the monkey's paw.

They also hate that part about you.

And I love that the reason that

they hate it is it's sort of like an expression of

their own sort of

latent self-loathing.

They can't utilize her as a positive force the way that Killua can, which we'll get to.

And at the same time, she's sort of like, she is the picture of Dorian Gray to them.

Right.

Um, in like a very particular way.

Yeah.

Alaka is tremendous.

I'm so excited to talk more about her.

I think that the stuff going on with Alaka in these episodes is so much stronger than the stuff that is going on with the election.

I think there is really interesting and kind of like fruitful stuff going on in the election, but I spend a lot of time going.

Well, but I want to be hearing more about Killer and Alaka.

Yeah, I'm glad that Sylvie's been...

Sylvie, have you been watching House or just thinking about House?

I watched all of house since we last recorded an episode of this podcast don't know where this is going yeah I mean I know woke house yeah so collection stuff is deeply house code there's it's yeah

Pariston Hill is woke house oh I was gonna say that Jing is woke house no Jing is woke house you're right

warring well sorry Jing is house and Pariston is woke house and they're at war

brief brief point and we'll we'll we'll kind of go to jokes just for me i love it but um jing is in in the show now.

Jing is in the show now.

He's just

in the show.

He's in the show a thousand percent more than his son is.

Yep.

Hey.

He has dialogue.

Sorry, Dre.

No, I have a very important question.

For specifically for Sylvie and Keith, I suppose.

Does this mean Mr.

Green, Green, Jelly Bean Man is Wilson?

Oh my God.

Well,

who's Wilson?

Him and Charles is Wilson, I think.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

My favorite actor, Dog Cheetle.

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

That's the name of houses like Bestie, right?

Yeah, Wilson.

Yeah, Wilson, the candy.

His doctor, yeah.

His life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

His life partner.

Here's something you need to know about me watching 137.

I was unbelievably jet lagged, and I did not know what time it was.

And I thought, time for a nice, straightforward episode of Hunter Hunter with no new information.

This is like definitely the most intense like beginning of a season

the the zodiacs have been handpicked by the chairman for two purposes one they will lead the organization the association in quote emergencies and two they'll fight with him um and right off the bat uh Something kind of upsetting is revealed about the Zodiacs, which is that they've been given a code name to match their Zodiac sign.

And most of them have adopted this as their legal name and also changed their appearance.

Where have we heard this before?

Yeah,

that's what Jing does.

I mean, we see someone that Jing did that to.

Jack, I'm so glad that you.

Yeah, I'm so glad that you immediately noticed that.

It is literally what Jing does to Dune.

Except, as the show points out, there are some exceptions to this.

Right.

Jing freaks, is referred to as Jing, despite being the boar, and he looks like Jing always does.

It's some real like

do-as-I-Say, not what I do type thing going on from Jing here.

And also the way that the kind of like the

foul patterns within Hunter Hunter kind of just like keep reverberating out through different levels, right?

You know, we see Jing forcing this on Dune.

We also see the Zodiac sort of like changing their name and their appearance.

I also think there's...

Oh, sorry, go ahead, Dre.

Yeah, something that I just, that just clicked into place for me with what you just said, Jack, is I had realized that Pariston hadn't taken on

the, you know, the

personage of a rat, but was more so like the spirit of a rat.

And that made me realize, like, oh, Jing is also kind of like the spirit of a boar.

He's a very boarish person, but also he's happiest when he's just a pig and shit.

He really, he truly is.

There is this thing of like, like, he loves mess.

They were picked because of who they are and then 10 of the 12 have really leaned into it and it shows it actually it shows Jing's face when they say some people have chosen, you know, not to do that.

Or there are some exceptions, but it then also shows Periston.

Periston is way rat.

He's so rat, though.

He is rat incarnate.

It's so funny

thinking about them getting their government assigned personas and being like, okay, yeah, I'm going to lean all the way into this.

It's been a long, I think it's been a long time since we've talked about like the hunter-hunter take on like an innately charismatic person and like the willingness of that charismatic person to like to

let the people around them change themselves for you.

Although we could have talked a lot about that.

Yeah, we just didn't we just didn't like put a name to it.

We didn't talk about it like we we did in Greed Island.

But right the I mean can you imagine

like getting reconstructive surgery to look more like a fucking horse because you're you love your boss so much?

I gotta say horse guide needs to like sue his surgeon.

He does.

Because you're the rat, my brother.

He's definitely the rat.

He is the rat.

Dude looks like how people draw germa and fan art.

You might be thinking one of the reasons Jack was overwhelmed was because it was a lot of new information.

It was also a lot of wildly grotesque new figures appearing on my screen.

Um, they're a new intro animation, too.

New intro animation.

Let's talk about this.

Um, we get a there's a there's a hidden sad Kilua.

Oh, in the intro?

In the intro here, we can see Kilua when Bone's on the screen versus Kilua when Alega's on the screen.

Yes, we do get that is, yeah.

Oh, he's he's looking like he's he's looking a little

resolved.

So, here is

what we see in the title sequence.

This new title sequence is very abstract, like big blocks of bright color.

We see Chemonero, we see the Zodiacs, we see the Hunter Tower with the big double X symbol on it.

There is a new title treatment with Hunter Hunter written in like ink pen that then gets like torn away to reveal the classic title treatment underneath.

We see Aluka, Morel, and Nove, Leorio, Hisuka.

The line has been changed again to you can smile again, you can fly away.

We see Canary and Leoria.

Remember Canary?

The Zeldic butler?

Yeah.

We see more shots of Kilua and Aluka.

We see Goan smiling.

We see what looks like a very tall tree tower type thing, with Jing standing on the top and turning around with a look of like shock or consternation on his face, which is really great.

Like, oh my god, you're here, which is fun going into this final

thing.

It's time to meet the Zodiacs.

Fucking hell.

All right.

Where do we start?

We'll just go down the list.

Keith, are you ready with

their actual names?

I'll give their Zodiac names and you can hit me with their

describe them for us, Jack.

I am ready.

I love hearing you describe the weirdies.

Okay, Ox.

Me Zeistum Nana.

This is a guy dressed in sort of armor with like a horned hat with a cow pattern on it.

He has like a black stain around his eye like a cow's, like a Frisian cow's spot.

The rat is missing, but we know the rat is

Pariston Hill.

A uh

ace attorney slimeball.

This is a Yoshihiro Tagashi character like born from the head of Zeus.

This guy just emerges fully formed, ready to go.

He's a tremendous shithead.

He is is introduced here being incredibly busy, quote, scrambling to secure votes.

This is the first we hear of what Pariston is up to, and it is election manipulation.

Parriston will not stop doing this.

They claim that he's scrambling to secure votes.

He claims that he's dealing with the East Gorteaux situation.

Yeah.

You caught Pariston's title aside from being the Zodiac, right?

He's the vice chair.

He's the vice chair.

Yeah, we did.

Yeah, we mentioned that we've brought up the okay, we did.

We've brought up the vice chair previously, but now we get a seat this guy.

Yeah, we have.

We get a really good reference to something about the vice chair in a second.

Rabbit.

This is.

This is Pion.

I love her.

She is a bunny girl on her bunny phone.

Yep.

Or her tiny phone.

Bunny girl on her bunny phone.

Hunter laptop.

Oh, she does have a little hunter laptop as well and a bunny phone.

Snake.

Geru.

This is a hot lady with black hair, very big, weird eyes, and a skin-type, skin-type, low-cut outfit.

Yeah.

Gero can also do something weird and creepy that we will see in a second.

Yeah, that's great.

Uh, sheep.

Uh, this is Ginta.

This is another racist caricature from Yoshihira Tagashi.

This guy has a big afro.

He has the way that Tagashi has drawn black characters' lips in the past.

And when we meet him first, he is sobbing at the death of the chairman.

He also has on his chest what looks like a

hunter-hunter-world version of the New Zealand flag.

Oh, he does.

I don't...

Ginta's character design is very odd.

Yes.

Then we have chicken.

That's Kluke.

Kluke?

Yeah.

She seems to be...

Spelled, by the way, C-L-U-C-K.

Kluke.

Yeah.

She seems to be fairly high-ranking, even among the zodiacs.

She has like spiky, feathered blue hair and a sort of of blue outfit.

That is not the colour I associate with chickens.

That's fine.

Then we have Monkey.

Monkey is Sayu.

I'm a fan of this guy.

He has a perpetual, exaggerated like frown,

and he is constantly posing

what I've written down here.

A weird thing going on with his arms.

This is, I don't know if you remember from the Hunter exam that

monkey with the human sidekick.

This is that guy grown up.

Yeah, the monkey.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Did that monkey have his entire dick out, or am I misremembering?

No, that monkey had his whole dick and balls out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, don't you worry.

You remember

Jing, a chronic no-show.

Then there is the boar.

This is Jing.

Jing is not happy about this.

He says something like, I'm going to kill you.

What does he say?

He says, yeah, basically.

Say, never get it, I'll kill you.

Yeah.

Then we have dragon.

That's a

boto by

Gigante or Gigante.

The way these people are being introduced is like a

just like a fast-paced, fucking sorkin-esque dialogue among all the Zodiacs.

Yeah, they each have a little chime in during this conversation, and they get a name, a title card when they chime in.

Botobai is almost wearing like a theater mask.

He looks like an Oni.

He has two ponytails, like flames coming out of his head.

He is confused as to why the chairman didn't call them in to help with the Chimera ants.

Good fucking question, Bottaby.

Then we have Tiger.

Tiger is

Kansai.

Spiky hair, spiky teeth, a ponytail that looks like a tiger's tail, and he is wearing a baseball jersey.

This may or may not be a Hanshin Tigers reference, one of the two

big king Japanese baseball teams.

The Hanshin Tigers wear striped baseball jerseys like this.

Then we have Dog.

This is Cheadle Yorkshire.

I didn't know her surname.

She is a dog girl.

She's green, the normal color of dogs.

She has a button nose.

She's great.

She is like...

She seems like she's got her head screwed on right, both in terms of like, I have a lot of...

She's like, what if Mustard Red was good?

I mean, she's part of the Hunter Association, so she's almost certainly evil, but you know what I mean?

She's also the head.

They only briefly mentioned this about

three-quarters of the way through the second episode that we watched.

She's like the leader of Netaro's faction, which is like there had been an inter-association skirmish happening between Pariston and

Netaro.

And I guess she's like the head of the Netaro crew.

Yeah,

she

initially seems to be kind of playing things sort of softly, softly, but over the course of these episodes, she is often the first to be like, I have to outflank Pariston immediately.

There's some really incredible type dogs.

What were you going to say, Sylvie?

There's some really incredible, just like cutaways to her inner monologue.

Yeah.

Yes.

She hates Paris more than anyone.

Yeah, no one's like,

Pariston more than her.

I didn't write down like a one-for-one quote, but like there's a part where he says something like, um,

just like some something about like procedure, just like, oh, yeah, we should let other people, we should let the hunters hear our voices and see our souls.

And then she goes, Periston, I hate you so much.

I hate you to death.

Here's what, here's what, here's what she says: He's hard to deal with because he readily accepts suggestions that are detrimental to him, and he even suggests ideas that put him at a severe disadvantage.

It's almost like he enjoys having obstacles to overcome.

He's a lot like Chairman Neter in that way, and I hate it.

It's great.

Then there is Horse.

Horse is

Sako Kobiyakawa.

Yeah.

He looks awful.

They fucked your shit up, dude.

Sorry, man.

Yeah.

It's not only that he sort of has like a horse mouth, but he has those like big, unsettling eyes that horses have, you know?

Black like a doll's eyes.

Would it be better or worse if his eyes were more on the side of his head?

Oh, worse, I think.

I do think worse.

It wouldn't be so bad.

It wouldn't be Skullman, wouldn't he?

I had to look at him to picture it, but yeah, that would be very scary to me.

And immediately, we're just given a lot of really fun, little unsubtle background detail.

Pariston

picks up the empty chair that is alongside the conference table and moves it to sit at the head.

And we have like a reaction shot from the group of just being like, oh my god.

It's great because he, he, they play him in this way where everyone knows that he's getting one over on them, but they don't know how socially to stop him because this isn't what they're good at.

And also, it's so annoying to go against him that they are constantly having to pick their battles and just let him do this kind of thing.

I think this is an amazing contrast to the kind of manipulation that we see the Zaldics wielding throughout this little block of episodes as well.

These like two kinds of manipulative

methodologies and the different ways that you can kind of counter them.

Because yes, you're right.

They're not good at beating Pariston, but also they're just like, it is so exhausting.

to even try and counter him because he'll just outflank you and move in another direction.

We actually see them really trying to.

So he has this opening where he basically says, you know,

you should just make me the chairman.

It would quote, save a lot of time and money and we all know I'm the right choice.

And the Zodiacs

hate this.

Snake deploys a sort of like ribboned snake arm.

It's like one of her arms goes lashing out.

It's kind of cute also.

It is kind of cute.

Yeah, it's great.

They say not a single one of us would ever vote for you.

And Pariston is

his smom is like a fingernail thick, right?

Like, as soon as you get below it, because he's just immediately, he's like, 11 votes.

Do you know how many hunters there are?

He says that the terra was far too strong, which is why he couldn't relate to the weak.

The same can be said for you guys.

I can empathize.

And to which they respond with sort of an accusation that

Periston has a,

runs a temp agency that he uses to enrich himself.

We've heard about the association dogs.

He takes advantage of weaker hunters or like labor of weaker hunters.

Sorry, what did you say, Sylvie?

I said, and we meet Cheeto because the hunter dogs.

Oh, association dogs.

Yeah, this is the true association dog is cheetah.

So he takes advantage of the labor of weaker hunters

and it seems like maybe even like ensnares them in debt

because it's yeah, it's heavily implied that uh, the reason why this is essentially an unfair election from the start is that uh, there's a ton of hunters who are like literally indebted to Periston.

It's it's crazy, like they drop so much rapid-fire shit about Periston.

They do, there's also the like implication that he's like disappearing people, yeah.

I couldn't remember if that was then or later, but yeah, it's a little later, I think.

Yeah, it the

All these people owe you money, and then they just disappear out of nowhere.

Or don't support your weird rival faction.

Yeah, post-Chimera Ant, the mask is fully off the hunters now,

both as people and as an organization.

There's great stuff from Illumi later that, like, they're so explicit about what happens at East Corteau.

It's great.

Yeah, it's it's really, really cool.

Um, so something that's worth saying is, and you might have noticed, by the way, we're talking about this we are like out of the chimera and arc in a major way we are like moving on to new stuff and you know this whole tranche of new characters introduced completely different play with tone the color palette that like very distinct like the purple of pito the and the sort of like the blue and gray and green of the palace that kind of like suffused the chimera and arc is largely gone.

The color palette has changed.

But at the same time, we are firmly

picking up from where the Chimera Ant arc left off, both in terms of like, we can talk about hunters in this way.

Obviously, Natera's death is what this whole arc is about.

We turn politics explicitly.

Yep.

Yeah.

But also

we have Yoshihiro Tagashi that is like so wildly empowered by making the big machine of Chimera Ant go that he is now pouring that energy into these other sort of interesting little loops.

It's a bit like, you know, the amount of water that it takes to make a massive mill wheel turn, you know, fairly slowly.

That volume of water is now being shot down a pipe at a tiny wheel that's not.

He didn't lose any water.

No.

Another character decides to nominate themselves.

Can you guess who it is, dear viewer?

It is Jing Freaks.

All

the Zodiac

feel about this.

This is the best.

This is so funny.

As a group, they all go, they all say just like this: I don't want to vote for either of them yes they say i wrote

i wrote american politics simulator yeah

uh it's so funny because they and they hate them for opposite reasons jing is like rude and kind of you know self-interested and is unserious and is like netaro in a lot of um ways uh And then Pariston is only like Netero in one way, where he thinks it's fun to fuck with himself and other people.

But also, he's like a conniving rat who is like absolutely willing to take advantage of any person or situation to empower himself.

Then we have perhaps the funniest line now that we've decided that Jing is just in the show.

Pariston says, Mr.

Jing, isn't your son having some trouble?

And holding suck.

Sure sounds like it.

Now we move into this really weird tensile scene where it seems like Pariston briefly threatens Gong.

Yeah.

It's hard to tell.

I think he's sort of, he, it feels like he's testing Jing's resolve because what happens when, so he says, I heard he's still in critical condition.

Maybe I shouldn't go.

He could be dead by the time I go there.

And then Jing says, no, go.

That kid's not going to die.

They stare at each other.

briefly charged and then Pariston's like forget about this whole self-nominating thing.

Let's have a real election.

Because

this is, I think, the moment where Pariston goes, I don't think I can beat Jing one-on-one.

Yes,

yeah.

It's uh, Mr.

Jing, isn't your son having some trouble?

Is so funny, yeah.

Um, after all this time, it's like suddenly cutting to the dads who went to buy cigarettes.

It's also to reveal that Jing knows what's happening.

Oh, yeah, he is aware,

probably has been the whole time,

yeah.

Yeah,

I'm sure.

I'm sure someone told him about what was up with Gone as soon as anyone in the association knew.

My next note here is...

Oh, go ahead, Jack.

My next note here says, getting bogged down procedure.

Both the Zodiacs are doing this and also Yoshiko Tagashis.

I love the bogged down.

I'm having so much fun here with the bogging down.

Cheetah says, okay, let's have the election the way that Netero said that we should.

We'll each propose, because it's no use arguing about how we should do this.

Let's just each propose one idea, and then we'll get a green, green, green jellybean man to pick randomly.

Sorry, his name is Wilson, though.

Is it Wilson?

We'll get Wilson to pick randomly.

This does make me think.

I feel like the particular getting bogged down in procedure reminds me a lot of scenes where a Keith character and an Austin character get into a spiraling argument.

Oh, my God.

So if you're watching this show and you're like, man,

I love this scene,

you should go.

What?

I can't remember.

Can you all think of a specific season that has one of those?

Oh, yes, absolutely.

All of them.

Yes.

And which character are you saying I am here?

It kind of flip-flops.

Yeah.

It's because

neither one of you all are like Jinger.

Yeah, this is what I was worried about.

This is what I was worried about, I think.

No, it's just the vibe.

It's the vibe of.

Because that's not you all.

all, that's characters.

Yeah, it's true.

It's acting.

Everybody, everybody who isn't Pariston and Jing is trying to come up with a method

of like running this election that is going to weaken Pariston and Jing.

Right.

Yeah.

Green Green Jelly Bean Man is a bit overwhelmed by this.

You have made your bed and you have to sleep in it, Green Green Jellybean Man.

We saw you laundering the hunters in the last episode.

This is your job, my guy.

Yeah.

The Ox is he's no Pariston, but he's trouble in his own way, like worrying about Jing, which I think is fun.

They don't like Pariston or Jing.

They don't like

each other.

No, yeah, there's a lot.

I just like, they cannot stand each other.

And I, that, there's a real feeling that this is purposeful by Netaro.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And we can, we get a bit of this like.

It's your class.

Hey, it's your classic.

what's the fucking Lincoln thing?

Team of rivals?

Oh, yeah.

Sure.

Cabinet of rivals.

Yeah.

Jing's method wins.

Pariston seems fine with this.

Well, yeah, well, we'll learn about that in a second.

But Pariston's reaction to this being kind of chill is a reflection of the way Pariston maneuvers.

Parriston is a real, like, I'll just play it where it lands type guy and actually seems to take some pleasure in having to play the ball from the roof.

Right.

And because Jing is the same way,

the rough actually is good for Periston.

These are, this is exactly what Periston wanted.

Jing gave himself

the same handicap that Periston would have given himself.

Media golf plus.

Here are the rules.

All hunts.

They use clubs in golf.

We could have just said.

You could have said golf club plus.

Wait, hold on.

I just need to say time to game, season start to game, record-breaking season start to game.

Oh, yes.

This is...

Tagashi looked at an election and said, that's not enough for a game for me.

Hold on, hang on, hang on.

Okay, here are the rules.

All hunters, all of them, are nominated.

Yeah.

We're sort of doing like a Holy Roman Empire election type thing happening here.

They're also all able to vote.

If there is no clear winner the first time, there'll be a re-vote with the top 16.

If there is still no clear winner, the pool will be cut in half before they go again.

Now, here's the problem: voter turnout needs to be 95%.

This fucking show.

Hunters need to sign their votes.

Anonymous votes won't count.

The others really don't like this this because it'll favor Pariston and Jing.

Specifically because

the people that Pariston has

power over or something on

will

feel like they have to vote for Pariston.

It's heavily implied that he's disappearing, people.

Yes.

Yes.

Rule five.

Jing Freaks.

Will be the chief executive officer of the task force.

And Pariston says, I love one through four.

I don't care much for five.

Not vibing with five.

And no, by the way, no one is vibing with five.

But actually, Pariston,

we don't get any internal monologue from Pariston.

I don't think at all.

But everyone else, we do hear what they're thinking.

And they're like, fuck, I should have thought of that.

But Pariston is the one that speaks up and says, like, that's beyond the scope.

We should not include that.

And it's a really fun move to do that because, like, that

means Pariston is also just as opaque to the viewer as he is to

the other zodiacs and I really enjoy that.

Jing is the other character that we don't get internal monologue from.

No, but

we do get flashbacks though.

Pariston is really interesting character design because he is so

repellent

in his affect.

And his character is constantly surrounded by these kind of like

shady salesman sparkles.

You know, like when someone's trying to sell you a used car in an anime and there's ping, ding, bling, bling, bling all around them.

Uh, he's got uh the shine in his eyes the whole time, and yet at the same time, he is just like

he's playing a dark game of his own at all times, and that kind of mismatch between the real, like trying to sell you a ten-dollar item for a hundred dollars and also some really sinister maneuvering is is very enjoyable.

Yeah, um, and it's even hard to tell, even from like actually watching, let alone

as a character in there with less information.

It's hard to tell.

He is so smarmy in the same way about everything.

It's hard to tell when he's actually conceding something or when you've accidentally played into a hand you don't know he has.

Yeah.

And a lot of the show.

We are not entirely being told Pariston's plan at all

at any point.

We get little flickers flickers of it occasionally.

And yes, we know he's got Association Dogs.

We know he's disappearing people.

There's a great line where they're like, hunters dying is kind of fine.

Everyone knows what they're getting into.

It's when they disappear that it's really concerning.

Yeah.

Beans looks at Jing when Jing immediately agrees to Nick's his election

boss role.

and says, that's a real hunter, looking at him with genuine awe.

And then he says, how frightening.

Flashback to two days ago.

Jing rigs the whole thing.

Yeah, Jing had guessed that it would come down to drawing lots.

And he actually even guessed that Cheetah would be the one to suggest it.

So he pre-writes his note, gives it to Green Green and Jellybean Man, Wilson.

And

this is his first house moment.

Instructs him to

instructs him to ask as if he's picked Jing's note, if the rules are acceptable to him.

Beans asks him outright if he would consider just becoming chairman, which is crazy.

And then Jing says, that's not going to happen.

Zero chance.

Sorry about that.

All I'm doing is following the old man's wishes.

And this is also, he reveals to Beans that

five is a fake rule.

It's there just to concede it.

Yeah, he says, this is how thugs and frauds con people.

It's not that special.

This is such a great line.

This is such a like a.

it's as though he is trying to say, I am better than that by being able to identify that, you know, it's like I have the tools of thugs and frauds in my pocket, and that's part of the reason why I'm good at this.

You're just a thug and a fraud, man.

That's you know, you're using their, you're using their tools because you are one of these.

Um, he says, when I can make my quarry move how I want, I have succeeded as a hunter, ringing the hunter bell

so hard that the cloud starts to fall out he says i just want to have some fun with the process that's all you could embroider this on a little embroidery sampler and it would be the most coherent one sentence answer to what is a hunter anything kind of literal too of course yeah it is of course the guy who delivers the most salient explanation of what it means to be a hunter is sort of spiritual villain of the of the saga Jing Freaks.

And the uh hunter, as far as the sort of the like

cosmology of the show is concerned.

Yeah, it's like, what is a hunter?

Well, it's what my dad does.

Yeah.

You know,

um, it's great.

There's really, really, really good stuff.

There are 661 hunters exactly.

Less than I would have thought.

Well, no, hang on.

Wait a second.

There was a time when you do have to play the squid game to become

there was a time when we asked you how many hunters there were and I couldn't find the answer.

Yeah, it was very early on in the hunter exam.

Sorry, very early on, comma, in the hunter exam arc.

I don't know where in there, but we asked you how many hunters you thought there were, and I couldn't find your exact answer, and I don't remember what it was, but I believe that you gave like a a double answer of like way fewer than you'd think or like thousands.

That was that is like my vague memory of what it is.

So it's like me.

Yeah.

Which means means you sort of missed on either end.

Yeah,

this is what happens when you hedge sometimes.

You really just hedge in either direction and fail.

Right.

This is the 13th election.

This is interesting to me.

This means that there have been

hunter organizations, many hunter organizations

that have been defined by something other than Natero.

Obviously, Notero could have won multiple elections.

That's a possibility.

But there are eras of the Hunter Association without Chairman Netera.

Yeah.

There is a think about.

There was a time where we were discussing briefly the possibility of

Nedera having invented Nen, and the fact that we were just about to enter into the 13th Hunter election was in my mind as a thing that I could not say.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, it could still, you know, you could have a hunter organization with

Nen, but I do think that so much of the way that the hunters have two tools in their disposal: a frightening, world-changing magical power that they wield like a weapon, and also the nuclear bomb.

Um, and so without that, it would just be the hunters would have a nuclear bomb.

I think, I don't think they have the nuclear bomb, I think that they are in the world that the nuclear bomb is in.

I mean, they got access to it, they did get access to it, yeah.

Um, um,

this is interesting

probably going to want a while to run this election, right?

No.

What is it?

A week?

Do they have a week?

One day.

It was one day.

Not even that.

Yeah.

I missed that.

I saw the date.

I saw that it was like August 8th, but I didn't notice the exact date that it was before that.

One day.

Yeah.

And they get up to 85%,

which is nice.

We get a parade of familiar hunters.

That's fun, right?

Yeah, well, so firstly, strict, quote, strict punctuality is expected.

And there's this huge line of hunters outside the door.

This is just some really nice

visual design, some really nice staging.

Rather than sort of like being in a big crowd and then coming forward in a line, or even just going like around like bollards, like a Q system would, the hunters are all just in this like long, straggly line running out of the building.

It's a really nice visual.

And who's the first person we see?

That's right.

It's Hanzo.

Oh, it's Menshi, actually.

Is it Menshi?

Menchi is there, and then Hansen, and then Satots, and then Buhara.

Menchi's food friend.

Wing is here.

Wing is here.

Gerenu is here.

And then Hiseka.

Oh, God.

Hiseka's got a new outfit.

Actually, I think this is quite a cool Hiseka.

Look, I think he looks pretty good here.

You do not have to hand it to him.

He's wearing gold earrings with hearts on, and his hair is red.

It's usually pink.

I don't know if this is a lighting thing.

No, he's not.

I think that his hair is sometimes slightly different reds.

Because I didn't notice it as being like phenomenally different than usual.

He looks very pale.

Part of this is just that we haven't seen him for a while, but in comparison to he's wearing like a paler doublet here.

Sometimes he wears that like dark purple doublet that makes his character a bit more saturated.

He kind of comes off as a bit pale.

Tiger is not happy to see him.

Sylvie's also not happy to see him.

He's doing the best bit that he's ever done, though.

It's so fucking funny.

It's so fucking funny.

He's like, it's really funny in these episodes, actually.

Yeah.

So, yeah, first of all, he's looking at everybody and ranking them.

He's half impressed by one Zodiac by Ginta, who is a 90, as far as he's concerned.

Tiger is an 85.

The Bunny is a 77.

He's bored by these people.

But he's also...

Yeah, well, I don't know.

My gut instinct is that this is factual.

These are like

this is some real thing.

Because what happens right after is that Lumi walks in as Geacheraker out of Husuka's eye line, and he goes 95.

It's it's it's like he's seen a hot girl.

Yes,

yeah.

Yeah, his boyfriend's here.

Really, really nice to see Gitaraka here at the end of the of the anime.

Kitaraka shows back up.

Also,

let me just see.

Duon is here.

Oh, sorry, the bit that he does.

The bit.

Oh, yeah.

He's got his

slip to vote.

And they're like, don't you even?

I thought you didn't care about this kind of stuff, you murderer.

And he's like, I don't.

And then he holds the paper and it's blank.

He's just here.

He's just here to find Jing.

He just wants to fight.

He heard about Jing.

He wants to fight Jing.

So he's pretending to vote.

And then he just

still wants to put it in the box.

And they're like, no, go away.

So he drops it and goes and sits in the audience.

Here's one thing you can say for Hisakamura.

He He's consistent.

He's consistent.

In terms of what he's after.

We also see a load of Mafiosos.

This is interesting.

There were some Mafia hunters, I guess.

We also see

some people from Greed Island.

I think we see some of Genthru's guys, or at least one of Genthru's guys.

You know, I take it back.

His hair is more red here.

Importantly, we see Notero's memorial painting.

This fucking guy.

Does anybody remember what Notero's Memorial Painting says?

No, I think I missed it.

I don't either.

You're all going so bad.

Chairman Notero's Memorial Painting says, heart is important.

Oh, yeah, no, yeah.

This fucking guy.

I mean, it was.

His heart was very important.

Look, yeah, I like Netero.

I like Netero a lot.

Like,

this is not a pun

because

he did not have heart in any way where that would be a meaningful thing to say.

No, he was famously very heartless.

Notero's heart was very important because it was a bomb.

Yeah.

Dynamite plungers are important, is what it Carlosa could have said, you know?

Yeah.

Here is what I think it is.

I think it's that prior to the point where he

actually fought the king, prior to the point where he actually was the man in the arena, he thought

the idea was very funny.

You know?

He was like, oh, I'm going to go in with a nuclear bomber.

It's exactly the kind of chairman Notero bullshit.

And it speaks to the power of the Chimera End Arc, right?

That by the end, it is just horror.

And Notero recognizes it as horror in the moment.

But here we have the painting that he made saying heart is important back when he thought it was kind of still like a funny little joke.

First results: no majority.

87% turnout.

Pariston is at the top.

He has got 37% of the vote.

This is not good enough.

I'm going to read out some of the other votes.

I think this is really fun.

So, Parriston, yeah, he had 249 votes.

Number two is Cheadle with 42.

Number, I didn't write down the number.

It was like number five, I think, was Moral with 12 votes.

Jing had seven votes.

Nove had five votes and kite had four votes.

Well, that's you don't want a baby governing.

No,

this is also a papal conclave.

Yes, it is.

Yeah.

I think that that is that is really interesting.

I'm going to say, just remember you signed that now.

Okay, cool.

Cool and good.

Both with the like the cavalcade of religious imagery around Natero and also with the the

mechanics of a Vatican vote, right?

Like the repeated

trying to reach quorum.

It's hard to see some of the names down lower on the list, especially because they run them together when they have the same amount of votes.

Gone had a vote.

Gone had one vote.

Oh, I didn't realize Kiloa had time to vote.

This is the other

thing that reminded me a lot of a papal conclave, right?

Is that like

during the early stages of a papal conclave, I mean, obviously the votes are not clear, but based on what people have said about them,

weirdies will just get like two votes and it'll be like, hang on, how did you do that?

Do you think we're going to get a Chicago chairman?

Should we get a Chicago chairman?

I want a chairman who's had a dog.

I want a chairman who's played Wordle.

Well, Nettero had a dog.

I don't care about any of this.

He's He's a normal guy shit.

He is the Pope.

You leave that stuff behind.

He is now.

No one tries to make the Pope relatable.

He's the Pope.

He's the Pope.

Did they do this to the Italian popes?

Probably.

Try and make them relatable?

Yeah, there was a bit of that with the

last.

What was the last Pope's name, Francis?

Yeah, Francis.

But he wasn't Italian.

He was.

He was South American, wasn't he?

That sounds right.

No, he was

an Austrian guy, and then it was.

Yeah, that was Benedict, was the Austrian guy.

He was, yeah, he's an Argentina.

Yeah.

It makes me super.

It's an Italian family.

People are like, we got a woke Pope now, guys.

No, you haven't.

We're losing chest to a dog.

All right, let's continue.

Beans is very protective of the ballot box.

This is very cute.

Jing calls him a baldy.

The idea that you could make

beans mad by insulting his appearance.

Remember, you're a low-key, great Yoshihiro Tagashi joke.

Yeah, um, he's a green-green jellybean man.

I would have thought that being called your bald would not have bothered him at all.

It might not.

I think it's just Jing going for a low blow.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

It is sort of like calling a fish legless, it sort of is.

Uh, and now, kind of like effortlessly,

the

show starts to introduce or like segue into the second plot here, as we cut two

dear friends, Hisaka and Ilumi, hanging out on the roof.

This is a date.

This is a date.

There is some really good date stuff with Illumi.

Hisuka and Illumi come out of these episodes really well, which is a crazy thing, I would say.

No, you're right, though.

You are right.

They're given some like exposition that they need to do.

And Tagashi is a smart enough writer to

bolster their character alongside that exposition.

So we're not just watching two people we abhor

exposit at us.

You know, it's been a long time since we've spent a lot of time,

especially with Hisuka.

because Ilumi's never really been likable and in fact has been extremely unlikable.

But Tagashi is not a stranger to having a character who's the worst guy in the world who you're like, but he's he pops.

Yeah.

Uh, Ilumi makes a misconception about his place in the world in one of these episodes that is one of the best things I've ever seen Illumi do.

It's it's really good and immediately like just fills that character up in a new, interesting way.

Totally, yeah, it totally re-characterizes Illumi's you know position in the zone.

Beautiful.

We will talk about it.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, Ilumi gives Hisuka the lowdown.

He says, We're voting because Chairman Notero died.

Yeah, something tells me you don't watch the news

yes which is true it's so funny he also says

he didn't mean all that stuff he doesn't have internet

there's a rumor that the association has been quote given a big backyard as the reward we had talked about the sort of like uh geopolitical um

Yeah, fallout of Chimera in the last episode.

It's fun to see that being made text.

You know, they've just been given the NGL.

The thing that's so great about it is in the last set of episodes, we see how it's framed by the media, and then we see how an insider talks about it.

In the last set of episodes, you know, the hunters are given stewardship over a nature preserve in order to prevent another catastrophe.

In this episode, they're given a big backyard as a reward for killing the ants.

It's really good.

It's really good.

And it is a level of politicking that I think is rare

in

media in general.

Yep.

There's not a lot of media that's like talking so plainly about

politics and people's political maneuvers.

I think there, I mean, I think there's a, I think that there is.

I think it is rare to see in like a

shounen like this.

I think like political fiction is kind of like

that is the engine of political fiction.

Okay.

I think that you have to exclude political fiction.

Okay.

Well, okay.

Well, then we're having a different conversation.

I think this makes sense because we're talking, this is not, this is not a political show.

And so you wouldn't expect like a

level of depth to the politics like

and when you compare to other shows that are equally on the surface, not as political, the level of this is what I'm, you know, trying to compare apples to apples.

Yes.

He says a lot of stuff happened around the world while you were playing tag with Krollo.

This is kind of like the only hint we get in these episodes of what's been going on.

It doesn't seem like it's been terribly fruitful for

Hisaka.

Also worth saying, we still don't know whether or not the exorcism has happened.

Yeah.

If you had stopped to think for even a moment, you could have fought the chairman or the ants for that matter.

My time is too precious for those moments.

Perhaps I could use a manager.

You interested?

They're flirting.

That's great.

Them flirting like this really

endears me to these two awful people.

It's great.

Hiseka spends so much time lusting after people he should absolutely not be lusting after that when I see him with Ilumi, I'm like, ah, this is how it could be.

They're the only people that can stand to be around each other.

And they even, no, they do actually quite like each other.

There's some bits where like Ilumi is irritating Hiseker in the early stuff, and he's like Isn't there a bit where he's like this fucking guy, but you get the impression they respect each other and They like each other.

Yeah

Ilumi also tells Hiseka that Goan is in a critical condition and Killua has gone to see Silva.

Sorry, this is the this is what's interesting about the Hisuka and Ilumi relationship is that

In any other situation,

Hisuka would not be able to stop himself from from trying to kill Ilumi.

It's his whole deal.

And he gets visibly excited by the idea of doing that in these episodes

before he knows that it's Ilumi.

But for some reason, he doesn't.

Instead, they're friends.

Why him?

Why are they friends instead of like another one of Hisuka's guys he kills?

Because it's going to kill her again, maybe?

It is kind of it does kind of have that.

Hey, Satos would see the connection.

Satos would and does.

Killua has gone to see Silver.

This is the first sort of like

information about where Killua has gone after he stormed out on Nove.

We knew where he was going because Keith read the episode name.

Yes.

Yeah.

When I reacted reacted to that,

I want you to know that that was happening live on air in my brain.

Yeah.

When you said alaka and something, and I said, how is that spelt?

I had not put it together.

And you heard the cogs spin into action in my brain.

It was delightful knowing that that was coming.

Also, within...

Four hours of getting off a plane in Japan, I saw an Aloka figurine.

Yes.

This was inevitable, I think.

this was inevitable it did not give me any information about who alaka is or what they do but it was very funny to turn the figurine over in my hand and read the katakana and go ah

um yeah

uh illumi says the zaldic family has another younger brother and i want to get rid of him as we see the figure in the photograph turning away remember that photograph that i looked at and i went who is there's another zaldic there then i briefly thought it was phaitan that might still be true we'll see

Yes, the percent, the probability is shrinking.

Do you know how much manga there is?

I think that they've been pretty explicit about who that specifically in that photo is.

The closing credits, it's a really simple closing credits this time.

It is the four main casts.

So Krapika, Leorio, Gone, and Killua, standing on the surface of like a

cloudy lake, looking up at the clouds.

and then the sun sets, and they're looking up at the stars that are reflected in the lake.

The moon rises, and then as it reaches the end, so the characters are kind of like standing in like a tableau vivant with their hair blowing.

Just as it reaches the end, Leorio gets bored and turns and looks at the camera, which is great.

It looks like he's checking out Karavika.

Okay, more election nonsense.

Keith, Periston wants to use the threat of having your hunter license

confiscated to prevent people from abstaining.

It's sort of

clear that he's implying that this would also temporarily suspend their status as hunters.

Everyone points out that this is clearly election manipulation.

And so he agrees pretty much right away to add in a bunch of points that promise that it's not, that it won't change your status and that you can get your hunter license back and everything's fine, but you still will have your hunter's license confiscated if you don't vote.

Until the election is over, it's not clear.

Yeah, everyone says it doesn't matter because people will still feel intimidated by this.

And then he says, like, no, no, no.

These people are not voting because they don't want to vote.

Threatening to take away their hunter licenses with no real consequences will only lead to fewer people voting because they're hunters.

They'll say, fuck the consequences.

And we'll find out if that's true or not.

But everyone's sort of confused by him.

Like, this is really a scene about, like, everyone can tell that he's being manipulative, but they don't know in what direction.

Seemingly, no one can figure out how to like oppose his ideas.

And part of it is because they share some of the same goals.

They also want more people to vote.

Yeah, I have a quote from Cheeto that made me laugh really hard.

Yeah.

I hate to admit it, but unless we do something to get out the vote, we'll never wipe that smile off Parison's face.

Pokemon

go to the polls, Hunter Association.

Pokemon go to the holes.

Go to the holes.

Suffer.

Well, we're going to log off forever.

Goodbye, everybody.

At what point, Pariston says, is coercion such a bad thing when you think about it?

To which Cow, in just like a great understated line reading, says, right, got it.

We're done.

Yeah, I think this is a perfect time for me to post

an image that I've wanted to, that I've been thinking about since we started this show.

And

it's an

would someone like to describe this?

This is angry Cheadle

shouting at Parriston.

She's saying, Pariston, are you homophobic?

And Pariston pauses and he's thinking, and then he says in very small letters, I am

gay.

And then we get Cheadle thinking, he's dodging the question.

And it is literally just what I think about every time I see these characters.

Is Pariston, are you homophobic?

I am gay.

Cheetah is furious for thinking this, but she's mad that Jing isn't here.

Jing is represented by a huge stuffed panda bear.

Mm-hmm.

I've written down here.

Why exactly don't we want Pariston to win?

I mean, it's obvious.

He's evil.

He's actively manipulated.

I've written down, other than the fact that he's clearly signaled as bad news, it's kind of kept for it's like, well, he's the baddie.

We don't want him to win because he's evil.

And this is part of part of what makes Pariston interesting, right?

Is that like

one way you could stage this is like based on a

manifesto.

You could have Pariston's manifesto be so clearly self-serving or so clearly evil.

You know,

this is the way that a lot of election fiction works, right?

You know, you have the guy who is saying that he's going to do something that is so clearly bad that we have to, you know, work the election against him.

There's none of that happening here, really.

Pereston is just bad news.

Well, Cheadle has sort of a solution to that.

In the middle of all this, Cheadle says, hey, why don't we like,

you know, get ourselves out there and tell the people what we stand for?

Which they eventually agree to do, but they kind of move past it here.

Yeah, this will come back up again.

Yeah, Periston reframes it as his idea later on.

Yeah, this is such an odd way to, and it's such a Tagashi way to like stage an election story where it's not actually really about

the election in terms of like people expressing uh an electoral impulse, it's instead about like

maybe 14 people maximum trying to wangle it so that their guy wins.

Yeah, it's it's it's more than the election, it's about like that the system of the election

is

sort of a structure that these people are

sort of building as they go.

Like, yeah, in the same way that like a game like Factorio or something, where you're like shipping goods off, is never about the goods or about like where they go or what their purpose is.

It's just about the increasingly elaborate machines you build to output like an election, you know?

Um,

uh, Cheadle is not sure why Notero selected Pariston to be the vice chairman.

Beans knows,

and you probably know too, the viewer.

Uh, we hear Notero speaking, he says, it would be boring to have a yes man, it should be exactly the kind of person I can't stand to look at.

Beans thinks this was a big mistake and still does, and it was you know, I think it's hard to say,

like, would Chairman Netero do anything different?

Uh, and I think probably the answer is no.

Um, but it is clear that the reason that Netero finds this so fun is that he doesn't understand

what running an organization is like.

Like in all meaningful ways, it seems like Netero, who is the most powerful human that

the camera of Hunter Hunter has ever shown,

was fully losing control of the Hunter organization to Paris.

And as far as his attitude showed, he was not interested in the truth of that.

No, no, it's not what Matero does.

You know, yeah.

Do you think fixing the Hunter Association is interesting or fun or a good fight?

No.

I think it's boring.

It sounds like nerd shit.

Yeah.

I want to punch.

I want to go to the field and punch.

Let me do my punch in the field.

I don't want to do books, Beans.

You can't make me do my books.

Fucking hell.

Beans, by the way, is still wearing a snazzy little outfit that we last saw him in.

It's as though

he gets a new outfit.

He should have been wearing this outfit the whole time.

This should be his little hunter outfit.

Yeah.

Also, he has an H on his outfit.

Yeah.

There's not the logo of the hunter organization.

The hunter organization logo is the double-crossed X's.

Why does he have an H?

You are not adhering to the style guide, Beans.

Beans?

i like that everybody respects beans

i don't

no

wow it's the one thing that all of these people agree on is that beans is trustworthy it's also not true beans is not trustworthy he's he's he is trustworthy in that he will do and and it's this is why i love these characters is because they understand this perspective They understand the perspective of I will lie and cheat and steal to do what I think is best for the hunter organizations.

And the person that does that the best will win.

And so the fact that Beans is untrustworthy, but he's untrustworthy to the benefit of the hunter association makes him trustworthy to them.

He's a eunuch.

He's a eunuch.

Yeah, you're right.

Yeah.

This is a very funny phrase.

Me pointing at Beans.

He's a eunuch.

He's a eunuch.

Did we talk about the eunuchs in Media Club Plus?

Or was that a

we did one time?

A Crusade of Kings thing?

Oh, yeah, I guess it could have been either.

Yeah.

I feel like Eunuchs have gotta have come up.

Fucking Shayapoof was in the show.

Shut the fuck up.

Fucking shut up.

Pokemon go to the holes.

If I'm going down, you're all going down.

That's why we need eunuchs.

We need someone who can safely go to the Pokemon holes.

It won't be a problem.

All right, I'm moving on.

And now the episode shifts gears completely.

Killer was older, missed the first vote.

I don't think of Killer as someone who's particularly interested in.

Sequant and Zebra.

Sequant and Zebra.

Viewer, viewer.

Costume went back.

Come on, you can do it.

You can do it.

Did you?

I literally wrote in my notes.

I don't remember these guys' names, but Keith or Jack will tell me.

They put them in the working doc.

I don't know if anybody saw that.

I pulled that up.

That was when I was vindicated.

Was the bandit who tried to break into the Zaldic house and watched an entire platoon get killed by canary and so effectively that he joined yeah and that's why um they're on the phone because sequen has to vote because he's a hunter yeah yeah yeah and zebro is the old man butler who's ripped uh killua uh opened the testing gate do you remember the testing gate yeah he pushed it open up to the fifth door and quote looked incredibly distressed zebro says uh when you see killua's friend I want you to ask him if he can help young Master Killua.

And Sequance says, Uh-oh, bad news.

You each have half of this story, and I've got the bad news.

I sold my watch strap to buy you a hair comb.

Do we remember how many

pounds the fifth gate is?

No, oh god, no.

Do we have guesses?

No, I can't really do weight.

I'm like Sylvie in the height.

It's 64 tons.

Is that a lot?

Yes, that's

128,000 pounds.

How much does an elephant weigh?

I don't know, like

2,300 pounds, maybe?

That's like a crazy guess.

How much?

There's a lot of kinds of elephants.

There's big elephants and small elephants, too.

They are probably bigger.

Elephants weigh.

Let's see.

Ooh, Asian elephant is 8,000 pounds.

African forest elephant is 6,000 pounds.

Bush elephant, 13,000 pounds.

Holy moly.

I just wanted to check if an elephant had appeared in the show.

So I searched in my notes for the word elephant.

No, an elephant appeared in our first Dragon Ball Z interlude, and my note here just says elephant parade.

It was when

that little creep from Brooklyn and Goku were running around a circus.

That little creep from Brooklyn.

You're not wrong.

That's what he was, but he was also a fox.

Okay.

In the tunnels beneath the Zeldic Mansion, Killiwa meets his dad, Silva.

He says, let me see Aluka.

I need her help.

And right away, the kind of like core...

thing going on here is just spelled out in some extremely unsubtle exposition As Silva says, No one alive can control Aluka.

And Kiloa says, Nope, she is a member of the family, not the machine.

I'll ask her as her brother.

And as Silva looks up at these strange, sort of like tumorous, swollen faces on the ceiling.

I have no idea what this is about.

I'll talk about this in a second.

He says, that entity isn't human.

Don't ever think of it as family.

This is the

basic shape of the sketch in place immediately in one conversation.

It is clangingly unsubtle here, and you're going to see Tagashi start to like pull at this and kind of color it.

But it is notable how fast he gets down to the business of like, I need you to understand what is going on here like this.

Jack, I want to give you, I want to do you the favor of giving you the other translation that I have here.

That thing isn't family.

It's something from another place.

Something from the darkness.

Demon World is back.

I just did this when I said demon world is back, baby.

You might think that I'm speaking kind of like metaphorically.

This is the clearest piece of demon world that we have ever seen.

Hey, what's going on with those faces on the ceiling?

I don't know.

I previously thought that.

I wrote that down too.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I like was like, oh, are these are these past alaka victims or something?

But they get they get uh vaporized, basically.

Yeah, what alaka does to people is cool as hell.

It's the coolest shit, maybe in the show.

Uh, um, what is that?

What is trophies?

Like, I really don't know.

I don't know, I have no idea.

They linger on them in a way that makes me be like, oh, what's that?

Kilua says something which I think is great, and that it works, I think, is so good for Silva's character, someone who has,

um, not in equal measure, but enough, has both appeared like kind of a

cold, distant, conniving, like assassin freak who rules his family with an iron fist, but also like

a fairly attentive listener and someone who is listening to his son and considering his best interests.

He's just also evil.

He's just also evil.

And that comes back up here.

Kilo explains, Goan made an awful contract putting conditions on his nen, and Exorcist would die trying to fix it.

If Alika hasn't changed, I'm the only one who can help her.

I know it.

And Goan needs her help right now to live.

And a flashback to their original conversation at the Zoldic Estate, uh, where Silva says, Promise me one thing: that you will never betray your friends.

And then Kilo responds to that thought:

If I can help out a friend but choose not to, is that a betrayal?

And this works, it works right away.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

Um,

it's really interesting.

The Zeldic parents

do seem like they are trying to teach their children lessons.

Something.

While they are.

Yeah, something.

You know, they are

actively,

abusively manipulative

to

probably all their children on some level, but specifically...

uh kaluto kilua and aloka the sort of the youngest children yeah

But even within that, it really does seem like over and over again, whenever we see Kikyo, especially, will you know, be like proud when Kilua makes decisions that seem to suggest he's learning or something.

And I wonder if there is this weird sort of like didacticism under here where he's like, oh, Kilua has learned an important lesson about the world, and that needs to be respected.

Yeah, it's because they obviously care about their legacy and the legacy of this older family, and they care about that like above

like warmth and love and healthy choices for their kids uh

yeah

and when they teach them lessons you can always reduce it down to the end that like killu is going to lead the family in order to lead the family he needs to have like some sort of complete perspective that it seems like Silva has that the other Zoldics lack.

I think you can see clearly like the second most

complete Zoldic is Ilumi, and there's something missing.

There's something missing from Illumi that is in Silva.

And I think that Silva fosters that in Killua.

Does he foster it for anything other than purely like legacy reasons?

I don't know.

It's hard to tell.

But it seems like that there is parenthood in

them somewhere.

Yes, and we get a bit of this later as well, in a way that I think is a really lovely shot comparing

Killer and Silver.

Do we know if the Tommy Pickles founded the Zoldic family, or are they like an ancient family of assassins?

I mean, Tommy Pickles is mad old, but Tommy Pickles is Rugrats, right?

Yeah, Tommy Pickles is Rugrats, yes.

You nailed it.

You nailed it.

I watched the first episode of Rugrats I'd ever seen the other day.

I was jet lagged, and I didn't enjoy it very much.

Oh,

I love, I love Rugrats.

It's hit or miss, and it's also a show for kids, but it's got that uniquely grotesque art style from the 90s.

And I think it's the best of those art styles, and it's also the best show that uses that art style.

I always hated

kind of shrieking, and their voices are all nasal, and they're like zooming in and out of the camera.

And I thought it was like 4 a.m.

and also 11 a.m.

at the same time.

And, you know,

it's worth saying that as the Zeldics have been, have reappeared in the story, the full suite of the

adaptation teams, like the Zaldic

ephemera also comes pouring back in.

The really great Zeldic theme.

The Cookeroo Mountain sets, all that stuff comes back.

We also get to see Silva's frightening dogs.

I think you wrote down something here, Dre.

Yeah, I said, look out, Kilua, that dog's going to kill you.

When I say frightening dogs, I don't mean Mikkei.

No.

No, it's kind of like a.

It's like the...

I can't remember the name of the shape-shifting critters, but...

Oh, yeah!

The

Kokiri.

Kori.

That's Zelda.

Kokiriko?

That's also Zelda.

Anyway, we've seen these guys before.

Kiriko.

Kiriko, thank you.

Yeah, I wrote Killua not taking dogs seriously as a threat.

We know how that's going to go.

Coming into this episode and hearing

Yulot describe Aluka as trans and talking about that being something that is explicitly going on in the thing is

illustrative for me in terms of like what is happening.

Because

without the context of of the next episodes to come

there were

the

alteration in the use of pronouns for aluka by different members of her family yeah was kind of like just odd to me i was like what is happening here where

and the simpler the the occam's razor explanation for this that turns out to be what is happening i think is the cleanest and the most interesting but i was going through these episodes going wait a second hang on what are we doing here with this shift in pronouns?

I mean, this has always been a show about gender in a lot of ways, and I'm really interested to see where that is going to go with Aluka going forward.

But I wanted to say, from the like the perspective of someone who hasn't seen the full runway and knowing Tagashi's wild, you know, this is Yoshiro Tagashi, so a character being referred to by different pronouns could

be a lot of weird shit going on.

We just had that.

That's what Pito was.

That is what pito was um

i think uh

aluka is trans

in an abusive family is a really in is like such a clarity uh

in addition to what else is going on with aluka which is so complicated and we're about to get into um

i have a note here that i'll talk about at the end of the episode which is like

why

is Aluka and what is going on here so compelling?

And I think that part of that is that blending of just this very simple, like person trapped in an abusive family, and also what we're about to talk about.

And also Killua.

I think that part of why Aluka kind of like sings as a character is really through Killua.

She doesn't have a lot to do in these episodes.

She is instrumentalized both by her family and by the camera in a lot of ways.

But Killua's kind of like relationship with her is fascinating.

And is another character that the Zaltics prevented from being Killua's friend?

Yep.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yes.

Uh-huh.

In two ways, by separating her physically, and then

I guess we'll talk about the second thing in a minute.

Aloka is way down behind like an almost comical number of bulkheads down in the dungeon.

She has been sealed away by the Zaltics and she is

presented surrounded by

stuffed animals

in this kind of like simulacra of a child's bedroom.

This reminded me a great deal of Salem Moon arc,

the Mistress Nine Hotaru arc,

which is about a

girl who has been raised by people who are seeking to manipulate the fact that they believe that she is possessed by a sort of like a dark being, a being from another place.

And during the early portion of that arc, she is famously staged sitting on a throne on a stage surrounded by a load of stuffed animals.

So I felt like there was like a particular reference kind of like happening here.

I think the easiest way to talk about Alaka, whose power is still not fully revealed by the time we get to the end of this, but is mostly revealed.

Alaka's power is drip-fed fed to us

uh through a series of like anecdotes that are told really interestingly both by killua and by ilumi and hisuka illumi telling this story to his

it's really good and i i also and uh um miluki too um and and miluki yes yeah the the like fractured

reveal of like how Aluka works and what Aluka is

and the way that it is like spread through these characters is really fantastic.

I think the cleanest way to talk about Alaka is to like break down what it is that she does,

and then we can kind of like talk about the circumstances in which that is revealed.

Because

a big portion of this revelation comes in a Hisaka-Illumi conversation that is fascinating for a bunch of other reasons.

I want to start first by noting how this begins, which is, I think, really great.

It really mirrors how the conversations about the election begin, which is like everyone shows up, everyone knows each other, everyone knows the score, and they just start talking.

And we just learn from what they're saying.

We just pick up bits of what's going on.

The same thing happens, you know, Silva's led Kilo down this extremely long, extremely secure hallway and says, I'm sure you already know this, but demands are still being made.

What is that?

It's so good.

Demands are still being made.

Um, he explains that Maluki had made the last demand for a new computer.

It's so funny, and this is, I want to talk about this real quick because, um, Kilua says, instead of responding to this right away, uh, or I can't remember, maybe he does.

He thinks, like, oh, well, then maybe it won't be that bad.

Uh, again, what will be that bad?

What are you talking about?

Is it because Illumi was manipulating me?

Is that why?

What have I done?

How could I leave my little sister in this situation?

Implication,

more than implication.

They're basically just saying, Ilumi's needle made me forget about Aluka.

Or made me not care about Aluka.

Or maybe not care.

I strongly suspect that the needle made him forget.

That's how I read it too.

We talked a long time ago about

a theory that I had seen that like...

Kilua knew about Nen when he was growing up and he would have to to just be a Zoldic.

And when he was sent off to fight in Heaven's Arena for the first time,

they put the needle in him to protect him from the top floor.

And that needle did a bunch of other convenient things.

There's a co-op between

Ilumi and Silva, make him forget about Nen, make him not go to the 100th floor of

Heaven's Arena, and make him for a not

remember Aluka, because that's a big headache for us.

And

this stuff's really good.

It's really good.

I think it's really good.

This stuff, like

this stuff, like really gets me emotionally.

There's something about

Killua

recognizing that there was someone else with him having a bad time, that there was someone else in there who he

wasn't able to help but can now.

And, you know, like what he owes to his sister, this person he's always been very close to.

This is like, this is really, this kind of like gets at my heart.

He's terrified and guilty and like confused.

It's very sad.

Also,

a fairly elegant,

it's kind of clunky.

It's about as elegant as you could get.

It is a fairly elegant solution to the contrivance of like, well, what do you mean there's another Zolting sister who can solve this problem immediately?

You know?

And the reason, the way you

get past that is you say, well, the consequences of her solving the problem are massive.

Am I going to get to that?

And also,

you had forgotten about her.

You know, you had been cut off from the one person in your family.

This is so sad, especially with the

stuff with Canary and wanting a friend.

Tying it to the needle, it works so well because even though Alica appears out of nowhere in the story.

Ilumi's manipulation and the needle have been a part of the story for so long.

We've sort of accepted that the whole time we knew Kilua, he was under this influence.

And it is a, it's a pretty small step to add one more thing to the list.

Yeah.

It's lovely.

It's worth saying, as we talk about this, Alaka is terrifying.

And the show is terrifying.

He's presenting this sort of like slow roll of like, what's Alaka's deal?

Like he said, demands are still being made.

The Zaldic family has another brother and I intend to get rid of them.

There is like a horror movie thing happening here.

This feels like a like

a short horror story that is slowly developing.

This little scene here ends with Silva making Killua

prove that he remembers the rules.

The rules.

It's necessary.

Have you forgotten how many people have died?

I think this is a great time to start talking about rules, but okay, yeah, sure.

What does Kilua say?

Kilua says, we've killed more people than Alico.

Yeah.

You know?

And look, you do not have to hand it to Silva, but it is different.

It is different.

It's also different in an evil way, right?

Where it's like the killing that the Zeldix do is bounded by their own control.

As soon as someone else is doing it, then they start getting.

And not only that, how many people died because of Aluka because they were put in that position by the other Zoldics?

Like the Zeldix.

Yes, just them.

It seems to me.

Yeah, almost all of them, like all but like, but like the 15.

Which is a lot of fun.

The double horror, the double like horror story horror of like, not only is Aluka kind of like terrifying in and of herself The Zoldics are also playing their own horror story right with Aluka.

Right.

I

there's something when we get into the rules like when we've gotten all the rules of how Alaka's power works

Can we like circle back to this because there's some stuff about just like

She kind of ends up being the platonic ideal of what the Zoldic

vocation is, you know?

Absolutely.

I've got notes about this.

We can can, we can absolutely come back to this.

As we talk about the rules, it's worth saying, this might be some of the best Nen we've ever seen.

Yeah.

Alicia is like a machine for Nen.

Nen?

Is this Nen?

It might not be Nen.

On multiple occasions,

Magic is back.

There's this great moment later on where they say, like, we don't know how she does this.

And she doesn't seem to have an aura.

She doesn't seem to have an aura.

She doesn't have any fighting ability that

anyone can see.

And unlike Nen, like people who specialize in Nen exercising, Kilua, Silva, and Ilumi all seem pretty sure that there is no limit to what she can do.

It reminds me of Neon a lot because if you remember Neon, she doesn't remember any of her.

Yeah, yeah.

She doesn't remember any of the things she writes, the predictions she makes.

And

if we are ascribing this to Alicia and Nanaka to to Nen,

then it definitely does fall under the branch of like some specialists out there are just like

the power is more in control than them at times.

Yeah, some of the two scariest lines about Alika are when Kiloa says, we're pretty sure she can do anything.

That's a terrifying line.

And then...

What, you don't think trans girls can do anything?

Wow.

Wow.

Sorry.

I'm like, I'm shitposting at an incredible rate whenever she's on screen.

And then at one point,

Kilua says, we don't know where she came from.

Yeah.

It's great.

Yeah.

All right.

Alaka is a wish creature.

She is like a wish-granting

entity, except

also two entities.

Yeah, it does actually seem to be two entities.

The Zaldics call the other entity like it and sort of conflate that with Alaka.

Right.

They call it something.

Killua calls this other entity, which does again seem to be another entity, Nanika.

Nanika has some of the best creepy art in the show.

I think that just means something.

They've just chosen not to translate that.

Yes.

Okay.

Alaka

will make

demands of you.

four demands four demands.

Yeah,

once these demands will be pretty straightforward, at least they will initially

be simple.

Lift me up, take me over there.

Once she's made four demands, something happens to her face.

I believe you only need to fulfill three demands.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

You only have to fulfill three, but she'll give you four choices.

If you refuse four in a row, that's a different different rule yes okay falsehood three demands her face becomes a sort of white mask with two black eyes and a big black smile like a like a gap

she

kind of looks like the gyroids from animal carl thing kind of looks like oh it does kind of looks like jinx panda

It does also kind of look like Jinx Panda.

It also looks a lot like Ilumi in a shot later.

It's great.

It's worth saying that Nanika's affect

is

like dreamlike and cheery.

She doesn't get a creepy voice or anything.

She just

once she looks like this, she will grant you a wish.

We're pretty sure she could do anything.

What are some wishes we see granted?

We see her.

Oh, you're skipping an important part.

After they say the wish, how does Nanika let you know that she's going to grant it?

She says, Kate.

No, she says, Kay.

We see her levitate killer Zaldic.

Briefly, we see her give a butler a million dollars.

And by give a butler a million dollars, she causes a blimp carrying a million dollars to appear, like to disappear from its original location and appear.

above the the butler and start raining money down.

It's like she can sort of just like rewrite reality, like existing conditions of reality.

Do we see other wishes get granted?

Maluki gets PC.

Oh, and also they

Maluki asks her at one point to kill someone he can't be bothered to kill.

Yeah.

You know, stuff like that.

Stuff like that.

Also, do we see her heal a baby bird?

Or an injured bird?

We do see her heal an injured bird.

After this,

she will go back to looking like Alaker again, and she will start making demands.

These demands will be commensurate, still delivered in the cheery tone of voice, to the wish that you just granted.

This is revealed when she approaches the butler and says, give me your liver.

And the butler says, no.

And she says, okay, give me your spine.

Give me your intestines.

And the butler says,

nope.

And then she asks for for the spine and she asks for the brain.

And if you fail to fulfill four of her demands, she kills you in a really cool way.

She

sort of like.

It's a little different each time.

But she like rings you out.

Yes.

Yeah.

Sometimes you get squishy flat.

Yeah, smithereened or rung out.

And then so you die.

And then who else dies, Jack, when you get smithereened or strong or wrong out?

Initially,

it seems to be that the other person who dies is the person who you love the most.

So, for example, they'll kill you and your lover.

But if the wish is really, really big,

it seems like it kills the person you love the most, and then it just starts going down a list in an order that at first the Zoldics don't quite understand.

We'll talk about what they come to learn later.

But all you need to know at this point is that like 67 people die horrifically all over the world.

Kind of like linked to this person.

These are the rules of Alicia.

Oh, once she is sort of like discharged like that, her demands go back down to the easiest possible level of demands.

This sounds complicated

because it is.

But

if you look at this for a second, and the show starts encouraging us to look at this for a second, this is a nen power custom-built to discuss almost every major theme and existing plot point that the show still has.

It is like virtuoso.

Yeah.

Um, the way Aloka has been like built to let Tagashi work through shit.

Uh, he was like, Do I need 500 ants to do this?

No, I'm gonna make one.

Aloka is the wheel that's spinning really, really quickly with all the water pressure from Chimera and

um

okay

what's the way into talking about this is it ilumi and hisaka

uh i think so they i think what so what happens here is after we get an initial shot of rules from kilua uh he gets let into aluka's room and

uh

what are they hug and then we cut away yeah

yeah she's so happy to see me so happy yeah every time they're on screen together, I like have to clutch my heart.

They're adorable.

It's so sweet.

It's been years.

I mean,

she's been trapped in here for years, probably.

Yes, it's fucked.

It's crazy how they're like talking about it.

She's the most dangerous creature in the world.

And then it just cuts to like a little girl in a goddamn bunker with her plush toys.

Like,

this is also the mechanics of a really good horror story, right?

As well.

The, like, the horror of this little girl is trapped, and also she is genuinely terrifying.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to

the the thing that's tragic is and this is like i think got its own whole thing wrapped up into it where it's like the thing that really breaks the trust for the zoldics and this would have happened eventually i think anyway but like one of the butlers says before all the rules are known I'm gonna fucking get a million dollars off of this, which we talked, we talked about.

And then that is like the first massacre that happens because of

alika.

And it could be the massacre, it's sort of like an accident.

I mean, you know,

um, a massacre, Alika's not out there killing these people.

They they lock her away because it's like, well, we can't stop ourselves from using her, and we might end up on the receiving end of some of this shit.

And even more so, we can't fucking stop these people, these like non-Zoldic people that we've got around.

Like, they kidnapped our kid,

used her to wish for a million dollars, and then a a bunch of people died.

Well, but there's also

the Zelda's know that Aluka has no fighting ability, so they could just kill her.

There's this awful thing going on as well here, right?

Which is that they want to use her in some way.

Right, yes, yeah.

Um, they really do want to use her, and they're expending a lot of effort and innocent life, and also trapping a girl in a basement to like figure out what that use is.

But if they were really that afraid of her, they'd just kill her.

Um,

Hisuka and Illumi are in a blimp

after the Hunter-Hunters remembered that blimps exist.

We're now firmly back in the middle of the...

Hey, we got blimps in Chimera, etc.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Straight away, we learn that the Zaldics have been killing people just explicitly to test the rules.

Miluki sacrificed some tourists.

Who were taking a photograph of Mikai, and there were two mikes there was like a

few of them yeah they're they're they gotta be careful those dogs are gonna kill all their children

you really gotta want one mikke per kid

um

there is an an allusion here right to like the um assassin family uh killing to get what you want this is one of these ways that aluker is like such a clear uh sort of metaphor for what's going on on some level.

We're an assassin family and we also have this thing in the basement that is just this sort of like platonic ideal of uh killing.

Um,

you had a point about this, Sylvie, right?

About like the way that Alica kind of dovetails with the Zaltics.

Well, so, like, when you get into it, what an assassin is, is it's someone making a demand in exchange for performing a task for you, right?

Like,

I mean, that's all occupations, but like, we whatever.

Uh, the

specifics of the thing that made me really think of it was Miluki doing the can you kill this guy for me so I don't have to

thing that he asks of her.

And it's like,

yeah,

the difference being that while the Zoldex, you know, they will also make their demands usually monetary.

And in exchange for the wish being granted, a gun, usually, I think almost always, actually, with the Zoldex, a murder.

But the thing that marks Alica is different and why they don't see her as like, oh yeah,

this is the ultimate sort of

transactional murder machine is because they can't control her and they can't control the collateral.

And it's like,

it's, it's too

good at doing what they do is the way I think of it.

And then there's also the classic like parent-child thing, right?

If they're like, my child is surpassing me in some way and I can't control them.

And so, you know, that has to be tamped down, has to be locked away.

And the other side of it is they can't even conceive of

a non-destructive use for her.

Like it never,

it's revealed that Killua knows extra rules because of his closeness to Alica and his just

willingness to try and heal an injured animal.

And

we don't know all of the extra rules that Killowin knows yet,

but we know that by

him asking for an injured bird to be healed,

he knows that to heal,

Nanica needs to be touching the target, which is not true for any kind of destructive act.

And

they don't know that this is true because no one ever even tried to do a good thing.

Ever.

No.

That's amazing.

It's so cool.

Just, it's so cool.

Ilumi and Hisuka start discussing this 67-person death following the million-dollar wish, the big one.

Because, so obviously,

there's some strange stuff going on here.

You know, Zaldic butlers are trained on in like a facility inside the Zaldic Mansion.

All through these episodes, there are just these kind of like weird little procedural Zaldic bits that are all terrifying in their own right.

For example, if butlers fall in love in the Zaldic family, they're both killed immediately.

This butler used to visit her mother, who was very sick.

She used to visit her a lot.

People always said that she loved her mother more than anybody, except following the massacre, the mother survived.

So how strange?

What was going on there?

But it turned out that she had recently fallen in love with someone.

She had found someone she loved more.

And even though she hadn't spent as much time with this guy as with the mother, Aluka's

sort of, like, violence targeted him immediately.

He was the number one target.

Now, you might be thinking, all right, so when you make a wish as big as,

you know, bring Goan Freaks back to life, there's going to be a big cost.

And if Killua is going to try and take the consequences of the wish himself, which is something that the Zoldics are starting to suspect, they're like, Killua Zoldic, you you know, you could just pin this on somebody else.

You know, you could make the big wish,

make Goan healthy, and then the next person who fails that the demands would be immense.

The next person who fails the demands would see the consequences of the

death.

But the Zoldics are already starting to suspect that Killior is going to get someone else to make the wish, and then he is going to try and fulfill the demands.

And I mean, how many people does Illumi imagine that that would kill?

Thousands.

Tens Tens of thousands.

This is amazing.

Okay, so hang on.

Faith, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Yeah.

The first thing is,

Kilua is going to try and fulfill the demands, in part because he's good and kind-hearted, but also, as it's spelled out later, Goan would not accept a bringing back to life that resulted in the deaths of all these.

people.

They're right about this.

I think it's Ilumi who...

It's Miluki.

It's Miluki has like figured this out, and he's correct.

He also says, like,

he doesn't think like us.

That's why we had to put the needle in his head, but he has correctly figured out what is going on here.

Secondly, even outside all of this stuff, we now have another game.

The game is fulfill a series of impossible demands that is potentially brewing.

You know, this is the um

herself is like a personified game.

Yep.

Yeah.

Uh, What's the Scarborough Fair?

The what are the demands in Scarborough Fair?

You know, it's that thing.

It's the like classic folk tale of like a person tasked with fulfilling a series of impossible demands.

Now one of those is possibly brewing.

That's really lovely.

To your point about the potential consequence here being the deaths of tens of thousands of people, it's such like a gleeful and fun and elegant thing to do at the end of your like world hopping shounen adventure story.

Be like, oh, everybody all these people ever met might die yeah because it turns out that this is how aluka targets

you go for the person you love the most and then you go

like down the list of people you have spent the most time with that's it right

yeah that's it which means that instead of that woman's mother dying it was her new lover and all of the people that she went to to like Zoldic Butler to school with, including the teachers.

Because they, like a little puzzle box, you know, she was only allowed to see her mother for a half hour every week.

So she very quickly racked up more time with, you know,

her classmates.

You could min-max Aluka if you were really clever about it.

But the Zoldics...

are trying to do that only through murder.

Yeah.

So before this 10,000 people die or tens of thousands of people dying thing,

there's that bit that Jack we were talking about with Ilumi that sort of spins his persona in an interesting little way because he's explaining to Hisuka all of these powers that Killua would put his life on the line to have a surrogate make the wish and then try to have

try to fulfill Alica's requests and then he would ultimately fail,

resulting in at least Killua himself dying and also the person that he loves the most.

Hisuka immediately goes, oh, so that means that no matter what, him and Gone would both die.

And then Ilui's like, no, no, him and me would die.

It's so good.

It's so good.

Hisuka says, hmm, I'll admit I have my issues, but you're the worst.

You know that?

It's like crazy when Hisuka Moro is saying that too.

Right.

Yeah.

And that you're like, yeah, you're kind kind of right.

And that is what is scary about Hisuka is that everything that happens, he has a pretty keen eye for the reality of.

He looks at Ilumi and goes, Ilumi's evil and a bad brother.

Yeah, yeah, that is that is

Kiliua's deal.

You undersold the moment of that, Keith.

The dialogue pacing is so wonderful.

They're in this like really high-stakes expository dialogue mode.

You know, they're saying things like, I'm willing to bet that Killua will have someone else make the wish and then attempt to pay the price for himself.

Gohm must have made a contract with a fate worse than death.

Kiluwa won't be able to meet Alico's impossible demands.

Still, he'll try his best and fail as an impossible goal.

And then

any way you slice it, Gohm will surely die.

And then Kiloa goes, huh?

And Illumi goes, huh?

And Kilo goes, huh?

Hisuka.

Hisuka.

And then hiseka says, wait, am I wrong?

And they both kind of like look at each other as Hisuka realizes that Ilumi has been thinking of himself as the the like target of love.

Yeah, it's crazy because it's Ilumi.

Yeah, it's crazy.

But it makes him so much more.

Um,

it just, it just like adds like a you suddenly realize that this character is like a beautiful uh phyllo pastry of multiple legs.

It proves why Kilua has to be the head of the Zoldic family.

Yeah, someone with

that thin of a grasp on reality that can't understand the gravity of of how he's run his life couldn't ever be in charge of something he needs to have a real view of the world and that's why killua is even out here in the first place is because silva believes that and i think there is a weird tension going on where like illumi knows that killua is the scion

despite being frankly the most capable killer of the Zaltics at least at this point i mean it's killua but killua is not killing right now right um

And there's this sort of a, there is a real tension between Ilumi and Killua, where it's like, you get the impression that Ilumi is like, well, I'm not going to be the Scion, but at least I can exert control over this guy.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

For as long as I can.

This is so clever.

Here in this.

So.

When they say, oh, the casualties will probably be in the tens of thousands.

There's this great moment as like a sweat drop forms on Hiseka's forehead as he realizes that like he is in the firing line.

Yeah.

Both

Illumi, but Goan and Hisuka and you know 9,000 other people

are in the firing line.

So now we have predatory Hisuka and abusive Ilumi are feeling the hens come back to Rus

simultaneously based on the sister they have neglected and Killua acting out of his love for Goan.

And they can see the train coming.

It's, you know,

they are going, going, oh god, right, we're actually really in a bind here, and we're specifically in this bind because of the way we have led our lives over the last, you know,

in Ilumi's case, decades, and Hezekiah's case.

I don't know how long the show's been going, what, six months?

No,

much longer than that.

Uh, you're saying how long has it been in universe?

Yes, I think it's been over a year.

I think it's probably been like a year and a half or two years.

Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure people have uh

like figured out the timeline, but I'd need to look at it.

There's this scene in the last episode where they cut back to Killua in

having his first heart-to-heart with his dad, and it's like, oh my God, Kilua is a baby here.

Yeah, it's really good.

We also do get to see a lot of baby Killua in these episodes.

He's very sweet.

At one point, Baby Aluka is playing with a Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask doll.

Yes, that's right.

I didn't notice that.

That's cute.

In a scene where Ilumi has jarringly short hair, black jeans, and just like a jacket, and he looks like a, almost like a normal guy.

I imagine this scene being like,

I was like, he looks kind of like fine here.

I don't know what's going on.

Ilumi has some lovely costume design in this, actually.

In the scene in the blimp, he's wearing this kind of like weird, textured white vest and like rosary beads around his arms.

I think that's really good because we usually see him in that stupid green doublet.

Yeah, he's always in the green doublet.

Yeah.

But it's it's sort of like in the scene where they show Krolo when he was younger.

Um

and it's like this isn't the guy.

He should be scarier and weirder.

He should be.

Ilumi's great.

Ilumi is a really good villain.

I actually love seeing the Zolbix being kind of normal.

It makes them so much worse.

Yeah, there's a lot of scenes here.

And there's so much cool Alica stuff that we cannot bring up all the great little Alica wrinkles that have been introduced already.

Otherwise, we'll be here forever.

But here's one.

The parents aren't sure why Alaka never makes demands of them.

They soon learn that they are being played by the children.

The children will...

Okay, so...

Sorry, you say they soon learn.

They learned it the day Killua showed up to take Alaka.

That's when they learned.

I mean, soon in terms of like our time.

Right, yes.

Alaka will only make demands of one person at once.

So the children will like tee off a demand with one of the butlers and then return Alaka to the parents.

It's not clear why they're doing this.

Is it so that the children have more control over the wishes?

I think it's no, I think it's to protect the parents.

And I think in Killua's case, it's to protect Aluka.

Right.

Because Killu wanted to keep Alaka's thing a secret, not realizing, I guess, that Maluki already knew.

Yeah.

Also, every Zeldic

has been testing her powers,

including Killua, but Killua uses it to bring her bird back to life.

Again, it's a really touching moment in these episodes as you see Killua's face of like, this is a kid who has been brought up his whole life in a world about like killing, you know, like

ultimate destruction, like the end of a thing.

Looking up and seeing that there is the possibility for a beginning after an end as this dead bird, you know, flies away.

It's great.

Election time?

No, Alica makes a demand of Killua.

Yes, it's true.

And the demand is,

Big Brother, can you die?

And Kiloa says, yep, and falls backwards and his head disappears from his shoulder.

It's so good.

It's really, really good.

Of course, as we learn later, this is just a goof.

This is just a joke.

Killer pulled his head really quickly.

She's not Alec's life.

He's not going to kill her.

But the surreal moment of Killoa's head disappearing as he falls back is in this bizarre room is some real good Twilight Zone horror.

Let me see if there is.

The second one is

the second request is Word Games.

She says, like, can we play the final A in Aluka or something?

I don't fully know what's going on here.

This is when we learn that Killua says the real Aluka is the one who calls me Big Brother.

The one who calls me Killua is the other one.

That's Nanika.

Nanika is scary, in part because Kilua spends so much time advocating for Aluka's

personhood and care.

And Kilua is also like, oh, there's another one in there.

And that one is bad news.

Just running through, make sure that we didn't miss any rules.

Yeah, I think we hit all of the rules as far as I can.

The same person can't make a wish twice in a row.

Do we say that?

Yeah, Tagashi loves to do this.

And some of the time when he does this, it's because he's setting up very specific rules that let him tell the story the way he wants to.

And sometimes he's just being fun with it.

Remember the elevator?

I do.

I mean, the elevator was actually kind of

blood.

Anika can't make demands of someone she doesn't know the name of because you start the demand by saying the name, which is why she calls Killa Kilo.

Is this a

plot contrivance to stop her from being genuinely unimaginably powerful?

Um,

no, I mean, I don't think so because

she in order to make demands on someone, she has to be near them, and so she really only ever ends up near people she knows the name of.

Right.

Yep.

Um,

Pariston now has 39% in the next round, but they still haven't reached quorum.

Oh, sorry, there is one more thing.

Sorry, Jack.

Uh,

did we say what Kilo, how Kilo gets off the mountain?

This comes after

the end of the episode.

Although, actually, it's worth saying about Ilumi's little plan.

Ilumi says, I am going to...

I will speak to Killua and ask him to follow the protocol of the wish.

Essentially, like, you make the wish.

No funny business, Killua.

He will either accept it or deny it.

But if Hiseka, who is here but hidden, you know, Hiseka will come with Ilumi but hidden.

If Hiseka Hiseka gets the sense that Killer is lying, kill Alaka.

Think of her as an ordinary child.

This is when the line, we have no idea where Alaka came from.

It's so good.

In this scene, we see Ilumi's face in the dark as he kind of like spells out this plan.

Just the white shape of his face, his big dark eyes.

He looks a lot like Nanaka.

And then we also see Hisuka's face there in the dark as well.

All right.

Election.

More absentees this time around.

People would rather put their licenses on the line than participate.

This is exactly as predicted.

Hunters are sent to the bottom.

What I would do.

Harrison's like, hey, if you wanted to put voting percentage up, you should have listened to me.

I would have argued more strongly for suspending people's

hunter status if what you wanted was to get more people to vote.

But you said that's what you didn't want that.

So I guess we got to think of something else.

You know who this guy is this guy is the npc austin plays when we are all collectively trying to get something done and he needs some little liberal to get in the way and jam up the wheels

um oh

who is it i was

it was when um there was some stuff towards the end of palisade when a character surrendered and we knew that any way we played the surrender it was going to just come out badly badly for us.

I don't know.

It was,

I'll type it in the chat.

I don't want to spoil the Palisade in the show.

Oh, sure, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

And we were like, this is just going to be a fucking headache.

Yeah.

That guy is very Pariston.

That guy is very,

very Pariston.

Okay.

Pariston proposes.

Also, we got to go and confiscate all these people's licenses.

We said we were going to do it.

How are we going to confiscate licenses from hunters?

That's right.

We're going to send them a letter saying, Yeah.

You better come in.

You can give these over.

This is where Parison says, Well, who cares about actually confiscating the licenses?

And they're like, What are you talking about?

It was your idea.

And he's like, Yeah, but if we take their licenses, then we have no more leverage over them.

And they're like,

Oh my God.

It's so infuriating.

I love it.

He's so

right.

It's the only thing that's going to be.

Parriston's superpower is that he will reflect for five seconds about an idea he had and be like, oh,

there are problems here.

Something that Tagashi did here that I think is really beautiful is he made

a terrible conniving blonde twink in the Chimera Antarc and then saw that and went, I can do that better.

I can do that.

I can one-up that.

Let's make him more conniving.

Yes.

It's his third conniving blonde twink.

Yeah.

I'm reading the

OSS

guide to sabotaging meetings from the CIA declassified pamphlet.

And then things like: make speeches, talk as frequently as possible and at great length, illustrate your points by log anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences, slow it down, advocate caution, avoid haste, where possible, refer all possible matters to committees, never fewer than five for consideration.

Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

Hangle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

And then this one is some real Parison.

Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to reopen the question of the advisability of this.

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it because what else does he do at this meeting?

He says, you know, we should do, we should get out the vote by

telling everybody our platform, making little videos and doing speeches and stuff, which was Cheeto's idea.

At the last meeting, Parison was like, no, no, no, we should take their Hunter licenses.

He also says we'd have a hard time doing this over the internet.

Are they going to try and do these speeches in person?

Are they going to go on the troll?

Well, most of the hunters are there.

Yeah, they have to come there to vote.

They do.

Because it's Tagashi, he has laid out the rules for absentee voting, but most of the hunters are there.

Nobody has a manifesto.

Nobody has a platform.

It's just, there's no.

That's what's being proposed.

Yeah, but the idea of these people giving speeches is on the face of it ridiculous because it's like speeches about what speeches about their platform yeah the you know the future of the hunter association they're dropping the speech

as the platform

okay

uh um it's so funny that this is the complete this is like

This is like when you see E.T.

with all his skin removed and he's the awful armature underneath.

This is just that for an election with no substance.

Or rather, all just the awful bones of an election with nothing on top of it.

Meanwhile, it is revealed that Aluka's power has rules that the rest of the family don't know.

This is especially funny, and we've kind of elided this a little.

The Zoldics have kept asking other Zoldics, including Killua, to repeat the rules.

So the irony here being that there are rules that they don't understand is

lovely.

And Kilua has been intentionally keeping rules from them.

At one point, Silva gets very angry at Maluki manipulating

Alaka, not because he values Alaka as a person, but because he doesn't think Maluki should be doing this.

And we get to see Silva's awful red Nen appearing.

Of course, Silva has malevolent Nen.

Don't you ever ask for a Razor computer ever again?

It's the same glare.

Don't you ever ask for a Razor computer.

It's the same glare that all of the

zodiacs give to Periston when Periston is like,

I nominate myself for chairman.

Okay.

Killua picks up Alaka, who has fallen asleep.

Alaka is now Nanaka, ready for the wish.

Actually, I don't know if she has fallen asleep.

I think she might just be creepy Nanaka mode, silent, waiting for the wish.

Yeah, I think that that's what it is.

Yeah.

And Kiliba makes his wish.

This is great.

I was not expecting this.

This was a real, uh, real doozy of a moment.

I thought he was going to somehow get Aluka out and then get someone else to make the Goan wish, which is still probably what's going to happen.

Now, Aluka is in the story.

I feel like I'm just watching the Rube Goldberg machine of Alaka wishes starting to like line themselves up.

Alaka wishes and demands.

But he says, here's my wish.

If we haven't gotten off this mountain in 30 minutes, kill our mother.

If we're able to make it off the mountain in that time, then kiss me on the cheek.

And Nanak

looks at the camera and says, Kay.

In my note here, I've written down Demon World is back, baby.

Everyone's gasping except for the mother who's crying.

And in her tears, tears, she says, Kilua, that was such a terribly cruel thing to say.

Wonderful.

My little boy is all grown up.

It's so good.

It's real, like it's some Adams family.

What is evil is good.

What is nasty is nice.

But she had also just praised him.

This is also what happened to the Adams family, though.

She had also just praised him for being such a good brother.

And it's like,

okay, what is going on here?

You put her in there.

Just before Kilua makes this wish,

he says to Silver, Dad, there's no doubt that we're father and son, right?

And we get this like collage of their two faces,

making as clear as it has ever been the physical resemblance between the two of them.

And anytime this show

is contrasting one of its protagonists with their father, we are like deep at the heart of what is going on here.

We see the like the possibility space unfolding of like, is Jing Goan in the future?

Is Silver Killer in the future?

You know, are these things predetermined?

And at the same time, as we're making a wish, like, if we haven't gotten off this mountain in 30 minutes, kill our mother, we are

teeing up to solve one nen condition with another.

You know, we're making another bargain, uh, as we've seen over and over again with the

hostage situation, as far back as the hostage situation in uh

Zaldic City.

What's the crew mountain?

York New City,

New Dong City, York New Delhi.

Oh, York New.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the Zaldix.

No, no, no, no.

Uh, you know, the like the cost of nan conditions sort of like being invoked being that they sort of start hemorrhaging out into like one nan condition breeds another nan condition, et cetera, et cetera.

We're seeing this happen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jack, why do you think that, and this is, I'll open this to the floor.

Why do you think Killowis said

there's no doubt that we're father and son?

What does that mean?

I think he was preparing.

The roof was preparing.

Yeah, I think he was preparing Silva for what he was about to do.

He was saying, look,

you know,

I'm you.

Watch this.

You're like a little baby.

I'm you.

You can't do this on contract.

I'm you.

I'm capable of this.

You need to be prepared for a world in which I can act against you in this way.

The needle's gone.

I think my spin on it is that

it's like, it's not just that I'll do this, I'll do anything to do what I want to do, but also I wouldn't do this if I wasn't right.

If this didn't make sense to do, I wouldn't do it.

Which you think is a silver thing.

Yes.

And it's, or at least a silver thing.

Silver thing.

Silver

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's such a good moment because then the doors open.

And

as we see.

Well, so firstly,

Kilo says, Nanaka's really good at breaking, but when it comes to fixing, not much.

When she heals, she has to touch the target directly or her power won't work.

Something that we've maybe alluded to by describing the way Nanaka kills as ringing you out.

It is mind-bogglingly gory, and it is shown on screen every time.

Yeah, people absolutely turning into red mist.

And also just sort of like awful Junji Ito shreds of person.

The image of the butler having her head smashed in is grotesque.

It's the one where she has like turned everybody in that room into like wet dish rags that really gets me.

Killer says there's another way to use the power as he leaves.

You can can grant one wish, but you can make it into a choice.

Am I understanding that right?

Is it that like you can frame it as an either or condition?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is powerful, even though here it's inconsequential.

But I think he's tipping his hand that there's stuff that he knows that they don't.

And also, it makes the metaphor even more obvious, right?

You know, like that there is a there is a space for choice here.

This is not as direct as just like calling in one thing.

You know,

there is room for maneuvering, there's room for a kind of expression and freedom within Alaka's wishes that only Killua has

understood.

And as he runs down the hill,

carrying her, and the sun is rising outside Kukuru Mountain, she turns her face back to Alaka and she kisses him on the cheek.

It's genuinely, really moving.

This is great.

Killua will be a good one.

What a good frame to end on with the kiss.

And he says, I'll save Goan and Alaka too.

Because as we're getting out of this, they're like

a really beautiful loop on the

on the um

where do we leave Killua that I was talking about last episode is it's like we've already seen you so so sort of Goan was able to like show Killua that the world exists and then that kind of soured in a really interesting way and then Goan kind of sorry and then Killua kind of helped Ikalgo do that and now we're seeing the like apotheosis of Killua like helping someone up the ladder that was let down for him of like freeing another family member from this.

This is just lovely.

It's great.

It's really good.

And it's

it

mitigates some of the instrumentalization of Aluka by the plot, right?

Where like

Alaka's whole tragedy is that she has been a kind of a tool that nobody really understands,

imprisoned and misused by her family.

And there was a bit of me that rankled a little bit when Killua approached and was like, I'm going to go and use my

sister, who's also a really great tool.

Time to use her to save Goan.

And the button on that being,

well, I'm going to try and get her out of this as well is great.

It's really lovely.

Yeah.

This is an underrated season.

Why do we think Alaka works so well?

Because she is, in and of herself, not given a lot to do in these episodes.

These episodes are really sort of like

sort of like extraneously about Alaka.

I think it's the realization that someone else other than Killua was dealing with the Zoldec family abuse in this way.

Like, I think that, like, we've, we've been spending over 100 episodes sympathizing with a kid who has gone through what we thought was the worst of the Zoltec family treatment.

And then we find out that, no, someone has had it, like,

just as bad, if not worse like she has been not even isolated to the grounds of the the estate she has been isolated to a room within it yeah she's in solitary confinement yeah like it's i think i think it's it does a lot um

with the

audiences already like being sympathetic towards Killua and like having to deal with that.

We gotta like, I think they do this a little bit with Kaluto even at times.

We've talked about it back when we had that little phantom troop

interlude in the Chimera Antarct.

Yeah, the vacation too.

Where, where, like,

where it's like, oh, Kaluto's starting to like see the world and make some connections and being like, oh, wow, these, look at these weirdies.

But this is even more to a more explicit.

Yeah, but this is it to a more explicit extent.

And this is like, I don't know.

I think it just like

it is Tagashi very smartly using the

sort of pathos that we've already built up for another character to have it affect

our feelings towards another.

Yeah.

I 100% agree.

Yeah, that like they've they have put Kilua, I think that the audience largely trusts Kilua implicitly.

And Kilua goes, I'm going to explain this whole deal with my sister.

And on top of it, it's going to have really kind of a phenomenal sort of Jenga tower of Ned.

Of Ned and some weird puzzle piece, you know, story construction that we're going to deal with.

Like, Kilua seems very confident that he knows what's going on.

And it's really fun to just be able to trust him and just hope that he can get to where he's going.

And that, I think, about does it for us.

I know we want to wrap up.

So I'm going to say this really quickly.

I have a question that I can't answer, and I don't think any of us can really answer.

So I'm sort of opening this up to the viewer because

my Japanese is not good.

But I was looking at the names of the Zaldic family, and I was wondering whether or not the Zaldic children's names are a series of puns.

We have Kaluto,

who could be the verb karu, which is for like cutting and snipping things.

Kaluto makes the uh the scissor paper the paper.

The paper dolls.

We have Miluki.

Miru is watching things.

We have Miluki down in his awful cave.

And also this idea of like the Zeldic that is keeping an eye on other things.

Kilo is pretty self-explanatory.

Kilo is pretty self-explanatory in English.

And in Japanese, the verb kiru is like incredibly versatile.

It can be like severing things, turning things off, terminating things.

what was the other one?

Like criticizing things, acting decisively.

My Japanese is...

That only started working recently, that last one.

Yes.

And then we have like ilumi and aluka for like iru and aru, they're like two different verbs for like to be for animate and inanimate things.

And I cannot say with confidence whether or not this is deliberate or whether or not I am finding faces in the flames, you know,

with my like very patchy understanding of the language.

But I'd be really curious to see if

people who know what's going on,

it would be very tagashi to have like a series of assassins, children who have like Japanese verb infinitives in the middle of their names.

If you know the answer to this question, you should leave us a five-star review.

And I'm going to read a five-star review real quick before Keith gives us what we're watching next time.

I'm assuming that we're at the

close of the episode.

This is a five-star review from Hunter Exam Dropout titled Help.

I ate the leaf from Wing's water divination cup and now my stomach hurts so bad.

Thank you for that.

Yeah, leave us a five-star review if you know about Japanese verbs and how they relate to the Zaldic family.

And hey, if you've been listening to this show for almost two years now, and you're interested in seeing what's next, or even if you just appreciate what we've already done, consider subscribing at friendsofthetable.cash.

Um, please do.

We do a lot of shows and streams and stuff, and it's great when people appreciate the show and show that appreciation by giving us a little money.

Next time, what are we watching next time?

We are watching three episodes.

Do you remember what I said last time about three and then four and then five?

No, we're gonna do three and then three and then three and then three if it ain't broke.

Yep,

I like it.

Episode 140, join battle and open battle.

Okay.

Sorry, did I say 340?

It says S03E140 here on my list.

140.

I said 140.

I did.

Okay, good.

141, Magician and Butler.

Okay.

And then 142,

sorry, Needles and Debt.

Interesting.

Makes you think.

Back with the Zelda family again, huh?

Killer Zelda really is the protagonist of this.

And as we're wrapping up the show, we are traveling back back to where he comes from.

Yeah, I love it.

And

they've taken Done off the board.

Yep.

Okay, bye.