An Appraiser Of Men - Hunter x Hunter ep. 48-50: Media Club Plus S01E16

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

As always, we are brought to you by Friends of the Table.

This season, we're watching 2011's Hunter Hunter based on the manga by Yoshihiro Tagashi.

It's good to be back.

It's been a few weeks since we recorded.

It's been

like a month since we recorded.

It's been a while.

Yeah, this is one of the longer breaks that we've taken.

We were busy and I was sick.

No, not for you.

This will be, you know, where this is not going to make any sense to you because two weeks ago, you will have listened to the one right before this.

It was a bad place to take a break just because these episodes flow so well from the last set of episodes where we got a ton of Kropiga stuff.

And then now, like, it really is sort of part two of kind of stitching these two plots back together.

Um, I really enjoyed them.

Do we have any initial impressions?

Oh, I'm like, this was so much fun.

I think it's like the first episode we watched was a very like funny, cute one for the most part.

Um, and the character character for the first time in a bit.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, and he's great.

I love him.

Zeppile, we'll get into, I'm sure.

But then also, we get some just like fantastic hunt for the phantom troop stuff in the latter two.

And like, we're in it, you know?

I do.

I'm starting to feel because I'm like, I'm editing them.

And so I'm hearing myself say, like, repeat this,

starting every episode being like, yeah, I really like these episodes.

And I'm like, I have to stop saying that because I like all the episodes and I sound like an idiot.

And then, like, yeah, every episode, I'm not, you know,

there's a lot of shows where

that I like that I'll be like, yeah, I didn't really like those episodes.

And I'm not saying that Hunter Hunter is a perfect show with no bad episodes,

but it's just something that I have to stop saying because I keep repeating, like, these are great Eps.

I mean, to be fair, I do think we have pointed out when things have dragged, such as,

you know, we remember Nen.

we remember when we were learning about nen yeah um and hey maybe there'll be maybe there'll be a little bit of a stretch in a little bit where we won't think it's so great um who knows i'm i

i'm not believing that but sure i don't know what you might be talking about here i'm straight up just like i'm right i'm don't ruin it for me i'm in a flow state with the phantom troop i'm just here i'm ready uh speaking of ruining things for people uh just weeks after gone gives himself permission to use his hunter's license, he's decided to pawn it off for cash to fund their investigation into the spiders.

While waiting on that info, it's back to scamming at the auction.

This time, they've stumbled on a way to use Nen to their advantage, and also stumbled on a man named Zepile, an appraiser, who takes a quick liking to Goan and Kiloa.

And agreeing to work basically for free, they leave him to earn money while they go off to immediately get captured by the troop.

Hopefully, something they've learned antiquing will help them escape.

It's so funny.

You know, you ever learn about the antiques and art appraisal market so hard you use it to escape from history's greatest murderers?

It's fucking crazy.

Like,

these kids are special.

Yeah.

It's wonderful.

I mean, I guess I do want to start with.

Going into these episodes, my first thought was, how does this this escalate?

I mean, where we left off, Karapika just took out a member of the Phantom Troop with very little effort.

I mean, the notable thing about that fight was not just that Karapika killed Uvo, you know, began his path of revenge in earnest, but did so seemingly, and not effortlessly, but without a kind of.

Pretty close.

No hiccups.

No, it went exactly as Karapaka.

There was like one hiccup.

I think that ideally Uvo would not have escaped from

and killed a bunch of the

protection team, like the bodyguards, they suffered some casualties because of Uvo.

Yeah, that's true.

And the way Tagashi kind of responds to this is that he goes into his little quests menu and selects a side quest.

Yeah, side or side quest.

And all, you know, Tagashi's trick is that all these are the main quest or whatever.

But the vibe very much is, and Tagashi does this all the time.

I think it is like a side effect or rather a um

like an upside to his drifting camera maneuver where um he can pick up and put down plot lines uh seemingly you know at will and those plot lines can have very different uh feels or very different sort of levels of tension um but the fact that he is just drifting between them at all times um lends the show this kind of like kaleidoscope feel um you know all the colorful pieces inside a kaleidoscope rotating around each other, such that he is able to move from this moment of high drama, high tension, you know, the

Mafia murders, you know, Uvo killing 400 men and then getting killed by Karapika with a knife in his heart, back to like now we're doing an episode about art appraisal.

This is something that I think, like,

really

it's Hunter Hunter sort of showing its age in like a good way.

As

Shounen and these like battle anime have aged, they've gotten so

good at

staying on track and accelerating and getting to the

getting to the exciting stuff and kind of like never breaking in a way that to me is exhausting.

Like if you look at something

like

Jiu Jitsu Kaisen, which is like currently airing,

it is like a similar thing where it's like, hey, we're going to like teach you fighting magic and you're going to fight, you're going to fight like ghosts and demons and stuff.

They get to that so fast and then never let up.

There's like very few kind of breaks in the action

in a way that feels really tight and focused.

But I like that sort of kind of dragon ball thing of like, yeah, we're just going to like take seven episodes to do nothing.

Well, except the trick is that it's not doing nothing.

No, no, no.

It's not doing nothing.

It feels like it's a sidestep, but it's really legwork for the thing that comes after this.

Yeah.

And the thing that comes after this is Tagashi escalating it.

You know, he has actually meaningfully escalated from

killing Uvo by

immediately putting Gonan Killior fully in the clutches of the Phantom Troop, which was not something I expected until Netflix told me that that was what was about to happen at the beginning of the episode.

What happened?

Oh,

I went out, I got the episode ready and I went out and made some coffee.

And when I came back in, the little pause screen that shows the episode Synopsis was like, Gonan and Killior have been kidnapped by the Phantom Troop.

And I was like, oh, come on.

Yeah.

But, you know, it is what it is.

And

it builds to this

great sort of piece of narrative sleight of hand, which is the Phantom Troop don't know Karapika's name.

And they keep calling him the chain user, which is fair.

I think if you met Karapika recently, that's probably what you would call him.

Gon and Kilua know who Karapika is, but they don't know that he is wielding nen chains.

So you have this great sort of...

people talking at cross-purposes where they have actually got someone in their clutches that is extremely useful to them, but neither party party recognizes it.

Neither.

Until,

not immediately.

I don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

I wanted to bring up that point of like,

that is emblematic of the kind of escalation and the kind of the way these plot lines are pulled together.

Is that, you know, the critical piece of information that the Phantom Troop are looking for is in the heads of Gonan and Kiliua, but but nobody knows that.

And they set it up great with the Machi thing at the beginning of that episode.

Sorry, we're talking about a thing that happens in the second episode that we watched.

Yeah.

But to set up Machi as like having a sort of, having sort of like supernatural hunches, and then

when things don't line up quite like she said, people are kind of surprised.

But they actually did line up right as she said.

It's just that no one, there was a, there was, there's some classic dramatic irony going on.

Classic.

All right.

There we go.

It's time to talk about art appraisal.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Welcome to Pawn Stars, everybody.

Welcome to Pawn Stars as Gohan begins by pawning his hunter license.

This is something we've been told people do in the past.

I don't think it's completely untoward.

Talk about legwork.

Like, they tell us that in like episode seven.

It's great.

And it is so funny in terms of like, you know, all Gohan wants is to be a hunter to find his dad.

And now he's got the hunter license, a thing that he already doesn't feel like he earned, you know, in the first place, really.

I think he feels like he earned it now, having given the badge back to Hisoka.

Right.

He is just like, well, you know,

step on the road to what I need to do.

And what they are looking for specifically is they're looking for information on the Phantom Troop, which they know they can get, but it will cost them money.

And they're obviously hunting for the Phantom Troop because that'll give them the money they need to buy the game, to go in the game, to find the clue, to find the dad.

Right.

To find the dad.

To find the dad.

Yeah.

I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly.

And

this goes fine.

You know, they pawn the hunter license and they get an auction catalogue.

This raises a question that I had

kind of suddenly, like a kind of uncomfortable bolt of lightning, which is, Greed Island is very rare, right?

Yes.

Yes.

Why is someone selling seven copies of it?

Because it's because it can make you a billionaire.

But why is this multiple sales?

I never.

Oh, I was under the impression that this is multiple sales by you.

I was thinking, too.

But I do think that

people who have been holding on to a copy of Greed Island for a long time and have independently come to Southern Bees.

I'm going to tell you something that we're going to learn because I don't think it's a spoiler, really.

But we're going to learn that there's someone who's looking for copies and buying up multiple copies of Greed Island, which means that there's a hot market for Greed Island right now.

And so, because

Greed Island copies are going, the people who are holding them are selling.

Yes, it is

an impression of the situation.

It is now, it is time to sell Greed Island.

Yeah, I just had a sudden realization where I was like, is there something, you know, is there something sinister happening here?

Why have all these copies showed up at the same time?

But it does make a lot more sense if it's not, you know,

someone selling somewhere in

the Hunter-Hunter world, there's like an Adam McKay movie happening about everyone who has a copy of Greek ILO.

I don't think it's very good, but it's out there.

Based on the way Tagashi writes or the sort of Tagashi's desperate desire to keep writing new weird corners of this world, we're going to see it one day.

Who wants to tell me about Benny Dellon?

Oh, my God.

You mean Benny Dellon, creator of Ben's Knife?

Yes, Benny Dellon's Knife.

Oh my God, God, yeah.

Creator of Ben's knife.

Which I can't hear as anything other than like Mercedes-Benz, like Ben's knife.

Like it's something that like a SoundCloud rapper would be like fucking talking about.

I adore it.

That's it.

Check out my butterfly knife that I put up Mercedes-Benz head ornament on.

I'm going to own that someday now.

I'm going to own that someday now.

Yeah, so

Ben Dellon was a skilled blacksmith and serial killer.

Sorry, skilled blacksmith and what?

Serial killer?

Oh, serial killer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Combination of blacksmith and serial killer.

And he killed like

280-something people?

300-something?

288 at least.

Okay, yeah, and he made a knife

for each one.

And they are known as Ben's knives.

And

importantly, Killo is dad apparently used to collect them.

Yeah.

Extremely good detail on Killo's Dad there.

So funny.

So funny.

Oh, here's a fun thing I just learned.

There's not a picture of Benny Dylan.

Dylan?

Dylan?

Dellon?

In the anime that we're watching, but there is a picture of him in the middle of the.

Oh, yeah.

I linked it in the chat.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Okay.

William Shakespeare.

Exactly.

Yes, this is William Shakespeare.

Wait, that is William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare.

Just balding.

Just balding William Shakespeare.

Without his wig.

Well, yeah, okay.

And

they are drawn to this knife because Ghon sees Nen sort of emanating from it

and is able to pick it up

at a bargain.

Yeah, we've talked through the past.

Calls to Goan, and he notices it enough to go, like, to use Gyo on it.

Yes.

And, you know, we've seen in the past that this show is not very good at understanding what an auction is, in the sort of conditional auction that Leorio set up.

But here, it does know what it's doing as the way this market works is, you know, you write in the price you're prepared to pay, and people can keep upping the price on it until the end of the day,

at which point you sort of win it.

I had thought that when we saw this knife calling to Goan, it would be

a moment of something sinister.

But Goan's laser focus is turned on make me a lot of money right now.

So instead, they just start applying it as like, we have become really good art appraisers thanks to our nen.

And they go around and start trying to bid on stuff.

And we just get a really nice little hunter-hunter montage of the various treasures that they bid on.

They tried a song for this montage, by the way.

Oh, oh, yeah, hit it.

This song is called F-R-I-E-N-D-S.

Okay, yeah.

And it's a play on a song that also plays from the very beginning of

the

Heaven's Arena.

Yes.

The only other time it plays is called Take a Walk.

Oh, nope.

This one.

Oh.

Yeah, I was going to say.

Yeah.

So this is the second appearance of Take a Walk and the first appearance of F-R-I-E-N-D-S.

The implication being, go and kill our friends.

That would seem to be the implication.

It makes it a sequel song to the season one song or the hunter exam song, Let's Be Friends.

Which is this one.

I love this.

Aww.

We also hear often the Heavens Arena itself has a theme that is associated, that is like a really bombastic version of that.

That plays, you know, I think at the beginning of Heaven's Arena episodes.

And following Keith's logic, which I think is sound,

the Heaven's Arena is where Gono and Kilua express their friendship.

Yeah.

Through fighting.

Yeah, through violence.

And learning.

And learning.

Yeah.

Here are some things in the montage that they see.

Fucked up doll.

No, not a very fucked up doll.

Fairly normal looking doll.

Haunted, but not fucked up.

Yes.

Extremely fucked up looking pot.

Yeah, yes, yes.

The pot is freaky but not haunted

wooden wood carved statue that will become important later the serial killer's knife uh and then some additional wrapped packages we just get lots of great images of god and killua as though they have just come out of macy's in this episode except the things they have that they are carrying are rare artifacts uh they then in a real 12-year-old's maneuver try and get these added to the auction catalogue um

and they're just like we already printed the catalogue

No,

we can't do this.

I think I asked in a previous episode about how the auction was structured, because I had previously believed that there was like the legit Southern Bees auction and then a secret criminal auction.

But when we spoke, sorry, when we spoke in a previous episode, you seemed to say, no, it is all just the criminal auction.

Yeah.

However, I was thinking about that again.

We have good auction and bad auction.

Yeah.

My read is that the math year is probably heavily involved in the southern Bees auctions, but it's a different thing.

My revised explanation, based on our last conversation and watching this, is that there's like a week-long auction season

in which the mafia is heavily involved and there's a special mafia night.

Yes, sure.

It's like a girl's night.

Where the Mafia community comes together.

Yeah, yeah, Mafia gets it free.

free.

Goan has some difficulty.

Just a lovely little gag here.

Goan can't do math.

Right, he cannot multiply 500 by 2.5.

Two and a half.

Because they are being outbid by a man named, or by someone named Zepile.

And I had a fun little sort of through line with this Zepile character in these episodes, where the first thing that I wrote down was, oh, he is probably

another Nen user.

You know, he's probably someone else out here

hunting for bargains.

And what is notable, and you know, we'll talk about it as more as more of Zeppel gets involved, is he is a nen user, but not in the really in the way that we have encountered nen users in the past.

Do you remember the name for this that we get from like uh Wing?

No, what does Wing called them?

A Nen genius.

Oh, that's great.

So this is a this is a someone who who doesn't sort of consciously know they are using Nen.

Yeah.

In Star Wars, uh, in Star Wars, he'd be called a force adept.

A force adept.

Yeah, no, sure.

It is

notable that that was my first reaction.

You know, I have now got, I have been so sort of,

I've spent so much time immersed in Nen.

Yeah, you're Nen-Pilled.

I'm Nen-pill.

I heard you were maybe going to say that.

I was trying to find, I was trying to find another, I was trying to find another phrase than Nen-Pill.

But look, I'm Nen-pilled.

My first thought is, you know, oh, someone's very powerful and has a capacity.

Oh, it's got to be Nen.

I'm kind of half right.

Half right.

Mostly, maybe you need more than half.

As Gun and Kilua try and sell these objects to a dealer, who initially seems to be offering them quite a lot of money for it, the dealer starts to pull some kind of a scam on them.

As the dealer realizes that the wood-carved statue is in fact a

like a vault.

There's a thing inside.

It's like a sealed box.

The dealer tries to get one over on Gone and Killua, but is interrupted by Zepile, who shows up.

Zepile has a key characteristic, and it's his eyebrows.

Yep.

They were like...

He is the most Phoenix Wright-looking character we've had in so fucking long.

Yeah, yeah, I rode Phoenix Wright.

I love the little battle, the little Phoenix Wright battle where we learned about art forgery.

It's so much fun the way that, like...

Actually, do you want to like take us through it maybe?

Do you like have any specifics of it?

So the specific that I have of it is that

it ends up being totally pointless.

Because the, so,

so we've got, they call it a wooden trove.

And so it is like a secret cache that rich people would store their treasures in.

To evade taxes.

To evade taxes.

I hate

banging this drum all the time, but the implication of taxes, you know, there's some sort of state structure that people are paying towards.

And I would love to know what your taxes are funding in the hunter-hunter world.

Well, they're funding giving funding

to

hunters to go wherever they want.

Yeah, I have no idea.

It might be the case.

In any case, please continue.

So the sort of the clerk at the counter is like, oh, I'm not going to buy your your wood.

It's or this, I'm not going to buy this statue.

It's really not worth very much, but I will buy the wood because the wood is very rare and old.

And I'll give you, you know, I'll throw in 80,000 Jenny

for just the wood plus like 400,000 for the rest of the stuff that's actually worth something.

And he's just going to take it into the back to check.

uh the age and this is where zepile comes in and says no no you're gonna take it it into the back to steal the treasure from the inside.

He's giving you a fair price for the doll and for the other, whatever the other thing was, but he's trying to trick you on this wooden trove.

Explains

what a wooden trove is.

Then a giant man comes out from the back, does not introduce himself, never introduces himself, and then starts posing all these sort of questions about how could you or couldn't you know that it's a real wooden trove?

Maybe it's a counterfeit wooden trove.

And then Zeppile gets to demonstrate all of the ways you could fool an appraiser or an antiques dealer into buying a counterfeit wooden trove and how you might counter those forgeries.

And the sub and the dub call everything a different name, but

the basics are

you could crack it open and then re-glue it, which is like the worst thing that you could do.

You could heat it open, like melt the glue, and then replace it, which is the second best thing that you can do.

And then the, I think we learn a little bit later that the third best thing that we can do is like make a hole in the side and take it out and replace that.

Well, we learn that later, but I'm telling you now.

Anyway, none of this makes any sense because this is all just for Tagashi.

This is all just for

Tagashi had a week where he really was into art forgery.

Yeah.

And so he put into.

I think I know why this is here.

I think I know what this is doing.

Yeah, my...

Well, do you want to go into what you think it's doing before I get into mine?

Yeah, I think this is an extended metaphor about

counterfeits and about

appraising people.

You know, what this lets you, what this lets Tagashi get into is spinning out a big metaphor about

reading people.

Yeah.

And not only how Zepile and others around Ghon read him, but how Goan reads others.

Sure.

And I think that's what this weird art appraisal plot.

But the question

for me is, because Zepile does make that connection later on when he's talking to Gordon Killua, the question for me is, why does he choose art forgery as the avenue for this metaphor?

Like, okay, I want to make a metaphor about like reading people.

How do I fit that into my story?

Well, it's a metaphor about, and this is like the most surface-level crit here.

You know, it's about claiming that something is different than it actually is.

Or, you know, constructing a thing to be different from how it actually is.

You know, looking inside something that initially appears to be one way and learning that it's that it's another way.

I think the other thing this is doing is it's mirroring Nen.

I think it's notable that...

Zepile has these names for the different kind of methods that he uses.

And in a very Mr.

Wing style way, he walks through them.

It's like, this is called an autopsy.

This is called an ostomy.

This is called whatever.

And like this leaning on

the same sort of structured language that nen masters have used to talk about nen

for this character who we learn is a nen genius, you know, is someone who sort of possesses nen ability, but doesn't know it and just sort of outputs it subconsciously or

you know, just sends it out into the pieces of art that he makes.

I think Takashi is drawing a mirror between, you know, artistic practice and

Nen.

Yeah.

The reason why this is so funny to me, though, the nuts and bolts of it, is that fundamentally, nothing that the giant introduces to the conversation matters against that this guy is going to take it into the back and crack it open.

Like, the fact, whether it's a real trove or not, whether the treasure is still in there or not,

that's what that guy is about to do.

So the whole thing was like a straw man that Zapyle sort of falls for and argues against, and eventually does argue against it, you know, sort of competently enough.

I think the ending thing is like, well, what do you do if you're wrong and actually there isn't a treasure in here?

And he says, I'll become your slave for life.

That was flirty.

I'm just putting it out there.

A huge man has no idea what to do with this.

He gives up.

He just immediately gives up.

Sort of like immediately gives it up.

Okay.

He gives up and he tells the other guy, hey, just give up.

And then they open this thing up and

it's full of a caricature of treasure.

Yeah.

It's great.

It's like a drop in ghouls and ghosts or something.

Zeppile values it at about 5 million US dollars.

Oh my God.

I hadn't done the calculus.

It's so funny.

You know, it is big.

I'm playing pirates as a child.

I'm like playing pretends with my friends, and there's pirates, and I pitch a pirate treasure, and it's fucking, it's this.

Yeah.

Normally, you'd be thrilled to get 5 million US dollars, but Togoni Killer is like, oh, damn, only one 200th of what we need.

Yeah.

For an opening bid.

And so then they go and have dinner.

They go, they go hang out out with

Zapayo, who reveals himself to be a pretty good judge of character and

another entrant into the parade of people that Tagashi is setting in front of Gonan Kiliwa as pseudo-role models, pseudo-exploitative figures.

This is another Mr.

Wing.

This is another Natero.

This is another Hisaka.

this is another um

I mean the the show has a very odd opinion about uh Gonan Killua as a sort of exploitable resource.

And when I say odd opinion, I don't necessarily mean that the show is

confused about what it's saying or is talking about talking at cross-purposes.

Um, I think the show is very regularly interested in how adults exploit these two kids and their world-shattering ability.

Um, but but out of the out of the the lot of them, Zeppelin seems like a pretty good guy.

Yeah, he says that he doesn't even want to get paid.

No,

the conversation is really fun.

We go into one of these sort of like, I'll ask a question and then you ask a question conversation structures.

Which is Kiluwa's idea, and then he immediately regrets it.

Killua is so funny in this scene.

There is nobody better to trap in one of these swap conversations, conversations, swap questions scenes, because

we learned quickly that really what Killer wants to do is ask a question and not worry about the rest of the bargain.

It's great.

And they almost immediately tell Zepile how they found the things using Nen.

And Zepile reacts in the same way that everybody who hears about

Hunter Hunter reacts.

I believe you.

Interesting.

We've said this before, but either.

For such a world-shattering secret, people are very chill about hearing about Nen for the first time, or Zepile already knows about Nen, in which case there are a lot more Nen users

than, you know.

This isn't even the first time they reveal Nen to a stranger in this episode.

Because while they're looking at the Ben's knife and going over their plan to use Gyo to look and find,

you know uh nen infused artifacts to then buy and resell at a higher price they're doing this right in front of the cashier who's about to sell them the benz knife

what if and the cashier just goes like

oh you could buy you could you could sell you could sell these you know over there for huge amounts of money What if you were just at the supermarket and two children came up and spoke the nature of the universe?

And it's just like, I think it's just one of those things.

It's like, it's too complicated to prove that Nen is a secret.

So just

understand that it's true no matter what.

And we're going to, we're going to write the show in a way that's easy and not annoying.

Do people know hunters are real?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

That's why there's the second hunter exam, the secret hunter exam, is so that you could become a pro-hunter and still not know about Nen.

Yes.

In fact.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's how it seems like that's implied.

That's how most people go about it.

Because Zepile knows about hunters, but seems to not know about Nen.

And

I'm willing to just believe that Zepile's never heard of Nen,

but just also is immediately willing to believe in it.

He says there are a couple of hunters in the antiques community, which is so funny.

We now have the Mafia community and the antiques community.

Yeah, the antique hunters.

Mafia hunters.

That's really what the shadow beasts were.

They were mafia hunters.

Didn't work out very well for them?

No, it didn't.

And you know what?

Here's really the thing.

If I was, if I'm like really trying to

give the show the favor of like figuring out how this sort of interaction goes down, I think Zepppile is like, well, you proved to me that Ned is real simply by having chosen these items.

You're obviously children who have no idea what you're doing, and you picked these four items seemingly at random, and they're like all like legit and important artifacts, except for my one that I won back from you.

Do we want to talk about his last item or do we want to

talk about Zeppile?

I mean, I think this is sort of the other

last big bit before we move this.

This is Killer's focus.

Killer wants to know: like, why didn't you try to get the treasure?

Why did you try to get what you got?

Did you pull one over on us?

And what he got is the fucked-up creepy vase.

Right.

And it turns out that

what Zeppile is doing is a bit like the Audrey Hepburn movie How to Steal a Million.

Zeppile used to be a counterfeiter and has sort of put this counterfeit item into the world and has a very low view of his own counterfeiting.

It's not terribly clear to me whether he has a low view of it because he now believes it's morally wrong, you know, he's gone straight, or whether he thinks it was shoddy workmanship.

And it might be a combination of the two.

I always think he is him being

overly humble, is how I read it.

Yeah.

Especially that with the way Gon Gone reacts to it, too, right?

Yeah.

Because he says, it made me happy that this piece of junk actually caught your eye.

I feel like he believes that, but I don't, it doesn't feel like it's true, which is why Ghan has his like impassioned little speech about it.

Yeah, because Goan,

you know, Goan stands up and is basically like, don't you talk about, you know, your own art like that, buddy.

It's so good that it glows you.

Yeah.

yeah it glows you know magic kids got a point

and it is so it's so interesting here you know we've seen the um box that gene sent that had nen you know written on it we've seen um the computer nen coming out of the computer that sucks you in we've seen uh wings

wings promise uh promise things and it it was really kind of touching to realize that the way the metaphysics works is that even someone who doesn't know they're doing it can sort of imbue an object with such value in their care and attention to it that objects in the world sort of accrue nen, you know.

Like well-loved objects or well-taken care of objects, you know, there is a spirit contained within those objects that the person isn't aware of, you know, putting in there.

And I think in as many words, this is what Gunn is sort of picking up on, you know, in saying,

you know, you have a connection connection to the art you make, and you have a capability, and that is valuable.

He gives a real little pep talk to Zepile.

And Zepile seems gen, well, Zepile seems first genuinely touched, and then, you know, as an art appraiser in Tagashi, you know, spilling out this metaphor,

delivers just an absolute skewing, pinpoint skewering of

Goan's strength and weakness.

This is Goan's trick.

Did you read this

thing?

Yes.

Yes.

It's a little long.

No, I think

this is a real inflation.

It's very important.

I think this is one of the most important things in the whole set of episodes here.

My eyes didn't deceive me.

When you appraise things long enough, you also come to be a judge of character.

I look at sellers and buyers too, not just merchandise.

It's a lot harder to appraise humans than antiques.

When I saw you, I knew right away I wanted to work with you.

And then there's a little bit of a,

I think there's a little bit of a break, and then it switches to his sort of internal dialogue

when they agree that they also want to work with him.

He says, I think I get it now, why this kid intrigued me.

He doesn't care about right or wrong.

When I admitted to making forgeries and when that trader gave me a hard time, I didn't see a hint of disapproval or greed on his face.

But what I did see was pure curiosity.

If something impressed him, he doesn't start judging whether it's good or bad, which means he's dangerous.

And in the dub, it says, which means he's walking a fine line.

Someone who can never be truly appraised.

This is real important, I think.

It's very important.

Sylvie, this was what you had this in the dock.

I saw that.

This was like, for the beginning of this, this was like the only note I really had was like

this quote from Zeppile being like, I think genuinely a very good read on Gone and something we should be keeping in mind

like going forward.

The whole

it doesn't necessarily like the morality of things doesn't necessarily factor in all the time.

It's just

what catches his interest

is just something he will pursue no matter what.

Although

there's another side to this coin that they show later, and

they also are using a coin metaphor for the whole for the whole next two episodes.

They sort of they they kind of they do a coin metaphor with

I think anyway the they're using a coin of the troop starts using a coin to decide things like heads to heads to do one thing tails to do another because they can't get into a fight so they have to decide things randomly.

And I think that they're saying like Goan and Kilua are two sides of a coin and then and like Goan is sort of aware of this dynamic and in a way that maybe Kilo isn't.

And then, uh,

uh, also, I think that they, they put that zeppile thing about Goan on one side of a coin, and then on the other side of the coin is

uh some stuff later from the from the kidnapping that we'll get to.

So, if I don't bring it up, that's my fault, but I'll get to it when we get there.

Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about.

Yeah,

um, that's great,

and then there's uh they get a call about the spiders.

The money

that they sold the Hunter license for

came through, and they

Lario calls and is like, hey, there's some spiders.

Episode over.

Episode over.

And also,

do we see in this episode how he is watching that stuff?

Or is that the next episode?

It was like a,

was it a cell phone camera?

He had like a live stream going.

Yeah, he had like a live stream.

That's more.

Guess what i mean okay yeah

and it doesn't quite match up with who they've got there watching them once we see them uh no it doesn't it's very it's it's interesting yeah um

uh Before we move on to the next episode, I want to go back to one of Dre's notes here.

Oh, yeah.

Very early on in this episode, we learned that, you know, as we've known for a long time, and as I think anybody who's seen five minutes of him on screen would be able to tell you, Leorio is a little behind in terms of his nen knowledge.

Leorio doesn't know what, and I'm also behind in my nen knowledge because I can't remember the name of it.

He doesn't know how to do the eye trick, the seeing.

Yeah, Gyo.

Okay.

Yeah.

He doesn't know Gyo.

And yeah, Dre, you have a question about like

sort of ranking hunters, right?

Yeah.

So like, if you compare Leorio to most normal people, he is like a monster compared to them.

Yeah.

But most of the other.

I would say.

you tell me if this is hyperbole, but I feel like of almost all the other pro hunters we have seen, Leorio is like a baby compared to them.

Yeah, I agree.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think the only

comparison we've got is like we got like a split second of Pacle struggling with none.

I sure.

Oh, we did.

I think that we could...

I think that like...

I always go back to Dragon Ball when I'm thinking of like how strong our characters in other shows.

when power scaling we can use the word it's not a dirty word well because I'm like

keep this power scaling

I feel like Leorio on a year where the turtle crew are not showing up to a world tournament I think that Leorio could like maybe compete in the semifinals do you think Leorio could beat up Mr.

Satan yes Definitely.

Absolutely.

Okay, anyway, my main question was, do we think that most pro-hunters are more like Leorio, or are they more like all these other freaks that we see?

Freaks.

Freaks.

Freaks.

The.

You know, the hunters are.

I mean, I understand that there are like wrestling jobber, you know, types, but the impression that I always have with the hunters is, you know, when you watch pro-wrestling, especially like large-scale, you know, storyline-driven pro-wrestling, you immerse yourself, you sort of willingly suspend your disbelief and enter into a world where every single person in it could punch your head off, you know?

Sure.

Like...

Everybody here is unbelievably strong.

And also, this guy's like a weird cultist.

This guy's like a hyper-American guy.

This guy has his brother and they fight each other all the time.

This guy occasionally just, you know, hits people with baseball bats, etc.

That's the entire world.

And there is something really funny to me about Hunter-Hunter, where it's like, there are normal people in the world, but there are also this sort of like hyper-elite class of weirdos with an astonishing level of power that are just bebopping around all the time, you know, out there.

I think it is, and it is funnier to me if the majority of the hunters are just like overpowered freaks.

They're like they're like MMO player characters.

You know, when you go into Limsa or whatever in Final Fantasy, and there's just like Greg who runs the bar and then there's like the lady in the market and then there's like the little NPCs in the bar who are sitting around and talking and then there's like 4,000 warriors of light, you know, the most powerful people in the world casting spells, putting on plays, etc.

Everybody is the like everybody is main character level or close to it.

You know, it is the we are all we're all level 80 in the fucking level 20 zone.

Yeah, what if everybody in the masons was a god is is my new impression of what a hunter

uh and it does it does make sense like uh when because

there's no one that we get a better look at

uh how their time in the hunter exam goes than gon kilo cropica and leorio but we see that leorio really wouldn't have made it if it wasn't for who he lashed himself to at the very beginning He may be dead four or five times.

He has good instincts and he has good luck.

And that

helped him.

And he's a good doctor.

Doctor.

And those sort of tertiary skills are what helped him make it.

I think he probably wouldn't have died because I think that he probably would have given up before he died.

Like we do know

even without

Gonan Karapika, he would have overheard that person saying that the bus was a trap, even though

he was going to go the wrong way.

And so I think he maybe could have gotten most of the way to the hunter exam.

This is not the first time we have come back to could Leorio, you know?

Yeah.

Could Leorio have made it to the Hunter exam?

I just think it's compelling

the more weirdos we see.

Yeah.

He

to me, Leorio gets by because he has just sort of like an intrinsic dude's rock field that

sort of like then it like when you get closer to him You're just like oh well shit.

This guy is this guy's chill as hell

Yeah, you know don't kill him here.

This is now a Leoria respect zone.

Yeah, I love that guy.

Do you want to talk a bit about your formatting here?

Oh, yeah.

You haven't just typed this into the Google Doc.

No, I changed the font a little just to be like a little more block font and it's bolded and I've put sparkles around it and it's pink.

This is very GeoCities core.

That's what I was going for.

Thank you.

It's It's my Gaia Online profile.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's literally worrying to its Gaia Online.

Incredible.

And then immediately below it, you've written your next note, the full beginning and end of which is just the words Ben's knife.

Yeah.

B-E-N-Z.

Yeah, yeah.

With my Ben's knife.

The Hunterpedia here is...

is Shizuku as Gun and Killiwell wonder about Blinky and where you go when you get sucked into the vacuum cleaner,

this is another good example of the Hunterpedia as sort of being like outside text in a fun way.

They have not met Shizuku in full knowledge of who she is.

You know, they met her at the arm wrestling.

They don't know anything about Blinky, but here they are outside of the story, you know, talking about Blinky.

Also...

Goan and Killiwa have a little tadpole in a tank next to them.

And I mentioned this tadpole in the last stream.

Last stream.

I mentioned this tadpole in the last recording in the ones where Goon and Killio are wearing brown face because they've got a tan over the summer.

Right.

And I went back to check.

This tadpole is growing up.

He, at the end of episode 48, has tiny little

tadpole putative legs, one set of them.

What do you think happens when he hatches?

We're going to come back to this.

Don't worry.

Oh, okay.

I really thought we were just going to talk about Goan's uh blinky face that he was going to talk about.

That was not blinky, not blinky as in he's blinking, but when Goan makes his face look like Blinky the vacuum cleaner.

I find Blinky quite frightening.

Um, yeah, oh, yeah, I like Blinky's voice.

I like Blinky's got like a phone like blinky voice.

Oh, you know how you describe

any sound,

he looks kind of like Toad from

Mario 64.

He and him, Blinky?

I don't know.

I just, that's just what I went with.

I've always thought she, her, Blinky as like a team with Shizuku.

Listen, girl, the vacuum cleaner is a boy or a girl.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a boy, because it'd be misogynist to make the vacuum cleaner a girl.

Like, that was not Tagashi.

No, I know.

Episode 49 begins.

Now, you might have thought, oh, there's going to be some business about finding

the two Phantom Troop members, which are Machi and Nobunaga.

Nope, they find them straight away.

Find them straight away.

Just follow up on the tip, and they get there.

This is Togashi's pacing strikes once again.

Yoshihiro Togashi, would you like to spend a little time as our heroes, you know, ascertain the location of the most dangerous foes yet?

No, not really.

I would instead like to spend 25 minutes on art appraisal.

Okay.

And then they're just sitting at the mall waiting.

That's...

Hold on.

Him spending 25 minutes on art appraisal is the secret sauce of this show.

I need to say that, really.

That's the thing.

Yeah, that's the secret collection of herbs and spices, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like when you, it's like when you de-glaze a sauce, you know, and the like the bits on the bottom can come up.

It's like,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

The art appraisal type beat.

That's the font, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And straight away, we get a really cool sign of a cool side of Killiwa emerges as Killua you know becomes very professional very quickly while he also be sippy on a milkshake though while he also be sippy on a milkshake he loves candy

get a sweet tooth yeah he loves candy and sweets he is also a child assassin yeah and not just from any uh assassin family from the prestigious zodiac family of assassins killua straightaway says we cannot do this You know, we can't kill these people.

We are not going to be able to meaningfully collect on this bounty.

So we are going going to have to start making, you know, specific new plans.

These two are members of the Phantom Troop.

And we learned that his dad, Silver, killed a spider a while back.

This makes me think this is possibly the empty seat that Hisuka filled.

Although he talks about it being a couple of years ago.

And we don't think they know what this is.

He's been in the troop for three years, I thought he said.

Oh, so it probably is Hisuka's seat.

Four.

Right?

What is Hisuka?

Well, didn't they also mention that Shizuku's newer than Shizu is

remembering?

Yeah, yeah.

So there's a couple people it could have been, I think.

The quote here is: A while back, my dad killed a spider for a job.

He doesn't complain much, but he said it wasn't worth the price.

And that is the highest compliment he gives a target.

He even got the lot of us together and told us we should steer clear of the Phantom Troop.

A little family meeting.

Yeah.

He says, imagine if the people sitting at that table were both Hisokas.

This is especially funny because Kiloa does not know Hisoka is a member of the Phantom Troop.

We get a cute little image of the two Hisokas sitting at the table.

One of them is looking lovingly at the other, which is like why I will always be here for Hisoka's extremely gross nightmare character.

Tagashi's character writing for him is so funny every time, in that, like, Hisoka is such a particular weirdo that even in like a dream imagining, he is hitting on himself.

Yeah.

He's like, you know,

I'm Hisoka,

which is great.

Nobunaga and Machi realize that they are being observed and are sort of deliberately acting as bait for a trap.

They are trying to draw out their observer, who at first they think is the chain wielder.

But then they can sort of sort of sense.

Everybody is suppressing their

nen

deliberately, and they can sort of sense that there are people out there and multiple people, but they don't know how many.

So they write off quite quickly that this is the chain user because the chain user works alone.

And during all this time, I am.

We are now describing Karapika as the most powerful man alive.

Yeah.

And

how long has this been the case?

Has this always been the case and it's just been superpowered once he learned Nen?

Or has Karapika just been this good the whole time?

No, no, I think it is specifically when Karapika forged the Nin contract.

Because Karapika's power is the power of his will and his desire for revenge

i think it's specifically when emperor time it's emperor time right is that what it's called it's called emperor time yeah emperor time when that's active i would say yes karapika might be the strongest person i think you're both right i think that emperor time gives karapika a huge potential to be dangerous in general and then

His Nen contracts make him extremely superpowered versus specifically the spiders.

The combination of those things and the situation that they're in sort of exponentially create

the Karapika that's able to easily defeat Uvogin, who is so, so, so, so, so, so strong, who one-shots,

he kills nine shadow beasts in like seven punches

off screen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's it's

it's a really good feeling hearing the Phantom Troop talk about you know Karapika in this way.

We have spent so much time with him in the show up to this point.

And

he has now been removed sort of from the main.

We had some pretty Karapika heavy episodes, you know, at the beginning half of this.

But Karapika has become a final boss, you know, at this point.

Yeah.

And he's become a final boss for the villains.

And Tagashi wants to have his cake and eat it and is doing it really successfully in playing the audience's

loyalty towards Karapika.

You know, that sense of like, it's my boy, Karapaka can do this.

He's great.

And also, increasingly

playing the Phantom Troop as the protagonists.

Yeah.

Where we are excited and terrified to see,

you know,

them get hunted by Karapaka in this way.

It feels so weird when we get into the Phantom Troop's lair

and

the show is giving us the angle of the Phantom Troop who we know have caught these two Stranger Kids.

And it's like we know that those Stranger Kids are Gonan Kilua, but the show is really

playing it like

you know, we jump into Kilua's head and we get some stuff like about, oh, I hope they don't scam me again because I figured out that the chain user is Karapika.

But it's so funny the way that they really,

the framing of the show really kind of like swallows the perspective of the Phantom Troop, and we sort of become

them looking at these kids, like, what the fuck do we do with these fucking kids?

It

demands such confidence from everybody working on this to to do this.

You know,

in order for this move to work and it works so well the

you know the short choices the the the the storyboarding team you know people who are deciding where the camera is placed and the writers and tagashi are having to move with such like steadfast confidence in their perspective choice you know in saying we're with these people now

and we're gonna make them compelling and we're gonna make them charming we're gonna make their concerns uh realistic and and easy for you as an audience to buy into.

And in situations where you can't buy into them, you know, tough.

You're going to have to deal with it.

This is the camera perspective.

You know, I keep thinking, Keith, about when you said

as the camera follows the Phantom Troop up into the sky in their balloon,

you are never coming back

from that moment.

You know, we have demonstrated that we can make a separation that great between our sort of A team of protagonists and B team of protagonists, the murderers.

And it's true.

It means that we have these

first these scenes with Machi and Nobunaga.

We get some great character writing on Nobunaga.

Lots of tension at this table.

It is so good.

Because we had sort of previously, here's what we'd known about Nobunaga.

He got shrunk into the car and he hated it.

Yeah, a little bit of comic relief.

He got in a fight with Franklin with the family.

Because with Feytan and Franklin.

Yeah.

Because they were late.

They're all mad that they were late.

I can't remember if Uvo was with them at at the time, but we get a little bit more perspective on, like,

Nobunaga doesn't like to be late because Uvo gets mad at him when he's late.

Yes.

And we just, we get a lot of dialogue from Nobunaga.

His performance is really great.

And we get to hear him at the same time as Killua is talking through the practicalities of, you know, being an assassin.

You know, Kilua decides, we're going to split up.

We're going to tail them.

Yeah.

And we're going to run.

If they see us, we are going to run.

Yeah, do not let them engage with you.

And then we immediately get to cut to them being like, we know that we're being watched, but we can't really sense them, but we're being date.

Uvo's dead.

Maybe we think Uvo's dead.

Yeah, what's the jack?

Do you want to talk about the tension there between Machi and Nobunaga and their sort of difference of opinion on this?

Well, as far as I can understand,

I'm not sure that I get what you're talking about.

Okay, there's two things.

There's two sort of fulcrums here.

The first thing is Nobunaga really doesn't want Uvogin to be dead.

And Machi is like, I'm pretty sure that he is.

Yeah.

And then the other thing is Nobunaga's like, I cannot wait to get revenge on the chain user.

And Machi says, the boss said to bring him in.

And I think he wants to recruit the chain user.

And this causes so much tension between them that the sort of the

tension between them physically crushes a can of soda that is on the table between them.

It's a fake Heineken.

It's a fake Heineken.

It is fake Heineken.

It's what we saw Uvo rip drinking a lot in the last episode.

Yes, and we'll get into, I think,

we'll get into Nobunaga and Uvo in the next episode, but it is really interesting.

I didn't pick up exactly what they were putting down.

in this moment until I watched the next episode.

Uvo's, oh, sorry, Uvo, Nobunaga's desperate sort of, I don't think he's dead, and this would would suck if we had to recruit the chain user.

Yeah.

Because this kind of, this blossoms into a really great, really sort of touching moment in 50.

They are also bickering about

Machi's hunches.

Machi, we alluded to this a little earlier in the episode.

Machi is sort of like, I don't think we're being pursued by the

chain user, but I think we are being pursued by someone who has a connection to the chain user.

And it's so interesting when a character makes exactly the right guess and doesn't have quite the language, doesn't have quite the pieces.

It reminds me of,

well, I guess it reminds me of two.

Like, the first thing that reminds me of is like, like, sort of a Twin Peaks sort of thing, just like a going off of hunches and stuff.

And like, sort of having, like, as a writer, you have the power to make your characters know things for no reason.

And then when you have them say out loud, I know this for no reason, and then play it off as something weird and mystical.

Yeah.

The other thing is

Disco Elysium.

It's a lot of Disco Elysium works that way of like

your main character sort of like

getting

senses of the world for no reason.

Is it supernatural?

Is it just a lucky guess?

Is it that he has amnesia and he just already knew and he's just remembering something that he doesn't know that he knew?

Yeah.

The other thing that, you know, I was trying to figure out what nen power Machi is using here.

And as much as I don't want to just be like, I suppose what I'm thinking is, how is she doing this?

You know, what is because we know her main nen power.

But her main nen power is threads.

And that is what I kind of came back to: is that, like, whether she is consciously doing it or not, Machi is connected to all the people around her.

And this kind of, this kind of almost invisible, you know, thin connection with all the people around her generates these hunches.

This is a very meta nen power.

It's demon world theory.

This is very

big

theory.

But

it's,

well, it's interesting.

We learned later that

sort of a linchpin of the back of this episode is the nen power of another phantom troop member Pakanoda Pakaneda Pakanoda

yeah

who can sort of verify whether something is true by reading the memories of

people she touches we could we we haven't had this power confirmed but that seems to be the case yeah that's that's Kilua's sort of guess on how it works My suspicion is that it is something like that.

What's interesting is that the Phantom Troop use this as a resource.

You know,

they ask multiple times Pakinoda to like check things and verify them.

And Machi, with a sort of

like a slight tone of resentment in her voice at one point, says, if Pakanoda says it, it must be true.

You know, like, oh, that information must be right.

And you can tell that she believes that that's the case, but there's a kind of like,

well, we have the, you know, what good are my hunches in this world where we have this this other member of the phantom troop who can sort of verify things like this?

And so I wonder if it is just just another little

wire in the Phantom Troop of tension.

You know, we have one woman who is operating on these hunches that even she can't really explain and doesn't dovetail perfectly with her nen powers.

And at the same time, the troop, including the hunch woman, is relying heavily on, you know, the

direct magical nen powers of this memory reader.

So I think, you know,

it plays into the tension at this table, right?

When Machi says, I kind of have a hunch about this.

And

Nobunaga says, oh, you always have hunches, but they sort of are also right a lot of the time.

Yeah.

Really interesting.

Yeah, not only do they break the fake Heineken, but Goan and Killyua and Leorio all feel the kind of malevolent burst of Nen.

Yeah.

And it's great.

This is some real anime shit.

Is Nen users in separate buildings, you know, not without really knowing that the others are there, all feeling the consequences of each other's emotions.

It's, you know, it's great.

And there's a, there's a, a danger there, too, because if they're not careful, then they're going to give themselves up by like

jumping, you know?

Yeah.

Because they have to strike a balance between sort of suppressing their nen, but not using Zetsu, which they explained to Leorio is like, if we they'd be able to feel our absence if we if we use Zetsu, they'd be able to tell someone with Nen just turned off their Nen.

Yes, they do this.

This is a plot point in one of the Jason Bourne movies with like phones that have been turned off.

Yes.

What does being turned off mean in Jason Bourne movies?

The telephones.

They're looking for mobile phones.

Oh, so if they break their phones that haven't.

Yeah.

The spies are like, ah, there's a vacuum there in absence.

Time for a quick

aside with the chain user, Karapika.

Um, this I fucking

rule on a brief aside as Krollo learns about Miss Neon and that the chain user is one of her bodyguards.

Oh my god, yeah.

Um,

this is important, I think.

Krollo, with a sort of Krollo has had, I keep saying this, about six lines of dialogue so far, and they've all been bangers.

Uh, so when Krollo says uh, Miss Neon is how Nostra gets all his success, huh?

And Shalnark's sort of like, yep, yep, boss.

Yeah, that's right, boss.

Yeah, that's right.

It's consequential.

Okay.

Yeah.

There is one more thing before we cut away to Shadownark and Krolo is that this is the first appearance of the coin.

They do a heads or tails

on whether if they find whoever's tailing them, if they're going to kill them or bring them to the boss.

and we don't know whether webs is heads or tails but we do get a glimpse of the web

they have a custom they reveal it later they reveal it next in the next episode they flip a coin again and they show one or the other and then say oh it's heads which reveals which one it was

Do you think that they made a lot of these?

Do you think that they've all got to have a couple of these?

I think it's one per member.

Yeah, I think it's one per.

So do you think that the sort of like the

workshop that they went to gave them like a batch order and they got 20 in case people would lose them?

Or do you think that they paid extra for I just I just need 13?

I think if I'm going to if I if I can

if I can if I can

sort of psychoanalyze these phantom troop a little bit, they've got some members that are kind of messes, and I think that they need ready available extras on hand.

Yeah, so they got like Krola got 50 or something.

Yeah.

Shalna probably got 50.

I mean, how many times do you think Shizuku has lost her coin?

Oh, we already know that she can't remember anything.

So I love her.

That was her creepy.

I don't think we've learned that yet.

It's creepy.

We haven't learned that yet.

No, we haven't.

Really creepy.

Okay.

Here's the news.

Melody and Basho, wearing simple disguises, are going to take Neon back home because the auction has been cancelled.

Except, as soon as Neon leaves, it hasn't actually been cancelled.

Well, the Mafia community needs to demonstrate that they will not allow anyone to intimidate them.

They won't negotiate with Terrorists.

So funny.

We want to do the auction, guys.

Guys, we wanted to do the auction.

They killed a thousand of us, but we got...

What, Mafia?

Who is still alive?

Can I?

Before we...

So the next thing that gets revealed, can I do this reveal?

Because I have a button to press for it.

Oh, please.

Wait, no, wait.

Okay, before you hit it, the Dons,

I said Don like I say gone because I read

the Dons are going to try and get the goods back because they have learned that all of the Shadow Beasts are dead.

And in response to this, they have decided to, they're like, well, look, our little experiment of get me 10 freaks

did not work.

And instead,

with the shadow beast destroyed, the 10 Dons are hiring professionals to handle the troop.

I literally, when this happened, I went, no!

Like, I lost my shit.

Yeah, it was great.

It's so good because we have

Silva Zoldix music.

And it's the fucking

image that they pair this with.

I'm just going to share it.

The image of Silva that they have.

It just sort of like sort of fades in from this like blurry image to a close-up of his eyes, looking like an absolute, the absolute murderer that he is.

They use the shot a few times with other characters, too, which is great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This hyper close-up on the eyes.

Yeah.

It's wonderful because,

god damn it, Tagashi is doing it again because now I'm like, ah, my guys, Silva and Zeno Zoldic.

Zeno?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The two worst men in the show.

Bro,

that's the guy that collects Ben's knives, right?

He collects Ben's knives.

He has one kill a day.

He is the abusive father of our protagonist.

He has a pet dog that he loves.

He has a pet dog.

Was it the way that Tagashi will make anybody a protagonist, given the

slightest inkling?

The promise of Silver Zeldic and Silver and Zeno, Zeldic showing up, I'm like, yeah, okay,

get these guys involved.

I think

I can't stand Ilumi.

I think Ilumi is a real piece of shit.

Yeah.

And the show would have to do a lot of work to make me feel this way about Ilumi.

And I can't stand Hiseka.

And I think Hiseka's a real piece of shit.

When we get POV stuff from Hiseka, it is exclusively malevolent.

I don't think we'll have protagonist Hiseker.

Or if we do...

We had a bit of protagonist Hisaka versus Castro and it ruled.

Yeah.

But I just want to say, do you think that Silva Zoldic has like an Instagram where he posts pictures of his dog and his Ben's knives?

Yes.

Well, they have a public

figure.

It's not an Instagram.

Silva Zoldic is a public figure.

That's what I'm saying.

He's like one of the most, he's like,

he's like one of all of the mass murderers in American politics, they all have Instagram accounts.

That's what I'm saying.

So why not the mass murderer at the

end that in charge of the murder?

He's posting mail lists like Obama.

Yes.

He's posting year-end reading lists.

It really is like, what if George Clooney was a murderer?

Do you think

Silver Zaldic is also listening to Boy Genius?

No, no, Silver Zaldic is listening to.

Silver is such a wild.

And Julians are such a beautiful voice.

I'm not wrong, right?

Boy Genius was on one of Obama's lists, I'm pretty sure.

Yes, absolutely it was.

Yes.

And then it disappeared the next year after Lucy Dacas quote tweeted it saying something like, take your music off our list, you war criminal.

Great, good for you.

Which is, you know,

what was I going to say?

Silver is such a weird character.

The most we've seen of Silver is that deeply uncomfortable, really funny conversation he had with Killiua just before Killiua left, which was like about the power of friendship.

The power of friendship, the dad and son.

You're like, hey,

I feel like we have a lot of fun.

Never betray your friends.

It was really funny.

And of course, it's not just...

The cool thing happening here isn't just that the Zaldic assassins are arriving, which should have been the Mafia's first decision.

You know, how did they know that the Phantom Troop were coming?

You know?

Everybody knows the Phantom Troop is real.

So if you're the Mafia, you just...

If they operate...

Listen, not to...

I'm just saying, if you operate it under the assumption the Phantom Troop are going to show up to everything, you're not going to be able to make a lot of money.

You know what I mean?

That's true.

And they are mortal.

There are only 13 of them.

You just need to, you know.

Also, rare that they're all together.

Established in the first episode they show up that it's been like three years since they've grouped up.

Their boss doesn't do anything.

He just sits and reads his book.

You know, it's easy.

Just sit there and look pretty, sweetheart.

That's all good.

The punchline to this scene is what Nostrada asks Karapika to do, which is join the Zaldic Assassin team.

Great.

Yeah, fucking incredible.

I love it.

You know, I have a good time

doing light analysis of the show, the way the show is working.

Sometimes it's fun to just stand up in the stands and cheer when they do everything.

Yeah.

Hey, sometimes it's just an ace serve.

Yeah, exactly.

It's exciting to me when the character we love, who is now the most powerful man on the planet, has to team up with the two

patriarchs of the Assassin family.

Yeah,

one of the three characters that they've shown that is like definitely despicable.

Yeah.

But they've shown being despicable.

It's also, you know, weaving further the whole, there is a massive cost to revenge.

You know, not just in the sense that you're going to need to join forces with your enemies to exact the revenge, but a sort of like conflation of the two

ways of killing, right?

You know, by saying

we are going to

entwine Karapika with the violence of the Zoldic family.

Yeah.

You know, or by implying maybe there's only one way of killing.

Yeah, Togashi is drawing, you know,

a line between the revenge, the sort of the pure revenge of Karapika and the assassins, and then is going to, you know, inevitably problematize that.

And then, you know, as if he has suddenly remembered that he needs to spend 20 minutes in the previous episode talking about art appraisal, and that's gonna be a lot of illustration.

We cut away from this.

We're done with this scene.

Yeah.

Carlo puts on a disguise.

Yeah, he does.

He dresses up in a little suit.

And his face is hidden in the shot.

His face is hidden in the shot.

Now, what's Carlo's face?

He has creepy eyes.

Does he have like a tattoo on his forehead or something?

Yeah, he has a cool cross on his forehead.

Right, side-up cross?

It's kind of like just it's not it's it's symmetrical like both ways.

Oh, it's a plus.

Yeah, it's a plus.

Or, hey, rotate that.

It's a cross.

Yeah.

So either he's going to be, you know, they're very.

They're very coy about Crollo's full look here.

You know, we sort of see him putting on his shirt.

They've honestly, they've been coy about Crollo's look.

Like, they've only shown him a couple times.

Very often we see Krolo either in.

He's shot so well, and this is

to some extent, this is Tagashi sort of preempting shot choices with his manga work.

But to Austin's point in the last episode, this is a result of the, you know, the anime team's work here.

We either see Krolo in extreme close-up, you know,

or in distant shots or wide shots, group shots, you know, where Krolo is, you know, almost a silhouette.

But But he's always surrounded by the rest of the troop, too.

Right.

In those group shots.

This can't be right because it would be crazy if this was the case.

Is this the first time we've seen him move?

I mean, we've seen him like move his head and

turn pages.

We've seen him.

He stood up to address the group, remember?

Oh, he does.

Has he moved to the bottom?

Yeah, that was like the big dramatic reveal when he stepped into the light.

I think what the show does and what Tagashi as an artist does, too, I'm just conflating it with the manga.

I don't know.

I haven't checked to see how one-to-one these shots of Krolo are, but

they do, it does such a good job of lending to the air of

final boss atmosphere, to put it like as simply as I can.

But he's so passive.

Krolo is so passive.

But doesn't that?

I don't know.

Personally, that adds to it for me, right?

Where it's just like...

Adds to what?

Adds to the air of like um

like i guess threatening air to it or like the the fact like we talk about which characters are powerful right and it's like this is the guy who

um

uvo for example answers to uh and he doesn't he barely spends any energy moving or talking

um and it's just like well why do they

it all of this him the

limiting how much you see him throughout the run of an episode as along alongside the um what i just said and the the the composition of the shots in which we do see him i'll go towards the the sort of like um

i guess in form of myth building for like the viewer of like why the leader of the phantom troop is capable of um

yeah what is he the roller coaster going up you know and then

absolutely and i think on some level that's informed by the fact that everybody else on this call knows what Krollo does.

I mean, maybe.

I don't know.

Maybe he is going to remain

passive.

You know, Krollo, we know Krowlo's verbs, and they are deploy the Phantom Troop.

You know, he doesn't need to move because he has 12, 11, rip.

He has, you know, he has.

And they don't fear him either.

You know, it really doesn't seem like they are afraid of Krollo.

No, they're in love with him.

Yeah, they have this immense respect.

What is it that this guy can do?

And Tagashi's favorite thing to do is introduce a bunch of weirdos and then give them all a special power and then show you all their special power.

And the fact that, you know, we don't have any of that with Krillo is great.

I know that

the Phantom Troop are a big player in the manga

post anime.

And so I am so curious to see, like,

what is the runway that Togashi is building for the Phantom Troop

outside of as an object of Karapaka's revenge?

I don't know.

We're going to have

some

like the

to go with your runway metaphor.

Things are about to take off, you know?

Like,

the plane is taxiing during these episodes.

I'm so excited.

I mean, it is very Hunter-Hunter that one of the symptoms of it taxiing is our protagonist kills one member of the Phantom Troop with no effort at all.

We had a connecting flight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just a little, a brief connecting flight.

The chain bastard.

Okay, so Carlo has left, presumably wearing a mask or hiding his face with nan power or something.

My expectation is to kidnap this neon or something.

You know, or if he can.

Or

something.

I don't know.

You know.

I don't.

Okay.

Gone and Killio begin to try and track the

two members of the Phantom Troop.

I'm just thinking about the next couple episodes.

Sorry.

Just give me a sec.

Okay.

I mean, Krollo is out and about.

You know?

Yeah.

He's out and about.

He's on business.

Be very funny if we never see what he did and he just comes back and was all heaven up screen.

Sir.

Coming back with Neon's head just in a jar.

I don't think he wants to kill Neon.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Maybe it's not business he's out on.

Maybe it's not.

I'm just saying shit, you know?

Yeah.

Maybe he's out just enjoying the sights.

Maybe he wants to buy something from the Southern Beast catalogue.

You know, he wants to go buy.

He wants all of it.

Yes, he does want to.

Ionically.

Yeah.

We're going to steal it all.

That was my Crowlo impression.

Kellua.

Has another one of these little pangs of jealousy of Ghon

as as Goan reveals that he kind of knows how to track.

There's a real sort of moment of like Killiwa being like, Do you know how to do this?

I want to teach you.

And Goan sort of going, Well, I know how to do it already.

And Kiliwa going, you know, he's jealous not in the sense of, I wish I could do that.

He's jealous that his moment has been taken away from him.

There's a little ambiguity because when Goan reveals

that he learned how to track by tracking Hisuka and never getting caught during the hunter exam,

Kiliwa punches him in the head.

And I couldn't figure out, did he punch him out of

jealousy, out of either not being the one to get to teach him or being sort of shown up in this to doing something that is very difficult?

Or did he punch him out of concern, which will come up later, of like, stop putting yourself in harm's way.

That's way too dangerous.

You shouldn't have done that.

I don't think Killua knows how to tell the difference between those feelings.

Maybe.

Yeah.

I think Killua is...

Killua is feeling feelings that he has not necessarily felt before.

This is kind of Killua's whole deal around Gone.

When Gone asked why he did it, I think that Killua says, like, no reason or...

Yeah.

I can't remember what he says.

It was really weird.

Killiwa tries to...

Killua is trying to weigh up whether this is a trap or whether they are leading them back to their hideout.

And he can't quite do it.

And it is this like acknowledgement that he is, you know, um right on the edge of solving a riddle that he can't solve that really grinds his gears for the rest of this episode and the next one.

Yeah.

There's some great music here during the

during the following scenes and then during what happens right after.

I'll talk about the first one now.

There's a variation of Killua's theme, which is the silver-haired boy, uh, called the silver-haired apprehension.

Whoa, it hasn't

played in a while.

The part that I snipped here is this part: we hear this a lot, actually, because Killua's apprehensive a lot, yeah, and then especially in this run, yeah.

And it it eventually devolves into sort of like chaotic horror music strings, like the where you pluck the

like the you know horror music strings, yeah

where you pluck the violin um

i heard that uh violinists hate that because they've got uh

they hate when uh uh a

a piece a composition has them has to has them plucking the strings like in a horror music thing because uh they get resin all over their hands oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah absolutely so i hear they are resentful of compositions and composers who make them pluck their strings You got to put the bow down or, you know, hold the bow in a weird way.

I didn't realize that was Killua's theme.

That's such a weird.

I mean, it makes exactly, you know, it's exactly the right choice for Killua, but it's such a sinister, sort of shapeless little thing.

His main theme is

much,

it's less

foreboding and it's more mournful.

But the silver-haired apprehension is very foreboding.

They actually play this.

I've got it right here on

Hunter Hunter 2011 OST list,

the website that I've been using.

They played for like three straight minutes during this following scene.

They played from 13 and a half minutes to 16 and a half minutes.

Really working through this feeling, the music supervisors.

Yeah.

Because as they look down at Nobunaga and Machi standing on a big square to make themselves look super obvious, like a Dark Cells mini-boss,

Finx checks in and says, Do you want a hint as to

the identity of these people?

Revealing that he is directly behind them.

There's a great moment when Nobunaga turns and looks up at the window.

It's amazing.

The distortion on the fisheye on everybody's eyes.

It's so cool.

It's an effect that we haven't seen in the show before.

Yeah, it's like a localized fisheye as their eyes sort of swell and then

they both dart away from the windows, and there's this huge exploding sound coming from their leaps to try to get away, only to realize that they're like they're both penned in.

And then Kiloa does this wild thing where he's just like bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing.

He bounces like 80 times in about five seconds off of the walls before getting grabbed by Finks.

This is, I have to put Virginia in the

kitty cat box so that that we can go on the train

you know

that's really good i think this scene is notable right because like when

have we

there it we very rarely see killua get like bested like this right am i misremembering something nope because other than ilumi um

intimidating him is you know hovering over these episodes like a specter very much um he hasn't appeared yet in these in these episodes but he uh

this idea of Killiwa being tested by his absent brother is just sitting here.

It's

it makes the Phantom Troop it makes Finks scary because to me he's just the dork with the the snake hat because I haven't seen him do anything else.

Oh, you mean the racing driver?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then here he's able to like

stop Killua and like

Killua has to like power out so much from the grip that he has on his ankles that the skin is like torn up.

Yeah.

Um,

and it, I don't know, it

also is able to just get the drop on Kiloa.

Yeah, yeah, Nobunaga as well, right?

Because Nobunaga is just in behind him when he looks back after that.

Yeah, he gets away from Finx's grip, and then Kilo briefly,

wait, but we're on the fourth floor, yeah, yeah,

um,

creepy.

And what is the and what

who wants to tell me the explanation for why Finks was able to give them this hint?

Because I think it's really funny.

Uh, it's exactly the same thing that happened on

Zevil Island.

Uh, one person was tailing another person

and did not realize that they were also being tailed.

The Phantom Troop had been following Gon and Killiua this whole time.

Yeah.

And not only that, uh, Nobunaga at least, but probably Nobunaga and Machi were not told that this is one thing.

So Nobunaga was like, I was wondering why all of a sudden the city was full of

Zetsu masters.

As the Phantom Troop is tracking each other around.

And this is, you know,

the.

I'm slowly building up a picture of what it is like to work for the Phantom Troop.

And it is weird.

Yeah.

They are

collaborators who have an immense respect for each other, know that they could each kill, or believe that they could each kill the other, but are forbidden from doing so by a boss they idolize.

Not aggression pact.

They're libertarians.

Yeah, it's an unaggression pact that they got going on.

But at the same time, they are all villains.

Right.

So they are all constantly lying to each other,

but in service of a common goal.

You know,

they do seem to be pretty genuinely unified in like, oh, well, we want to do X and we just have different ideas about how we want to do it.

There was no hard feelings about being lied to.

It was like, oh, yeah, that's a great way.

Because, you know, if I knew, then I would have known and I would have acted differently.

So

this worked out best.

I just can't have anything about them arguing and then Phaeton.

Or no, it's not Phaeton who stops the fight.

I think it's Machi later on because Phaeton's part of the fight.

Right.

And Nobunaga and him have a conflict.

I'm just picturing one of them whining, like that one Reddit post being like, you're breaking the NAP.

You're breaking the NAP.

And their villain is their villain.

Their boss is the devil.

You know,

it's odd.

It's like a it is like a libertarian gang of roommates and their boss, the devil.

Yeah.

Killua's skirmish with Finx is really fun.

When after the bouncing and Finx catches him by the legs, and then Kilua like faints with some rocks, almost catches Finx off guard to try to kick him, but it doesn't work.

And then Kilua does kind of like a tornado thing to escape.

And he probably could have gotten out the window at that moment, but instead

either Nobunaga or Machi is right behind him.

Yeah, Nobunaga, yeah.

But just this kind of fun little scuffle.

And he does a bit better

than, you know, he's not, Finx isn't sweating or anything, but he's doing a little bit better than getting the floor wiped with him.

Like, he kind of acts like what happened later on when he's

when they're being guarded by Nobunaga.

Yeah, he hates this, though.

You know, he hates it.

It's especially tough because he put himself in, for Kilua, this position of vulnerability by saying, we are weaker than these people and we shouldn't engage with them.

And then, you know, it's, it's, it's, um, he's sort of getting hit by the sword both ways, right?

Where it's like, first, he has to admit his weakness to gone

and be realistic, and then he has to suffer for it as their plan goes awry.

And, you know, yeah,

he gets hurt.

And they immediately, they immediately start interrogating them.

They say, do you know the chain user?

And it's at this point that I realized that they don't.

I know.

Isn't that great?

It's so, it's so well done.

And, you know, all the little bits of them here and there talking about Karapika, not being able to get in touch with Karapika, trying to meet up with Karapika.

And then it's like, wow, good thing they didn't fucking meet up with Karapika.

Yeah.

It's almost like they wrote it to be like this.

I know.

But it's such.

It's not necessarily capital C clever plotting.

You know, I don't think it's doing anything particularly difficult.

No, it's one of those little pieces of

dramatic action.

There's little pieces of plotting that

doesn't seem obvious until it is written, until those pieces slot into place.

Like a lot of.

And it must have felt great for Tagashi to be like, wait, shit.

Like I love Tagashi's writing.

And when stuff like this pops up, it is like clever and elegant in that it feels inevitable when it happens.

You know, it's so clean.

It happens.

It's clean.

It's like, oh, yeah, they never did talk.

Yeah.

And then

you get to shine a spotlight on it and be like, now the whole thing is about this detail.

Yeah.

Which 50, as we're about to move into, is.

There's a little detail that I want to dig into.

Killer, when he is being interrogated, says, a bad lie will make things worse to himself.

And then starts answering their questions honestly.

And I wondered if people had thoughts about this kind of like

dispositioning from Kaliwa.

Good instinct, because they have someone there that can read his memories.

I think it kind of ties into some stuff that we see later.

When Ilami's shadow starts being cast on the episode,

I think this is just another extension of that.

the don't fight anyone you can't kill thing.

Yeah.

And I think that it's Kilua being like, well, I can't find my way out of this.

I need to just really being haunted by Illumi.

Yes, very much so.

They ask him why he was tailing them and he gives a really, really good answer, really sort of cleverly evasive answer, which is he just says, there's a huge bounty out on your heads and we wanted the money.

And it's true.

Yeah.

They say, who's your boss?

And he basically says, my boss is Mr.

Wing.

He doesn't give his name, but he says, you know, he was a uh enhancer um

uh

and he says he wants to be a pro hunter which is so lovely uh i can't you know this might be a little moment of truth in killiwa still you know feeling the the pebble in his boot of not having made it through the hunter exam or it could just be a very convenient lie from a child assassin who has

almost certainly been uh deliberately put himself in a situation like this before.

I am sure Killiua has been interrogated by, you know, people before.

Right.

People just as dangerous as the Phantom Troop.

I mean, we've seen it on screen, basically.

Sure.

I mean, with the Zelda family?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The thing is, you know,

one of the bits of luck is like, yeah, they have information.

The reason that they're in town also is because of their friend Karapika, who has a grudge against the Phantom Troop.

And they know that Karapika is looking for the Phantom Troop.

but they don't really have any details.

And it wouldn't be

like it wouldn't be a complete thing to tell them.

Like, if they did want to turn on Karapika, you know,

just like out of instinct or fear or whatever, they wouldn't really even have anything to say.

No.

So it is like, oh, yeah, the real

accident reason why they're here.

Yeah, the only, the really only reason why they're here is because they need eight and a half billion Jenny.

Yeah.

It's great.

He doesn't let slip that he is a member of the Zeldic family, which is smart.

And possibly also

Tagashi doing some

pre-plotting.

If we're moving into a Zeldic versus Phantom Troop arc,

the Phantom Troop not knowing that Killua is the son of the Zeldix might be, you know, I'm now watchful for whether Togashi is setting up some of these little neat plot maneuvers, like they don't know that Karapika is the chain bastard.

However, throughout the rest of this episode, I think this is lovely.

Nobunaga calls Karapika the cat-eyed boy, which we had never heard.

This is, by the way, we just sort of,

we've just sort of bridged the gap between these two episodes, 49 to 50.

49, I think, ends in the car ride.

Oh, there's a great line before the car ride, though.

Oh, yes, I have it right here in the Discord.

I just posted it because it mirrors the

lot of eyes in this episode.

The Silva eyes, this is like the exact same framing that Silva's eyes are framed in.

Nobunaga says, I have a few questions for you, and you know, interrogates him and then says, My last question is: Do you want to die now or later?

Which is just some good villain shit.

As the episodes continue, we learn that

Nobunaga doesn't actually necessarily want these people to die.

No, he's just scary, but it's good posturing.

Yes,

scary posturing.

Well, oh, right.

So

they're here.

They get in the car.

They just step into the...

Pakanoto's there, ask him a few questions,

and then they

just get into the Phantom Troop hideout when the episode ends and the next episode starts.

Yes, and, you know, we get a great reaction shot of Gon and Kilua from Gon and Kilua as, you know, Pakanoto says, welcome to our hideout.

And the guitar credits, you know, start to play as we get the wide shot of the spiders

lounging and Hisoka is there.

We don't get a reaction to Hisoka being there from the crew yet.

It's very funny when we do.

But just

what a great joke.

What a cut through a lot of tension from the last episode in this episode.

Oh my God.

It's like at the very beginning of episode 50.

Before we move on, I want a quick Hunterpedia update.

Today's Hunterpedia update is Machi, the transmuter.

Gone pulls Kiliwa up on threads like a little marionette.

However, what I'm sure you're all here for is the Tadpole update.

The Tadpole now has two little legs.

Oh,

great.

That

little fella's growing up.

Important thing that we did not talk about from this episode.

Yeah.

Mashi's new outfit.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, talked about that.

I didn't notice.

I heard Wolfcut.

Oh, yeah.

She.

Oh, she's in a track suit.

I forgot.

She's a wolf.

What is a wolf cut?

A wolf cut is

sort of stylish mullety thing uh it's what i say to my hairdresser when i go in to get my hair cut it's the sort of shape

from uh yeah i go i hold up a picture of an anime character uh at the salon and i go please do this to me um

yeah no she looks like uh she looks like uh good like 25 of the lesbians i know and uh i love that about her they're like

so i didn't read this as a i i see it it now as a as a track suit but for some reason looking at this i was like oh yeah she's wearing like a collared shirt and a vest no i agree i that's how i read it at first too and then it wasn't until i saw the stripes on the the fucking fake adidas stripes on the side that i was like oh her original haircut originally she was wearing like a robe like a sort of like almost like a giant

ninja uniform it sort of looks like the pajamas version of a gi

um

damn and

It's the athleisure version.

Sure, it's an athleisure gi.

And then

for anybody out there watching Yu Yu Haka Show has sort of like a Botan style ponytail

from Yu Yu Haka Show.

I know enough about Yu Yu Haka Show for that to scan.

Botan's the best, best character in Yu Yu Haka Show besides

that's hard, actually.

Maybe they're all equally good.

We got to watch some of that.

That's going to be.

Yeah, we will.

Yeah,

we're going to watch.

We got to do two different bonuses because we're absolutely going to do one where we just watch the first three or four episodes because it's the best opening to an anime, I think.

It's got such a good start.

And then probably somewhere in the middle.

Some dark tournament stuff, maybe.

Okay.

Does Huyu Hakasha have a good ending?

No.

Okay.

Well, moving on.

It's fine.

It's fine.

It has a couple endings, kind kind of, you know?

Season three,

I think Tagashi wanted where the anime ends in season three.

I think that really was supposed to be the last season.

And then there's

a sort of controversial final season that

is definitely the weakest.

Some people are like, it's still good.

And then some people don't really like it.

But it's just not a very strong ending.

He was trying to end it.

And I think they sort of pressured him into keeping going when he didn't want to.

So So that's why I'm sort of a little long in the tooth.

Yeah.

Episode 50 begins, and Goan, Hisuka, and Kilua all notice each other.

They all respond differently.

Hisuka, for the first time, experiences a kind of

sort of shock and embarrassment, where there's this brief moment where he's like, holy shit, I hope these arsholes don't give the game away.

It's so

straight up a sweat drop from Hisuka.

Goan just raises his hand and goes, Hey!

Yeah, Goan.

Just before he raises his hand, Killua says internally, We, you know, we're gonna keep this secret for now, and is interrupted immediately by

Goan saying, It's a hi, Hisaka.

Imagine this from Hiseka's perspective.

You are disguising yourself as a member of the Phantom Troop who you've infiltrated for three years because you want to kill their leader in a sex way.

One of their members

is killed, the strongest member is killed.

You don't know how or why.

The entire Phantom troop starts freaking out and hunting for them.

The boss leaves.

Then, two members arrive, along with Gon and Kiliwa.

Gone immediately says, Hi, Isaka.

I should say, I think that Hiseka knows exactly why Uwogin died.

Do you think?

Oh, right.

Yes, because of

the chat with with Karapika.

Yes.

That puts Hisako in a really interesting position in the Phantom Troop.

Right.

So Finx immediately is like, do you, or maybe it's Nobunaga's like, do you know someone here?

And Kilua answers for Gohan being like, no, no.

And then goes, oh, wait, yeah, we do.

Her.

And it's Shizuku who Goan arm wrestled like a week ago.

And Shizuku doesn't remember this at all.

This is a tiny detail, and it is so scary.

Shizuku has.

The scary bit is not only that Shizuku has no memory of it,

but that the other members of the Phantom Troop on sort of realizing that they're not going to get through to her.

Because they do remember.

Phaeton and Franklin remember.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They just sort of give over to her

recollection of events.

They just sort of like, well, you know.

Phaeton says,

like,

once she's decided to forget something, there's never bringing it back.

And then

that's when Franklin goes like, Oh, yeah, I guess you're right.

And then Shizuku's like, Yeah, I am right.

Like, she looks like she laughs like

a girl boss.

Not only do you have to agree with the with the reality that I've invented, if you don't, I'm gonna be mad about it.

She says, I'm decided to back

on you, yeah, she said decided to forget, which is such a cool, um,

you know, uh,

sort of snapping together of the stuff with Blinky and of making things disappear and nobody knows where they go.

You know, if she is really in control of what she remembers and forgets, why is she chosen to forget losing an arm wrestling match against Gun?

You know, it's great.

But the arm wrestling sort of conversation

begins as,

or rather continues as Nobunaga starts arm wrestling Gun.

Initially, probably with pretense of like I want to see how strong you are yeah he seems impressed at the beginning he's like you beat her in an arm wrestling fight and then it cuts to like clearly gone has now lost 30 of these in a row his hands bleeding as yeah and Nobunaga's like working himself up into a sort of fervor of grief This is torture again, right?

It's people torturing Gone.

Yeah, 100%.

And it didn't seem like that's where it was going, which is why it's so interesting.

It sort of makes me feel like Nobunaga doesn't have a good handle on his emotions.

It was a real

world.

Some of the Phantom Troop do feel like they have a good handle on their emotions.

Who?

Yeah, we.

Yeah, Machi.

That's a great, great example.

Machi, Franklin,

Suzuku, because she doesn't have any.

Right.

Krowlo.

Sure.

You know, weirdly, weirdly, Hisoka.

They're not good emotions, but we've seen in the past Hsoka kind of managing his emotions.

Right.

Like when he went into the death trance for an entire night and then hunted down and killed an old woman.

Right.

Yeah.

It's even more true if you don't count horny as an emotion.

Right.

I don't think emotional.

Which, of course, it is.

It is.

It is.

Yeah.

Listen, I'm a therapist.

It's an emotion.

You can speak with confidence here.

That is the funniest way you've invoked that.

If anyone knows that Horny is an emotion better than a therapist.

I feel like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, Dre.

I feel like the secret trick is it's like that meme with the astronauts that it's like, it's all emotions, always has been.

Uh-huh.

See, secretly, they're all emotions.

This sort of arm wrestling torture sort of blossoms out into some great character writing with Nobunaga as we see for the first time the depth with which he is grieving the loss of Uvergin, he is convinced that Uvergin couldn't have been beaten by this chain user unless he was caught in some kind of a trap.

You know, that there was like a sort of a dirty trick being played.

And what is interesting is that Uvo sort of was caught in a trap, just not the kind that Nobunaga is imagining, and perhaps not the kind that Nobunaga is capable of imagining.

He says Uvo never would have lost a fair fight, and it kind of wasn't a fair fight.

I mean, it was, it was, the rules of reality were being followed but not it wasn't like a an equal test of strength the one person

had the special i can kill spider's power well it's yes it is

the trap is the nen contract you know the trap is not uh we surrounded him and shot him with a bunch of machine guns you know it's not um

uh the guy getting killed in the godfather at the at the uh toll booth or whatever you know it's it's not like they just jumped him or whatever.

They stood there together in the desert and said, let's fight now.

The trap that they were caught in was specifically the trap of

Karapika

literalizing his desire for revenge into a magic power.

Yeah.

And

the spiders being unable

to

predict that someone would have such a grudge against them that they would shape their Nen

specifically around them.

They all know about Nen contracts.

Do they?

I'm going to say that, I mean, I don't know one way or the other, but like, I think they all do.

I think that they must all know.

I don't think any one of them is new enough to Nen that they wouldn't have heard of Nen contracts, something that Karapika learned in his first week.

Yeah, that's true.

But Karapika is a genius.

We get a little more detail about Nobunaga and Uvo later in this episode, but I think it's probably worth talking about it now.

They're lovers, right?

It feels like it, right?

Like, it.

Sure.

I don't know.

That was always my read: was like,

especially when we get to the

Uvo.

There's a lot of unprocessed,

you know,

pseudo-platonic attraction in this show.

And

I wouldn't be surprised if, in the same way that

Nobunaga sort of projects his image of Uvogin onto Goan,

that the show sort of projects

like Kilua onto Nobunaga in some ways.

Obviously, not in other words.

Oh, that's really interesting.

And so, in the, you know, there's a lot of like going to kill our boyfriends

vibe surrounding Hunter-Hunter.

But I've always,

what's that?

Always are.

Yeah.

I've always, I, I've always read their

relationship as more like, um,

like, more one-sided.

And

that's so interesting.

And I, and that's why I see, that's how I see the Nobunaga thing also.

Sort of mirroring this like, I can't, can't, I can't exactly figure out my shit about this, but for some reason,

I'm uh totally irrational about my friend, my normal friend, Uvo Gien.

Yeah, um, yeah,

it's it's it's you know, we learned later that, yeah, like you said, uh,

Uvo would always sort of fight better when he had someone to fight for.

And the oh my god, I'm gonna sneeze midway through a sentence here.

Um,

the example that they give is

Nobunaga.

You know, we see them fighting back to back.

Yeah.

And, you know, whether or not they are like capital L lovers, these are two people who sort of depend on and are powered by each other.

We get a little bit of timeline here.

Nobunaga says that they knew each other from before the troop formed,

which I think implies that they're founding members of the troop.

Yeah, sure.

Yep.

Also culpable in the

culture slaughter.

Yes.

Yes.

Which is, you know, we've sort of known,

but there's a confirmation there.

At this point, Kilua puts together that they are talking about Karapika.

This is such a good moment.

Right.

Shallnock reveals, like, these kids have nothing to do with it.

Palkudon has already cleared them.

And we know that.

This is someone who's like got it out for the spiders who works for the uh

what's the family called?

The um the Nostrad.

The Nostrod family, and that's where the lights go on for Kiliwa.

And it's such a good, uh, uh, like, uh, double revelation.

First, that Killiwa knows, and secondly, that he has realized that Gon doesn't.

Uh, yeah, Gon has not figured this out.

It's great.

Um,

and Gon recognizes in this moment, in seeing, you know, Nobunaga sort of come apart, that the troop is capable of empathy.

And in that moment, you know, in sort of

making this acknowledgement, he expresses his aura.

You know, what do you call this?

His

wren?

Yeah, his wren, yeah.

He could keep sort of his power grows three sizes.

His power grows three sizes, and it also feels like a kind of

not like a concession, but like an expression of his power.

He is showing them his real power after they have shown him something about the.

Yeah, can I read the quote here?

Yeah, yeah.

He says,

I don't know him, the chain user, but even if I did, I would never give him up to you.

I thought you were just heartless monsters, but I see you can shed tears for your friends.

Why couldn't you spare a fraction of that grief for the people you've killed?

And this is where he sort of slams Nobunaga's hand down after having lost over and over again.

And it brings us into

an immediate escalation as Feitsan gets involved.

Well, this is where they sort of all agree to let them go.

And then,

oh, am I jumping?

You're just a little bit.

So, the

first thing that I'm going to do is.

Right, because Phaitan is like, you can't, don't, don't win in this.

You're being tortured.

Yeah, so the first thing that happens is,

I think that this is a kind of a terrifying moment for Gon, or sort of a moment where

the way the world works, or bits of the way the world works, are being revealed to him, maybe for the first time, which is that these monstrous individuals are capable of, you know, grief and empathy and,

you know, a kind of

internal, you know, calculus beyond just theft and murder and pillaging.

And I don't think God knows what to do about this.

No, right.

Well, this is the other side of the coin that I was talking about earlier, where Zephile says

that

he doesn't judge things on the same sort of moral compass that other people are judging things on.

He has his heart and his mind open to

being impressed by things and being curious about the world.

And

then the flip side of it, though, is that he also does do that.

He does go like, he's not moved by Nobunaga's passion.

He's infuriated by it

because it's hypocritical of him to cry for his friend and then also be a vicious, horrific mass murderer.

And Goan can't square, you know, Kilua might be able to say, well, look, that's just the way that the world is.

Unfortunately, unfortunately, the mass murderers also, you know, because he was raised by him, right?

Yeah, I was going to say it's something Killiwa knows all too well.

But Kilua is a great example of this because when Killua reveals that he and his family are assassins, Goan doesn't flinch

and is just interested and curious.

And I think part of it is Kilua saying, like, well, I don't really want to be an assassin anymore.

And also part of it is that

it's never really made real to him.

Yeah, it's not immediate.

But this is real.

He already knows someone whose life was torn apart by the spiders.

And they certainly don't seem to be changing their ways or anything in this conversation.

So it's sort of like, okay, my friend Karampinga, his whole, everyone he knows, was killed by the spiders.

One spider died, and they're now like, we're going to go kill more people because of this.

But so then, okay, I'm pretty sure I'm multiplying 500 by two and a half.

I'm pretty sure he might hate these guys.

I'm pretty sure that these guys suck.

Yeah.

It's

yes.

It's great.

Uh, but now Phaetan tries to torture him to get more information out of him.

Um, something to notable, we don't need to dwell on this, uh, the torture methods that Phaytan, who is, you know, we know is a legendary torturer, Phaitan doesn't come across well in these episodes.

Uh, he seems like a real nasty piece of work.

I mean, he's always seemed like a real nasty piece of work, but he he is um Takashi has decided that he is going to be the evil phantom troop member in this sequence, so he is.

I love both the voice actors for Phaeton.

Um, the uh

the sub is like the one that I am sort of the most, like, that's who I think of when I think of Phaeton.

But sometimes, especially when I'm taking notes, and I'll be like, let me just switch over to the dub for five minutes so that I can write while they're talking.

And the English dub for Phaeton is like...

Such a whispery little creep.

It's so bad.

And he's just like, he seems kind of bored, but he also seems kind of evil.

And he's also like very whispery.

It's very funny.

He's like, I should look.

He's going to peel back his fingers.

It's like, yeah, so the...

That's a good one, too.

You nailed that.

The torture that Phaetan, any sound, the torture that Feytan lays out is, you know, extremely straightforward physical violence.

He's going to break his fingers.

He's going to pull his nails out or something.

And it is very cold and upsetting that the...

Final destination of this Nen torture master is just, you know, immediate physical violence.

Yeah, well, we've learned that he's a torturer and that people, that people who get tortured by Fatekan are the least lucky people that the Phantom Troop kill.

And we don't know what his powers are, and we still don't know what his powers are.

Yeah, yeah, it's creepy.

I was expecting a sort of like

those horrible torture droids in Star Wars, you know, some sort of very

specific fictional,

you know, frightening methodology.

So to have Fatehan come out and be like, I'm just going to break all your fingers was spooky.

Was again just good character writing.

But Nobunaga gets him to stop.

There is no physical fighting between members of the troop.

Disputes are determined by a coin toss.

They decide to keep the guys around, especially because Nobunaga has decided that he wants to recruit Gon to the spiders.

Yeah.

And God's response to this is: no, absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

Although there was a great scene when they first agreed to let them go.

Go

sticks out his tongue and goes

at them.

It's so funny.

And then Franklin sort of explains Nobunaga's away,

you know,

watching them in captivity.

And this is where Franklin goes, yeah, I can totally see

why Nobunaga's on this weird kick.

They definitely do kind of seem like Uvo Gien.

One of the things that he says when he describes

the similarities between

Uvogin and Goan, we've sort of talked about this conversation already, but it's

he wears his emotions right on his sleeve, and when he's mad, he forgets about the consequences, and it's like

demonstrated.

Yeah.

And you have a note about this, right, Dre?

Yeah.

I mean, the other thing, too, is that when Nobunaga is getting sad about Uvogin,

I think think this is the right, yeah.

Well, I mean, we're talking about the last episode, but

you know, the other thing they're talking about is that even though Uvogin was so powerful and he seemingly like always preferred to work alone, that actually Uvogin was at his most powerful.

And I think the wording they use was when he had, when he was like fighting for someone else, yeah, yeah, this is the conversation where they show them sort of back-to-back.

Um, yeah, him and Obunaga.

I think Shizuku describes it as, uh, so he was at his strongest when someone was holding him back, yeah, something, yeah, yeah.

Um,

and we see Goan kind of basically like powering up in a similar way when he is like kind of fighting on behalf of the memories and like the thoughts of all these people that the Phantom Troop have killed.

Um, so just another way in which we are kind of seeing, like, okay, Goan and Evogien are very, very different people, but they're both enhancers.

And again, I mean, this is something that the show keeps doing.

You know, we are constantly seeing weird, uncomfortable parallels and, you know,

similarities and differences being drawn between Goan and Hisuka, or Kiliwa and the other Zeldic family members.

It is almost as though Togashi is presenting these two sort of character studies in Goan and Kiliwa, and then surrounding them with...

interesting reflections of those character studies.

And that's definitely one way to write a cast of characters, right?

You know, pick two two protagonists and then surround them by people that will reflect

various aspects of

those protagonists.

I think it's working really well here.

And it is at its most interesting for me when they are

uncomfortable, right?

When the parallels that are being drawn are between characters who do not initially seem like direct pairs.

For example, the 12-year-old boy Prodigy Gone and the Ronin villain of the Phantom Troop.

Oh, uh, no, the uh, the uh the evil giant evil giant of the Phantom Troop, Uber.

Um, I think that's great.

Taking characters that you're like, I don't think these guys are like at all, and saying,

Huh, that's what you think, buddy.

Yeah,

get a little buddy, Tagashi tapping the side of his head, and I mean, and they're right.

I think that I think they do a good job of showing

where those similarities come from.

And like, yes, and and differently and the differences, you know, I think the moments where Hisaka and Gon's relationship in the show is the most

generative in terms of interesting story stuff is where they are saying, these are the ways they differ tremendously.

And at the same time, these are the ways that they are grimly similar to each other.

Yeah, there's a little bit of like, of where you go, like,

someone's personality, and I think they do a lot of this with the Phantom Troop where, you know, Jack, when we first get introduced to the Phantom Troop and you're like, you know, all right, let's see the evil monsters.

And then it's like, oh, these guys are all just buddies.

They're evil buddies, but they're all just like kind of hanging out.

Where there's a little bit where they're going, like,

being evil isn't your personality.

Like, you have a personality, and then you also are evil, maybe.

Maybe.

But then they've got Hiseker, where being evil really is Hiseker's personality.

But it doesn't have to be.

Hiseker's personality is grooming

for all kinds of reasons, for all kinds of people.

And that is his evil personality, yes.

Oh, also, Magic Tricks.

Right, Magic Tricks, yeah.

Hey, people contain multitudes.

Grooming.

Yeah, and Hezekiah.

Magic tricks, too.

Yeah.

It is so, you know, you're in real trouble when Hiseker is the least weird person in the room.

That's the joy of Hiseka being in the Phantom Troop, is that, you know,

he's just surrounded by awful people.

I had to do a little check to see, you know, to do a little Phantom Troop audit in these wide shots.

There are 10 members visible.

The troop is down to 12 right now, Rip.

So, yep.

Confirmed, Oni Nobu and Krolo are missing.

Nobunaga is off guarding the boys, and Krolo is out on the town.

He's gone to a ramen joint.

Truly out on the town.

Yeah.

All dressed up.

He's picking me up.

He's...

Aww.

Yeah.

No, it would be a terrible.

He'd just read his book on the date.

He does.

Yeah, he's going to read his book on the date.

You know this.

I don't mind.

Yeah.

Have you seen how hot he looks reading that book?

Yeah.

The book is.

Nothing wrong with that.

Ain't nothing wrong with that, you know?

The book is what binds him to the demon world.

I think I've said this already.

Let's move on.

Okay, as they are being guarded by Nobunaga, Kilua has a breakdown.

Yeah, he's

stressed about.

This is so good.

This is the sort of nadir of Kilua's very bad day of saying, look, we shouldn't mess with these guys because they'll kill us.

And if they don't kill us, they'll capture us.

And if they capture us, we will be at their mercy.

And now he knows that this is the case.

And he sort of has this real low of like,

I have failed.

And not only have I failed, I am

vindicating what Ilumi said to me, right?

Right.

He's sort of replaying the Hiseko moment in his mind where when Goan gets grabbed by Phaeton, Kilo moves to help and then goes, well, I could have done anything anyway.

If I had moved...

If I had moved, then Hiseko would have cut my throat.

But then doesn't that mean that I would have just let Goan die?

And he can't handle this.

Yeah.

This is this is two things, right?

This is the long tale of Zelda trauma.

Yeah.

And it's also the other two things that it is: is

the

Illumi conversation, which we know because they show Illumi.

But the other side of that is it's the Silva conversation.

Because

by

giving into the Illumi thing, he is

not following the promise that he made to his dad.

And at the same time, it is, it is, um,

it is the sad state of affairs that the way that Killiua is able to think about those relationships closest to him is through a lens of violence, right?

Is how have I let this person down in a situation where they could have been harmed?

You know,

it's almost as though the toolbox that Killiua, the awful stew that Killua finds himself in, is always going to be one about, you know, his responsibility

around moments of violence.

Yeah.

I've got a button that I didn't play last time

that comes back up

around here.

So they play Family of Assassins again, which is great.

We never get sick of that.

We love that.

But last time, it was right after Silver-Haired Apprentice when

Goan is standing off against Pakunoda and Machi, and Kilo is standing off against Nobunaga and Finx.

And this time, when Kilo is like

maybe going to

intentionally step in the path of Nobunaga's sword, because he's basically daring himself to have the courage to protect Goan, and his only idea for how to do that is to like sacrifice himself to give Goan an opening.

He says that's what gives it meaning.

That's what gives meaning.

The fact that he is likely to die.

It's so sad.

It's very sad.

And they have a great conversation about it, which we'll get to.

But the song they play is Illusion, which is like really good, tense music that they play every once in a while.

Hasn't played in a while.

It's that one.

Lovely.

It's just too scary.

Sorry, I was grooving.

I didn't say anything because I was too busy moving to it.

It's two scales played opposite each other, which is so simple and so nice.

It's very much like,

you know, it's like the simplest musical maths to be like, oh, wait, these notes are all going to have an inverse relationship with each other as we walk up one scale and down another.

It gets very intense.

It like sort of builds for like two full minutes.

Let me see if.

Yeah, there we go.

It's so lovely.

You know, what they've done is they've built out the chords above those those scales.

And so now everything is sort of matching with the chord that it's in.

And also its opposite number in the other scale.

Really, really, really lovely stuff.

This composer is fucking great.

Yeah.

I had a really nice moment actually the other day where I was like,

there's going to be new music throughout the whole show.

Yeah.

This guy's going to be coming up with new stuff every so often.

We actually do get one other song that we haven't heard in a while when they're talking about Nobunaga fighting back to back with.

uh

oh do I not have that song anymore I thought that I did still have it um they're talking about back-to-back fighting with uh uh Uvogin and they played the same song it was uh

uh Baisho's song that they play when he's um

writing his first poem it's called the uh uh

the ido lunatic is what it's called i think

damn

no i maybe got rid of it the ido Lunatic versus the Chain Bastard.

Yeah.

Live on our fucking

fun song.

Anyway, anybody who wants to hear that can go hear that, but they've introduced a new Iido Lunatic.

Now, Gun and Kellywa have a little argument.

They have this argument directly in front of Nobunaga, which is wonderful.

I think only adds further fuel to Nobunaga's fire of I have to recruit at least one of these people to the spiders.

It's right after Goan has decided to start for some reason talking about

Zepile and Zepile's

art fraud.

Yeah, and Kilu is like trying to work out how best to

die so that Goan can escape and is like, Goan, stop it.

Stop fucking talking about Zephyr.

And then, Jack, do you want to talk about their argument here that

Goan engages this

is really simple and it's really it's it's uh it's great gone writing.

Killua sort of lays out what he's going to do

and Goan hits him again in a sort of a mirror of Killua hitting Goan earlier.

Yeah.

And

says, stop being so selfish.

You know,

what you are doing is selfish and you shouldn't do it.

You know, you're my friend.

And Killua, like every single audience member, basically says, hang on.

This is right out of your playbook.

I'm basically doing the Goan freaks thing, you know, going back to the way Goan's obstinacy, Goan's considered obstinacy, has over and over again

wrecked his body but furthered his ideology.

Yeah, this is sort of a Hanzo fight, like turned into a dialogue.

Canary, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's a not a long conversation, and it's really simple, and it ends with this great punchline where Goan says, I'm allowed to do this, and you're not.

And I love it when two characters argue and both of them are wrong in different ways.

Or it's like, you know, we don't have one character clearly winning the argument.

The position Gohan is taking is still a selfish and obstinate one.

Right.

But there is such,

you know,

barefaced.

uh smug lovable courage to him saying i'm allowed to do this but you're not uh

it was such a great you know end to that discussion uh killua is like, he goes like, he's like, that doesn't make any sense.

And goes like, yeah, well, I'm stupid.

It's great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

It's great.

But then

the genius brain that brought you, what if we use the weapons inside Trick Tower to hack through the walls?

Uh-huh.

Delivers his second plan.

Let's hack through the walls.

And bypass.

Ostomy time.

Let's kill.

And this is great because right after claiming to be stupid, you realize that Gon has had this plan the whole time and has just been trying to clue Kilua into the plan.

Yes, but we didn't need to do all the art appraisal stuff to learn this.

He's done this before.

Yes, he has done this before.

This is, you know, it's really not ostracizable.

But now we know how to call it ostomy.

We do now know how to call it ostomy that the nice art appraiser gave us during that week that Tagashi had rented art appraisal from the library.

Yeah.

The dub, the dub that I, the, the English dub is the one that uses all of the medical terms for this stuff.

The Japanese

or the English subs for the Japanese dub

have like different names that I can't remember them.

And the fact that my subtitle said ostomy.

My subtitles called it sidestepping for this one.

I can't remember what the other ones are called.

I think we are, I think, between the four of us, we have at least three different subs.

So

it is less subtle, but it is a clearer extension of the metaphor if they are medical or physical terms.

If we're talking about appraisal of a person or appraisal of a body in the same way that we're talking about appraisal of art, I suppose that makes sense.

I think sidestepping and stuff is

cooler, but I can see why they use the medical terms uh and then briefly uh the back end of this episode becomes a very short very exciting slasher movie as Nobunaga stalks through the corridors of

their hideout looking at the sort of

the first thing he does is he tries to lock some doors to sort of

impede their progress and then he sort of has a little chuckle to himself and says why am I locking doors they just break through all the walls and it turns out that that's what they've done they've been breaking through the walls and then in the end they break one wall, but don't actually climb through the hole to sort of double back behind Nobunaga.

The start of this is great.

It's the same song that they play during Gunsfight with Hisuka.

And when they first go to...

ostomatize the walls, they sort of dash straight at Nobunaga, who's like, are these guys really going to fucking try and fight me right now?

And then, no, they dash to the sides, each going, you know, going 180 degrees.

And this is the song, it's great called Try Your Luck.

Oh, yeah, this one.

Oh,

fucking shreds.

Keith, can you jump a little bit further where they like double the harmony on the electric guitar?

Yes.

It has like this desk hand light above it.

It's so good.

I think it's.

The two guitars are gone in Kilova.

Yeah, they are.

Yeah.

Or Karabaka and his chains.

Also, that.

No.

No, it's worth it.

It's worth it.

I'll cut all this out.

Don't cut any of this out,

keep it at all.

Oh, well, that's okay.

We'll just cut all of that out.

There it is.

Gonkiller is shredding right now.

They're playing this.

Oh, it's great.

Yeah.

Fucking love.

Hey, we stuck to it.

It only took a minute or two.

And in the end.

Yeah, hopefully.

Yeah,

I'll fix that.

Yeah, so

I have the whole song as a clip on my mixer, and I can use the touch screen on the mixer to sort of set the start and end of the clip that I want to play.

And it's like not a very precise thing, which is why.

Oh, you're just like chunking it.

I introduced earlier the concept that I can move things around, but I'm very limited in that capacity.

There's restrictions to your nen abilities.

Nobunaga introduces a creepy power here.

It doesn't help him too much, but it's probably going to be frightening in the future.

And it's a new nen ability called N.

Yeah, yeah, you're correct.

N is going to be on the exam.

Okay.

Like, this is something to remember.

I feel like.

It's so great that he introduces it, and then we actually don't see it used.

Yeah, we just kind of get the PowerPoint presentation.

Yeah.

And we see, like, the bubble.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Here's how it works.

He extends his aura out from himself a really quite substantial distance.

Not like a city block, but definitely like an entire building.

Yeah.

And anything that moves within that building can

it's as if it's touching his body.

Yes.

He says, I could feel any falling leaf.

We get this sort of image of him surrounded by these falling golden leaves, kind of briefly coming back to Nobunaga as a Ronin, and the sort of poetic imagery of a Ronin, as opposed to what he has been for this episode, a grieving,

fairly pragmatic man guarding two children.

Yeah.

He also laughs a lot in this episode.

He also has big

Nen horoscope.

He keeps coming back to like, you're an enhancer, so this means you're like this or whatever.

You know, he's reading everybody's signs.

Goan and Killer escape.

Goin' saying, it's my job to be reckless and yours to stay cool and keep me in line.

Yeah.

Yeah, he thanks Killer like, hey, Killer, I'm glad you're back to normal.

You were acting like me.

I'm supposed to act like me.

You're supposed to stop me from doing the stupid shit I do.

And Kilo is sort of like,

you know, it's very funny.

It's funny, like, the, you know, Kiloa is such an overthinker and an over-analyzer.

And it's funny for Goan to just introduce this concept to him that he obviously was not aware of.

That, like, it's kind of...

It's kind of not out of character, but it's a surprising new notch in the character of Gohan Freaks that he is like,

I'm allowed to

throw myself into crazy situations because I surround myself with people that have my back and will tell me that I'm going too far.

Yes, however,

the absolute king of that in Ghan's cosmology, the North Star, is the wise man Karapika, who is currently on a bloodthirsty path of revenge.

Yes, he's doing,

he has decided to be way worse than Ghan in this respect.

Yes.

Karapika, I'm signing contracts with the Zeldic family.

But Goan and Killer are triumphant.

They're running back towards York New City, and they've decided what they're going to do is, I think, kill the Phantom Troop.

Yeah, Goan, I think, says he wants to kick their butts.

Yeah, buddy.

Yeah, he can do it.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

We need some Nen contracts.

It's great because we are now right back to we need to be strong enough to defeat Hisuka because they realize that the only way to defeat the Phantom Troop is to get better at Nen.

And the person who can teach them Nen,

is it calm, considered Mr.

Wing and their dear friend Zushi?

No, it is the man we have discovered is our murderous revenge friend, Karapika.

I mean, this is why I was trying to say that

Mr.

Wing is like

in a show with a very short list of good guys, Mr.

Wing ranks pretty high.

Yeah, I mean, Karapika is a good guy.

Unfortunately, Karapika has sort of like

Karapika is not taking a measured approach vis-à-vis the Phantom Troop.

Karapika is riding a dangerous horse.

Yeah.

Meanwhile.

Oh, so this is when Kilo reveals that Karapika is the chain user and Gon's like, oh shit,

that's.

Are you sure?

As the narrator, as we pan over the city lights of York New City, and the narrator says, meanwhile, a fearsome storm has begun to brew.

And I think he's talking about two things.

He's talking about

the Zaldic family showing up.

I am so curious to see.

Well, oh shit, Maluki's about to be in town.

Because we last saw Maluki leaving on a hot air balloon.

Do you remember that?

I do remember that.

Yeah.

And I wonder how many people Silver is going to bring.

Probably just him.

It is so funny to think that when they were talking about hiring professionals, that they just got Miluki and

they show Silva and Zeno, but that's just because those are the names they know.

I think Miluki's a capable assassin.

I mean, he says he hasn't left the island for the island?

The mountain for a long time.

But, you know, he's gone through Zaldic training, I'm sure.

Well, I mean, yeah, for sure.

And he's talked about his explosives and stuff.

It's just, it seems like

he's got that Cohen Brothers plan to mount an explosive to a gnat or something.

Yeah, the other fearsome storm, of course, is whatever Krolo is doing.

You know,

Tagashi and the anime team know that by making Krolo so passive, by making him so inert almost, as soon as we even hint that he is beginning to move, the viewer is going to be going, what's that fucking guy doing?

What's he up to?

Before I think you arrived, Keith, in the call, we figured out how tall Crowlo was.

Yeah.

Yes, I remember this.

I remember this because we talked about it

in like either the first episode or like the third episode or something.

We were playing the height game and we were all guessing who was the epitome of 5'7 guy.

And it was, it ended up that it was Crowlo, right?

No, it wasn't.

No, he's 5'10.

Oh, he's 5'10.

Oh.

Who was the 5'7 guy?

Shall not, maybe?

Maybe I'm just forgetting what the.

No, because I remember guessing that it was Jing.

I was the 5-7 guy.

It was Karapika that was 5'7.

That one I think that we revealed.

I mean, I'm looking at a game ran article, so I'm like, whatever.

This is probably all bullshit.

But

I just...

maybe.

Hunter Hunter 5-7 is just like, did you mean season 5 episode 7?

It might have been.

No, not in this case.

Maybe it was 510 guy, and I'm just getting the height wrong.

That might be possible.

Yeah.

Is there anything we would like to discuss in this episode before we move into the final Huntapedia and some outro stuff?

No.

Hey, we didn't do intros today.

No, we didn't.

It's fine.

We just got right into it.

We just do outros, I guess.

You're using we here, Keith, and it's doing a lot of work.

Hey, look, you know, anyone could have stopped any time.

We could have said something.

I noticed pretty early on and I just decided to like.

Okay, no, we're rolling.

Keith is kind of our Crolo Lucilpha.

Yeah.

It's true.

And I knew if I said, hey, we got to stop.

to do intros, then we'd have to do a coin flip and it's a whole situation because we'd have to turn on webcams and it's just, it's not worth it.

And Keith's already done a coin flip on a webcam for friends at the table.

That's true.

Oh, yeah, that's true.

The final Hunterpedia is Franklin, who is an emitter.

Gunn turns his hand into a gun.

Time for the Tadpool up to Tadpole update.

He shoots the fish tank as the Tadpole, which has now turned into a frog, tries to climb out of it, and

the shot ends as the poor fucking frog gets shot by gun.

Wow.

Do you think that's the end of the Tadpole saga?

I have no idea.

I don't know.

I don't know how we escalate from here.

The tadpole has the gun.

Wow.

Oh my god.

It was so funny.

Because as soon as I realized that that little tadpole was actually growing, I was like, oh, it's going to turn into a frog eventually.

And for it to turn into a frog and immediately get shot by Gone doing a little I'm Franklin joke, it was very funny.

Outro stuff.

Yeah.

I would like to to introduce a new segment.

Okay.

Oh,

I had assumed the tadpole was the segment.

Seriously.

No, no.

My new segment is.

So I was, I was, after

what's the art appraiser called?

Zealop?

Zeppile.

Zeldop.

After Zeppile,

you know, gives his little appraisal of Gon,

I was trying to go back and find, you know, instances where maybe Hisaker had said explicitly what he thought gone's ideology was and it's either it's it's never been said as clearly as uh zapail said or i didn't take notes for it but but what i what i did do in trying to find it is i searched in my notes for the phrase gone is

something that i have typed 25 times over the course of writing my notes document.

About once every other episode.

And I invite you to search in your notes document for the phrase, gone is.

Mine's paper.

Oh,

mine's ephemeral because I don't keep them after we record.

Hold on.

I don't know.

Does anyone know how to search within the notes app on iPhone?

No, I don't.

I'm so sorry, Jack.

I would have prepared.

Well, let me give you some samples of situations in which I have written definitive statements about gone freaks.

Gone is confused.

Yes.

Gone is trying to catch birds with a fishing rod.

Yeah?

No, no, no lie there.

Gone is 12.

Uh-huh.

Presumably so.

So far, you're 100.

100%.

Gone is now officially a hunter.

True.

Gone means a radiant personality.

You know what?

The officially a hunter thing might have been wrong, depending on when you said it, actually.

Because

it could have been pre-ned.

Well, I'll say this: it's pre-ned.

He was officially a hunter, but he was not a full hunter, despite being officially a hunter.

Gohan is mine.

That's me quoting Hisaka.

Okay.

Goan is happy to see Killiwa.

Oh, it's true.

Goan is going to run to the airport.

Goan is very scared.

Goan is surprised he's gotten so strong.

Goan is stuck in a Beyblades fight.

Goan is doing great.

Goan is alive.

This is like a poetry.

Goan is learning to hustle.

Goan is not concerned about what is good or bad.

Goan is furious again.

Goan is an enhancer.

Yeah, and that's it.

That is Goan so far.

Wow.

I found one.

I found one scrolling.

What have you got?

Hell yeah.

Gone is so non-plussed about Kilua killing someone.

Oh, yeah.

It's true.

Maybe.

I'd like to invite people to tell us what they think Gone is.

Maybe in a five-star review of some kind.

I found one more.

Leave us.

Oh, yeah.

Gone is happy scared.

It's true, yeah.

Regularly.

Sorry.

Go ahead, Sylvie.

No,

I think Jack has something.

Oh, you should leave us a five-star review, and you should leave it on Apple Podcasts.

There are probably other places that you could leave a five-star review, but the place.

I'm sure you're listening to this, honestly.

The place that counts is

Apple.

It's the big one.

I forget.

The place that counts.

No.

Let's not do that.

I'm not going to do that.

The place that counts.

I will, Apple.

I'll send you

keeping track of us.

I'll sell that to you for $5 million.

You can have that.

I can't read the reviews anymore because people are putting spoilers there.

Now, here's the thing.

Hey, fucking knock that off.

I'm just going to go.

It's a very minor one.

I checked.

It's very funny, but you can still

need it.

It has accidentally become important.

Yes.

I will say, I don't mind too much if it turns out that I'm not going to read these reviews now.

But at the same time, maybe think of

other people who are similar to me.

I'm not saying this to scold people, leaving spoilers in the thing.

I'm just saying.

Yeah.

I will say that if anyone who

is not finished this show,

it won't, it will only matter because of this show, not because of Hunter Hunter.

Yeah, it's not, it does, it doesn't, it is a, um, it's a, it's a, it's a Media Club Plus spoiler more than a Hunter Hunter spoiler.

It's screenshot related.

I think we can say that, right?

It's screenshot screen related.

That's not enough to really

be too specific and give anything away.

Oh, here's a lot of stuff.

Have we missed the screenshot of

Behind the Back Krolo?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I said we talked about that.

We talked about it.

Okay, good.

I remember talking about the arm wrestling, but I forgot that we talked about that.

But if you're not sure, we've covered everything

other than the last one.

If you're going to go in the reviews and say, like, Goan duels Killua to death inside the sun or something, I'm not interested in learning any of that stuff.

Someone write that, though, because it's not true.

Or, like, a chimera.

There's only one chimera ant, and you've already met them.

Right?

Okay, I'm gonna here's the thing.

I got a couple five stars I'm gonna read out in a sec, but also here's another prompt for people if they like having these prompts.

Come up with your best fake hunter-hunter spoiler in a five-star review.

And I would love to see some of that.

Um,

so

because Jack couldn't luck, it fell upon me.

So I grabbed a couple here.

First one from Junk Bones, five stars, obviously.

That's also the name of the title.

That's also the title of the review, though.

Right.

This podcast is so great that I'm infusing my review with Nen to make everyone who listens to an episode 0.1% stronger.

That will really add up.

Trust me.

Wow.

I can already feel it.

I can open their cars that I couldn't open before.

Yeah.

I lifted my car.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

So that means that you are already pretty close.

to be.

Oh, I'm a Nen master.

Oh, okay.

Jack is a Nen genius.

This podcast is opening their nen pores.

That's why the friends of the table music is so good.

Oh,

infused with nen subconsciously.

It does make sense.

I'm not going to read this whole one here, but

there is a review that tickled me from Leoria's dad, which is their username on iTunes.

That is

a list of both...

what nen types we would be, which I'm like, oh yeah, cute.

A couple people did that.

But then also

what our zodiac signs would be.

Which I think is really funny because, for example, they called me a Scorpio, which is not true.

And it's just very funny that someone looks at me and goes, you were born in November.

What are our signs, Sylvie?

Yeah.

Oh, would you like to?

I can go through both your.

I would love to hear if anybody's is correct.

Well, first you can, Keith, I'm going to start with you.

They said you're a transmuter.

And

sorry, a transmuter with some aptitude for enhancement.

Wow, they really got into that.

His star sign is Cancer Sun Gemini Rising.

I am Cancer.

Actually, I'm a Cancer Gemini cusp, really.

Wow.

Okay.

Wow.

I don't know how to know what rising.

I don't know how to calculate rising.

That's like a chart thing.

I know mine is, but that's because I'm a gay woman.

Which is really like a day after most people are considered a cusp.

okay but it kind of you know it's relevant that you know i'm i'm on the cusp of cusp with gemini yeah

jack is an enhancer that they also would have success with transmutation as well their star sign is virgo son libra rising uh no yeah i thought

uh me sylvie is a conjurer with the possibility of becoming a specialist later in life which i think is the funniest way of saying someone's trans I've ever heard

it's like, oh, yeah, you got Kurapika vibes.

They're the person who wrote this.

I love it.

And like I said, Scorpio, Sun, Gemini, Rising.

I literally don't have any Scorpio in my chart.

Gemini's in there.

It's fine.

But it's not rising.

Dre.

Dre is a specialist, but has also developed conjuration and manipulator abilities.

Or a Pisces, Sun, Libra, Rising.

Okay,

I don't know what the Sun and Moon and Rising stuff are.

Sun is just your basic one.

Okay.

I'm

born in May.

I am a Pisces.

Okay.

So they got you

out of four.

Two out of four.

Not bad.

Yeah.

Pretty impressive.

Not bad for

a very fake thing.

Yeah.

Shout out to Leorio's dad, though, who, who literally, by the way, the first line of this is: I know basically nothing about astrology.

It's a great position to work on.

I think in the same, maybe in the same way that they did a study, and when you crack someone's back,

you actually have more of a chance of being helpful and giving someone relief if you're not a chiropractor than if you are a chiropractor.

Like professional chiropractors are less effective than base average

at helping people with back pain by manipulating their back.

I think maybe the same is probably true with astrology.

The more you know about astrology, the less effective you actually are at reading people's signs and stuff.

This makes sense to me.

Yeah, this is my new theory.

Yeah.

So, thank you for that, Laureas, dad.

There's also ones for Austin and Allie here, but I figure save that for if they're around.

Yeah, um, because I want to know.

How do you guys feel about your nen types, by the way?

Uh, sorry, mine was transmuter.

Yeah, you're a transmuter with some aptitude for enhancement.

Um, I don't think I'm a transmuter, I consider myself

either a

conjurer or a manipulator.

Probably a manipulator.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What am I supposed to do?

I'm fine with conjurer.

I'm looking at the personality things, and I, yeah, I could see that, Keith.

Yeah.

Oh, sorry.

No, no, no.

I'm wrong.

I'm wrong.

Yeah.

It's it's not manipulator and conjurer.

It is manipulator and transmuter.

Those are the two that I'm like, I'm one of these.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I take it back.

Okay.

Transmuter is whimsical, prone to deceit, and fickle, which was,

we, I think, I just talked about feeling like a transmuter in the episode with Austin that we just feel like a transmuter.

Feel like a transmuter.

I'm going to read the next review here.

Unless.

Yeah,

you were an enhancer that does some transmutation, Jack.

I think I am an enhancer or a country.

Yeah.

I fuck with mine.

I'm fine being Karapika.

I'll take it.

Chain bastard.

Yeah.

They're calling me the chain bitch.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Keith.

Well, time to go change your Twitter username.

I have one last review here,

just for today.

And I promise we'll be reading more of these.

Don't you worry.

You got to tell us all your fake spoilers.

Huzzah.

Oh, this is from At F F Sam.

Huzzah.

After years of begging my wife to watch HXH, they finally started to watch it when Friends of the Table started this podcast.

After listening to eight episodes in, I understand why their words meant more than mine.

My ego is in shambles, but I'm laughing too much to care.

Easily a five-star podcast.

Thank you so much.

Sorry for destroying your ego.

That sounds like someone who loves Hunter Hunter, but doesn't listen to Friends of the Table, but does listen to Media Club Plus.

Yeah.

That's something I want to hear about because I just sort of just baseline assume that almost everybody that listens to this listens to it because of Friends of the Table.

So I do,

I want to hear from people who found this

not via already listening to Friends of the Table, although that person only halfway, that's true, because it's

via

the family.

Oh wife listens to Friends of the Table.

Still,

the fake spoilers, I want to say this.

I want to give a warning.

Don't give fake spoilers that are really close to the real thing.

I'm I'm gonna be vetting them.

I want them to be fake.

Well, but itunes isn't, so they aren't gonna be up there.

No, for sure.

If, like, for other people, do it.

I just mean on the show.

Like,

yeah, don't be like, don't be only two degrees off from the truth.

If, if, if, for, if, if, if we did this a few episodes back, don't write like, uh, oh, Karapika kills uh Nobunaga in the fucking uh in episode 46.

In episode 46, or whatever.

Like, it, like, don't just replace a character from a real spoiler or whatever.

Do things like

Leorio gets his head stuck in a toilet for a full episode.

Like,

Kayla kills Gone fighting inside the sun.

That's a great one from Jack.

That's a great example.

Ilumi is Leorio.

Leorio takes off his little glasses and then, just like Brattley Pin Man, transforms into.

Oh, God.

Yeah, Leorio's glasses are the pins.

Yeah.

Ilumi's great.

I miss Gituraka.

I hope we get to see Gituraka again.

We need a recut of the show where Ilumi's form is the fake form and Gitaraka's the true form.

Oh, that'd be great.

I don't know why.

Okay, this is a final note and then we can leave.

Why

we should plug stuff after this.

Why look like that?

Why choose

Kitaraka?

I guess you want intimidating.

You want to make people afraid of you just by looking at you.

And he succeeded.

Succeeded, yeah.

Earlier today, Kat, who has not watched Hunter Hunter, said to me, you know how all the Hunter Hunter heroes look really stupid?

And I said, yes.

And they said, do the villains also look really stupid?

And I said, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who, why do they look stupid?

Who looks stupid?

They meant

stupid brackets positive.

Okay.

Okay.

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

Everybody is outlandishly dressed and styled.

I'm on the record

having said that the thing that initially prevented me from watching Hunter Hunter was thinking that Ghon's character design was terrible.

And I

can no longer understand what I was thinking.

I don't know why I think.

I can't imagine what else he would look like.

He looks like Goan Freaks.

What else is he going to look like?

It really was the fact that he looks so much like an Akira Toriyama character that I was like, this is just shitty

Akira Toriyama.

But that's like part of it is the fact that he looks like a characteristic.

I definitely talked about this before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember talking about it.

But just to bring it up, I do know why.

I do know what it means to think that they look stupid because that prevented me from watching the show for a while.

Okay,

so if you're listening to this but not listening to Friends of the Table, we were talking about you a minute ago.

Why don't you check out Friends of the Table?

Or maybe why don't you go to youtube.com/slash Friends of the Table to watch the streams and stuff that we've done?

Or twitch.tv/slash friends of the table to watch the streams that we're going to do.

Or very importantly, go to friendssofthetable.cash because we have bonus episodes of this show.

We have covered two, we've done two episodes on Dragon Ball.

And can I announce what the next one's going to be?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We are going to be watching

part four,

some episodes from part four of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.

Friends of the friends of the table.cash.

Friends of friends of the table.cash.

That's friendsofetthetable.cash to watch us watch JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 4.

Yeah, should I drop the episodes or?

Yeah, drop the episodes.

Why not?

The episodes we're going to be watching, the plan is to do two Jojo-based

episodes of Media Club Plus Plus, which is not what we call that, but I, you know.

We're going to be watching episodes three, four, and five from Diamond is Unbreakable, the Nijimura Brothers, parts one through three.

I'm very excited to have you guys

have

the

sort of a reference point for when I talk about stuff like stand fights.

Yeah.

When is that set?

I know JoJo is like a like sort of bounces around different times and genres.

I'm pretty sure that one's set in the 90s.

I'm just going to check really quick.

That's a reminder.

Yeah, mid-1999.

Friends of the table.

Friends of the table.shop.

Any more personal stuff since we didn't do plugs at the beginning?

You guys can find me everywhere.

Sylvie Bullet

if you want.

I'm, you know,

this and Friends of the Table are the main thing I need you guys to check out.

So whatever.

Yeah, I think that's it.

You can find me on co-host at JDQ.

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

One of these days, I'll write a new intro or outro theme for this show, which would be fun.

Oh, what would be a good time?

Maybe a chain bastard when Karapaka does some shit.

That might work.

We shall see.

We shall see.

You can also find me doing stuff over at runbutton, youtube.com slash runbutton.

You can find our podcast in the RSS feed that you're listening to this from.

Just search run button.

We were great at doing podcasts.

We only do a few of them a year, but we just did one and it was great.

So yeah, check check that out.

We just finished our 10-year-long, almost 11-year-long Digimon World Let's Play.

You can check that out.

It's sort of a

bizarre adventure to watch a Let's Play that takes place over 10 years.

Go watch that.

It's great.

It's Keith's bizarre adventure.

Yeah.

It's my bizarre adventure.

All right, that's it.

Bye.