By The Way, I'm Not Sorry - Hunter x Hunter ep. 22-25: Media Club Plus S01E08

Hey everyone, it's Keith with a quick announcement up top.

Next week on the 19th, Tuesday the 19th, we're going to be dropping our first ever bonus episode for Media Club Plus.

It's the first of

two that we have planned.

We're not going to do this every month or

we have no set number of bonus episodes that we're going to do, but we have a few ideas.

So I'll be sure to drop notifications in here when we got bonus episodes coming out.

But if you want to take part in the bonus episodes, episodes, you can sign up at friendsofthetable.cash at the $5 level.

That gets you all of the friends at the table normal rewards, plus now the Media Club Plus bonuses.

We're watching 10 episodes of Dragon Ball, original Dragon Ball.

The episode that's coming out next week is covering episodes 1, 2, and 3,

and 11 and 12 from season 7, the Tian Chinhan saga of Dragon Ball.

That's episodes 83, 84, 85, 93, and 94.

So, yeah, if you want to watch along with us, those are the episodes to watch coming out next Tuesday.

Friends at the table.cash, $5 level.

Thank you.

You should sign up.

It's really good.

We went wild just telling Jack a bunch of Dragon Ball stuff and Dragon Ball Z stuff that they've never heard of.

It was hilarious.

Okay, bye.

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 J.

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.

You can find friends of the table at friendsofthetable.cash.

That's our Patreon.

Also,

twitch.tv slash friends of the table and youtube.com slash friends of the table and friendsofthetable.shop.

We've got a new merch storefront with new friends of the table related merch up there that you can check out.

With me, as always, is Jack Takeet.

Hello, you can find me on co-host at JDQ, and you can get any of the music on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.

Sylvie Bullet.

Hi, I'm Sylvia.

You can find me anywhere at Sylvie Bullet.

Also, because this we're recording this like months or two in advance, go to emoboyskissing.bandcamp.com.

My band's there.

Yeah.

That'll be...

There's nothing there now, you're saying this will be not there.

There's nothing there now, but we, like, we're, we're in the process of recording things.

All right.

Yeah, this is so long from now that this will be

four months.

Fuck yeah.

I love that.

There's so much less pressure knowing people won't hear this for ages.

I will say that there is a unique kind of pressure to having almost half a year's worth of recording on my drive.

Fair.

Sure.

That I just totally can nothing to you it's just like oh nothing can happen to this or we're fucked we're just totally

yeah upload it to the drive yeah i'll put backups on the drive or something uh andrely swan

hey uh you can find me on twitter at swanjara3000 and i guess since you'll be hearing this month from when we're recording it it's it's safe to plug friends at the table dot shop oh yeah yeah yeah oh i just went for it i just said that

oh yeah okay yeah yeah i was too busy while you were talking talking, the ice cream truck noise was happening, and I was way more interested than

that.

Do you need to go get a Teenage Ninja Turtle gumball eyes?

No, I just, it was scary noise.

Okay.

Can you get me a Sonic the Hedgehog gumball eyes?

No, I do.

It's just, it was like

it was in, like, coming through like voice over IP, the noise was like distorted, so it sounded like, oh, it's the creepy horror music.

You thought it was like a Five Nights attracted.

It's a Freddy's situation.

Exactly.

Yeah, you thought Freddy Fazbear was here.

And today, special manga consultant,

Ali Agampura.

Hi.

Hi, hello.

I have a question to start.

Yeah.

We don't clap on this show.

It's fucked, right?

Thank you.

Which makes you feel better.

We can clap.

Do we do a 3-2-1 clap?

It's very fucked up.

You're right, Allie, and you should say it.

Do you just want one just in case?

Just in case what?

I don't know.

Just in case.

If I'm talking him into this,

I'm a twisted fucker.

What happens, Ali, is when we say this, I'm so glad you get to experience this.

He says it like this.

He says, well, we can do a clap for you.

If we get to a point.

It's with so much disdain, too.

It's not even disdain.

It's like when

a kid hands you like a teacup and tells you to drink it when there's nothing in it.

It's like, that's what we're the kids.

It's a control that's not connected to anything.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I'm trying to imagine a scenario where

something would happen and we need a clap and even still have an episode to put out.

It just makes it easier, doesn't it?

Even if you have a backup?

No.

I mean, let's just do it.

What did I just want to do?

Can we do a 3-2-1?

Three, two, one.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

You're welcome.

Hi, everybody.

That's going to be in the tie.

That whole bit's not getting tight.

I can feel it.

Never know.

We'll see how we'll see how I feel.

We'll see how it feels.

Allie, did you have a plug or did you just want to?

You know, you can find me around on the internet.

I have the social, I'm over on AllieWest on twitter.com.

Twitter.com doesn't even exist anymore.

So you don't have to go there.

I have a show similar to this, but not very.

There's a Star Wars podcast where I was watching Clone Wars and then I was watching Rebels, but I can't do that anymore.

So now we're playing Kotor.

You told me that you were playing Kotor and it didn't occur to me that it would be for anything other than the enjoyment of playing Kotor.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

But now I get it.

Uh-huh.

You'll probably be done with that game by the time this goes.

No, that's not true.

That's not fair.

No.

No.

But you'll be very deep into it, probably.

Yeah, we'll be

close.

How far in are you as of now?

We're not even off of Taurus yet.

Yeah, Taurus is long.

Yeah.

I like Taurus.

I'm a Taurus defender.

Yeah.

Karth defender?

Yeah, I actually don't understand.

I don't even, like, I can't even figure out how you could ever feel any way besides like neutral about Karth.

I don't even see.

Well,

there's a couple reasons.

Oh, if you're playing as a girl, Karth is the worst.

I always forget about that.

Karth is way worse.

Also, if you have a really high charisma, he will try to talk to you every five seconds.

Yeah, but that's not, that's the thing.

It's like really, you can't, you can't hold that against Karth.

That's not Karth's fault.

It is not Karth's fault that Rob made the worst build that anyone's ever made.

I'm just saying, I've played that game before and not, like, getting out of the apartment complex, Karth wants to talk to you.

Not being able to walk across the street before he wants to talk to you again.

that I can't get into the second building in this video game before this man wants to tell me he doesn't trust me.

It's funny.

I remember it.

It's funny that this came up that you started playing this because I was playing Baldur's Kate last month, like right before the first episode of the show dropped.

And I was playing through Baldur Skate 3.

And I was like, wow, they haven't really gotten better as a genre.

of or even as media video games have like not improved on how well you can tell a story since coachar one Like, that is the level that we're still.

Wow, that's a take.

Yeah.

Holy shit.

I really do think it's like I'm watching, I'm watching cutscenes in Baldur's Gate 3, and I'm like, this

could have just beat Kotor.

Have you considered that they are the same genre?

They are the same genre, but they are most CRPGs.

Have you considered that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

No, I'm with you.

No, Keith, I'm 100% with you on this take because as someone who has beaten Baldur's Gate 3 and liked it,

as I finished it, I was like,

this looks better than Baldur's Gate 2, but it's the same thing.

Yeah.

It's the same thing.

I don't think, and the thing is like, yeah, it's a CRPG, but

venture outside the CRPG, RPG genre.

And like, what is mainstream video games delivering in story that a CRBG isn't?

You know what I mean?

Like, now I'm playing Starfield, and I'm like, this is even worse.

Well, okay.

Well, come on.

He's not going to be talking about the taste of Soylent.

Like, come on now.

I think Soylent tastes fine.

Okay, we need to fucking talk about anime.

Okay, these episodes are kind of nuts.

I love these episodes.

We watch four.

Is this our first four?

This is our first four.

We had a four scheduled, but because of scheduling issues, we changed it.

We added an episode to the season to split up to four.

Yeah, so we created

like two threes and a two out of what was a four.

Yeah.

So, quick recap, Goan continues the like the Hanzo fight style of bullheadedness, the self-endangering, I'm going to get my way sort of attitude that he kind of develops in the middle of the

Hanzo fight by following Kilwa to Assassin Mountain,

actually called a Kuckaroo Mountain.

Kuckaroo Mountain.

And insisting on being allowed to be eaten by the dog that they have that is the size of a house.

A Mike.

Love Mika.

Mika is Mikke, but spelled

Mike.

Yes, Mike the dog.

Mikai's terrifying.

Great thumbnail.

This is one of the very good thumbnails of.

I don't know if everyone has the same thumbnail, but it is just like the horrible image of this evil dog,

Mike.

Anyway,

he's convinced to not be killed by Mike because the very, very nice

fake security guard, Zebro, is like, hey, if you get eaten by this dog, I'm going to be in big trouble.

And Gonzalez, oh, okay, sorry.

So instead, they train in a house full of Piccolo's training gear, the heavy clothes, maybe Rocket Lee's training gear, if you need that.

Yeah.

It's just heavy cups, heavy teapots, heavy chairs, heavy doors.

Heavy bathroom doors.

Very heavy bathrooms.

It's 500 kilograms.

That's 1,100 pounds, if you're curious.

We also get a taste of what Ilumi references in the last episode about how they live in different worlds.

You know, Goan is never going to be able to get to Kilua.

They just live in different worlds.

It's not true.

They do get to Kilua.

But we get a great taste of this when

Zebro explains the rules to the door.

Someone want to quickly say the rules to the door?

Oh, you mean the fake door and the real door?

The fake door and the real door.

So they have the fake door.

We'll go over the fake door, but what are the, how heavy is the real door?

Oh, I don't have the exact.

I have the exact if no one else has the exact.

It was, so the first door is like two tons.

Two tons.

Every other door is twice.

It's two tons per side, so four tons.

And then, yeah, it is like a series of increasingly heavy doors that every time you walk through it, it tests how strong you are.

Going two tons, sorry, four tons, eight tons, 16 tons,

32 tons, 64 tons.

And I think that there's the highest one is 128 tons.

Maybe 64.

It's like 67 doors.

Oh, it does go.

So it goes even higher.

Okay.

Kilua.

I'm like gone trying to do that math.

Sounds a great seed.

Kilua, for example,

got through 16 tons worth of doors.

That's metric tons.

That's

000 pounds um jack has been thinking a lot about how strong kilua might or might not be um

through these first uh 20 something episodes and this is our first like

we have a range he he's strong somewhere between uh 16 metric tons and 32 metric tons hey i have uh i have an important thing to contribute okay

uh i googled googled things that weigh about 16 tons.

You want to know some things that weigh about 16 tons?

Yeah, of course I do.

Around 54 tigers.

Okay.

Around.

There's like some wiggle room.

Yeah, there's some wiggle room.

Your average tiger, 16 tons.

About

six and a half blocks from the Great Pyramid of Giza.

How many?

Six and a half.

Six and a half.

And honestly, that is like kind of what the door looks like.

This is all just

half of this article is just numbers of animals.

57 pigs.

What?

27 horses and 21 cows.

Are you telling me that the pigs they measured were barely lighter than the tigers?

That's a good point.

I mean, pigs are pretty fucking heavy.

Pigs get big, but I guess tigers are lean.

Yeah.

I've seen it.

I've seen cats.

I know what a big cat would look like.

32 grand pianos, one of Brideswale.

Okay, so it's one Brides Whale.

That's perfect.

Yeah.

That's a one-to-one with something we all get, is a Brideswale.

Not since the start of the Hunter exam have we had such a paradise for freaks.

It's been a long, sort of time since we've had a bunch of new characters.

It was a breath of fresh air.

We got introduced to person after person after person, starting with the two most normal people and getting to the biggest freaks right at the end.

It was great.

We met a bunch of the Zelda family.

We met a bunch of their employees.

And we get to see all of their personal interests and their relationships with my best friend, Kiloa.

Hold on, second.

Kilo is my best friend.

I said it first.

God damn it.

I called Dibs on Goan.

Gonzal my best friend.

Whoa.

Sylvie's getting out shotgunned.

Jack, Jack, quick, call Karapaka.

And then Sylvie has to hang out with Leorio.

I'll take Leorio.

You're going to make me hang out with Leorio?

You saw what she did last hour with Leorio.

Sylvie, you can hang out with Pacle.

Fine.

You don't want to play fun trivia games with Leorio?

Hang out with the Blowjob brothers when we're matching out.

Is this at a Leorio respect zone?

Yeah, no, I love Leorio.

Oh, yes.

Also, I don't want to be alone in a room with Leorio.

Leorio is,

in a lot of other shows, would be

the joke character that everyone hates, but in this one, he's the joke character that everyone loves.

But

has to just be put up against the three,

you know, the three best boys.

Also, though, is the joke character that can push two tons worth of door

with a little help.

Well, yeah, but like Karapaka also needed his side.

He got his side for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He wears a little suit.

He wants to go to school.

Medical

school.

No, nothing.

I love Leoria.

He's a nice young man.

He is just also a little bit of a pervert sometimes.

He is a pervert.

He can get big angry.

He does.

That's where he's no recovery on his passion.

Hey, Allie, I'm going to hang out with you and Leoria.

Come on, come on.

We get some new music in this episode.

We got a taste of new music in the last episode.

We got the song Family.

Wait, is that the name of the song?

I might have got

the Zoldic theme.

Yeah.

I might have accidentally gotten the name of a different Zoldic theme from one of the movies by mistake.

Fair enough.

Anyway, it is like the choral-like,

you know, they're screaming, they're singing like Zoldics are the best, Zoldic are the best, but in Latin.

Yeah, basically.

Uh,

and then we get uh, this episode, we get the intense guitar solo determination music, which is awesome.

The uh, we know,

we know

everyone knows what I'm talking about.

No, I do know what you're, I, I, I puck real hard when that uh showed up.

I got so excited.

Yeah,

uh, any

comments on the the beginning of this first episode?

Anybody have anything that's

there's um the intro is different

we don't get the big monsters uh mystical treasures this is gone oh like the narrator intro yeah we get it's a cold open

it's solved now they they consider what is a hunter asked and answered we now know it's our three friends it's someone who passed a hunter hunter exam is what a hunter is

yeah i actually missed that i i did i pressed pressed the skin intro button, and so it went right past him.

Fake fans.

Fake fans.

Yeah, I don't watch the intro every time.

Killua's going to be my friend now.

Damn.

Kill cares about watching intros.

I think the first thing that I kind of want to touch on in this episode is the way that the arrival to Cookeroo Mountain and the headquarters of the

infamous, feared, murderous Zeldic family, who are, you know, first encounter with a Zelda family member other than

Kiliwa was was Ilumi's terrifying sort of

intro at the end of the hunter exam yeah like very dracula like

yeah like thunder and lightning Kougaramount and it is I think really clever and I think super in keeping with the way that the show

talks about its world.

The way we are actually introduced to the Zeldix proper is via a tour bus with a woman on a tour bus.

The bus only runs once a day, but you will have a guide.

This is called Lamentation Tours.

I fucking love it.

Lamentation Tours.

I made a note and I need to see if I can just read this and if you all are like, yeah, no, that makes sense or if you think I'm insane.

This tour guide lady looks like a Pokemon character.

Oh, she is

super

happy.

Oh, shoot.

Yeah.

Also, do you guys want to guess what her name is?

It's only in the 1999 anime.

What is her name?

What is her name?

Her name is Kelly Lou.

Oh, sorry.

It's not in the manga.

It's not in the mango.

Oh, it's just in the 99 anime.

Okay, what was her name?

Coco Loo.

And she works at Kukaroo Mountain.

Coco Lou from Kukaroo?

Yeah.

Oh, that's good.

She shows up and she's got her little microphone and she is saying, you know, that

here's where the Zaldic family lives, and they are rumored to live somewhere on the mountain, though nobody has ever seen the house.

She gives us a little background.

She says that the Zaldic family has 10 members.

I love that she's giving us like the little fact sheet from this tour.

And we get an outline of everyone.

And we do get an outline of everyone, but I think that's...

Including Tommy Pickles.

I literally wrote that down in my thing.

I'm so glad, Keith.

I'm so sorry.

I literally wrote Tommy Pickles.

That's funny.

Yeah, and so they show up and they do a little photo op outside the gate, which is called the door to Hades.

This is this sort of like uh um

this ridiculous door that we've already talked about.

Everybody goes out and takes some pictures.

Two guys show up and they're like, oh, if we can get a picture of the of any Zelda assassin, we can get lots of money.

Leario is mad because he wishes that they had taken a picture of Killila

and got a lot of money.

And then in go the two guys in through this little door and are instantly turned into skeletons, just murdered via the game.

Yeah, it is just they run through the thing and it's just screaming, screaming, screaming.

And then this hand comes out, a monstrous hand comes out holding the skeletons, and the tour group, you know,

bounces and leaves.

Most popular spot on the tour.

What,

the door?

Yeah, they do.

Yeah,

the Kukaroo Mountain gate is like, I think they say it

in

one of the intros or outros after this.

They're like, it's the most popular spot on the tour, which is very funny.

It's not just on the tour, it's like the feature of the tour.

Yeah.

And I think that, like, in the way that we've talked about the hunter exam as being this,

the existence of hunters in this world implies this bizarre, heightened reality, where,

you know,

the whole world is a freak's paradise, as you put it earlier, Keith.

And I think the fact that it's like

there is this murderous family of assassins who are ultimately also a tourist destination for a lot of people in this world is fascinating.

And is a kind of twist on what Ilumi said at the end of the hunter exam, where he was like, we don't exactly...

Locals know about us.

And at the time, I'd sort of imagine this little mountain and, you know, like local villagers being like, oh, the assassins live up on the mountain.

But now that I think about it, it's so much in keeping with the way this show thinks about

the

weird and the mundane sitting like cheek by jowl,

that they're just a tourist destination.

Yeah, yeah.

Can we rewind, actually?

Because Allie, this is your first time on the show.

How is your experience catching up with the manga?

It's been fun.

It's been good.

So

I read the manga up to this point, and then I also watched the episodes.

Oh, you did?

Yeah.

Well, just to like, to like

be able to keep up with the conversation.

Also, just like

know how to pronounce names and like understand how differently it's packaged.

And I was like, did you watch all of them?

To the no, no, no, just the, just the, the set for this, this episode, um, 22 to 25.

Um, and like

there's a real tonal shift.

I don't want to say there's a tonal shift.

I guess like the

manga is also like sort of campy and fun and lighthearted, even when like fucked up things are happening.

Yeah.

But like the music in the show and like the way that each of these episodes open up with like this like really pleasant narrator talking about pastoral like the mountaintop where the assassins hang out

was not what I was expecting.

I guess the other thing is like like,

this is my first experience doing something like this where it's not like, oh, I've watched the thing once and a couple years later, I'm going to read it, or I'm just going to read this thing

and later the anime comes out.

So I'll check it out.

Like doing it side by side, the thing that stuck out the most is like how much time

this series of things took versus how long it does in the manga because it's just like, here's a person, we'll fight them.

Here's a weird building.

Well, we're going to hang out in in it.

Okay.

Now everything's resolved.

And that like took me like an hour to

read it or whatever.

Whereas in the show, it was like there was more backstory and you get more of these characters, which is really fun.

But I was also just like, oh, okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yep.

They're in the house now.

It's funny that.

It's funny that

the

I know that this is actually true a lot of the time for anime adaptations of manga where like actually the anime gets more time to breathe, not less, which is i think uh for

uh like

movie adaptations of books or tv show adaptations of books in america i feel like usually it's like oh the the the adaptation leaves out all of this detail uh but it ends up being the opposite for a lot of

um anime which is kind of funny i didn't it didn't occur to me that you would be breezing through these chapters in the manga and then because i do actually have a line in here it is is one of the slower sections in the show so far uh gone's like super healing ability kicks it just in time for this sub arc not to drag um

yeah they spend about uh they spend about

just over one episode training and then gone's arm is fine and uh he can solve the day which is uh at like basically perfectly timed.

If it was any longer, it would have been like, okay, come on.

I like Zebro and Sequant Sequant as much as the next guy.

Those are the names of the.

They pretend to be security guards, but they're actually

just there to show intruders how to get in, which is really funny.

The whole thing is that it's just to, no one that's going to invade can actually get up there.

That is the, that is at least what the Zolviks think.

So instead of letting people damage the gate, they sort of funnel people through the gate to just get eaten by Mika.

Zebro says something really funny, which is for some reason, 80 to 90% of intruders just try to go through the front gate, which is really funny.

And also, probably

exactly what they want.

They don't want people blowing holes in the gate.

Just aesthetically, I bet.

It's just a pain to fix.

Oh, yeah.

You know that, like, if the Zolducks were like in a community and not just on a mountaintop, they'd be running the

Homeowners Association or something.

Oh, yeah.

they'd be such sticklers about your lawns especially mrs zaldeck i want to see the architect digest like youtube video about

poverty so badly

um

genuinely

like kikio zaldic and their 10 children or actually we don't know how many children they have fewer than 10 i think there's five

this murderous family of assassins and their grandfather and their 40-foot-year-old dog have made their home on a beautiful cuckoo mountain.

If you were not watching these episodes, and Ali, I don't know how they portray Mikke's size in the manga, but Mikai's the size of a house.

Mikkei is not just a big dog.

He's big.

Yeah.

Yes.

He is like 50 feet tall.

I want to, let's talk about Mikke, actually.

Because

there is a bit of business in and around this gate with this guy called Zebro.

Two episodes of business?

Yeah.

Yeah.

This has happened a few times making this show.

We will get into a chunk of episodes that y'all are really excited about, and I will watch about an episode and a half and go,

uh, yeah.

And then I will watch the back half of the chunk and go, oh,

this is fucking great.

Yes, this absolutely happened here because

we do a lot of pissing about outside the gate.

It's not terribly interesting, but eventually Zebro is like,

look, here's the deal.

Mikkei won't attack you if you go through the testing gate, this very, very heavy gate.

He only attacks you if you go through this little trap gate that we've made.

But tell you what, I'm going to let you in and I'll show you Mikkei.

So you can make a decision about what to do.

I do agree that this bit of the episode is kind of slow, but there is a lot of really fun character stuff here, especially for Goan.

Like, we do get this

absolute like pedal to the metal death wish.

Goan has a death wish.

Like he is like, I will get the thing that I'm looking for.

And I don't, I literally don't care if it kills me.

I don't, it's not that I don't believe that I'll die.

I gen, I genuinely will do it despite death.

But then the second that Zebro is like, actually, you doing this would inconvenience me.

So I'm going to help you.

I'm going to help you because then at least I'll die immediately instead of being killed by the Zoldex.

And Goan's like, oh my God, I didn't mean to cause you any trouble at all.

He's a good boy.

He is a good boy.

He is a good boy.

Can I read

this sort of ideological statement by Zebro about Goan?

It's a couple sentences here.

He's a good boy.

He's willing to quell his own anger for the sake of another person.

He believes in his own strength as well as in his friends.

He has a strong heart.

It's likely that Mikkei won't frighten him at all.

He was wrong on one of those things.

Yeah, he was only wrong about the last thing.

Yes.

Because the thing that happens is we,

it is fully implied that what we're going to get is one of these Goan understands nature and nature understands Goan-type scenes.

You know, we've seen this with the blood butterflies.

We've seen this all over.

Goan is the little boy of the forest.

The storm, the curios, the storm, the whole, you know, and they really are setting it up to be like, Goan is going to look into the eyes of Mikkei, and Mikkei and Goan are going to come to an understanding.

And instead, Mikkei

is jumping.

I'm sure I've talked about this.

Well, it's weirder than that.

I've talked about this on a show before, I think, definitely recently.

But there's a ridiculous Disney Halloween movie that they made years ago of the story of Sleepy Hollow.

And it's very much a sort of like classic Disney tale with a wacky Ichabod crane or whatever until the headless horseman's horse is introduced.

And the horse is drawn and animated in this completely different style than anything else.

It looks like a gothic horror animal.

And it just sits in every frame like a nightmare.

Because

it has come from another movie and has broken into this movie.

And it's brilliant.

And Mike is very similar.

There is something alien and

cold and upsetting about the way Mika looks.

He is a sort of wolf, but he's 40 feet tall, and he

has

muscular human arms.

He has muscular human arms and he has these horrible alien blue eyes.

They're not.

He has eyes that look like Ilumi's.

Yes, he does have eyes.

This is why I say Jaws.

The eyes reminded me of the Jaws dolls' eyes.

The doll's doll's eyes.

Yes.

And he is just,

whenever he's on screen at this point, he is

very, he moves very deliberately.

He is very still.

He just looks down at Gon with this kind of absent alien intelligence.

And Gon is fucking terrified.

Yes.

He's literally sweating bullets.

He's just like, I cannot reach this.

This is a level of evil beyond me.

He felt like a Dark Cells character was the other thing I wrote down.

Yeah.

Oh, Oh, sure.

Huge Mikai fan.

Yeah, yeah.

I love Mika.

He's like, he looks scraggly, and his nose is so long.

It's bizarre.

He's like a demonic Borzoi.

He is like a demonic.

He does look sort of like a Borzoi.

He also looks a little bit like Wiley Coyote.

Yes.

You know,

those realistic Pokemon where it's like, this is just Jarizar the Dragon.

Like, this looks sort of like realistic Wily Coyote.

sure

i i do love how like

simply this this wraps up i guess like there's a lot of back and forth about like oh which way are we gonna go and then go on is like i'm gonna go in there no matter what it takes and then it's just like

we we have the familiarity with gone being like animal specialist of

of the of the crew that like seeing him scared and seeing the janitor just sort of no sell the situation situation.

It's just like, oh, okay, well, we've gotten past this.

We've learned who Mikai is.

And there is this

sub-thing of like, why is

the janitor helping Goan at all?

And it's like, okay, part of it is that it could be a hassle for him if Goan

winds up dead.

The other thing is, you know, we've seen it again and again, but he is impressed by Goan and is like sort of compelled to help him

because of his sort of earnest passion.

And then there's this third thing where we will run into it a lot.

A lot of these employees

are rightfully scared of the Zoldics and worried about Kiloa.

Yeah.

There is something really interesting going on where the employees know that

their lives are utterly dependent on the Zaldics.

The Zaldix can and seemingly will kill them or

worse for any transgression.

Because that's what the Zaldix do.

They are killers.

And also, the employees aren't quite as...

Hmm.

The employees, it seems, intuit that Killua is a 12-year-old child who is in a bad place.

Yeah.

Like physically

in a bad geographical place.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And this sort of becomes a theme of these episodes as we continue.

Is Zeldic employees going...

Zeldic employees seeing

Ghone as an opportunity for Killiua to get a like a light in his life.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Does anyone want to talk about the scenes that we're cutting to while this gatehouse stuff is going on?

With

stuff with Killowa?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or does no one want to talk about it?

No, we have

listen.

I am prepared

for Killowa chat, okay?

This is a highlight of my week as Talking

Killowa.

I wish.

Sorry, someone called it.

I got our dibs.

Yeah.

The...

I'm just looking for my.

Do we cut to that in this first episode at all, actually?

Oh, it might.

It's possible that it's at the start here of the second one.

Yeah, I think we might like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's at the beginning of 23.

Well,

we did end

22, basically.

Mika is the end of 22.

Are there any other 22 thoughts before we go to 23?

Yes.

I really quickly want to talk about Zebro

telephoning the mansion.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my God.

So Zebro calls the mansion and says some of Kiliua's friends are here.

And I don't know if we hear the other side of the conversation, but Zebro is like, yep.

We do?

No, we don't.

I don't think we can.

Oh, we don't.

We hear like a Zebro apologizing.

Zebro is like, all right, okay, sounds good.

Sorry.

And he puts the phone down.

And then Goan just runs up and dials the number and picks the phone up again and gets connected to the butler, a man whose name we do not have at this point, but we will later learn is called Goto.

And the butler is shot like a scary person in an anime because that's exactly what he is.

He's warning against...

If anyone needs this mental image,

he's shot like

evil nightmare pork chop from Doug.

If anyone else has seen the episode of Doug where he has bad dreams.

Yeah, there's an episode of Doug where he's

a recurring bad dream where Pork Chop wants to kill him, his dog, and he's very menacingly flipping a coin

in the exact same way that Goto is.

And Goto is flipping this coin.

This was so scary to me as a child.

And so I always think of that when I see Goto flipping a coin.

And the butler basically,

the butler tries a couple of different tacks.

He says,

Kilo doesn't have friends.

First of all, this is going to become the refrain of these episodes.

Uh, Killowa doesn't have friends.

Uh, and then he tries a different tack, and I don't think he actually believes what he's saying here.

I think he's just trying to put Goan off the scent, by saying, hey, hey, how do I know that you are actually Goan?

You know, you could be someone mimicking Goan's voice.

Uh, and even if I were to see you and let you see Kiloa, you could be taking on Killua's form, which is some real people in glass houses throwing stones type situation, given that his boss is Ilumi, someone who we just saw

doing that and on that level this reads almost like a threat uh we are so you know I am saying that you know you might be uh you might be an invader but really what I'm saying is uh we come from a place where people can change their voices people can change their appearances you need to again you are in a different world now you have entered the Zelda family's world not gones yeah I read it sort of as like like it doesn't matter what the truth is it's our job to not trust you

The other thing here is: this is absolutely the vibe of trying to telephone your friend and their scary dad picking up the phone.

Being like, I want to talk to Killua.

I imagine if Killua's dad picked up the phone.

Oh my God, I'm so excited to talk about Kiloa's dad.

But I think

all I have to say for 22, does anybody else have any other 22 thoughts before we move on to 23?

I think I'm set.

This is the heavy house chapter.

This is the heavy house chapter, yeah.

Well, they go to this house and they wear uh extremely heavy clothes.

Yeah, we meet Sequant.

Good physical humor.

Yes, we meet Sequant, who we learned in the past was part of a crew that tried to storm the Zaldic mansion and were handily defeated by an apprentice butler, who we see in silhouette standing on like a pile of corpses.

Fucking great.

Yeah, and so he decides to just get a job there instead.

I guess I work here now.

All my friends are dead.

I work here now.

Try saying that when you walk into a Wendy's and see how it goes.

Yeah, so they put on their heavy jackets and they lift their heavy cups.

Goan is sort of prevented from

training because of his broken arm, uh but is training in secret at night it is um very funny when they put the um

the like weighted vests on how leoria is the one who falls down and the other two are kind of fine yeah um i also wrote leoria thirsty flower pose because that is what he does and i don't know if that scans for anybody is it the tea

you have to water me you have to yeah yeah i don't i don't i can't think of the pose but i do know what

i take a screenshot because i'm you know.

Okay.

I got to make sure my comedy is coming through to everyone.

Let's see here.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

Yep.

You're absolutely right.

I do.

Okay, I didn't remember this pose, but I did actually mean the pose from the comic is what I do remember.

But that's fine.

I don't,

we're good.

No, I'll google the pea flower comics.

No way,

it'll come up.

Thirsty little flower.

There we go.

It is a similar face.

I'll give you that.

Oh, yeah.

And then, yeah, he's on the ground.

Okay, I see it.

I see it.

I see it.

Thank you.

Yeah, it is that pose.

It really is.

Let me see.

And they do some training here, and we get a really cool training montage music that we haven't heard before.

It's this sort of like

it's lots of brass instruments.

It's like you said, Keith, there is a lot of new music in this sort of arc.

I didn't catch this other new music thing.

It's not the guitar one that I was talking about, the determination song.

I don't think so.

This is as they are doing all the training together.

But it might be that.

I think the guitar one was in the last episode.

No.

But now might be a good point to talk about Killua because as they are training, we get to see for the first time the inside of the actual Zeldic mansion, which is a torture dungeon.

Yep.

Yep.

Do you want to go run down what the deal is with it?

I can just give the top-level thing, and then

we can dig into it.

Killua is being

whipped by his brother,

an assassin named Miluki, who we learn is the person that Killua stabbed on his way out along with his mom.

Remember, earlier we heard that Killua attacked the two of them.

Miluki is the one who got stabbed.

And they are trying to get Killua to apologize, right?

They're specifically looking for an apology.

Yeah.

They're like not.

The mom is basically not mad.

She is obsessed with Kilua.

Oh, right.

Kilua's mom shows up.

How do you feel about her, Jack?

What was your first impression when you saw this lady?

Okay, absolutely not what I was expecting.

I think I was expecting

it.

I think I was expecting

someone who looked more like Illumi, you know,

an older Ilumi.

And instead, what we have is a woman dressed in a

formal dress with a wide bustle.

I think she has a parasol or am I just does she just seem like the sort of person?

Oh, she has a fan is what she has.

She's wearing a fan.

And her face is covered in bandages.

Formally

over her

well, over her, no, her mouth is not covered.

And over her eyes, she is wearing a visor that has a single red light glowing in the middle of it.

She's also wearing a massive floppy hat.

Have I missed anything?

Is this what Kikyo looks like?

She's got some bandages on her collar.

Did you have the collar?

Oh, yeah, good shout.

Massive, frilly collar.

And she is being accompanied by her daughter,

a young girl called Kaluto.

This is actually...

Okay, this is complicated.

This is actually not complicated if you want to just go by what we get from the manga and the

anime.

This is Kilua's brother.

Kaluto.

Oh, Kaluto is Kilua's brother.

Okay.

Yes.

They only ever use Hehim pronouns for Kaluto.

This gets further complicated later.

But as far as I can tell, there is nothing

about Kaluto other than that he goes by he him

and is Kilu's brother.

Okay.

And

Kikio shows up and is pretty much sort of what we had anticipated from the earlier

implications about her.

She is devoted to her son

and also believes that, and she says this a few times, he is at a critical point in his life

in which he is sort of destined to rise to the height of the Zaldec clan and

be the best assassin.

And she sees all of this business with friends and friendship and any sort of internal personhood other than death to be getting in the way.

But all of this is filtered through this very

manipulative sort of, I'm doing this because I love you and because I love our family sort of language.

Unlike Miluki, who seems to just be beating up Kilua because he is

jealous and angry that

first that Kilua attacked him and second that Killua is afforded a kind of position within the family that he is not.

Just by being the younger brother, also.

Yeah, Kilua is like the golden child, right?

And

it's...

So, I don't know.

I like

positioning him opposite Miluki because Miluki wants that so bad and isn't it, and Kilua is like completely either non-plussed or actively like

inconvenienced by the status that he has within this family as the like heir apparent.

Uh, quick thing about did we mention uh Jack?

You mentioned uh Kikyo's visor.

Did we say that it's like a cyborg visor that gives her information slash potentially communication all around

the Zaku eye?

She does like a Zaku eye.

Yeah, she does have a Zaku eye.

Uh, this is also kind of a

Captain Bryan type situation, right, Ellie?

Hey, no.

Not in the sense of villainy, but in the sense of the tool.

It's okay, it's okay.

Jack doesn't know what Dragon Ball Z is.

Well, yeah, this is like, this is, this is like,

no, because this is like a full, this is like a full face mask.

Someone, give someone, send Jack Vegeta from the settings.

Yeah, you could, you could make eye contact with Brian

through

the visor.

Whereas with this, I think it is to make up for a pair of missing eyes this is yeah, this is a brilliant

this is the

That is the oh sure sure sure yeah

this is the the the power scouter from Dragon Ball Z yeah listen to friends at the table

Yeah, I don't know what the deal is with Kikyo's face, uh, but I'm sure we'll find out.

Uh, did you have something for that, Dre?

Oh, yeah,

No,

I was just agreeing with what you said.

So the other thing about Kikyo is like, seems increasingly unable to contain her emotions.

She's like rapidly

sort of like losing her temper and then switching back to like a cool and composed and

sort of pretending like she didn't just freak out for two seconds.

And

the other thing was that

Sylvie, you were talking about like Kilua being the sort of heir parent of the

Zoldix and being like

the, you know, the golden child.

They do like a lot.

They show this in a lot of really interesting ways.

The first way is that they have a bunch of different characters say it.

They have Miliki say it to Zeno.

They have the grandfather Zeno shows up and is like, hey, what's, you know, what is your opinion of Kilua?

And Miliki is like, well, he's the best one of us, obviously.

Uh, they have Kikio sort of screeching it all the time.

Um, they have, uh,

and then they also have like this weird thing where the

three generations of head of the Zoldex all kind of look the same, and all of the other ones don't.

Uh, it's very weird, like, it doesn't, I don't know what they're trying to do there, uh, but like

uh

all of the

All of the heads of the family are like have the same white hair and blue eyes.

Yeah.

Very odd.

I had not put that together.

You're talking about

Kilua's dad, a guy called Silva, who we'll meet later.

Yeah, Hanson Squidward.

Oh, yeah, he is Hanson Squidward.

He is.

And then Zeno, well, Zeno, the grandfather.

But yeah, let me see.

Do we want to cut back to Gonan crew?

I would love to do that.

Oh, do we, did we, I don't want to like linger on the torturing, but was there anything that we had to say about this besides that it obviously did we mention that Killer was chained to the ceiling?

Yes, he's chained.

He has his legs and arms in shafts

and is like hanging from his wrists from like either the wall or the ceiling.

And it's being

feel like that's for days.

It seems seeming like for two days minimum is

hanging and being whipped.

because you don't know when he got back after the hunter exam and like yeah, how

idiot this was.

Yeah,

hey, there's some fucked up shit going on at the Zaldeka stage.

Yeah, there sure is.

Um, and it's like it's not good, it's not good, and it's even hard to square, like, okay, Miluki and the mom.

Like, I can see it, but it, it, it becomes, like, really hard to square.

But I think you have to,

you have to square the fact that, like, the people that it doesn't seem make sense that they're letting them do that are letting them do that.

Uh, you know, when we, when we see the other members of the family, we're like, would these people do that?

Well, it doesn't matter if it seems like they would or wouldn't.

Uh, they do, they did.

It's like

they, they, at the very least, are fine with like letting it happen, right?

Like, I don't think Ilami's got any fucking moral objections to this, you know?

Um,

well, it's also just, you know, this is, this is,

these are the people who, who have the buff janitors who have a toilet with a really strong door, right?

Like, we're just in, we're in, we're in funny mountain town.

Did we talk about that old man's big muscles that suddenly showed that?

I'll talk about it.

Because he's just

summoning his aura.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's in the fucking Vinn Diesel tank top.

He's fucking.

He reveals.

I was just wearing a frumpy coat is really what happens.

He takes off his frumpy coat and it's ripped.

It's like, of course I'm ripped.

I have to open this

4,

4,500 pound gate every day.

It's the shounen equivalent, right, of the bit in the rom-com where they take off the girl's glasses, the beautiful Hollywood actress's glasses, and go, oh, you're so beautiful.

It's true.

Except Captain Zeppro.

Taking off his jacket and being like, I'm fucking ripped.

I mean, straight up, the reason I point that out is because as we talk about how Hunter Hunter draws on different Shounen tropes, the old man who is secretly very strong or very buff is like a constant thing.

I mean, we kind of talked about it with Netaro, but I thought it'd be worth pointing out that they're going back to that one.

Netaro versus Zebro, my money.

Okay,

Zebro's getting put in the skeleton garbage bin.

That was another detail, actually, was that they just stuffed the bones of the guy.

It's

by Mikai into the trash.

Yeah,

good for him.

I hope he has benefits.

I love Zebro.

The other Shonen trope that they play with is the heavy house full of heavy things.

It's like there's, you know, the trope of the reveal of I was wearing weighted clothes, and actually, I'm stronger and faster.

We get like the other side of that in like a very sort of hunter-hunter way of like, you know, Jack, this is something that you would recognize.

But several famous, several of the most famous scenes in,

you know,

shonen fight history is like

the princess bride.

Oh, I'm actually not left-handed.

I'm right-handed.

Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.

It's that, but it's like, oh, I was wearing 100-pound,

you know, shoes and wristbands.

So I'm going to take that off and now be much stronger.

We now get the inverse of that, which is like, here, put these on, train with these.

You'll be stronger and faster later.

Yes, great.

We're seeing the other side of it.

Yeah, yeah.

Very famously, the Rock Lee one, I think, is what pops to mind with a lot of people these days, where he drops his weighted training things and it goes, yeah, explodes.

It's great.

It's a great gift.

What a gift.

Shout out, Naruto.

Yeah.

And a quick shout out to Naruto.

And a quick shout-out to our friend of the show, Naruto.

Naruto's my best friend.

There we go.

That's finally resolved.

That's a good second place to go.

Shut the fuck up.

They opened the testing gate in exactly the way that you think they would open the testing gate if you've seen any story ever.

Which is to say, Karapika and Leorio both try very hard to open it, but they can't until Goan takes off his sling.

His arm has healed in seemingly 46 minutes.

And he pushes the gate open with them.

We do get shots of them spending multiple nights here.

Yeah.

It's a broken.

48 hours, you know?

Okay, that's.

It is, yeah, it is too creative.

And then will they get to get to the country and drive that bus all the way up to the top of the mountain?

Yeah.

He's young too.

Kids heal fast.

Yeah.

I feel like I remember them saying like, oh, you can spend like a week here, two weeks here or whatever.

That might have been a line that didn't.

In the anime or in the manga?

Maybe in the manga.

Because I don't.

I mean, I wouldn't be shocked.

Yeah, I think the plan was to stay longer, but Goan just doesn't need to, like, the scene where Hizuka's like, hey, that poison will wear off in a week.

And he gets up that

scene that minute.

I forgot about that.

Yeah, yeah.

Goan just has super healing powers.

It's a wolverine.

Yeah.

There's another long-standing trope of the genre.

They head through this little forest and they meet standing

between two sort of stone gate pillars, the apprentice butler, who we saw in the flashback earlier when they killed

like 20 men.

This is a young black woman with dreadlocks carrying a cane with a

yellow orb on the top.

And we don't get her name here, but the subtitles reveal that her name is Canary.

This is Canary's intro.

She fucking rules.

Yeah, Canary's the best.

She's awesome.

Was this the half where, like, was this when the episode started clicking for you?

It was around Canary?

I'm curious.

Well, maybe a little, maybe a little after.

Okay.

It was what happens to Canary at the end of this episode.

So, okay, yes,

that is a top

before.

Quick before we go, I want to go back because I forgot something.

Uh, uh,

the during the torture scene, it kilo first learns that Goan shows up, and he has a really nice moment of uh being extremely determined that Goan definitely will make it to uh

uh the mansion, which is which is nice.

It totally unnerves his mom,

yeah.

Um,

so the butler's quarters has has not given...

So, okay.

Canary's boss is Goto, the butler.

She is an apprentice butler.

The butler's quarters have not given the crew permission to enter.

So she draws a little line in the dirt with her staff and says that she will remove anybody who crosses the line.

Goan says, we didn't come here to fight anyone.

We just want to see Killua, which is very much like...

This is similar to what you were saying earlier, I think, Keith, about

calling the butler, where it's like, we make the rules here.

We get to decide, you know, whether or not you come in, whether or not this is even true or not.

We are the ones deciding it.

Because it doesn't matter that Ghan didn't come here to fight anyone and just wants to see Killua.

You're on Zaldic ground here.

They are prepared to fight.

You know, they are stripping away all option for diplomacy or conversation or interiority beyond

warning and consequence and violence.

And so having Goan say, Look, look, we're just here.

We want to chat.

It's very similar to Goan's encounter with Mikke, going,

I don't think that I can actually talk to this person.

But Gohan being Gohan, and I think recognizing perhaps wisely that Kaneri is a person, not a 40-foot-tall, murderous dog,

begins his approach.

And this is now just five minutes of Goan getting the shit kicked out of him again, right?

This just keeps happening.

It is very quickly back to the Hanzo playbook

yeah he learned that that this works hey i could just i could just

i could just make them so uncomfortable with beating me up that they let me win

this is yeah what this is

and here's the thing this isn't actually fun to watch a second time no because I mean, it's not fun, obviously, because it's a character we love getting the shit kicked out of him, but it's kind of structurally uninteresting as well, because we know how this works, right?

Go and

go and it just gets you to the point where you go, hmm, well, I don't want to kill you.

The two interesting things that happen here

are the difference in the reaction from

Kraviga and Leorio

who were freaking out during the Hanzo fight, right?

Yep, there we go.

Images in the chat.

Yeah, they they get this like super,

super painted

look where they're just like, No, we are watching.

We are here for this.

Yeah, we've seen how this goes.

We know the plan.

We all are determined.

Goan gets beat up, and we stand being weird.

And then the other.

Oh, we stand being weird.

We also do get the thing that then Goan

points out afterwards, which is like, the reason I knew this would work was because I could tell that you care about Kilo and that you're not.

He says you have a heart, unlike Mikkei, which is great.

That to me is even more Mikai fucking rules.

Mikai weird alien dog and heartless monster.

But yeah, he's like, because we see

Canary kind of sweating a little, even as she's standing firm.

She says, please go away.

The Zaldic method of we'll just keep hitting you with a stick doesn't really work against Goan, and I think that that is, that's, that's the show.

That's, you know, Goan is, Goan is bullheaded with his heart in a way where he's like, I can just, I can just barrel through all of this stuff.

This beautiful, sort of elegant, melancholy waltz is playing.

uh during this this whole scene this is another really interesting piece of music um

i can't tell, and

maybe we'll get into this in the next episode.

I don't know who this theme is attached to.

I thought it was attached to the Zeldix for a while

and sort of like the

moneyed majesty of this

estate that employs all these butlers and

has this very melancholy sort of romantic waltz theme.

But it might be attached to Canary.

I'm not sure.

Because something happens to this waltz as it continues.

But then, yeah, Goan punches the brick barrier and says, when I mentioned Killiua's name, you soften for a moment.

And then in just a brilliant, scary moment, Canary suddenly stops and

begs Goan and crew to save Killua, and then is seemingly just killed

by a bolt of light from off.

Shot in the head.

Yeah, there's a shotgun and like a sort of freeze frame, kind of very stylized black and white still of like her head clearly being shot and her going down.

It is wild.

And then just episode over.

What an ending.

As the camera pans to, well,

it's great actually because it's not quite episode over.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

She gets shot, she goes down, the camera pans, the waltz gets cut out and replaced with the Latin Zelda chorus that we heard with Ilumi.

Except this is a new arrangement of it.

It has been written like a classical fugue, like these overlapping choral parts,

rather than Ilumi's big deep chant and the bells.

You know, this is this much more sort of mannered, sorrowful arrangement of this theme.

And Kilua's mom says, oh, she made it sound like we were being mean to Kilua, which is great, as we've just intercut to him getting beaten up in the dungeon.

And then she relays a message to Gon saying, thank you for coming, but I can't see you right now.

I'm sorry.

End of episode.

And I thought that was great.

I thought all of this stuff was fantastic, uh, with the exception of going getting beaten up for six minutes, which, uh, you know, that's probably not the last time I'm gonna see that.

But Canary was such a cool character, and to have this great character design show up and

then get shot in the head at the end of the episode was

good.

Uh, uh, subverting expectations.

Um, something I want to mention about uh, just going back to the like

Zoldic method of just hitting you over and over again a little bit, but

also kind of connected to Mika and stuff, is that like a lot of the stuff that's going on in the Zeldic estate is like either designed to break the spirit of people trying to get in or condition them to like,

I mean, we see Sequant ends up just being someone who works there.

I don't think it's intentionally set up like that, but it is.

This place is either built to train you to be an assassin or break your spirit.

And I think that that really says a lot about the parenting style of the Zaltic family.

And also just lets the viewer kind of like infer a ton of shit about why Killowa is the way Killowa is.

Yeah, totally.

Anything on

23?

Gone is the drill tweet that reads, Jokes on You, I love being body slammed by one dozen perfect wrestlers, and my mouth isn't filled with blood.

It's victory mine.

Oh, it's so great.

Oh, I do actually.

So, we've had two really great character introductions in Kikio and Canary here.

And I wanted to ask about how this is handled in the manga alley, and if there are any sort of notable differences between it and the show there.

Um, I well, it just happens really quickly.

You don't get any of the like flashbacks with

Kalua and

the apprentice bodyguard.

Canary.

Canary.

Yeah.

That is about to happen in 23.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that

like the employee who got beat up and now works there, like I believe that entire plot line is just in the show.

Oh, huh.

Like, that guy is just not a character in the manga,

at least as far as not as far as I remember.

So it's really just like

it's more like monster of the week or like puzzle of the week, sort of going through them than it is this sort of like slow considered things.

And I like both versions of it, obviously.

I think the like focusing on the relationship between Kinari and Kalua is

important in this sort of structure of the story of like getting past each of these employees who like

have their own

allegiances to the family, you know, and like

different ways that they'll react to that.

But yeah, I, there's like, it's interesting being on this episode because I do feel like a lot of this

is

kind of dry.

Like it's fun character work.

And I'm sure a lot of of it's gonna pay off later for like how you think of Kalua but it's really just like oh here's like a weird

here's a bunch of freaks

here's like here you know here's what here's what a family of an assassins is like in a world where assassins are well known and a tourist spot

but yeah it really just feels like oh this is this is this is the gap between

getting the gang back together, as it were.

Yeah.

Which is notable because at the end of this arc, the gang

splits apart again.

Yeah.

With a little chain in an extremely funny way that we will get to.

As we go into episode 24, I wrote down that I really hoped we weren't going to get a plotline that I find so

monumentally dull, which is

a person is conned into believing that other person doesn't care about them.

You see this a lot in like Disney movies of like, oh, the villain

makes the hero think that the other hero doesn't actually like them.

And we have to waste a lot of time as the heroes manage to communicate to each other that that's not the case.

So I was really hoping that we wouldn't have a

Goan and crew get told that Killua doesn't actually like them or Killua gets told that Goan and crew don't actually like him.

We get some hints of that, but ultimately, Goan is just such a powerful force of love, and Kiliua is so unshakably confident in his friend's ability to come and find him that we just bypass that altogether.

Everybody believes that everybody else is going to find them, and they do.

Yeah, they absolutely try to do this, but no one buys it for even one second.

And there is no doubt.

Although we do get a little bit of that at the beginning of this episode of 24

with this flashback between

when Kiloa meets Canary for the first time.

What a great flashback.

I think start to finish.

This is really fun.

Baby Kiloa, what, eight years old, out on solo kill missions,

comes home and we get

him in a tree eating an apple.

Canary shows up and like they have this, you know, sort of moment of introduction.

We get some lore about a place called Meteor City.

Meteor City is a city that has been erased from this world, is what she says.

This is where Canary is from.

This is where Canary's from.

This is where she was hired out of to be

an apprentice butler.

You're allowed to be.

The way they talk about it does make it feel like the butler is just like snatch-up orphans and they are like indentured servants to the volume.

That's true, but Canary is such a badass that it's hard to

imagine her being snatched.

I guess.

I just thought it'd be worth mentioning that it's like a little.

It's up to interpretation, at the very least.

It doesn't seem like Meteor City is a good place.

It's a place that, like Canary says, you're allowed to dump anything there.

That's why so many members of the Mafia and the Phantom Troop come from there.

That's a weird thing to say.

We know Phantom Troop is the Phantom Troop Bell.

So that's where.

So it just seems like this is a place that produces

scary, strong people.

And that is why Canary is a child and is like,

you know,

a sea.

They certainly imply that she's like

around the same level as Kiloa skill-wise.

I mean, in this flashback,

we see later on, like, her handling a hunter.

Like, oh, oh, handling a hunter.

Like, handling a hunter.

And they're actually, those are actually all hunters.

They don't say this outright, I don't think, but Sequant.

Sequant is a hunter.

I know Sequant is a hunter and the leader was.

We should run through the flashback before we jump ahead.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Okay.

Okay, Jack, go ahead.

Killua and Canary Kanary talk.

Killua notices that Kanary has

uses something called the silent gate, which is what Killua uses to move silently.

And Kilua demonstrates rhythm echo, which I've written down as Kilua's horrible way of walking.

The thing we saw him use to kill the serial killer, to rip his heart out, and then we saw him spectacularly fail to use against Ilumi as Gitaraku.

And then

because everybody is constantly under the threat of the tyranny of plot moving onwards, 50 men come to attack them.

And they show up.

Canary

fights them.

First, takes out the crew and then takes out the boss.

Who, yes, this is our first confirmed hunter after the exam,

getting beaten by an eight-year-old.

And during this fight, Canary uses Rhythm echo

herself.

Uh, she's just being shown it the one time.

Killua offers to teach it to her, and she just learns it by watching.

Uh, no, I think she has known this before, which is even scarier.

The implication is that she

knew this prior to this point, and she was just being polite.

Yeah, Killu's like, you already knew it, and she was like, Yeah, sorry.

Oh, I missed that.

Uh, and Killua immediately, because he's Killua, starts playing the oh, so you think you're stronger than me game.

This is eight-year-old Killua's idea of

being friends with someone, reveals that he doesn't have any friends and asks Kanary if she wants to be his friend.

And it is immediately obvious that she does.

Yeah.

It breaks my heart.

It's very sad.

It's very sad.

But she also notices...

Kikyo watching from behind a tree as a bootleg version of Prokofiev's Dance of the Nights starts playing.

Yeah.

Like, we get the, like, iconic, big, opening bass notes of Dance of the Nights that is then replaced by some different Hunter-Hunter music.

This is very funny to me.

They do this elsewhere in this episode.

They play some...

I've been trying all day to figure out what piece they are pastiching, but it's another piece of romantic classical music,

probably from an opera.

I thought it might be Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, but it's not quite that.

It's like they are doing a very specific musical reference,

and it is fascinating the way that these musical references are being deployed to paint the Zeldic family

inside this kind of musical context of

20th century, oh sorry, 19th century romantic classical music, very operatic classical music,

which fits so well with the Zaldex being like

deeply wealthy, deeply mannered, but at the same time, it's not like they are hiding how violent they are.

It's not like the twist is like, look, it's this very wealthy, elegant family who secretly under the surface are all murderers.

It's the even cooler Hunter-Hunter version of that, which is, look, it's this very elegant family who are extremely open about the fact that they're bloodthirsty.

Dracula's on the map, and you can pay $10 to go see him.

Yeah, you can just

see his gait.

It has the same tone as, like, I don't know if anybody else who lives in a city has experienced these, but true crime tours that people go on.

Oh, yeah.

Which are disgusting.

They are gross as shit.

But it's so much cooler than, hmm, I don't know if I would say it's cooler.

When we we met Ilumi, he was given this, and he needed to be to sell that scene.

He was given this really doomy, heavy, ancient choral part.

And then seeing that get rendered out as we see the Zaldic family as a sort of institution into these no less sinister, uh, romantic orchestral pieces that still have this very dark, sort of showy tone to them, um, is really, really great.

Well, there's just like, there's this, like,

this thing.

When they are killing, it's like

their job.

They're being hired.

They're being hired to like fulfill another person's darkness.

And they're obviously also evil and, you know, willing to kill and enthusiastic about killing.

And they have their whole little fucked up family cult.

but they also are a business they are billionaires like easy um yeah they these people the these people are showing up on the like forbes list of the hundred richest people in the world like

Silva Zoldic is the 12th richest person you know like

like they have they're not just billionaires they're like deep billionaires they're like they probably have like a hundred and fifty billion dollars or something crazy.

They own this whole region of this country.

And have authority over it.

You can kill anybody who

is.

Yes, they have like, not just, not a lawless space.

They have a their law.

They have a

they have a

they're like the the uh

shit.

What is the what is the

the Metal Gear thing where they set up their little oil rig country?

Outer heaven?

They have an outer.

Yes, they have the Zoldic Outer Heaven.

I thought you were trying to come up with the name for the Vatican.

No.

But it kind of is.

They are

a pseudo-country.

I can't even get started thinking about this.

We're going to...

There's a line at the end that...

broke my entire brain about how does this world work.

But

we will get there because Canary notices Kikio watching from behind a tree.

She is noticeably unbandaged at this point.

I didn't know.

I'm curious if the...

Because we know that Kiliwa also attacked her when he left.

It could be that the bandages on her face are a result of that.

I think we got it confirmed that Kilua stabbed his mom in the face and then

feel like that got mentioned on the airship during the hunting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Kanary says, I can't.

She doesn't actually say, I can't be your friend.

She says something even sadder.

She says, something like, I'm very sorry, Killiwa.

And Killiwa understands that to mean, I can't be your friend.

Yeah, because Kanary.

Yeah, Kaneri is cognizant of the power dynamic here in a way that Killiwa is not.

Killiwa thinks that a power dynamic is a special way for a word of killing someone.

Yeah, how do you perform power dynamic?

How do you know?

I want to know.

That's when he sharpens his nails to pull hearts out.

I want to make sure sure that I'm powering it.

I'm not stronger than Goto

so that I can do power dynamic.

And then we just get this smash cut to Goan.

We get two stacked smash cuts, favorite hunter-hunter trick.

The first is to just go and saying, let's be friends openly.

And it's like, this is this radiance that Ilumi was talking about.

You know, an open-heartedness, a willingness to be present with someone in that way.

And then a second smash cut to Killua just in the torture chamber and he looks up and says, Go now.

This is the like deep tragedy of these episodes to me.

It sort of is the key that will unlock a lot of later stuff.

Like

the thing that we see,

the brilliance that Illumi talks about that

blinds Kilua, the this sort of like effervescence that Gone has that like magnetizes all these people to him

that

Kilua is like interested in and confused by and like wants to be a part of.

The thing that these episodes

I think teach is that Kilua also has that and his family has spent his whole life trying to snuff it.

Yeah.

Like,

everyone around Kilua is

cares about him, wants the best for him.

The problem is that a lot of those people are horrible villains.

But some of those people have are good natured and have

normal ideas.

Maybe Canary is one of those.

Maybe a couple other people are one.

We'll get to Goto, you know, sort of maybe being one of these.

But like Zebro, definitely.

And then obviously also, you know, all of the of Goan and his friends.

Canary is also a murderous child.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, me's a lot of people.

Yeah.

Children in this show are sort of weird superhumans.

Everybody is operating at a different level.

But I mean, we've seen Goan handily fight adults regularly.

But here's the other thing about it, Jack, that I made this note.

Everyone is still seemingly surprised when a child superhero beats their ass.

Like, oh, yeah, this is true.

Like,

we have seen so many horrible nightmare children, and but like, all these people, especially people who take the hunter exam or who are hunters, are still like, well, you're just a little kid, I'll beat the shit out of you.

And then they almost die.

I just think it's, you know, I just think that

we're in the soup, you know,

you know, it just seems like there's a lot of soup when you're in the soup.

I think it's not that common that you have a gone or a canary or a kilowa.

I just think that we happen to be

in that soup, in the

really strong kids' soup.

The same thing happens in, you know, in Dragon Ball, original Dragon Ball.

You know, we're following around, you know, 10-year-old Goku and 10-year-old Krillin, and,

you know, what, 15-year-old Yamcha.

And I think, you know, Tien is somewhere around that age, also.

And it's like, oh, all of these kids.

And people still are like, you're just a kid.

But it's like, but

this whole show is kids that beat the shit out of adults.

But I just think that it's like, yeah, they just attract each other.

They're just kids who are superhuman.

are magnets for other kids that are superhuman.

That's true.

So it's just like, I think it's just one of these,

you know, these suspended disbeliefs that we need to like, like, oh, the world is probably, like, we are seeing a higher percentage of super-powered kids than is really existing.

Do we think that somewhere in the world exists that's like

Cleveland or something?

Because like.

Probably.

What is the Ohio of the Hunter-Hunter universe?

Write in to tell us what you think.

Yeah.

I mean, is it, is it, because it's not Whale Island, because that's where God comes from.

It's probably not Meteor City.

It's not a Bayojo or something.

Shut up.

It can't be Meteor City.

It's not...

What's the other city it begins with, the Zed?

We've heard about a couple of times.

Oh.

Oh, I know you're talking about it.

Where the buses are lying for the Hunter exam.

Oh, yeah.

I've written it down somewhere.

Zaban City or Zaban City.

Yeah, yeah, Zaban City, yeah.

Maybe it's that.

I don't know.

Or does everywhere just produce one super-powered child?

It's like the ones who walk away from omalis except the kid has a great time and goes on adventures every city produces one extremely powerful child um

i do not know uh

let me see where i'm at

oh

great news yeah

Canary is not dead.

Oh, correct.

For some reason.

Now, this is just...

This how you make a television show.

I understand that it is fun to have a cliffhanger of making a character look like they were absolutely obliterated and then return.

I don't understand why Kikyo didn't kill her.

I mean, she's pretty good at her job, but otherwise.

I think there's a lot of investment, like in a sort of literal way

in each of these butlers.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, fair enough.

She did just beg them to rescue Killua from the family.

And so I don't know.

I think at this point, she's so confident that it won't happen.

That's true.

Because the interference hasn't happened yet.

Right.

And what she's doing is just trying to stop the plea.

Yeah.

Oh, she's trying to say, it's essentially her saying, stop talking.

Yeah, shut up.

Yeah, this is a shut up smack.

You shoot someone in the head lightly.

Again, that animation.

That makes perfect sense for the Zoldeck family.

Shut up is a bullet to the head.

From her fan.

She shoots this kind of glowing bolt, and then when we cut back to her, she's holding her fan, and the tip of it is glowing and smoking, which is like no normal weapons.

Well, that's not true.

Leorio has a knife.

Just a rule.

Just a knife.

So there,

Leorio, who again we are reminded in a sudden jolt of horror that this man is a doctor or wants to be a doctor, is like,

she's fine, she's not actually unconscious.

As we cut back to Killua, who effortlessly so Miluki sort of is continuing to torture Killua.

This is the Adams family twist of the episode.

The best.

This is great.

Miluki sucks.

What do you say?

We cut back to him torturing Killua, and he says something like

something about killing Gon and Kiloa's friend and Killua's other friends, I believe.

Can I rewind real quick to the thing that sets Miluki off to say that is Killua pretends to apologize.

He goes like,

good morning, bro.

I'm so sorry about stabbing you.

I'm so sorry about stabbing you, bro.

Yeah,

and then, right, and then he gets a phone call.

Miloki gets a phone call from their mom about how gone, not gone, about how Kilowa's friends are here and near the butler's office.

And then he says, like,

he says something.

He threatens them in some way.

And Kiloa pulls his chain off the wall, just effortlessly, rips one of his hands down.

The chain just clatters.

And he's like, hey, if you touch any of them, I'll kill you.

With a crazy look on his face.

It's great.

I mean, just it's, yeah, it is the most killing intent we have ever seen from Killua.

It is fantastic.

Yeah, because everyone else he's killed, he's barely

emoted at all.

He's mostly been bored all of his other murders that we've seen.

Yeah.

He goes into that sort of like almost trans-like state with some of them.

And then, I mean, with the guy in Trick Tower, he had some fun with it.

But with...

playing it cool.

Yeah, I guess with Bodora, there's the implication that he was hypnotized as well.

And then there was, but there was the other two on the airship that he just was like, you're in my way.

Stop it.

Oh, yeah.

What happens next is there's like a brief conversation between

Kikio and our crew where she like introduces herself and says, like, she's basically trying to dissuade them and saying, like, Kiloa doesn't want to see you

and suddenly she's like I believe the exact words in my subtitles were Papa what are you doing oh no

and she her like her like visor like freaks out a little bit and she just like runs off and Kalato has to be this is the thing about the visor that I don't I don't they don't ever say how it works like no does she have live feeds all of all over the place that she's like watching are people communicating directly with her That's kind of my assumption.

There is a much easier answer to this, and that's just that she's a Zaku.

What is a Zaku?

From

this from Gondom.

So they have, they got the mono eye thing that does the exact same thing hers says, where just like the eye like goes back and forth across a visor.

But she's like getting information from other places that she is not at.

Sure.

Yeah, so she has like a little, she has like some antennas and stuff on her visor.

Um,

I just, this was to me like confirmation that like there's like a security system of some kind that her visor is hooked into.

Yeah, I feel like it like I'd need to like look through and see if there are any cameras in the background of shots.

Yeah, like it's not a stretch to believe it.

It is not a stretch to believe it, but but she sounds so much like she's talking to people.

Like when she's like, Papa, don't stop it.

We talked about, we didn't talk about this.

Like it sounds like she's talking to Zeno, but Zeno never, no one ever makes any

act like they're talking to her.

Yeah.

That's true.

We talked about her being kind of like, she goes from zero to 100 with all of her emotions.

Yeah.

And that could easily be interpreted as her just like talking to what she sees on her screen as well.

Yeah, that's true.

Like the sort of like, don't go in there when you're watching a horror movie type thing, except it's her.

father-in-law and

her son is the monster she doesn't want him to go see.

Does anyone else want to take?

I can keep going with the conversation between Zeno and Koe.

Did anyone's because this is the first time I've seen this

actually translated?

Did anyone else's sub

say what Zeno's shirt says?

Yes.

Because mine has never said it before, so I've never read it.

He's wearing this like cloak with,

I don't know how to describe it other than like, like, he's got, like, the thing that priests wear during Lent.

The, like, uh, uh,

you know what I'm talking about?

Like, I do know what you mean, but uh, I saw a stole is the wrong word.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

It's uh, it is, it is the a stole.

It is like a stole, but it's like

instead of sign as well.

Yeah, yeah, instead of like being like a scarf with one one on each side, it like goes through his head.

Anyway, it just looks very priestly to me.

But on it, it has some words that I've never seen translated.

And it just says, it says one kill per day.

I feel like mine already said like one murder a day.

Oh, really?

Yeah, mine said one kill per day as well.

One kill.

Okay.

I might be misremembering.

I mean, I bet all those kills are murders.

Yeah, it's probably,

you know, you can probably translate it both ways.

It's the thing, right?

One of those, like, discretion of the subtitlers.

It's cut back to that TV program about the Zaldic family, and it's like, the Zaldic patriarch Zeno has an unusual philosophy.

Has written on his shirt one kill a day.

This is the grandpa,

and he shows up and is like, look,

Killiwa,

you can go.

And then what does Kiliua do?

He just rips them all off.

He just goes.

He's like, oh, this was nothing to me the whole time.

Does anybody have what he says to me?

He says,

I believe it is, I feel.

By the way, I'm not sorry.

I felt kind of bad, though, so that's why I let you hit me for so long.

Something along those lines.

This is where it reveals, like, all of the weight of the last episode, like seeing the horrible violence that they were doing to this 12-year-old.

This episode is like, ha ha, it's the Adams family.

Like,

they, he doesn't even care.

This is this is Wednesday, Adams beating up on Pugsley, and Pugsley's like shrugs, uh, shrugs, yeah.

Like, it's yeah, it really is.

Yeah, uh,

I looked it up, by the way.

Uh, Zeno's shirt is different than I had in my in my head, which is not uncommon for me.

Uh, he's wearing a he's wearing like a purple vest over a white shirt with a metal, a huge metal gold collar.

And what I'm crazy, what I'm saying was

a scarf is actually just a paper sign that is like affixed to the front of the shirt.

And that sign, that paper sign says one kill per day.

Maybe it's fashion.

Maybe it's street weather.

I think it is fashion.

Yeah.

I'm wearing a shirt.

This is right now that says, worship the old gods Sineita on it.

So if I were in Hunter Hunter and you saw me wearing that shirt, you'd be like, wow.

Who are the old gods?

Who are the old gods?

It's actually just a band that Zeno really likes.

He's just really into

hardcore.

Yeah.

And he sends him off saying, you should go talk to your dad.

Or rather, your dad wants to see you.

And Killer is like, huh, okay.

Then we get a single tiny, just an extremely funny scene between.

We get what starts out as an exposition scene between Miluki and Zeno and turns into basically a Cohen brothers joke or a Wes Anderson joke, maybe.

The conversation goes like this: Miluki thinks Zeno spoils Killiwa.

Zeno says, oh, it's because he is special.

And Maluki agrees.

Although he says,

so he might be the most talented Zelda assassin in the history of our family, but he is too erratic.

He's a kid who wants to go and make friends.

He could never lead the Zeldic family.

And he pauses and then he says, unlike me.

And this is when it transforms into a Cohen Brothers or Wes Anderson gag because he says, basically, I want to be the boss, Grandpa.

I've built a new bomb.

My bomb is so small that I can attach it to a mosquito.

And the bomb will go with the mosquito.

And then when the person gets bitten, the bomb will go off.

But it's kind of tricky because it's hard to target someone with a single individual mosquito.

And then we just cut out of the scene.

No, no reaction.

Oh, no, no.

Zeno does say, like,

you're too, you're smart, but you're foolish.

Oh, right.

I quoted this.

He says, this is the English dub.

You're a sharp boy, but that doesn't mean you're not an idiot, too.

There is also a couple other interesting little bits.

That's a fucking succession scene.

Yeah.

Hey, the Zoltics are a succession family.

Oh, no, absolutely.

Yeah.

There is a great, there is a couple little good bits to this conversation also.

The The first thing is how easily Maluki admits, like, I understand

why you treat him better than you treat me because he is better than me.

He is good.

But that doesn't mean that he should be the boss.

And the other thing is that

his evidence that he should be in charge is like, I'll kill anyone you want me to.

I'll kill anyone you ask me to without any problems.

Killer was always complaining when you tell him to kill people.

And this was sort of when I had the thought, like that,

you know, we know that they're training Kiloa to take over the family.

The thing that they're training the other Zoldix to do is to be Mika.

They are training him to be the heartless killing machine, as close to that dog as you can get, but still go out and do the missions.

And this is what Miligi doesn't understand.

It's actually the fact that you will kill whoever they tell you to without complaining that is the exact reason you couldn't be in charge,

yeah,

um, yeah.

And we and we get a real sense of that in action when we meet Killua's dad, yes, totally, 100%.

Uh, does anyone want to talk about Hanson Squidward?

Real quick, do we when do we get the scene where uh call it that there's like a brief scene where the Kaluto

like interacts with gone and the crew

says something about that was between that was when uh when kikio leaves after the canary shooting um

uh kaluto hangs back and like

asks him a question and then runs

yeah she's like who are you and they say we're killowist friends and he just kind of goes friends and then that's when kaluto gets called away and it's a real moment of like oh this could this kid also

yeah he's learning about friends for the first time.

Yeah.

Like, is this, did, did Gon just like plant the seed for another, like, Zaldic child to stray from the family path?

Um, which I just wanted to mention.

Um,

puzzled by the idea that you could have friends, or want them, maybe.

Maybe that's what it is.

We don't get, we don't get a lot of information about what he's thinking.

We do get a lot of curiosity.

Has he had any dialogue?

Spoken, spoken dialogue?

That was his only dialogue.

That was pretty much it.

Yeah, I think maybe he responds to something that

Akikio says, like one other time, maybe.

But yeah, this was Kaluto's only real dialogue.

Just a lot of like curious and interested spying.

And then that.

And then following the mom around a lot.

Yeah.

This silva conversation is so bizarre.

It's

so much.

I feel there's like a look on it.

So when Killua gets there, Silva's like, hey, tell me about your friends.

And the face that Kilua makes is like

the first time his dad's ever had any interest in like

anything about him.

Kilua clearly is like in awe of his father in a way that is like so different from anyone else that we've seen him interact with in his family.

And when we see them interacting, like

Silva is intense, but like he seems like nice in a way that is totally off-putting and like very surprising.

We're just like, oh, we see all of this bizarre behavior from all of these absolute weirdos.

We open the door and we see Silva, who is a monster of a guy.

Handsome Squidward.

Sitting a monster.

Yeah, he's Handsome Squidward.

He's a monster of a Squidward.

Sitting next to him is like a mini Mikke

who's like got

his like muzzle restrained with like a metal.

Like, this is clearly, you know, someone's biting people.

This

room that he's in also has a real, like, the background feels very like, it's got the like same sort of piping that you'd see in like Giga artwork or like Sutomu Miha's work.

Yeah.

Which like just adds to the atmosphere.

Kilua sits in this real weird looking chair.

Like everything about this place feels like this isn't a nice room.

This room isn't used for nice things.

And

it really offsets him being like, you can tell me everything about the exam.

And he does

a really strange.

Really strange.

Strange thing.

What was your first impression of this, Jack?

I mean, I am

basically in the business of being wrong-footed by Hunter-Hunter.

So I

went into it being like, oh, this is a work.

You know, he is building up to a kind of

moment of violence or domination in which he, you know, shreds this up.

And kind of...

This is very similar to...

the way you described this happening in previous episodes, right, Keith, where it's like, I'm kind of right, but not right, not not in the exact way that I thought I was going to be.

Because that moment never really comes.

Instead, we get this conversation that is deeply unsettling because of how,

on the face of it, mundane it is on so many levels.

This really is the coming home from school, how was your day, son, type conversation.

He asks about his friends and Killiwa says they're a lot of fun to be with.

And then he asks about the exam and you can tell me anything and everything.

And then they're just having a fun time.

When we cut back to them in a bit,

we hear that, you know, they're chuckling about, like, oh, and then haha, Hanzo said he was going to cut his legs off.

God wouldn't let him cut his legs off.

And the subtitle says, both chuckling as the two of them think about this.

Yeah, I thought it was really funny.

We thought that was actually pretty funny.

My sub was like, uh, uh, was like

explaining the Hanzo thing, and then then Kilo was like, Gun's so self-centered, and then bursts out laughing.

It's like,

it's such an odd view of that, of what happened there.

I don't know.

Maybe that's like a weird translation, or I don't know what the dub said, but

the read of that situation

as Ghone being self-centered is really funny.

And then we get to a moment where you're not 100% wrong.

No, not really.

You get to a moment where it could start getting sinister, but instead it just stays strange.

When Silva asks, do you want to see your friends?

Be honest.

There is no need to hold back with me.

And he says that they've never had a father-son chat before.

I just got that screencast.

Yeah, that is concerning.

I also wrote that down.

It is such a bizarre thing because it felt natural.

He says,

there is an ease to this conversation that is bizarre.

He says,

well, and in part because the things he's saying is things that the viewer is putting together and that the viewer is thinking about Killiway.

He says, I was raised by my parents to be an assassin and I raised you the same way, Beat, but you and I are different and you leaving home has helped me realize that.

You are my son and a person on all on your own.

And I'm like, I'm narrowing my eyes, I don't know about this.

So he asks again, do you want to see your friends?

Killiwa says yes.

And Silver lets him go, but makes him make a promise.

He bites his thumb so that it draws blood and he says, you must promise never to betray your friends.

And Killiua bites his thumb, and they put their fingers together in exactly the same gesture that we saw Goan do with Aunt Mito back in episode one, except this time there is blood involved, whereas before it was just a boy and his aunt pressing their thumbs together.

Which is, that's the Zelda family through and through.

And then...

Killiwa just gets ready to leave.

Silver lets him go.

He has a brief

sort of run-in with his mom, who, like we said earlier, claims that the three have already left without him.

Oh, they don't care about you, Killiwa.

Nope.

Kiliwa doesn't buy it.

Yeah.

Okay, I need to talk a little bit about Kiloa interacting with his mom

because

I wrote multiple times in my notes that, especially in the flashbacks, the Kiloa kind of has some Stewie Griffin vibes.

Sure.

Well, so he wants to kill his mother, and Stewie famously wants to kill Lois.

So I wrote down him when he met her in the hallway and sort of intimated that he would kill her if she tried to stop him, that it was a damn you vile woman moment.

And I just kind of wanted to put that out there.

I also think it's really good that she gets so fucking proud that, or like excited when Killua like threatens her.

Just another point in the like, this family is full of freaks Column.

It's so, it's so bizarre because they're all terrible, and we know that Silva is terrible.

We just haven't seen it.

Well, we see him being awful to his wife.

So that is one.

And like, you know, like

in it, in a way,

in a way that is like,

like,

she's awful, but like, so is he.

So, why is he,

why is he so upset that she's being awful?

He's awful too.

Yeah.

Uh, uh, and and then we get that we get, we do get some of that sinister, we, we get the, the peel back of the conversation with Killowa a little bit where he has like this sinister laugh of like, oh, he'll come back.

And it's like, I don't know.

I don't know.

To contrast what he says to Killowa's face, which is like that we're different, is he says, he is my son after all?

Like, that, like,

I think it's really good that they established that Silva, I don't know, it makes you think about the fact that assassins have to be social creatures as well, in a way, like they have to be able to talk their way into things.

Yes, I was, yeah, this is totally like this, his ability to go Killowa's whole life without ever having this kind of talk with him to immediately slide into it in a comfortable and familiar way that puts Killowa at ease is

an assassin's mask.

Like, this is where it becomes scary.

Yeah.

And, and it's actually like,

it's a return to the status quo when he leaves and then is like,

you know, they go, finally, here is the silva that I kind of expected.

But we don't get a lot of it.

And, and then, and in fact, I think that his play

is such a long play.

We're not going to, I don't think we're going to fully understand

how

or like what

Silva meant by this conversation for like 60 episodes or something.

Yeah, there was a lot going on there.

Yeah, there really was, yeah.

That is not terribly clear.

And I mean,

it's a fool's game to try and make predictions based on this, but I feel like the between the blood promise: don't betray your friends, he's my son, after all, he'll come back.

We're playing in the space of what Illumi said to Killiua about, like, oh, you're wondering what it would be like to kill Gon.

And all the pieces are in place for us to work towards some kind of configuration of Killiwa is going to be asked to harm his friends, and that is going to play into Silva's hands.

But, you know, knowing Hunter-Hunter, it's going to be, it's the way that is going to be configured is going to be really weird.

I mean,

you can see the track that Silva wants wants to lay by he says,

you know, the thing that he says when he goes is he'll come back.

He's my son.

Like, he has to come back.

But the thing that he says to kill his face is, come home when you're tired.

You know, come home when you're ready to come home.

But then

the only bit of leverage he has is

a blood promise to never betray your friends.

So you can see, like, you can see the way that this is so is like not an innocent Thing but then the flip side of it is I do think that Silva means it when he says like the way that Kiloa can become the Leader of the Zoldix in the way that he needs to be is by becoming a full person

Outside of Kukaru Mountain like I don't I don't think that I do think that there's a there's a

a way for that to like be a good plan.

Because what is not going to work is having Kilo trapped on the mountain, resenting his whole family and the family business, and then being like an adult who has nothing but disdain for his family, has the willpower to resist being broken by them, and no desire to kill anyone.

You know, and it's like, oh, probably should have let him go with his friends 20 years ago, huh?

Um, I think the only other bit of business for me this episode is that uh Canary has come round and she has offered to lead the crew to the butler's quarters, where she can't guarantee that they'll be able to see Killua, but they're able to get a lot closer to the house that way.

And

boy, are they in the butler's quarters?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

You want to tell us about the butler's quarters, Ali?

Um, well, okay, so this is just a normal

all intents and purposes, this is a normal building with normal cups, a normal

heavy here.

But I guess you don't know because all the all the butlers need to be trained assassins, so who knows.

Um, but the vibes are really bad because the butler,

one of the butlers at least, is very upset that the matron of the house is upset.

Yo,

man, that what you got, some feelings there, Goto.

What's up, man?

Mistress's voice was barely above a whisper.

He can't stand to look into their faces because they made her upset.

And the way that he...

I'll say,

I think that that was part of the ruse.

You think that's part of a ruse?

Yeah, I think that's part of the ruse.

You don't think that he's just like a

fiercely fiercely

i think he loves lowest solo

yeah i don't think he does i i don't think he does

really yeah i don't think so um

i think i think that the i think that the person that he's trying to protect is kilo ahir i don't think that he loves

i can see that yeah that's my that is my read on it you know uh you know maybe there's there will be a little bit more here at another date um uh but you know i don't i don't think that I can prove that I'm right.

I just get the vibe that that was a ruse.

I mean, I don't think we can prove that you're wrong either.

I don't think that is like

a bad way to read this episode at all.

I think that adds like some interesting layers to Goto.

I just assumed he was horny for Mrs.

Hallbick.

I just assumed

he's in the butler house pacing all day thinking about her visor, you know?

Yeah.

Anyway, the way that he emotionally deals with this is by challenging them to a weird coin game.

I'm going to throw this coin back and forth, and you have to guess which hand it's in.

He's going to judge them based on a test of his own device.

Yeah, he says, I'm going to judge you based on a test of my own device.

The test is just flipping a coin and trying to...

Well, hmm.

It is metaphorically a test about being able to see deceit in the world.

That is what the test is supposed to do.

Oh, so firstly, they take a canary hostage.

They say, if you get this, if you try and mess with me or you don't answer in three seconds, I'm going to cut her throat.

And everyone's like, all right.

Sounds good.

What's the game?

I wrote down, is this going to be a kill you a quiz?

Because the implication is that he's going to ask questions, but the question he asks is the same every time, and it's what hand is the coin in.

Then he tosses the coin

and just sort of catches it quite quickly and it's like, which hands it in?

And then a rare example of a question, it's the same question, gets harder every time.

Harder every time.

Because what he does is it's like, he does, it's like out of fucking Looney Tunes or something.

He tosses the coin and then just goes like,

very accurate, yeah.

With his hands a bazillion times.

And then and then eventually some more butlers arrive and they all do the hand business and

you know, it's it's it is what it is.

I was really hoping we would get a killer a karapika powerpoint explaining how to win this game but we do not we well we get a little one we do get it after the game's over um uh

but we we get a great uh little karapica or uh sorry gone bit here uh quote Leario, give me your knife.

Don't worry.

I won't do anything stupid.

And then proceeds to slice his own eyelid.

You got to be, you need a cut man.

I went fucking crazy for that.

Not going to lie.

That was kind of badass.

It was, but it's just so funny.

Like, don't worry, I'm not gonna do anything crazy.

And then...

Gon's favorite movie is Rocky, because

all his heroes, just like him, have CTE.

But

they get through this as the game gets more and more tricksy and more and more deceitful.

But eventually, Killua, who has been in a room in the Butler's quarters playing with like 500 identical robot toys.

Eating candy, yeah.

Eating candy,

comes in and is like, hey, what's going on here?

And the mood, it is so funny.

The mood changes to a celebration instantly.

Everyone's like,

I'm so happy to see you.

This is fantastic.

This is great.

Killiua says,

basically, like, were they trying to mess with you?

Did they try anything?

And Gohan says, no, they were just keeping us all entertained.

At no point during this scene, do we cut to Canary, a woman with a knife to her throat?

Goan is convinced.

I can't tell.

Is Gohan saying this just so Kiliwa doesn't feel bad about his family?

Or do you think Goano?

I don't think so.

Yes, because Gohan saw them take that woman hostage.

Right.

Yeah,

I think that

Goto convinced.

He passed the game and Goto kept his end of the deal and let Canary go.

And I think that that was just.

I think that Goan was like, well, we don't need to bring this up.

I think we could just pretend like everything's cool.

Yeah, why talk about old stuff?

You did skip, I think, the best

line in the whole show so far.

Which was that?

Does anyone have it?

I have it.

If anyone doesn't know.

Keith, please tell us the best line in the show so far.

You're here, Goon.

And this guy, Karapika?

And Raolio.

Is this in the manger, Alley?

No, I don't recall this gag.

So funny.

So funny.

Yeah, during this, you know, he says, this guy, Karapica.

And then Karpi goes, you forgot already?

And he says, Reolio.

and l'orio's like i just laugh

so funny funny it is really a peek into kiloa's mind which is just like a big thought bubble that says gone

yeah it's a big thought bubble that says gone and then on the outside of the thought bubble it is just an endless fathomless panel of knives guns someone getting blown up someone getting hit by a car and then in the middle it's him going gone

I love Kilua.

Also, notable Riolio, when you talked about how the

Zeno, Silver, and Kilua all look the same,

Silva has the same color palette that Goan does.

He has this purple, sorry, he has this blue and white and grey colour palette, whereas Kikyo, Kilua's mother, has a purple color palette.

And I think that going into that room with Silver and the colours just matching up exactly kind of like snapped together a lot of

you know this is the heir apparent to the zeldic empire yeah yeah

um

it's uh

uh

the the the visual language of the three

like zaldics that we see the three head zoldics that we see is very bizarre i don't know i genuinely i don't know like is it just

To show that like how serious they are about like well, I don't know why they look the same, but they do.

Um, their faces don't look the same, they don't like look like family in that kind of way, but they're just like it's the hair, it's really the hair and the eyes.

Yeah, um,

there are like resemblances between some characters in the family, but it's mostly that, like, well, all the all the

face.

Oh, okay, Kaluto.

I was gonna say Kaluto and Kiloa looks pretty similar.

Yeah, um,

um,

yeah, Kaluto looks like what if Kiloa wore more

mascara?

What if?

What if?

Hey, what if

society?

If

I mean, Kilo is so excited.

It's great for everyone.

Do we have anything else about this

very long, fun, but mostly difficult to comment on

Butler scene?

Two things.

I thought it was really, really good when they do the

hand, like sleight of hand, whooshy hands thing, and the hands are steaming afterwards.

Oh, yeah.

Really good visual gag, I think.

Also, I liked the

flow of

Leorio gets knocked out, and then Karapika gets knocked out, and then it's gone.

And

they formulate a wordless strategy, which is like, let's just make sure to guess,

to not make the same guesses so that we don't get knocked out together.

Yeah.

Which I think is, was

a really good little bit of them being a team.

Yeah.

And did we mention that the last one Gone gets is

when they do like the multi-butler thing?

They do the work.

And then it's like, it's actually in the hand of the guy behind me.

Yeah, very funny.

Total.

That's, I feel like also a gag.

Like, that's so silly.

What a goofy way to play that.

Like,

okay, I buy that.

Go knows if there's someone behind him.

I don't know what he saw that made, that was like the guy behind me has it.

Yeah, that was very funny.

I think.

And then they break up.

Oh, wait, wait.

Killua's got a new outfit.

Oh,

yeah.

Killua is dressed like streetwear spawn.

He is.

Yeah.

It's a sort of, it is.

It's a weird sort of spider web type outfit type thing.

Also, the backpack just has a bunch of

straps basically.

And it's a lot of fun.

It looks kind of like it has an outfit earlier in the episode when we saw it.

Sorry, you cut out.

It's cool.

Oh, it's a kind of cool spider web thing.

Killua had a new outfit earlier in the episode when we saw him as an eight-year-old.

He was wearing a kind of teal sweater.

This is notable because the main characters haven't really had costume changes up until this point.

He looks fucking sick as hell.

He's ready to go.

He's got his little skateboard, and he just goes.

They just let him go.

They all leave.

Yeah, they all leave.

He's like, We gotta get out of here.

My mom's gonna give us an earful.

It's so funny how, like, like

how lightly he takes, like, he treats his family like a normal kid treats a normal family in a

weird way.

Like, he's having space with his brother.

He's arguing with his mom.

He loves his dad because he, like, respects him.

But they're torture monsters and murderers.

And he will occasionally get a little, like, a little fragmented moment of, oh, wait a second, maybe I'm actually extremely damaged.

And maybe there is a world outside of this.

But for the most part, yes, he's like, this is just my normal family.

But off they go.

They get on a little train.

Killewa learns to his horror that they used tourist visas to enter the country

when they could have used their hunter licenses.

And we get confirmed that Gohan will not use his hunter license until he punches Hisuka in the face and returns his badge to him.

Hey, if ever a guy should get punched in the face,

it's Hisuka Moro.

And Karapika out of nowhere says, hey, I know where Hisuka is.

Because it becomes clear that...

We are told what Hisuka whispered to him during the fight.

If you recall, Hisuka whispered something to Karapika

and then immediately surrendered.

And it turns out that what he whispered is, I'll tell you something interesting about spiders.

Classic Hisuka

freak whisper.

You know, we learned that the Phantom Troop is regularly called the Spiders by people who are familiar with them because it's their logo.

So Karapika was like, yeah, I'd love that information.

And Hisuka said, okay, maybe in a perfectly normally named city on September the 1st in about six months' time.

What was that name of that city, or do we all want to say it at the same time?

I'll say it.

The city's name is York New City.

Y-O-R-K-N-E-W Space City.

York New City.

Strangely familiar.

Well,

on September the 1st, what could be happening on September the 1st in York New City?

I know the famous auction.

The world's largest auction from September 1st to 10th.

Rare items from all around the world will be sold.

Tricksters will show up, including the Phantom Troop, and definitely Hisaker.

So everybody's like, well, we're going to meet up in six months' time in York New City, where they're going to have a big auction.

The auction arc approaches.

Everyone loves an auction.

Oh, this is another trope of the genre, the auction arc.

I think you're pulling my leg.

Yeah, I think you're making that up, Keith.

Sorry, I was lying.

Wow.

On the internet?

Yeah, I was lying on the internet.

What?

Sorry.

Yeah, on the internet.

I thought the computer was smart.

So then everybody says, look, all right, well, bye.

Karapika's like, I got to get a lot of money if I want to, I guess, go to the auction.

I don't know what this is about, Karapica.

You don't need to bid on NFL.

No, Krabiga doesn't want, Karmiga doesn't want

money to bid.

Karapiga wants a patron to hire him

to do a job.

There's a duplication that it costs a certain amount to get into the auction, I think.

And then Larry's like, yeah, I'm going to go study to be a doctor, like the plan always was.

And so after all this, now it's just going in Kilua.

And what do they do with their time?

Six months.

Probably have some fun in six months.

Probably do some hanging out.

No.

We have to train.

Leading to an extremely funny sight gag.

Because we get a little Kilua PowerPoint presentation.

Oh, my God.

Killua gets the stick.

He draws a little distance of the spam in the ground.

He's pulling a Karapaka.

And he says, this is the power difference between between Hisaka and Hanzo.

And Gon says, and what about the power difference between Hisaka and me?

And Kiliwa.

It's so good.

It's like a single shot.

They don't cut here.

Killiwa picks up the stick and walks really far back in the frame, really, really far back, drawing a line and says, oh, probably, probably over here.

And then Gun says, and what about you?

And Kiliwa walks a fair distance back towards Gunn and draws a line in the ground and turns around and says, wow, I'm so humble to himself.

And he's got a little cat face on him.

He's got his little cat face.

It's really funny.

It's so good.

Killo is so good.

There's

Allie can talk to me about this because she also read this in the manga.

One of my favorite manga panels is in this bit where Gon asks Killua like how he

how he knew the power levels between everyone and Gon says, how do you do it?

And Killua goes draw on the floor nothing to it while blushing it sounds really good oh that's fun there's a different blushing moment in this one which is uh

uh

when when uh kilowa draws himself on the ground it's like i'm so humble and then gone's like wow kilowa you're amazing and he's like oh shucks

it's great it's it's fantastic uh

The well, Leorio's gun, so they need a new character who blushes all the time.

Yeah, that's true.

The funny thing is, they don't actually ever show you where Kilo puts himself.

No, you don't ever get it.

It's not as close as you might think.

Can I

ask you, Jack,

how accurate you think this graph is?

How right do you think Kilo was?

About what?

The placement of all four characters.

Of all four characters.

Yeah.

So he says that Killiwa's implication is that Hisuka is the most powerful person they've faced.

Yeah.

Well, on this list.

Right.

I would put.

I think Killiwa is stronger than Hanzo.

I was surprised to see Killiwa rate himself less powerfully than Hanzo.

I might swap Hanzo and Killiwa, And I might bring Gon way closer to the pack.

I think Killiwa is still feeling a little sour about being rated, about being seeded lower than Gon in

the branch.

The branch?

The bracket.

Listen to friends at the table.

If you want to know about the friend.

Yeah, you know, I think he's like, I'm more powerful than Goan, so I really need to rub it in.

You know, I need to go all the way out there into the distance.

So that's my answer.

Bring Goan closer to the pack, swap Hanzo and Hisaka so that the power rating on all of them, at least to most, goes Goan.

And what do you think?

What about the difference between Isaka?

So Hanzo and

Hisuka were pretty close on the graph.

Are you keeping that?

I move them a bit further apart.

The problem is, I think Hisaka can kill anybody.

Yeah.

But you've also said that about so can Killua.

And so can Killua.

Yeah, yeah.

Who's the most powerful character we've met so far?

It's Killiua.

You think so?

And that includes Hizuka.

Yeah, I think, I don't think, I don't think Hisuka would give Killiua a problem, really.

Okay.

I think Killiwa would just go, I don't know why we're doing this fight.

This is boring to me.

I don't want to fight the clown.

Interesting.

He pulled that serial killer's heart out in one second.

Sure, but it doesn't take a lot.

Regular humans in our world that couldn't pass the hunter exam for shit can kill 50 people

if they really wanted to.

Damn.

Whoa.

Don't, though.

Don't.

Don't.

Hey, if you're listening to this, don't.

If you're listening to this, don't.

Don't kill 50 people.

And don't want to either.

Friends of the table is a good idea.

We can't control people, though.

We can't control if they want to.

I think they should be allowed to want to.

Just don't do it.

I'm going to be honest.

We can't control if they are going to anyway.

So you might as well, if we're already not controlling things, you might as well still say, don't want to kill people.

Look, look, we're getting into the weeds here.

I think the important bit is that everybody is now getting ready to go off to make some money and get themselves into a good position to attend.

Wait, auction of the year.

How could you make money and train at the same time?

Well, you should go to the Heavens Arena.

And then the narrator says, Gon and Killiwa have figured out a way to make money and train

at the Heavens Arena.

Cut to credits.

So that really was like a little mini arc when you described it earlier.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any final thoughts on these?

Any manga differences, Allie, in these that you wanna, that we didn't get to?

Other final thoughts?

Yeah, nothing crazy.

I feel like this was a little,

you know, it was a little by the numbers, like the plot

kind of paced out the same way.

You get some more details, you spend some more time with people

in the anime than you do in the manga.

But it seemed, you know, pretty, pretty,

a pretty, you know, good adaption in that way.

Um,

uh, would I have

it's weird?

It's the thing of, like, since I read it the first time, would I have made this two episodes instead of four or perhaps three?

Um, maybe.

Um,

oh, I think a funny thing that um is important in the manga is that I think in this part, or maybe the part right before,

there is

a um

dress up gone

funny game that plays out through the a couple of chapters.

Like in one, in one like chapter and illustration, it's him like in a pair of boxer shorts or whatever.

And then the next two,

it's just like clothes that you can cut out and put on him, which I thought was really funny.

That's so cute.

And then for 43, there was an announcement that

Higurashi married

Nyoko.

Uh,

oh, I should look up her name, uh, the creator of Sailor Moon.

Um, oh, that's great.

Yeah, they got married between chapters 43 and 44, apparently.

So, that's so early.

The

little way that he draws the two of them is so cute.

She's a bunny, and he's like a little chibi dog.

It's really good.

That's great.

Uh, also, the occasions where he will do a doodle of a Sailor Moon character, it's always really good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Such a power couple.

The illustration is really cute because it's like,

here's me asking her.

Here's us planning the wedding.

And it's like the both of them just laying on the floor.

Then like, here's the reception.

Here's the honeymoon.

And then the final thing is, now we work right next to each other.

And it's two of them at two different desks with like their backs facing away from the camera.

And it's really,

very sweet.

so congratulations for that.

Years ago at this point,

yeah, congratulations,

congratulations.

Um, but yeah, overall, my impressions of the manga have been really good.

I've been really enjoying it.

Favorite character?

Um, that is so tough.

And I was thinking about this before this because I was like, I should have an answer for this, but I feel like it's still really too early.

I love gone, obviously.

Um, Keith, you knew I was reading Dragon Ball a bit before this.

And that's my big, like,

this era Shonen tropes touchstone.

And the thing that I keep running into when I read Hunter-Hunter is the same sort of thing of like,

you have this protagonist who's just a magnet and who's also like shockingly good at stuff.

And that's really all you have to do.

And then

just how much

he loves drawing Goan.

Like you can really see it in the first couple of chapters where he's like still working out the characters and the story and stuff.

And just like how often he's drawing Goan's face

is just like, there's a lot of affection there, which I really, really appreciate going through it.

And the final thing that I wanted to say is how

surprising some of the pacing has been.

like, I feel like the story spends time

setting up like the puzzle box for the next for the volume or whatever, um, and then ends up getting through it in a way that feels like more quick and like refreshing than I thought it would be.

I

obviously wasn't on the podcast for the like hunter exam stuff,

but I kind of took a break in between reading it from the first trial

where Kurapika

like knocks that person out.

And there's the debate about like, are we to kill them?

Do we know that he's killed?

Yada yada.

And I was going back expecting to be like, oh, and then, you know, everybody else's test is going to have this same like sort of length because

this is like introductions to these characters.

But to have that end up being like

Leorio

bets all of his time away, then that's it.

And then, um, Killua just fucking rips that guy's heart out in one chapter, and we're done.

I was like, damn, okay, that's the hunter arc.

No messing about, yeah, just you know, we're in and out on this one.

You had the one big, tough introduction to this, and then for the rest of them, it was sort of like, okay, people get it.

Um, and I, I, I appreciated that.

It's something I like about the show that it's willing to be very unpredictable with how long things are going to take.

It's not afraid to slow down.

And it's something that I really like in an anime is like these slow episodes, like the first two, where they're mostly just hanging around,

sort of training, sort of, you know, doing some character stuff.

I really like when an anime will go, any show really will go from...

the 10 out of 10 excitement of the hunter exam and be like, we need three episodes that are at like a three out of 10

before we can gear back up.

And I think it's a good way to like not get like

crisis creep where like everything has to be bigger and crazier than the thing that just happened.

Like just take a second, reset your stakes, and then jump back in.

And

Hunter Hunter is a show that's really good at that and really good at like

getting through something that you think might be might be too long really fast, but also getting in and being like, oh, this could be a chapter and be like, no, this one's going to be two chapters.

Yeah.

And I do really appreciate that about especially this set of episodes because of your description of it being like a little mini arc is like you introduce a bunch of characters, you introduce a bunch of ideas, you really get a sense of

who

Kiloa is and where he comes from.

And, like,

you know, in the chapters before, it's like, who's this mysterious boy?

And he's an assassin and he's cooler.

And he, you know, you have this understanding of where Gon got his skills from, but like, where, where is he coming from?

And, like, how violent is he really?

And to have this place to sort of measure him against the other members of his family.

And you're not just measuring him against, like, the other protagonists, is really refreshing.

And then you also have this like mini-emotional arc for Gone, where it's like, oh, I'm really frustrated.

And you know, I

haven't

this goal set in front of me.

I have these frustrations that are still in me from how the Hunter exam went, but like, I'm dedicated to this other thing.

And at the end of this arc, we're going to have this sort of like return to the status quo where you know the gang is back together.

And then even though they separate again, you sort of know, know where their paths are pointing them.

Um, that like so Denver Verse, your new city, right?

Yeah, I think it would be a weaker story if it was like, oh, Kalou is here.

And now I'm, I keep trying to pronounce him like the liquor and it's really weird.

Um,

he's here, and you know, now we're gonna do another, you know, tournament arc, or we're gonna do another, like, we're all gonna go hunting together and be sort of forced to be in a situation.

Um,

I think, like, doing it this way where it's like, okay, we've, we've, we've set out what we said that we would do in terms of supporting each other.

And now we have like our own

priorities has, it feels really smart from like a storytelling perspective and feels like more honest to who these guys are.

So I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

I think the only other thing that I wanted to say in this first episode, besides thank you for having me and shout outs to Video Plus.

Shout out to the first season of Hunter Hunter.

The moment that I knew that I wanted to read Hunter Hunter, it was a couple months before it got added to the Shonen Jump app.

And somebody, a friend of mine, posted a screen cap of one of the pages.

And I don't know when this comes up.

And Jack, if you want to cover your eyes, I'm sorry, but it's not like a spoiler.

It was a panel of someone, I think Kalua, looking at Gone

and being like,

sometimes when I look at you, it's like looking into the sun and it's too bright to focus on.

And I was just like, I need to know what's going on here.

Yeah, that's, if ever there was a panel that you see and you go, especially with

these two particular, the way these two particular weirdos look.

Oh, excellent.

Yeah.

So I'm looking forward to seeing where the emotional stakes in the show go because, you know, through osmosis, I feel like that, you know, we're going to get in it at some point.

But to like, just see how

cute and fresh and like, you know, it's not that like the situations aren't gritty and that it isn't like a fucked up like, oh, they're fighting and there's death and there's blood and, you know, they're facing things.

Like just the way that like these characters came together and the way that they interact with each other has still been

really

refreshing in a way.

Like, it's not like a comedy, but

it doesn't lose its heart despite,

you know, the like squid game fucking murder house that they were in.

It is really able to play both sides of it tonally in a way that, like, doesn't, it never feels like it's like muddying itself.

It

You always get the

pulled back.

I'm an observer watching what's literally happening and it's horrible.

And then zoom in and like everyone's happy and laughing.

And like, it's like, they're happy and laughing because they're fucking sick.

But it's still cute.

Yeah.

Good show.

Yeah, good show.

Any other closing thoughts?

Oh, what are we watching next time?

Next time, that is such a good question that I'm prepared to answer.

This is the end of season one.

Episode 26 is a flashback episode.

It's the same as episode 13 was.

So, you know, watch it if you want a recap of season one, but or really watch it if you want a recap of the last 13 episodes.

But we are watching episodes one through three of the Heavens Arena arc.

you might consider those episodes 27, 28, and 29, depending on how you're watching.

Cool.

Cool.

Excellent.

I'm very excited.

Allie, do you have any, do you want a closing plug?

Closing plugs, love.

Listen to Friends of the Table.

You might be watching to media.

You might be listening to Media Club Plus because a friend of yours has been talking about friends of the table for years and was finally like listen

you can listen to something else there's just you know watching hunter hunter or whatever but like

you should listen to friends of the table yeah that's true uh-huh hey and shout out to your friend who got you to listen to media club plus because they're a fan of friends of the table that's great that's a good kind of

really good friend if you want to be a good friend you should make your friends listen to us

if i wanted to get into friends at the table, where should I start listening to it?

There's so many episodes.

Partisan or Sang Fiel.

One of the two.

We have a lot of seasons, but those are kind of the agreed-upon starting points among the show people.

Yeah, we got Partisan, a story, a sci-fi story of revolution on a holy moon.

And we have got Sang Fiel, a story about a blighted desert wasteland inhabited by uh strange uh mechanical gods uh possessed shapes uh werewolves but cooler uh what else lives in sangfiel all kinds of stuff trains

uh uh gods of luck

um

yeah true people but bugs

but lots of bugs

yeah

but in a good way in a good way skeleton

lots Really funny skeletons.

Maybe some people have built a heaven, but not very well.

You know, listen to find out.

There's a lot of stuff in there.

It's a good time.

Yeah, absolutely.

Any other closing plugs, Jack?

No, I don't think so.

I mean, any music that you hear on this show or on Friends of the Table, you can get to by going to notquitereal.bandcamp.com.

I'm proud of it.

I make a lot of music for the shows we make.

By this point, you will have heard several themes for an anime rewatch podcast because I think that's funny.

And they're available at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.

Sylvie, any closing plugs?

Sylvie Bullet on everything.

Emovoicekissing.bandcamp.com.

I said that earlier.

What are

we, the TikTok, Friends Under Square Table, Friends of the Table on Twitch?

Check out our YouTube.

The restreams of Bluff City Season 1 are all hosted there if you didn't catch them live.

What else?

What other show stuff am I missing right now?

Co-host, Friends-Table.

Oh, Friends-Table and co-host.

Yeah, that's true.

I think, I think,

I can't think of anything else.

The Go-Host gets everything that the Twitter gets, by the way.

So if you're off of X.com,

you can go on the co-host.

That's a great way to not be on Twitter, but still follow friends at the table.

It actually gets more

stuff.

It gets like slightly different stuff.

It's like mostly overlapping the same, but

it's not always literally the exact same.

Adre, anything else?

No, I think that's everything.

All right.

You can.

I don't know.

Yeah, that's it.

Oh, hey, this is the I remember what I was gonna say.

Uh, this is the second episode that we're recording since we got our album artwork.

Did we already talk about the album artwork or the podcast art?

Yeah, the Media Club Plus art is by the wonderful Annie Johnston Glick, who you can find her website by going to anniejg.com.

It is an extremely cool piece of art, as you'll be able to see with your eyes right now if you look down at the device.

It is a photograph.

It is a real-world model that is slightly larger than you anticipate it being.

And almost everything in it is actually modeled and placed and lit in the scene.

The view of Whale Island is like a quilt.

It's extremely cool piece of art.

Annie and I both got very excited looking at the old ISPY books, those sort of great photograph dioramas.

We are really stoked about it, and we hope you are too.

Yeah, you said piece of art, but it's actually pieces of art.

It is?

Yeah, it's many pieces of art.

Oh, I suppose it is.

Yes, many distinct pieces of art.

Yeah, all right, that's it.

Bye, everyone.

Thank you.

Thanks, Ali, for joining.

Goodbye.

Thank you for having me.

Okay, bye.

We don't clap at the end either.

This isn't fine.

What if you lose the backup sometime and then you just have these floating, these free-floating MP3s?