Demon World Theory - Hunter x Hunter ep. 44-47: Media Club Plus S01E15

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

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

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

My name is Keith Carberry.

You can find me on Twitter and co-host at Keith J.

Carberry.

You can find the Let's Plays that I Do at youtube.com/slash run button.

With me, as always, is Jack DeKeet.

Hi, I'm Jack.

You can get any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.

Oh, and you can find me on co-host at JDQ.

Andre Lee Swan.

Hey, you can find me on Twitter at Swandre3000.

And Sylvie Bullet?

You can find me most places at Sylvie Bullet.

It's Sylvie without the E, not spelled like the French way.

I never say that.

I should say that more.

Also, you can follow the show on TikTok at friends underscore table.

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We've been streaming a lot more lately.

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You can check out out the friends at the table podcast if you haven't listened to that before.

And

third time returning guest, Austin Walker.

Hi, Austin.

Hello.

Also, underscore Walker on Twitter, Austin.

I'm co-host.

While we're recording this, while we're recording this, literally while,

the counterweight prequel arc is airing.

on Twitch.

Oh, yeah.

And it's going into the feeds also.

Yeah, main feed.

The main feed, which there's a chance you're listening to this and didn't know we were going to do a counterweight Counterweight prequel.

Yeah.

And so maybe you were an old fan and you fell off the main show, but you heard we were doing a Hunter-Hunter show and you're like, I'll listen to that.

That's fun.

And then you're like, oh my God, wow.

Counterweight.

I love those little freaks.

And let me listen to that.

So that's a good thing.

That was a blast.

We've like done, we've done, we've never done like a return, like a flashback content thing before.

And I had a blast.

You know, I don't know if there's something we were worried about, but I wasn't worried about it afterwards.

I thought it was great.

I was confident we would all find those rhythms again.

And I think we did.

I think we did a good job.

We watched four big episodes today.

These were great, I think.

This was a really hard season to pace the episodes out because you have this just massive block of huge, important episodes right in the like the end of the first third of the season.

And like sort of scheduling things around that was like really difficult.

There was a while where

these,

the second two episodes that we watched were going to be two all on their own.

And I decided that we shouldn't do that.

But yeah, I had a ton of fun watching these.

We're officially in Chain Bastard City for these episodes.

Fuck yeah, we are.

Austin, you maybe don't know, but Karapiga's theme for this season is called Chain Bastard in the official soundtrack.

It is just called that.

It's really great.

Good.

That's fantastic.

It's one of the.

Can we get a little Chain Bastion?

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

Chain bastard.

I understand.

Yeah.

Oh, I also, I got buttons for a lot of the sounds now.

Is there a button for the

M song that we could like deploy whenever someone says something dramatic that we want to hold on for?

Oh, with the

end credits song.

No,

yeah.

I've mostly been like songs that crop up that are new or that haven't

that haven't come up in a while.

Like when leorio showed up for the first time in the last set of episodes we had a lot of this one

right sure sure sure sure and this one

yeah

every single one of these songs affects my walk cycle and yeah

you put your hands in your pockets you slouch down real low your legs get twice as long as you're torso yeah but i just need i just need yeah have you considered ending the episodes by saying something about like the future of the show and whether or not you'll succeed at your dreams and then play Hunting for Your Dreams, the Hunter-Hunter ED2?

It is so good.

Hunting for Your Dreams is amazing.

I can't believe that they came up with an ending theme that is almost as good as the killer opening theme.

I'll have to put that on here.

Almost as good because it's better.

Do you think the closing is better than the opening?

I'm a huge Hunting for Your Dream fan.

I think my favorite song in the world.

Oh, show.

Um, not in the world.

My favorite song in the world is probably not from an anime.

Just to be

could have been.

If there was one of us up there where it was true,

you'd saying it's most likely to be me?

I think it's maybe most likely to be you.

Really?

I think so.

Maybe.

I don't know.

It's not, I mean,

I don't think any of us are particularly likely is the thing.

What if if I reveal it's me?

That would be cool.

I would actually believe that most.

Yeah.

Really?

Because you can kind of wrap back around

to where it's all just music, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's all just music.

I mean, this is, and this music is incredible.

There were several points during this show, during this chunk of episodes, where I was like...

The music is too good for this show.

Yeah.

See?

I love this show.

And to be fair, we have been getting a lot of messages from people being like, by the way, did you know that

a lot of the biggest numbers are like rip-offs of old classical pieces?

Which I'm like, I guess that sort of makes sense.

I haven't listened to confirm.

But I mean, something from Romeo and Juliet is like actually a...

uh uh like a state like a production of romeo and juliet is actually uh one of the yeah phantrope songs entrance of the nights i believe yeah i was gonna say um that's the only one that i remember out of the top of my head but there was like one or two others that people have sent messages about uh and i

I haven't done the

work of putting it together so they can read it out and put it on the show, except for this.

This is the casual version.

So I guess expect an update to that.

I don't want to be too flippant, but being like, hey, did you know that this song is based off this other song is very much just being like, hey, have you heard of music?

The concept of songwriting?

Well, especially once you get into the century range of talking about music.

But anyway, back to the recap.

We're in Chain Bastard City.

After watching Uvogin demolish a small army and taking on the Shadow Beast, Karapika decides, don't worry, I've got this.

Let's capture him.

And it works basically for a while.

We follow the Nostride bodyguards and their tail of spiders after an extremely, extremely quick dispatching of the shadow beasts and get some detective work scenes that most roving murder gangs would be incapable of.

Karapika finally makes good on his promise to meet up with Hisuka, who promises a mutually beneficial information exchange, which Kropika agrees to.

Unfortunately, while he's away, the troop shows up to bail Uvagin out of jail.

And after a brief plot shift and vibe shift to Gonkillo and Leorio's side of things, in order to connect the two disparate plots, we're back watching Uvo's hunt for the chain user, setting up the final episode

that we're watching today, a showdown between Kropica and Uvagin.

These episodes don't stop.

I mean, I I guess they briefly stop to go check in Leorio.

I will say they stopped so that we can get what at first blush looks like Blackface going and killoa in the Hunterpedia, which I know what's actually happening there now.

It's not Blackface.

Okay, let's have the deal work.

I would like to know.

I missed the Hunterpedia, but I remember this from other times that I've seen this.

I forgot it was now, though.

What's going on?

I think it was these episodes.

I have to watch a bunch of catch-up episodes, and I'm pretty sure it was this set.

It is these episodes.

It was a note.

Okay, good.

There's two of them in a row, and with no comment, Goan and Kilo would just show up in the Hunterpedia brown instead of like pale instead of white.

Yeah.

Like, what is happening?

Kilo was the palest person of all time.

The palest person who's ever been.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, Goan's on an island.

Goan has some tan already.

My understanding from reading on the internet, which, you know, don't trust the internet, but is that this is like a not that uncommon gag in certain japanese like anime and cultural things for media that comes out in the first couple of weeks of september because all of the kids are going to school sunburn

from being

out all sun that's so weird it's very weird that's so does this explain the tadpole

tadpole no in all of these hunterpedias and i realize we're jumping right to the end of an episode here, but I think it's just good to get this sort of at the top.

There is a small tadpole swimming in a tank to the right of Gonan Killua

in the Hunterpedia.

Yeah, it has, I believe, not been there previously.

Oh, yeah, that feels like new school year, and now we got a class pet.

And in fact, they're in a classroom.

They're always in a classroom, right?

No, they're not because episode, I was just looking at the one before the one I was on.

On one of these, there are, maybe it is a a classroom still, but it's not like schoolwork on the board.

It's like love letters.

It's like, it's like, we love Hunter Hunter.

Yeah.

It's crayon drawings on the board.

It's crayon drawings versus the whiteboard, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

And now they've got a little tadpole.

And now they've got a little tadpole.

Now they've got a little tadpole.

That's

my favorite folk song.

And now they've got a little tadpole.

Now they've got a little

tadpole.

One day he he is going to be a frog.

All right, let's go.

That was beautiful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I will say,

very excited to see the shadow beasts arrive.

We begin

with the last grandpa.

Grand opening, grand closing.

Literally, I meant to say that.

One minute only.

How many shadow beasts did we spend like hyping up the shadow beasts just to have them?

Well, just

destroyed.

Only for one episode, but we were really excited about them.

And it's so fun.

Let's not be around the bush here.

Not only do the shadow beasts that we saw get introduced last time, Rabbit Dog, Leech, Porcupine, and Worm,

all get killed by Uvo in some of the goriest death scenes we've seen so far.

They live just long enough to explain what each of their powers are.

Yeah.

Fail to use them effectively and then die.

And then,

just like me.

A real real moment of restraint from Tagashi because I think he realizes that it is a funnier joke than what he usually loves to do, which is exhaustively explain a bunch of freaks' powers.

The entire rest of the Shadow Beasts get killed primarily off-screen

with the exception of

the business and like one new one line.

As I said before we started recording, I was going to add some new names

to the two discussed this episode list of names.

You've explained this, presumably.

You've explained that you've added this big list of names to listeners in a previous episode.

I think it's come up on Mike.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have a list of like 20 names of people or 12 names or something of characters who've come up this arc.

Well, guess what?

The Hunter-Hunter wiki has guesses at the other names of the shadow beast because none of them get introduced.

And

they are

fish.

The question mark.

Double question mark.

Double question mark.

Hedgehog?

Which is weird because we already got porcupine.

We already have porcupine.

Mule?

And I don't think Mule is right at all.

I think Mule is way off.

I don't think hedgehog kids are doing either.

Isn't that what the looksmaxing kids are doing?

They're mueling.

Frog?

And bat?

I think bat might be bat is right.

You see bat wings.

You see the wings.

You see the wings.

Frog or frog is also correct, just based on the hands, you know?

Oh, like I get everything.

And it has kind of a froggy look.

Yeah, it is kind of a froggy look.

It is kind of a froggy look.

Yeah.

These shadow beasts are destroyed

with a real.

Well,

the first four are destroyed with a real kind of verve.

And I think I'd like to start there as we go from.

Oh, sorry, the first four, right?

Yes.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There is something really interesting happens here where it is as though Togashi and the

anime team are painting with a very broad brush.

They're operating on a kind of macro scale when we see Uvo massacring, you know, 150 mobsters.

Where we have a few scary moments.

You know, we see him throwing a pebble at a sniper on a hill, but usually he's just wailing on him in like a mid-shot.

Yeah.

And there is something overwhelming about that scale of death, but it is as though in

you know, zooming the camera in to what is set up to be a really intimate, you know, sort of like four-on-one fight between these shadow beasts and Uvo, Uvo gets the upper hand immediately, and then the fight essentially turns into like a slasher movie, this very intimate series of kills as Uvo dispatches the Shadow Beasts one by one.

It's funny because we, so

what just came out on the Patreon, for anyone listening to this that's looking for more Media Club Plus, you can go to the Patreon now and find

at the time of recording two bonus episodes, both covering a Dragon Ball that we recorded about a month and a half ago.

The second episode just dropped, and we got to watch like a five-episode-long fight where Goku fights the same guy for five episodes.

And

it is impossible not to be drawing contrast to how

Tagashi does things where like fights can last an episode, but fights can also last half a scene or a quarter of a scene or one second or one move.

I'm going to drop a relevant tweet I saw yesterday.

This says, fuck it.

Here's the entire Goku versus Frieza fight.

It is 173 minutes.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah, man.

Yeah.

It's just episode after episode after episode.

Which also, for Jack who doesn't know this already, a key part of that fight takes place over five minutes of

their lives.

Right, of their time.

But takes like four episodes of the show.

That's ridiculous.

That's almost like someone making a podcast about Hunter Hunter, where it takes us longer to talk through an episode than it does to watch it.

Right.

Yes.

They're working on an even more ridiculous time scale than we do in Dragon Swords.

There is something,

which is like part of the reason that the Ubigians stuff before can only hit so hard is it's painting in really broad brushstrokes.

And if he's not under any threat, he actually doesn't look that dangerous you know yeah yeah because it's like it's like you know um

me uh playing chess against toddlers i can't play chess but i'm gonna beat the toddlers um because they don't know how chess works and we're not gonna learn anything about your acumen of chess not at all no i'm just moving the pieces around and there is a moment towards the start of this fight where we get We get some genuine threat from the shadow beasts, who are real nasty pieces of work.

They are

nasty little freaks.

They are.

Who's everyone's favorite of this first set?

Porcupine.

What's Porcupine's ability?

Porcupine's ability to do it.

What does Porcupine look like?

One, Porcupine is a little bald man.

Looks like Porcupine looks like hair.

Yeah, he does look like Krillin.

Krillin.

Krillin had a real rough go of things.

Yeah.

The kind of Krillin that we get shot down by Android 18.

Krillin who goes to the mafia instead of becoming a mafia baby.

Real

true

comes back.

True mafia baby.

And Porcupine's ability is.

Surprise.

I do have hair and I can shoot it out of my body and it's very sharp and also I can control it at will.

So you can stab but also make it bouncy.

Yeah.

Make it like dense and block things.

Sorry, I just saw 1999 Porcupine.

Oh, please.

Oh.

I think he has a little, you know, who's got a little bit in him?

Is Charlie Brown.

Oh, yeah.

Or you might have hair.

He has Charlie Brown hair.

He does have Charlie Brown hair.

And Charlie Brown.

I like his little shirt.

And he looks like Charlie Brown, the world's most depressed nine-year-old.

This looks like the adult that Charlie Brown would grow up into.

Does this make rabid dog Snoopy?

Porcupine has a really great mannerism where he ends all his sentences with a little confirmation for himself.

You know, he says things like, I can manipulate my body hair, you see, or I can manipulate my body hair, yep, yep.

The voice actor does a really nice cute, like, hum thing, like a little like yum after everything.

And I think the translating it to yup is a really good affectation.

There's a really good

punchline to this where, as he realizes that his goose has been cooked and he is about to die, he's like, My hair will protect me from this.

Yep, yep, yep.

And then he just gets got completely.

My favorite of the Shadow Beasts is Leech, who is a Junji Ito character.

It's so gross.

Leech.

It's so gross.

Probably the grossest thing we have seen yet in this show.

Yeah.

He's he, and he is shot like a Junji Ito character as well.

That way that Ito will,

you know, fill frames with people's faces.

There's this overwhelming sort of like weight of flesh and eyes and horror.

weighted people do not do well in these episodes.

Let me tell you, if you wanted a show that doesn't treat bodily roundness as grotesque, you got the wrong show.

Yeah, in any way, not a single larger character in this show.

Is Melody

sort of

round well?

But even Melody is like Melody's body has been shattered as a result of the body.

Yeah, she's like the result of naming from the devil.

Yes, exactly.

Um, but yeah, leech bites you and injects a bunch of leeches into you, uh, through his saliva,

which will uh hatch inside you, yes, and surely kill you from the pain.

Yep, surely.

Uh, this unless you drink a lot of beer, unless you drink a lot of beer and pee all the time.

Um, I kept waiting for the leeches to be like a problem for Uvo, but it is a very funny joke that uh, the problem for Uvo is the chain bastard.

Uvo has one problem.

Uh, then we have uh, Dre, who is your favorite?

Has it have they been mentioned already?

It's Porcupine, man.

Yeah, Porcupine is great.

Leech is too much of a freak.

I don't love the horrible slug tongue.

I don't like to see it.

I think

Leech was great.

The way it works is his power really only works if Rabbit Dog can get to you first.

Right.

Because Rabbit Dog is just run fast, bite hard.

Yeah.

They're friends, and I think that he's communicated that to Rabbit Dog, Austin.

And Rabbit Dog has said, Look, buddy, you know, it means a lot that you'd say that, but I can't do what I do without you.

You know, I have to bite them, but I couldn't.

I think that they know that they are that type.

I think I'm going to have to go Porcupine.

Porcupine is great.

Okay.

No one's here for Worm.

No one's out here talking about Worm.

I do like Worm's little tummy.

I like Worm.

I don't like Worm.

I like that Worm is dedicated to his job.

He's first on the scene.

He's last to go out.

And he's, you know, he's warning his friends, like, hey, send the rest of the shadow beasts.

It didn't help.

I'm sorry for what I'm going to say, but Worm to me, when I look at Worm, my brain goes, Mr.

Hanky from South Park.

No, I can see that.

It's mostly the head shape, but it's unfortunate.

And it really drags the character down.

This is not a comparison that I have.

I've never.

It's just a little poo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can see.

what exactly is leech's like nin power because he said he like breeds the leeches so it's not like these are nin leeches they're real leeches maybe it's the tongue thing

yeah is it like having a body that can store leeches in it yeah is it like he's created he used nin to create his weird tongue organ thing

yeah maybe he can maybe the tongue chink because he doesn't look like he has that tongue in his face the whole time of all the things we i expected us to like linger on on, this wasn't one of them.

Yeah, we might do two.

I do appreciate it in the sense that's like, yeah,

nen is gross.

Nen is gross.

It's weird.

We don't all get like cool chain bastard powers.

It's so cut and dry when you're looking at the chart.

But then you get into the real world and there's worm and speech.

This is what Austin came out to say last time.

Yes, it is.

Yes.

This is why Austin's on this one this time, too.

Well, and that's the thing.

It's like all these motherfuckers, you'd think you'd look at them like, oh, they got to be specialists.

No, like, none of them are specialists, actually.

They're all just doing a different type of manipulation.

We need a specialist today.

We do.

I wonder if we'll meet a specialist today.

Who could say?

I knew, Dre.

I was lying.

Okay.

Well,

let's forget.

Let's just,

you know, move through these with the kind of efficacy and speed.

I will call out a name and someone can tell me the exact way that that person dies.

Okay, it's worth saying this is within about seven minutes of, this is within a total period of about seven minutes.

Right, they show up that the deaths happen within about two minutes even.

Worm

exploded with a nuclear bomb.

Punishment.

That's not true.

Worm survived that to the very end.

That's true.

He kills him in the end.

I think, yes, he survives it, I think, long enough for the scene to end and to call the buddies.

And then I assume dies of his injuries.

Definitely dies.

His face was permanently smushed.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

You're right.

The nuclear bomb punch would have probably, which is the most DBZ we've gotten yet.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

It's time to see.

We saw the Big Ben impact, right?

Which is just.

I mentioned that Uvo looked like a Saiyan last time we recorded, and I think they go even further in that direction.

It is fun, though, because then we get to see that punch, and it is like, it is almost, it is like a less impressive version of what Tian does in that fight with Goku, where he destroys the ring.

It's Tian Shinhan destroying the ring.

Yeah.

At this point in my notes, and I'm just rereading through my notes for the first time.

Before I knew how this scene was going to go down, I wrote down not the best stop by the Shadow Beasts.

I also, we sort of papered over this, but I like that at the very beginning, Shellnark says they're here, which is great because it's kind of unclear why

the

spiders sort of stop their escape in the balloon.

And it seems like, based off of sort of Krolo's suppositions of how things must have gone down, they're trying to lure out who they can only assume are the powerful men users working for the mafia that must have figured them out.

And that totally is what happens.

They do show up and they're like, all right, time to play cards.

Didn't they know that someone, like, didn't someone fit in Owl's description?

Like,

didn't they know that that's

awesome?

They know about Owl.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So to me, it was they're trying to bait the Shadow Beasts out so they can find out where the treasure goes.

Oh, yeah.

They, they were definitely trying to bait Owl out.

I just, I had forgotten that they,

I, I had forgotten they knew specifically about Owl.

I don't know if they knew about the Shadow Beast as a whole, but they definitely knew about Owl.

Um, because that happened in the last set of episodes.

um

yeah the other thing to say about this is that every uvo's like i've got this everyone else is playing go fish um and like sort of

not watching and vaguely commenting on what's happening it's very funny it's the vibes of these motherfuckers shallnark's absolute happy-go-lucky i love

i am becoming increasingly afraid of shalnark oh yeah shall mark is terrifying um there's a lot of there's a lot to say about shallnark in these episodes shallnock is the one who I described when I first saw him as like a little Dragon Quest boy.

Yeah.

I would also like to extend that to he is a background character in a dungeon Meishi

episode.

You know,

he's an early, he's in a party, he gets killed by a basilisk or something.

Except when we talk about Shalnark's affect as being frightening, almost every time he appears, he has just had this placid, friendly,

sort of like...

Yep.

Here we go.

He's one of my favorite lines later on in in another episode.

He's talking to Uvo, who's like, is like claiming to not like money.

And if you want something, he takes it.

And Shalnark is just like,

wow, that's awesome.

You're the model thief.

And it just like feels,

it sounds totally genuine, but there is something there where I'm like, is he?

I can't tell if you can hear

me.

In Keith's impression just now, Shalnark.

I watched these episodes with Janine Hawkins from Friends of the Table, and she heard

Shalnark talking and was like, that's a Goku.

He sounds like a Goku.

Wow, you're the model thief.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

Like he just, he's just out here to have a good time.

He's, he's impressed by people's acumen, whether that acumen is in cards or in arm wrestling or blowing a nuclear hole into the ground.

It's hard to say if there's a deep hidden cynicism.

Right.

Because of that genuine

morality.

Right, because he also is in a roving gang of murderers.

Like,

this is like kind of becomes like the thing is like the, the, like,

I guess ideology but like the rule set as well that the phantom troop operate on skewing their worldview.

Right.

Um like

I don't know.

Um I feel like that's a big thing with when

later on with Nobunaga the lucky

you can't raise your voice at other members.

They love to snap at another at another troop member.

Like and I think part of the thing it's worth maybe saying here is like part of maybe we don't have their full worldview at this this point, right?

No, we know.

Here's what we know: is they killed a bunch of mafia people.

Um, at this point, we haven't seen them kill

and that they did a genocide.

Oh, did they do a genocide?

Oh, yeah, did they do a genocide against

everyone?

Yeah, I guess that was that is like

pretty bad one.

We get these flashes of you know

total

sort of like uh

uh

emotionless killing,

which is the heart of Karapika's question about them, in a way.

Right.

Like, how do you do this without feeling anything about it?

Right.

And, like, why do you do this?

What is going on?

Like, do you remember innocent people that you've killed?

You know, what, and stuff like that, which we'll get to later.

But we, and we get, we see them killing people for no reason.

Uh, in an episode later, there's just like a guy that they just kill him to steal his beer.

Uh, they do that and treat him like very disrespectfully.

But there's also this like knowing where they like they have like uh

they say out loud like oh, it's a shame that that person was there or like oh that person was unlucky that they got they got the worst of you know Phaeton has this line about uh the guy that he tortures he had the worst luck of anyone today.

Uh like they they get they they can put themselves in the shoes of their victims enough to know, wow, it really sucks to have to come across us, huh?

And they treat each other with such like a familial care.

Yeah.

They're on the inside, you know?

It's so bizarre.

We then do know enough to say what I was going to say and then walk myself back from, which is like, when you are this nihilistic, like

everything becomes a place where pleasure could happen, where you get joy from killing, because none of it fucking matters anyway, right?

And at that point, like, take care of your own and,

you know, get off on killing hundreds of mafiosas and stealing that guy's beer, you know?

Yeah.

this is where I like it when they are translated as bandits instead of thieves.

And that shows up a few times in the

in the subtitles in the translation that we have,

which really does get across that feeling of like a band.

There is that they are this destructive roving band who are who are making sure things are good inside.

You know, they hang out, they look out for each other.

But yes, there is that destructive nihilism that allows them to just sort of be like, well, you know, this is just the way the world is.

We are stronger than you.

Another important thing as we're talking about the morality and all of this around the fan of troop is we know at least some of them are also pro-hunters.

Yeah.

Yeah, we do.

We sure do.

Hunter organization seemingly does have a problem with that.

So I'll do the test.

What do you mean?

Right?

Yeah.

Well, and I assume Shalnark has

a hunter website.

Yeah.

And is telling Uvo, like, hey, you should really become a pro-hunter.

It's really convenient.

And these are, you know, these are the kind of people that

the hardest thing about the hunter exam would be having to be bored for five days.

Yep.

Right.

Like, they're just, that's the position that they're sort of in.

If we remember the game that we were just playing,

Leech

is your favorite?

No, no, Leech is.

My favorite way to go.

Leech gets their head bitten in half by Uvo.

Right.

Uvo.

Because

Uvo has been poisoned.

Yeah.

By Rabbit Dog, the neurotoxin that's paralyzed him.

Yeah.

Right.

But

didn't get the face, only got the neck down.

Only the neck down.

And I feel like it was intentional because they were like, well, we want to be able to hear you screaming.

Yeah, he says he likes to keep them able to

feel pain and fear.

Yeah.

And then Shellnark is like, I'm impressed that his teeth were able to cut through Uvo's skin.

I guess he likes to torture people, you know, keeps them

just happening, you know, go for it.

My first note for for this entire set of episodes is the Phantom Troop are horrible little freaks, but they're my horrible little freaks.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's truly how I feel about all of this shit.

Like, they are so just like

cartoonishly charming to me.

Like, just, you know,

with all my sensibilities.

Weirdly deuterotagonist coded, I feel like.

Yes, they totally are.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

If they stopped the murder, they'd be likable mostly.

Probably.

And hey, I think that there was like murdered the bad people.

I think that they happen to be likable already.

And that's part of the problem.

Yeah, that is, that is, I'm with Austin on this one.

That is my big one.

I'm transmitting them into

a more real place.

Not likable on the screen, but likable in a way that I would like someone.

Yeah.

I guess.

The thing with the Phantom Troop is that

they kind of represent, they have the same worldview as the Hunter Association when it really comes down to it, which is that, like, if you're powerful enough, you can get away with this stuff.

If you can pass the Hunter exam, you can't get tried for murder, and like you got all these benefits and shit like that.

Write a bus pause, you have a bus pussy.

Like a bus pause.

It's like they're like, well, they're just skipping the paperwork.

They are in a way that is more

literal than I think often this gets used.

They are two sides of the same coin.

Yes, they really are kind of the

shadow of the other.

It is also much easier to join them in theory.

The process is much less complicated.

Oh, yeah, it's way clearer, yeah.

Although, they seem to be.

No, no, no, no, except that you have to kill one of them.

Oh, but the hunter example.

Have you seen the hunter exam?

Yeah,

I did see the hunter exam.

You never had to fight Uvogien.

Yeah, that is true.

Only because Uvo Gien wasn't there.

But if Uvogin was there and he killed you, he wouldn't get to become a hunter.

So there are like slightly different rails on the edges.

There can only be, what, 13 spiders?

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, 12 plus Carlos.

12.

Right.

So there, but there are hundreds, thousands of hunters.

So it's, I think it's easier to become a hunter by nature of you don't have to kill one of the 13 baddest people alive.

But it's a human.

You can't become a phantom thief, you know?

This is what I mean.

Yeah.

We've seen other hunters, they wouldn't fucking make the cut.

Like, right.

Like, the fact that

I feel like

we've seen one hunter who can, and we're going to talk about him today.

Yeah.

It's my boy, the chain bastard.

Well, we've got, we've got, uh,

uh, you know, the, the, the shadow beast that we've met, these are also all people that would have breezed through the hunter exam, are probably themselves pro-hunters.

Uh, you know, if they're not, they could pass it in a, with their eyes closed.

And still, the gulf between them and

the fan group is like massive.

It's an ocean.

Sure.

Which is the third organization here to think about in terms of world building stuff.

Is like, where's the mafia, the many mafia, the 10 mafia families face?

The mafia community.

The mafia community.

Every time.

Or just the community.

Sylvie, every time that they say the community, I think about AJ Styles.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I'm so

about that reference on the show, I don't think.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

It's very, it's the mafia community.

The mafia community is the funniest thing in the world The fact that they like and and to fit into this into the world that already exists It's like they

them existing does change what it means to be a hunter in a way.

Yeah.

Because you start throwing around numbers for money that it doesn't matter that you have a hunter's license.

Goan and Killua and Leorio are still fucking broke.

They can't go to the

mafia auction and buy a copy of Greed Island with the the money they have it doesn't matter that you can go to school for free but it millionaires it does cut

billionaires no that's true that is true it does cut both ways because you know all that money and all that exclusivity and even the knowledge of nen at the higher levels of the mafia it can't get you 10 shadow beasts that can fight one

uh phantom troop member and let me tell you those guys are out there so people that can fight the phantom troop they're out there but the mafia doesn't have access to them or

it doesn't have retainer on them.

That's right.

They've briefly contracted Karapika without knowing that Karapika can do this necessarily.

Right.

This is something that actually Karapika is more competent than anyone else in the entire mafia.

And you couldn't keep Karapika on retainer, like you're saying.

Karapika's vision is bigger

than this.

And also,

he's undercover.

Right.

And also, Kropika might not actually.

I don't know that Karapika could beat a Shadow Beast.

I know that Krapika can beat Phantom Troops.

Right.

And we'll get there.

If Kropika's goal from the beginning

was to beat the Shadow Beasts, then Karapika could beat the Shadow Beast.

Correct.

For sure.

But there's some really funny Karapika lines in the absolute climax of these episodes that we will get to

that hit very weird and I think are on purpose.

hey, what happens to Rabid Dog?

Uh skull.

Uh shot in the head with a piece of leech's skull.

Uh Uvo spits Leech's skull at him so hard.

No, not shot in the head.

Shot through the chest.

Through the head.

And into the head and the pen.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And he doesn't just spit it.

He has to like hock it up first.

There's a

eight second long like a vacuum noise as he gets the breath ready for this.

He's going to bring up the vacuum noise.

I'm glad you also noticed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then

there's one person left, happens to be pretty good at blocking punches and other sorts of things.

How does the porcupine die?

Gets screamed at so hard, his brain explodes.

That's so sad.

It's really sad.

It's sick, too.

Yeah.

Sorry, Sylvie, which kind of sick?

Cool.

It is one of the cool things that has happened on this show.

Like, rip to porcupine,

rest and porcupine, but also you went out in the best way possible.

Oof.

Oh, man.

The end of it is so bad.

It's horrible to think about, and that's why I love it so much.

Yeah.

That's the end of that.

It is.

And is this, it's during this fight that Karapika realizes who he's up against, who's here, right?

Because at the beginning of this fight, Ubergin has a shirt on, and so no one hasn't seen the back of the rabbit dog slicing his lower shirt

in a way that reveals his lower back tattoo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ubergin's in on the trend.

Those are in again, you know?

They are in again.

100%.

Do you think that it was Ubergin's decision to get it all the way down there?

Or do you think that was something Krolo made him do?

Either or, I don't know.

I feel like it's like one of those, like, I can tell what he knew what Krollo would like.

I'll Don't ask me about the shipping matrix I have for the Phantom Troop.

That's right.

Episode 46 is extremely gay about Uvo.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

It is like.

You don't have to get that.

Look at watching him drink these beers in his little shirt.

Totally.

Look at the thumbnail for episode 45.

I made a note of it in the last episode.

There is like,

there is this moment where it is like Uvo is drunk, and drunk, and Uvo, when he is drunk, is in love with Shalnark.

He gives him a big old sloppy kiss on the cheek.

He does.

He does.

It's great.

He's number 11.

Yeah, he's number 11.

From what I'm seeing.

Yeah.

That's low.

That could be high, though.

We don't know what order things go in.

You know, we often think about it.

Yeah, we don't know if the order actually represents anything.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, it takes the number of the person.

It doesn't represent anything because it's the one in one out of

like, as long as you beat a particular person, that's the number you take, I guess.

Because he

says that he's killed.

Everybody is like,

all the Phantom Troop members are like, well, that was close.

Whew,

you almost got my ears there,

buddy.

But we're okay.

And then seconds later,

Ubergen lifted into the darkness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jack, you were going to say.

The way this happens is, you know, we get this cavalcade of gore as Ubergin dispatches the shadow beasts.

And then Karapika throws the binoculars to Dazaline and says, well, gonna go capture him.

And first, we get a little bit of business here as Melody, you know, hears the melody of Karapika's heartbeat and then says.

Something to the effect of he's gone blind with rage and fury.

Again, coming back to all this eye imagery, you know, obviously we have a lot of eye imagery with Karapika and seeing, but we have eye imagery with almost everybody in the show.

Think about these real close-ups on Hisuka's eyes, Ilumi's eyes, Killua's eyes when he is doing Shadow Step.

I think that, you know, this goes beyond just the genre conventions of like an extreme close-up on these characters and tying these moments of real heightened emotion and drama to people's eyes

I think is just so built into like Karapika's backstory.

It's a really good way of carrying that stuff.

So Melody plays the flute and plays at first what I had thought.

Ah, yeah, here we go.

Thank you.

I had thought that this was the movement from the Devil Symphony, the flute movement, because that is what had played earlier as she was talking about this.

So for a bit, I was like, what is Melody's plan here?

As everybody is transported to just this remarkable pastel

flower meadow.

Everybody, Daseline,

Squala, the others are all standing in this field of flowers.

If there is a song that can do this for you guys,

I wrote down Peg by Steely Dan.

Yeah, just Peg by Steely Dan.

It's for me, it's

Peg by Steely Dan.

Do I know Peg?

I don't think I know Peg.

Peg is great.

Come back to me.

It's good.

It's a good time.

Yeah, Yeah, it's on Asia.

I don't like Asia at all.

Or rather, I got three songs into Ager, and he was singing about a brown cow, and I couldn't be doing with that.

That's the first one.

That's the first song.

It wasn't a good start.

Me check my notes where I've gotten.

Asia starts with Deacon Blues to me.

Yeah, so I like Black Cow.

I don't like Asia.

Off of Asia, but Deacon Blues is, oh my God, one of the best songs of all time.

Deacon Blues is great.

Yeah.

You know what?

Deacon Blues is actually the song Melody would play to get me to the meadow.

She's been playing the sax bit.

Okay, so

Melody says...

Krabika is a little bit of a Deacon Blues.

No, but the problem is that Krabika does not hear the thing that they say when you lose, or the song that they play when you lose.

Or the name that they give you when you lose.

I can't remember the Deacon Blues chorus, but it's about losing like many Steely Dad choruses.

Moving on, we get about 40 seconds of Melody playing the flute.

Really nice, the show just sitting back into this music and kind of like letting the viewer sit with it as Karapica is.

We hear a field in spring almost as long as we see the living

Shadow Beast.

Yep.

True.

Yeah, this is A Field in Spring.

Melody says this is the perfect composition for relaxing.

And it works.

Everybody calms down, including Karapica, who then says, thank you.

I'm very calm.

Now I'm going to go and capture.

Yes, you've fixed my heart.

Now I can go do this calmly instead of excitedly.

Which may have been a life-saving maneuver.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Melody,

they treat Melody like the things that she says are true, and they're very careful, like, when she's not sure, that she says that she's not sure,

and it feels like,

like,

the way that she describes something is basically trustworthy.

I think Melody's great.

And she said that he would die, so I believe her.

I adore her.

And

there is something here.

These episodes are going to...

And I imagine that Karapika's arc, as we continue, is going to get real in detail about the sort of mechanics and affect of revenge and how stories of revenge tend to kind of...

be put together.

And there's something really interesting about taking this moment to inflect Karapika's action differently post-Field in Spring.

You know,

the blind with rage and fury, and then, you know, what does it mean when we send our hero into the moment of their revenge, having, like, calmed them after having heard the perfect composition for relaxing.

And I think that we will see more of how that plays out as we get more of Karapika's confrontation with Uvo.

But I thought it was really interesting that the show seems to be really interested in threading this needle between showing Karapika as this figure of just burning passion for revenge and retribution, and then taking these moments to

ask him to tone it down a little for his own safety or for the mechanics of the show.

They're paying back a little bit from Trick Tower when Karapi, where Killer realizes that Karapika's never killed anyone, and they sort of ask him, like, hey, if you've never killed anybody, like, how are you going to go and kill everyone in the Phantom Troop?

Like, are you going going to be able to do that?

And he thinks on it and he's like, yeah, I can do it.

Karapika is great.

Now, you described Uvo getting

pulled into the sky by chains, but there's a tiny beat beforehand, which I think makes it even funnier, which is the Phantom Troop explains how the leeches work.

And they say, look, we get a sort of...

PowerPoint presentation from Shandark about ammonia.

Shandark

is their Karapika.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The line that really made me laugh is,

I think it's Shalnak who says, until this time tomorrow, it's absolutely critical that you drink beer constantly.

And then Uvo says, hurry and get this poison out of me, and then is yanked into the sky like Solid Snake's Fulton.

Yeah.

Yeah, he got Claw Machine.

And this is wonderful because this was the first moment in these group of episodes, even since Chain Bastard was introduced, that

have underestimated my good friend Karapica.

I had thought, I knew Karapika was conscientious and was skilled and was motivated by revenge.

I had not really put together what those skills would do in the hands of someone who has learned Nen successfully.

You know, Gon is talented.

I sort of thought that Karapica was going to be operating on a kind of Gon and Killua level.

But this is Karapika we're talking about.

And

he reveals over these episodes that he might be the most powerful character in the crew so far.

That's interesting.

So you don't think Goner Killua could do this?

No.

Interesting.

No, I don't think that they could.

I think that they might in future.

But Karapika does some...

extraordinary stuff.

So the chainsaw is importantly, right?

And that is very true.

That's the thing, right?

Which is why he's succeeding.

And I just want to be clear because of karapika's uh uh conjurer nen

kill gonakillowa could not

make chains to yank uh uvagin up into the air but we mean couldn't do this following their own path right couldn't couldn't have kidnapped one of the members of the phantom trew right is such in such a successful way and then and then what follows which is this kind of one-on-one confrontation down the road yeah

um

uh pulled into the the sky, Machi shoots, they think that this is more shadow beasts kidnapping Uvo.

Machi shoots one of her little daggers, daggers, needles.

A needle is like a little dagger for sewing

out of her finger to trace them.

And we get a little cut to

the Phantom Troop, where Krolo receiving a phone call is like, huh, someone wielding the power of chains.

This is interesting.

I don't know how to interpret this little moment from Krolo.

The read that I get from it is: this is Krolo realizing, even if the others haven't realized it yet, that they're probably not dealing with a shadow beast.

I think Krolo knows the limits of the shadow beasts and is like,

this is someone new.

I think what he knows is the shadow beasts are all beasts, and there's no chain animal.

There is no shadow beast.

It would be like a spider web

or some sort of long, eey fingers.

I mean,

long eel.

Um,

Karapika could be frog, and that could be the tongue, the like ribbon.

It would be a tongue if it was a shadow beast because it would lean into the grotesqueness of animal stuff to stay on point.

Yeah.

Um, also, over these episodes, they've really started referring to the members of the Phantom Troop as the spiders.

We'd heard them kind of called that a few times before, but that is now how they are described as the group.

Yeah, it's funny.

It did something that didn't occur to me until I was calling them the spiders in an earlier episode.

And Jack, you were like,

I don't remember what you said, but you noted that I was calling them that,

even though they had really not been called that yet.

It is much better than what I have been calling them through all my notes up until this point, which is the members of the Phantom Troop.

I've always called them the members of the Spiders or the Troop.

Yeah.

This move that Karapaka is using is called Chain Jail the Restraining Middle Finger.

A power power to capture and restrain the Phantom Troop.

He will use it for no other purpose.

And here we get our first sort of hint at a new Nen mechanic.

Yeah.

And I'm sure this is going to be the last of the Nen mechanics that are going to be introduced across this show.

Oh, yeah.

I've got the exact quote if you want to read it.

It is pretty important.

Yeah.

So he's in the back of the car.

Uvo's in the back of the car being driven by the Nostrad bodyguards and is like struggling against these chains that he's pretty confident that he should just be able to flex off and that is a confidence that will pay off in a little bit uh uh but he can't do it and he thinks to himself he's put enough nen into these chains to keep a master enhancer in check uh and then karabiga explains this power can only be used on the spiders a power to capture and restrain the phantom troop i've sworn to use this ability for no other purpose i've applied the condition that should i use this technique on one who is not a spider, I will die on the spot.

A self-imposed restriction and a covenant with myself, the proof of my resolve.

The risk is high, but the stronger my resolved, the stronger my men.

I want to shout out Twitter user and co-host user Cool Ranch Zaku, who was playtesting a game called Realis for me while I was watching Hunter Hunter.

And Wes, my friend Cool Ranch Zaku, was like, oh my God, Austin, you are making a Hunter Hunter game.

You just didn't realize it.

Oh,

everyone else will understand that once uh they get to hear us play Realis, which is exciting.

Uh-huh.

That's really cool.

And we get a close-up of Karapika's heart.

Uh, and there is a chain around Karapika's heart.

And as we get further into Karapika's revenge, the literalization of the you know narrative techniques of revenge stories is remarkable here.

The way that Togashi has codified the way we talk about revenge in stories

into

the way Nen works.

You know, this is a character with literal chains around their heart, with a literal dagger pressing against their heart that will only

be removed by their own death or by exercising that dagger pressing into their heart to destroy others.

Exercise is specifically to do something that isn't their this revenge mission, right?

if Karapika tried to do this to anyone else in the car the dagger would stab his heart yep yep right

it's a literalization of the of the the revenge story in in the sense that like revenge stories are constantly about people who have gone through hell and then who draw on that power or who draw on that trauma and convert it into a sort of will that allows them to do the unthinkable and get their revenge, right?

And yep, that's just true in this world.

And these stories are also always about the knife edge that the revenger walks on, about

the

ridiculous dig two graves sort of thing, where it's like, so often stories about revenge are about the violent downfall of the person doing the revenge.

You know, walking down that road will lead to catharsis and retribution, but could just as easily lead to, you know, self-destruction.

Sure.

I mean, Karapika's like Nin teacher basically says as much, right?

When he's like, there are people in this world who need to be chained to hell, he very smugly says, Well, I think you'll be the one who's chained.

Yeah.

Uh, but it is just

Tagashi is so good at

making these things literal, you know, physicalizing them in the world and having his characters.

You know, we literally have a character with a chained heart here.

Um, it's great.

Uh, Jack, you have this is this is a

side issue, but you had a you have a sort of pet theory about Nen.

Do you want to catch Austin up on your little theory?

On your little theory.

On my little nen theory.

Okay, this is my pet theory about Nen, Austin.

There is another

world populated by spirits and demons.

What humans call Nen is merely the result of tapping into covenants with that other spirit world.

So for you.

You told me this theory while we were walking in the woods in Michigan.

Oh, I've already.

Yeah.

We were walking through the haunted woods and it sort of came to you.

You snapped out of a reverie.

This is before you tried to break apart a tree

and you were like

and you told me this and I thought, huh, that's interesting.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting because

who is enforcing men

conditions?

What is the power that judges the truth of what Karapika is doing?

When,

like, how can you stretch this and break it?

Like, does that power come from the self?

I don't know.

If Karapika breaks the rule, one of the Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced judges is going to show up and give you a right card.

Okay, two questions here.

Wait, what do you mean?

What is a Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced judge?

So, Final Fantasy Tactics is a little game where you

over Final Catholic Church.

But you bop aroundly.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is a different game.

You reinstate the Catholic games.

But you bop around in these little isometric dioramas, sending your guys to fight other guys.

It's turn-based.

And there are apparently line judges show up.

So it takes place in Evilise.

Oh, I know about Evalise.

is the Final Fantasy 12 setting also.

And here's an this is an image of a Final Fantasy 12 set of judges.

They're these guys in big weird armor.

And they're the same ones who show up in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

And I'm going to count on Sylvie here to correct me if I say anything wrong because I know you got my back.

In both Final Fantasy Tactics and in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, sorry, in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and in Final Fantasy Tactics A2,

there are rules that get put into place in every battle.

And those rules are things like, or they're laws, I guess is what they are.

Those laws are things like, don't use fire skills.

Don't attack anyone lower level than you.

No healing.

Can you think of some other ones?

I'm not targeting multiple enemies is one that I talked about recently.

That's a lovely big one.

It's brutal.

It's so good.

It's really fun.

Because you go into

so much of Fantasy Tactics is actually a strategy game as a series because it's about building characters more than it's about applying them to a tactical situation.

It's more like, have I built this character strong enough to succeed in various situations?

And then the addition of the law system means that, uh-oh, my strategy is going to break down because I've built a character who can attack multiple times per turn.

And there's a law that's like, no, attacking multiple times per turn.

Well, this is also

Hitman's excellent freelancer mode, right?

Except what if when you...

Yeah, give me an example of that restriction.

Never put your pistol away for longer than five seconds.

Right.

So then what if you didn't do that?

Instead of it being like, oh, you messed up, start over, a big dude in armor showed up and held up a red card and zapped you off the map and into jail where you have to then go pay bail to get them out or wait until enough turns, enough like battles have passed.

So it's not like i'm being told off it's like my character is being told off so it might be like strong strong eric gets sent to jail midway through the fight and i can't play with strong eric for the rest of the fight because he's having to like pay bail on the other side of the map yeah he no like literally you have to wait till you get out of the fight go to the prison on the map and pay bail but strong eric is strong that's why i brought him That's so funny.

But in 82,

it's a different penalty, which is interesting, which is if a character dies in battle, you cannot revive them for the rest of that battle.

Like, you can't bring anyone back to life if the judge is mad at you.

Yeah.

You also don't get

a bonus.

Yeah.

You also don't get a bonus because in A2, you can say, I'm willing to go into this law if you give me bonus XP, for instance.

And if you break the law, you don't get the bonus XP.

Right?

Yep.

Why are the judges?

Because they enforce the laws in Evo.

No, I mean,

but aren't we killing each other to death and stuff?

Right, that's because because the judges prevent that.

Yeah, the judges prevent people from dying, and that's why in FFTA, if you go to a place that doesn't have a judge, like a lawless place, if someone dies there, yeah,

yeah, yeah, I forgot that name.

I think it's Yagged, maybe it's a J-A-G-D.

Yeah, permadeath is if it happens there, if I'm remembering, right?

Oh, that's so cool.

That's correct.

Yeah, uh-huh.

Um, okay,

really quick, just because I have my

thing of screenshots from the episode here open, and I'm seeing my older screenshots from

putting together the

Dragon Ball episode that went up the other day, and I'm seeing something that Dre shared, which was how

Mercenary Tao kills General Blue in Dragon Ball, and it reminded me of Uvo, so I'm sharing it.

He pokes him in the temple with his tongue and kills him.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

That's Uvo shit.

That's really good.

That's Ubo shit.

Ubo shit.

Ubo shit.

That's really good.

We should keep that one.

Uvo shit is when you show up and you're unbelievably destructive and impressive and then die.

I was thinking like Flamilli shit.

Like it's his tag at the beginning of the song.

Flamilli shit.

Yeah.

That's Ubo shit.

Yeah.

Okay.

Uvo shit is when you drink a case of Heineken by yourself.

And then piss out a load of leeches

before you go fight someone out in the Grand Canyon.

Oh my god.

So that episode's over.

Actually,

yes, it is.

Really quickly before we move on, I want to get back briefly to who is arbitrating these conflicts before we got on to the judges.

Because I think it would be very Tagashi to go into direction in two different directions here.

Direction one is this:

Karapika is the self.

You know, one has a sense of truth and power in oneself, and it is part of that truth and power that is used to create your aura.

You know,

the Tagashi that says that everybody has this latent

sort of power for magical self-actualization is the same Tagashi who would say you could make a contract with your heart, and it is yourself that holds you to that contract.

It is also Tagashi to say, it's the devil.

It's the devil or something, Or like a spirit or something.

Yeah.

I think it's the same little.

I mean, I know what I think, which is that Nen is an expression of the demon world.

But it's the same little freak that Miss Neon uses to tell fortunes.

Or not the same one.

You know.

Well, I mean, this is the thing, right?

Is that if you're right, they're two different worlds in a real way.

Oh, yes.

If there is a little demon world, and also you're right, that that would be the type of twist it would have to be.

It couldn't be that Nen exists and also there are just some

nen spirits or something there it would have to all be a construct of another layer of bureaucracy and and specialization and numeric accounting like there would have to be eight different devil types to account for the six types of net you know what i mean it would have to be something like that I picture the spirit world that Nen is attached to as Hieronymus Bosch's garden of earthly delights.

See, I picture it as the beginning of the movie Brazil.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Hierodomis Bosch, ripped Hirodus Bosch.

You would have loved Brazil.

But I think every nen type is reflected in Garden of Earthly Delights.

I think you can check it out there.

But yes, Kirapika has this conflict with himself.

Conflict.

He does have a conflict with himself.

He has a contract with himself.

As we move into 45, in the Huntopedia of 44, Worm pops out of the ground to frighten Gurn and Kellyua.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We see new shadow beast.

We see, well, I guess not new.

We've seen the first shadow beast that we see, Owl,

pops out of nowhere to land on the Phantom Troop's car and try to stuff them all into a little bag.

This rules.

I love both Owl's memories and the power itself.

He has weird little face.

Yeah, so what is going on here?

There we go.

There he is.

What is going on here?

Are you asking?

Are you asking what the power is?

What are you asking?

Oh, I'm just asking.

I'm being a member of a podcast.

I'm sorry.

Yes, and

yes, and

Owl is arriving to deal with

these fools by putting them in a little bag.

Yeah.

He does.

He drops a tarp.

Sorry, what's it called?

What's the name of his fun little bag?

It's called Fun, Fun, Fun Cloth.

Convenient Magic Kerchief.

This man hung out with His

a kid.

Yeah.

He got this from a carnival.

And he was like, oh, I love fun, fun cloth.

Yeah, he drops a big tarp on the car.

And a really funny trick happens, which is that

the people in the car, the phantom troop members in the car,

basically notice very quickly that something is wrong.

And without us really clocking what's happening, are out of the car.

But not all of them.

Right.

Nope.

Poor Nobunaga.

Such a good time for a gag.

Yes.

Nobunaga's like position in the car.

And like, to be fair, Owl lands on the car, and then what we see is a close-up

anime cut-in of four of the five people in the car like dodging out of the way.

And then one of Nobunaga looking dizzy, like he got punched in the face in Mike Tyson's punch-out.

And then the cloth expands to grow across the whole car, ties it up in a little bag, and then begins to shrink as the car like spins out of control until it just bounces on the ground like you put a Hot Wheel in a bag.

And you hear a little voice in the bag.

Yeah, the bag shakes around.

Nobunaga is mad.

There is a bit of me that as soon as this happened, I was like...

My mind filled with the possibilities of what if the bag changes hands and Karapika is somehow holding a bag containing a car and four members of the Phantom Troop.

And while that might have been more fun to think about i think what ends up happening with this bag is way funnier uh and scarier yeah uh as more of the phantom troop oh my god more of the shadow beasts show up um

and we cut away from the phantom troop standing in the road as the shadow beasts arrive apologize i just want to apologize to nobunaga because i made it seem as if Nobunaga wasn't skilled enough to escape.

No, he was in the middle seat.

He was in the middle seat.

He was in the middle seat.

That's not.

They show a little picture of it.

Yes.

Again, they do what Phaeton gives a very brief PowerPoint presentation.

Yes.

And also,

again, this is another instance of the Phantom Troop just being charming dorks.

Yeah.

This is all just a gag to have them get in a sort of cute little fight.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because isn't Shizuku who's like...

That bag of yours is really cool.

Yeah.

You just put people in the bag.

That's the perfect accessory for theft.

Yeah, that is the perfect accessory for theft.

You do see the wheels turning in the Phantom Troop's brain of like, this is how they stole.

This is how they got all the stuff out of there.

And also, wouldn't it be good if we could do this?

I think if I love the Phantom Troop so much.

I think if you just swapped Krollo out for, say, Leorio,

it'd be fine.

It would be or Sylvie.

It would be fine.

Or we lost

Yeah, don't get me wrong.

The Crows with Sylvie.

Crowloe went with Sylvie.

Oh, yeah.

And then the Phantom Troop, just what I'm saying is they would just get up to hijinks if they had a different

slightly different direction in life.

I just fixed all of them.

Because this is the first time you have been...

on an episode, Austin, post the introduction of the Phantom Troop, right?

So you didn't hear my dawning realization that these are weird, hyper-competent, but still just kind of like lovable murder goofballs.

Because

you got to put yourself in the perspective of like never having seen this show before.

They are given the world's largest and most frightening buildup.

Yeah.

Yeah, I remember it.

I only just watched this show like a year ago.

The runway on the Phantom Troop is longer than anything else that happens in the show.

And it's the beginning of Karapagus storyline, right?

Like,

you get to the end of the runway, and it's just a bunch of people hanging out in a living room playing PlayStation and they occasionally just obliterate somebody.

Right.

Yeah.

And one of them has

a big vacuum cleaner with a cartoon tongue that she uses to suck up, you know, 400 dead corpses.

Yeah.

They are so odd.

And they are the only...

You know.

Gone and Killua and Leorio and Karapika deserve the Phantom Troop as opponents.

They are like

souls in their weirdness.

But it is interesting that you said,

get rid of Crolo and they be normal, Austin, because we haven't gotten a lot of Krolo so far.

But what that implies to me is that Crollo is a bad dude on a level.

No, I'm basically just on this stuff.

Krolo is like, we're going to go kill everybody in this room and take all of the loot.

Whereas Leorio would be like, I have a good idea, guys.

Let's all get Slurpees.

Let's go to 7-Eleven of the Slurpee.

I don't even think that's a good thing.

Leori organization would elect Leorio to a leadership position.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't think I'm gonna fuck with Leorio, you know?

Yeah.

They do

revere Crowlo in a way that I don't

think they get them.

They revere Crowlo in such a funny way.

We find that in the right circumstance, Leorio could

woo people over with his like his like regular Joe charm.

I agree, and I and I and I think that Leorio would very quickly embrace sort of corralling these goofballs into stealing the money from a casino casino,

like a heist, instead of killing a casino full of people and walking out with bags of money.

This is the thing, and I think that they would peer pressure him into still being a criminal, right?

Yeah, he would say,

he'd be like, I don't know, guys, we shouldn't kill everybody.

What if we just spend the time we use killing stealing more stuff?

And you're right, Ubergin probably leaves.

Well,

we all know what Lario's theme song title is.

All I Want is Money.

See?

And he's got another one that's called like Nasty, Nasty Miser Man or something.

Dr.

Warmhearted Miser.

Yeah, that's his other theme song.

I'm telling you.

And they're kind of like that.

I love that guilty gear.

That song, both of the songs are the songs of a guy who would steal a trillion Jenny from a casino.

Sure.

It would make Leorio more like Lupin the Third.

He would look Danny Ocean.

Who he looks like.

Danny Ocean.

Lupin III.

He's already a Lupin the Third type.

Yeah.

I mean, no Unaga would fit right in then.

He'd just

right.

Oh, I can't remember his name off the top of my head.

Jigen.

Jigen.

No, Jigen's the other one.

Jigan, Jigen's the other one, the other one.

The other one.

Samurai, yeah.

What's the samurai's name?

Oh, I don't know.

This is brutal.

I can see his hair.

I can see his

Fujiko.

It's Lupin.

It's Jigen.

It's Go Aemon.

Go Aemon, of course.

Another classic historical thief.

Who on the Phantom Troop would be Jigen then?

Finx?

I don't know.

Which one's

on the phantom crew

all

a lot of them yeah thing thing's has gun vibes a little bit yeah yeah yeah

we got we will talk about things later

we will talk about things later yeah uh tiny brief cutaway to dalzaline's car uh this is a really lovely moment just of like situating the people in this chase in this various sort of three-part chase uh really nicely um someone in the car i can't remember who says for a split second I thought I saw someone landing on their car.

And I think Melody replies, it was probably another of the Shadow Beasts.

And there's something so nonchalant about the way that this chase has started to go off the rails.

And the characters are just like, oh, a Shadow Beast has landed on their car.

Okay.

It's fundamentally a farce.

Because

the whole Nobunaga, or not Nobunaga, the whole Nostrad family thing for being there is they think that the Phantom Drop has stolen all of the stuff from the vault for the entire uh uh for the entire auction which was their plan but the shadow beast had it all along so they're chasing they're all chasing

the yeah the the

brothers this is a yeah you know yeah like you said it's a farce right because there is there is like a fundamental miscommunication of of information here or a misunderstanding that has led to uh many bodies um a lot of wasted gasoline as they are driving out out into the wilderness.

People who don't need, because truly, if they had just stayed in their rooms protecting Neon and never raised the word, nothing happens, right?

Or what ends up happening is Owl, you know, the Shadow Beasts get killed by the Phantom Troop and everyone moves on with their lives.

Yeah.

But the Shadow Beasts already know that

all of the auction stuff is safe.

So they're only out for, I guess, the payback of you killed, you know, 300, 400 guys

to the mob.

So the mob is probably probably ordering them to go do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, 364 days of the year, Porcupine just gets to kick it.

And then on this one day, you get called in because someone robbed and killed a bunch of mobsters.

And you're like, all right, cracking my knuckles.

It's time to go show people what's what.

It probably is a cushy job until the fandom troop shows up.

Until your brain gets exploded by a man's voice.

Yeah.

I need the porcupine prequel manga.

The like daily life forced.

It's a lot of using your own squishy butt hair as a, as like a beanbag chair.

Oh.

That doesn't sound so bad.

So we cut back to

we cut back to the phantom troop, and all the shadow beasts are dead, except Owl.

They're all dead.

They are killed off-screen.

It cannot be overemphasized.

They get nothing.

No name, no introduction, no powers.

The supposed frog gets like a couple of lines where he underestimates the Vanderdroop for some reason.

And then they're dead.

They're not even worth the screen time.

Yeah.

The scene where they descend is one of the funniest shots, I think, in anime.

Because look at them.

Come on now.

They don't have any.

Come on now.

They don't stand a chance.

You can tell.

The frog has little glow fingers.

The one who is maybe hedgehog just has needles sticking out of his body in weird directions, but he's not in like.

Porcupine's Luigi.

He's Porcupine's Luigi.

What is the one on the furthest left?

Like, I don't even know.

I lost the table of the.

Oh, I closed.

Yeah, I closed that page.

This is calling him Mule.

Question mark?

It's not Mule.

Mule?

It's Guy.

That's a guy.

That's a guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's great.

I love it because it's also Tagashi kind of poking fun at his own designs here.

There's a little, like, I'm going to turn this up to 11 and like do a gag of my

own

biases in design.

Yeah, well, it's that plus,

and I kind of didn't.

notice this until they were all dead.

This is like a classic Tagashi joke.

Or rather, Tagashi loves, and we talked about this in the last episode, to introduce a new subset of freaks, often in silhouette, and then work through the freaks one by one.

Uh, so he's doing a real bait and switch here.

Oh, they work through the freaks, they sure did.

But if you look at these characters compared to some real pristine Tagashi freaks, their designs aren't very good.

He's drawn these quickly because he knows they're going to, you know, compare these to the Phantom Troop members, each of whom is so distinctive and so well put together because he knows that they are going to show up, you know, constantly.

Yeah, you're right.

None of these are a mummy wearing boxing gloves or a tiny person with hair and one huge eye.

Or pervert clown.

Or

trying to think of another very simple.

Inverted Christ figure.

Right.

Yeah, fucked up inverted Christ figure.

Oh, I haven't heard this last episode yet, but you just promised me you talked about Jesus Christ.

Yeah, well, we talked about Jesus Christ.

That's all.

Thank you.

I got you.

I'll be, I'm excited to hear the episode.

I just think it's really important.

it's i just think it's important every episode that we think about that jesus christ existed in this world yeah yeah and the devil and judas and yeah

interesting his ability yummy tasty wine surprise

right what what do you think uh jesus christ's nen power was

uh or alignment not python multiplication he's a conjurer right

yeah conjurer conjurer but like dips into some other stuff, right?

Right.

Oh, okay.

Specialist.

Specialist.

Yeah, he's like, it might be literally Carapicus power that we're going to be.

My contract to forgive the sins of mankind can only be achieved if I die on the cross.

Jesus Christ.

What does he say?

It is.

What does Jesus say as he dies?

It is over.

It is.

It's over.

He says it is over, but he says

it's Jover, actually.

He's Jover.

It's so Jover.

Well, that's not

a animal.

Jesus Christ is canonic.

Not only canonically exists, but is a character.

Am I right about that?

Is that Jojo?

Yeah.

Oh, Jojo.

Yeah, yeah, no.

Jesus Christ is a major part of Jojo.

He shows up in Jojo's.

Is Jesus a Jojo?

Part seven.

No,

well.

Because his name is Joshua.

Yes, actually, you're correct.

It is Josh.

Yeah,

Keith is 100% correct here.

Jesus is implied to be a JoJo.

My bad.

Oh, my God.

They have to collect his skeleton.

Oh, and y'all have talked about about this arc in relation to JoJo's.

Sylvie's the only one here who knows anything about JoJo's.

This is the thing.

We can talk later.

I think I have the episodes of Jojo I want to show you guys.

All right, that's a bonus.

That'll be a bonus.

Absolutely.

Because in the way that a lot of Hunter-Hunter is in conversation with various

other

anime and manga genres,

and there's often a sort of like exploration of it, there's a lot of Jojos in this, this,

I would say.

Yeah, we've definitely touched on a Rocky having a very, like, I've mentioned that Araki has had like a huge influence on a lot of this stuff.

Okay, that makes sense.

Because like Jojo,

I think last time we brought it up, I timed it out that JoJo was in part

like stands had been introduced by the time Hunter Hunter was rolling around.

Yeah, is I think the thing that we had established.

I watched the first two seasons of JoJo's and you don't know shit.

So I don't know anything about any of the relevant stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jack, you also mentioned that you'd watch like a couple episodes, I think, when we did the.

I think I've watched the first season, the sort of the gothic,

you know, like.

Yeah, sure.

You had started Crusaders where stands pop up.

Part three on where it is when stands are introduced.

Yeah, I haven't seen stands.

I saw a man who he really entertainingly did something with a frog.

I can't remember what it was.

He had a ridiculous hat.

He was called like a baron.

He was doing he was demonstrating the ripple, also known as homon, which is you know a breathing technique, but also when he punches the frog, it doesn't damage it, it doesn't hurt the frog, but the energy goes through the frog, it passes through it onto the rock that the frog is sitting on, and it explodes the rock.

Yeah, is that Baron Mr.

William?

It is Baron Zephyri, Baron William Zephyli.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay,

Hunter, Hunter.

Here's where we get our little

view of troop members don't snap with each other as the Phantom Troop both preps to torture Owl to learn where the things are and deals with their own bickering as Nobunaga and the car are let out of the

out of the bag.

It's such a good line because Phaeton delivers like

it has such like a specific kind of delivery and is like so relaxed about everything in a way that is scary usually, But the sort of chiding, like troop members aren't supposed to snap at one another is like,

it's so funny that they have, they have taken an opportunity to

tease Nobunaga only to be like, you're not allowed to get mad at us.

It's against the rules, which also means that at some point this wasn't a rule.

Someone was snapping.

too much and they had to have a meeting and they had to make a rule.

Troop members don't snap.

Weird.

Then they torture each other.

Then they torture Al to death.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

I really like that the show has yet to show us Phaeton's power anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

Yeah.

Or have we seen, we saw, well, we saw Phaeton.

We saw Phaeton use

the assassination technique that Kiloa does,

where his hand becomes like a blade, but we haven't seen the actual nen technique other than a little glow.

It really reminds me of the

hey guys, I'm going to reference a Simpson's bit.

I don't know if this has ever been done on the internet, but

there's the one thing of Homer.

There's like a gang war on their lawn, and there's like a little guy just standing there, and Marge is like, let's go inside.

And Homer's like, I have a link.

I'm going to just explain it for the audience.

Oh, you came prepared for this.

I did.

This is the first thing I thought of when I watched the scene because this was my emotions.

Because Homer wants to stay to to see what the little guy's going to do, but he goes inside and goes, aw, and that's how I feel about seeing Phaeton's hand glow

because I want to see what he does to those guys.

Sure.

They definitely are like, we're keeping Phaeton in the back pocket.

Yeah.

Like Shizuku, we can assume, bonked with Blinky, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But who knows what Phaeton does.

But

the flip side of this, we don't know Prolo.

We don't know what most of them do.

Yeah.

Not exactly.

But we mean like this is a specific specific scene with a specific subset of them that exists.

And so you're getting the tease of, like, ooh, here we go.

We're going to learn what the rest of this small group of the Phantom Troop does.

No.

No, you don't.

No, no.

And they've teased Phaeton multiple times as a torturer and people being like, oh, anyone that comes in contact with Phaeton, that's bad luck.

And

they keep doing that and then still not showing what Phaeton does.

And it could turn out that his torturing has nothing to do with his powers.

Right.

He might just be a a really enthusiastic torturer the impression i get is that the below krolo the phantom troop is a kind of flat structure but within that flat structure phaitan is the boss um the the the read i get is that phaitan is krolo's second in command that yeah yeah i get that yeah there's definitely some vibes of of that

yeah

uh I think Phaetan's great.

Really, really nasty, nasty, nasty guy.

We talked about this a bit

in the last episode Austin but very often with Feitan I look at him and I see Killua going down another path.

Oh, that's fun.

And I think that that is highlighted a lot in the way that they shoot Phaytan killing people.

Which is that he so they show that he's short.

Like Killua.

Yeah, like Killua.

Yeah.

Is the next thing we show we're at the Venostrad hideout?

Yeah, we're at

tied down on a stretcher.

Not tied down, buddy.

Not

coiled down.

Yeah, it's like

wires, like piano.

Can we talk about how the camera really enjoys Uvo Gien?

Can we mention what I'm talking about?

Uvo is what I'm talking about.

Yeah, we mentioned it briefly, and then I gave us our first picture of Uvo with

the chains, and then now there's Uvo laid out on the table.

There's a lot of that in this episode.

There's a lot of Uvo

doing different things.

The

way that they've got him chained up going to this place where they're holding him is so fucking cheesecake-y.

Yeah, that's what, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It gives a thumbnail to this episode.

It is literally Netflix, is like, oh, yeah, this is the one you're looking for.

This is the one.

The one you're looking for is the one with him tied up in the back of the car.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There it is.

Like, I'm kind of sh I guess, I mean, at the end of these episodes, I guess I'm less shocked that there's not a big Uvogian

fan community.

Yeah.

But

there's an audience that I know that would love this guy and

haven't seemed to really been engaging with with him.

I'm surprised to hear that.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I just haven't been looking.

It's just not enough.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, we get these four episodes or eight episodes or whatever, but I know people are such freaks about the Phantom Troop.

And you know, notoriously, anime fans definitely never attach on to like one character, even if they only show up for like an episode or two.

Yeah.

It's a thing that never happened.

Okay, there's some Ubergin out here.

There's some,

yeah, people are.

Are people freaks freaks about the Phantom Troop?

Is that a big thing about Hunter Hunter?

I got a lot of them right here.

Hi.

Nice to meet you, Jack.

Got Sylvia.

We've been doing a podcast together for almost a decade.

Hi, Sylvie.

Have you seen how hot these weirdos are, Jack?

I mean, it's great Ubergina Novanaga.

That's really, really good.

Look at them.

I guess great.

Really good.

That's great.

I suppose my question is this, right?

Like, I am watching this show in such a vacuum that it is very difficult to,

I can make inferences about what an audience is going to be interested in or what are going to be the topics of conversation in an audience.

But it is interesting to hear Austin say something like, you know, people, you know, people are freaks about the Phantom Troop.

And it's like, is that what a lot of the fan discussion and fan production around Hunter Hunter is?

Is

combinatrix with the Phantom Troop is...

You know, most of the fan production and fan debate that I see is whether this is the best arc or if a later arc, if Chimera Andrew is the best arc.

That's mostly what I see is people

who love certain characters saying the people who like the other characters don't understand what makes the show good.

I don't know.

I haven't seen that.

But of course, that exists for all things.

I do think that is

the split for the most part, though.

Are you a Karapika or are you a Goan and killer?

It's crazy.

You can have both.

They're all in the show.

Yes, they're all in the show.

But if you care about,

let's just talk about the show as it exists right now.

If you're not a Goan and Kilowa person,

then the last arc kind of sucked.

Heaven's Arena, like, you know, and now you're like, oh my God, my boy is back.

Karapika is back.

And the show does not have infinite time to spend on their subset of main characters.

As a Goan and Kiloa person.

Yeah.

Heaven's Arena is the worst arc in the whole series.

Totally.

By a wide margin.

Totally.

So it's not.

I agree.

You know, this is what creates the Karapika people.

You go from the bad arc or the underwhelming arc to this, and it's like...

Well, and then the other arc that

many of us

do that again, real quick.

How's it going?

That's it.

I don't need the button anymore.

You were in the right shade, Sylvie.

Yeah.

Jack, I was trying to learn this on my guitar before we started recording this by ear.

But like, the other thing about this arc is, I'm just going to check really quick.

It seems like it is 20 episodes.

Yeah,

tight in and out.

If I go over here to season five of Hunter Hunter, it is I can't do this math in my head.

It's fine.

And you know, I would like to be a surprise for Jack anyway.

Yeah, uh-huh.

Oh, I'm excited.

But no, that.

We should revisit this after you've done that arc.

Because I am a, that other arc is the best this show ever gets.

Yeah.

But I really love this one.

I love Karapica.

I love all this.

It's great.

This is great.

It is also worth saying that, like, you know, you can probably infer this, listener, from the way we've been talking about this arc as we've gone.

But the...

The whole genre palette of this show has changed as we've moved into the York New City and the Phantom Troop arc.

If Heaven's Arena was a breezy blue and white tournament arc,

this is often shot at night.

We have these big wide shots of canyons, motorcades.

We've got people shooting guns.

We've got death and destruction.

This is like a very dark,

visually dark arc.

They're about to rub our faces in it because they're about to cut back to what Gona Killow had been up to.

And it's just like

the same thing.

It's fucking funny.

It just goes back 20 episodes, like what was going on in Heaven's Arena.

They're just like having fun, trying to get money, doing arm wrestling.

And they have to, like, Karapika's plot crashes through the window of

the Gona Killow plot.

It's really, really good.

These are together now.

These are tied together now.

In this headquarters, where they have Uvo tied down, Karapika is reminiscing on the people in the Mafia who have died recently, the kind of sort of sub-revenge plot that he is working on as we hear Melody's flute music play.

And I think it is really notable that we haven't gotten any names or faces of dead Kurta clan members so far.

And this is the revenge that is underpinning Karapika's plotline.

But we don't know anything about Karapika's family or Karapika's kin.

We haven't seen images of them at any point.

You know, when we hear about the violence of the Kurta clan, we often go back to this image in silhouette, you know, death and destruction, violence in silhouette against fire.

But I do think it's notable to see Karapika, you know, specifically reminiscing, going through these faces of people that the Mafia have killed, and noticing that there is this absence in specificity about the deaths in the Kuta clan.

Especially because at the beginning of this arc, Karapika is like very dedicated to

like...

Fuck these people.

I'm just here to scan my way closer to the people who stole my family's eyes.

These are all people who work for those people, which means they're bad.

Yep.

Yep.

I mean, he still is that.

He still is that, but he's also mad that they have been murdered by the Phantom Troop, who is the.

It's kind of a senseless murder.

It's the bigger fish.

Yeah, and I think this is a genuine sorrow that he's feeling.

I

don't know.

Do you have any thoughts that you're able to talk through as to why we might not have seen the Kurta clan with any specificity?

I.

don't know.

Like, there's.

How did I cut out?

No, you're good.

Okay.

My background noise changed very suddenly, and I was like, oh, this shit stop.

Okay.

It's interesting because

I can't figure out why Tagashi tends to neglect the Kurta clan.

Like, direct, like, by putting...

Like...

I don't...

think they're directly on screen for at least the rest of this arc

even.

i think

i think hmm i'm not sure i don't quite remember i know that they're in a movie i haven't watched yeah they are a non-canon question mark correct non-canon yeah both the movies are non-canon yeah that's what i thought yeah

um

um but i do think that there is also and those movies were released after the 2011 series was finished right

i

i see yeah was the manga that they're because they're based on, or at least a little bit, they adapting a

Karapika backstory side.

Right.

Yeah.

If we're comfortable talking about the manga, there is some more Curtis stuff in the manga, is my understanding.

But, like, that is

two part in the future.

There is a two-parter called Karapika's Memories that I have not read that comes out in 2012, at the end of 2012.

And I think that, I guess that's my question is, like, was that out by the time...

I don't know.

This is a 2011 anime, and I don't, I think, I mean, I guess we're 40-something episodes in.

This anime may have been on when that manga came out, but I don't think it gets directly adapted

into the show directly.

I'm remembering, right?

I think it is sort of

more evidence of, Jack, what you were saying, that it does take

20

years of the manga, or not 20 years, it takes like 15 years of the manga to get to karabiga karabiga's memories yeah

is there so i'm i'm you know trying to do a generous reading is the show saying something about the way that a quest for revenge can you know pair itself down to

i think you can make that read

i think you can make that read but i also think that if you're going to make that read you have to make that read against the other thing about manga which is that it is produced at a breakneck pace right uh breakneck uh maybe more literal than we often use the phrase.

Oh, especially in Tagashi's case.

It has literally

done irreparable, or not, maybe not irreparable, but it's done major harm to that man.

Like, he has been open about the health issues that he's been dealing with because of

the schedule that manga release imposed on him.

So, yeah, so I would say that who I don't know.

I can't say enough about it one way or the other.

Again, Tagashi does eventually make this back this flashback

one shot basically about Karapika, but

who could say why it took that long?

I would be cautious about jumping to it meaning

a particular thing.

We could, of course, produce a read on that.

But we're also not getting...

We don't get a ton of background on Leorio's.

We know why Leorio is here, but we don't know anyone in Leorio's family's name either.

Phil is the one.

He's the one.

That's true.

I think there is a difference between leorio's backstory at least in this arc

this arc is about the revenge um

and if we had an arc about leorio's leorio learning to be a doctor or something i might make the same kind of like hey why aren't we talking about that but like but what if it was filmed with three dozen characters in the hospital and it was like a send-up of like hospital rom-com ho stuff

sounds good right and then you'd be like well, no, we can't do how am I supposed to fit that in?

I've already introduced 28 other characters in which Leorio is in residency.

And 10 of them have just been killed off screen.

Totally.

And again,

you might be right.

I'm not closing the possibility on this that like that.

Tagashi is like, yeah, Karapaka is so forward-focused that we're not going to ever go back to saying the thing or showing what he came from.

Yeah.

We also know that it has been five years, which is like a long time.

Like,

I don't think

it puts them outside of the scope of the story in a way that where they would show up naturally.

So you have to, you would have to find the time to go back and put them in, which someone might do or might not do.

Yeah.

I would, I, I, the, the other half of this is, I think, is maybe

if I had to make a pitch, a high-level pitch on this, why are we not seeing it?

It would probably have less to do with there is a,

I'm saying something thematically about

the relationship between revenge and memory inside of Karapika.

And this is getting like,

again, maybe production focused or genre focused.

But it's because we need to believe in the revenge story before you later undercut it.

And by saying that he doesn't understand something about what happened to the Kurda clan, right?

Or that there is something about what happened there that Karapika doesn't fully understand.

You know what I mean?

I would so much,

I would believe that there is a late...

Hunter Hunter isn't over yet, right?

And so I would totally believe

that in a chapter yet unwritten, someone says to Karapika, you have it all wrong, right?

And this is complete fan theory bullshit, right?

And I'm not up to date on reading Hunter Hunter.

Keep the curtains closed on the thing so that you can open the books.

Yeah, you keep the curtains closed.

You're not that far in.

Let me get the story of revenge before I commit to paper exactly for the reader what totally, really, truly happened back then, you know?

Yeah.

Okay, we have a tiny frightening hint of Shalnak's nen power as we see him using a fucked up little phone and a

blow dart to kill a Mafioso and intercept his conversation.

Question mark?

Not terribly clear what's going on here.

It's scary.

Hisoka meets Karapika in the fucked up first place to meet Hisuka.

I'm glad.

This is one of those.

I'm glad that you said it's not clear what's going on here before I talked about what was going on.

Because I know what's going on.

I forgot that it wasn't clear what's going on.

Yeah.

Oh, with Shalnark's nen power?

We get like four or five beautiful establishing shots of this decayed fairground, all these great shots of broken rides.

Like you said, Austin, this show is moving at such a pace, especially in this arc, that having this moment of like four or five just static background shots of this ruined fairground feels like a really nice, unsettling breath.

What a great choice Hisuka made to hang out here.

This is a very hesitant.

Because we know Hisuka, well, it's not really, because Hisuka likes hanging out in his apartment.

He likes taking a shower.

I think he's been

performing mostly.

He just likes the aesthetic.

Come on.

He's trying to be the Joker here in a way, but like not, I don't, not in a legitimate way.

Not in a...

The Joker.

Batman's the Joker likes to hang out in old rusty carnivals for real.

Hisoka is playing the Joker because he thinks it's funny.

Right.

Yes.

And he's funny.

He doesn't mind that you know that he's just doing it because he thinks it's funny.

Also,

we get just a lovely image here of Hisuka in a wide shot crouched on a carousel horse.

It is so good.

And in this wide shot, where they draw Hiseker at like lower detail, you just see the like pink flame of his hair and then almost like this skull mask of his face.

It's drawn at really low detail.

It looks great.

Hiseka fills Karapika in about some phantom troop backstory.

Members can be replaced at a moment's notice.

You get in by defeating someone.

The boss fills the vacancy if someone dies.

They're mostly known for thievery and murder, but they dabble in philanthropy.

Such a fun detail.

It's such a good detail.

Which we don't have any context for that at this point, right?

No, we don't.

No, but I can sort of.

I have a guess at what they're talking about, right?

Which is that they're talking about a real sort of organized crime looking out for people

in very specific circumstances,

in very specific places.

Can't remember.

Have we been given the name of the place?

Yes.

Well, I don't know about the place you're talking about.

We know the Phantom Trooper from a place called Meteor City.

That is the place of Phantom.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can't remember what else we know about it.

We know a bit about Meteor City, actually.

We know that it is like a site of an ecological disaster or something like that.

They call it the world.

It's called the world's dumping ground in a place that's been erased from the map.

It is a place where you're allowed to dump anything.

There's no no laws against not dumping things.

Canary is from there.

Canary is Canary, right?

That's what there is.

We got Meteor City from Canary, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Canary's from there, the Phantom Retrovert from there, and it was the birthplace of this mafia.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Hisuka replaced number four a couple of years ago.

This is our first confirmation that Hisuka is post-Kurta Massacre.

Yeah.

Which I sort of anticipate.

No, Grappika doesn't actually know who was there, which is interesting.

So it is interesting to have Hisaka confirmed as, you know,

wasn't involved.

Do you believe him?

Do I believe Hisaka when he says he replaced four a couple of years ago?

No, do you believe that he was not part of the Kurta Klan massacre?

He would have had to have been part of the Kurta Clan Massacre outside of the Phantom troop.

Because he only joined.

So you believe him when he says I joined them after that yes I do okay uh cutter clown was five years ago and the Phantom Troop are still talking about Hiseker like he's a very new member yeah sure um that makes sense also I think part of where Hiseker is really scary is that sometimes he is very upfront with you yeah

yeah for sure and we've also we know about Karapika that Karapika is both within his nin and just his like non-Nin abilities is very good at figuring out who's lying.

Yes.

Yeah, for sure.

Not as good as Melody.

That's why they're friends.

Right.

Hisuka reveals his pervert plan, vis-a-vis the

Phantom True.

Now, it's exactly what we all thought it was going to be.

Yeah.

He wants to kill Krolo.

Right away.

Right away.

He wants to fight Krolo.

Yeah.

Because

he is titillated and impressed by his power.

Yeah, I think that we set you up to have to say why you thought that Hizuka would be messing around with the Phantom Troop.

And you were like, clearly he's interested in Krolo.

Yeah, and not in a good way.

Not in a generative way.

You know.

They just have a very toxic situationship.

Yeah.

And who amongst us?

The very funny bit right before Hisuka leaves,

he gets the message from Karabika or something, and he's like, oh, I forgot.

I I got to go meet someone, and Krolo's like up to some mischief, Hisuka.

And Isuka's like, hmm, of course, and then just leave.

Yeah.

Like, that is flirtation.

I mean, and also, Krolo's like a fucking idiot.

Like, he was able to

guess the whole situation with the

fortune teller, like, based on

based on just kind of the assumption that no one in the Phantom Troupe would be a traitor, which is, which is wrong, because because Hisuka is a traitor.

But he is right about the Fortune Teller.

But he was right about the, he basically invented the Fortune Teller theory out of nothing.

Yeah.

So, you know, he knows Hisuka's deal, I'm sure.

I'm still curious about what

Krolo offers the Phantom Troop.

He's their leader, and they talk about him with such a spectacular reverence.

It is so funny.

I can't remember where it came up, but there was a bit where

they were like, yeah, Crowlo, you're the best.

Oh, it was as he was going to stand up and give a speech.

They all they all uh you know hype him up.

Um, but you know, we see the phantom troop out here, and they are frightening and capable and powerful.

And Crowlo just sits in the church reading.

Um, he loves books, yeah.

He loves books.

Look, you can't pull the wool over my eyes, Austin.

He's got some horrible nen book power, I bet, but I don't know what it is.

Or, or he just kills you with a knife.

I don't

know.

Hey, why not both?

Why not both?

The book turns into a knife.

Yeah, the book turns into a knife.

So you guys have been reading my fanfiction.

Oh.

But it's tricky to kill Krello.

He is with at least two others at all times.

When a job ends, he vanishes instantly and without a trace.

He goes to the demon realm where Nen is arbitrated.

That's where he doesn't live there.

He's not, or rather, he lives there.

He's not from there.

He has just figured out how to

do that.

You know, what greater power could a thief have than like visualizing, being able to visualize the metaphysics of the world?

The book is a missed linking book and he can go into the book.

That's a hunter, hunter, power.

That's an end power for sure.

That is a nen power for sure.

Yeah.

No, the book is actually what he's got written in the book, the book binds him.

to so the thing about the demon world the spirit world is that it is so compelling and if you go there the the reality of that world begins to eat into the reality of your world So Crowlo is always seen reading to like bind himself to our reality, to remind himself of the metaphysical truth of our world.

I love demon world theory.

It's great.

DWT.

Yeah.

I believe it, but for real life.

That's what I'm saying.

This is my worldview now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I believe in the demon world theory.

of the world.

Yeah, it's kind of a, it's a deliberate misreading of Gnosticism.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, it just explains so many things.

Yes.

It all kind of just clicks together when people leave demon world theory.

If you're reading literature on World Demon Theory,

Demon World Theory, not World Demon Theory.

No, no, no.

We've changed it to World Demon Theory.

You've invented it, but we're taking it big time.

Whoa.

But anyway, that's why Krollo vanishes immediately.

And he wants Karapika to help their goals align as we see the Phantom Troop begin to.

Sorry.

You're saying Hisoka and Karapika's goals align, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What did I say?

I thought you said Krolo there, but maybe I just misheard because I was thinking about Krolo.

Yeah, it happens to me all the time.

Asto.

Sorry.

Hisuka does claim to know seven of the powers of the phantom troop, which is funny because it's a little low.

Yeah.

There's four.

No, sorry, there's not four.

There's

13 total.

There's 13 total, and he's one.

So

there's five question marks still.

Yeah.

How do you think the Phantom Troop describe Hisuka to their friends?

Are they like, we got a new guy?

He's a really creepy clown.

I work with this guy.

They are their friends.

Yeah.

They are all, they don't have friends outside of each other.

What do you do?

Outside of their social circle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a social club, not a job, you know?

Yeah.

Right, right, right.

Well, when you're passionate about your work.

Yeah.

Anyway, it's just funny.

Like, we're like, when are we going to see Phaeton's power?

What do they do?

Like, Hisuka hasn't even seen all these people.

He's still waiting.

They're regularly better than Hisuka, and I want to see them all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the Phantom Troop regularly breaks into groups.

We know this.

In their first introduction, the Phantom Troop was split into two teams.

You know, it took us a while before we cut to Phaetan and Nobunaga and Machi and Franklin.

I think they said it's like two years since they had all met up.

Something they said.

That sounds right.

So some of them might be meeting Hisuka for the first time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They get pulled to one side and they're like, oh, listen, this is Hisuka.

He sucks.

Who's this clown?

Who's this clown?

Don't let him be with the boss unless you're there.

And there's something that happens during this meeting that I think causes Krapika to sort of accept without accepting.

What is this?

I don't remember.

Oh, yeah.

That's when that's when Kropika gets the phone call.

Yeah, what happened?

Uh, Uvugin broke out.

Yeah.

Well, Uvugin was

busted out by the arrival of the Phantom Troop wearing their Reservoir Dogs cosplay.

So funny.

They show up,

they get slicked back hair.

They, they go, uh, they just get let right in.

And

it's a fake beard.

Uh,

when they walk into the

room, Uvugin Uvogi just goes,

like, you clean up nice.

And then

Dolzine or whatever the fuck his name is,

immediately goes, like, oh, I'm fucking dead.

I'm dead.

And then he's dead.

Sphinx.

Yeah.

And then he just puts his hat on.

He's a snake hat.

Like, he's a Mega Man villain.

Yeah.

Underestimating the million.

This is his first time wearing the hat.

So it's not like he takes off his suit and he puts on the hat we all know.

No.

No, yeah.

That's fantastic.

Underestimating.

What What do you think?

Yeah, underestimating Tagashi.

Underestimating the way Tagashi moves.

It's so easy to underestimate him.

And you would think that I would be...

Well, actually, I have a moment later where I just fully gave over to Tagashi's.

You know, we'll figure that out later.

But yeah, my note here says, the troop take off their disguises and kill Dalzaline.

Someone in a fancy helmet here is new, I think.

So I was so overwhelmed by Tagashi, I invented a fourth phantom, 14th phantom.

You could not mentally connect the snake hat man to

Leto as the race car driver.

Yes.

Does this change what you might guess Sphinx's powers are?

I can't do this.

I cannot do this.

I can't make it work.

To me, this is like trying to see the old lady or the young lady in that drawing that is

both the duck or the rabbit.

Or the duck or the rabbit.

And when your brain sees one, you have to work really hard to see the other.

something about my brain is now broken with things where because i see him as the race car driver i i i have no idea what

you have said his power was when you just thought he was the race carrier race car driving keith

he thought he was a race car driver because he's wearing like a race car he's got like a trash suit

he is on like the yeah yeah yeah so now he's a race car driver from fucking Thebes in 800 BC.

Oh, that's fun.

Like a chariot driver.

Yeah, he's a chariot racer.

Oh, what is this?

Because his hat is very much sort of like ancient Egypt or rather

adventure story caricature of ancient Egypt.

Right.

A man with a snake on his hat.

And what's his name?

Finks.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Finks.

With a pH like Pharaoh.

Okay, that's true.

Yeah, he got it.

That's a snake of it.

Finx.

Because he thinks really hard about what he's going to say.

He's always thinking about Egypt.

Oh, so he's British.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

God, Phantom Troop, but if they were British.

No, terrible.

That's a Guy Ritchie movie.

It is a Guy Ritchie movie.

Why do you say what's his name, Finx, as though that's supposed to give you a break?

I thought you were doing a bit.

I could tell that this wasn't a bit.

Jack, Jack, I want you to do a little trick here.

Yeah.

I want you to take the final letter of his name and put it at the beginning and then say his name.

S-Finx.

That's a bit.

That's the bit.

Why is he dressed like a racing driver?

You can't always be in the uniform.

Yeah.

Sometimes he was an angel in a suit.

You clock in, and then you put your uniform on.

No, but why is he, why here, Takashi?

When Takashi wants to do a weirdo, he just can't stop himself.

He just does the weirdo 110%.

Have you seen Hisuka?

So now he's decided to get all koy about it with this racing driver?

I think it's less coy.

I think it's just

a new aspect on him being a weirdo.

Yeah, I think it makes him more of a weirdo.

He's like a weirdo.

He's picks and chooses when to do it, you know?

Yeah.

Sometimes I'm in my...

I gotta, I'm home.

I gotta take off my tracksuit and put on my fucking snake hat.

No way to fix it.

No jersey.

I gotta go fucking tooting common mode.

And now say something he'd say when he's doing his racing.

Vroom!

Vroom!

Yeah, that's all I'm doing.

Can't wait to get home, put on my snake ad.

Shizuku and Blinky suck the poison out of Uvo, who just breaks his bonds immediately, which is great.

You know,

Karapika, as we learn later, Karapika, Karapica has not worked this through by accident.

This has all been, not the escape, but

capturing Uvo relied on several things that Karapika had worked out.

Um, so it's not like oh, Uvo could just break his bonds whenever, but, but freed from the impositions of Karapika and the others, he is able to just escape straight away.

And Karapika now has a personal nemesis as Uvo breaks through a wall and swears vengeance.

Right.

We now know for sure that the person who's saying chain bastard is Uvogin.

Yes, yes.

He gave him the nickname.

So I know we are going long and this is probably going to continue that way.

But

I think it'll speed up.

It'll speed up soon.

It'll speed up.

I just wanted to bring.

We can have this conversation more so on a later episode because I think it becomes a bit more explicit.

But Uvo has some real Shonen protagonist

tendencies with some of his stuff.

The big one being,

to me, both his reaction when he gets out of the

restraints, the big like angry yell and the like, oh, I gotta go get that guy, is like

played in the same way that a Shounen protagonist being fired up after being defeated by their rival would be.

And then also, in a more funny way, the, I got taken here at like 8 p.m.

or whatever.

I can tell it's past midnight by my stomach by how much.

Oh, yeah, but that was a really good point.

I was like,

yeah, he like pinpoints when he last ate, and then he can he compares it to how he's feeling, and I'm like, that is something Goku could do.

Yeah, Goku could do that for sure.

And Uvo, just in general, with some of both the abilities he has and like some of the, some of his guest traits in general, really makes it feel like if a shounen protagonist went bad or went wrong, like what would happen when they grew up all the way and still had like their power was exponential or like their power fit the age that they had grown to at the same rate of development from when they were like a little kid with a tail just to stick with the Goku analogy, you know?

There's a great bit from that scene where

Dalzaline tries to stab Uvo with the sword, and the sword just breaks in half and goes flying into the wall.

But Karapika is able to punch and bruise and bloody his face.

I was going to say, I think that's

a really crucial hint for some shit Karapika's able to do later.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We've talked a little bit about the Hunterpedia here.

Here we have Brown Gonan Killiwa, I guess Sun's Hands Gonan Killiwa.

And And they're talking about Dalzaline, who takes care of Miss Neon, even though it is a drag.

And then Goan turns to Killiua and says, taking care of you is a real drag because you're also a spoiled kid.

I love them.

I love them.

I love them.

We talked a little bit in the last episode about the kiss.

And

I...

When I said that the Hunterpedia is sort of like moving in this weird storybook feel where characters are allowed to express their emotions in this much larger than life you know single joke single punchline they're the fun it's the funny pages of hunter hunter um

i worried that that i was coming off too strongly as like but isn't it so important to talk about platonic friendships you know in the face of that and i want to be clear that that's not really what i was saying i was being i was i was saying more specifically that

freed from the confines of having to think about a hunter hunter episode Gonan and Killiua in these hunter-pedias are able to say things like, I love you and kiss you, give you a big smooch and blush, or are able to say things like, taking care of you, a spoiled kid, is a real drag, and then they fight each other, or, you know, worm pops up and they get scared.

It's like a different way that Gonan and Killiua are able to exist in the show, and I think it works really well for it.

But also, why are they able to do that?

They do the thing that's so fun about this is like

this is not the text of the narrative but it is the text of the of the show and we get the going and killer who can say i love you and it's real that they said i love you because we saw it it doesn't have to have been in

in york new city where they said it they said it in this semi-fictional i mean it is not it is out of the the the realm of the fiction but the truth of the characters is still there and i love to use all the parts of a show to to tell a story and to do characterization it's because they are separate from the demon world in the Hunterpedia.

They're not worried about refuse.

Right.

Refuge.

Refuge.

No, no, refuse.

Wait, so it's because it's been destroyed by the demon world.

They've abandoned it.

Are you saying the hunterpedia is heaven, Jack?

No, no, it's completely separate from that whole sort of metaphysics.

Okay.

Interesting.

Okay.

46.

You know it's a bad sign when the episode opens over the Phantom Troops music.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

This is how we open.

This has gone off the rails for Neon's gang.

I mean, it's gone off the rails for everybody, but the Phantom Troop have really sort of clawed it back.

This has gone off the rails in a major way.

Their goal was to take Miss Neon to the auction.

She can bid on her mummy.

You know?

At every turn, though, they have had opportunities to force her to not do this and have basically said like no she'll be a real pain in the ass

unless we let her do like they they confront her with the idea that multiple of her body cards have been murdered and that the auction has been canceled and all she has to offer is like but i want the mummy hand but i won

Yeah, there's a real like you spend on some of these episodes being like ooh this mob boss who in the English dub is voiced by Bo Billingsley Jet Black's voice actor.

You're like, you're like, damn, I, I, she's, she's being manipulated and used by her evil mafia dad.

And then she talks for five seconds, and you're like, oh, she is a ruin of a human being.

She's a terrible person

who I have no sympathy for.

I have a little sympathy for, but still.

Well, part of me, part of the being manipulated by her evil mob boss dad is like indulging in her every whim that surely can't.

You don't come out of the womb wanting eyeballs.

No.

Yeah.

No.

Well, you, uh, no, you don't.

There's a bit when you're in the womb when you want eyeballs, and then

yes, when you don't have it, you're like, can't wait for my eyes to come in.

Yeah.

We get a little bit of,

you know, as Karapica's gang sort of addresses the fact that Darzalina is dead.

They have a little vote as to who they think should be the boss.

Karapika suggests Squala.

No, that would be a real mistake.

So we get Hunter Hunter.

Okay, but maybe that's just to keep Squala out of harm's way.

Maybe it's like, listen, Squala, you've been here the longest and your power sucks.

So you suck.

Your power, there are dogs.

No, I totally read that as Karapika being like, oh,

I'm playing into the mafia power structure so that I know that you're right.

That people don't suspect me.

But that is a much funnier interpretation.

I'm just being mean to Squala, whose power is.

Oh, no, he's terrible.

He's useless.

He's useless.

And he's a coward.

He's even a nice guy.

He just shouldn't be here.

It's like, as soon as they're like, we should elect a new leader, it is so obvious that it has to be Karapika.

Not just because of like the plot in who Karapica is in Hunter Hunter, but like.

Karapika is the only competent person.

I don't know.

What about that other guy who never says anything?

He literally just nods.

He just shows up and rolled this arc out of nowhere and it just hears me suddenly.

Oh, sorry, giving the guy

Linson, who seems like he won a contest to be in Looker Harvard.

They never say his emphasis is in the mole.

They never say his name while he's on screen.

They just one time say like, hey, you and Linson go.

And you're like, oh, Linson must be the one guy here whose name we don't know.

I have been writing down people's names every time.

And every single time Linson shows up, I make the conscious decision.

Ah, this guy's not important.

I need to

get this guy's name down.

That's his nan power.

He's using Een.

You don't notice him.

Uh, yeah, um,

we get a tiny bit more of the Karapika Hisaka scene actually to begin this episode.

And a note I took here is: you know, is the role that Hiseka is going to fill in Karapika's revenge plot the kind of counter to Melody?

Uh, you know, is Karapika, oh my god, is Hisaka going to be there to empower and

encourage Karapika's worst, most violent impulses towards revenge?

I don't know.

But that seems like a kind of Hisuka thing to do.

Sure does.

It's really funny that Hisuka gets to be in every arc of this show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So far.

We've had Karapika arcs.

We've had Goan arcs.

They're all Hisaka arcs, baby.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The showrunners and Tagashi know that despite being the worst person in the world, Hisuka is a great engine for plot.

Hisuka really is the C3PO and R2D2

of

Hunter Hunter.

But gay and hard to understand.

That's C3PO and R2D2.

Yeah, I remember, you know, in the Hunter exam, I couldn't tell whether Hiseka was going to be like an ongoing presence in the show or whether he was a Hunter exam freak uh but no he is the bad clown um imagine imagine this show but with tonpa and hiseka switched where tonpa's doing all this shit he's just like imagine a world where hiseka gives people diarrhea juice no i was gonna say where hiseka's only in the one arc and then tonpa's in every other arc we've seen

um uh neon's uh dad light nostrad is coming to new york to try and get neon out and he orders karapica as the interim leader to protect neon Neon.

I had a real like that's my boy Karapica moment when he introduced himself to Light on the phone.

He said, my name is Karapica.

I am the interim leader.

And I was like, oh, shit.

Yeah.

Light doesn't know who this guy is.

Light is just like, oh, there's an extremely competent

mafia,

freelance mafia member in Neon City right now.

Yeah.

Yeah, they have this whole, they have this whole like, you know, couple of minutes where they all realize that no one knows how to get in contact with light, which is why we get into

the little bit that we had with Neon being like

way more interested in not getting the mummy hand and the jellied infant skulls.

Oh, my God.

Then we have this little scene that we discussed earlier where Shalnark is on the Hunter website, the terrible point-and-click 90s website with the bar.

Yeah.

And, you know, soft pitches becoming a hunter to Uvo, who is not

Uvo's chugging Heineken.

This is where I have

nine screenshots from this series.

This is where I wrote that the troop reminds me of vampires.

Oh, for sure.

They like exist so far above the concerns of mortals.

We were watching Uvo drinking the beer.

Here, I've got that.

And then he just carelessly tosses it behind

over the dead body of the guy that they killed to steal his beer.

Yeah.

For no reason.

They could have just let this guy like

be scared in the corner.

Yeah.

Even do we know the long earlier man's name?

I do, but I don't know if it's been said out loud.

Oh, yeah, it's Franklin.

Franklin.

Franklin.

Franklin shows up with the like, here's a hundred extra cans of Heineken to drink.

Even that has the sort of like...

in a vampire story, this type of vampire story that you're talking about, Keith, where it's like, I got this from the human world, right?

Like, I guess they drink these, you know, here's a bunch of them drop as if as if the use case for the object is an unknown thing in a weird way.

Like, we're just a, we move in different.

And it's so unreal.

Like, look how small it is in their hands.

I have this.

I love it.

It's tiny.

It's like not a real object to them.

Genuinely, I had such a belly laugh when they handed the, when Franklin handed the beer to Uvo.

It was just, it's like such a good sight gag.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I love that there are two big in the phantom troop like this yeah two people who've the same like if they were if they were an mmo like uh characters they'd have the same rig you know what i mean

um like it's just good to have two big guys you don't need just the one you need two you gotta have big guy talk sometimes uh take a quick five

yeah yeah all right great sounds great

okay we were at The two big guys.

We like the two big guys.

I love the two big guys.

They feel like vampires they have the sort of like

like obvious villain protagonist energy that vampires have and stuff that vampires show up in um but i also i love the image of like

like

the two of them next to shall mark who is like normal guy in a suit

yeah and is there like they are two massive monsters

uh uh franklin is literally a frankenstein gag

uh

and And Uvo is like the same size, big giant.

He's a Saiyan.

He's Napa with hair.

But yeah,

the rest of this scene is the now famous on this episode kissing scene.

Gives him a big sloppy kiss.

Gives him a slop moocha on the cheek.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Plus a lot of doxing.

You know, real large-scale, old-fashioned doxing.

Yeah, the Hunter episodes kind of seem to be Kiwi Farms to some degree.

This, because they are trying to find out, they essentially figure out that it's the Nustrad family, and then they use the Hunter website to figure out which Nostrad family members are in town and where they're staying.

I'm so curious about why the Hunter website has this information.

Well, maybe it's it's not Kiwi Farms.

Maybe it's

like the NSA.

It is more like NSA for hire is what it is actually.

Maybe they give this information about where the world's mafia members are so they can sell it to world governments.

Yeah.

And you know who's probably selling it is hunters or people who know hunters that are inside the mafia being like, hey,

I'm not in any danger.

I'll freely sell.

I'll tell you where the NSA is.

Dalzaline did before he died.

But this is Shalnar's second scene in a row, like doing real detective work.

A little tech savvy.

Shalnark

was how they got the location of the hideout.

And now they're like looking up Nostrad connections.

And then they cut back.

This is more evidence that Shalnark is

the Phantom Troops Karapika.

Karapika is at the same time that Shellnark is doing this, being like, we've got security vulnerabilities.

They could look up at any time that where that this hotel room is connected to the Nostrad family.

And then like deploys a plan, which is like, all right, we have to move Neon, but we shouldn't like check out of her room.

And also we should not use aliases because that could trip someone up and like, or like that, that could give away that we're trying to hide something.

Just book some additional rooms.

You two aren't connected to the Nostrad family, so you should book it in your...

And it's like, in some ways, this is why Karapica, this is why the Karapica and the Phantom Troop fit together so neatly.

Like, Karapica had to be Karapika.

Like, if there wasn't a Karapica, the Phantom Troop would have invented one, right?

Which is literally what happened, right?

It's like the only one who could go against them is someone who has very similar capacities towards plan.

Like Karapika is also sort of doing a heist here, right?

Except that his heist is a kidnapping and murder.

And his hope is to do it to every member of the Phantom Troop.

And so he has to end up using some of their methodology in terms of being very explicit around plans.

I mean, like, Uwegien is not that necessarily, but the way that they planned to do this heist, clear up the bodies, get everything in the vault, and leave, is the sort of like, okay, this is a this is a much bloodier Ocean's 11 situation.

Austin, I have the thing for you.

Yeah, what's up?

This is Jason Bourne.

Yeah, this is Bourne versus the

Treadstone agents.

The Treadstones, yeah.

The professor in the field, you know, this whole like, we need to move to a different hotel room, but you need different aliases.

Yes, that versus Jason Bourne planning, as is is the, you know, I fit together with my nemeses because we are ultimately doing the same thing.

It's just what, in what direction is the dagger pointed right now?

Yep.

Well, it's towards Karapaka's heart.

But who knows?

Maybe there's a second secret dagger we don't know about.

Perhaps.

And then

has anyone checked?

Oh, we skipped this point earlier, briefly.

Is it Gyo that lets you see hidden stuff, lets you see Ean?

Yes.

Yes.

One of my favorite things in this episode.

Yeah, I've had this written.

It's already happened.

This is because it was actually last episode.

No, never mind.

This is in the car, which is they notice the thread while driving away.

Yeah.

Because

if you know about Gyo and Ian and all this stuff, I would be in Gyo mode once every 10 minutes all the time.

Well, they all the time.

They explain why you can't do that, though.

And then they re-explain why you actually can do it.

It's because if you're focusing your Gyo into your eyes to see how you can see things right, then you're fully vulnerable to to nen attacks.

Totally.

Totally, totally.

But I just mean in my daily life.

Oh, sure.

When I'm walking around,

I would just ping detective vision every once in a while to make sure that I didn't have someone sneaky bungee gum or the nen thread stuff that's like following me, whatever.

I would just have to be checking it all the time.

And I said to myself, and then two seconds later, I think Melody, maybe someone in the car when they're driving away with

with Uwegien is like, wait a second, let me just check to make sure we're not being followed.

We are

toss this thing out the car.

I'm pretty sure it's following.

They see that there's a car behind them, and then Karapika says uses Geo.

And then back to

Karapika being a boy genius.

Machi is like, that happened faster than I thought it would.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Karapika is sort of like, what if Robin was Batman?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

And Shalnock is what if Robin was a murderer?

Robin was the joker.

Wait, no, that's the Red Hood.

That's Red Hood.

Uh-huh.

So it is at this point that some stuff started slotting into place.

Actually, so Uvo stands up and goes to go and kill Karapika.

And we get a music cue playing here that is

does not bode well for Uvo.

You know, in the way that

you can, you know, set music to images and you can get a sense of somebody leaving a building, this is not going to go well for you.

As Uvo stood up, I wrote down, hey, is Uvo going to die?

Are we going to get a new phantom troop member?

And then I started to develop a second theory.

We have heard a lot about the systems by which not just new phantom troop members are

introduced.

How does it work?

Well, one of the things that we know is that you become a member of the Phantom Troop if you kill.

the or rather in order to take a phantom troop member's seat you have to kill the person there and at the same time, if a phantom troop member is killed, you know, outside of that, the boss fills the seat himself.

Another thing we know about the Phantom Troop, based on how Hiseker has been talked about, is that the Phantom Troop holds a lot of stock by members vouching for other members.

You know, we had people sort of sneering about Hiseker and other people being like, the boss vouchers for him, or Machi vouchers for him, or something like that.

Talk about using the whole part of something.

like

all of this shit.

And Jack, I'm sorry that I'm saying this, but it's not really a spoiler.

We will get to all this.

Tagashi uses all of this shit so perfectly.

Yeah.

All of this stuff gets redeployed.

It's amazing.

It's so good.

The economy of his structure work.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Just in general, like, it's one of the things that has led to the creation of this show, I think, is the way that Tagashi does this.

Yeah.

It leads to some really really

interesting work.

So, you know, the argument I made about Nen being about an investment that pays off because you've introduced a lexicon of abilities.

This is the same thing, right?

How does the Phantom Troop?

And how it intersects with the other things you already know about the world, but you don't know that you know about the world.

It's one of the things that makes the York New City arc and the Chimera Ant arc stand out, not just in this show, but among

anime in general is like

how

how

the the characters in the show feel like they're thinking about all of these rules themselves like the phantom troop remembers that they recommend people to be phantom troop members like they are they have those thoughts and then talk about them.

And, you know, the same thing happens with the Chimera Antark.

Like stuff that gets brought up is stuff that characters are thinking about and bringing back up when it's relevant.

And

it creates a really, really

interesting quilt of characters kind of enmeshed all into one big thing.

Yeah.

So my theory is that Karapaka is going to be, what is, what number is

11.

Yeah.

My theory is that Karapaka is 11,

either as a result of killing Uvo.

He's a year younger than

or by being vouched for into the Phantom Troop by Hiseker because this dovetails so nicely with the like Wolf and Sheep's clothing

hazy alliance thing that Hiseker and Karapika are developing.

And Karapi is already trying to do the Wolf and Sheep's clothing thing for the Mafia.

And

what better and more standard, frankly,

hallmark of a revenge plot is having to go go deep undercover

in the group that you despise.

You know,

I don't know if that's going to happen.

It seems like the obvious move.

However, in the past, I make predictions like this, and Tagashi does three quarters of them and then swerves at the last few into the weirdest direction.

Well,

you know.

Sometimes your GPS tells you that the fastest way to go is down the side road, but it doesn't know that that side road

is under construction.

People have already closed down that road.

Yes.

Yes.

That is true.

Or the road is a cliff.

We get confirmation of how the Phantom Troop were tipped off.

We've known it all along.

Krullo worked it out.

This is Miss Neo.

This is the consequence of Miss Neo.

What are you talking about?

Lovely Ghostwriter.

Lovely Ghostwriter, of course.

One of the demons.

The second second demon that we have visual confirmation of.

Yeah.

Who's the first at this time?

The purple-haired woman who runs the hunter shop that Karapiga goes to.

Sure, sure, sure.

Yep.

She says, Do you have a...

Do you have it?

Do you have it?

Do you have it?

Grapigo, do you have it?

He didn't have it.

Did he?

He did.

No, he came to my friends at the table, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right.

Well, time for genres change.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, uh, uh, uh, I've got the I've got a button for genre change.

Yeah, do we have the do, do, do, do, do, do, do, oh, you're going this way.

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

Nasty, nasty, mousey.

Is my mop cycle again?

Yeah, uh-huh.

Which one?

Which one were you thinking it was gonna be?

The gone theme, the adventure theme, the call of adventure theme.

Okay, yeah, yeah, I don't have that one.

Which is not really what this vibe is.

This is more smooth.

Leorio has a plan.

Yeah, Doctor Waller.

Leorio has a plan, but it is currently

it gets there.

But I did some maths.

oh it's

it's not great yeah

at this point oh leorio's plan has managed to raise them 0.09 percent of what they need which is that's about the same method that kilua had right because you've you've forgotten to take into account the mole or the fish right yes the mole or the fish or and let me tell you something how do we know that there's not a third step to this plan we you just have to trust that leorio has a plan i mean i do yeah Yeah.

Leorio knows what the numbers are.

That's right.

Does Leorio know what Nen is?

No.

Sort of.

Sort of.

Leorio could not see it.

Leorio does not have it.

Leorio does not have it.

And yet, at the same time.

And yet.

Maybe more than anybody else.

Leorio has it.

Leorio has the do-you-have-it poster in his room.

Leorio's plan is basically make enough noise that the mafia suckers you into a massive underground arm wrestling ring uh in which people will bet millions and millions and millions of jenny and it works well except except and until the road is closed yeah now this is when i just i just sort of gave up i sort of said to takashi look

you have now so firmly uh unsettled my freak radar or rather my ability to determine what characters are important or not because

a sort of

the all the lights in this underground arm wrestling ring come on and we are introduced to Ragdoll Hisuka.

It's sort of like oh, I'm sorry, do you mean conditional auction announcer?

I do.

This is the

punk.

Mine also just said punk.

The subtitle is called this punk.

This is a character who has sort of like ragged,

discolored patches of skin around his eyes.

He looks like he's sort of

sewn together.

This is the announcer.

And yeah, it looks like a weird Hisaker.

Hot topic Hisuka.

Definitely.

Abs for miles.

We have left off the files.

All this man is wearing is a sports bra and a thong.

Yes.

That's correct.

Right.

And a bow tie.

And a bow tie.

You're telling me this is not an important...

This is just a...

Tagashi just had an idea for a guy and drew him quickly?

Or this guy is actually in two scenes?

Oh, my God.

God.

This guy looks even more amazing in the manga.

Oh yeah.

I need to see.

Please show us.

Is that four candles tattooed on his arm?

What is this fucking rules?

I'd party with this guy.

Yeah, this guy fucking rules.

Looks amazing.

I mean, it looks like he has

denim sewn into his eyes, around his eyes.

Well, that's the raggedy Andy thing.

Well, in the anime, it looks like it's fur and like maybe it's glued there.

That looks like it's like stitched

into the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I see what you're saying.

Yeah, you're right, Keith.

Conditional auction announcer.

Conditional auctions.

We talked a bit about whatever.

Yes.

Jack.

Yeah.

It doesn't mean shit.

It doesn't just a bet.

It's a bet.

The thing you're talking about.

It's about

gambling.

Yes.

What's really funny is that in the last episode, I had just thought that this was something Leorio had made up, but the punchline that the mafia is also made is something

made up.

Boutagashi made this one up.

This isn't even a bet.

This is like a, hey, we're hiring for a a job.

It's so, yes.

It's, yeah, you can see, though, you can see like a pebble getting into the machine where it's just like Tagashi, the guy who like goes in and sets everything up so that later when they get knocked down or expanded on, you're like, oh, that's that thing from before.

Except this time, the thing that was set up was conditional auctions, which aren't a thing.

So that, like, oh, we had to learn about conditional auctions before so that it would make sense now.

But then, as

I think Kilo points out, like, this is just a bounty hunt.

Yes.

Yeah.

Because what happens here?

It's

a conditional hide-and-seek auction.

I need to link something just to the non-Jack portion of this podcast really quick.

Sure, sure.

That I had completely forgotten about until just now.

This is from episode 93.

So maybe there's like a through line of a type of people in this world

that we didn't know about.

Yeah,

this is the type of people I am.

It's another goth character for Jack.

Who's wearing?

I'm just going to say this, wearing golf tees.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, this character is great.

I won't say more.

So the Phantom Troop are having this thing called a conditional hide-and-seek auction, which is a high-bounty hide-and-seek game.

The most made up of it.

Being handed out by conditional auction announcers, sort of Bob's Beauties, who are these ladies with paint sort of slashed over their eyes.

They look very cool In like purple dresses, purple long dresses.

I have no idea what the deal is here.

I guess this is the compare of the,

you know, the way I see it, this sort of mafia club runs all night.

And first there's some cabaret, you know, then there's some burlesque.

Then the people come on and they do arm wrestling or whatever.

And between all these things, Conditional Auction Announcer comes on and does his little thing.

See, I think that's wrong.

I think Conditional Auction Announcer has interrupted.

Like, I don't think conditional auction announcer is part of this particular.

This is a person who is upstairs and like has run downstairs with news from the mafia.

Like, hey, we're not doing it, any of our scheduled events.

We are all looking for these guys.

This is like when you're hanging around the iceberg lounge, which is the Penguins Club in Batman, I believe it's called that.

And no one around you is like a penguin person or anything.

But then suddenly, someone shows up who is like dressed like a bird bird in a weird way.

You're like, huh?

What's going on?

And then that person is like, we got to get the bat.

We got to get the bat.

I guess we got to go get the bat.

I guess we got to get the bat.

Yeah.

Danny Devito said.

Danny Devito said.

This is both Tagashi and everybody in this universe once again is obsessed with games.

I say this every time it comes up.

Everybody in this universe loves.

Jack should lose their mind.

What, more than Greed Island?

More than literally being sucked into a game?

Okay.

Um,

uh, yeah, so this is a mafia move to hunt down the phantom troop.

Uh, two billion Jenny per troop member captured.

There is no time.

We are now just firmly in the realm of uh my quest log in an Elder Scrolls game has gone too big.

We have to ensure Miss Neon doesn't die.

We have to kill the Phantom Troop members.

We have to find the eyes.

We have to raise a lot of money to get Greed Island so we can figure out where Gene is.

And we're going to do that by either arm wrestling or capturing a ton of members of the Phantom Troop.

It's funny to see it as

a bulky quest log that is getting like too full.

Because the other way to see it is like...

really efficiently tying a thread between these two things that are going on.

Like, we haven't really seen

Kilowa in, you know, eight episodes or something.

And like they've been off doing this weird shit.

And then all of a sudden we get like eight minutes of them.

And then

this weirdo comes in and says, everybody, everybody seems to figure out this stuff with Kropica that we've all been focused on.

Yeah.

Quick, and there's money in it.

And both things are true.

These are, I think, both real.

Yeah.

Because there are a lot of plates spinning.

And now basically the entire city is hunting the Phantom Troop.

We get this great wide shot of people looking around and exchanging wanted posters.

And this is good because we have Killua saying, they're not going to be able to do it.

This is the Phantom Troop.

Everybody here is dead.

And also,

on the side of the show.

Where we are with the Phantom Troop, where we like them and want the best for them, we get that great feeling of our heroes are lost in a city that is hunting for them,

which is an exciting, you know, sort of standby.

How are they going to get out of this one?

Well, and we get the other part about being the Phantom Troop fan, which is

Killer was like, if they stole from the Mafia, they have a screw loose.

Because for Killua, it's the Mafia.

The Mafia will get you.

The Mafia also thinks this.

Right, exactly.

Even Kill, who is...

From a family of killers, so much stronger than the Shadow Beast, as far as we can tell.

Like, my gut instinct is that the

Phantom Troop adjacent.

Correct.

Yes.

In terms of power level.

So, to the point where I thought Ilumi was going to be a member of the Phantom Troop for a long time.

Sure, of course, right, of course.

So,

like, the fact that Killer was like, oh, you must be crazy to steal from the mafia.

Like, oh man, the mafia has pulled one over on the world.

Yes.

The greatest trick the devil ever played right now.

And that's the thing.

Like, it's, it's hard hard to overcome that Ned is secret.

Right.

Like, even the, even this huge, mega-powerful organization doesn't have Ned like that.

Right.

It has some Nen users, but it totally has the guy you met at the bar who has Ned.

Well, you remember

what Light Nostrad says to Kropica about

Dulzoline?

No.

They say, like, he's like, are you sure Dulceline is dead?

He was a Nen user.

He could withstand 10 bullets.

Right.

Oh.

Oh, yeah.

Karapaka's instantly like, yeah, that other guy withstood a bazooka.

Yeah, he caught a bazooka rocket in his hands.

And that was the least impressive thing that he did.

Yeah.

Like, you could have said, yeah, he bit a Shadow Beast's head off.

He 1v4 Shadow Beast and got them each in one hit.

Yeah.

Actually, he got paralyzed.

He got four of them in three hits because the last one was a shout, not a hit.

Yeah.

Um, Gon calls Karapika to be like, Karapaka's hunting the Phantom Troop, uh, who doesn't pick up as Uvo approaches him.

And we get like uh, two crowd goes wild lines as they trade off.

Uvo says, Where do you want to die?

I will let you choose.

Crowd goes, Woo, Uvo, Uvo.

And then Karapika says, Let's go somewhere remote.

I don't want your screams to bother anyone.

And all the other people on the other side of the arena were like, I got Karapica.

Oh, there it is.

It's such a good line.

It's a really fun kind of twist of their,

like, the expected thing.

It is the, it is the, the, the roving

murder band who's like, I'll honor any request.

And then it's Karapika, the nice guy, the PowerPoint guy, who says, I'll have you screaming at the top of your lungs.

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

And it's fun.

And it's fun.

And we get to the fight.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, wait.

Hunter Pedia.

Squalor is dating Miss Neon's maid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is his last job, by the way.

This is the last job they need in order to like buy a house or something.

Remember, when he's introduced, he's on the phone with her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's like, dude, don't worry about it.

I just got to give this one last thing.

I got to have to go home and be a family man, you know?

Yeah.

Well, like, and it's so clear that his hope for this whole job was, they're not going to get past my dogs.

And we got the, like, the little blow-up guys.

They're not going to get past the blow-up guys at the dogs.

And, right, even if they do get past that, even if we do end up hiring these idiots,

whatever, it's the mob auction.

No one attacks the mob auction.

Everyone from the mob is there.

Yeah, it is.

It is.

No, I'll talk about that later.

Never mind.

This episode starts with Uvo pissing on screen.

Uh-huh.

Pissing eggs on the screen.

No, no, no.

Hey, pissing what?

Pissing eggs.

Pissing out leech eggs.

Yeah.

This episode starts with a blood red moon in the sky.

Yes, we have a shot.

Oh, you have the blood-red moon.

Yeah.

Then Ugavu is pissing.

At the side of the road.

Yeah.

Red moon, red eyes.

You know,

Tagashi doesn't need to be...

Tagashi doesn't need to be subtle about this.

It's Karapika versus Uvo.

We know what we're here for.

Is this the first time we've seen Karapika's earring, or is this just the first time it has been highlighted by the show?

I had the same back and forth.

It's definitely the first time it's been highlighted enough to really notice it.

But he's wearing it non-stop, both in these scenes and in some flashbacks that happen in this episode.

I'd have to go back and see if it shows up in the episodes.

Like in the Hunter exam or something.

Yeah.

Or even in...

the stuff with his master who teaches him nen before because that's it shows up in that flashback but i don't think it showed up in the first version of that.

I think it did.

He's so calm normally that his hair is always like covering the side of his face.

But he thinks he's like shouting and it's anime and his hair's going crazy and he's jumping around.

He has a gold and ruby earring on his left ear that appears sometimes.

And as the fight begins, Karapika throws off his robes.

And I realized this as we actually saw the flashback as well.

We've had

three Karapika outfits.

So

we have like his first look that we see him wearing during the hunter exam.

The most pajamas of the set.

And then we have this second look that he's worn through most of this arc, this blue and

because usually he wears red and blue and in this arc he's worn like blue and gold.

Did I wear red earlier?

That's when he always had

orange.

It's orange.

It's like a

blue top with like an orange line through it in the first round.

Right.

Okay.

But here he throws off his robes revealing a mint and white outfit.

Yes, he dramatically throws off his robes to dramatically reveal his new pajamas.

Yeah.

Yes, his new pajamas.

And I'm interesting.

I've written down, we've seen him in white robes before, right?

I was just thinking of the white shirt and pants he wears under his main outfit.

Yeah, yes, that is correct.

Like when he sleeps or something, we've seen it.

We definitely saw him during the hunter exam just wearing those two.

Yeah, he took it off during a fight as well.

I think he maybe took it off during the Magitani fight.

Good Karapika costumes in this arc, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like Hisaka.

Karapika's costume is

showy, but also simple in such a way that I didn't necessarily notice it changing until I had gone, oh, wait.

I also barely noticed it changing from

red to gold.

Yeah, I put a different pattern just now.

It's different, right?

He has the white under the garment on, but then in the first arc, he is a long blue, sleeveless, like tunic robe that's from that, that you know, is closed up on the neck and then goes all the way down his body, long and kind of narrow.

Yeah, whereas in this arc, he has this kind of like blue shawl, blue and gold shawl that stops at about the waist, and then he has like the blue and gold pants.

Like a skirt, or is it pants?

I might be, it might be skirts.

It might be a skirt, yeah.

I just don't have the full shot here.

Um,

is this some kind of vendetta?

Says Uvo.

Yep,

yeah, buddy.

Also, immediately impressed.

He's like, he says, who are you?

You're no ordinary Nen user, which is very funny to say, like, Phantom Troop saying to someone who's known Nen for six months.

Yeah.

Oh, I mean, you know what?

I'm looking at it.

I'm looking at it.

While he's learning Nen, he has the blue and orange on.

So he got this new outfit after learning Nen.

Oh, it's his turtle school uniform.

Like Goku.

Exactly.

I wonder if he conjured it.

I wonder if it's a conjured outfit.

Oh.

That'd be kind of fun.

That's a fun way to train your conjuring ability.

He's true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is like, he's always, I'm always when Goku and Gohan need to learn to be Super Saiyan permanently.

Yep.

Yeah.

Exactly.

He's like, well, I don't have to use it as a power, but having it conjured all the time will just be a constant.

It's like walking around while constantly, you know, flexing your abs or whatever.

Which is what Uvo does.

Yeah.

Uvo is constantly flexing and also does not remember the Kurta clan off the top of his head.

No, no.

Karapika has to remind him.

There's like a big

yeah, no, it like he straight up, like, I, I, when he even says that he does remember and he's like, oh, some of them were good fighters, I don't even really, like, believe him.

I think he might just be saying that to get under Karapika's skin.

Maybe, but I kind of believe it.

I believe that he remembers once he sees the eyes.

He sees the eyes and then he goes,

yeah, the eyes.

Yeah.

Because at first he hears the scarlet eyes and he goes, is that some sort of treasure?

Oh, yeah.

And at first i thought um

he is post the massacre but as it became clearer and scary it became clearer and scarier that he he was there he doesn't remember it um we kill all sorts of people man and the phantom wednesday or tuesday or whatever yeah not only do they kill all sorts of people but they also face a lot of people wanting revenge

um this is something that the troop that happens to the troop a lot they're like we kill a bunch of people then people come looking for revenge and then we kill them he says fools like you are the reason I never get sick of killing

his life hobby is denying people their revenge.

Yeah, uh-huh.

And there's there's uh

this opening conversation, and this kind of continues after the fight as well.

It is so interesting watching Karapika reaching for some sort of justification or vindication or handhold in his revenge and just finding an abyss.

Yeah, and it is like sick

in a way where it's like

it doesn't, it is hard to square

that they feel that way with how they present on screen.

Right.

It's hard to see that.

But this is the thing that makes me go, is there something about, and again, and I'm revealing that this is not covered in the anime in some ways.

I've always been like, what really happened with the Kurta clan?

Because we get,

we're going to learn in a moment that karapika has made a decision about coming after ugavin i'm or uvagin here because he wants to know can i kill any member of right the phantom troop yeah uwegin is very clearly the most physically strong one and he's an enhancer a master level enhancer if my chains can hold him they can hold any of them right um because of what you know well maybe i'll just say it now the way the chains partially work is that they they put they enforce zetsu on you forcing you to not be able to use your enhancer or your your nen abilities so you have to break out with your bare strength um when they when they wrap you up the right way and because of that if uwegin can't break out well guess what uvagin is like naturally strong before nen yeah and so if they work if if the enhancer nen doesn't work and the rest of it doesn't work and so there's a play that that karapika is making i'm gonna go after that guy first so that i can know if i can go after the others successfully but there's something else here that karapika hasn't thought about, which is Uwegin is the one who is the most likely to not remember anything about the fucking Kurta clan.

Yeah.

And is the most likely to not care about the revenge story, to not be able to fill in any of the details about why the Phantom Troop is the Phantom Troop.

He doesn't care about any of that stuff.

If his first person that he went after was maybe Krolo or maybe

Shalnark, we might, this, the whole exchange might be different because that might be someone who could talk to to karapika about what happened there right and by making it uwegin the most monstrous and violent and you know outright clearly like is not here to inform karapika is here to try to kill him we get a really nice it's it comes across the plate so smoothly that you get to root for Karapika for all of this.

And you as the reader or the viewer never stop to go, like, is there something?

This character can't give Karapika anything here.

And so my, my, like, secret hope has, not hope, my secret curiosity has always been, will we one day get the confrontation that reveals something about what is happening, what happened there?

You got to read the manga, Austin.

Just no.

This whole bit is just me being like, oh, shit.

You got to read the manga.

Yeah, I also, it's funny because

I've always felt that

where the Phantom Troop stuff goes will

end up revealing like a lot of Meteor City stuff.

Like, what is it about Meteor City that's doing this to people?

Like, turning these people into

people that do this.

Yeah.

This is like a major thing of what's happening currently.

My understanding.

Cool.

Okay.

Here we go.

It's time for a fight, and we go into, and it has been so much fun watching this after watching Dragon Ball.

We get some shonen-ass shonen animation here as Karapika jumps up and deploys his chain,

Ubergin roars.

The chains are infused with an unreal amount of nen.

But even in this beautiful, just really dynamic, active Shounen fight choreography, Tagashi is playing his favorite trick because

we are in Uvo's head here, not Karapaka's.

So good.

As Uvo is really struggling to harm Karapaka in any way

and identify what kind of Nen user Karapaka is.

And I will say, I did not see this coming.

This is great.

This is such a great turn.

There was a fun bit.

I think it was last time we recorded, or maybe before that, where you were like, well, have we seen any specialists before?

And I had to be like, well, kinda.

We've seen Karapika.

Karapaka is playing fancy Nen games in a very similar way that we saw Hisuka playing them with making his chains invisible.

Or rather, it's actually the inverse.

Karapika consciously makes his chains visible.

They are by default

moving silently and invisibly, which allows him to pin them to you in the same way that the...

Is it Bungee Gum?

Yeah.

He lets you see them.

Oh, right, right, right.

Yeah, rubber and gum.

He lets you see them so that you think that seeing them is a necessary part of them existing when it isn't.

Yes.

And then we get some various bits of things.

Because he has touched him and put the chains around him invisibly.

It is.

And then reveals it.

So identical to how Hisuka reveals it.

100%.

It rules.

Which is the other great thing about the Hisuka-Karapika alignment is suddenly you go, oh, there's a little formal alignment between the way that they fight.

And now they're also working together.

Yeah.

A dark path you walk, Karapika.

I love this part.

This is such hubris, though, on and from Karapika.

Um, like, when you, when you really consider what's being said here, it's outrageous that Karapika says this.

Uh, in a row, almost, uh, he says, I'm impressed.

I didn't think you knew how to use Ian.

And then later, when he clocks the

chains, he goes, So, you can use Gyo.

These chains are fortified with a conjurous Nen, meaning I can use it in order to render them invisible.

And it's like,

guy, you have known Nen for six months.

This is a Phantom Troop guy.

What are you talking about?

I didn't know you could use him.

Karapica is the smartest motherfucker in the universe.

If I'm going up on Daigo in Street Fighter and I know I've got him, I'm gonna talk shit.

But that's how you lose most of the time.

Listen, sometimes

Uvagin is not Daigo.

This is something we've learned.

We get

the Nen wheel as Uvo is trying to place Karapika on it.

And I wrote down, Uvo's Nen presentation.

Well, time to have a clarification from the PowerPoint Master.

As Karapika...

Karapika reveals that.

And this is just hilarious.

First, he is a specialist,

which, you know, is a...

Well, not just...

He's a specialist kind of all the time, but when his eyes turn scarlet,

he is able to use 100%

of all

Nen types.

And what is that called?

That is called

Emperor Time.

Emperor Time.

And hell yeah.

When this was revealed,

I had the reaction of the kid in the candy store being told that they could have one of every candy.

I was just like, This is perfect.

100% of

every type of...

He's going to do amazing things.

Yeah.

Janine Hawkins said, oh, that's bullshit.

So

that's OP.

But does Janine know that Karapika is our favorite boy?

Well, no, because Janine has seen this arc, right?

When I started watching this with Janine at the beginning of this set of, like the whole eight set of episodes, the start of whatever season.

this is, you know, this whole York New City arc, the Phantom Troop season, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

The York New City arc.

Yes, exactly.

emperor time

um

but the thing is he it's not op because karapika is bound to this is what i said

this this new thing which we've we've we've touched on earlier in the episode and i don't think we need to go over it again in detail nen contracts uh where you and these are spoken about by mizaken uh karapika's teacher like they're a real thing which i mean they clearly are but they clearly are uh it does not surprise me that wing did not teach this to konakilua

Because

this is dark, Nen.

This is dangerous.

You can swear a contract and set conditions.

A conditional auction, if you will.

You think Konakilua aren't responsible enough to handle Nen contracts?

No, no, no.

They are not remotely responsible.

And in fact, Keith, that is going to be demonstrated when they start making unwise Nen contracts left and right.

We're going to get into real trouble there.

I can foresee it.

The demon world is close to the surface in these moments.

You make a contract, you say, you know, I'm only going to use these powers in these certain conditions.

The fucking judge from Final Fantasy tactics is about.

When I have scarlet eyes, I always can use 100%

of all.

It just works.

Plus three sentences.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Counted by.

My sentence.

When a dagger pierces my heart, I expire instantly.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

So

here's why I wrote, who are you making contracts with?

We've covered that.

This is interesting.

This is an interesting example of, and I mean,

this is kind of exactly what you're talking about, Austin.

I think all of us are very interested right now in the narrative stakes and the sort of mechanical stakes of speaking truth into a world,

of saying something and in saying it, making it real.

And this is exactly what Karapika is doing here, you know, saying, I will only use these chains for these purposes.

Oh my god, I completely botched that sentence.

I will only use these chains for these purposes.

I will only unlock these nan powers when I am in this heightened, you know, state.

And let there be consequences if that is the case.

And as if to demonstrate this, well, first, he tortures Uvo.

He chains him up.

Uvo gives Karapika very little trouble during this fight.

Concerningly little trouble.

And he tortures him.

He punches him so hard that the impression you get is that he is sort of like distorting his flesh, breaking his bones.

And then chains his heart with a stake of retribution and sets a contract on Uvo's heart.

This is interesting.

You can put contracts on other people.

It's not clear if this is the same sort of Nen contract.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or if this is a particular power.

So

it is a self-contract that involves someone else.

You're saying...

Yes.

I'm saying, like, I have a power.

This power will stop before your heart.

If you don't tell me something that's true, like, my thing will go in.

Yeah, you're right.

It's not putting, it's not a contract on

Uwegin.

uwegien it's a contract on himself on on on karapica which is i will kill you if you don't tell me the truth and that's that's on me like it's got you can't i can't prevent myself from doing it because i've made that contract right which makes it a good bargaining chip to anybody but uwegin maybe right this weirdly reminds me a lot of basho's nen abilities in the way that basho is able to make statements about the world and then see them you know unfold it's a lot less kind of fun and funky when Karapica does.

It is less funky than the haiku, yeah, for sure.

A deeply underutilized power, by the way.

Yes.

Basho's?

Yeah.

Yeah, Bashos.

Yeah.

If Basho had Karapika's brain,

we might be the strongest then user alive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you do have to, they set up the weakness of it by when he says, like, this chair will burn,

and it does.

And he's like, it didn't even burn all the way like it just like was on fire yeah okay here we go better words

sorry useless

useless friend squala that's five syllables yeah

has

new nen

ability

okay that's seven that is not dog-based

writes that in people knew and as we know from this show it doesn't doesn't really have to be a haiku.

It just needs to be 575.

Right.

It doesn't actually have to be

others.

Yes.

No.

No.

Develop an idea, reflect it.

In the way that they taught me what a haiku was in second grade.

Yes, it has to be haiku the way the game Ghost of Tsushima handles haiku, a poetry form that wasn't invented yet at the time that game takes place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But it's Japanese, isn't it, Austin?

You got to just whack it into that game.

Put it right in there, dude.

No big deal.

Slide.

Okay.

uh so it comes down to uh

the question that uh karapica asks uvo which is essentially where is the rest of the phantom troop right

yeah tell me this or you will die and surprising nobody uh

uvo has been begging for death for a while less out of i'm in so much pain but in terms of like i am going to i'm not going to give you anything

You might as well kill me.

So in response, I think in my subtitles, he says, go to hell, you son of a bitch.

He says,

die, bastard, or something.

Yeah, that's what mine says, too.

Also, to be clear, Karapaga is not offering life to him.

He's saying, I'll let you live a little bit longer.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true.

Which does.

I want to actually note visually about this sequence.

Jack, you talked before about much of this being from Ubergin's perspective.

And we get a lot of the chain is pointed at the camera.

We are literally in Uwegin's perspective with the chain coming towards us a lot.

And then in the moment of death,

we do sometimes get it from Karapika's perspective too, but like especially early on when it's revealed that it's been hidden and it's revealed, we get the shot looking up at Karapika on the mountain with the chain coming from him to the camera's perspective.

We get him again down on the ground.

At the very end.

Oh, go ahead.

At the very end, when Uwegien says, go to hell, you son of a bitch, we follow the chain back to Karapika.

Like the camera pulls back alongside the line of the chain and pulls us back both behind and below Karapika looking at Uvagi.

It's wonderful.

And then

the camera's in the hole that Uvagi is being buried in as Karapika dumps dirt onto it.

Yeah.

You're totally right.

There is.

Tagashi is so confident in his

voice that

someone could have set up this arc and said, in order to make Karapika's quest for vengeance

sell to an audience, we need to ensure that the Phantom Troop is otherworldly and abhorrent and terrifying.

And Tagashi,

in kind of like a masterstroke, has gone, no, I'm going to go the other way.

I'm going to make you sit with the Phantom Troop for such a long time that when Karapika arrives as the chain bastard, he is now suddenly this nightmarishly powerful,

driven, impossible figure.

It's coming at it the other way than I feel like a lot of people would do, and it works so well.

Just to gesture back towards the

Dragon Ball that we watched recently, where fights take five episodes and enemies become friends

with

one speech, as long as it gets some time to percolate.

That expectation that a fight in a shonen is going to take minimum one episode

is so powerful.

I remember when Uvokin died and I was watching it the first time.

I was like, that's it.

That's it?

That's all that we get of Uuki.

They just set him up as a character that could be in like 30 more episodes.

Yeah, rules.

And then, no, they just kill him and then they bury him and then they bury you with him.

I want to just shout something out really quick because we say the word Togashi a lot on this show.

um but uh togashi is not like on the anime right like obviously it's an adaptation but it is but i but madhouse which is the studio that does this uh it does a great job and has made a billion other incredible things like vampire hunter d and trigon and the director of this uh hiroshi kojina comes up through doing animation on things like vampire hunter d and city hunter and a bunch of other stuff uh has directed a number of other series and like there are a lot of creative decisions in terms of deathned, I think.

No, that was the composer who worked on it.

That's the composer.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's a composer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't, I think I, I think I would know if it was Madhouse, double check, but help produced many shows, including Madhouse, yes, but not this director.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Yes, yes, yes.

Madhouse was like,

you know, one of the big breakout 80s.

I mean, they were around before that, but when you think about the anime that blew up in the early, the late 90s, early 2000s in North America, things like like vampire hunter d and ninja scroll and trigon yeah a lot of that was madhouse stuff and then yes they also make that note i thought this list was a madhouse list not a that particular director list i think that you were reading talked about kojina before because i remember mentioning that he is uh advising on the sandland movie that's coming out or has come out

I think that's out and then the game is coming out later this year.

So, yeah, so like still active, still working.

But we're just

giving a shout-out to.

It is.

It is.

But yeah, just wanted to shout that out.

Yeah, no.

Very talented animation team and really like interesting adaptive

moves that they make to get like...

In addition,

I have not read the manga.

So I'm really curious if the affect of Tagashi's manga is played with in any way.

Because I know from what I've seen of the 99 anime, there are some like tonal and visual style differences between all these and not just that the little jelly bean man is flesh tone i need to go and like do more like comparison reading of the stuff that we're watching but allie will be on in an episode or two and she has been reading the uh the the manga uh and we'll talk to her about it and then

i'll say that that the closest that i get is like looking up stuff as I'm going.

Like, hey, what is this?

What does this look like?

And it is, it is, it feels, except for the parts that are like, oh, we have like specifically adapted this moment, like a lot of the Canary stuff, they've backfilled a lot of things from Canary as a character to get you more stuff

that wasn't written when the 99 stuff came out.

Yeah.

Sorry.

No, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

Go ahead.

So somebody

the beats feel fairly faithful, and there's a lot of

shot-to-shot stuff being done.

But of course,

it's a show, there's a lot of drawings per show.

Yeah, they do a lot with themes that Tagashi uses a lot, like visual metaphors that he really likes.

We've mentioned eyes are a big thing that comes back, and like that's a big thing that he likes to use.

That was, yeah.

There is something about TV as a medium that makes it really good at

like

bringing you into a perspective that also works in

books, but I don't know how well or how easy it is to do in manga, like or in a comic.

Like I've never...

I'm a bad manga reader in the way that like I don't read images in manga as well as I do in.

I can't read.

I cannot follow it in the same way, so I don't.

Yeah, I can follow it, but it doesn't, it rarely, not never.

It's tough.

You know, I'm watching Dungeon Meshi right now, and I've just finished reading that recently.

And the current episode of Dungeon Meshie is incredible.

A great adaptation of an early chapter, the Living Armor chapter.

And there are some visual things.

The animator on it, I believe, worked on the, sorry, the storyboarder on this particular episode worked on like Isaacin and Dynazon or Dynesion and some other stuff.

I believe that.

Oh, no, wait, no, I'm wrong about the director.

No, you go ahead.

But there are some choices in it it that completely transform

how the characters look briefly.

And there's a little flashback sequence that is in the manga, but there is color work done.

And then the whole thing, I believe all of the Dungeon Meshi

music is by, yeah, it is, or not all of it, but some of it is by Mitsuda, the

composer of

many JRPG soundtracks, like the Chrono Trigger soundtrack, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears.

And like, oh, yeah, this is a different work because of those things.

And when it hits, it hits, you know?

Yeah.

So yeah.

Anyway.

And now we are basically done.

You know,

one Phantom Troop member down.

Shout out to my boy Karapika.

It's a dangerous path that you're walking.

12 to go.

We cut back to the

group of

Phantom Troop remaining troop members.

This way,

there's only really 11 to go.

Right.

Well, she doesn't have to kill Hisuka.

Well,

but he should.

He should.

And also, if

they find out that Hisuka isn't a Phantom Troop member, then they'll have to replace him.

Right.

Right.

True, fair.

Recruiting someone cool.

Yeah, they're all now pretty sure that Uwagin's been killed because the fight wasn't instant.

So

that is not like Uvo.

If he's not back by Dawn,

we'll see.

It's an extremely eerie close-up on Krolo's face.

There will be a change in plans.

It's so good.

I'm so curious about

what is the Phantom Troop's current plan?

They have the treasure, right?

Oh, no, they're still going to get the treasure.

Yeah.

Right.

When I first saw this screenshot, because this is the shot of the Phantom Troop talking to Krolo,

I think my thought was

these are our heroes gesturing at the troop, and they are talking to a bad guy who they have agreed to parley with.

Yeah, you did say that.

Yes, you did say that.

You did say that.

Yeah.

No, not right.

No, not right.

No, no, not right.

It's a staff meeting.

It is a staff meeting because

their muscle hasn't showed up.

I always consider them as basically childhood best friends.

The Phantom Troop members?

Yeah, well, the ones who are from that era anyway.

Sure.

They're from the same town.

I want to call call attention to one small detail that we moved past.

Jack, did you notice what happened after Karapika's eyes turned back to being the regular color, the black color?

No.

Oh, he says something.

He says something and he stumbles and grunts.

What happens?

What does he say?

He goes, that probably took me longer than it should have.

And stumbles and like is like winded.

Despite seeming like there was no like he was in complete control you know uber you never got a hit in on him no he he broke his arm but then he used it he healed it using holy chain healing thumb this is right yes what was that one one more time a holy chain healing thumb right which is a

what is that even manipulator power uh something like that maybe a manipulator power yeah this is him at 100

Maybe enhancer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It could be.

But he's using the chain, so I don't know.

Anyway, yeah, I think he's too long.

Yeah.

He seems tired.

He seems

like winded.

Mindness.

My sub says, I spent too much time in that state, is what he says.

Oh,

wow.

That's a little more direct.

That's interesting.

Well, that's a little more direct than what's going on.

That's a little more direct, but it's there.

So I'm saying it.

Not a spoiler.

It's in there.

Yeah.

It's in there.

Interesting.

There are consequences to nen contracts beyond which have been revealed to us.

Condition and condition.

Condition and condition.

So this is a thing they actually do kind of allude to more in the in the manga.

I just have it pulled up right now because I wanted to look because

I was unsure whether Emperor Time,

if that was like a specific nin power, like that was like a like Karapika had made the contract to like I get Emperor Time when my eyes are scarlet or if that was just like Karapika's eyes are scarlet and so right.

I think it's that.

I think it's that.

I think it's that too, mainly because of the thing where, and they have this in in the anime too, but when they do the flashback to Karapika and his teacher, whose name I don't remember and I don't know, Mizukan,

the Mizukan, thank you.

Uh, Mizukan, I says something along the lines of like, hey, when your eyes turn color, your aura feels different.

Let's do the water thing again.

Yeah, yeah,

which to me implies that it is naturally thing.

But like in this panel where

Mizuken is talking to Karapika about like

almost like the nature of Nin, he's talking about how

you know nin connects with our emotions, and that it's in quote, it's thanks to that that we're sometimes able to overcome the 100% limit, but it's never fine

because overcoming the strength we have creates a lack somewhere else.

It can become a weak point, sometimes even fatal.

It creates a lack somewhere else, and I know where.

And hey, you know,

maybe we're seeing Demon World.

See echoes of Castro in that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And maybe we'll learn more about the sort of weaknesses that going above your limits can impose on a person.

Now,

is this just the way the shot was done?

Or does Carlo have multiple pupils?

Which shot?

Let's see.

The screenshot that I showed.

It does

straight in on his face.

The pupils of his eyes leaking into the eyes right now.

That's fun.

It's very fun.

I don't know.

Yeah.

It could just be the shadow.

I think that's more what it is.

Yeah, I think that Krullo is kind of a freak, and they wanted to emphasize that by showing himself to this point.

He could fall into them.

Krullo has had.

Krello has had two minutes of dialogue in the entire show so far.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hunterpedia is Uvo who crashes through the screen to gun and kill you as shock.

A running gag that I love, and again speaks to Hunterpedia as being a different kind of reel,

just as real, but a different kind of reel than the show itself, is how often characters will be killed in the show and then introduced in the Hunterpedia.

Hi, it was me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

This is Baze, who we, you know, we just saw Baze get absolutely destroyed by a vacuum cleaner.

She kisses people, etc.

She sure does.

She sure does.

That is Baze's power.

But I think that's

all I have to say about this stuff.

Does anybody else have other stuff they want to make sure they hit?

I think we've got everything important that I wanted to say.

I think that's everyone.

This has been an extremely long one, but a real banger.

A banger.

Yeah.

This one deserved to be long.

Thank you for coming on, Austin.

Yeah, thank you again.

This is, again, so this is why I picked, this is why I wanted to do the previous one, right?

Which is this is the payoff, which is actually the big thing I want to say, right?

That, like, hey, you know what a specialist is.

Three episodes ago, you thought, have we met a specialist?

Uh, you understand that that, like, other, that, because what Keith was saying, too, before about what makes Hunter Hunter so good is characters know the rules too, and they, but that, but they're still, um, that doesn't mean that they understand their rules perfectly, right?

Right.

And so you have Krolo and Uwegien being like, hmm, sounds like a conjurer or a manipulator.

It's great when they cut back to Krolo Krolo, echoing the same thing, either conjure or manipulator.

We don't know.

We don't know.

And on top of that,

fundamentally, it's just like you were given a cool...

You were given maybe an overwhelming amount of information delivered maybe dryly.

But now that we're deep enough in that you internalized it,

the writer can start playing with it in surprising and fun ways and begin revealing

new

folds of knowledge and new variations on what's there.

And now that it's being deployed by a character that you care a lot about in a way that's delivered directly without it needing to be, without the core stuff needing to be set up, it also can hit in an emotional sense.

And like, I think that you're, that we could all wish that Heaven's Arena was like better, but I think that you do get something by kind of quarantining.

the place where you get the core nen explanation in a sort of dry formulaic tournament arc you gotta eat your vegetables before dessert.

I said this in the first episode where we talked about Heaven's Arena.

It is, for me, the

arc that improves more than any other arc upon seeing it again.

I know we've been going long, Jack, into one sentence so that we can get out of here.

How are you feeling about Ned here in York New City, halfway through this arc?

Pro.

Comma.

We said the words freaks and weirdies a lot in the last couple of episodes.

And if you are listening and saying, I wish they'd stop saying that, you're overusing that as a joke.

If you are not watching the show along with us, you do not realize how deep we are in freaks and weirdies territory.

I cannot apologize.

It would be like if we were making a show about botany and you were complaining about us talking about tall trees.

We are surrounded by freaks and weirdies, and it must continue.

I respect you using your sentence to mostly talk about something else.

No, no, no, because, because the freaks and weirdies, that's Nen.

That's Nen.

That's Nen.

That's Nen, baby.

Nen will turn your tongue into a reverse straw to deposit leeches.

It will.

You know what?

Never mind.

Nen will let you make a devil contract with your own heart.

With your own heart.

This has been Media Club Plus.

You can find the bonus episodes of this show at friendsofthetable.cash.

You can subscribe to the RSS.

They're also just there to listen to.

You can catch us on Twitch and YouTube at twitch.tv slash friends of the table and youtube.com slash friends of the table.

A lot of good stuff going there.

By the time this is out, we will have recorded our second, I think.

It's on the schedule.

Fuck, what is the name of that?

That game with the scary game that's funny?

Lethal Company.

Lethal Company.

We did one.

That's on the YouTube, that first episode.

That was great.

You should go watch that if you haven't seen it.

I edited it together.

Three different perspectives to do a fun little Lethal Company movie.

I think it came out really good.

Thank you for doing that.

It was a blast.

Anything else to plug at the end?

I just want to say, look at how good the outline is on Ubergin's face during the sequence where he's getting tortured.

They do such good work.

That's all.

The line was.

Look at that.

Oh, my God.

It's incredible.

Yeah.

This thick black line.

It's not anywhere else in this this sequence.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's it.

Bye.

Oh, no, wait, Keith, no, wait, Keith, Keith, Keith, wait.

What are we watching next?

Oh, next, we're watching episodes 48, 49, and 50.

And the titles of those episodes

are.

And I'm going slow for effect.

Yeah, of course.

You're not looking anything up.

While you're going slow, I want to say, when he says,

it enforces Zetsu, this is what I mean by it was worth it.

Because we all know what that means with three words.

Right.

And we couldn't have known that otherwise.

Anyway.

Very sharp eye.

Oh, fun, great new character in the next episode.

Very sharp eye.

Oh, yes.

That's true.

Pursuit and analysis.

And Ally and Sword.

Excellent.

Great set of episodes.

Oh, my God.

It's insane that the next set is still

Yeah.

Good arc.

Yeah, good arc.

Very good arc.

And good night, everybody.

Good arc and good night.

Good arc and good night.

Stupid.