The Butterfly and the Spider - Hunter x Hunter ep. 14-16: Media Club Plus S01E05

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

As always, we are brought to you by friends at the table.

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

How did everybody like these episodes?

We're back in it.

We took a little bit, we took a month off, basically.

Far back.

Do we want to introduce ourselves?

Introduce ourselves.

No, it's gonna be fun.

No.

We're still gonna be a little bit more than a month.

It won't be a month off for the people who have been listening.

That's just true.

Kayfame.

This is coming out in the end of August.

No, it's currently the it's currently September or some shit.

I don't know.

No, we'll introduce ourselves.

With me, as always, is

Sylvie Bullet.

Hey, I'm Sylvia.

You can find me on most social medias, except for the one that a certain guy bought recently at Sylvie Bullet.

I even changed my co-host to that

to consolidate.

It's called

brand consistency.

So wait, so it's co-host.org slash brand consistency yes it's co-host.org slash brand consistency um

no it's it's co-host.org slash sylvie bola instagram dot one word or underscore

one word right it's just all one word yeah it's all one word i don't bother with the underscores i know some people like them but they're not here right now wow wow shots fired austin no to be fair friends underscore table is always here except on co-host there's no underscores i forgot so it would be dash it's a dash yeah uh and yeah you can go to that's a great segue in the meme thing.

You can check out our other show, Friends Underscore Table, on

Twitter and also TikTok.

And

sorry,

Twitter doesn't exist in my brain anymore.

Sure, it's X.

It doesn't exist in my phone either.

That's true.

Hey.

High five.

Yeah.

Actually, that's not true because I keep the Friends of the Table account on my phone.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Oh, I just mean it reminds me X now.

It doesn't say Twitter on my phone.

Yeah, it does.

Cool, brain.

I don't want to talk about this.

Someone else introduced themselves.

You can, of course, also check out all the streams that we've been doing cataloged on youtube.com/slash friends of the table.

That's where we've been uploading the streams after they've been streamed on Twitch, which is twitch.tv/slash friends of the table.

And if you want to support the show, you can go to friendsofthetable.cash.

Also with me today, Jack DeKeet.

Hi, my name is Jack.

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

I'd also like to shout out our amazing cover art by Annie Johnston Glick, whose website you can find at anniejg.com.

That's A-N-N-I-E.

And Andrely Swan.

Hey, you can find me

on X.com because I'm straighted

at SwanDrink 3000.

Bill!

It's just me and CM Punk.

We're the only two people that are on X.

Just talking about how we won't take Advil.

Oh, I won't take Advil.

Wow.

Well, okay, Keith.

Do you want to invite?

Do you want to invite over to edgex.com, the official social media for straight edge people?

Well, I take Tylenol and I take Aspen.

Wait,

that isn't the proximate, is Advil, right?

Which one is Advil?

Advil is, I'm pretty sure, aspirin.

Advil is aspirin.

It's ibuprofen.

It's ibuprofen.

Ibuprofen, right.

Jack, can you ask me what is Advil?

Couldn't remember what it is.

Medicines are called different things in the UK and in the U.S.

For example, Tylenol is called paracetamol in the UK.

I knew that.

That one I did know, actually.

What about ibuprofen?

What do you call ibuprofen?

We call...

ibuprofen ibuprofen uh and we don't call it advil at all so when i hear advil i'm like what the fuck who is that?

And then I have to run to the pharmacist holding crockery in front of me.

Never heard of that in my life.

That's a leave.

Don't know what that is.

It's good.

It's the best one.

So it's my, it's the one that that actually makes my headache go away when I have a headache.

Welcome to Headache Talk, a new podcast in the friends at the table line.

The music is just five uninterrupted minutes of a high painful tone to really get you into the space to be able to discuss the headache.

Can we go around the horn and how many days a week do you have a headache for at least half an hour of the day?

Three?

Three.

Zero.

Are you guys all right?

I mean, like, like on average, yeah.

I don't.

I'm an

I'm a healthy.

Jack.

I get.

Oh, gosh.

Probably

two.

Two days.

I think

three.

Ow.

Mine are always at at like the end of a workday.

Mine, I like wake up with a headache a lot.

You're not drinking enough water, it sounds like.

I drink so much water.

I drink a ton of water.

Whenever I have a headache, it's like, oh, there's some sort of substance missing.

And I just add that to the equation, and the headache usually goes away.

And sometimes that's Tylenol, but sometimes it's caffeine.

I think it's an allergy thing.

I, you know, oh, yeah.

I get allergies on my face at night, and then I wake up with a headache.

Um,

I've got a recap: yeah, we got everyone, right?

We introduced everyone, we introduced everyone, we all said how many headaches we have.

Okay, cool.

And so I hope you're keeping back at home.

Yeah, this will be on the test.

Yeah, yeah, put this on your chart.

Uh,

okay,

the headache champion of the show.

New event, we finished last episode with the end of the um,

the trick tower, the prison, the journey through the horrible prison, slash maze.

The slash mousetrap of the board game.

Slash mouse trap.

Judging by some of the

clips we got of them

taking the route down through things.

Weirdly, for the first time, no new examiner, no fun new weirdo to meet.

The prison guard who never shows up at the beginning of the last one

explains the rules to the new game.

I heard, Sylvie, was that you protesting that there is actually

kind of a new character.

It's like a guide character.

Yes.

I think that her name is Kara.

It is.

Yes.

And she's a.

She's just like a.

She seems like a service employee with a forced smile, is what she seems like.

I don't know how many people here have seen the film Battle Royale.

I have not.

I've seen the film Battle Royale.

No, I haven't.

I will talk about it

a couple of times in this episode.

This will definitely come up later, but I feel like her design in particular is a nod to a character in Battle Royale.

I'll get a picture up while you continue with your summary.

It's funny that we're going to be talking about, you're all going to be talking about Battle Royale because I have a different thing that I'm going to compare this to,

which you will find out thusly.

So the ward explains the new rules to the game.

Good news if you're a fan of the world's most popular LARP.

It's the Assassin game.

Every one of our remaining freaks draws straws to determine what the heck.

Does everyone know these ass game?

We've all been to a high school or a college somewhere in the world.

What the fuck are you talking about?

No, you know the assassin game?

No,

I know this game, yeah.

Okay, Dre knows.

Jack, do you know?

I can, based on the episodes that I watched, intuit what you mean.

Yeah, like I can guess based on the show, but I've the assassin game to me stars Etsy Ottatore.

It truly is the world's first popular LARP.

It's got a long history.

In 1982,

Steve Jackson Games published their version of the Assassin game.

And it's something that gets played

around the world, I know,

but a lot in American high schools and colleges.

It's the exact same rules as this.

Everyone draws draws.

You have a target.

Someone has you as a target.

And your goal is to

basically be the last person standing.

This has slightly different rules.

You're basically getting points by collecting people's ID cards.

Your card is worth two.

Your target's card is worth four.

And everyone else's card is worth one.

Once you have six points, you can go wait

for the end date.

Although I think that you can still get caught if you're caught waiting, which is why one character digs himself a little hole.

We'll talk about that later.

And this is on an island.

They get on a little boat.

Right.

Yeah, they get on a little boat and they go two hours to this little island called, I think, Zevil Island.

It looks a little bit like Whale Island, actually, but it's not.

So you might be asking, who is the main crew hunting?

Maybe each other.

No, not each other.

We learn straight away that no one has each other as a target.

The only character that we get their number straight away is Goan.

It's clearly bad news.

He takes it fine.

He's actually kind of excited.

It's weird.

They disembark and we spend most of our time watching Goan training montage himself

to learn how to hunt, interspersed with scenes of Leorio and Kropica having teamed up, a reveal about my favorite current mystery, what is up with Geecheraker.

Yeah!

And a lengthy sequence of Ghan stalking Hisuka, attempting to put his practice into work.

And that's where we are.

That brings us basically to the end of these three episodes.

Did I miss anything?

Did anybody want to?

I want to, yeah, I just, I really want to quickly, in case you haven't seen this episode, there is a mechanic to this game, which is that the way you are,

you described as hunting people's ID cards, what you're actually hunting are the

numbered badges that everybody has been wearing from the start of the hunter trials.

Right, little pins that everyone's been

basically displaying for the last 10 episodes.

And as soon as most of the players realize that

you can only identify your target based on their pin, there's this great moment where people suddenly cover them with their hands and then take them off their clothes.

And we'll get into this as we talk about the episodes, but a really cool way that this sort of arc sets characters apart is by whether or not they choose to hide their numbers.

But a lot of the mysteries and mechanics of the early part is who is hunting whom, and can you remember, not just you, the viewer, but can the characters remember

the association between the numbers and the actual people themselves.

And obviously, Goan and Kilua recognize number 44 right away as Hisuka.

Karapika seems to know straight away who he's got.

Leorio does not know who his person is, and neither does Kilua.

So I'm excited for us to see

what we find out in these three episodes.

We do actually, right before all of this, get a we get close-ups of the few remaining contestants.

And even though we got everyone's name at the end of the last episode, I'm still like, who are some of these people?

They have gotten absolutely no screen time.

We have big eyebrows, big mustache guy.

We have a red ribbon army android with sunglasses.

We have someone

I'm going to call handsome Leorio.

There's just not a guy who's saying, what if Leorio was like not,

what if you know how Leorio looks like too old of a man?

What if someone looked the same as Leorio, but actually was like...

Was that age?

Yeah, was that age?

Fantasy RPG peasant clothes guy, purple nose, purple hair, smiling boy, plain faced smiling boy, and then a guy wearing exactly Piccolo's clothes from Dragon Ball Z.

He has the head wrap.

He has the purple cape.

It's bizarre.

What's funny about the way you're describing this is that this guy doesn't look like Piccolo really at all.

This is Piccolo's clothes guy.

That's not the bow user, right?

The bow user is big eyebrows, big mustache guy.

Who's the one?

Oh, sorry, sorry.

No, sorry.

Sorry, not bow staff.

He's got a guy who's got a bow staff.

Got it.

The bow guy is Pockle.

PockleQuest character.

Right, right.

But not the Red Ribbon Army android with sunglasses.

That's the sniper.

Yes.

Oh,

okay.

There is something to be said.

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead, Trey.

I think her name is Cyper.

Cyper or Cypher?

Cyper.

S-I-P-E-R.

No, with an S.

Or like a sniper with no N.

You know what?

I think that is probably more it because that is what we see her doing.

Yeah.

Wow, she does look like a Red Ribbon Army and she really, really looks like an Earl like a Dragon Ball era Red Ribbon Army soldier oh wow especially oh her 1999 version she looks like cami from street flight wow that's weird

there is something really pleasing about um so they show us uh little inset shots almost like um

picture-in-picture shots of all remaining 24 i believe candidates and it is such a uh

Playing with the level of detail that is accessible to the viewer is kind of like this show's main trick that it deploys all the time.

And I think that it taking the time, well, first whittling its cast of characters down to 24 and then taking the time to show us all of them is this really nice moment, especially as we move into a game that is ultimately about, you know, these 24 people trying to remember who is who and what their special powers are.

And getting this like silent introduction to all the remaining characters is lovely.

And there's a great punchline, a double punchline to this, which is at the end, Leorio butts into the picture-in-picture display as if to say, you haven't included me.

He like pulls the picture-in-picture bar to one side to reveal him.

And then Tompa butts in to reveal that he also hasn't been included.

It's an animaniac's moment.

Yeah.

It's so funny.

Especially because.

The secret to this is that I think that they're shown in the order that they finished the last selection.

Oh, yeah.

the selection order?

Yeah, so so it ends sort of with like this like quote-unquote ends with a sort of like big picture of Goan, like there's our main character, and then it's no, Leorio and Tompa also have to muscle in because they didn't get really included.

It's also okay, go ahead, Jack.

I was just gonna say, when Lorio draws, are we talking about the drawing part, right?

Uh, this is no, this is this is like just showing, yeah, they're just showing each person

in like little portraits.

Okay, go ahead.

Oh, I just love that we are pairing Leorio and Tonpa.

They really are.

They deserve each other.

They sure do.

I am like a die-hard Leorio and Karapika together forever, Stan, but there is something about...

Tonpa and Leorio as two of the worst men in the competition.

Just constantly getting attached to each other and constantly being like, the other guy is the problem.

Like, Leorio believes firmly that Tonpa is is the worst guy in the competition and he's a perfectly normal man.

And Tonpa is like, look, I was just living a nice normal life of crushing rookies at this competition and then this idiot showed up to make everything hard for me.

And it makes sense too, because it's sort of like, you know, that beginning of Tonpa's...

introduction where he's like, you know, we're following him around, sort of complaining at how all the rookies are too scary and too like, like, impossible to trick.

And it's funny that he gets so attached to Leorio because it's really like Leorio's the last guy left that he can get one over on.

Yes.

The most

the easiest man on the planet to trick.

But with like

to say Leorio has a fiery temper is a massive understatement.

Leorio will just go off about anything of the slightest provocation.

So I'd like to, I'm happy to report that there are six works in the Leorio slash Tonpa tag on Archive of Our Own.

Wow, can you read the titles if they are not spoilers?

The first one is just Tonpa Ex Leorio by author SlurpMyFatween.

That's the only thing that sort of differentiates it, so that's why I mentioned it.

The next one is Tonpa Exleorio First Meeting.

So fine, whatever.

The next one has a good name.

The next one has my favorite name, which is I Love Juice, but not as much as I love you.

And the description is Tonfo loves juice, but but a faded encounter in a convenience store leads him to eventually loving something more than his juice.

Answer.

Leoria.

Jesus is all related to his poison juices that he gives out.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah, I assume that's the deal.

And the next are all very standard.

There's 365 Days of Your Love.

There's this next one's a 50 Shades riff, which is 50 Shades of Your Love.

I'm not clicking on that one.

And then there is another one that's got like a bunch of different pairings.

This one is called Crying X Crying.

One of the tags on this is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Interesting.

I wonder what's going on there.

Oh, well, another tag is Tonpa Bay.

So I'm assuming he sort of took over there.

Anyway, that was my little fan fiction diversion.

It was great.

Is there anything else?

Oh, I think I have one thing, one more thing to talk about before we get onto the boat.

I have two quick things

into the meat of this competition.

The one thing that is just this lovely little moment is that Gone, we get a little shot reaction shot of Gone noticing Hysoka's wound.

Oh, yep, that was a good one.

Hisoka has got a cut on his shoulder from the time that he, I think, decapitated

the

examiner.

Yeah, the vengeful former examiner.

Yeah.

And this is a really nice moment of Gon looking at Hisoka and going, oh, he's mortal.

He can be hurt.

He can be hurt.

And something in here has hurt him.

And it also sets up, it's a really nice piece of foreshadowing for what is going to become really critical in this little arc of episodes, which is blood and physical violence.

Yeah.

And there's something that gets to this

smooth between

the noticing of the shoulder, the drawing of Hiseka's name, being excited for it, and then using that shoulder as part of his plan.

It like really, really works out so well.

And is like, like,

it's just like such an easy,

you know,

the

prospect of having Goan try and go after Hisuka and like being pretty game for it, actually, and kind of excited by the idea

is kind of a hard pill to swallow.

And they do some very smooth work to get that like working and where it's like, oh, this is like

this ball is like rolling on its own, basically.

But yeah, him noticing that shoulder is really good.

And it does, it's just another piece of what the show does really well: is like it's constantly showing you people noticing things, which is like such a weird thing.

It's just like a weird thing for a show to do well, especially this kind of show.

I don't really think

a lot of

shows in this genre are like really, really overexplain-y.

It's kind of, I wouldn't even call it a pitfall.

It's just like a piece.

It's just like what comes with the territory.

You get a lot of people explaining everything that they see and like what they're going to do with it.

And this show is so content to just like watch you, watch Goan, watch Hisuka.

Yeah.

It's a real economy in visual storytelling,

which is notable in a show that, yeah, just flings interesting pieces of visual storytelling at the camera pretty constantly.

My one other thing, this is really quick.

Guiderocker can't even pick up his straw like a normal guy.

No, of course not.

He like jitters over to it and then he just like kind of punches into it.

It's very funny.

Yeah.

I mean, Leorio also can't draw a card like a normal guy.

No, he screams, you gotta draw it like you mean it.

Yeah.

Oh, in the Dre, are you watching the

dub?

Yeah, the English dub.

In the sub, it's very similar, but he goes, if I'm gonna draw a card, I'm gonna draw it in style.

That makes more sense than you gotta draw it like you mean it.

Yeah,

I think it does make a little bit more sense.

Although, I don't know necessarily that it's possible to draw a card in style, and he doesn't.

He just draws it basically normally.

But he does draw it like he means it, so that's true.

That's true.

I think about it.

It's easier to draw it like you mean it, even though it is a sillier thing to say.

Yes.

Ronald past my

favorite Leorio line here.

I don't know when he says this.

I think it's around the drawing.

It might be just after he's drawn it.

And I've just written down, quote, I have no idea what's going on, but I sure don't want to lose Leorio.

This is something that fucking character summed up in one sentence, huh?

Yes, yeah.

From beginning to end, really, that's the Leorio story.

We're on the boat.

Not much happens on the boat.

We get two quick scenes with

the two pairs

both kind of assuring each other that they don't have each other as targets.

The two pairs being Kiloa and Leorio and Kiloa, right?

Koropika and Leorio and Kiloa and Gone.

Right, yes.

Yeah.

There's this very funny moment where Kilo is like, tell me who you got.

And Gona's like, tell me who you got.

And Kilo was like, no, I wouldn't do that.

I was trying to trick you.

But then is too excited to not show.

So they work out a deal where they show each other at the same time.

And it's very funny that

Kilo is pretending to be a jerk, basically.

Well, I mean, I think Kilua is a jerk.

Kilua is like a

closed-off, hard-hearted, damaged weirdo.

But in the face of

being given, I don't know, I feel like this is, I feel like this is the character relationship in a lot of ways, so I have to imagine we'll have more to say about this.

But given the opportunity to feel curiosity and excitement and love of the world that he sees in Gon,

allows himself to be playful and you know, feel that playfulness.

Gone brings out of Killiua, like, oh, what if I was a 12-year-old boy who loved the world?

For some reason, I reference this guy all the time.

I don't know why.

This comes up on Run Button, it comes up on Friends of the Table.

I've referenced different parts of

this character for different things,

but

the

like

the evil snow wizard from the

Frank Rant,

the Rankin and Bass,

Santa Claus is coming to town,

a stop motion movie.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Do they not have those over there?

The Rankin and Bass.

I'm such a Rankin and Bass.

Evil Snow Wizard?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, the Snowmiser?

No, not the Snowmiser.

That's from

the Year Without a Santa Claus.

This is the Winter Warlock is his name, actually.

The Winter Warlock.

From Santa Claus.

He looks fucking great.

I know.

He's great.

It's such a good one.

This is the best one of those movies by far.

And if you Google image search, you'll see his evil version and this other version.

But there's just like a very sort of cartoony scene where his like icy heart is melting because Santa Claus does a dance with him.

Early, young, you know, young, red-haired Chris Kringle does a dance with the Winter Warlock, and it melts his icy heart.

And that is sort of Kilo to me, is this very stop-motion, goofy, you know, ice literally melting off of the skin of this guy.

And he's like, oh, the world is fun.

Yeah, I can hang out with my friend, Gunn.

Absolutely.

Guns, the Santa Claus of Whale Island.

Oh, you know that.

Do you think Santa.

Well, no, we must have got sidetracked.

Okay.

Killiwa can't tell if.

So there's a little conversation here where Killiwa says, sorry, where Gon says, I have to get Hysoka.

And they both are sort of like, well, that's, you've got your work cut out for you, buddy.

He is a monster.

And Killiwa can't tell if Gon is excited or scared and asks him.

And Gon says he feels both.

And I feel like

moments in which Gon is able to identify and talk about conflicted emotions that he is feeling is pretty central to this character.

We've had scenes of this before, specifically with excitement and fear, and Gon kind of conflating the two into this

sort of

urge towards action.

I think it's notable that it comes up again here in, you know, a very similar conversation of like, are you excited or are you scared?

And Gon is now able to say, well, I think I'm feeling both, but sort of leaves it at that.

I can be wrong, but it struck me as

Kilua sort of walks away from Goan

after this conversation that we haven't had the like

very much of the camera following Kilua, like

looking at things through his perspective the way that we have for

several other other characters including hisuka including tonpa but especially uh kropika and also leorio um

i agree i think that's true yeah just kind of surprising with how central of a character he's been that we like haven't been kind of in his head yet in in that same way

it keeps him at a remove right yeah you know i feel like in the early in the early episodes or rather in this first in the last maybe 10 episodes or so, a lot of Killiwa's character has been, this person has frightening and violent capabilities beyond the audience's understanding.

And I think that by not getting that internal view, that interiority,

yes, you're right.

It is notable the way that in a show that generally has a pretty drifting camera of interiority, we are regularly denied Killiwa's viewpoint.

And I think it's a deliberately distancing maneuver.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I think it's even notable that we've spent more time

with Hisuka from his perspective than we have even with Kiloa, who is like kind of at this point sharing screen time with the main character more than anyone else.

We get off the boat, unless anyone has any more boat thoughts.

No, I know our show.

I think we should get off the boat as soon as possible.

I will say, when they get off the boat like there's just a lot of good lines in the english dub in these few episodes um but kilo tells gone don't die okay and then gone says yeah same to you i think that's that's actually i think pretty much also in the sub

um which is really good yeah they're like don't die

it's very funny I would like very quickly before we get off the boat, and we could kind of blend this into actually

the battle royale starting.

This is, I believe, the first of the hunter trials where contingent on success is, yeah, you might just kill other contestants.

We've had running.

Yeah.

We've had cooking a big meal, fighting pigs.

We've had Trick Tower, which we can sort of assume was...

Trix

and fighting the prisoners.

And there is something as sort of a mask off moment here.

Yeah,

there's like, there's been this passive

competition and hostility between the members of this test the whole time.

And we've talked a lot about how like other contestants have served as kind of de facto exams for each other to try to get themselves over on competition.

But this is the first time that it's like, okay, you are all now versus each other.

Yep, totally.

Also, we didn't mention it.

This is the penultimate phase.

We have been told, unless there are tricks and traps and lies, which is this is the Hunter exam, I would believe that.

As far as the examiners are telling us,

we have this, the battle royale on Zevil Island, and then we have one more, and then the exam is over.

Which is little does Jackson know the last

phase of the exam is the Chimera Ant Arc?

Well, I feel like it's the, it could very easily be the, um,

uh, what's his name?

Uh, James A.

Castor Infinite Wishes genie joke, where James A.

Castor says, you know, everybody always wishes for infinite wishes, but, you know, what if they don't allow you that?

And the answer is, I'll wish for infinite genies.

I think infinite hunter exams.

There might be the final hunter exam might be 40 further tests

contained within it.

But yeah, Battle Royale begins.

lovely camera work as they leave the boat.

We get this shot almost at water level looking up at the gangplank as people are walking.

And I posted in the Media Club Plus channel, everybody say good luck, Killiwa, next to a little image of Killiua walking off the boat with his skateboard.

Yeah.

Insulting his shoes.

I did insult his shoes, but I don't want to put that on microphone.

It's like talking about how you might not like Taylor Swift and people will just come down on you and fight you.

I won't do this.

The Battle Royale starts kind of funny because we really do get

a ton of this sort of like

Ghosn training by himself montage kind of up front.

Is there anything before that that we want to mention?

We see him.

Okay, sure, go ahead.

We briefly see the best bit of Battle Royale video games that comes out of Battle Royale movies as well, which is watching other people who aren't you fighting.

That is one of the most exciting bits in PUBG or in Fortnite or in Battle Royale is contestants seeing other contestants fighting off in the distance and having to make a decision about whether they want to intervene or when they want to intervene.

So we get to see Gone back in his classic habitat, relaxing in a tree, wondering about what to do.

Oh, when he spins upside down while thinking of stuff,

so great.

And he notices two people hunting each other in a field.

He notices

the person who has arrows shoots an arrow at somebody, and the arrow has a paralytic agent on, and that person keels over, and

the archer goes and takes the badge.

And Gon is like, hmm, interesting.

But then, yes, Gon

is like,

well, I'm going to have to get it with a fishing rod.

Yeah.

They actually do a pretty good job of like, I know we just talked about how they don't explain things.

They show you what Gon notices, and then they go back to explain like the thing exactly, which is

an anime concept that doesn't get like

it doesn't get expositioned here.

They just use it

a few times, but Go notices that Pockle, the guy with the arrow,

was like suppressing his

presence.

He was like hiding his presence until right before he fired his arrow, which he then used to his advantage because the guy dodges out of the way in order to not get hit.

And so he like intentionally didn't kill this guy, even though he was aiming to kill because he knew he would get out of the way and get hit by the poison.

It is a little bit Sherlock Holmes sort of math on the screen, but

this is just

sort of the way that the genre thinks sometimes.

So just in this order of operations that Gona is going to go through his series of Dr.

Housian revelations, something happens in front of him and he gets an idea.

This first idea of hiding his presence is very important.

Yeah, and then he knows he can't beat Hisuka in a straight fight.

So he's like, I'm going to snatch the badge from Hisuka's chest.

Hisuka, in a classic Hizoka move, is like, oh, the badge?

They're going to take it.

I should hide it.

Absolutely not.

This is where the badge lives.

Maybe the only character that doesn't hide the badge.

Nope, that's not true.

There are some others.

We'll get to them in a second.

Okay, great.

But it's really fun.

So Ghana is like, oh, I have to get it by tricking.

And he immediately starts trying to...

Like...

What he wants to do is work on his fishing rod technique on a moving object.

So he starts trying to catch birds with his fishing rod.

And it doesn't go well until he notices that the birds are trying to catch fish,

like snatch them out of the river.

And so we get this really just

lovely piece of, again, visual storytelling of seeing a fly on the surface of the water that is then hunted by a fish.

And then the fish is hunted by a bird, and then Gone flings his fishing rod and catches the bird, you know, out of the air.

It's so well done.

It's really

like just like a lovely bit of animation work.

And like

I don't

have more expensive looking than a lot of the stuff that is like in between fight scenes in the show.

Like the backgrounds are always nice, but like characters.

You can really get a lot of mileage out of a kind of shitty looking version of these characters.

But they do a very good job with this.

I think like the thing that makes it stand out to me is because it is something that doesn't seem like a sequence that they'd put the time and effort and probably money into right with uh shonen anime that would go like they give this the sort of care that like

i mean i'm not gonna compare it to a fight scene in terms of like actual like visuals and anything but the amount of detail and like the i don't know quality of it definitely feels like just the level of detail in the birds is kind of surprising i love how the birds look i love how they are just normal ass birds and they're very cute They're really cute-looking, sort of like blue jay-type birds.

I love that he

puts little rubber bits on the hooks of the

hooks of the hook to not save the birds.

He wants to protect the bird.

And then he's a good boy.

Yeah, and then we see when he does finally catch a bird and it's like wrapped up in the thing.

We do see him make sure that the bird is okay before letting it fly off.

It's so sweet.

And I I think that there is.

It's very funny that Gunn sort of establishes this plan of like the right moment to strike is

when your target is also just about to strike.

This is kind of the thing that he has learned.

He has completely neglected the other lesson here, which is that everybody is in a chain of being hunted.

And that he is also part of that chain.

This is Gunn's mistake.

This is Gunn's mistake once again.

Getting so excited about learning one thing and then being like, ah, shit, wait.

I am actually involved in this.

But it did make me wonder, and I think that I was probably clued into this as well because of what you talked about, Sylvie, about how lovingly this sequence is animated.

I wonder if this sequence is on some level acting as a broader thesis statement for what it means to be a hunter.

You know, watching our protagonist hunter hunt their way through a chain of targets to predict how they're going to move.

A person or a thing is targeting a person or a thing is targeting a person or a thing.

You know, the natural world is just an interconnected web of people

planning and waiting to strike.

And if you can see that chain clearly enough, if you can sort of see what people want and how they are going to get it, you can manipulate it to your own advantage.

And I don't know if the show is trying to tell us something about hunters.

You know, this is the what is a hunter minute again of the show.

We're ringing the bell because Goan literally says it.

It's actually the first time that Goan puts forward his own idea of what a hunter is during all of this stuff when he's thinking about like when he's this is a little bit before the birds, but he's thinking about like having to follow Hisuka and like how he's going to do it.

He says, this is how you hunt.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are we seeing a sort of at least maybe Ghon's grand unified theory of hunting or being sort of spoken to us in one way.

An interconnected web of predator and prey or actor and counteractor

that can be

sort of seen by someone in the know and manipulated.

I don't know,

but it's interesting.

It's not that grand and unified of a theory yet because

while we are watching him do this, we are also watching someone else watching him do this.

Yeah, it's great.

It's really good.

It's the bit in

any sort of sci-fi thing.

It's in one of the Star Wars movies, right?

Where it's like, and it's in all kinds of things.

The creature that's threatening our heroes is eaten by a bigger creature, who's then in turn eaten by a bigger creature.

There's always a bigger fish.

There's always a bigger fish.

Who is Qui-Gon?

That's Liam Neeson.

Yes,

I believe that is Liam Neeson, yeah.

Right.

Geretta.

Geretta is the

one that we see

stalking Goan as he trains and is kind of,

I'll say bemused.

He's sort of like kind of impressed and

satisfied at Goan's hard work

and his ability to be able to master hunting in such a short amount of time,

while also being kind of,

I don't know.

Is he disappointed?

Is he sort of like

just kind of I lucked out that he's like, oh, very clearly, this kid is not watching his back at all.

It never comes up.

Go never takes a single precaution to make sure he's not being hunted.

Yeah, I don't know, especially because in comparison to

there is a kind of

being impressed thing going on, and that comes back later.

You know, Gereta is clearly like, well, this person's putting in work, there is that kind of disappointment, but there is none of the sort of

electric radiating malice that we get when we see Hisoka watching.

Goan.

Not necessarily in this episode, but, you know, later in these episodes, but in the past, when we have seen the way Hisoka talks about kind of cultivating, not just Goan, but Karapika and Leorio as well as like worthy opponents and worthy components.

There's this sort of

magnetic, pseudosexual, malicious,

electric

voyeurism going on that we don't get any of really with Geretta just watching here and sort of going like, oh, wow, I'm biding my time.

Goan's shore trying to catch birds with a fishing rod.

Sorry, Jack, I lost my place reading my notes while you were finishing what you were saying.

I'm sorry.

No, no, it's totally okay.

Did you have something there, Sylvie?

I heard you take a breath.

I just was sort of giggling at, once again, the mental image of this dude just sort of like sitting there watching this kid flail around with a fishing rope for two days.

For two full days.

For two days.

There is a sort of, there is almost, you know, Piccolo, we're bringing Piccolo up again.

This is not Piccolo guy, but

like this is, this does sort of remind me of

in

Dragon Ball Z where Goku is dead.

You know, this is like the very first

15 episodes of Dragon Ball Z.

Goku's dead.

And he never comes back.

And he never comes back.

He basically entrusts his son to Piccolo to train.

And Piccolo's version of training is,

I'm going to sit this four-year-old boy on this platform surrounded by dinosaurs and watch him from three miles away and see what he does.

And there is, so I, there is like, there's like weirdly this sort of kind of

silent mentor thing going on.

Like, he's not helping.

He's not hurting.

He eventually plans to hurt him, but he like does seem like he's like, well, he's on the right track.

Let me let him at least learn how to do this before I teach him the very painful lesson of you should also be watching your six while this is happening.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the end of the episode there.

We move on to episode 15.

Isn't it delightful?

I wrote down, Gone is exactly the sort of person who would get surrounded by butterflies.

The episode begins, and lovely, unproblematic pink butterflies

surround Gone.

And then I wrote, oh, they're blood butterflies.

Because these butterflies hunt blood

and are

looking at the sort of like wear and tear on Gone's hand from where he was throwing the fishing rod so many times that he sort of scraped his hand.

And these blood-hunting butterflies show up that become kind of the visual

become a key part of the visual language and the plot, the way we cut from scene to scene, kind of from this point on.

These butterflies are incredible, and I'm sure we're going to end up talking about them a lot.

But is there anything we want to hit as far as their introduction is concerned?

I might be going one scene too far, but I

just gotta say, butterflies on strings.

Right,

oh, he he has his little guys on their little string, and he's walking around with them taped in his hand.

It's so cute.

It's great.

Gone builds a blood hunting butterfly machine.

Yeah, so this is where that shoulder comes into play.

He notices that the butterflies are following the blood.

He sort of tests it by waving his hand back and forth.

And he goes, Hmm, Hiseka's shoulder is bloody.

There's probably not much blood here on Blood Island besides that.

Did you call it Blood Island?

Yeah, I did.

It's a big fighting arena that had, and it's got so much blood that a species of blood butterflies evolved here.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

But he does have

this idea of like,

let me follow the butterflies, but let me make sure that I can follow them really, really well.

And so I'm going to tie very thin grain around them.

Watching this, doing this project is is really fun because I get to see a show that has meant a lot to my friends that they've known about for a lot longer than I have.

Keith,

you play Gone or Bits of Gone in almost every character you make.

That's funny because, really, I don't think I'm thinking of which characters

post-date me watching Hunter Hunter, and probably it's,

I'm going to say that it's

like,

maybe,

maybe

leap forward, but definitely like.

Openness to the world that I think I associate very much with Keith characters on Freds of the Table.

I think this might be like

also the threads that tie

Goan to like shonen protagonists at large.

Yeah.

Speaking of threads that tie, not just the threads that tie the butterflies to Ghan,

there's a really great moment where we see the butterflies feeding on

Ghon's bloody hand,

and then we cut through the butterflies to the butterflies feeding on Hisoka's shoulder.

as Hisoka sits against a tree, kind of thinking about his

plan.

Oh, it was a great, like, immediate sort of confirmation that the plan would work.

Right, yes.

And not just that, you're right.

It is this mechanical confirmation of, like, oh, this is working.

But,

you know, this show is so interested in ways that Hisoka and Gon are kind of linked, a sort of linked entities, and cutting through

like a butterfly, like an animal with a very particular trait.

Like

a butterfly is feeding on Gun's wound, and then we cut from that to a butterfly feeding on Hisoka's wound.

And that being the linking moment between these two characters, through this kind of like weird natural connection, almost like fate, you know, like the natural world itself connects these two people,

I thought was just lovely.

Hisoka as well.

Hisoka is such a weird, cool character.

Just sitting there, perfectly chill, wound on my shoulder, five or six butterflies feeding on it.

Takes a telephone call from Gitaraka, who I always forget has a walkie-talkie.

There's some scheme that is going on there.

Remember earlier they were talking with each other on a walkie-talkie?

They are doing something in this hunter game that is not taking the foreground right now, but the show takes little moments to remind us that they are in cahoots, as it were.

Maybe they're just friends.

Maybe they are just friends.

Do I think that's a good point?

Whoa, it's a good point.

Whoa.

We get a little thing that at this point in episode 15, I thought was very unsettling, was a very unsettling reveal about Gitaraku.

Little baby that I was, did not realize what was going to happen in the next episode or maybe later in this episode.

We see Gitsaraku holding one of the pins that seems to hold him together.

And it's like a sharpened acupuncture pin, almost.

It has a plastic, a yellow plastic or ceramic

point.

Oh, sorry,

cap, bulb, and then comes to a sharp metal point.

And he's just holding it in his hand as though he's taken it out of himself.

Which was weird.

Because...

Yeah, it's been, if you're not watching the show, it might have been a while since we kind of described Gitaraku, who we described early on as rattly pin man.

Gitaraku is a tall, almost toy-like

purple figure

with a

mohawk, right?

Gitaraka has cool hair.

And

hundreds of

quite large yellow pins protruding from all over his body.

He moves jerkily when he walks.

Including his face.

There's tons of face.

Oh, including.

Yeah, yeah.

He kind of looks like Pinhead if.

Oh, I know what he looks like.

Looks like if Pinhead was Jesse the Body Ventura.

I don't know who that is.

What I was going to say was.

He's the governor of Minnesota?

He was.

He was.

He is in my heart.

He will be again.

The once and future governor of Minnesota.

Whoa, shit.

There's a prophecy happening here.

Probably.

There's tons of prophecies about Jesse Ventura.

And is it Minnesota prophecies too, or is it just Jesse Ventura prophecies?

Minnesota.

Yeah.

Okay.

Federal.

Forever intertwined.

So here's what Gitter Accur feels like to me.

You know, sometimes they make kids' versions of like

kitchen tools, like kitchen tools that the adults use.

Like, for example, this espresso maker.

I'm putting it in the Media Club Plus chat.

This is an espresso maker made of wood.

It's got nice colors.

It's got nice simple shapes.

Kids use them.

To me, Gita Rakur is like if you made pinhead from Hellraiser into one of these.

He's Fisher Price Pinhead.

He's Fisher Price Pinhead.

Okay.

Not because he's less dangerous, but because he looks like a toy.

Yes.

Because he's made out of like

he moves like a wind-up soldier.

Yeah, I'm going to put a picture of Pinhead in.

Can someone put a picture of Gitarakur in?

Because I try not to search these characters.

Yeah, I'll find one.

I just want to compare them side by side.

I want to look at them.

And if you're looking at home, you can join in with this this game too.

Playing the fun game of how to

do that.

What's the first vowels in Gitaraker's name?

It's an eye.

Yes, there is Fish Press pinhead.

He does look like that.

Yeah, he does.

He really does.

He's got pins coming out of his ears.

Anyway, he's chatting with Hisoka on the phone.

They're sort of planning things out.

Hisoka doesn't know who his target is.

And so he has a fun plan, which is, well, I'm just going to target, I have my own badge, and I am under no risk of losing it, which is worth three points, four points.

And then I'm just going to

three points.

And then I'm just going to target three random people

to make up a six-point total.

This is very Hisoka.

Hisoka loves to make a little game out of things within the game.

Hisoka looks at the game that he's been asked to play and goes, I can make another fun little sub-game for me.

Well, if you can, which is just get three guys.

If you think about, like, okay, my personality is to

not really care about the stuff that's going around me very much.

And then all of a sudden, I've got this game where I can either

try really hard to find one specific guy out of 24

or

attack three people.

That's for him, that's so much easier.

That is like

totally the easy route.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Especially because he is so confident in his own abilities.

And based on what we have seen in the show, he's right.

Yeah.

Gone is on his little blood hunting butterfly tour.

And it gives him a little violence tour because these butterflies don't go straight to Hysoka as planned.

Instead, we find some bones, we find a body, then we come back to the guy who got hit by the arrow.

I love the way he deals with this.

Yeah, so what happens here?

The butterflies lead him back to the man who we saw earlier get paralyzed, kind of right near the middle of episode one.

Do you want to talk about how he deals with it, Keith?

Oh, sure, yeah.

So he finds the purple shirt, purple-nosed guy,

and he's got that slice on his arm.

And in order, you know, I think that you can read this as Gone being a, you know, a good little boy if you, if you wanted to.

I think that that is

not untrue about what he does.

But in order to like not register more false positives on his blood butterflies, he props the guy up by a tree, bandages his wound, and then goes like,

good luck next year.

Bye.

Good luck next year.

Oh, quick note, we don't need to talk through.

The remaining contestants have been told that by reaching this point, they gain free entry to the competition next year.

That's something that they get told on the boat on the way in.

The kind of stone-faced reaction to this news, because obviously no one wants to put up with doing this again.

Yeah.

Or admit that they might lose.

Yeah,

the people who are talented enough to be able to pass it, if for some reason they don't pass it this year, are annoyed at having to go through it all again.

And the people who are here by luck are like, if I try to do this again, I'm going to die.

So everyone is like not happy about

this

sort of half-kindness, which is when we get the

really the only bit of characterization from Clara, who has about two sentences,

or Cara, I think it is,

where she's very happy happy and smiley and then gets no reaction from this, and like,

inside of her head, does a big grimace and is like, they're all so upset.

I can't remember what she said, no reaction or something.

Yeah,

it's great.

And then, as Gunn is kind of doing this, doing this trail, we get some more shots of the person hunting him, whose name is Garrett?

What's this person's name?

Geretta?

Geretta.

Geretta.

Geretta.

And this, I love this so much.

Garrett is way funnier.

Just Garrett.

Garrett.

It is so...

We know how this is going to go, you know, or at least we can sort of anticipate how this is going to go.

You know,

when Goan,

Goan is going to strike at Hisuka as Hisuka strikes at his target, and then Geretta is going to strike at Goan.

And we got this information from Goan.

Goan has gotten, you know, two-thirds of this piece, but he hasn't put it it together yet.

And something about the way that it's not just dramatic irony, it's like

dramatic irony,

but

you have done a bit of math that the character hasn't done yet.

You know, we have been let into Goan's plan, but we can see

the runway that he can't.

Right.

Goan thinks that he's Goan with the fishing rod, but he's actually the bird.

Yeah, fully.

Yeah, that's absolutely what it is.

Right.

Um, and having that come from Goan is so great because we could just as easily have gotten on with the show's done this before.

We could have, had they set the characters up differently, had Karapika go, Hmm, Goan believes that he is Gohan with the fishing rod, but he's actually the bird, or whatever.

But you know, having the victim of this scheme be the one who actually lays it out for us, yeah, with a flaw, and there's another mistaken identity

in this chain

that it is a mix of metaphors.

I think the show in being,

you know,

this is basically 70 minutes of television, these three episodes.

So it gets a little bit more time to

not mix these.

But

Goan thinks that he's Goan, but he's actually the bird.

And he thinks that he's catching

the fly, but he's actually catching a spider, which is a great little metaphor that they use throughout that last episode.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I'm actually outside this chain.

Hiseka's not in the, not a part of the

fly, fish, bird,

fisherman, fisherman who fishes birds sort of dynamic.

You have misunderstood your opponent, Gone.

Yeah, totally.

And then we move into,

we cut to Leorio.

But I

talked a lot.

So I want to take a back seat in this next section.

Who wants to talk about Leorio?

I can talk about Leorio.

You said it's sad to do that.

No, it's just the first way to do it.

No, please don't.

So

I like the Leorio bit, so I'll do it.

I just also don't have very comprehensive notes for it because I watched these a little further back than

the most recent episode we did.

That's fine.

We can fill you in.

Yeah, I think I've got most of it.

We get Leorio sort of like looking through the,

I always want to call it a jungle.

It's just a forest, but Leorio is off being the king of the jungle and sort of like wondering how you can track anybody down.

I believe that's sort of his main complaint.

We see him two days in for the first time, and the first thing we hear him say is, Where is everyone?

I haven't seen anybody in two days.

The fuck is

neither has gone, but he's been busy.

Yeah, you ever play a match of PUBG or Fortnite or something, and it just does not.

Not only does it not go the way you anticipated, you spend most of the match going, somebody out here is playing a Battle Royale game, but it is not me.

I'm on the hillside.

Yeah,

I'm playing a game of going from house to house, collecting things for 25 minutes.

I'm playing Street Fighter because I don't like those games.

Yeah, I also like those games.

So

while Leoria is sort of wandering around trying to figure out how the heck do you even do this thing,

he runs into our good friend Tonfa.

Right?

This is the part we're talking about, correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The part where Tompa's got diarrhea.

Yeah, the part where Tompa's got poopy pants.

This is his only bit.

This dude's only bit is

being the contrarian and IBS.

Yeah.

Most of his games are diarrhea based.

Yeah.

Either he is diarrhea or he's giving someone else the diarrhea.

That's it.

That's it.

His opening pitch is,

I found you because I need medicine because I'm going to shit myself.

You're a doctor.

And you're a doctor.

Leorio says, I have, I think that he says that he has all kinds.

Yeah, I have all kinds of anti-diarrhea and stomach medicine, which is kind of funny because his briefcase isn't that big.

So like, I'm just thinking of a half of this briefcase that he's got is for diarrhea and upset stomach.

His pepto case, yeah.

Yeah.

No ulterior motive?

None, not according to fucking Leorio, who's a man to death.

Well, what happens is he, uh, Tonpes shows him a card.

That is the like, here's your number card, and it's not Leorio's number on the target card that he has.

Right?

I hope I'm.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

And that is evidence enough for Leorio that Tompa's not tricking him.

Unfortunately, Tompa is tricking him.

Tompa is tricking him.

I do like this bit for Leorio because it does kind of keep with Leorio's

consistent personality of being kind of a shithead when he speaks, but in his actions, he does try to help people.

Right.

Which I think is a good little moment.

And Tompa's trend of like while he's tricking you, giving you actually useful and actionable information.

Because Leorio is able to get the identity of his target, who is

there should be more than six fix about these two.

When you put it like that, there should be more than

listeners.

Considering how many there are for other characters, I'm sure.

This is, I mean, this is a show.

I'm sure there's thousands.

I'm going to just do some

comparisons.

He's able to find out Ponzu is his target.

He didn't know that before.

Ponzu, you might recognize her as the only girl.

He learns what her abilities are.

She uses like poisons and stuff like that.

And that she's like laying in wait for her target to just pass by.

And so, like, she's not moving.

So he can find her, but be aware that she's like got traps set up.

And so, this is all like good information that we learned before it's revealed that actually

Tompa is working with the monkey and the monkey's pet human.

No, that's the right way to put it, yeah.

Um, and that's why Tomba had someone else's badge or a different, a different target is because he swapped in order to do this trick.

Pretty good trick, honestly.

Yeah, yeah, you know, like the plan works great for them.

I will, like, give them that.

Tompa and Monkey Boy.

I don't know if that's proof that it's a great plan because it works on Leorio, though.

You know what?

It's got a 100% success rate on the show.

That's true.

Yeah.

Actually,

well, it's got a 0% success rate.

So it succeeds for a minute.

I'm going to

show up.

I think it's going to solve the problem for Leorio.

Yeah.

It would have succeeded.

Which is unfortunately what happened to our monkey protagonist.

Who gets caught by Karapika and held at wooden sword point?

That was so funny.

It's not the first time that he's held the wooden sword to someone's throat like it could cut them.

It's great.

Yeah, two really nice moments.

Karapika arrives properly for the first time in this arc.

This has been a very Karapika-like arc, and he arrives in a really cool way.

He appears out of nowhere and kicks, I think, Tonpa in the head.

Yeah, he kicks Tonpa in like the head slash throat.

And then immediately tells us that lying is wrong.

He's right, so

morally people, yeah, it's so funny.

It is such a Karapika move to lay low for basically most of the arc, arrive, kick someone in the head, and then deliver a brief lecture on morality.

And then they have a little chase through the trees after the monkey.

And yeah, this is just pre-holding the monkey at knife point.

But there's a really cute moment where

Karapika has taken the monkey, except it is not revealed to us yet.

The way that the show chooses to reveal this to us is we continue to get the shot of the monkey's man kind of jumping through the trees, and then we get a little like bing,

like little light of arrows around where the monkey used to be, but there isn't a monkey in there anymore.

It's like a little circle where a monkey used to be, and then we cut to

run for his boss, and he looks back to see that the monkey has.

No, my boss.

No, my monkey boss.

My monkey boss.

He's smaller than me, but much stronger.

Well,

that's why he's always got his penis out.

It's a display of dominance.

It's a primitive display of dominance.

What?

Yeah.

This monkey's got his little penis out the whole time.

The whole time.

And it's to keep the man in his place.

He's crazy frogging.

You know, he's the same way.

Crazy frog sort of dominated our society for a good few years by having his little pecker out there.

So was this monkey?

Yeah, well, the ritual of 2020 and 2020 is fantastic.

When we were weakest.

When we were weakest.

When the helmet was working on the hole now,

the device is dead in the hole deeper than a skyscraper, the pit to return Crazy Frog to.

So yes, it turns out that Karapica's target was Tonpa.

It's extremely funny that that's the case.

And we end up with the Leorio Karapika team teaming up, working together, and they have a spare

point badge.

They do.

They have one point, one spare point badge.

And at this point, I made...

From the monkey, I believe.

Right?

Yes.

I made a prediction that I...

I keep trying to predict what is going to happen in this show, and usually what happens is that

I'm right, but in completely the wrong direction.

Usually, what I think is going to happen does happen, but with a different combination of characters, which is really interesting.

My prediction was they're going to give this point badge to Gone to tip him over to six points.

It is going to be like a plot-critical, last-minute gift to get someone over the finish line.

To be like, all they need is one extra point,

and Karapakir and Leorio are going to come through.

Now, what ends up happening is

we will get there.

But do you see what I mean about like kind of sideways being right about the prediction?

That's a good, that's, I think, the sign of a good show to me is that

when you're, when you're doing a lot of guesswork and things, a show that prompts you to do a lot of guesswork, I think already you're halfway there.

And then like sometimes being right, but in weird ways is like,

I think,

key.

Yeah, night falls.

And the,

I think this is the point at which this little arc of episodes really turned for me.

I was enjoying them fine.

I thought we spent a lot of time with a fishing rod in the early part.

But like,

night falls and these episodes just suddenly get really good as night falls here.

The whole color palette changes.

And we deepen into this incredible, like...

purple and blue as we cut to Killiwa.

This is a visual trick the show has done before is matching Killiwa's vibe and outfit to the environment.

We saw this last on the airship when he was looking out at the blue landscape below.

But Killua is now in this purple and blue forest.

Keith, Killua has not bothered to hide his badge.

No.

Beautiful.

Love it.

Killua is walking through the woods, completely unbothered, wearing his badge.

I wrote in my notes, what poor fuck has to fight Killua?

Because I believe, and I wrote this

when the rules of this game were being set up.

I don't think

Killua might be as powerful as Hisuka.

I think that if maybe I don't think that Kilua could take out Hisuka, but I think that if Kilua set his mind to killing anybody, he could do it effortlessly, which is a really interesting character because when you remove the stakes of

what if they lose this fight, you know, if you say, well, that's not going to be an option.

How do you construct stakes around those characters?

And that's really cool.

We lost Sylvie very briefly.

She lost.

Very briefly, I'm back.

Blue.

Hi, I think either Discord or my internet connection is being a little wonky tonight.

But I don't think Killiwa can die.

I also don't think Killua can die.

I missed the last little bit of this conversation, but I just want to firmly say

Killua will never die.

Killowa will live forever.

Uh-oh, fear.

One fear.

No,

I'm not doing a bit, Jack.

Okay, good.

He's just my favorite.

And we find, just as I thought, what poor fuck has to hunt, Killiwa, we get our answer.

And I believe it's one of the Blowjob brothers.

It is one of the Blowjob brothers.

One of the Blowjob Brothers, yeah.

One of the.

Deeply unfortunate.

Blowjob brothers.

Now, when I say Killiua can't die, I think these fucks can and will die regularly.

Maybe not in this situation, but when I look at someone and I see a vulnerable idiot,

it's those three.

So I have no worries about Kilua whatsoever, which is a nice thing.

You know, the show knows how scary it is for Gon to have to be hunting Hisaker, and I appreciate that they kind of threw us a bone by being like, don't worry about Killua.

Killua is going to be absolutely fine.

Yeah.

He's up against people who've lost the Hunter exam three times.

Or more, six times.

They've done it a lot.

Yeah.

So they're not helpless, but they are.

They can't win the Hunter Exam.

No.

No.

Goan creeps up on Hisuka.

It's nighttime.

We're still in this hyper, sort of really heightened color palette.

And to Gohan's horror, Hisaka stands up and says, I can see you.

You know, come out of that.

And Goan is getting ready to stand up.

And then

someone else stands up.

It's one of these great scenes.

I've seen them in other stuff.

You think you've been found, but actually someone else has been found.

It is a man with the quarter staff and a mustache, I believe.

Does the fellow have a mustache?

He does.

He does have a mustache.

Yeah, big, big eyebrows, big mustache guy.

And what happens?

He's very scary and sad.

Would someone like to describe what happens?

This is the guy who...

challenges Hisoka, right?

Yes, he does.

He whips out his staff and cuts the top of of Gohan's hair off.

Yes, he does.

It's kind of like a Naginata type thing, right?

The sort of like

polearm with a little blade at the end.

And they get into this, like I thought what you were saying was it's kind of a little loony tunes, is what I thought you were going to say.

I mean, there's a lot of Looney Tunes moments in this.

Like, we've mentioned a few of them.

There was the bit with the monkey and the little like outline.

There was like,

honestly, there's some stuff with

it.

There's some

Radley Pinman later that feels very Looney Tunes to me in this episode.

Like,

the Looney Tunes vibes are here, and I love that.

I think more shows should be like Mel Blanc productions, etc.

I don't know if he's like a bad person or anything.

I just know he does voices in those.

What I was saying is that they get into this fight where Hisuka just dodges the entire time,

very deliberately is not fighting back back against this guy.

And at a certain point, we

see

um

Gohan's kind of freaking out about it, too, by the way, because he's like waiting for a moment where Hisuka's gonna strike specifically, yeah, because that was his strategy, right?

Like, get him when he's, yeah,

and uh,

he just doesn't swing at any point, and then you see that there are a bunch of butterflies gathering around the

it's like at the side, like um

sort of like kidney level, I guess would be where I'd say.

And Hisako points out that

is this guy Bodoro?

Is that his name?

Yes.

Yes.

Hiseko points out that Bodoro's like dead already is basically the way he says it.

And

it's already dead.

It's in your eyes.

Yeah.

And

this guy just wants to go out fighting as opposed to like bleeding out.

So I'm begging for it.

It's really sad.

Yeah.

I think, actually, I I think this is Goz.

Okay.

Yes, Bodoro's later.

Bodoro is a different older looking guy.

Bodoro is older.

Goes is the guy who has brown hair and the big mustache.

And

Bodoro's the sort of gray-haired gentleman with a similar look.

Yeah.

So that sort of continues for a bit

until a

right, I'm not missing anything.

and then the needle sort of comes out and gets that guy right in the neck.

Yep, correct.

Yep.

Yeah.

In a great conversation between

but not just one needle, right?

A whole lot of

first in the throat and then a sort of barrage of needles in the chest.

He's fucking horrible looking.

Yeah.

Is it a face maybe?

Yeah, he gets a bunch of needles in his face.

It is.

It's a really weird, gross.

He gets pincushioned.

He gets pincushioned.

Absolutely.

Pincushion, of course is the uh the person who comes and hunts you from cushion hell uh when you open the cushion lament configuration

um

yeah and kitaraku and hisaka have a little conversation i don't know what these guys relationship is but i love it if i were in a room with hisaka i would be fucking terrified i would be terrified even if hisaka did not appear to be wanting to kill me i would be like this could turn at any moment anything i say might be turned into this weird, sexualized game that he plays.

I don't feel good about this.

Gitaraka and Hisaka can hang.

They just hang out.

They just hang out.

And I don't have like, they have like a very normal conversation.

It's kind of like a Tarantino conversation is what they have.

They have like this very sort of buddy-buddy, casual conversation about the merits and situations in which you might spare someone instead of murder them.

I'll tell you what this actually felt a lot like for me.

This tends to be in content, not in tone.

Yes.

This felt a lot like a gone and kill your conversation, actually.

Not in terms of the killing, but in terms of talking about ways in which they are similar and different from each other.

And using a conversation to be like, not like we're on different sides of the same coin, but to like, we see this a lot as well in all of the pairs, really.

This is Karapikir and Leorio in the early episodes as well, of like, what does being a hunter mean to you?

You know, we have these like duologues with a character presenting one worldview.

Who is who?

And someone else is a person who is.

I don't know that I could map them one-to-one.

I think it's less it's Gone and Kiliwa and more the kind of the narrative framing, the way they frame these scenes between sort of opposing forces that they do.

Yeah,

Hisuka says, Also, this guy is Gitarako's target.

So Gitaraka now has the badge.

Right, so that is who Wounded

goes and then let him get away.

This is part of their conversation: Hisuka being like, you let him get away on purpose.

Yeah.

So that he would come find me.

And then, I don't know.

I don't know what Gitaraka was expecting Hisuka to do.

Oh, kill it, right?

Gitaraka wouldn't know fully that

he did kill him.

Oh, yeah, you're right.

Yeah, so I think that's the thing.

I think it was to see, like, oh, will Hisuga kill him or not kill him?

Because then he kind of gives him,

like, he kind of gives him shit for, they give each other shit for the ways in which they spare people's lives.

He's like, you spare people's lives on a whim.

I spare people's lives in a way that's meaningful to me.

Right.

Yeah.

To me.

That's, you know, that's the important part.

He's not.

He's like, when people are useful, I think the line he says is, I only, as from Hisuka, I only spare those whose deaths would go to waste, is how he puts it.

Versus Gitaraker is kind of, they kind of

kind of implies that

he does it on a whim.

And it didn't seem like a very permanent whim either.

Right.

But, and I'm going to ask the question, and then I'm going to say three, two, one, and we're going to answer it.

Okay.

Who is more evil, Gituraku or Hisuka?

Three, two,

i can't do it i can't do kituraku

i can't do that it's it is gituraker i think wow that's really interesting i answered just based on what we've seen on this show me too

okay that's really exciting

that's i think gitraku is fantastic because then something fucking banana happens

please take us through this please jack the floor is yours for this yeah absolutely do you remember earlier when keith said we get a reveal about a mystery comma which is guitarakur keith this doesn't reveal shit

it it it introduces many questions but it does reveal hey what's up with the the the clickety clackety pinhead man

Well, sort of, because what happens is Gitaraku does some more clicking and clacking than usual.

You know?

Yeah.

And it was great because

these episodes have been fairly conventional in terms of information revealed to you.

Really, the wildest thing I think has been the blood butterflies, which is very hunter-hunter, has been very cool.

But we haven't had any of the just like massive hunter-hunter swings.

And then, as this started happening, I was like, oh, shit, here we go.

Because Gitaraka starts clicking and clacking and sort of contorting, and he starts removing pins from his face.

And his face sort of

bulges and shifts and changes.

His hair changes color, and he becomes a

slim,

pale-faced

person with long, dark hair and a new or different face.

He's does he still have pins in his face at this point?

No pins in his face, no.

He is just

a new, different-looking person.

Totally different-looking person in the face, yeah.

And Hisuka says,

I never get tired of seeing that.

Okay.

And then he says, Well, I'd better go to sleep and starts digging a hole with his hands like a machine.

He's the best.

That is the best scene in the whole episode.

It's so

good.

That is the loonies here.

Digging the hole.

So deep that when he climbs into it, only the top of his head is peeking out.

And then he covers himself with dirt.

He says, I'm a safe here until the time's up.

I'm asleepies.

Yeah.

What the fuck is happening?

What's wrong?

I'm sorry.

What are you going to do?

What's weird?

Do you mind?

Just

everything you've said just sounds regular to me.

Okay, okay.

Question one.

What is Gitaraka?

Question two,

has the rattly pin man been a form Gitaraka takes, or is it his true form?

Three, why has Gitaraka chosen this quiet moment with Hisaka to reveal reveal this secondary slash primary form?

Four, why does Gitsuraka dig a hole in the ground with his hands, cover himself in dirt, and go to sleep?

So

oh damn, I had an answer for the first few, and then I got distracted trying to answer that last one.

Why does he look like this?

I've just seen this picture.

So this is the second time I've seen this, because when it happened, I was like, well, I just have to keep watching.

You know, don't roll that back.

He also has huge eyes.

Yeah.

I love how his eyes look.

No pupil, like all pupil or no pupil.

And like a little, like, kind of

scary and weird.

Looking at this picture, it does look like there is like a slightly different shade of black within the scene.

It's just his

eyes change depending on the scene.

Sometimes they're all black.

Sometimes there's like a black to gray gradient.

The original, like the first second of the reveal, his eyes are very purple looking.

It's such a deeply strange moment.

Hey, how do you think he made his eyes be red when he had the pins in his head?

I don't know.

Are the pins magical, or is he magical?

Probably

studying into acupuncture, I'm afraid.

That's yeah.

I so okay, two legitimate questions here.

Because

firstly, does Gitaraku have consistent pronouns throughout, or are we doing a sort of body shape-shifting thing going on here where pronouns change?

I believe consistently

see him.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

That's sort of just like a bit of business.

The second thing is, if you are not watching along, listener, I really would take the opportunity to Google what Gitirako looks like in both these forms.

Because

that they are the same character is really striking.

And I was going to ask the people who have seen this show: what are some nice Google terms that would produce these different kinds of characters?

I cannot tell you.

You can't Google this if you're sensitive to it.

You can't.

You cannot.

I was going to suggest: can we just put links to like pictures in the show notes for this episode?

Yes.

Yeah.

One of the reasons I was very careful about what I put in our Discord was there are a lot of file names that have spoilers in them.

Oh, wow.

Oh.

That's just really interesting.

You know, we just got to be careful Googling things.

Yeah, totally.

Very easy to do.

Teacher is fascinating.

I'm very glad that you'd like, I mean, they're hard to miss, but I am glad that they sort of held your attention so immediately.

Because this is one of my

favorite little bits of the Hunter exam is this mystery and like what.

what his deal is.

Yeah.

Really, really super cool character.

And then we're sort of done with this episode, we get this wonderful image of Hisoka sort of

Hisoka now

Hisoka needs to pick his guys, the guys that he will hunt.

So he stands on top of this mountain and makes this...

The shot choices are so cool.

We get this beautiful shot as though we are looking through Hisoka's fingers,

finger and thumb coming together to make an O, like a spyglass.

And we are looking through that.

And then we get the reverse shot of Hisoka with his hand held up to his face, looking through his finger and thumb.

Really cool.

And he notices Karavika and Leorio and goes, Oh ho ho,

I'll get him.

Dun done.

This is the point at the episode of Media Club Plus where a little episode bumper pops up showing the word Media Club Plus in the Hunter-Hunter script.

And then the three of us are standing there.

Then you watch some commercials, then it it comes back, and the three of us go, Oh, and we point at it, and it says Media Club Plus in Katakana.

And then we sort of look, we just sort of smile at it, yeah, because this is an episode break.

We are, unless we are Hisoka, in which case we throw a Joker through the screen.

That's so cool.

I love that.

It's so cool.

Could we take five minutes before we move on to episode 16?

Yeah, yeah.

So, before we move on to the next one, I did remember a thing that sort of happens.

I mostly remember it after the

Tonpa

and

Monkey fight, but I believe it also, it first starts with the guy that Gone bandages up,

which he leaves on like a tree stump, if I'm remembering right.

And then a bunch of animal, like sort of forest critters are looking at it.

Oh, yeah.

And then later, when Tonpa and Monkey Man get added to that little pile, there are just more.

And Man Monkey, of course.

My bad.

There are just more of these little critters looking at them.

And that was another moment that I was just like, oh, this show's silly.

I forgot how silly this show is.

There was like 30 little woodland creatures looking at the

Monkey Man crew.

And someone had to draw all of those.

And they were right to do this.

They were confident enough in this joke that they were like

30 smaller critters.

Yeah, cutting

them like three times to see that there's steadily increasing numbers of them is very funny.

It's great.

Really, really good.

Speaking of animals, are we ready to start talking about episode 16?

Because episode 16 begins with just the most doom-laden establishing shot that two episodes ago would have meant nothing to us.

Sure, too.

What is that shot?

We begin on blood butterflies.

First shot of the episode, just looking at blood butterflies.

I think we have a couple of shots of blood butterflies flying, resting on things, resting on a leaf.

Right.

And it is.

They've come out from wherever they presumably hibernate between hunter exams.

Yeah.

It speaks to kind of the way this show.

The way this show works, where it is like,

we're going to teach you how we're going to teach you a thing about how the world works that you would not have established, and then we're going to use that to power the...

the visual language of the show because the way these butterflies now just like presage specifically bloody violence not just violence but violence that is that is that is gory or is bloody is great it's almost like seeing vultures circling in a western um except it is almost even more

pure visual language in the sense that when we see vultures circling in a movie we come at them with so many

you know, references and associations and memories of all the possible different things that that could mean.

When we see these blood butterflies, because we were introduced to them so recently, we are like, oh, I know what these mean.

Someone is about to bleed.

It's a very mountain goat's ass character to be introduced.

Someone is about to bleed is a good line.

So I have here first for

16.

This is where we come in on

Hisuga watching Karapik and Leorio, and then we get a quick flashback to their last meeting

to go in.

And it did not go in.

Well, I don't know.

I think they both got away alive.

And actually, Leorio got away with a piggyback ride.

Yeah, that's true.

One of the more fun things to do in the world.

Yeah.

From Hiseka, a very dangerous kind of person to get a piggyback ride from.

Very surprising kind of person to get a piggyback ride.

And

so we are not just getting this flashback, but Hisuka is also getting this flashback of these two people and being like, oh, yeah, it's them.

And

I think

is already approving of their growth.

I think he says that they've grown so much I hardly recognize them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's it goes back to the

the judgments that Hisuka is constantly sort of doling out to people.

Um I think that's something that we see from him a lot is that he kind of sees people as these judgments that he makes.

Like whatever he's seeing,

it is

like

it feels very real to him.

Like he is seeing something literal about people.

Because

I know that Kripika and Leorio look exactly the same as they did

a week and a half ago

with the last time they saw each other.

Maybe it's longer than that.

But this is very much like powerful people are able to set the rules of a world, right?

But I wonder if part of the way Hisaka has developed this ideology is the knowledge that he can kill anybody and anything.

You know,

he is making that sort of mistake of like,

I have physical power over you, therefore I get to set the terms of the way you exist in the world.

Maya, you've grown so much over the last few days or whatever.

I had no idea what he meant by that.

He's a little bit of an Anton Shigur in that way.

Oh, yes, he fully is.

Anton Shagur is the villain and sort of secondary protagonist in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, played by Javier Bardem in the movie.

And if you are not familiar, Shiger has a very similar sort of like deeply nihilistic.

I don't know that Hisaka's nihilistic.

I don't.

We'll get to that.

They don't have the same sort of nihilism.

I think that, like,

in

the way that Shigur wants to like offload his sort of

like

psychological, his psychology and his violence onto fate and the flipping of his coin uh i i think that hisuka is like more in reality than that um but he does have they do have this this this they share the same sort of like

um

like gamification of violence that and like and trust that they are the top dog and judgment of the people that are around them like

like, Shigur is using the coin to judge, and it's like it's not him that's judging, it's fate that's judging.

Hisuka's like, no, it's me that's judging, and I'm judging you by my metrics, and we're playing my game.

Um, so they do, but there is a sort of similar kind of thing between them, I think.

What do we think Hisoka meant when he says they've grown so much in just a few days?

Which is the actual line?

Um

So

I'm trying there's I know obviously more about Hisuka Jack and I don't want to

I don't want to I don't want to spoil anything.

I do want to admit that I think that

he is pretty

pretty realistic in his in his judgments.

Like I

don't see.

I think that we'll be introduced to more complications of this game as he continues to play.

That will reveal more things about what he's using to judge people by.

But I do think that he's sensing their raw talent or their potential in some way.

Because there's a scene that we're kind of eliding here that I think is actually worth digging into because it is really super interesting.

Leorio and Kurapika run into Hisoka and Leorio has the great line, I always meet someone I don't want to meet at all,

which is extremely

Leorio.

And Hisoka basically says, give me your badges or I will kill you.

And after a lot of very tense negotiation.

I love the negotiation.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you want to talk about how this goes?

So Kurapika knows that they have an extra badge.

And so he...

Which they got from

the monkey man and the man-monkey.

Sami is his name, I learned.

And I don't know which one is named that.

So they have this extra badge from Somi.

Kiloa,

I think, correctly senses that he has to explain the rules of the game.

Kropika has to explain the rules of the game to Hisuka.

Because Hisuka just simply

is in his own space.

He's not the rules being explained.

I think Kropica.

Hisuka does not have to care about the rules of the game in order to totally game.

Right.

And I think that Kropika is already kind of an explain things-minded person, but I think he also is kind of aware of this thing of like, well, why is he stopping us?

We're not his targets, we think.

Or maybe Hisuka says something to let them know that they're not his targets.

Probably just saying, hey, give me both of your badges.

And so he explains the rules to Hisuka and says, we're not your targets, probably.

We have this extra badge.

If you let us go, you can just have it.

And if you don't let us go, then we will have to fight you.

And they both get ready for the fight.

Leorio does his little knife flips, his knife skills that he has.

It's great.

It's really good.

Click, click, click, click, click.

Not even a type of knife you could actually flip, but somehow.

He goes for it.

It's a

folding knife.

It's a folding knife.

Is it a folding knife, but it's not a.

It's not like a butterfly knife.

I was thinking like butterfly knife.

Yeah, yeah.

He does.

I don't remember the exact mechanics of it.

Maybe he

flicks it out.

But it also,

he does move it a little and it just

twirl almost like you'd like twirl a drum stick if you're

in a band.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

If Leorio had a butterfly knife, he would cut his hand open constantly trying to do this.

Does anyone want to feel

how

Hisuka reacts to this proposition?

Because it is a losing current, and a Krabby Gunners, this is a losing game.

Like, there is no real reason why Hisuka would have to accept this.

Sure.

Oh, God.

Why does Hisuka accept it?

He laughs, right?

He laughs at them, yeah.

He, he, he, oh, it's, it's really cool animation.

He puts his palm over his face.

It's not like he's putting his head in his hands.

It's like he covers his face with his palm and his shoulders are shaking because he's laughing so much.

And I had no idea what he was going to do here.

My guess was that he was going to accept it and then kill them.

Or not kill them.

They're the protagonists.

Attack them.

You know, that's where the episode was going.

But Karapika puts the little...

Hisuka says, yeah, let's do it.

Let's go for it.

And Karapika puts the

badge in a little tree.

And Hisaka says, and Karapika says, I'm going to leave now.

And Hisaka says, okay, I'm just going to stand here for the time being.

So you know I'm not going to make a move.

It is deeply strange.

He says, and this becomes important.

He says, I'm going to be standing here for a long time anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really, really weird.

On some level, this is just Hisoka's game, right?

Hisoka's game is very much.

He's like a farmer.

He's cultivating these people until he sees them as a worthy opponent to be cut down.

He accepts.

And right now they are still unripe fruit,

is the dub language he uses.

No, I think that's what he says.

He's like, I'm not going to explain the sub, yeah.

The um

the

I guess the answer to like why does he accept it is that he likes them,

and that is this is like his version of liking people.

He likes them, he doesn't want to kill them, and so he accepts the deal that is good enough for him.

Uh, you know, it's not going to be that hard for me to find another person, I don't want to kill them, um, but very we see we see that it takes a lot out of him to not kill them

because he's he he said he spends presumably the entire night and into the morning

sort of

to to Goan's intense fear hiding in the bushes nearby

like oozing

murderous intents

is what they think it's really weird and well I mean it implies it took that much effort for for him to like not kill

and leoria like his natural instinct his natural bloodlust is so overwhelming and it goes so against like his desire to see like jack said to cultivate strength in these people that he has to like meditate all night basically until he can trust himself again Yeah.

So, well, so some interesting stuff happens here after they leave and before he begins his death meditation.

It was extremely like this is this is like the most kind of psychosexual, violent man we've seen he's going to be.

This is like,

this is like, I can't move.

He's the strength pervert.

He's the strength.

Yeah, he's the strength pervert.

He's like, this is,

you know,

I can't move.

I have an erection kind of, but like, this is what, this is really what this says.

All right.

I really can't read it any other way.

It's like, I've got to stay here.

I pitched the tent.

I have to stay and not.

Man, yeah.

Husuka just went six to midnight from midnight to six.

Yeah.

God.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Okay.

Y'all say I'm bad.

Okay.

He.

No, you're more clever.

He crushes a butterfly in his hand.

So a blood butterfly sits on his hand.

This is before he begins his

sex death meditation.

And he crushes it in his hand.

Just like me.

And then he opens his hand and like 10 butterflies fly out.

And I have no idea how to read this.

I don't know if this is an abstraction.

He is a magician.

Is this a trick Hisuka is doing?

Is this something that Hisuka is imagining about the world?

You know, like I I can kill something, I can cause this death, and in that death, there will be this kind of like a rush of rebirth.

Or is this a property of the butterflies?

Uh, that when they die, ten of them are born.

It's a, it's a really cool moment.

If you can let me reach for a moment,

uh, I referenced earlier the sort of mixing of metaphors that the show is able to like kind of skate the line on between these two visual metaphors.

There's the bug, the fish, the bird, and the fisherman.

The bird fisherman, in this case.

The birderman.

The birderman.

And then there's this other metaphor of the butterfly and the

blood, the butterfly, and the spider.

Yeah, yes.

The spider stuff comes up a lot in this episode.

This episode is very heavy on the spider.

Because Hisuka is the spider.

Well, there is actually no spider.

We only ever see the spider's web.

web, right?

We only see the spider's web, but yes, you're right.

Hisuka is the spider.

I think it is notable that that vacuum is there to be filled by the viewer going, oh, Hisuka is the spider.

Well, and it's also interesting because I guess this is getting towards the end of the episode, but it's implied.

I mean, at first, we think that

I forget his name, Blow Dart Man

is the spider.

Is the spider for Gone?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They swap, they swap.

They do the role swap swap of like, no, actually, it's Hisuka's a spider.

But

I think that

Goan remains the butterfly.

And I do think it's trying to say something about like Hisuka's a spider and he's got all these butterflies.

Like he's he's spinning the web and he's catching his, you know, unripe fruits in his net.

Yeah.

yeah, definitely.

And then he just stands there by this tree.

And Gona has been watching him because Gon has been shadowing Hisoka sort of for this whole episode, which is a nice little storytelling trick that lets us blend Gon and Hisoka's sort of perspective as characters.

You know, we can get them on screen at the same time.

They can mirror each other there.

And Hisuka stands there all night as visible, murderous intent radiates from him.

The way he was drawn is crazy.

It is very cool and scary.

Anybody seen the manga version of this?

No, please show me.

So, what happens is he stands there, and then, like he is casting a spell,

his face gets crossed out.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

That's a really accurate translation.

Also, my favorite Discord emoji that I haven't been able to use in here because of spoiler reasons.

Holy shit, he looks terrifying.

So, what happens is we're in this like purple light light of the night.

The purple and the blue are the kind of key colors at night.

We get this close-up of Hisuka, and he has been cross-hatched.

He's been drawn in extremely high detail, cross-hatched, and he's got his hands out like he's casting a spell.

And yeah,

the grass ripples, this purple magic sort of pours off him as he enters this kind of like murderous trance.

And he says, he's narrating it as well.

He says, it sucks to be around here right now.

As he does this, which is really funny.

I would not have put that lie in the mouth of a character who was doing an unbelievably evil spell.

I don't remember him doing that.

But yeah, he says, it sucks to be around here right now.

We get animals reacting in fear, which is always nice.

Now, Jack, you've said

magic.

You've said that it's like a spell.

Can you sort of expand on that?

Can you tell me

what you think that he's doing?

What makes you think it's a spell?

Yes, absolutely.

This face is so crazy.

Oh, we get this face.

This face is later.

The bloodlust faces are fantastic.

Yeah.

Also, I want to be clear when I said seeing animals in fear is always good.

What I mean to say is, as you will know if you've recently listened to

Palisade, I think that it's always really fun when you draw out the natural metaphor of like, oh, the animals are responding to the things that humans are doing.

You know,

just so that you still just say, I think it's really fun.

You know, you get to see the rabbits sort of being like, oh, what's happened to the eclipse, the solar eclipse, or whatever, et cetera.

Yeah, all the animals can sense

the murderous malice and run away.

Yeah.

What is this from a family?

You keep calling him spell and purple magic.

I want to hear that.

I saw Kitaraka do the thing earlier in the episode.

So I have been primed to be like, this pair of characters have a sort of limitless well.

We also know that Hisaka is a magician.

And I thought that he was

summoning some sort of dark energy.

I thought he was going to transform, honestly.

Or summon some sort of horrible dark energy that would allow him to hunt.

the remaining

people he needs to hunt.

You know, he was sort of getting serious.

That is what I thought was happening.

And so it was especially cool when it just snap cuts to morning and reveals that he has been standing there in the same posture all night.

Right.

And he is completely drained.

Yeah.

It's so funny because he wasn't seminar.

He was suppressing.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

He...

He

just takes off hunting.

He just, he, he has this incredible, like, slumped posture.

He's, like, leaning forward and leading with his shoulders.

He is.

He's leading with his hands.

His mouth is open.

His eyes are kind of hollow.

He has sort of...

He has become possessed by the need to sort of hunt and kill here.

It's bizarre.

I wrote down here, what is Hisaka?

More to the point, I don't know.

I mean, green, green, green, jelly bean man exists in this world.

I don't know that it's super helpful to be like, all these people are human.

But this was kind of like a real moment where I went, oh, I don't think Hisaka and Gon are the same

thing.

And I don't know what to do with that.

Because off goes Hisaka.

That's a

gone after him.

That's definitely a sort of definitive statement of the kind that we should keep in mind for if it gets affirmed or refuted.

What's the definitive statement?

I don't think Ghon and Hizuka are the same thing.

Yes, yes.

And I say same thing in the same way that I am not the same thing as my cat, Virginia.

Sure.

I want to briefly say that unlike a lot of other battle royale settings, this battle royale doesn't have a characteristic that I associate with a lot of them, which is claustrophobia.

This does not feel like a very claustrophobic space or claustrophobic episode.

And in fact, it is kind of scary because of its breadth, because characters are kind of just ping-ponging around in this big, wide space.

It's really 24 people on a massive double island.

It's really two islands connected by like a thin land bridge.

Yeah, nobody is being drawn together.

by a mechanic of the game.

There are lots of these wide shots of the forest and the sky.

You know, we occasionally get this massive overhead shot of the island, which you would think would feel isolating and claustrophobic in the sense of

they're trapped on this island.

But what it actually ended up doing for me was being like, there's this massive space that they are in, and they are just bouncing off each other.

And we get this as Gon climbs a tree to try and figure out where Hisaker is going, because he reasons that if he can, this is his moment.

Hisaker is going to go and kill someone.

And if he can get in the way, that's when he gets the badge.

There's a little bit of panic here because he's like realizing

Hisuka's now not fought two people in a row.

He only needs one more badge now.

He might not fight this third person either.

It's so normal to just give up like in the face of Hisuka.

I would.

That Gon is now like, I might miss my chance entirely if my chance is built around waiting for him to attack.

Yeah.

He says, why didn't I think of this?

You know, I've been an idiot.

Why didn't I think of this?

But then he notices the bloodlust zombie walk, and I think is put.

This is where he builds this plan of, like, oh, actually, he's about to go kill someone right now.

Yeah, and we learn that Hisuka is going after

Studio Ghibli Grandmother.

Yeah, this does look a little bit like

old Sophie from Sophie.

Yeah, I was trying to think of the name Sophie.

Yeah.

And we get this lovely, lovely, lovely shot of

the three of them walking together.

It's an abstract shot.

They are isolated in blue against a black background, and we get to see them walking towards each other.

It's really, really cool.

So, they have Gon's got his plan set up.

Hisuka finally sees

old Sophie

and

just absolutely makes a break for it.

Goes from ambling to,

I don't know,

how fast is he going?

Way faster

than

a

non-hunter-hunter universe person can run.

You know, so fast it's like it creates wind, you know.

He also charges directly at the camera.

This is a sort of pseudo-jump scare that we have here.

We have these great shots of Hisaka, mouth wide open, eyes bloodshot,

huge,

like black void of a smile on his face, charging the viewer.

and

we actually don't see we see the strike we see he like slashes at old sophie with a card um i don't think we actually see like what happens

but i'm gonna go ahead and chalk this up to um dre i know that we've got your like uh

people killed by husigo list i'm going to i'm going to now oh yeah i forgot to add one i'm going to i'm going to now officially add uh

this as the the first murder.

This is a murder.

Yeah, no, yeah.

I believe he cuts their throat.

We see them in the background.

We see him in the background.

We're calling this person old Sophie, but he uses he, him pronouns.

We get like a jet of blood from this person's throat as they fall in the

back by the way.

Aegon.

Aegon had pushy eyebrows and a large crooked nose.

who kept his hair in a ponytail.

His outfit consisted of a lilac cloak covering his upper body and a matching dress underneath it.

Shout out to Aegon Alt Lights from the Company of the Spade.

Yep.

Hisuka has done it.

But in the moment of the attack, Gohan makes his play and it works.

It works perfectly.

And then the little he holds

it.

It's so cute.

Yep.

And then they both kind of like look at each other like, wait.

Did this just happen?

Yeah, Hisuka

is kind of shocked, which is not a normal thing for him, I don't think.

No.

And I was wondering as we watched these two episodes whether or not Goan actually was successfully hiding from Hiseka or if Hiseka knew that Goan was there the whole time and just was like, Yeah, like, yeah, that's that's my favorite boy.

I'll let him tail me around for a while.

But in this moment, I mean, it seems to confirm that, like, no, Goan did it.

He was doing it, yeah.

And he has, he has some help.

Um,

uh, I don't know that we want to get there

right away.

Maybe we'll double back to that, what I was about to say, and go more chronologically.

But this is the moment where, you know, the,

you know, Goan thinks he's going, but he's the bird.

Geretta shows up or doesn't even show up.

All of a sudden, Goan is like just falling.

Falls over.

Yeah.

And we see Geretta sort of chiding him being like,

was it 7,000 times is the number that he...

Yep.

He says, he's like, do you know what that number represents?

It's the amount of times I could have killed you.

It's also the amount of times that you cast your fishing rod.

Fishing rod.

Yeah.

Does he say anything else?

He, I mean, he says, like, hey, better luck next time.

You know.

Yeah, it is not.

You get the impression that, unlike some people, Gereta is not an evil person.

Geretta is just, Gereta is in their own anime and has just taken out Gon.

Right.

An anime that is about to reach its finale.

Because

Gon lies there paralyzed

and

sees a spider,

Jesus, sees a butterfly fly into a spider's web, tangle itself up in the web by trying to escape.

And the sound of the butterfly struggling crossfades into this dragging sound.

And I was like, what is happening?

As we cut out to reveal that Hisaka has killed Gon's attacker, has killed Geretta

as a reward for how Gon worked hard to hunt him.

And just by luck, that was the guy that Hisuka was meant to hunt the whole time.

Yep.

So he doesn't need

his own

badge anymore.

So he gives that to

Gon.

And then he keeps the hunters, he keeps Geretta's badge and all the other badges that he collected various ways.

No, doesn't he give his badge and

another badge?

No, Hisuka only has

Goan's badge back and also his number 44 badge.

Yeah.

Right.

And

Goan is mad about

real.

This doesn't count.

Take it back.

Hisuka says, and this is just such a good

Shonen anime moment.

I feel

Hisaka says, it takes 10 days to recover.

You have three.

I think you'll make it.

You know, like this real moment of confidence in Goan's abilities.

It's sort of the closest you might get to a compliment from Hisoka.

And then Hisaka turns, and Goan is already standing.

It's so good.

So good.

Oh, and before that, he's like sort of complimenting him.

He's like telling him why he's giving him the badge back, saying how impressed he was that he was able to take it in the first place.

And he notes the hiding presence thing

as if this is a difficult skill to learn.

We just saw Goan sort of master it kind of on his own with no teacher in a couple days.

And

he's like, you just learned it naturally, like a wild animal.

And this is a sort of thing that

ties into the other kind of superpowers that Goan sort of shows up with.

Things we haven't referenced in a long time, like his super smeller,

his like ability to pick out differences between wild animals, super smell.

Um, he uh, uh,

like

he is in touch with animals in a way, I think, that sort of lets him

adopt something that an animal can innately do that a human cannot,

at least as far as Hisuka explains it.

Um,

uh, and that, like, like this was the crucial part of this plan is that Goan did genuinely execute perfectly perfectly the suppressing his presence thing, whatever that means, or whatever the mechanics of that are in this universe, like we know that that's not a thing in real life.

So whatever that means in Hunter-Hunterland, that's what Goan was able to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But Goan

Hisuka keeps Goan in his debt until you can become a worthy opponent.

You know, like classic old-school manipulation here.

And Gohan responds to this by trying to punch him in the face.

Hisuka

dodges the punch and punches Gohan in the face, knocks him through the sky and you know, backwards, and then says,

basically, if you can punch me in the face, I'll clear the debt.

You know, when you are able to land that punch, I will consider us square.

There's something interesting to me that I'm curious to see how it's going to get played with about like

violence as a way of settling debts, not in the sense of erasing the debtor or the debtee, but in the sense of like paying back violence is a way that you settle a debt.

And it's weirdly, it's like a reverse debt also, because Goan has this badge that he doesn't want.

And the version of settling the debt is giving it back to Hisuka, but the way to give it back to him is to successfully hurt him.

Yeah.

And now we have a very weird mechanic.

Like, it's just like, it's just odd.

Yeah, we have set up something great now.

Just good storytelling.

Goan has the 44 badge.

And, you know,

I have demonstrated that I cannot accurately predict the way Hunter Hunter goes, but I can sort of predict the way it goes.

And I love that, you know, when can I give the badge back?

Under what, you know, what does it mean to carry this badge with me?

I think that that's just good storytelling, and I am sure that the show is going to get some mileage out of it.

It's been we've seen Goan, like, being someone already who's, like,

doesn't want to be,

he doesn't want to be, like, helped the way that Leorio is helped.

Oh, like, yeah, he wants to feel like he did it, did it, and did it right.

Um,

and so, like, I mean, the last shot of the episode is like a zoom in.

He's like sitting under a leaf or something with his knees tucked up to his chest.

Yeah, knees tucked up to his chest, hugging his legs, his like scowling eyes peering over his knees, and the only other detail of his face that you can see is like a big swollen cheek from getting punched in the face.

Just like furious that he has to carry this like this sort of

symbol of him not actually passing the hunter exam if he passes it.

This is

this means I didn't do it.

And coming coming from his as well this kind of like magnetically unpleasant malicious entity you know it would it would it would be different if it was geretta in this situation or something yeah um we match cut from gone lying on the floor oh go on i don't think it would be different for gone if it was geretta though huh

Like I think if Geretta came up to Goan after the exam and said like, hey, I could have caught you 7,000 times, but I thought you were doing such a good job that I didn't.

I think Goan would be like equally pissed.

I think that's probably true.

I think the difference would maybe be the terms, like Greta's terms.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

And I think the way that we as viewer experience it is absolutely different.

Definitely.

I think that you're right.

I think I was probably thinking of it in terms of the like the

implication.

That is an object of power.

Hisaka's 44 badge is an object of power in the way that Gereta's 12 badge or whatever

isn't.

That's true.

We've been like looking, we've been afraid of number 44 since the first moment the badges were introduced.

But no, I think you're right as to speaking to Goan's character there, Dre.

Yes, I think Goan would be.

I think Goan would feel that way if it was Karapika or Leorio, you know?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Of course, it wouldn't be Kiliwa because Kilua would beat Goan handily in any fight on the planet

and walk away.

We match cut from Goan lying on the floor to the blood butterfly in the web in the least subtle match cut I have seen in a long time.

I don't think that it is.

I mean, you know, it is what it is.

Tell us what you really mean, Show.

Cutting from a character who's been caught in a metaphorical spider's web to a bug caught in a literal spider's web.

It's a bit like the rat in the departed.

I don't know.

But, you you know, it is what it is.

I think that there is maybe, there's maybe another level to that image that is interesting, which is that this isn't a butterfly.

It's a butterfly that feeds on blood.

You know, there is something about

your violence has brought you into this trap.

Your own bloodlust.

And I was getting...

It's too...

That's the way that the butterfly is the same as the spider.

Oh, yeah.

Yep.

Sure is.

Gonan Hisaka again.

And I was getting mad about that being very unsubtle, and then that was replaced because they played Ghan's theme in the minor key.

Oh, I missed that.

I didn't notice that.

Which I hated so much.

The music in this show is so good.

It's so good.

And

I don't know.

Maybe it's just a personal thing.

I find play the character's theme in the minor key to be the least interesting decision you can make in any possible moment.

And such a demonstration of...

I don't know.

I can't speak for how the music supervisors used it I

just have to say I like I think that this is

at some point you've got to be like how do we save ten thousand dollars on this episode

and it's by not writing a new song for this moment it sure well but the problem is it is a new song Keith it it it actually turns into this really interesting little piano uh sort of like nocturn this like melancholy little nocturnal oh have they not used this stuff before are they not like already no this is this is brand new the first 16 or 18 measures are gone in the minor key and you know

whenever i feel the temptation to do that

it

as a composer you have to trust everybody else that is working on the thing with you to pull the feeling out you know it feels like such a demonstration of lack of trust in the people that you're working with to be like i really need to hammer this home i gotta i gotta play gone's theme in the minor key to let us know we're feeling really sad no the writers and the animators and the performers and the concept artists and everything are communicating that just fine.

If you'd just done this beautiful, weird, sad little piano nocturnal.

But instead, it was just a real clunky moment at the end of an episode that I thought was really good.

And that this moment is really good because, you know, the narrator says,

I love this.

This is such a good Hunter-Hunter narrator thing to say.

The narrator basically says, What do you think Ghon is feeling right now?

Which is wonderful.

To be like, have a narrator say, try and figure out this character's emotions.

I thought it was really, really good.

I don't remember him saying that.

I also don't remember the.

Maybe, is it possible that I didn't see the last minute of this episode?

Because I don't remember the match cut.

I don't remember the minor key.

And I don't remember the.

I want to find the exact subtitle line for you.

Because I wrote down what do I think Gowan is feeling right now.

And then the narrator said the same thing.

And I was like, oh.

Me and the narrator on the same page

I'm the viewer

okay here I've I've got the episode up on my thing let me

I can't oh and a blood butterfly lands on his hand that's really really cool

Gohan was completely helpless against Hizugo who knocked him out with a single blow What must he be thinking alone in the darkness?

Isn't that nice?

What must he be thinking?

Having the narrator say that about, you know, their character, if the narrator is the author.

I actually had a question here, you know, as we come to the end of this little chunk.

What does the defeat of a protagonist, how does defeat work in shounen anime generally?

When we see a protagonist take a fall?

like this?

Where does it generally fit in the narrative structure?

How is it sort of portrayed?

In what ways is this indicative or different from the way shonen protagonist defeat is generally shown?

That's a good question.

I immediately thought of three different shows.

The first thing that I thought of

was

Dragon Ball Z.

Yeah, me too.

Where

there's like not

a lot of defeat.

The stakes are always so high.

Like individual characters get defeated.

Goku is such a

powerhouse in that show that they

that a lot of like a lot of the meat of the show ends up like being keeping him away from the main fight for long enough to have other characters like not be able to handle things than to have Goku show up.

And there's a couple exceptions.

I think

that is true in Z.

I think that gets different in Super.

Because Goku and Super, I think, is very, is much more

prone to losing.

And then like doing the, doing the thing that Goku always does, where it's like moments of adversity are where he becomes, becomes, you know, he gets his next level up.

That is the thing.

That is like the real shounen thing is like losing actually happens three-quarters of the way through a fight.

Yeah.

And then that losing makes you

sort of outrageously strong because of your desire to not lose or your feelings of friendship or whatever.

I have two things here.

One is that in Dragon Ball, I believe it eventually gets literally written into the script.

It is codified, yes, so it becomes literally crossed when they get beaten up more.

And also, a lot of the stuff you're talking about, that's just wrestling.

That is also wrestling.

It is very much paced in a lot of ways where it's like you gotta make sure, like, the bad guy has to get his stuff in.

You gotta make you doubt that the hero can really do it.

And then everyone cheers when the hero does their job.

Or maybe the hero even loses like two or three matches before they finally beat the bad guy.

Yeah.

But it is very much that sort of pacing, especially.

Yeah.

I find

sure.

So the other show that I was thinking of was Pokemon,

where the conclusion of every

first, okay, first of all, Ash is losing all the time.

Is that a thing that happens a lot in the Pokemon?

Oh, God.

Ash is always getting his ass.

Ash is always getting...

He's like...

He's like...

constantly beating the idiots that follow him around everywhere trying to steal Pikachu.

But he's always losing.

He's like usually beating like the bad guy of the, like the sort of bad guy of the week style person.

But whenever there's like a test of skill,

a test of like, hey, Ash, this is about testing your ability as a Pokemon trainer.

He's constantly losing those.

as

because if he was winning them, then he'd be on his, he'd be eventually eventually the Pokemon master that the show can't let him be because then the show would be over.

So, like, not only is he constantly losing to like, you know, one of my favorite early episodes, the guy with the unofficial gym that has the sand shrew,

guys like that, who's like, oh, wow, there's people out there who really know what they're doing and I'm an idiot.

But every season ends with him making it to the Pokemon League and losing.

Literally every season except

the very last season he loses in the finale.

And how does he deal with that?

He moves to a new country is how he deals with it.

Every time?

Every time.

Every time.

Oh, God.

But there is something to be said, right, for the fact that there is no fucking way Gone can beat Hisaka.

That's the premise that we started this arc on.

You know, you cannot beat Hisaka, so you're going to have to be clever about it.

And we still end with an even more humiliating

he's won, but it's deeply humiliating.

It's a very

kind of loss, I think, in Shonen.

Maybe I'm like, my focus is too narrow,

or I'm thinking too broad, or just something isn't occurring to me.

But I'm trying to think of like someone who's like

just kind of like

stewing in having to take their lumps, you know?

Like, I've been, I've lost and I've been humiliated, and I've just kind of got to be in that.

Yeah.

I'm struggling to think of like a good analogue.

That's okay.

We can come back to this.

I'm sure that this isn't going to be the last time Gone loses a fight.

Hey, maybe it is.

Maybe it's all the W's from here on out.

Hunter W hunter.

All right.

Closing credits, music.

Wait, is there anything else we want to say?

I don't think I have anything else to say.

I do have a question.

I have a question for everyone.

If Leorio

never made friends with Goan, Kuropica, and Kilua, how far would he have made it through the Hunter exam?

He would have.

He wouldn't have had the strength to keep running through the first tunnel.

I have

I talked with a friend about Leorio when I I was visiting the West Coast last, and she pointed out to me as a manga reader that a lot of Leorio's people like hyping up Leoro is just, Leorio did this really cool thing just off screen.

You guys missed it, though.

Leo's not as much in the anime.

So

Leorio.

We talked a little bit about this, not from the manga, but

in the 1999 anime, when I, in the first episode where I watched a bit of that,

Leoria was depicted as much more competent.

Yeah.

But as far as like the anime goes, I think that he gets his second wind because he made some friends and he doesn't want to be outdone.

He like literally gets, he's about to, he's about to flunk out and he gets like stared down by Goan.

Yeah.

And I think that that is the moment that if

he's not with Goan, he loses.

He's coming back next year.

Jack, what do you

Okay.

I think that Keith is right.

I think that if he doesn't get stirred up by Gohan, I've forgotten that moment.

That was such a great moment.

Goan looking over his shoulder at Leorio.

But I will say this.

He has the...

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt because he gets that second wind.

He gets through the running.

The man-faced monkey fake

examiner shows up and says, Satos is fake.

Everybody, come with me.

Leorio is like, Oh my god, he's right, goes with him, and is immediately killed by a man-faced monkey.

That's where he fails.

These are all interesting answers.

I think you're all wrong, though.

I have one more, I have a counterpoint to my own point.

Yeah, please go ahead.

Leorio's superpower is

being the reluctant outsider of a friend group that, for some reason, really values him and his company.

God, maybe the more fun answer is: if it's not, you know, the three friends that he has, who does who does Leorio become friends with?

Yes,

this is exactly where I was going.

So, thank you for that.

Yes, he becomes

Tompo's accomplice for the whole exam until the very end when Tompa fucks him over.

Evil Leorio teaming up with Tompa would be pretty good.

Also, just like he could hang out with the Monkey Man, maybe.

Yeah.

The other funny friend group he could fall into is Jisaka and Gitoraka.

That would be pretty funny.

It's true, yeah.

Like, one of them sprains their ankle early on, and Leorio is like, oh, I got an ace bandage in here.

I could just tape your ankle.

Please, you know, Gitoraka

is doing literally this whole thing on a sprained ankle without even flinching.

That's why he moves like that.

Yeah.

I don't think Gitsurako has ankles.

I think Gitsurako has...

I think he has two ankles per leg.

And he has double ankles.

Sure.

And whatever pin he puts in it is which ankle he gets to use.

Right.

Oh, he can switch between high mobility and high strength ankles.

Yeah.

Leorio wouldn't have made it to the Hunter exam because he wanted to take the bus and called everyone stupid for not wanting to take the bus.

I hadn't even thought about that.

Yeah, it doesn't even make it to the exam.

Absolutely.

He didn't even meet it to the exam because if he didn't meet gone he would have done a hate crime against karafika and go

okay he would have just been thrown overboard by karafiko

yeah drowned um

uh

karafika would have just yeah uh i had a i had a fucked up thought what if kiterako is the pins

that's fun that is fun

we were we were doing a uh Ali and Janine and I are playing a game called Grandpa's Farm at the moment for live at the table

and an idea that I thought I had to choose kind of what farmer I was gonna be in this sort of Stardew Valley type game and an idea that I had but didn't end up going with because it didn't work out was

Grandpa is pins no was that I play as all the plants on a ill-tended farm trying to persuade a farmer to bring the farm back to basically like what if you play as the plants

who have possessed a guy.

And I think maybe that might be the pins and Gitsuraku.

Gitsuraku might be 500 acupuncture pins that have possessed a man.

I couldn't tell

from the description.

Grandma's Farm is a tabletop game.

Yes, yeah.

It's by Tyler Crumrine.

It's from

Possible Worlds.

Oh, okay.

Same guy who made Seam Thieves, the Mariela game.

Yeah.

Is there any last thoughts?

We've gone, we have intentionally turned the train off the tracks to just explore the sort of side of the tracks area.

It's fun over there.

Do we have anything else over here or maybe even back on the tracks before we close it down?

Yes.

Have you

have you ever squashed a penny on the train tracks?

No.

No.

Because I saw the episode of Pete and Pete where it taught me that it would kill the train.

I don't think it would kill the train.

I'm sure it is extremely dangerous to do, and you shouldn't go near train tracks really ever

unless you are using squash penny train is

I suppose.

Sure.

Those are made with a penny squashing machine, but I know that historically pennies squashed by trains.

I have a Godspeed You Black Emperor record that has a penny squashed by a train in it.

I mean, it probably isn't squashed by a train.

I know the first run they were squashed by a train, but I don't think Ephraim's going out there and putting a bunch of pennies on train tracks.

I don't know.

They have money, right?

They could commission a train to roll over a five-year-old.

I don't know if Godspeed does have money.

I think Godspeed might be in the category of musicians who you think, I think listeners sometimes do this about Friends at the Table.

They're like, oh, that thing has listeners, so they have money, right?

And it's like, nope, we're trying our best.

I've just been hearing about them since I was in high school.

Does that account for money?

I don't.

I fear that it might not.

It would be sad if it didn't.

I'm sure they're doing fine, Is the thing.

But I doubt that they are.

I think that they are probably like mountain goats level of fine.

I think it's just

it's

I think it also might be cheaper than you'd think to commission like a shitty train to like run over some pennies for an hour

Pikmin's

pretty fast though.

I think it's just the weight of the train because the penny squashing machines are not going going very fast.

That's true.

No, and you have to be five years old and turning them in Disneyland.

Yeah.

A lot of gears in there, but still, trains are very heavy.

In gears in the train or gears in the penny squashing machine?

Oh, there's gears.

There's a lot of gears in the penny squashing machine to make turning it easy.

The train makes up for this by being very heavy.

There are gears in the train, but they're not helping squash the penny at all.

Yes, Sylvie, I'm enjoying this conversation.

However,

it's late.

I know it is.

Should we wrap this up?

Great point.

Great point.

Two episodes, I think, for next time.

Oh,

short one.

Short one.

Episode 17 and 18,

I believe.

Sure, you're the boss.

Let me just double-check.

Yeah, we are.

That was the original.

Big time interview.

Say again?

Wait, big time interview?

Trap in the hole?

Big time interview.

Yeah,

that's a reality.

Big time interview.

Yeah, yeah.

Who knows, Jack?

Hey, Jack, who knows?

I mean, I know.

I know what it is.

Yeah, trap in the hole and big-time interview.

Part of me is like, maybe we should do more, but I think we shouldn't.

No, let's do two and get ourselves back on track.

All right, let's get back on track.

And if we end up feeling like after we watch these that we need to do another one, we can like append something to this.

Yeah.

Sure.

You know, we can always go back and

editor Keith.

So two episodes next time.

Trap in the hole and what's it called?

The big interview or something?

Big time interview.

Big time interview.

Excellent.

Big time.

You can.

Oh, go on.

No, I was just going to say,

I guess I didn't really need to give you this warning on air.

But Jack, a little bit of a snake warning for the next couple episodes.

Oh, right.

Someone online warned me about these snakes, and it was very sweet.

They said you can skip these episodes, and I'm a professional.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to be extremely brave, and then I'm going to come on the recording and tell you about how brave I was.

Yeah, you are.

And I figured giving a little advance warning would help with it.

No, thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you so much for your support.

If you have supported us at friendsatthetable.cash, which enables us to make this show.

Obviously, this show is free,

but if you like the kind of thing that we are doing and are interested in supporting us further, you can go to friendsatthetable.cash, where we have a range of benefits available for you, including two full seasons of Friends at the Table that you might not have heard in a fictional Atlantic city called Bluff City that is some of the best work we've done.

Cannot recommend Bluff City highly enough.

That's great.

And it's it's got the exact opposite vibe of everything else we do, which is really, really long and hard to get into.

It is super easy to get into.

You could theoretically pop in wherever you wanted.

I don't recommend that.

I say start from the beginning, but they're all little self-contained, you know, little mini arcs.

Some people remember that.

Anything else?

Any other plugs when we get out of here?

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

Okay.

Well, that's it.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.