Hunters ARE Evil - Hunter x Hunter ep. 116-118: Media Club Plus S01E37

Patiently waiting for the music.

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 by Yoshihiro Tagashi.

My name is Keith Carberry.

You can find me on the internet at Keith J.

Carberry.

You can find the Let's Plays that I do at youtube.com/slash run button, where a bunch of good stuff is going on.

You should go there and watch some of the stuff.

It's good.

Also,

as we're recording this, it was just last week that the Realis season, using Austin's Realis game that both Jack and Janine worked on, right?

That's up on the Patreon.

The new season is starting when this airs three weeks ago, four weeks ago.

I'm not

100% sure.

But Realis is really cool.

You should check that out.

And there's

a free video of it that I believe is featuring Austin and Jack up on the YouTube.

Is that what that was?

Yes.

Is that on YouTube already?

Well, by the time this is out of the video, by the time it is.

Yes.

I was trying to be professional and talk about things that I know will be true in the future.

It's joyful to do that, isn't it?

But it's so easy to fuck it up.

I believe there will also be some episodes available for free.

The first arc of Realis is going to be available to everybody in the main feed.

But if you support us on Patreon at friendsatthetable.cash, not only will you get episodes a week early, you will also

get access to the full Realis.

And it's great to support because that's how you support this show, too, if you like this show.

You've been hearing the voice of Jack DeKeat, who is with me as always.

Jack, is there anything else that you want to say?

You can go to notquitereal.bandcamp.com to hear some new music by me.

I wrote the theme for Realis, which was really fun.

Over the last sort of six months or so, I have.

And it was easy?

No sway.

It was the hardest theme I've ever written.

It was was the hardest theme I have ever written.

And over the last six months or so, or whatever, in introducing myself on Media Club Plus and pointing people towards my Bandcamp, I've sort of gritted my teeth because I felt like I've been a fake composer, even though I know that that's not true.

That's not how this stuff works.

Incredibly uncomfortable.

Can you explain what was the fake, what's fake about it?

Because I'm not making any music.

This, of course, is an unsustainable

position to hold.

But you can go to notquitereal.bandcamp.com notquitereal.bandcamp.com to hear new music from me.

I was, am, and will continue to be a real composer.

You know, that's not.

You've composed other things since we started Media Club Plus because we did a lot of Palisade.

Palisade.

During

a year of it.

Yes, we did.

Of the 18 months we've been doing this show, give or take,

you know, two-thirds of that has been full of Palisade composing.

It has, yes, it really was the post-Palisade pre-Realis period.

The PPPRP.

Yeah.

At which point, all hell broke loose.

But All Hell is now breaking loose more quietly and comfortably than it was previously.

Well, it's a great track.

People should go listen to that.

It's really good.

Thank you.

And it's extremely different.

It's wildly different than other stuff, too.

So,

also with me is Sylvie Bullet.

Hi, Sylvie.

Hey, I'm Sylvia.

You can find me on the internet, like Keith said, at Sylvie Bullet.

I'm on some social media platforms, but less so these days as they all turn to bigotry.

Bigotry, top to bottom, left to right.

Really trending right now.

Yeah.

What else we got?

We got the YouTube friends of the table on YouTube.

Check that out.

We've got Jack and I played some anthology of the killer.

Keith and I are still playing Virtue's Last Reward.

All sorts of good stuff up there uh crusader kings you crusader kings i was like there's something i'm forgetting and i'm it's the big one crusader kings still going strong uh hey a lot of king stuff to well actually not a lot of king stuff a lot of king adjacent stuff which crusader kings is also filled with yeah uh you're frequently adjacent to kings on that is my understanding yeah totally all the time uh and it was a slow month because it was you know the holidays and winter and people being busy and stuff like that and and spinning realis and Perpetua up.

But there was a bunch of streams.

I'm doing the future thing again.

There was just a bunch of streams.

I streamed every day a couple of weeks ago.

Damn.

That's this week.

Why is he doing this?

How does he know this?

With the power of calendar.

And of course, his net ability calendar.

Yeah, my net ability calendar.

When I use my calendar, I always know what's coming up.

Hey.

Andre Lee Swan.

Hey.

I don't know how to follow that up, but I'm here.

Do you have a calendar?

I do.

Do you have a physical calendar?

No, but I have four different digital ones.

Wow.

Holy.

It is too many.

It's a lot.

I have two digital ones.

And I used to have a to-do list, but I ditched the to-do list for a second calendar.

I have one physical one.

Yeah, the physical one.

Well, we all have the notion, and so I'm counting that.

Okay, yeah.

So I have two.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm counting that too.

Okay, so I have one physical one and one digital one.

One mental one.

One mental one.

All of the internet to me is mental.

That stuff's mental.

Yeah, it's mental.

And if you think about it, yeah, it's mental out there.

Speaking of mental.

Speaking of mental.

Are we still liking these apps?

Are we still liking these?

I love them.

Oh, my God.

I keep thinking that they can't get better.

And you're wrong every time.

Well, so this,

they might not be able to get better.

What they can continue to do is be brilliant.

Right.

Like without fail or pausing.

I'm going to tell you this.

I don't know.

I usually do this in the other chat.

I'm putting it in here.

I don't know.

I think they get better.

I don't know for sure that like each new set of episodes will continue to have like one episode that tops the previous one.

Yeah.

I guarantee you there is still stuff that's better than this.

And I've been looking forward to episode 116 for months.

116 is astonishing.

It's wild because these previous, the previous set that we did as the assault sort of like continued to rumble on and all the dominoes sort of started to fall, I was like...

The assault on the castle has gone wrong in a really entertaining way and watching all these pieces ping-ponging off each other is just tremendously fulfilling.

And I would have been happy with three further episodes of that.

But what happens in these episodes is it sort of continues to spiral and continues to go wrong in ways that have different feels or different cadences.

This is not just the last three episodes again,

even though we are still in pretty much the same situation.

Yeah,

the macro of what is happening is the same situation.

It is like another set of extremely compressed time being told over the course of three episodes.

Like, that is in extremely broad strokes, the exact same thing that happened in the last one, but everything has like progressed so extremely and so kind of explosively

that it feels like a whole new set of circumstances.

How do you write this?

I don't know.

I feel like no,

and you know, with almost still almost no dialogue.

This is three more episodes with like internal monologue and narration and like almost nothing else.

There's a lot of words and there is

16.

We are going to spend a lot of time, 116, talking about.

116 breaks into dialogue in some really interesting ways.

And as we suddenly remember, Yoshi Hori Tagashi remembers that he could write dialogue and he could write it really well.

And then forgets.

And then forgets.

You know, I.

Keeping these plates plates spinning and keeping track of all the various moving parts here is like a Herculean task.

I'm an iterative writer where, you know, I

plot something out, I figure it out, I write it, I see what doesn't work, I try and fix it.

You know, as George Slilder says, I try and move the big dial in my head from bad writing back towards good writing.

And I write some stuff and then check the dial again to see if it's moved.

I don't know how you iterate your way through this.

It feels like it had to have been like immaculately planned, right?

It really, yes, it feels like this stuff is heavily because there's there

to

do what's happened and what is going to happen without a plan and get out of it on the other side and go, that was amazing, is

for one, it's impossible because I know that I know stuff that couldn't have been known from the beginning.

Or sorry, I know stuff that would have had to have been known from the beginning.

But yeah, I don't, I, uh,

it this feels meticulous to me.

Yeah.

Sorry, I have to, I have to interrupt with an egregiously off-topic thing.

You know, the current thing, you know, the current thing about Blue Sky where people are like, Jesus Christ, the dumbest humans on earth are replying to my tweets with the most inane

feature

of Blue Sky that is happening.

I posted earlier.

And you can guess whether I was serious or whether I was joking.

You, Keith J.

Cobre.

Yeah.

They should make a movie about a smart man who is awesome.

And I knew it was going to be this one.

I have just now received the reply from someone who doesn't follow me, isn't followed by anyone that I know, and isn't following anyone that I know.

To ser with love,

stand and deliver.

Thanks for the advice.

Thanks.

It's really funny because Blue Sky is very, very bad at this.

This is like a property of the website that is very notable.

We didn't need to add the at this.

It's not great on this.

It is not a good website.

But I do feel like a lot of old school Blue Sky people, the sort of people who were on Blue Sky first and were very proud of their invites, etc., are like, oh, you'd never get this on Twitter.

And it's like, man, as soon as you get over 8,000 8,000 followers on Twitter, this shit happens to you all the time.

Yeah.

Well, this is interesting because I have over 8,000 followers on Twitter.

Well, I did before

the last year and a half happened.

Yeah.

And I never had anybody replying to any of my tweets that didn't.

Very lucky.

I never had, like, I would post.

Oh, no, it was people who are following you will do it.

Yeah, even them.

Like, I would post outrageous political things.

I would post, you know, veiled jokes.

I would post like

what I consider to be controversial opinions.

And I would get like likes and retweets and no comments or like two comments.

And the comments were like, yeah, I agree.

Maybe I wasn't posting at, maybe I wasn't posting as egregiously as I thought.

Maybe that's the lesson.

On Blue Sky, people are like, dear sir, place the ham between two slices of bread and you have what we call a sandwich winking emoji.

Okay, I'm sorry to derail, but I hate that website.

My posts are great.

You should follow me.

Yeah.

All my posts.

We're great.

Yeah.

But

that's me doing the whistle.

I'm all right.

You're doing

great.

And you're great.

Not on Blue Sky.

I'm great at other things.

I'm all right.

Do you have a recap for these episodes?

I would love to know this.

Nope.

Okay.

I forgot.

Okay.

I got really sucked into making sure that all the timing was.

We have three and a half dozen new songs for these episodes.

So I was making sure every time was right.

And then all of a sudden it was 7.15 and I had to use the bathroom and I had to like wolf down half a sandwich.

And then I got here and then I was learning.

Oh, recap.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to edit in a recap because I think it's an important part of the show.

And

we're going to pretend that it was here.

This week, we're starting off with maybe the most important episode of Hunter Hunter to date, a bottle episode featuring Goan's emotional face-off with Pitu and Killua's emotional face-back with Goan.

We'll get into it in depth, but that's literally all that happens in this one.

In the next two episodes, we check back in with all the other threads going on in the palace.

Cheetu begs to be killed instantly by the Zoldix.

Meleorone is able to link back up with Kilua.

Ikalgo deals with having blown his cover.

Yupi is having an identity crisis because he can't find any of his friends, and everyone keeps attacking him, and it's not fair.

And Knuckles semi-successfully is able to keep Yupi from killing Shoot.

But who will prevent Yu B from killing him?

Great recap.

Wow, thank you.

We pick up almost exactly where we left off as Goan and Kiliwa watch Pito at work.

The first shot of the episode actually is light streaming through the holes in the roof from

the dragon dive, and the ongoing destruction of the dragon dive is going to become a sort of like recurring theme in these episodes.

If the immediate aftermath of the dive was like

everybody get out of of the way as the palace is, you know, getting bombarded, now we're starting to see the longer-term effects of its attack.

I say longer term.

Let's not say it now, but later we will learn exactly how long has passed since the mission began.

Yeah, yeah.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

Something I actually, just real quick, I love about like how much there is to say about episode 116.

It is the shortest.

Minute-wise episode of Hunter Hunter to date because the beginning of it, there is a

three and and a half minute long recap, which is extremely

not what Hunter Hunter normally does.

Do you have the episode length?

Minus the recap?

Minus the recap?

No, it is, let's see,

minute, just under 17 minutes.

116 is singular.

And the place to start really is that this episode takes place in a single conversation in a single room.

I don't think we've seen Hunter Hunter do this before, have we?

I can't think of anything.

Okay,

there's things that are close.

There's the prisoner game from the Hunter exam.

Oh, yes, that's fair enough.

But there's way more characters and it's a bigger space.

And they treat it like three rooms.

They do treat it like three rooms.

Actually, that's really interesting.

Yeah, because not only is it set in one room, the prisoner game in the Hunter exam,

like Keith says, uses sort of three sets.

It uses the corridor where the prisoners are, it uses the central room, and it uses the corridor where Karapika goes to hide.

And, you know, we hang out with this, well, with him.

This confrontation with Pito is one set.

It's often like three camera positions, right?

We're looking at Pito.

We're looking up at Goan from Pito's perspective, maybe four.

We're looking at Goan and Killiua, and then we're looking from Kiliwa's perspective.

Yeah, if you want to think of like, you know, a space that's lit up with like what the used area is on this set, it's like about half of a bowling lane, like one lane in bowling.

It is like Kilua behind Goan, who is behind Pito, and that's it.

So there's like a huge room, but only this tiny little area that's even used.

And the episode has a really simple question that it's asking.

You know, often when we frame scenes in Friends at the Table, we come at it from the perspective of like, what is the question that this scene is trying to answer?

And the question for the viewer here is: is Goan's rage going to get the better of him, or how is Goan going to respond to Pito

on seeing that they are healing somebody or on learning that they are healing someone and this whole sort of like electric

15 16 17 minute scene

just plays as this sort of like spiraling exploration of that question as we see Goan get closer and closer to snapping or further from snapping and Killio sort of like trying to regain some control or speak to Goan, Goan trying to figure things out with Peto.

It's, it's wonderful.

Is there any sort of like real high-level stuff we want to hit about 116 before we start digging into it?

I have an extremely high-level thing, which is, I just want to like re-emphasize me being excited for this episode for a while now.

Um,

in a way, like all of Media Club Plus Hunter-Hunter season has been working towards like this one moment and a couple other things.

Like, 116

to me, the like finishing of a, of a twisting of a knife that has been like kind of slowly being inserted for a couple, a few dozen episodes now.

And

when I think about like what is interesting about Hunter Hunter, 116 is a major, massive flash point.

in the core in the sort of like tapestry of the answer to that question.

yeah.

Can I read?

I think these are both jack quotes that are from the very top of our working scratches.

Please, please, Greg.

Uh, quote one, Goan's great, isn't he?

Feel like it would be exhausting, but extremely valuable to have a gone in your life.

Uh, quote two, I don't think Goan and Hiseka are the same thing.

I still agree with that one.

I agree with that one too, but

yep, sure does.

Yeah,

yeah, I cannot see Hisuka having this kind of reaction, but I can see him being very happy

to see Goan having this reaction.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, because I think, like, Hisuka understands that people contain multitudes in a way that Goan doesn't.

Yeah, you do unfortunately have to hand it to Hisuka.

One thing he knows is that people contain multitudes.

What does he do with that information?

Bad things.

Bad things.

Bad things.

Okay, these are the players.

Pito is kneeling next to Komegi, who is lying flat on the ground with a surgical mask over her mouth.

Can I read one more thick quote from this from a couple down?

Yeah, close to a jack quote.

The relationships we have with the people closest to us are our greatest strength and greatest weakness.

You know?

They've got a point.

And finally, do you think the gorilla from the screenshot could use Ned?

yeah that's an important one too he is nen he is named yeah i wish that i had remembered that when we were talking about the gorilla he uses nen every time he moves yeah yeah he is nen kimaki is wearing a surgical mask not a surgical mask a um a oxygen mask um yeah this is a sort of like prosaic little detail in this scene that i love that however dr blithe works dr blithe is like um is physical you know dr blithe works with scalpels and scissors and you know various medical instruments and so also it's wise to give the person an oxygen mask over

uh komagi dr blithe continues to work on a huge wound in their torso uh pito kneels beside them

gone

is standing with a kind of like single-minded rigid posture his shoulders are hunched um his hands are by his sides in fists he is glowering.

Even as we begin, we get these incredible shots that we sort of saw teased at the beginning of this confrontation of like looking up on Goan's face as it is darkened by the fury.

Behind him is Killiwa, who knows exactly what is going on and knows exactly how high stakes these situations are and doesn't really know what to do about it.

That's it.

Yeah, you could tell Killua's already worried about Goan overreacting.

Killua's already breaking Sylvie's heart.

It's really sad.

Oh my god.

They both are, to be clear.

Where we get our first new track in ages.

As the scene begins?

Yeah, this whole scene is a brand new song called Prologue.

Play that funky music, white boy.

Why is it called Prologue?

It's actually one of the longest instances.

There's two...

Two new songs in a row.

Hold on.

What?

No, no, no.

I'm just answering the question.

Oh, oh, oh, who's the white boy?

Okay, yeah.

It's me.

And it's not that funky.

The music's not that funky, but you know.

Oh, I thought you said play that fucking music.

I said play that funky music like the night.

I knew it wasn't funky, but I did hear correctly.

Yeah.

Every second from besides a couple seconds of silence,

from the minute this episode starts until minute seven and a half, it's two new songs played back to back.

One called Prologue and one called Invaders.

I'm uncomfortable already.

That's Prologue.

And we'll talk about Invaders in a couple minutes.

I was so excited when I started hearing new music.

Yeah, yeah.

And this is a, Jack, I know this is your favorite from Harano, from Hurano.

Hirano.

drums everywhere yeah yeah yeah drums everywhere there's a drum queue in the realis theme that um

is just one of hirano's like drum fills that i did without thinking about it and mono is it from mano amano

um it might be it's no it's um it's when he has those big taiko drums that go

um and it ends up getting quieter in the mix because i when i wrote the drum uh part i thought it was going to be in a different context, but you can kind of hear it there in the midsection.

Anyway, his drum work is brilliant.

It's also a lot of choral stuff in this episode.

We'll talk about the choral stuff.

There's somebody who sounds ripped straight out of Halo 2.

As when it comes up, Keith, you're breaking my heart.

I love Halo 2.

Keith, there were thousands of years of choral, secular, and religious music before Halo 2.

Yeah, but they didn't do it as sick as Halo Halo did.

Yeah, and

none of it was set to animation.

That's true.

Well, as far as we know, those old monks might have figured out something.

Oh, they might have had a little flippy book.

Yeah.

Okay, Goan is a monster from the beginning.

He is burning with Nen.

His vocal performance is amazing in these episodes.

God, yeah.

Goan's

Japanese VA in particular gives me chills in this.

The Japanese VA.

This is where I think that the VO for the English dub

can't hit the

rage in the same way.

The Japanese dub is unreal.

It's how it is.

It's so good.

I would actually

say, I agree with you, Keith.

I'm quibbling here.

But I almost feel like...

It's not the rage part that it doesn't hit in the English dub, but it's like the sadness that's within the rage that I feel like really stood out to me in this, in the Japanese voice acting.

Yeah, I think that's true.

I think that to me, the English VO sounds a little restrained.

Like,

you can hear

trying to hold back, but

the Japanese VO is not concerned with trying to hold back at all.

Yeah, which I think is a right for it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's the correct myth.

Goan's opening line is: Do you remember who I am?

And Pito is

uninterested in listening to any of this at the beginning because, as the narrator makes very clear, intalible, as far as the narrator is concerned.

Yeah, they are absolutely focused on healing Komaki.

This is my first, I need to mention this manga chapter moment of the episode because there is a panel, like, the narrator straight up says that Pito is unable to understand the words that Gon like is so focused that they're unable to understand Gon's words.

Gon's speech bubble is in the next page, like, it shows from Peto's perspective, basically.

It's gibberish.

Like, they filled them out with nothing.

It's really good.

I think,

yeah.

Yeah.

Really great.

And then Goan leads with, I came here for one reason, to make you restore Kite.

I think this is great.

The sort of like the circumstances of Goan's revenge or like what Goan saw as the plan has been spelled out in the past.

Goan wants to see Kite restored.

And I believe we had characters say the only person who can do that is the person who put him in this state, right?

Yeah.

Or like hint that that's even possible.

I think, you know, there have been several people who are like, I don't know that Kite's coming back, Goan.

I don't think they say it to his face.

But

the sort of first test for Goan is like, are you able to even

get to that stage, right?

Or do you just kill Peter?

You know, do you just leap into an attack?

So I was

struck by Ghoun's opening not being, I'm here to get revenge for what you did to Kite, but I came here for one reason to make you restore Kite.

This is a really good example of like perfect revenge falling apart in the moment that it actually needs to happen or that it is actually planned to happen.

You know, we've seen Goan talking desperately about like how he wants to restore Kite, how he wants to to exact revenge we've had so much prep for uh withstanding pito's n we had all that exhaustive planning of the assault and a core part of the assault being gone and killua are going to target pito because they have a grudge and then in this moment all of that is falling flat because pito simply isn't able to hear what ghan is saying you know all the sort of like um imagined i'll be able to tell it to them to to tell them how much i'm hurt, to try and exact revenge, all of that, you know, is falling on deaf ears.

And I think that's great.

It's just such another example of like

all the meticulous planning and all the depth of feeling that has gone into prepping this operation is going to have to go up against the ants in the room, as it were.

Well, that's great because this is fundamentally a scene between two people who can't hear the other in a lot of ways, right?

Or won't listen to the other.

And a third person who can hear both.

And is

suffering because of it, honestly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is a great setup.

This is Kilua's first entry into this.

Goan,

like,

says his bit.

Pitcho doesn't respond at all, I don't think.

Uh, we get some narration.

Goan's aura is terrifying and haunted.

We get some even more haunted nen from

Goan later.

And then this is like, then we focus in on Kilua's kind of analysis brain of what's going on.

Why isn't Pito using any aura?

Like, surely they understand that this is an attack.

What's going on?

And kind of puts the Komagi third-party King Hurt himself.

Can't use Aura while healing kind of pieces all together.

Yeah, he says, this is a mother shielding her young with her own body, protecting the weak from a predator.

And then, you know, again and again, he's coming back to his encounter with his grandfather.

Why was Zeno so cryptic?

And he also said he remembers another line from Zeno, right?

Where it's like,

I didn't agree to this.

Yeah.

Oh, it's

the only thing I knew.

was what they i can't remember exactly what it is like the only thing i knew about the mission was what they said

basically Like, we showed up, and there wasn't supposed to be a girl here, as the implication, I think.

And this is such lovely setup for the rest of this scene, you know, this whole episode that's going to follow, because we see Killiwa putting the pieces together successfully.

You know, Killiua is standing in the back of the room, having intuited or worked through almost all of the picture.

And yet,

that is not the dangerous bit.

The dangerous bit is standing between him and Peter.

You know, solving the mystery isn't going to help them in any way at this point.

Going is the one that we need to be worried about.

While Killer is putting these pieces together, we get our second new song.

It's called Invaders, which is great because, of course, it's the hunters who are the invaders.

It's only right after this song ends that he has his thought about

Peto as a defending mother cat.

And

it's also interesting because Invaders is a song that we're going to hear a lot in in a different context.

This is how Invaders normally plays when we hear it.

I really like this a lot.

I think Sylvie just recognized this.

Yeah, I did.

But we don't hear actually any of this bit today.

We'll hear this in a few episodes.

We hear this stuff.

This is the later part of the song that we hear,

which is is obviously indicative of the kind of extremely moody songs from this set of episodes.

And also very much in line with the part of prologue that we hear, too.

I really like those tracks.

The drums are huge and intimidating and very cool.

Yeah, it's very like textural composing, right?

It's like pretty straightforward working through a series of musical textures.

You know, you have these simple chords moving between them, even Even though the first portion that we heard, these sort of like clouded close chords just played up on that.

I don't know what that was.

It sounded like a synth of some kind.

Like bells, a bell synth or something.

And I think that this sort of like,

I mean, it's very tense and it's very.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's yeah, that's like a like some sort of FM synth sound with an electric piano or something, yeah.

It's heavy and it's scary and it's tense, but the music choices over this whole assault

have been really great in terms of like

overwhelming the listener when they need to be overwhelmed, but also acting as clearly as possible to be like

we do not need to

introduce too many new or complicated things.

You know, it's notable that we haven't had new music for ages.

And when new music arrives, at least in these two cues, they're very straightforward, almost ambient cues.

Some very interesting stuff going on later, though.

Yes, very interesting stuff that's happening, Glaitza.

There's like a kind of a tonal shift in the last half of episode 118,

and

the soundtrack adjusts for that shift.

Yeah, and over and over, Hirano has been, he has these, these hallmarks, right?

These drum parts, these kind of like big electric guitar parts that we know.

He's really good at these sort of like

rolling,

like motivated, percussive or rhythmic parts.

His music has a lot of movement to it.

I think all of these things are like Hirano hallmarks.

But over and over again, he has been like reinventing his sound or the textures that he is playing with.

York New City sounds very, very different to the Chimera ants, sounds very different to Greed Island, sounds very different to Heaven's Arena.

I mean, think back to that great, um,

the sort of like uh uh opening JRPG flourish of the Heaven's Arena theme that you know it's just completely absent from the soundtrack now.

Um, and then in the early stages of Chimera Ant, we had the um hegemony of the food chain, which makes a really frightening reappearance here in a second, uh, but with that sort of like synth bass.

Um, and even here, towards the end of the assault, his new music has a new sort of texture to it.

Um, Pito, this is from from

the narrator, kind of mixing with the dialogue in an interesting way.

He comes in saying, Pito didn't know what to say in this situation, but what came out was, and out to Pito, this girl is precious to someone I really care about, more than you could possibly know.

And then back to the narrator, the truth, plain and simple.

And then Peter chimes back in, because of her, the king became who he is today.

If she ceases to exist, the king will cease to be who he is.

She means that much.

So, all I want is for her to live.

I beg you to let me heal her.

Then I'll do anything you ask of me.

Yeah.

And Pito bows down in surrender.

They have this incredible posture that as Sylvie found for us

is taken directly out of the manga.

This scene is almost adapted one-to-one, right?

Yeah, there's a couple things that are different.

I think a big one is that

I hope I'm remembering this right.

In in the manga there is a panel where

after Gone sees Komugi he there's a panel of kite being experimented on because that's all like I think the narrator says that all gone could see

oh no we get that in the episode

okay cool I couldn't remember if we did or not really the only additions are like linking animations from

like faithfully apt uh adapted frame to faithfully adapted frame there's some really interesting additions they make though um

There's like the ones I can think of are

there's a shot of the Goongie board

that isn't in the manga.

And then there's also

they linger on the window.

Yeah, they do it like twice.

Yeah, there's kind of a very black panel like fully inked in.

I can't remember what was in that panel.

besides the like

full shadow and then in place of that they show the door yeah

which again was where the king's malevolent men after komugu komugi was hurt came from

um which i really like as an adaptive move to continue linking those two things it's very um

it's very reminiscent of david lynch um to come to this this dark window to have this uh a shot of a conversation and as the tension rises and rises in the conversation we will we will occasionally cut away in like a static shot to just this dark window with nothing behind it.

Often not over the conversation.

It won't be that we are looking at the window while listening to the conversation.

There are several instances where we just get a silent shot of this sort of like black void outside the window.

There's a lot of silence in this episode.

Yeah.

Pito's pose here is wonderful.

It's just like the narrator talks about it as like

showing that no harm was intended.

They're kneeling down with their arms out in front of them.

They're paws up.

Paws up.

Paws up.

Like every great ant, despite being a cat, Pito has the ant hands.

I think.

Does Yupi have Yupi has human hands.

Yupi has the most.

Her eyes, Pito's eyes really stood out to me here, too.

I mean, so much of Pito's character is shown like through their eyes.

Yeah.

And I feel like expressive.

Yeah, they're super expressive, and I feel like this is the first time that we have seen their eyes like not full of confidence or not excited or not curious or malicious.

Like, yeah,

yeah,

yeah, definitely.

And at the same time, of course, all that fear, uh, uh, all that malice and anger is poured into Goan's eyes.

Goan's eyes regularly in this scene.

Um, Goan's eyes appear in three ways: normal eyes, uh, blank, empty, illumi eyes,

and shaded eyes, you know, like cross-hatched, almost like Pito's eyes.

Gohan's response to Pito bowing down in surrender, does anybody have what he says exactly written down here?

Because this was the first time...

I had no idea.

I had no idea how this scene was going to play out.

And this was sort of like the first, oh, God,

like,

hairpin turn of the scene for me, which is that after Pito bows down and surrender, Gohan shouts, are you kidding?

Not in the sense of, are you kidding?

Is this really happening to me?

But like,

really?

This is what we're trying?

His awful aura burns around him as hegemony of the food chain plays.

And he shouts, get up, we are going outside.

But Pito doesn't move.

Actually, I think, I'm not 100%

sure.

I think that it's not hegemony of the food chain.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it is another song that is standing in for hegemony of the food food chain.

The first thing that we get is a new song called Vow of Vengeance.

This is what's playing while Pito is like saying the line that I read,

you know, because of her means a lot to someone like Carol King became who he is today.

That's this song here, Vow of Vengeance.

Which is a very kind of slow,

sad, but also creeping dread kind of tune.

Creeping dread is gonna is uh yeah, you said the secret phrase.

Those are our keywords this episode.

Dial in with creeping dread.

I think, Jack, the one that sounds like uh, hegemony of the food chain is called What's Going On Here.

Uh,

God, Harano drums is so good.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah, we hear this later, too.

Yeah, I think that it's.

I think that the part that's that they take a bit of hegemony from the food chain is in one of those two songs somewhere.

Right.

Or this guy that says that that song's not in this episode is wrong.

Killiwa, by this point, has figured most of it out, but he knows that the information will have, quote, only a negative effect on Ghan.

Oh, I wonder why, just for a second, to talk about the line, because Pito's obviously trying to convince Goan, please don't kill me or attack me, don't make me stop healing, Komagi.

I'm, I have to do this.

And what they say is, um,

because of her, the king became who he is today.

If she ceases to exist, the king will cease to be who he is.

This is a really interesting argument, um, because it is kind of like a rational

argument for someone who knows the situation, which Goan does not know.

And

like Pito's, I think basically making the case here, like, no, no, you don't understand.

The king isn't the same king as when we got here.

Like, it's different.

This is the hens coming home to roost as far as the whole like royal guards the king is changing

plot that has been happening is Pito's the Pito's writing here is so lovely.

I love that they say

means a lot to someone I care about rather than the king.

And at first I had thought that this is because Peter was trying to hide the fact that Komegi was related to like the king.

But then they say they mention the king later.

So instead this is now just another bridge to the ants.

um especially the royal guards some of the royal guards starting to talk in quote-unquote more human terms about their loyalty and love

rather than it being like

sorry go ahead oh rather than it being like I'm an ant and I serve the king Pito is saying this person means a lot to someone I really care about and I think that is a big distinction it's a huge turn it's also the exact opposite impulse that poof has which is

seeing the change in the king and wanting to snuff it out yeah well poof wasn't there when

pito was the one who was asked like but hey, can you do

this?

I'm counting on you.

Pito was never bothered about fucking nanotechnology.

Yeah, that's the thing, right?

Like, we've talked a lot about Poof being the sort of like overbearing parent archetype in a lot of ways.

Pito got the front row seat to seeing the king's like heartbreak at Komugi being

like killed.

Yeah,

do we do you think that she understands that as heartbreak, Pito, or yeah, Pito.

I think

that's the only way I can read the Pito's tears on that scene.

You know?

Yeah, I get, like, I think part of what makes this scene really good for me is that I feel like the way that Pito is written,

they could have very, like, they could have very leaned into like the part where Kongumiki is basically teaching the king to have empathy and to care for people, right?

Like, that's kind of the premise there.

And

I don't know if Pito understands that in so much as she just understands that, like, the king likes this person.

I'm a royal guard.

That is my job.

If this person makes the king happy, then it's my job to make sure she's safe.

I think that is more where I come at it from.

Yeah.

Is that like

it doesn't necessarily even matter that she's teaching things to the king.

What matters to Pito is that this

is just someone who matters to the king.

And like there is like no

ambiguity to that relationship really

to Pito

after being front row seats to

the aftermath of Dragon Dive.

Yeah.

And I think that also then makes Goan's anger like interesting because it is.

Goan is not responding to, I think there are ways to read this where it's like, oh, Pitu has developed empathy and Goan doesn't see that.

But I think there's also a way of reading it, which is Goan sees that, no, she's not healing this person because like she realizes that violence is bad and healing is good.

It's this is the same thing as what she did to kite to her, it's just she happens to be healing this person instead of turning them into a weird fight zombie.

Yeah, I don't.

Sorry, go ahead.

I think that that's what makes

the argument about not wanting the current king to

very interesting because, on the one hand, like, I think that the tension between Poof and Pito is that, like, and UP's off to the side and doesn't really have an opinion on this, it feels like.

Nice vibing.

But, like, Pito

or Poof is like, I have my idea of the king, the king the minute he was born.

That's my king.

And deviations from that are like a corruption of the king, and they need to stop those corruptions from occurring.

Where Pito

is like, he feels feels down for whatever and is like i'm here to serve the king as he is

and yeah that is

um i think magnified by like not just here to serve the king as he is but i also want to prevent the change back so now instead of like the passively accepting how the king um is changing is now making an argument for preventing a change back to pre-Komugi king Which I think it hits so hard for me.

Yeah, is that like

the ants are like terrifying.

They're very bad.

Under no circumstances do you have to excuse the actions of the Chimera ant regime.

No.

But at the same time, like this is,

you can only, like, you can't help but sympathize with this to me.

Like.

Like, okay, so I think that it's tough because it is a, they're a society, right?

And you're like, oh, you know, it's bad that they're killing people.

It's bad that their food is human meatballs.

Like, all this is bad.

But I think about like, Sylvia, I know that you've been watching the X-Files.

And one of the arguments that like Mulder makes all the time, you know, a guy who's not excusing monsters and is still trying to like arrest monsters, which is very funny.

Yeah.

Something that he tries to like convince other people is like, no, this isn't a, this isn't a human.

This is like another thing that sees humans as food.

They like think

and feel,

but like, we are their cows.

And so, like, we have to act based on that.

And the thing that's so interesting about the ants is like, that is simultaneously true and also constantly becoming less true.

Like, we haven't seen it, an ant eat a human in like 20 episodes.

Yeah.

We have also increasingly seen ants who are like, oh, once I'm like given a choice to not eat humans, I don't don't know if I want to do that anymore.

Some of them still do, right?

But a non-insignificant amount of the ants that are left are very willing to go a different path when even the hint of one shows up.

I think I'm just mostly covering my ass as the villain apologist of this show.

Yeah, I mean, I think there is something there's something really interesting going on here for me in terms of like, is the thing that Peter is feeling

love and care and heartbreak, or is it you know like quote-unquote ant loyalty and something that I think that the last few episodes in the sort of the project of the chimera ant arc in general has been saying is that like there's very little difference between those things yeah right you know you could you could arbitrate whether there is a difference between those things sort of biologically whether you could say um

you know, there's a

like biological loyalty is actually a different thing to love.

But I think in terms of the things that the ants have been like trying to tell themselves at first, I think about that great moment in the last few episodes where Poof finally admitted to himself that the thing he feels is jealousy of Komegi and the thing that he feels is love for the king.

And I think that it makes absolute sense to extrapolate that out to Pito as well, seeing this moment.

And, you know,

I think that I'm absolutely reading this as the loyalty that the royal guards felt, the sort of like fanatical, semi-magical loyalty that they felt towards their king and to the preservation of the chimera ant structure

is another way of talking about the love that they feel for you know the for the people around them.

Fanatical and semi-magical is a great rhyme

very real lyrical miracle, Jack.

It's a real

doom, you know.

I think also,

this is the broader project of Hunter Hunter.

Hunter Hunter is very interested in saying people who do appalling things

can feel

with a profound and gentle softness of heart, great care for those that are close to them.

And you know how we know that?

Is that

hunters around this whole time?

Yes.

And then Hunter Hunter says,

what are you going to do about that?

And this is the question that Goan hates.

Goan cannot conceive that someone might be capable of brutality, cruelty, and avarice, and at the same time possess love for those around them.

I don't know how we know that.

Even the phantom troop.

This is the phantom troop.

This is the phantom.

But he doesn't have to Krolo's face.

Yeah.

Yep.

Krolo's face?

Or Krolo's face?

Yeah, and then Crowlo said a bunch of nothing.

Oh, but

was it twice?

He also said it in front of Nomunaga and when Krolo wasn't there.

Like he also said it in front of Genthru.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was going to bring up the Genthru part because I feel like that that actually kind of goes opposite.

Because Goan is like perfectly fine with like, oh, well, the fight's over and Genthru really cares about his friends.

And I can understand that.

Within the confines of a game, right?

Yeah.

And so that's the difference, right?

Is that Pew2 broke the game by like killing Kai.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All of the Genthru stuff, what Genthru did was objectively awful.

It was violent.

It killed people that Goan peripherally cared about and some people that Goan legitimately cared about.

But these people were playing greed island and once Genthru was able to say was able to show regret for his words and deeds

it was no longer incoherent to Goan that he um

that he was kind about the angel's breath you know at that point Gohan was like well he's clearly an evil person but within the confines of the gate you know the sort of the like um mental structure that Goan put that into but over and over before that and after that, the show has shown that this kind of ideology doesn't work for shit in the real world.

The other thing is that he was taught right before Kite died.

He was taught by Kite to have less mercy.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not just less mercy, but specifically...

Every other hunter has been talking about how the ants basically like are subhuman and are just murderers.

And if you meet an ant, you got to kill them.

That's the only way that you can handle it.

Yeah.

Because we've also also got in this, we've got Goan calling

Pico it and that thing, and you've got Kilua calling them them and he.

Yeah.

It's it's great.

This is this is Goan's mistake.

Yeah.

This this kind of like

people who are evil, people who commit inhuman acts are inhuman, rather than people who commit inhuman acts contain within them the capacity to love.

That love might not be directed at your friends and, in fact, might be outputted as the most violent, cruel hatred.

In the case of the Phantom Troop, fucking genocided an entire people.

Yeah.

And there's one last piece to this puzzle, which is that we have seen more of Peto than of Goan almost.

Maybe it's about even in the last 30-something episodes.

Yep.

Meanwhile,

Ghan hasn't seen Peto since they tore off Kite's arm and turned him into a zombie.

Yeah.

And

this is a

binary change from

crazy-eyed Pito to like prostrated palms-up Pito.

But Killiwa Zaldik, the assassin child, figures it out.

But he has a heart of gold.

He does have a heart of gold.

I mean,

yeah.

And a brain of

well, better than whatever kind of metal Goan's brain is made out of.

All right, let's see.

Peto says that they will do whatever Goan wants, but

Pito has to save this person no matter the cost.

And this is another great moment of like the way the dialogue kind of like the pace of the dialogue like ripples and flows through this episode.

The word save trips Goan up.

This is where Goan sees, you know, it's made clear that the thing Goan sees Pito as, which is true, is like a violent, corrupting force of like nen destruction.

This is when we see Kite being worked on by Dr.

Blythe.

So Goan is stuck on save.

When Goan walks up to Pito, who's got their paws up,

we get to see that image from Goan's perspective, and when he looks down at their um, their hands, he like his like vision gets all blurry, like, he's like literally not seeing straight, which is really good.

Um, there's also a new song that plays here that I, Jack, cannot tell you the name of still.

You remember when I wouldn't tell you the name of a song last time we recorded?

I still can't tell you the name of it.

Oh, okay, you're gonna play a second of it.

More

cool drums,

and then a nice pulsing synth.

This is your Chimera and Synth.

I love that one.

It's going to be really fun.

It'll be really, really good.

What episode do you think that we can say the name of that song at?

Just to give a guess.

Well,

we're at 116 right now.

Let's say

121.

All right, we'll check in.

Killer gets stuck on the word anything on Pito's, I'll do anything if you let me save this person.

And in fact, Kilua says, what do you mean anything?

And then Gone says, I'm asking the questions.

Yeah, it's just another big weird trouble moment.

There is so much of gone just completely like trying, shutting Killua out in this scene,

both implicit and explicitly.

and uh oh we talked about collecting sad kiloas in the last set of episodes this is another these are these are the ssr sad killowas these are the peak sad kiluas

um these are this is also peak sad gone for me like there's yeah

i i

there's a face that he makes um while trying to restrain himself before he slams on the ground that just like shatters my heart, honestly.

The like confusion and anger

in my I posted a bunch of manga screen caps.

It's the last of the first five I posted.

That's so good.

Takashi's line weight in drawing all of this and like his use of texture is incredible.

I really recommend the manga to people to check those out for this stuff.

For Jack, that's Q-weight.

Shut the fuck up.

Piece of shit.

Goan is like shuddering.

You sort of get the impression that he is like on the verge of throwing up

throughout this whole scene.

He doesn't know what to do.

He says to Pito, why should I wait?

Why should I do anything you say?

And at this point, Kilio says, cool it.

You know, he says, stop.

This girl is hurt probably because of us.

To which Goan says, so?

What the hell's the matter with you?

Probably.

Likely?

I'm supposed to wait for probably and likely?

It's so

good.

It's great as well because,

man, I have so much sympathy for Goan in this sequence.

You know,

I don't want to

downplay

how

effectively the scene

has you feeling the grief and the anger and the horror that Goan is feeling.

It is working so well.

At the same time,

this is the same Goan who, like,

smoke comes out of his ears when he has to think too hard about math or, like, interrupts too quickly to say, Let's go save someone, but doesn't offer a plan.

Goan's saying, likely, probably, maybe.

Why should I be thinking about any of that stuff?

It is exactly the same Goan.

You want me to touch this thing?

I can't do that.

That's one of the reasons why, you know,

that's one of the reasons why this episode makes me almost like makes me cry.

Like, is remembering where we started with Gone, remembering the

smiley kid who caught the fucking big fish so he could go find his dad.

Yeah, it's tragic.

I mean, it is the longest Tagashi's trick yet to

entrap Goan in this situation.

You know, he's been given all of the wrong pieces to a puzzle.

He's the same guy, right?

You know,

he's been weighted by this awful trauma, but he has none of the, he has no sort of like emotional advances to help him work his way through it.

Yeah.

Also, I think this is why it's so important to like

go over the manga differences from the start of the

series where Kite

is part of it from the start.

Why would you do that?

Why would you cut that?

Why would you cut that?

And I'm very glad that we went over that.

It's something that I,

it's something that made these episodes difficult for me when I watched them without knowing that.

Like, it's harder to grasp why the enormity of the grief.

He's like this.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Because, you know, I was thinking about this, and, you know, I was lucky enough to have the context from

the three of you about

when Kite originally appeared, you know.

Because here in this moment, in this room, as Goan is like shuddering, we are like right down in the heart of the character, you know?

And

there was a bit of me that was like, Kite is a Chimera ant invention.

We have been with Goan for way before the Chimera ant.

We will be with him, at least in the...

Well, I don't know.

The the manga forgets about going for a while apparently we we'll see more going after this you know and there's a bit of me that was like why is he feeling this so immensely and so

like with such intent and there's two answers to that the first and the truest answer is that they made a baffling decision about the pacing of the beginning yeah this works better with kite uh earlier it works better with uh it it ties together with the like plot of uh kite's relation to jing you know all of that stuff works better i think the other reason that we are way down in the mud, way down in the heart of the character in this moment is

this is Goan's mistake.

You know, this is the clearest possible invocation of

Ghon's

like

blinkered ideology.

Yeah, an insistence on playing a game by his rules.

Oh my god, speaking of, something amazing happens.

And as soon as I kind of like put together the resonance that was being drawn here, it was just perfect.

Pito breaks their own arm.

Yeah.

The immediate resonance here is with the king tearing his own arm off.

I think that this just rhymes really nicely.

It is

like an act of self-harm that in the first instance proved a kind of like bloody-minded

obstinacy and like

a weird bloody confidence, you know, like if you were playing for your life the whole time, we only need to make this fair, but at the same time, the king knew Peter would heal his arm again, you know, or like the king knew he would be fine with a broken arm, no matter what Poof thought.

And I really love that it's being mirrored here as like an act of self-sacrifice, as like a desperate attempt.

I also love the way that the royal guards are very often like reflections or silhouettes of the king, standing in for the king.

I think about their horrible N

being apparent.

And very often, you know, they hadn't seen the king's face for a long time, but they fucking knew who the royal guards were.

I think that Pito also breaking their arm in this moment kind of like aligns that silhouette more perfectly with the king.

It's what Pito says next that really brought it together for me.

Pito says, I'll break my other arm if you want.

And if you're still not satisfied, I'll break both my legs.

And I realized that we are in a Goan torture sequence.

Yes, she's playing Hanzo and Goan at the same time.

She's playing Canary, getting beaten up.

And in this moment, what is it that Goan says?

He says, no fair.

He is completely consumed by his anger and confusion.

He doesn't know why Pito is doing this.

And more importantly, he sees it as like cheating.

It is not fair that you do this.

I'm the one who does.

Hey, I'm the one who...

It's tremendous.

It's so good.

It's not fair.

It's not fair.

It wasn't fair when Goan did it.

Every single time it comes up, we say, this isn't fair.

Hanzo has that amazing end to the Hunter exam where he's like, he's just going to keep fucking doing this.

Yeah.

It's, oh, it's wonderful.

And I've spoken on every previous occasion of like Goan torture sequences of like, I was getting a little tired of this.

I didn't realize that the punchline, or at least one of the major punchlines to it, was watching it get turned back on Goan and watching him, like, not just

be unable to come to terms with it, but recognize it immediately as like an exploitative,

like,

unfair action.

I also think, you know, like taking the whole scene, you know, a slightly bigger chunk, like,

I think that he even thinks it's not fair that he showed up and

Peto was healing someone.

Like, they're supposed to be the monster.

Like, I'm not supposed to be conflicted about this.

I'm supposed to just be able to kill you or be killed by you.

Yeah.

Also, because I know that some listeners are probably screaming it as well, there's a major distinction between Peter breaking their own arm and threatening to break their legs and Goan

throwing himself over and over into a fight that he knows he can't win.

You know,

both participants are active in previous Goan torture sequences.

Hanzo is breaking legs, Goan is continuing to fight.

Canary is striking out at Goan.

Goan is trying to cross the threshold.

I think there was a third one, right?

With Gemthru or something?

Was there one in Creed Island?

I don't remember.

Yeah,

Gemthru keeps blowing up his arm.

Blows off his arm, yeah.

Oh, he blows off his arm.

Yes, yeah.

Or like one of his feet or something?

I think it's one of his hands and one of his arms.

Yeah, okay.

Or something like that.

Pito is making a sacrifice, you know?

Pito is saying, I will do, I will, I will disable myself.

I will wound myself in this moment.

And Goan is just standing there.

You know, that is massively different.

But

Goan recognizes the way in which it is like an emotional play.

It's wonderful.

Although, fair to say, Pito started it.

It is absolutely fair to say Pito started it.

It's also fair to say, and I think it's important to remember this, like, I think that simultaneously, you know, these episodes, it's, it's impossible not to sympathize with Goan because of how well they've written previous episodes.

But on its own, this this episode is really unfair to Goan.

Like in a lot of ways, they make him look bad and evil.

They make him look evil in this episode.

They make him look like someone who doesn't care about the life of a little girl because

he's so possessed.

Although, I guess actually, this is an older girl to him.

He doesn't care about the life of a girl in order to

carry it.

Yeah.

Because he's like no it's my thing it's my problem that I'm here to solve like I don't care about Peto saving this girl I want to do my thing yes but then the the the other thing is uh

this is a child like this is why you don't bring a child here gone is at this point what 13

yeah 12 13 yeah yeah again this is like why you this is the inherent like kind of

this is the way that uh young Goku breaks bad, you know, like this is the kind of thing that uh it feels like Tagashi's playing with.

It's like, this is what happens when a child who doesn't have the ability to sort of like process or regulate emotions the way that like someone who is dealing with fucking really, really traumatic grief when,

like, can like this is what happens when they have the ability to

like kill anyone, basically.

Yeah, the most

empathetic and most responsible adult in Ghan's life

called him

an adult tiger.

Yeah.

This is also the wages of Zeno and Netero, of Netero's little over-the-shoulder thumb points and Zeno's you make the call.

You know,

as a way to

not just abdicate the responsibility

of doing things the right way as

the seniors, the adults, the people who are in charge of massive organizations, each of them.

Instead,

this is a test for them.

This is another stone on their journey to being the next generation of us.

Yep.

Yeah.

Okay, let's see.

And again,

you talked about how this makes Gone look bad.

Really?

Yeah.

You know what?

I think it's

worth

mentioning that.

And then it's also worth being like, well, yeah, but he is in the wrong here.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's...

It's a credit to the show that the situation is so phenomenally complex.

Like,

not just the facts, like the list of facts is a complex list of facts, but it is a genuinely difficult moral quandary in a way that rarely shows up in any television, let alone children's television.

Yeah, it's great.

Can we still call this that?

Throughout this whole scene, Goan's aura has been like ebbing and flowing.

It's been great.

I talked a long time ago.

I don't remember exactly when, but it was, I think I was sold on Nen.

So it would have been post,

I think it would have been during York New.

I talked about how efficient Nen was as a way of like externalizing emotional state.

You know, you could see people's emotions moving in their Nen, and it is never more clear in this scene.

As throughout the whole scene, Goan's aura has been like bubbling up or burning or being a shockwave or like calming down and simmering or just like blankly like pouring off him like a waterfall or leaping up again suddenly.

It's great.

After he says, um,

uh i don't know why you're helping her kermagi after what you did to my friend kite there's this massive burst of aura that then just like burns itself out very sadly um as he just sort of like stands silently and then he says to hell with this and starts charging his punch uh at which point killua uh decides to start acting and he acts pretty much until the end of the scene at a great cost to his heart yeah oh my god

he says killua's opening is i think probably the smartest opening he could do in this situation.

He says, you kill Pito and Kite will never be whole again.

At which point, this has clearly worked in the short term.

Goan's fist burns itself out.

He turns it off.

And that's a good thing.

Two things about this part specifically.

So as that's happening,

this is the most haunted his nen gets in this episode.

It's got the same

golden glow that it always has, but it has these like horrible, ghostly tendrils, black tendrils spinning up off of it.

Malevolent Nan the music is haunting, and the reason that the music is haunting is because of the track that is playing that is called Hunters Are Evil.

It's so good.

They said it, they said it.

This is the track.

This track is so beautiful.

I think you've got to listen to the Halo 2 song.

It's really close.

It's really close.

It is close.

But also, shut the fuck up.

It's great.

That's music for Goan.

Goan Freaks.

Yeah, our good friend, protagonist, happy Goan Freaks.

Yeah,

it's it's reflective of two big things for me.

It's reflective of the spider's cues,

and it is also reflective of the way we sort of talk about it sometimes as like the scary nen theme or like the mystical nen theme.

It's just orchestral music that plays.

Yeah.

Latent power, yeah.

Yeah, it's not human voices here, but it is this sort of like it's the same construction of chords.

Yeah, it is synth synthoises.

Um,

Goan's repost fucking sucks.

He says, must be real nice for you.

You can stay calm because it's not your fight.

And the note I've written down here is Killiwa obviously wounded.

His like, his like lip shakes.

Yeah, he's about to cry.

Yeah.

I really like how they do it in the anime with the like shading over his eyes and stuff.

But again, the manga just doing it with Kilua's like mouth quivering basically between two panels

is some really masterful work.

Like you get his face of him really sad, and then

his mouth kind of like slanting a bit more, and then like getting back into position of just like the straight line

as he tries to get himself under your control.

And it just like it crushes me every time.

This is like the depth of Goan's selfishness, right?

Of

Goan's like

myopia, as far as uh his relationship to the world is concerned not just because kite was there with killiua the whole time yeah not just because we have seen over and over again that kite is to jing what killiua is to gone they have the same color palette they have very similar movement um

but also because everything killua thinks about from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to bed is how are things for my dear gun breaks yeah well he is his father's son he is his father

good one it's a good one

dre it's an abandonment um

and i think it's a particularly cruel abandonment right because the first thing that it invites the first like the first wound that you feel is the kite meant stuff to kill you too you know killiua was there the whole time and then

according to the anime they met in the same moment.

Yes.

Yes.

Also,

if Kai or if Kilua hadn't done what he did, Goan would be dead.

Yep.

Yep.

Goan got him out of that situation.

And then the second wound, the deeper wound, I think, is like Goan misunderstands Killiwa's care for him.

Right.

Or, and, and/slash or

reveals

his own care for Kilua only extends that far.

Yep.

If the roles were reversed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or at least in this moment with the amount of rage that he's feeling.

Yep.

It's great.

It's wonderful.

It's also worth saying, characters cry regularly during this assault.

We have had several characters just sobbing, and we will continue to have them sobbing.

Mark cries in this scene.

Yeah.

Peto cries, Knuckle cries a lot, Shoot cries, Maliorone cries.

Killer cries cries on the inside.

Well, this is what I love.

Kilu is not crying in this scene, and I think that that's

I don't know that that's because he's holding it in.

I think the thing that I'm drawing attention to and like really liking here is the

is keeping it underplayed.

You know, it's very, very overplayed.

We know exactly the pain that this guy is in, but it doesn't spill out into the action of the scene.

If you look at, we talked about this, but you know, the shaking lip quivering from Kilua at

on my video, it's 1934.

To me, that reads as like actively stopping himself from crying.

Would otherwise have happened

and like

lip breaking in that moment.

You watch him literally pull himself back from tears.

Yeah.

It's like a big

cry right now.

It is.

No, yeah, if he cries right now, then like it'll just like

it'll break him.

I don't know if Dre and Sylvie remember the uh the the the reddit post that i shared a few months ago uh in uh pito bricks um but gotta remind me man

there has been so much that's happened in the past few months but we can keep going i will i will quote it

um

uh

okay says goan i've calmed down now this is of course an echo of the scream in the truck uh when he has the meltdown about kite's death and then he says okay i'm fine now.

And he has just a chilling expression on his face.

Yeah.

He has not calmed down, but most concerningly, he thinks he has.

Oh, dead eyes.

This is like

Jaws.

This is like

the God, what's the fucking

dude's name from Jaws who delivers the speech about the doll's eyes?

Oh,

Quint.

Quint.

Yeah, Quint, yeah.

Quint?

I think it's Quint, yeah.

One of the all-time great cinema monologues.

Yeah.

We have a watercolor of Killiwa here and visible and emotional distance opening up like a gulf between the two boys.

Yep.

Then they start brokering.

Pito says it'll take three to four hours to heal Komagi completely.

Too long.

Yeah.

He doesn't say too long.

He says, sorry, too long.

It's a sorry is the point of the condescending sorry, right?

Yeah, he is not apologizing in any way.

He's like,

yeah, you know?

Yeah.

Sorry, too long.

Pito asks for one hour and they can, quote, heal her most critical injuries.

To which Gohan says, okay, after one hour, Pito is coming to Peijing to heal Kite.

And then Goan sits down in front of them.

and says, I will wait right here.

This has now become a test of keeping a promise after the healing is done.

And I don't know where we're at here.

I do not know how this is going to go.

I believe Peto fully when they say healing this person is the most important thing to me and I will do anything.

I do not know how long that feeling will last post the healing.

Although

Yeah, I don't know.

It is going to be dependent on how things shake out elsewhere, I think.

Oh boy.

Well,

Sylvie earlier said, I think we're going to talk for an hour about episode 116.

Underestimated.

You know what?

I think I said over an hour.

Maybe.

I don't know.

I'm going to.

This is still a win for me because I wanted to talk for at least an hour about this episode because it's one of the best.

117 begins pretty simply as Meliarone, drawn by Gonz's Audible Meltdown, finds Killiwa.

Oh, I do really like like this, actually.

Yeah, the sad hand on the shoulder.

The sad hand on the shoulder, but also, isn't it the last shot of the previous episode that Killer was gone?

He's not in the room yet.

He's not there anymore.

Yeah, he's not gone freaks.

He's gone, Geo-N-E.

He's gone with the freak.

The freak here is nice to Melioron.

He would agree.

Melioron is currently

the calmest person

in that room, which is a terrifying proposition.

That's true.

Hey, he got his stuff under control.

They talk about it.

He's like, I was so scared.

I could only hold my breath for 10 seconds, but I think I'm doing better now.

Oh, you know, I'm now realizing what the

you're all right about what at the very end was happening here.

But specifically, what it's showing wasn't that Killua had already left, it's that Killua had been using God's accomplice and is invisible.

And the actual last scene is the rustling of papers as Kilua.

Keith's cutting out for Keith is cutting out.

Yeah, Keith's cutting out.

I'm here.

You're here now.

We lost your half of that sound.

You're saying that we see the movement of the air as invisible Melioron.

Right.

The last shot is invisible, Kilua and Melioron leaving because there's like Russell on the ground.

I really like, I love that right after this really hurtful thing happens

with Kilua's first friend, that he has another friend who comes and is like, hey,

we're still on the same team.

Yeah.

And actually, there is a third friend that needs your help.

Yeah.

Bell

ropes Killua in to going and helping with the ongoing nightmare knuckle and shoot and UP situation.

Yeah.

Then we have a lovely little scene.

It's funny.

It's a lovely little scene here.

Cheeto has decided that he's so good.

He is so funny.

He is someone that he is going to demo his new ability on.

I'm glad they did this because it's a good bit.

It's a really nice bit.

The world's dumbest ant.

Chosen.

I think Chi-Tu's just the dumbest motherfucker

or any other species.

I'll give someone else a chance to finish this answer, but I'll say that Chi-Tu has chosen Moral to demonstrate his new powers on, but cannot do that because Moral is in Smokey Jail with Poof.

And so there's

a new person appears.

And that person is

Gampa.

Repeat.

Gonna go after Gampy.

Zeno Zaldic is temporarily interrupted.

Cheeto's original line is that he wants to fight, yeah, quote, the sunglasses guy with the really big pipe.

Zeno complains.

He says, for the first time since taking over the family business, I may have killed someone who wasn't my target.

Yeah, he's still visibly bothered by the.

So note I've written down here is idiot Chitsu is still banging on about his new ability.

Yeah.

I would like to put another tally and then maybe you can hand it to Zeno.

Column.

I like Zeno.

Yeah.

I like him, but he fucking abandoned the boys.

He did abandon the boys.

Like he is, you know.

The bar is low for these people.

The fact that

Zoldex, but he's my second, he's like my

third place.

Oh, well, yeah.

Yeah.

There's some talk, you know, Zeno sort of realizes that this is going to happen, and he says, all right, you should watch my back.

And Cheeto says, oh, you think you're going to fool me?

And is immediately obliterated by a ball of purple men.

Squished like an air.

I thought for one moment.

This is the kind of obliteration that makes it clear that this is permanent.

This is fatal.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I described

my verb was pancaked.

He gets pancaked by Silva, who we didn't know he was even there.

We didn't know he was here.

Silva drops from the sky and punches Chitu's head in.

I'm going to say that two of his last words on Earth was when

Zeno sort of

annoyed at Chi Tu is like,

so I'm like your second pick for who to fight.

Chi Chu goes, bing bong.

Oh, he's a Knicks fan.

And he says it twice.

He does that, yeah.

He's like, write again.

I don't feel sad about this death because Cheeto died as he lived, a wildly lovable idiot who misreads every situation he's in.

What this does do, however, is it rings the bell for our first major character death.

People throughout the assault so far have been in difficult situations, but they have been mostly surviving.

Sure.

This is the closest that we've gotten.

But here on screen, for the first first time, the first casualty made brackets major.

Sorry for those peon ants.

They died Daisy.

I mean, also brackets major, because this is G2 major.

He's a named ant that we spend a lot of time with.

That's fair.

The ants and died.

Killua killed.

Oh, right.

Yes, those peons.

Yeah.

The Zaldics leave on the Feathered Dragon, and they have a little chat about their family.

Silva asks about Killua, to which Zeno says, he's really sweet.

It's like classic Gampy dialogue that then turns halfway through.

He says, I think he's matured, and I have reason to suspect he has removed Ilumi's needle.

I cannot believe that I forgot that this was confirmed.

Yeah, I thought that they were talking about this the other day, right?

Yeah, we talked about this like maybe on episode 32, maybe on episode, maybe on two episodes, like

25 and 32, about if

Zeno and Silva know about Illumi's needle.

But I think I said, I reckon they do.

I definitely said my guess is that they do.

In actuality, I've seen this episode multiple times, and I knew for sure that they do.

But it does say a lot about

the Zoldics, I think.

It sure does.

I don't think it says new information, but it does.

It confirms

suspicions, yeah.

Specifically, something that I said episodes and episodes ago was like

that I've seen, again, you know, I don't, I'm not putting a lot of stock into people's theories about television

typically, but I did see someone say that

they thought that it was possible that Killowa knew about Nen, and one of the things that the needles did was erase his memory of his knowledge about Nen until he was ready.

Which I think

is true.

What's that?

I don't think that's true.

I think that's interesting, and I think we'll talk about it again later.

Sure.

He also briefly is like, hey, I think I felt that thing when you get close to death, when time slows down.

Yeah.

He's like, huh, weird.

Yeah, Silva's doesn't believe this.

No.

Silva's response is sort of like, huh, okay.

All right, dad.

Okay.

This is part of why I brought up

a couple episodes ago.

Killa recognizing the dragon dive despite not knowing about Nen the last time he saw the dragon dive.

That's why I think I brought up.

Yes.

Yes.

I think that that is a continuity thing.

I'm happy with that.

I'm just.

Sometimes continuity things turn into real things.

They do.

I have done that.

This is for a brief point.

We didn't know what was going on with the iconoclasts in Palisade, and then a transcription error told us that it happened.

I don't remember the details, but I remember it happening.

Transcription misheard something Austin said and transcribed that iconoclasts can travel in dreams and were like moving through people's dreams.

And Austin read the transcript and was like, wow, that's sick.

And that's how the iconoclasts appear in Palisade.

Okay, Killio signs up with Malioron to help fight Yupie as Maliorone feeds back that basically everything has gone fucked with the Yupie situation.

I love this because it is one of the weirdest things that the narrator has had to say.

which is, after Malioran explains the situation to Kilua, Kilua, and also explains, I can hold my breath for you for one minute as long as I don't have to move.

Kilua holds up his finger and says, one minute of God's accomplice is plenty because I'm only going to need one shot.

And then the narrator says, approximately three minutes before Kilua raised his finger, Knuckle was in the air.

The narrator is kind of

getting funky with it.

And then they tell the best new information that we've learned about a character in a long time, which is about Knuckle.

Once he punched out a cop to help his friends escape

and he got a fucking way with it, he did.

He spent all day and night running around, eluding four patrol cars and dozens of police.

And this was the day he graduated from grade school.

He was never caught.

Yeah, this is what

Knuckle is doing.

He is leading Yupi on a merry dance.

At one point,

because Shoot's in a bad way, he's trying to keep him away from Shoot and also keep everyone away from the king.

However, in a really creepy moment,

he moves outside of Yupi's kiting range and Yupi is like, you know, I don't need to waste my time with you.

My goal is to protect the king.

It does genuinely look like a boss that you've gotten too far away from.

Yeah.

He just turns around and starts stalking back.

It leads to this wonderful tense moment where

Knuckle has to like do an about face and rush back towards shoot again.

We get this beautiful shot of like as the sort of you know UP also talks this through about how he's not really here to kill these people, he's here to keep them away from the king, so he needs to get as close to the king as possible.

You get a lovely image of the three royal guards sort of like forming the three colors that make up white light

and the king standing in the middle of a spotlight of white light.

Yeah, that's a really good shot.

Also, all the chibi versions of them.

It's very funny when the ants and when the royal guards and the kings show up is chibis.

As Yupi is walking back to his station, he calls out.

He says, Peto, and this begins my favorite subplot of these episodes, which is Yupi has no idea what is going on.

He doesn't know, like, where anybody is.

He briefly worries that they've all left him behind.

I know.

Yes, well, but he has no evidence to suggest he he can't feel anybody's n right up like very relatably like he's unbelievably powerful he has a really solid shot at killing any aggressor in the castle right in the on the planet oh yeah yeah yeah but he's a threat to everybody here um

and at the same time he is just like confused he doesn't know what is he has no good guess his his best guess is that they've suddenly chosen to abandon him at one point he starts calling out for poof

Because there's smoke everywhere.

It's also worth saying that, like, throughout all these episodes, the palace is like in increasing disrepair.

Like, ceilings are starting to fall in.

The staircase is gone completely.

So that's all Yupie.

Well, it's 50% UP, 50% Dragon Dive.

Yeah, at one point, Yupie,

there's a gigantic explosion as Yupi, I think,

knocks Knuckle out of a window.

That's how this scene begins.

Yupie,

no one knows where anybody is.

Knuckle thinks that Morel is fighting Pito.

I love this.

Does he?

I thought that...

I thought

he hasn't lied about like, I think the boss is fighting Pito.

Because everyone knows that it's Gon and Kilwo going after Pito.

But I think he has some reason to believe it's because

he can see that Moral is in the throne room.

right?

No, because Pito is in the...

No, Pito is in like a side chamber.

Yeah, Peter's in a side chamber.

Poof and

Moral are in the.

Our shoot and I, let's see.

I'm just looking through the.

This is where they do one of my favorite things, which is Knuckle gets really mad that Yupi thinks of them as gnats, another reversal of like the humans are the bugs.

And thing, yeah.

Later on, Yupi will start calling people cockroaches.

And Knuckle will say, not me, you.

Yeah.

Nobody knows where anybody is.

You be being confused would be great on its own, but the fact that the operation, the shock and awe operation of Notero's opener has

really thrown everybody off balance.

Everybody is now improvising.

Knuckle decides to grab, shoot, and like...

temporarily evac and as he is evacuating he realizes that he has made a mistake The mistake is this.

Oh, can I raid the line?

The line's really good.

Yeah, it's so good.

By the time Knuckle realized that he had made an error, he had already made another one.

Get him.

Great line.

It's very relatable.

Yeah, he says

in his return to his station, Yupi must have made eye contact with Shoot and decided that he was basically nothing.

And Knuckle is not going to let this stand.

So he sort of like

he says he has this great line.

He says, can I ignore the fact that my friend was insulted?

For what reason?

What am I supposed to do if the mission succeeds?

Do we just let this insult slide?

This is some classic Knucklebind idiocy, but it's part of why we love him.

By the way,

he has a warrior's code.

I saw Shoot.

I get it.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Shoot is like has this phenomenal trail of blood behind him like it's like 60 to 70 feet long.

He has like dragged himself down this whole room and

you could just walk right past him.

Yeah, like I all I also would not waste my time with that.

Knuckle admits that without medical care, Shoot will just die.

He thinks that Shoot might die within 10 minutes.

Right.

So it's sort of like, I mean, the...

Knuckle is inventing that shoot is mad in his own head, and then we get confirmation that Shoot is mad about this.

Because

when Knuckle decides to go after Yupi, he drops Shoot on the ground with an audible thud, which I think is not good.

The Shoot response here is, what the hell?

Yeah.

Oh, I thought that he was still saying, what the hell?

Because he's been muttering, what the hell.

I think it's about the insult of Yupi, not being dropped.

Because then he says, I know it's my job to try and stop Knuckle.

Are you crazy?

Don't go.

Just keep your mouth shut and buy more time.

Please, Knuckle.

I beg you.

Knuckle responds to the what the hell, though.

He goes, sorry.

Yeah, he apologizes about it.

He says,

I should say, don't go.

Keep your mouth shut and buy more time.

But then he does say, please, Knuckle, I beg you.

That son of a bitch, the way he looked at me, it was all I could.

It was like I was nothing more than trash.

I called this a weird Al-ass delivery from the English VO here.

It really does sound like I'm speaking specifically of Weird Al

in his song Albuquerque from Running with Scissors.

He has these lines that are like

so tortured.

Weird Al has some tortured lines.

Weird Al has some tortured lines.

Yeah, he's delivering them.

I mean, if you've heard

Shoot's English VO delivering these lines, it's kind of like that.

Weird Al seems like a really nice guy, but his music does nothing for me.

I think his music is.

I'm with you.

It might be because I'm not like a 12-year-old American.

I tell you what, he's very, very good.

He's a good performer.

I like the way he moves, sings, dances, and plays the accordion and stuff.

But I don't terribly care for his music.

Albuquerque is

a shaggy dog story, right?

Yes, it is the shaggy dog story, yeah.

Yes.

And it's like 15 minutes long?

Yeah, it's like

12, 15 minutes long,

mostly spoken word story about a fictional version of Albuquerque.

Oh, I'm never going to listen to that.

I do like, I tell you who I do like, actually.

I like

Dr.

Demento and the history of curation and discovery of weird American novelty music.

I sort of think that that is a really interesting piece of musical history, and I think the stuff Dr.

Demento does is really cool.

Weird Al,

less so.

I think it was anti-song parody.

That's not a bad position to be in.

Yeah.

Well,

Weird Al is the only successful song parodyist.

No, for sure.

In two ways.

That doesn't mean he's the only one who's ever made money from it, and he's the only good one.

I like it when people are really mad at him for doing the parodying the songs, and I also like it when people love it when he parodies the songs.

Either response is great.

Yeah, for sure.

Just not for me, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's see.

At which point,

Knuckle gives a great line, just a really nice capstone to his arc in these episodes.

He says, I'm sorry, Master.

He's talking about morale.

He will regularly refer to morale as boss or master.

I really like this sort of like hunter hierarchy.

Gonan Killiua Wing on Bisky is their master.

I love that he has this relationship with Morale.

He says, I'm sorry, Master, but the thing is that we're both idiots.

Some things are more important than saving the world.

This is great.

We agree that Knuckle and Shoot are both idiots from the start.

That's part of the fun of it.

Here we're seeing it played out.

I think that this is fun.

This is a great line.

This is very knuckle.

It's very in-character.

I think this is another little piece in the Jenga Tower of things that reflect extremely poorly on the hunters, even the ones we like.

Yes, absolutely.

The narrator, who is

the narrator is editorializing more and more during these episodes.

He says, a brand new era, the sign of something important, which I thought was really, really good.

Meanwhile, Poof is still in the cocoon.

Two sort of like burning

yellow eyes peeping out.

Sort of like,

oh my god.

Mothman?

Is it Mothman who has those very distinctive glowing eyes, round glowing eyes?

Sometimes, right, yeah.

There is no Mothman, so it's hard to say for sure.

That is true.

I believe.

Morel hears Yupi shouting and he thinks i hope the old man's doing okay this is again just my absolute delight at how how far this plan has fallen apart for every single person uh the old man is no longer here right all of that is done and and uh moral now hears yupie and is like yeah fuck that means that shoot and knuckle are both dead yes

He says his light is, we thought we knew what we were doing, but these royal guards, and then he trails off.

My note down here is, everyone's got off piece and it's completely fucked everything up.

Yeah.

Oh, I can now reveal what these sets of episodes were called in my notes.

I called these

the middle blunders.

It's great because it's everyone's blunders.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah, everyone's blundered.

Everybody has blundered.

Yeah.

Except Komegi.

Well, she got blundered on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She was taken off the field before she could play.

Yes, unfortunately.

Yuli.

Stop the fighting.

Oh, Komagi.

Ow, airstrike.

I wonder if this will impede my ability to play Goongie.

Answer, yes.

Yeah.

Your word was broken.

That gives me an idea for a new move.

Kill the Goongie player.

um

uh

yupie is now just like sorry just picturing her pulling out a gun at the gungie board now and shooting her opponent

um dark kamugi arc oh wow she's wearing like a black gi instead of a white one yeah

uh she doesn't wear white she was gray right or something she has white yeah she's like all gray yeah i by the way i think i've been told by people that in the manga she's supposed to be like

a brunette and stuff, like have

just like brown hair.

Yeah, the character design is really cool.

I think that they make the decision to give her that character design because it works for so many of these heavy contrast moments.

Yep, yeah.

And sitting her opposite the king, who is colored like a maniac.

The king, if you have not been watching along, is purple and green and metallic silver.

He looks a bit like

an action figure.

Right now,

you will have noticed he has disappeared from the show completely.

He's busy.

UP is mad.

The initial root of his anger is the simple, I do not know what's happening.

And then, in much the same way as when you're having a bad day and you close a cupboard door too loudly and it makes you want to burst into tears, he's like, and my shoulder is fuzzy.

It has that mark on it.

And this stupid, like, thing is following me around.

And these two little things start to really, like, grate at him.

And as he sees Knuckle, who is now charging back in, he says, okay, I've had enough.

What is it with you guys?

And as he leaps into combat, he starts changing his form so aggressively that Knuckle immediately turns and flees.

I love that line because it's such a tip of the hand, like, to exactly how he's feeling, both to the audience and to Knuckle, who is like, Knuckles on the verge of death, or sorry, shoots on the verge of death.

Knuckle is like, I'm going to die avenging Knuckle with a single punch.

Avenging shoot with a single punch.

Avenging shoot with a single punch.

And like, we mean nothing to this guy.

And then, and then he shows up and he's like, What is it with you guys?

What the hell is going on here?

This is so

annoying to me.

UP is so,

so

sweet in these episodes.

I was talking to someone who had read this arc in full, you know, ages and ages ago and was so excited for me to get to it.

And I said, you know, I love how wildly it's gone wrong.

And he said, what's your favorite bit about how wildly it has gone wrong?

And I said, oh, it's Yupi melting down.

And he said, that's my favorite bit too.

So I'm so glad that like Yupi's confusion in here is resonating to people.

He has turned into a sort of awful muscled Hulk.

And you might think that when I say muscled, I mean muscly.

No.

No.

I mean his body is the texture, color, and shape of a lot of amassed muscles.

Yeah.

Like under the skin.

Yep.

Right, he looks like a diagram gone wrong.

Yeah, yeah.

And he's also like, in the way that UP regularly is, he's like swelling and distorting in really weird ways as well.

The palace shakes.

We get this great single shot.

I think it's the only time he appears in this episode of Welfin watching.

Like, what the fuck is happening?

Yeah, we totally get that.

Knuckle running, grabs Shoot.

This is his second evacuation of Shoot, and starts running.

Shoot says, did you get him?

And Knuckles says, huh?

And Shoot says, Did you land the punch?

And he says, not yet.

By the way, we also, oh, actually, we have one more big thing.

Talking about the explosion, the narrator says, being Being under extreme mental stress for the first time in his life, jealous, Yubi became aware that the true nature of his ability was, in truth, not useful at all for guard duty.

Rather, he began to feel his entire body, as well as his aura, become engorged with his furious rage.

The destruction that was unleashed was accompanied by great pleasure.

Then, as he rapidly deflated, he was overcome by a sense of great loss.

Having had more experience, Knuckle instantly recognized what had happened to Yupi, and then it cuts to Knuckles saying, we can win.

They've chosen to make a bizarre sexual metaphor here with Yupi's new power.

Yeah.

It's wild.

There is some stuff here that is

that works, I think, that works with the metaphor less as like a as like specifically a sexual metaphor, but as a sort of like cathartic release.

What's odd is that they really do double down on it being this sort of like orgasmic meltdown from

Yupi.

Before that, there is a gigantic explosion.

This is the biggest explosion we have seen in the Assault on the Palace after the

Dragon Dive.

Yupi appears briefly as.

I love the way Yupi looks here, actually.

We get like one shot of him.

He is no longer a sort of muscled figure.

In fact, he's barely humanoid.

He is sort of like a stack of glowing suns

arranged in like a pile with two red eyes with beams of light coming out of them.

Then he explodes.

Um,

here is where I think this is interesting: is that in this moment, Yupi gets a kind of like monumental catharsis that Ghoan is finding himself unable to get in the assault with Peter.

So much of the Goan sequence was like getting close to a moment of explosive violence and then not being able to do it.

I think that that's interesting, especially as we see that this

UP recognizes the power of this catharsis and also the kind of like danger inherent in it immediately afterwards.

I don't know why it is a sexual metaphor.

I'm trying to figure it out.

It could just be

that it coincidentally started to sound like that and it was just leaned into.

I mean, I think it works.

I don't have anything against it.

I really do like the sort of the clear writing about sexual metaphor and then the depiction of this like wildly inhuman object,

this like pile of suns that explodes.

I think that's kind of neat.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, the big glowing balls of energy that explode look very cool.

The ants aren't sexual in any way, really.

We had that brief discussion of like the kings out there making babies, but right in general, that stuff is not really happening.

The ants are never really, there are no romantic entanglements between them.

And that's true.

And how there's so many ants who are wearing basically like thongs and short shorts and who are mostly naked.

And it's like that's just that.

I think the closest we get to any sort of romantic entanglement is that there's some stuff implied between Hina and Leol.

Is Hina the name she goes right now?

It's fairy background.

It's fairy background.

Like, this is not the norm for this sort of thing.

Yeah.

The only one that feels potentially different to me is Zazan.

Is that her name?

Oh, yeah.

Zazan is super horny.

Well, but like, I think there is something interesting there where it's she is sexy, but she is not sexual.

But Pike is sexual.

Pike is sexual.

But is not

sexy.

Yeah, like, here's the thing.

We got to, we're, we're trying to untangle the what's going on.

You tangle Pike's webs.

Yeah, and also Tagashi's own weird

sort of like

sexual website.

Sometimes you want to draw Lady Hot.

Sometimes you draw two men, nude on leashes,

that

Chimera and has as his dogs.

And I got to be real, that's sexual, guys.

If we pretend it isn't, we're lying.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I think we talked about it as sexual back then.

Yeah.

But that was like a sort of sexual exploitation of humans, right?

Yes.

It's never been between two ants other than like,

as you said, Pike being

Sazon's number one reply guy.

I'm going to keep an eye on this.

I wonder what's going to, you know, I don't, it's not like I'm expecting this to, but so often with Tagashi, he will, like set upon a theme obliquely uh and it won't be for a while it might not be for a hundred episodes until you start to see the sort of other like peripheral shapes of that theme yeah i don't know it's very interesting yeah um

knuckle has a great plan his plan is quote i'll make him so mad he blows up

and then you p has an even better plan I'll pretend to get mad and then lure him in and then pretend to blow up and then kill him.

I wrote, oh no,

UP has learned what tactics are.

Yes, he says, I want to use this power without being consumed by emotion, possession of both power, sorry, possessed of both passion and presence of mind.

And then the narrator drops his banger.

We knew this was coming.

I knew in my heart that we were going to get to this moment eventually, but when I heard it, it still filled me with horror and amazement.

He says, three minutes have passed since the mission began, and the tower of the throne room tower just like starts to slowly slide into a leaning position as the central part of the palace has flown three minutes that's the last for anyone counting that's the last five episodes

uh the race complain about that and i yeah can i just say you're an idiot

if you complain about the time stuff in this arc you have no taste they know they explain it they give you a several things happen at once they explain it

once and it's used effectively too the important thing is that yeah you people like to see what's the guy called goku what's the guy called

no i agree yeah what's his you always like seeing what's his name with the blonde hair sometimes you like to see the guy pissing around a desert for 48 episodes for one fight and you complain about five episodes packing i don't know Well, because it's five episodes of content.

The joke is that it takes three minutes.

Right.

People do also complain about the time stuff at Dragon Ball Z, Z, but that's why the joke is that they explain how the time stuff works.

Yeah.

And then even then, the reason that it's five episodes is because they're showing you like six simultaneous threads happening simultaneously.

Yes, and they hammered this home in a line that I don't actually think we need.

I think that three minutes have passed since the mission began is a way better line to end this episode on.

The narrator then says everyone's motives were beginning to merge.

Sometimes you just want to put it on the screen, you know?

Just same thing.

I think it's weaker with that part, but I do think it does, it draws attention to how a lot of the issues with the last set of episodes is that like people aren't sure where everyone is.

People are acting past each other because they have different goals.

And

like, there's been a lot of confusion.

And I like

restating that that's been happening.

Or not restating, stating for the first time, really, that that's been happening.

But I agree.

Yeah.

It's worse.

It's worth writing.

Yeah.

Episode 118, a false rage.

Okay.

So

the tower that Morel and

before we start on this episode.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

UP is trying to bait the team into thinking that he's a creature of uncontrollable rage.

UP's like discovery of this plan and then his immediate successful attempt to exploit it is so funny.

He gets so mad, he explodes, and then he's like, oh,

what if I make him think I'm going to do that?

It's really, really good.

There's a really nice contrast here with Ghon's rage again.

You know, Yupi is pretending to be angry, and Goan...

Yupi is pretending to be angry to lure someone in for an attack.

And Goan is genuinely angry and is being held back from an attack.

The episode title here being A False Rage, I think.

My favorite expression of his rage here is he's, so he's in this massive crater.

He left this gigantic, the narrator calls it like a gladiatorial arena.

This crater is huge.

It must be, what, like 60 feet deep or something?

Really, really wide.

His number one expression of rage is that he absolutely punts APR across the crater in a wide shot.

So hard that it like makes a column of dust when it impacts the other side of the crater.

it also interrupts perfectly the announcement of accumulated interest

yeah it says it's time and up just wallops it across

so funny really funny uh meanwhile morale i love how seamlessly the show has like shifted from 116 into like action

and some comedy in 117 and then 118 is like full of funny stuff.

Yeah, it's really, really impressive.

But he's always been really really good at this.

And part of the way he is good at this is he moves at his pace and he doesn't care too much if you are lagging behind his emotional beats.

You know, the show is funny when Tagashi decides it's funny, not necessarily when it's appropriate for it to be funny.

Right.

And sometimes that doesn't work, but in general, it works really well.

You're sort of being led by the nose towards laugh lines or sad moments.

I mean, this is part of why melodrama works so well, right?

You know, you act at this register, and eventually your audience starts moving with you.

Morel and Poof, I wrote down here Morel and Poof in the cocoon.

There's supposed to be a comma there.

They are not both in the cocoon.

But this is a really fun echo of the fight with Cheetu.

Do you remember when

Chitu was fighting Morel and Morel just like laid down and fell asleep and Chito didn't know what to do?

Now we're in another standoff except it's it's

Poof that is static and Morel that is the one who is having to wait.

It's interesting because well the other thing is that we have the fight with Leol and

Morel wins his

fight with

Poof and sorry, not Poof, with Leol and Chi Chu by waiting with patience and without acting first, letting them act and tries to do the same thing with Poof.

And it doesn't, it kind of backfires.

No.

Because Poof, it seems, has done something that I don't think a cocoon does.

It seems like he has turned himself into, quote, impossibly small microorganisms that are able to.

He didn't write down here.

Is it like trillions and billions?

I think he says approximately 100 trillion.

That's exactly right.

Yes, 100 trillion.

But approximately.

Right.

Give or take.

100 trillion.

That is.

An unbelievably huge number.

Yeah, those aren't real numbers.

And

we see the little flies that that poof is now i suppose yeah the microscopic flies but they sort of start to reform into poof outside this is a bit of a letdown i was hoping that

we have been so treated by up's gonzo transformations yeah that i was i was seeing the cocoon and i was really hoping that um

some fucked up thing would come out of it.

Can I, I don't, I don't normally like to spoil things, and I'm not going to give you any specifics, Jack, but I think you're going to come out of this really like what's happening.

Okay, good.

Good.

Glad to hear it.

Yeah.

Lorraine has no idea what's going on.

Yes.

Meanwhile, Ikalgo has commanded a van.

Oh my God.

The visual of Flutter driving the truck is so funny.

So funny.

I think I talked about this in a previous episode, but I'll say it again.

I really like how they chose Flutter as the ant that Ikalgo Ikalgo is possessing, just because the visuals of him doing anything are so good.

He is starting to come apart thinking about his encounter with Bluster, and it only gets worse when he sees that Bluster has followed him down.

He says, was there something off about my imitation of Flutter?

And the tension in this scene that I really love is that he doesn't know how busted he is.

He's like,

is this something I can talk my way out of?

Or is this something that I'm going to need to fight?

Because if I get this calculus wrong and I just attack him, I'll probably be able to kill him, but then, you know, I'll have to deal with having killed Bluster.

Right.

He enters the underground warehouse and starts hunting around for Palm.

He calls out, saying that

he's kind of like sending a message from the director, but none of the women answer because

in kind of a grim wrinkle, we learn that they have been told that they can only talk to director Bizf.

That's the only person they're allowed to talk to.

And they know that BZF has a direct line to them.

And so they think that this is some sort of like test of loyalty from the director, so they are not giving.

It's like

the narrator says something like, the director sent in this bizarre creature to test their loyalty under, you know, weird circumstances.

This is another really good, just another layering of the ways in which loyalty, whether that is come to by oneself or, you know, like enforced loyalty, introduces these really interesting wrinkles into the plan.

You know, loyalty can cause people to act in ways that might seem very sensible to save their own skin or to work for the benefit of someone who they are looking out for, but you know, are not remotely helpful in any other circumstance.

He finds something.

Yeah, character, finally, a character who's using Gyo without being prompted.

Well they once the

once the ants figured out nen they learned it pretty quickly You know, I feel like they got nen fundamentals down pretty quickly their first move though was everybody come to the main hall and we'll kick the shit out of each other

Remember when they thought you could learn nen by just punching each other?

Yeah, which was true Yeah, that was

wrong.

It was true.

Yeah.

Well, actually, so it was it is true, but the Royal Guards came out already having nen, but they had that big party where they punched everyone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He finds some Nen writing on the wall, secretly written in aura.

We have

used the word Nen writing to describe something different before, something that Tashi has forgotten exists.

We call it, I think, Nen script in the show, which is like...

It's like physical writing, visible to people who can't read Nen, but it's like a spell, right?

It's like writing a spell onto something.

Yeah.

This is not that.

This is just like aura has been used to write text.

This is like what the

hunter who Kiloa, or not Kilo, Kuripika tried to get a job from did, except it's like

static and fixed in place instead of being a funky skull that Karapika can't see.

I demosky,

with the numbers.

With the numbers.

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh, it's a good show.

Pum's message basically says, I'm trying to leave.

I'm trying to go up into the palace.

If you you don't hear from me by the time of the attack, assume that I am dead.

And as Ikalga leaves, he feels like he has lost a part of himself, despite never having met Palm.

He really wants to get a win for his new friends.

He does.

Although, to his credit, he immediately moves on to the backup plan, which is this.

If the rescue Palm mission fails or is unnecessary, switch sides to the ants and feed them lies.

This is great.

It's great.

Especially because now Bloster's down here and Ikalgo's like kind of panicking.

I love it.

Everybody gets a chance to panic inside their own head in this show.

Yes.

Except usually Goan.

Goan doesn't, I don't think, ever has that sort of moment of panic

where they're like thinking of all their options and balancing things and thinking of worst-case scenarios and figuring out, ah, if I, if this is the, if this percent of thing is maybe going to happen, I should probably act in this way.

Like, Ikalgo slots right into there.

It makes total sense that Ikalgo's doing this.

Yes.

And, you know, is like kind of going through this as he's driving back to where he already knows Bloster is.

And it's great.

What is

Bloster lay this trap?

Sorry, Jack, what were you going to say?

Well, this is the exact,

this is...

This is attention that the plot exploits immediately, right?

Because it's like, switching sides and feeding the ants lies only works if they believe that you are one of them.

Whoops.

This is, you know, we have

to have Kagashi's tricks almost ever, I think.

Like, it's it's really low level in terms of what is important for the plot of the show.

Um,

uh,

like in these episodes, so many bigger, more intense things are happening, but how this bloster stuff plays out is hilarious.

First of all, the like it's time to switch sides immediately coming into focus with the bloster stuff, like kind of simultaneously is funny.

And then bloster kind of lays a layo trap for Ikalgo, who falls right into it.

And

Layol's name, Laol's dead name, has become a Shibboleth now, right?

Like the ants have figured out that

you can like bait someone into

everyone knows that he's called Lael now, but if we're going to call him Hagia, that's a sign.

And

Ikago fails.

He fails.

Bloster shoots him so massively with his claw cannons.

It's like the scene in The Godfather where he gets

at the...

What is it?

It's like a toll booth or something?

It's a toll booth, yeah.

He's just getting shredded.

Flutter's body is absolutely shredded and absolutely ripped.

And in this scene,

the question is, has Ikalgo made it out?

You know, we know that Ikalgo can do this, but it sure looked like Flutter got obliterated.

Bloster leaves, heading up towards the elevator, and we find Ikalgo back in occipus form, clinging under the truck.

And he thinks, oh, sorry, God.

Here's the part of this that's amazing.

So

Ikalgo immediately is like, this is great for me.

I can let Bloster go, and Bloster will spread the word that the imposter Flutter is dead, and I'll be free to move around as I see fit.

And instead, what happens

is Bloster goes in the elevator.

Do you remember the elevator with all the rules?

Because Bloster didn't.

Bloster didn't remember this elevator with all the rules.

It asks for a code, and Bloster goes, huh?

It's so funny.

And then it all goes in like, this motherfucker, he he doesn't rule the code.

No, he doesn't know.

Well, it's not even,

it's the her that really makes it because Bluster isn't going, ah, shit, I forgot the code.

He's going, what?

What?

What code?

It's so funny.

And then it cuts back to Ikalgo, who really seals the deal.

And he's like, don't tell me he came down here without knowing about the code system.

I love Bluster.

Knuckle, meanwhile, is also Ikalgo, you know, like, gears up, presumably, to take Bluster out or something, maybe swap to Bluster.

I think that might be the plan.

I'm not sure.

He's gearing up for it.

We don't see.

Yeah, he's going to pull the old Swabster.

Nope.

Swabster.

No, not too bad.

Not too bad.

Knuckle prepares for his attack on Yupi.

He can't get hit once because if he gets hit, APR deactivates, because Yupi will deal so much damage in a single punch that he will clear his debt.

Knuckle knows this.

There's one more thing about the Ikago situation.

Yeah.

Ikago has figured out that it was something with Hagia's, with Leol, with Hagia's name being something besides Hagia, but now Bloster is about to die.

And he has no clue what this name is.

And he's like, fuck.

If anybody asks me about Hagia, I don't know what to tell them.

What am I going to say?

What am I going to say?

This is a problem.

I don't know what to do about that.

Great pains to spell out exactly what you can and can't say around people.

Like, like, you know, it's it's that hunter-hunter mode of like being extremely clear of what you can and can't do.

Like, I can't just pretend, I can't just say, oh, I didn't know because Bloster was trying to kill me right away.

So, this is clearly a make-or-break situation for any ant that's in this building.

Yeah, it's funny how clear they get with that stuff.

Anyway, sorry, let's go ahead.

Uh,

Knuckle and Yupi.

He is trying to get Yupi to go bankrupt.

Reminder, he gets Nen debt by how much Nen he sort of like outputs.

And if it fails to hit Knuckle, it will add to his debt, and eventually he will become bankrupt.

Knuckle can also increase the debt by hitting him.

If he just waits around to let him go bankrupt on his own, he will have to wait around to do nothing for more than 10 minutes.

This doesn't seem like a lot, but after the revelation that it's been three minutes, you know, this 10 minutes seems like an ocean of time.

Yeah.

And they also point out that like, if I wait 10 minutes, then Shoot's going to die for sure.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

UP hears Knuckle prepping to come in and thinks he has fallen for the white trap.

And

he has.

And he has.

But Knuckle has a great job like setting up this imperfect information on both sides.

They both have one big thing that the other doesn't know.

Yubi is obviously faking

being mad.

He's not actually in a rage, and he's not actually about to blow up.

It's a ruse.

But what Yubi doesn't know is that Knuckle can take 7,000 nens worth of damage for free because of how APR works.

Yubi has no idea about this at all.

Yes.

Yes.

He is waiting for the next

interest cue to be his attack.

This is lovely.

It makes

APR's little its time feel really meaningful

in this moment.

I really like that.

And he leaps in for an attack.

So we get to see that it's up to like 6,000 now.

Yeah,

6,000.

Yeah.

This

is wonderful.

Well, I guess we'll get to it in a second.

As he leaps, he begins a monologue.

Do you have this written down?

Does anybody have the full thing?

I have a little bit of it, but I don't have the full thing.

I'll do mine and we'll see if we can Venn diagram the full monologue.

He says, he's talking about Shoot, and he's like, I'm attacking on behalf of Shoot.

He says, it's really odd.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't like him that much.

I always thought he was kind of annoying.

I don't get it.

Since when did he become my best friend?

Why am I this desperate to get revenge for him?

And he says something like,

working side by side does this to someone, I guess.

Yeah.

To be honest, I always thought he was kind of annoying.

Since when did he become my best friend?

Why am I so desperate to get revenge?

Actually, it's not even revenge because he's not dead is what I have written down.

Which, knuckle, I love you.

This damn ant, I'm getting more and more pissed off.

I'll give him a third punch just for myself.

Wow, I'm amazing myself.

I don't think my mind has ever thought this fast.

This is when the petty dropped for me.

And I haven't even finished throwing my punch.

Wait, is this what they mean?

Time's frozen.

Everything slows down right before you die?

It's perfect.

It's wonderful.

This is, you know, even in the midst of this

nightmare, Takashi reveals that he is always the master of like, I put down a piece three episodes ago that seemed like you saw the whole thing of it.

You You know, the whole like

time slows down when you die.

I would have been perfectly happy for that to be the thing with Zeno and Pito and Natero in that scene.

I think that would have been perfectly enough.

But this moment with Knuckle really reveals that that was all just set up.

And the thing, and there's two really beautiful things that happen in a row here because the so the first thing kind of all grouped together, this Knuckle stuff, where he's throwing this punch, he's having a monologue to himself in the way that is very normal to the show.

And then it starts getting a little bit long.

And I noticed it before Knuckle notices it, not much before.

And then Knuckle notices it.

And then it's like, okay, this is weird.

What's going on?

This, this thing where, like, the monologue naturally just gets too long for a show to sustain.

Like, for how short of a time this is.

And then Knuckles like, wait, I haven't even finished throwing my punch.

What's going on?

Yeah.

And this again is why the time stuff is so good it's so good it's so good because we know that knuckles already been in the time soup and so he's now in within a time soup inside the time soup yeah

and the show really starts treating it like he's about to die at this point i thought he was going to die yeah and in fact i think this is the the closest the show has gotten to really trying to sell a death

and it shows this rose this like beautiful bloomed rose that like loses a petal one by one.

Oh good.

And it's just like, oh my God, Knuckles about to fucking get his cloth.

He says something like,

I'm sorry.

Oh my God, this punch is coming.

It's way more than 7,000.

You're counting nen even till the end.

And this is the second beautiful thing.

They've set up this information where it's like.

The information that Yupi doesn't have versus the information that Knuckle doesn't have, whose information is going to be more valuable?

Which is going to win, like the the 7,000 nen debt that Yubi owes but doesn't know, or the fact that Yubi's being pretending to be mad.

Actually, Tagashi's trick, Killois shows up out of nowhere, remember him from the beginning of the last episode, and thunderbolts him like a fucking Pokemon.

It rules.

It's great.

He paralyzes Yupi.

Knuckle gets like seven or eight punches in and then wisely runs.

He runs.

He says, I did it.

I did it.

I'm done.

I can't do anymore.

I almost died back there.

I saw the pearly gates.

He says, no, I've got to get shooted to a hospital.

I hit him eight times.

I love Knuckle so much.

I want to be clear.

Kilua doesn't literally yell Thunderbolt when I say that.

He does literally yell Thunderbolt.

He Pikachu's out.

It was lovely.

It was a really good Deus Ex Machina, and the Deus was Killiwa Zaldic, and the Machina was,

I guess, the sky.

We see,

there's a little bit of Yupi trying to figure out what's going on.

He's so mad that he keeps getting attacked by mysterious things that he can't figure out, and especially by people that he can't see.

He's like, How did I get hit by a thunderbolt that big?

I didn't even see it coming.

We know, of course, that Killua was God's accomplice, Melieron, yeah.

But Yupi doesn't know that.

And

we see Yupi look up at Kilua, recognizing him, you know, from like 60 feet away at the top of the ditch that Yubi's made.

And Kilua goes, sorry, I'm a little pissed off right now, so I'm just going to take it all out on you.

Yeah.

And starts walking down into the...

Earned confidence, unearned confidence?

Who knows?

It's great.

But this is a royal guard.

It is a royal guard.

It is a good thing.

Kilua's fucking Zaldic.

Yeah.

We haven't seen him do Godspeed yet.

Oh, oh, it's worth saying that as he walks down, electricity starts crackling around him.

Even huger.

Even huger than usual.

Gotta love Killer's Aldic.

Gotta love

you.

We've got a trio of new songs in this section.

We went through it pretty fast.

They all play in a row from between

19 minutes and 30 seconds and 21 minutes and 18 seconds.

The first one is

called Play More With Me.

And it's

when

um

knuckle is feeling like he's about to die um and is charging in at yup

this is some classic to uh uh hirano fight music i think

but a little more horns

it's a little uh overbearing isn't it

It's set up.

This is lovely, though.

Yeah.

And then from here, we go right into this isn't safe here.

Oh, this cue is so good.

This cue is so good.

Mario.

I know, I know.

I love this one.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, the note I wrote down here was new music cues, new possibilities opening up, a stalemate breaking.

You know, one of the easiest ways you can cue an audience into

the grand is shifting is, you know, new sounds start appearing.

And then this last one called Something Falls.

This happens when

he gets his eight punches in, and Yupi starts to try to figure out what the fuck is going on, and then Killow appears at the top of the ditch.

This is great.

Three pretty good songs, like all back-to-back to back, like in a row.

And these songs, I think, pretty much all kind of show back up for the rest of the

Chimera Ant arc.

Maybe not all the time.

I think they come back up anyway.

Don't hold it against me.

There's that great C.S.

Lewis quote about how, you know, he writes one sentence being like...

You know, she walks towards the door and then he gets up and like smokes a cigarette and goes out for lunch and goes to deliver papers and comes back and sits down at his desk and picks up the pen and writes on the other side of the door was the living room or whatever.

And, you know, as you read it, no time at all passes between those things, but he's, you know, and there is, it's just, it's

when you say Keith, it's just like three songs back to back to back between 19 minutes and 21 minutes of this episode.

I'm like, oh my God, Hirano would have spent weeks.

Weeks.

And then the poor, the poor orchestrators and the people playing the thing.

And we just fucking watched it.

It took us three minutes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, they show back up.

This work.

This is, you know, they play.

Oh, actually, let's see.

Something falls plays only once in the whole thing.

This is also animation.

Safe here plays twice.

That's criminally underused.

And let's see.

Play

more with me plays only once.

Oh my god.

Wow.

Once, twice, once.

That's

crazy.

Actually, there's another song that does play more often.

We didn't even talk about it.

It happens at the very end of

117

during.

God, what's happening at the very end of 117?

The end of 117?

Yeah, the very end of 117.

Oh, three minutes of past.

Three minutes of pasta.

Yeah, that's the knuckle and you be fight.

It's called anxiety.

Yeah.

If you can believe yeah that's how it sounds

yeah

yeah

this is what plays in my head when i realize i haven't taken the garbage out

it's so cold here actually it's not so bad it's so cool i have to shovel snow when we're done it's i'm dreading it in the dark i'm gonna i need to be able to walk out of my apartment yeah

This is Sylvie's snow shoveling music.

Yeah.

This is okay.

Speaking of being done.

Yeah.

Those are all three episodes.

Those are our three episodes.

What are we watching next time, Keith?

And then we'll do some reviews?

That's a great question.

Next time, we're watching episodes 119,

120, and 121.

And those are called

Strong or Weak,

Fake and Real,

and Defeat and Dignity.

Oh, wow.

That's some Hunter-Hunter-ass episode names.

Yeah, yeah.

And they're very similar, too.

There's a lot of,

well, I guess a strong or weak and fake and real are opposites in the defeat and dignity, which isn't really opposites.

Sort of already connected.

Yeah.

Do you have a review for us, Sylvia?

Oh, fuck.

I don't.

Hold on.

Oh, fuck.

I forgot my duty.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Vamp!

Vamp!

This is just rapping, except we're just saying, oh, no.

Oh, no.

Oh, shit.

Well, God.

Oh, no.

She forgot her duty.

Oh no.

Oh,

come on.

Oh shit.

Hey,

Jack, you heard any good jokes?

Oh, okay.

No, what's

the best thing about Switzerland?

What?

I don't know.

The flag's a big plus.

That's really good, actually.

That's good.

I really like that one.

All right.

Okay.

Okay, okay.

I have a five-star review titled An August August.

Only the second August is capitalized.

My name is way too rare to ever be chosen, but as an August birthday, I'm glad to do my duty.

Also, interesting to report that at time of writing, Pocketcast is beating Apple Podcasts in number of five-star reviews by over 200.

Oh, wow.

How many are on each?

I mean, we have 500 five-star ratings on Apple Podcasts, so presumably around 700 on Pocketcast.

Wow.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't have Pocketcast.

They have ratings, but not like written reviews.

Is that true?

Does anybody know?

I don't know.

Okay.

I'll go look, because I have podcasts.

Because otherwise, I'd read it.

I'd, you know, we'd go read some.

I have a good one here.

Another one, just to read a second one to make up for my dereliction of duty.

The best companion piece to Hunter Night.

My friend and I decided to watch Hunter Hunter on a whim a year ago.

Little did we know at the time that our schedule perfectly aligns with the best companion piece podcast on Hunter Hunter?

See, we watch every two weeks, call it Hunter Night, and make themed drinks.

Then the next morning, while I get ready for work, I get to listen to this pod.

It's perfect and has brought a deeper understanding of the show for me.

Thanks for doing what y'all do, Cody.

That's great.

Hell yeah, Cody.

That rule

of themed drinks.

Yeah, please, like,

what the show emails?com.

Yeah, please let us know about your Hunter Hunter themed drinks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what?

I'm going to

challenge myself.

I'm going going to, I'm going to do a theme drink.

I'll come next time we record with a theme drink.

Ooh.

Oh.

I'm excited to see what you theme it after.

Yeah.

Mine is the, is

it's water divination, and it's just, I put a little bit of sugar in a glass of water.

Who's a specialist?

Yeah.

I'm going on the,

what's the best website for cocktail recipes?

Well, actually, I'm just going to search Ant Cocktail.

Oh, there's a recipe called Red Ant.

Red Ant, Red Ant, Red Ant.

Red Ant, Red Ant.

It's the Yubi.

Mescal.

Yeah, it is.

Whiskey, Mescal, Cherry Brandy, Cherry Liqueur, Cinnamon Syrup.

Tocolatl Molle Bitters and Three Brandied Cherry as Garnish.

And it features classic cocktail recipe instructions.

One, stir all ingredients over ice.

Two, straight into Bartini glass.

Three, garnish.

I'll say this.

We've been having great reviews from month people,

a lot of name people as well.

But I want to rethrow this gauntlet from people whose names haven't been called.

Thank you to the person whose name is too rare to have your name called.

I want the people whose names aren't being called in a fight.

I want you fighting with the people whose names are being called.

Oh, you want it to be hostile.

Because I do, like, I could read a review here that isn't name-related if you want.

Sure, yeah.

I want these two camps to bury each other.

That's fucked up.

Sure, yeah.

You're doing Chairman Netarow stuff right now.

I remember when the giant bomb cast emails were just people arguing about Australia.

Sure.

I don't remember.

I don't remember this, but it sounds fucking great.

Okay, one more review, and then we're going to go.

Five stars titled Guerrilla Focused Analysis.

In this challenging media environment, where truth is elusive and genres are blurred, MC Plus provides much-needed critical analysis by keeping our focus where it belongs.

On the gorilla.

MC Plus is the brightest star in my podcast feed, so bright that I'm writing a podcast review for the first time.

We got another one.

Every new ep is an instant listen.

Their astute and often hilarious exploration of culture, media, and storytelling through the lens of Hunter Hunter helped cement the anime as one of my all-time favorites.

Now I'm pestering everyone I know who has watched even a little Hunter Hunter to listen along as well.

Thank you.

You should too, podcast review reader.

And check out Friends at the Table while you're at it.

Looking forward to the rest of Media Club Plus Hunter Hunter and whatever comes next.

Sick.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's a great review.

I am confident that no one has talked about the gorilla as much as us.

No.

I'm a harder of that.

If you were born in, is it October?

I think we're

in September.

September.

If you were born in the merry, merry month of September.

Oh, I'm I'm wrong because if there's August reviews here, there's an episode with September that's not out.

Oh, right.

Which means it must be October.

You were born in the frightening, frightening month of October.

Woo.

Ghosts.

Dweebs.

Dweebs.

Ghosts and Dweebs.

Ghosts and Dweebs.

Please leave a review.

And if your name is

Kate, Katie, or Catherine.

Oh.

Cover your bases there.

I like that.

Leave ye a review.

Oh, Twinkling Lights.

I like that you turned into a character from the lighthouse there.

Leave ye a review.

Which one?

There's two.

Yeah, yeah, good point.

Good point.

There's three.

Well, I think that about does it for us, I think.

Yeah, I'm good.

Bad day, but good hunter, hunter.

Yeah.

And hey, we got in under three hours, even though we spent an hour and 15 minutes on the first episode.

We needed to.

Yeah, we needed to.

Come on.

Come on.

Come on.

Come on.

Come on.

All right, bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.