What is a Hunter? - Hunter x Hunter ep. 1-3 : Media Club Plus S01E01

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

For the first time, 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 Togashi.

My name is Keith J.

Carberry, and you can find me on Twitter and co-host at Keith J.

Carberry.

And you can find the Let's Plays that I do at youtube.com/slash run button.

With me today is Jack Dake.

Hi, I'm Jack.

You can find me on co-host at JDQ and buy the theme music for this show, along with other music that I make for friends at the table at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.

Sylvie Bullet.

Hey, I'm Sylvie Bullet.

You can find me everywhere at Sylvie Bullet.

Andrew Lee Swan.

Hey, you can find me on Twitter at Swanjerry3000, and you can find me every Monday night over on our Twitch channel at twitch.tv slash friends at the table.

And today,

and who knows when else, we have Austin Walker.

Hi, I'm here.

I'm here for today.

Also other times.

Probably not every episode, but I'm going to sneak in whenever my schedule lines up and I can join up to talk about the show.

That's super good.

All right.

Today we watched the first three episodes of Hunter Hunter.

I am extremely excited to talk about this.

I've been looking forward to this for a while.

I've been looking forward to re-watching Hunter Hunter, even though I just did it.

Same, actually.

Yeah, it took me a long time to get through the last 40 episodes in my rewatch, just for no reason in particular.

Oh, yeah.

listened to, if you've watched Hunter Hunter before, don't read into that.

It really was for no reason in particular.

Actually, at the top, should we talk about like

how exposed to Hunter Hunter each of us are?

Yep, that's exactly what I was leading into.

This is a show that is near and dear to me.

I've watched it several times over the last, I don't know, probably seven years.

I've probably seen it three times.

Sylvia, I know how much you like Hunter Hunter, but I don't actually know how much of it you've got in you.

So I watched Hunter Hunter for the first time.

This version of Hunter Hunter.

So I've only seen the 2011 one all the way through.

Right.

But

I watched this a couple years back

during lockdown, basically, and marathoned it with my boyfriend.

I just like, it was one of those shows where after it ended, I wanted to just keep going.

I was watching on Netflix, so that made it very easy to just...

This isn't a plug.

It just, it's a discussion of mechanics.

It auto-played constantly.

So I like just marathoned it and then like a couple months later watched it again.

I think I've watched it like two and a half times is how I'd count it.

I also

sort of, I think I had like 20, I have like 20 episodes left in the rewatch I was doing, but then we started talking about doing this and I decided to wait.

And I now have some 170 episodes left or 170.

140.

140.

Okay.

That's like nothing.

That's like nothing.

Yeah, it's a breeze.

Dre?

Yeah, I have watched all of the 2011 Hunter Hunter.

I have not read any of the manga, but I want to

since it picks up after where the anime ends.

Actually, I watched the anime in a weird way.

Like, I think I watched it in two chunks.

And so the first chunk, like, I got really into it and just like kind of mainlined it.

And then I don't remember what happened, but I fell off of it.

And then, like, three years later, was like, oh, yeah, I should finish the show.

Yeah.

And did you jump right back in?

Yeah, I jumped right back in.

Because I think it split for me

right at the end of one of the arcs.

I don't want to say arc names.

Sure.

Yeah.

Austin?

Yeah.

A lot of people that I know, like the three of you, had been telling me for years how good it is.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I forgot.

Yeah.

What?

You forgot?

How did you forgot that's when you watched it?

After, yeah.

Uh-huh.

I only watched it like last year, I want to say.

We've just been talking about it so much since then that it's easy to forget that you had only just watched it.

Yeah, I'm basically a newbie here.

I watched it once.

I've read a little bit of the manga, both at the very beginning and then also like a little past where the anime ends.

It's an ongoing manga, it's worth saying, though also one that's being released very slowly at this point because of the health of the creator.

But yeah, I watched the show.

I read a little bit of the manga.

I've watched like two episodes of the previous 1999 Hunter Hunter.

And that's about it.

It's good.

I like it a lot.

Jack?

I have not seen any of Hunter Hunter.

Well, I've seen three episodes now.

Until just now.

Until, yeah, until two days ago.

And not only have I not seen it, I know essentially nothing about it.

In fact, as we learned from the

series available on YouTube, we did a stream in which Sylvie and Keith subjected me to some screenshots of Hunter Hunter, and I had to interpret them, sort of.

Had to.

I was, yes,

I was impelled to interpret them.

That's the first thing I knew about.

Listen to that.

That's at youtube.com/slash friends of the table.

It's great.

At first, I thought that the primary character of Hunter Hunter was Naruto.

This is the familiarity that I have with this.

So it's worth saying that going into watching these first episodes, I knew that there were characters called Kilua.

I think I knew that there was a character called Gone, and I think I know what they looked like.

I know that there's a character called, I think, Krolo Lusilpha, who is coming on.

Yeah, these are all things you learned in that stream.

Yes, this is what I'm saying.

Prior to watching, this was kind of the extent of my knowledge.

I knew, and I think that this is worth mentioning because this is sort of, I feel like so much of the conversation around the show, and I don't understand what people mean, but I can sort of pick up from context clues that it is consequential.

Whenever people talk about Hunter-Hunter, they talk about a Chimera ant arc.

The Chimera Ant arc is the thing that makes the show, or is such a really important part of the show.

It's just worth saying off the bat, I don't know what that means.

I don't know what that is, but I know that it represents a large amount of runtime and also represents a lot of fan and viewer interest.

And for anyone listening, we're going to

keep it that way.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, be careful.

Talk about the show in any way that you want, except for don't spoil Jack on anything.

Don't let, yeah, don't like I'll come for you yeah it's worth saying that like i i have guides to take me through this process and those guides are dre and sylvie and keith and austin and anybody else from friends at the table who comes on i'm very excited that people are excited but but we're gonna we're gonna come at this in our own way uh of course the show is brought to you by friends of the table you can support the friends of the table patreon at uh friendsatthetable.cash you could listen to our other show friends of the table by searching for it in your podcast app of choice.

Anything else to plug off the bat?

I think just it's fun to say, like, thanks for supporting us because we wouldn't be doing this without the support of the patrons.

Like, we had a goal to hit, and it was, as always goes with these things, it's like, well, we'll set this goal.

This seems kind of outlandish.

And then people really came out to support it.

And then the closer we got, the more, you know, momentum there was, the more it became clear people were really excited for this.

I'm really excited for it.

Yeah.

Mostly because I get it.

I think that all translates to people who, like, maybe want this show now and aren't 100% sure why they want this show about a show that they haven't watched yet or something.

I think it's

we make we have fun talking about stuff and we any opportunity for us to do that and to dive deep.

Also, we've done a number of podcasts about like movies we like here and there.

Yeah.

Some of which are on the Patreon feed.

And I think that that helps a lot.

So it's very exciting to me as something that I don't.

I signed up to do this show as early as we were talking about it, in part because I am so thrilled by there is a piece of media that animates all of you so much, and that is presumably windows into things you're excited about that you say I will enjoy, but I don't know anything about.

And there was sort of something really interesting, and it's already proving rewarding to just be like, I'm going to put my name down for this and blunder straight into it and see what happens.

And just a last note before we head into it,

you're sort of not just new to this show, but you're new to this genre in a way that I hadn't anticipated.

And I think that's kind of an interesting place to be in for this show in particular, that is like both so full of and

also

it's so full of anime is really what it is.

It's chock full of shounen, which is like a genre that it seems illustrated by

the Naruto snafu

that I didn't know that you weren't so familiar with.

So I'm curious how, like, someone who's kind of, who hasn't seen, I grew up watching Shonen like for my whole life.

Can you describe for listeners who also, maybe this is their first dip into these pools, what Shounen is in a broad way?

Yeah, so Shounen is like extremely, extremely broadly

like manga and anime for boys.

It's aimed at boys.

I believe it literally means

boys' comics.

And that's why I'm describing it that way because that's literally what it means.

Of course, it's really a whole mess of

leanings and tropes and story types and

ways that things happen in shows.

They tend to be action-y and they tend to be a little funny and a little light.

They are

a lot of times

about

fighting.

There's also a lot of like, and this is President Hunter-Hunter.

There's a lot of coming-of-age stories in Shonen.

There's a lot of coming-of-age stories.

Shonen is a genre, like it has its

sort of like genre conventions and stuff, but at the same time, it's sort of like

you can describe something as like a young adult novel, but also

it's like a sci-fi one or like a mystery or crime one or like all this.

Like it is a very shounen is a very broad way to describe things right and and they they it's worth pointing out yeah they yeah they take place in all sorts of times and places um like some of the biggest uh

of the genre this one kind of is uh anachronistic in weird ways like like it's kind of hard to tell sometimes when this takes place another show that i'm thinking of is uh a dragon ball one of the most famous if not the most famous shounen that there is um you You know, a show where there's boys living in the woods and talking to animals and living on his own, and also spaceships and flying cars and dinosaurs.

It is a very good like archetype of the genre as a touchstone.

Yeah, both like the original Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z.

Yeah.

And yeah, that is like, weirdly, kind of the breadth of the genre.

It kind of shows like two ends of it in a way.

Well, and then there's like sports shouen about people playing basketball and card game shown in and shonen about like it's a huge space, right?

Right.

I mean, that's a good idea.

Yeah, it's massive.

I don't know if like tournament arcs are like a convention within the sports shounen manga.

Like they've all got their own things.

It's one of those things.

The more specific that we try to get, the more it will be impossible to say what a shounen is.

Yeah.

But

these are the sorts of things that you might find in a shonen.

Teamwork, friendship,

you know, stuff like that.

That's, I think, how you really get.

Burning heart towards justice or just like

this sounds like Salem Moon.

Now, listen, buddy.

If you think you're going to trick me into talking about gender on this show, you got another thing coming.

I got five other podcasts I already do.

We will never talk about guns.

Mark my words, we will never talk about gender on this.

Nothing in Hunter Hunter has anything to do with gender.

Nothing whatsoever.

Soup to nuts.

No gender in this show.

Certainly not immediately.

Yeah.

All right, but we do start off in this show with the hunter exam.

Tens of thousands of people from around the world try out every year to be one of the few people accepted into the ranks of the hunters, whatever that means.

Among them is Gone Freaks, a strangely talented boy from a village on Whale Island, and his new friends, the misanthropic Leorio and the mysterious but good-hearted Kropica.

They endure trials, puzzles, cheats, and and secret observation to just barely cross a threshold to begin their exam in earnest.

I want to hear first, I think, from Jack.

Jack, what did you think about this broadly?

This was great.

I described it to, I think, Keith yesterday as like getting hit on the head by a bottle and liking it.

I started watching, and

the intensity of

what is happening was both, on the one hand, extremely straightforward.

You know, we begin with,

you know, word is getting around town that Gon is going out to catch the master of the swamp, which is like a big fish that only his dad has been able to catch before.

And apparently, he's going to go off and take the hunter exam, and then he catches the fish.

And, you know, all of this is pretty straightforward, coming of age stuff that is easy to follow.

And yet, at the same time, you are being bombarded

constantly, from frame one, actually, maybe this is a place to start talking about it, with things that you haven't seen before.

The first frame of this

show is

a man's voice says something like, dangerous beasts, and then you see like the weirdest fucked up

like

tangerine and white Loch Ness monster appear, and then he says like, weird creatures, and you see, like, a guy that looks like he's made out of a combination of scrunchies and hair pom-poms walking around, and then he says, like, powerful treasure, hidden places.

These are the things that are the, that, that, the, people who search for these have a name, and we call them hunters.

And already I was like,

you've, you've ran into my, you've ran into my segment.

I'm introducing a segment, a surprise segment.

Oh, God.

What is a hunter?

What is a hunter?

This got up for our notes.

I have this written down.

Look at what the show is.

Well, you're just a hunter.

Oh, yeah.

That's great.

Can you see what I've I've written as my first note?

Yes.

What are hunters?

That's funny because I have here a segment.

It's not a big deal, but don't worry about it.

What is a hunter?

This is a recurring, first recurring segment on this show.

I have written here in my notes: quote: Strange beasts and monsters, vast riches, hidden treasures, evil haunts, uncharted frontiers, the mysterious unknown.

The people who are captivated by the magic in these words are called hunters.

Oh, it's so good.

The image of all these people reaching for an orb.

Well, so yes, maybe if you haven't seen this, it's worth seeing this because it doesn't take very long.

When this man is saying, this narrator who shows up at the beginning and end of every episode, what we've got here, we got ourselves a classic narrator.

This guy shows up and says, Will gone do it.

I don't know, buddy.

The narrator is fantastic.

I'm watching the sub.

I don't know what anyone else is watching.

I do want to particularly shout out the dub announcer.

He is so

great.

yeah, yeah.

Um, yeah, so every time he says one of these things, you know, weird monsters, magical places, beautiful treasures, we get to see the fucking platonic ideal of a weird monster or of a magical treasure or of an unknown place.

You look at that and you're like, yep, that's exactly right.

So, to your question, what is a hunter?

We can go around, we can go around here, but I will say, my literally, my first note that I wrote watching this show is hunting is like a sort of broad push towards adventure.

Question mark, question mark, question mark.

Monsters, treasure, strange places, except it's codified in society in some way.

Question mark, question mark, question mark.

Yeah.

There's an exam you can take.

Question mark, question mark.

Right, you can't.

What does it mean?

Just go do this.

Right, right, right.

What does it say about this?

What does it say about this world that there is a sort of societal place or a societal role for those who feel the call to adventure?

What does it say about adventure that we are saying, you know?

If you're

It's not that they're getting,

they're not joining a hunter's guild, of which there are thousands across the world.

We'll get into that.

The hunters exam.

Right.

Yes.

Yeah.

And this is sort of an interesting little thing to add, I think, is that I watched

not all of, because it's actually way longer than in the 2011 series, but I watched some of the 99 series beginning.

And one of the little plot points that they have in there that they don't have in this one, they run into a fake hunter.

Oh, oh, they run into

a mention of these.

Oh, they don't think that does that happen in the manga?

Oh, no, sorry.

They mentioned Rose.

Sorry, sorry.

If I'm thinking of the same thing, I believe it does happen in the manga.

I'm thinking of the character you're thinking of, Keith.

Keith, you're describing.

You're saying that there was a character in the 99.

I'll tell you the scene.

It's not a, it's a doesn't, I don't think it reveals anything too much about the show.

There's a person who's like selling a chance to beat him in arm wrestling.

And

Leorio slightly loses to this guy because he's too hungry to properly compete.

And they find out that this guy is a fake hunter.

Okay, yeah.

I'm thinking of something else.

I'm thinking of in the manga, there's like an entire, the manga, I mean, the manga literally does start by saying

strange beasts and monsters, secret treasures, etc.

Wow.

So then there's a different, it doesn't open with the, with the, um,

with the fishing.

It opens opens with a different experience of a younger goat.

99 also begins that way, yeah.

Okay, I see, okay, yes, um, yeah, I don't want to

what do other people think is happening

to Keith's question, well, it might be legal for us to say I know what's happening.

Oh, I suppose you know what it is what we see here, based on what we see here, yeah,

yeah, it's sort of like uh, what if uh Indiana Jones was like

a job, like a yeah, like a common profession.

Or like somewhat of a common profession, or common enough to be common knowledge.

That is a good way to, I think,

bring it into something that we can recognize.

It seems like

they get treasures and animals for money?

Well, we learned something.

We learned some specific things.

Yeah.

Right?

We do know that stuff, but we also know from Leorio.

Ringing the bell.

No, go go ahead.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I didn't know if there was another segment?

A Leorio segment.

No, no.

No,

this is the second part to this first segment because we do learn.

We have

opposing forces in here about what Hunter is towards the end of the third episode.

Is it the third episode?

It might be even earlier.

It might be the third episode.

It is.

We can kind of talk about it in the first.

Yeah, we got a bit of the first episode.

We're going to talk about it in the first episode.

It's in the first episode on the boat.

We talk about it on the boat for sure.

Right?

You can get money.

I want money.

I'm Leorio.

I have glasses and a suit.

And my reason is simple.

It's money.

It's money.

And he's like, think about all the things you can do.

Hunters don't have to hunters don't have to do this.

Hunters don't have to pay for this.

I don't know what the specifics are, but it's like, he's like, I can buy a bunch of expensive wine.

I don't have to pay to go across bridges.

And

this is to Goan.

Or sorry, Goan is here.

He's saying this to the boat captain, who is sort of like their first trial in order to get.

There's like, there's an exam just to get to the exam.

And that is like really what we see in these first.

A lot of people will say the hunter exam begins now.

Right.

Or

this part of the exam has already begun.

Yeah.

You know, that happens a lot.

Because the ship itself that picks them up to take them to the exam is part of the exam.

But Goan is there watching Leorio say, I want to be a hunter for money.

Meanwhile, Karapika saying, I want to be a hunter for revenge because my whole clan was murdered, and I want to be a hunter so that I can get revenge on these other people.

How those things are connected, who knows?

No, I believe Koripika does say that being a hunter will give him access to things.

That is true, but things provide to resources.

Things is very mysterious.

Yes.

But there's some sort of the resources of the Hunters Association line.

But Goan is there, and Gohan knows, I'll say, zero in this, in the 2011, about what a hunter is, except for that his dad was a hunter, and his dad left him on Whale Island to go be a hunter.

So it must be a pretty neat thing to do.

Let me quote, because I wrote down exactly what Goan said.

It must be an awesome job in order to leave his kid.

What a positive attitude.

I'm going to read my favorite tweet about Hunter Hunter,

which is Hunter Hunter is the story about a young boy whose father left one day to buy cigarettes and never came back.

And so now the boy is determined to head out on the grand quest not to find his father, but to find out what's so awesome about cigarettes.

And that's my Twitter user, up

yog KRTA.

I don't know.

I don't know what's going on.

It's up yog KRTA with you.

Not much, Dog.

Not much yoga.

We don't want to, I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves in terms of, I think we should like introduce the characters, but before that, I do want to talk a bit about this

moment in episode one of

so Gun is being raised by his aunt, I believe, a woman called Aunt Mito.

Mita.

Mito?

Mita?

Mitcho,

who

has very mixed feelings about Gunn following in the footsteps of his father, whose name is Gene.

And

they

she says outright, you know, know, your dad abandoned you to become a hunter.

Wham, smash cut to his dad in a picture standing in front of a huge motorcycle.

It's such a great cut.

And then back to Gone, who's having a great time.

And she says, you know,

he left you here in my care.

And yeah, he says, basically, I want to find out why it was so important to my dad.

That's why I've got to do it.

But he's not saying this in the sense of like, it will help me understand my loss.

It's more that like, there is something that animated his father.

Yeah.

And he aspires to be like his father and he wants to be seized by the same animus.

He doesn't, he's not ascribing anything negative about Gene's motivations.

It had to have been a genuine thing.

Okay, but I have a question.

And this is not.

I don't know the answer to it.

I don't know what my thought is, having seen this whole show.

Do we think that this has always been motivated by

an open curiosity?

or do you think from just this scene that there is

at some point a deep-seated pain that that absolutely

or do you think I'm projecting that because I'm a regular person and I'm not going freaks?

I don't think you're projecting it at all.

There's this moment when they do like a pinky promise.

And at that point, I switched over to the

sub because I wanted to see what the rhyme was that they used for the like stick a needle in my eye.

That was so cute at which point i never went back and now i'm watching the the sub um but there's this uh it's a really sweet really well executed moment of like gone holding his like thumb to his aunts for longer like they they hover in this moment he doesn't want to break the touch and let go and i think that in japanese does he extend the syllable of the final of the rhyme yeah yes he does he does the kiss yeah yeah very long like an extra 15 seconds is that what it is yeah that makes sense.

Yeah, it's adorable.

And something that I realized that I've been doing.

He says thank you, right?

He says thank you to her in this way.

And it's like, I'm not going to not leave here without making it very clear to you that I understand what you've done as my, you know, statement.

Well, here's the thing.

Mito has been abandoned twice now.

First, she is abandoned by Gene, who leaves,

leaving his son in her care.

And then she sees the same process get worked on Gon and is abandoned by Gon in just the same way.

It's also worth pointing out, she's abandoned by Jing like twice in a way, because like he leaves to be a hunter, he comes back, and then leaves again after leaving Gon in her care.

Like, what a guy, you know?

There's no way this sadness isn't, and you know, obviously, we can only read what is in the thing.

But as I view this, I'm like,

there is a deep sadness in this family that is going to have to have seeped through from one person to another.

And I think that, you know, I do believe Gone when he says, you know, I'm going off to have a good time.

But I think he's aware of the sadness here.

I think that, you know, they

the thing about the sadness

is like, it's not a sadness, I think, born out of

judging his dad,

which is, which is the

part that is like striking about how he explains why he's going.

Because I think you

I'm getting visuals mixed up, so uh, because I watched both versions, yeah, um, yeah,

but I don't, I think it's I think that there's, I don't think that they're trying to say he doesn't care about his dad, he's just curious, he's just a curious little kid who's like, no, right, right, right, right.

Um,

uh,

but I, I, I think that we can see this sort of like

this sort of like non-judgmental curiosity from Goan as a character.

Like, I think that's sort of a feature of him.

I mean, that was my biggest thing that I noticed having watched the show and it's been so long since I've seen these first three episodes is how quickly they start kind of introducing

Goan's like unique take on the world and how some people see it as very like naive and like ignorant.

But then the people who are like closer to gone start to seeing it as like like i think you said it best keith as like just a genuine curiosity and almost like a genuine desire to just understand people uh a lot of those people also see his father in him like sure this happens not just from the people that are close to him but random people who seemed to have also known his dad uh you know the captain on the ship is like oh is this this i you don't know who i am but i'm a captain and and i'm looking at this kid and i think this is uh gene freaks's son like almost right away i think that i will say that at no point in the show are we told at least at this point that this kid's surname is freaks so i heard that for the first time and i had to stop myself from interrupting you during the summary because it's very funny oh do they really not say it do they not say it nope what I don't think so.

You know,

I really, I want to, I was like, oh shit, I need to be careful about surnames.

Because, like, for example, there is a, like, I don't think we find out Leorio's last name until the last like 10 episodes of the show.

And

that one we will not spoil.

Mr.

Moriori.

I don't remember it.

So

it's not even like that might happen.

But it is like a Tagashi name.

Speaking of Leorio, Gone Board's the ship.

And I wrote in my notes, oh, how naive I was when I wrote this.

I wrote, oh, the Hunter Academy is elsewhere, question mark.

Gonna go on a boat, question mark.

I love that you thought there was an academy.

I love that you you were like, oh, yeah, no, he's going to a school for this.

Instead of playing the fucking squid game, we'll get to this in a second.

So they board a boat, and we are immediately introduced to someone I wrote down in my notes as pirates, but they're just rough men on a boat.

I'm very

judgmental of the pirates.

Oh, that's so great.

The interesting thing about these guys, and the reason why you look at them and you're like, oh, this is a rough crew of obviously pirates, is they've got to have been chosen specifically to be able to handle people who may be taking the hunter exam.

Right.

So they've all got to be better than your average

hunter hopeful.

Me, in my brain, what does an average hunter hopeful look like?

Let me tell you, we'll get to it in episode three.

I was not prepared.

I mean, at this point,

go ahead.

I just want to very quickly point something out about the ship that my girlfriend, who's very into like pirating and sailing like history stuff, mentioned while watching this with me, which is that it's a sailboat, but it has a modern like terminal and like like

it has like a like a steamship like cockpit.

Yeah, call it for a boat

cabin.

I don't know.

It's all get to this, I feel like it's a bridge.

Bridge, that's it.

Thank you.

Yeah, it has like a yeah, anyway, I thought it was very funny.

Yeah, that's cool.

The mast becomes a point of drama in the first episode.

Sure.

Well, also, like, there are, it's, you said they were pirates, and in your mind, Jack, when you first saw them, I get why you say that, because they look like cartoon pirates.

The first shot of them, they have on tunics and swords and

bandanas on their heads.

Exactly.

Now, does one of them have a mohawk?

Yes, like that's spiked up with gel, 100%.

However, we eventually cut to Leorio.

Truly, one of them has like the buster sword on.

When we cut to Leorio, who is a man in a suit, like a button-up suit.

A first new character.

And he's reading, like, at best, maxim, you know, a sort of like,

like a ladder.

He's fucking looking at porn.

My man is on the pirate.

Did the non-pirate pirate?

Because I also, I assumed it was, like, he was reading Shoden Jump.

No.

There's a naked lady on the cover.

He is

the same thing.

He has a briefcase with a black and red diamond pattern on it.

Yeah, he's wearing a thinly tailored suit and he has little round glasses.

Very little round glasses.

I love his little glasses.

I gotta apologize to Leorio because I do remember seeing this man in one of the screenshots and identifying him confidently as.

He wasn't familiar with his game.

A businessman.

Just a homogeneous

man.

You have to understand that

you subjected me to such a gauntlet.

You showed this guerrilla man

in the first screenshot and then told me he was nobody.

Yeah.

And then

you know, no, no, Jay, what you have to understand is that was when the hunter exam began for you.

Right, the gorilla was nobody, and then the nobody was one of the main characters.

Yes.

And we

can see a collar.

She's not naked.

And there is an advertisement for some sort of

wow, Dre, you were in there like a second after me, but you didn't get the gif.

The gif is clean.

Oh, yeah, no, never mind.

I forgot his expression, his expression, right?

I was thinking of the shot when he's in the bunk, um, when the ship is

like glancing around nervously, uh, but at the same time with a kind of wrapped, lascivious attention on his magazine.

He's got like a Homer Simpson face going on.

I don't know what he's like,

I don't know how to describe that smile.

It is definitely a man who's looking at a naked shit.

Think about the Grinch, then think about the Grinch looking at porn.

Oh, God, Leorio the Grinch.

And Leorio must be.

Was Leorio there?

I don't know how old Leorio is, but he is older than gone.

We'll find out.

Yeah.

Then we meet Kurapika, who looks like a.

I wrote down in my notes, fancy lad.

Kurapika is wearing a sort of a tabard, like a colorful blue and red tabard with a sign or a symbol on it.

And very quickly, we determine that there is a sort of ideological difference, shall we say, between Leorio and Kerapica.

Yeah.

In their

hunter-word motivations?

Yes.

As you mentioned earlier, Keith, Karapika is the last surviving member of a clan.

Do you have the name of this written down?

Kurta.

Kurta clan.

The Kurta clan, who was murdered by

the Phantom Troop.

In my notes, I just wrote down the Phantom Troop.

We learned Karepica is becoming a hunter for revenge.

At this point, I underlined what is a hunter.

It includes bounty hunting question mark.

But yeah, this was interesting because, you know, I had already started to get a sense that being a hunter was as much an infrastructural position or like a societal position as it was.

Like,

it is so fascinating to me, and I think we're going to keep coming back to this.

It's like Sylvie said, oh, it's like, what if Indiana Jones was a job?

Indiana Jones notably isn't a job.

He's like a university professor who goes off to rob tombs and fight Nazis.

But here we have like someone who...

This person isn't being a bounty hunter.

They're not choosing to be a bounty hunter.

They're choosing to be a hunter,

which maybe includes bounty hunting, includes stuff that

gives you access to revenge stuff.

Meanwhile, Liario wants money and lots of it, and we get a very cute little money montage.

We sort of drift into his magical headspace.

And we just get to see him being like, oh, I want a mansion.

I want fine wine.

I want all that kind of shit.

A nice car.

Oh, yes, he does want a nice car.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do really love the

like how they put you right up against Leorio immediately.

Just in just in his design, who is so different from everyone else that we've seen in the show by really looking like a guy.

He's a fucking guy.

Yeah, all-time guy.

Like, just, yeah, just incredible.

Like,

if I didn't know better, he was sucked into the TV and turned into a guy in the show, and he's just rolling with it.

Like,

next to Goan, who looks sort of like a Dragon Quest character,

who

one of the first shots in the show, we see him dressed up in like leaf camo wizard clothes.

Right.

Well, this is that's the thing, right?

It's like they all represent a different sub-genre of shounen in some way, right?

Where it's like Goan is like, Goan freaks the wild boy, and Karapika is like, you know, Karapika, last of the Kurta clan, out for blood revenge.

And then it's like, Mr.

Leorio's wacky day in the office.

Like, that's the vibe, you know?

Like, that is the

three ranks it feels like they're from.

You know, that very apt saying about how, you know, like, you are closer to having no money at all or closer to being unhoused than you are to being a billionaire, which is simply true.

As much as I wish I were other characters in this, I think simply by being virtue of a human living on Earth, I am closer to Leorio than I am to any of these other characters.

One of my notes for that second episode is literally just Leorio is the only normal person in this universe.

Well, I have a question about this because a storm, a storm whips up, you can't get onto a boat in enough, enough.

In really any fantasy work, as Ursula Le Gwynn teaches us, without a storm immediately testing the characters.

We get Gunn's two casual admissions of things.

What are these two?

Oh, what are Gunn's casual admissions?

Yeah, would you like to say, Jack, what he casually admits?

I don't know that I wrote this down.

What does he casually admit?

He has two powers.

He can talk to the birds, and he can smell the storm.

He says that in one sentence, and no one yes.

Well,

the cat

is impressed with him.

Yes, this is very interesting that he does this, and he smells the storm in a lovingly rendered scene.

Now, you might think we just need one shot of Gunn smelling the storm.

No, four or five

intercut.

The storm comes, tensions rise, everybody's getting seasick and gunned along with a sort of inept sailor called, I think, Katso,

helping people out.

Karapika and Leorio intensify their ideological argument about what hunting is for, up to the point where Leorio says, and I wrote this down, come outside, basically, and I will end the Kurta clan bloodline once and for all.

It's so fucked.

It's fucked.

It's so fucked.

Yeah.

Leorio takes a really shit.

It's a bad first impression.

He really makes a bad first impression.

I am lovely.

What is happening?

Leorio talking that shit.

Leorio is from the streets.

Like, Leorio is not like you.

Leorio is not here Leorio on Xbox Live.

That's what I'm saying.

Yes.

But so Leorio feels his feelings strongly enough that that is the last surviving member of the Curta clan who has had a fundamental

agreement with

the genocide is about someone saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not all about spending money.

I will kill you and everybody

will wipe you up in the face.

Leo, good.

There is an angle of this that we are missing.

The actual fight starts because Leorio introduces himself as Leorio, and then Karapika refers to him as Leorio, and Leorio is like, no, like, you're not using the right honor.

In the sub, no, in the dub, sorry, in the English dub.

He's like, call me Mr.

Leorio.

I'm older than you.

It's definitely one of those things that works better in the Japanese version because,

like, the way, well, I guess because of the way honorifics work in yeah Japanese I think it is a clearer gag like it's I don't think it's like a bad joke or like a bad like writing in the dub I just think it's one of those things that in translation is a little clumsier sure and it's worth saying oh sorry go on Keith oh well just that uh that like this this final push of like feeling slightly um disrespected by uh Karabika calling him by his name

and sort of ignoring him a couple times is the other part of it.

And

this is how they get to outside, where Karapika and Leorio both immediately are like, yep, we've got weapons and we're about to fight.

Just pulls out a switchblade.

Leorio does.

And they all have their little weapon in this episode, right?

Which is like, and then because Karapika has like the...

Like the

nunchuck, but they're almost like sharp.

They're not literally sharp, but they're kind of like they come to a point like they're wooden swords and they're kind of connected, but they're not connected sometimes.

And then Ghon has the fishing rod, obviously, which is sick.

Oh, every time Gohan uses the fishing rod, it's so cool.

Uh, now, this might be um, because you've seen the rest of the show that you're saying that it looks cool, and based on what we've seen him do, it's definitely going to get to a point for me where it looks cool.

But right now, it looks like he has he has gotten stuck with the fishing rod equipped in Animal Crossing.

Jack, did you forget the part where that fishing rod is so strong strong that it could wrap around a huge tree and catch a like 13-ton spider fish?

Smiling fish.

Shrimp fish.

Yeah, that's true.

I hear you there.

And he's definitely put a lot of work into upgrading the fishing rod so that it matches his entire fucking color scheme.

I did not think Gon was the protagonist of this when I saw him in the screenshots.

You thought it was the other person that you called the fancy lad.

I thought it was Killiwa.

Yeah, the guy that I thought was...

And so the fact that Killiwa basically didn't show up in this, and we can talk about when he does later, because he shows up in the funniest possible way if you believe he is the protagonist.

Yeah, so, but I will say, well, so firstly, and I'll come back to this later, I really like a move that happens here, which I think is not just consistent with what I know about what I've seen of Shonen, but it's also consistent with any sort of heightened mode of drama is when

a natural environment or a natural situation is matching our characters' impulses.

Cutting between this big, you know, tempestuous storm coming to its climax at just the moment that Leorio and Kurapika are fighting on the deck and these kind of like two threats being drawn together into one threat, culminating in like, I think Katso going overboard and both people in that moment being like, oh no, we actually have to save him and reaching for him and failing and then Gone coming diving in and you know, you know, all of this stuff matching up together is really nice.

it's such a great cut to the empty air and then gone like showing up

fully stretched out oh it's really good just superman diving off that shit especially like classic this is who this character is leorio and and karapika reach for the guy but they're not leaping off the boat because they think i have to be on the boat to catch him right and that's not how gone thinks gone says i'm going to grab him no matter what it takes and here we have the shonen protagonist and they really underscore this when it cuts back to like their back on the boat.

Leori's like, that was so reckless.

Why did you do that?

You would have fallen in.

And he's like, but I didn't.

I didn't fall in.

They really underlined that.

This was the moment

that I fell in love with Gone.

It is a piece of heroism so outlandish.

that you can't help but love him.

I wrote, Gon's great.

No fear.

Ready to go.

I think this moment, there's a moment in each episode that really I feel like just like, oh, this is who Gone freaks this.

I just want to put a sort of note next to something that Jack sent me.

Just to keep it.

I want to keep it and I want to have it.

Here we go.

I'm going to drop it into the scratch thing right underneath

the intro.

Goan's great, isn't he?

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

That's what I said to Keith, and Keith said, I'm going to write this down.

I'm writing that down.

At which point,

Brandon Reese's comic shirt, One Fear.

That kind of gets us to the end of episode one.

Is there anything else we want to talk about on episode one?

Goan's nose.

Same.

Goan can smell anything and everything, bro.

Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We mentioned power.

Yeah.

He does also smell the soda in episode three.

Or the juice.

The juice in episode three that has a little something slipped in it.

He doesn't recognize what it is, but he does go.

So it's like to get to the soda arc in about a minute.

We should move to each other.

We'll move on to episode two.

There's one big nose event in two also.

Gone just having sort of

like

very

heightened senses is going to be just sort of a recurring thing.

They're not quite getting into like

Goku

super strength yet.

Goku also has a super smeller.

Yeah, Goku's also, but like Goku's also like a little boy with

a monkey tail.

Gun is a human.

If Gun popped a little monkey tail out, we'd be all like, yeah, okay.

I know.

That would surprise me.

I tried,

you know.

No, go ahead, Jack.

How old is Gun?

Who knows?

Gun is.

I think they say he's 12.

Do they?

Okay.

Yeah, they say he's 12.

That's about what I was expecting.

I think the last thing I want to talk about is:

if you're not watching along with us, there is no fucking way that you would know this because we won't talk about it unless we do.

At the commercial breakpoints, we get these cute little bumpers.

And in these bumpers, we have a character, one character in episode, standing next to their name written in the script of this world,

which is like a syllabic alphabet.

It looks like it's, yeah, it looks like it's a syllabic alphabet.

And they sort of glance at it and go, huh?

And then presumably we cut to commercials, and then we come back, and we see it translated into Japanese underneath.

So, you know, we can match those things up, and the character looks at it and goes, huh, yeah.

It's worth

that, like, it is partially based on,

I think, I'm pretty sure the katakana.

The symbols that are shown there, you can kind of see where I believe it's specifically the P syllable in Kurapika's name is the one where it's was most obvious to me, where there's like a little accent mark that just becomes a circle in the hunter-hunter text.

Oh, that's great.

So it's a

verification on already extant katakana.

Yeah.

Because it is just it's syllabic, right?

Like it's it's it's Japanese syllables, but as

this other script.

Rendered into some things,

you know, perhaps slightly intelligible to someone who can read Japanese, but definitely

off enough that when you get the thing revealed, it's great.

It kind of serves a double purpose that I want to talk about.

The second purpose a bit later, but the first is that we're getting introduced to these people formally, and that feels really nice.

Here are our characters, here are their names.

One more thing this episode before we move on, really quick, which is we have to resolve Karapika and

Leorio, which is the,

there's this big, you know, the guy that they save says, oh, thank you, you saved, you, oh, thank you, you saved my life.

You saved our life my life.

And Gona's like, you were, it wasn't just me.

These other two people helped us too.

And they, he does a deep bow and

says, thank you so much.

And Kropika's like, no, that's all right.

And Leorio kind of smiles and goes, it's nothing.

And like, I'm glad you're safe.

And he's blushing and he's a big smile on Kropica.

Uh-huh.

And Kropica notices this and melts and is like, oh,

okay, Leorio is a good guy.

Leorio is actually,

you know, Leorio is a real.

He's a genocide.

Leorio is a real one.

Beyond that, and he goes, I was being so rude.

I apologize, Mr.

Leorio.

With him for me, firing my Joshi beam.

More blushing from Leorio, who then is like, ah, you don't have to call me Mr.

Leorio.

It's funny.

Leorio blushes a lot.

Leorio blushes a lot.

Real party.

Leorio is very flusterable.

Leorio is great.

Dude's Rob.

And Leorio apologizes.

Take back everything I said.

I'm sorry.

And Goan is pointing to mention that.

Because Goan believes in friendship.

Maybe he can't say that yet, but he believes in other people being cool.

We're all out here in the world on an adventure together.

Something else he believes in is his.

He never questions his judgment of other people.

The judgments that he makes about people, he believes.

himself on those judgments, which is what we see at the very beginning of episode two, where the captain of the ship, who he now totally trusts,

tells him, hey, you should go this way to get to the hunter exam.

And Ghon's like, okay, I'm going to do that.

And everyone else is like, Goan, what are you doing?

The bus to go to the city is this way, and it's going in the opposite direction of the tree that this guy sent you to.

And he's like, yeah, but he told me to go here, so I'm going to go.

I'm just going to go do it.

Go up to this tall tree.

Yes, I have noticed this in my I've put this down in my notes as something that I have decided to call Ghan's mistake because I imagine it's going to happen several times, which is Ghan being amenable and genuine, receiving helpful secret information as a result, and then either acting on it or just blurting it straight out because he's excited about it or wants to confirm that he's heard it right.

I don't think this is going to be the last time we see Ghan fall into this trap.

Well,

where for you is the trap?

That the world is harsh and cruel.

Look at it.

At some point.

Oh.

Oh, you're saying it hasn't shown itself to be a mistake yet?

Well, it sort of did from this.

So, yes, the sea captain says, look,

you want to climb the tree to that massive pine tree up on the hill up there, and that'll show you the way to where the thing is.

And everybody else is like getting on buses and leaving.

But then another man who's listening in hears and says, I'm going to go that way too.

Well, also, there's another character here.

I overhear something, and it's

Leorio Leorio.

Who over here?

Because the airline game has begun.

Some sneakering

Hunter exam hopefuls being like, those buses are traps.

None of those people are getting to the Hunter exam.

The buses are traps.

Right, because anyone naive enough to take a bus to the Hunter exam

like Leorio.

Well, not only that, Keith, they are not just buses that are going somewhere else.

It's not like you've been told, you know, get the bus, but you've been given the wrong direction.

No.

These buses are specifically traps.

They have laid them on with fucking signs on the front saying, we're going to the city.

No, no such thing.

Presumably, you get on that bus, it drives you a mile out of town, and then the conductor says, everybody off, you failed.

Yeah.

It's fucking wild.

It's wild.

Well, and it's so funny because Leorio is like, he shouldn't trust people that simply about Gohan and

the captain.

When in fact, it's everybody else who is being trusting, right?

Right, they're being trusting of like this

of the hunter exam as like a structure that's gonna actually tell you how to get to it when the whole thing is that it's a big test just to get to the test.

First, first lesson of the hunter exam.

Do not trust institutions.

Well, it was, it was, it was sort of funny, uh, Jack, that you said, uh, you know, Goan's mistake, because I'm watching this being like, Goan's a genius.

Goan is like, uh, you know, he's like a savant at finding the right way.

And even this time that he gets, you know, he sort of naively gives the directions to this guy that ends up following them.

I think if that guy had asked, he would have told him the way anyway.

And then, two, the fact that that guy sneakily followed them is what allows them to pass the next test.

Because they let this guy go first on this, like, what it's like a pass-fail single test.

We gotta, we gotta go back to fail.

We gotta talk about it.

We're gonna talk about it.

We're gonna talk about it.

I was about to slow down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who wants to intro this?

Before we get.

Okay, Jack, you go ahead.

I want to make sure we're getting the first timer's experience as much as possible.

Before we started this scene, after the trap buses were introduced,

I started thinking about the way that the Hunters exam has been obfuscated.

First with, you know, survive the boat, get through the boat, then find the venue, then avoid the trap buses.

And I was like, oh, this feels like what they're doing is they're buying into a big game.

You know, even in something as codified as the Hunters Academy, something that is pulling you forward here is a sort of

like an ARG almost.

You are being led from puzzle to puzzle that is being hidden within the world.

And I thought, oh, that's really interesting, this idea of this.

It seems massively complicated.

It seems massively complicated and also deeply compelling to the kind of people who would feel this call, right?

This is the looking for the game anywhere.

This is clear what some of these people's relationship to the hunter exam is, like the captain.

Is the captain a hunter?

Is the captain a freelance contractor?

It's one of the things.

We don't know.

We have no idea.

It feels like a cross between the Truman show,

the squid game, and the Michael Douglas game movie, where you're like, the Fincher's game, where you are like walking through a world.

This is the point at which I was like, oh, this is so interesting to me.

You are walking through a world

that potentially has the potential to have hidden, relevant things, or traps, or blind alleys, at any point.

And then the next scene happens.

Gone, Liorio, and Karapika are walking through a very spooky-looking, abandoned village.

And Liario says something like, there's no people here.

And Gon, which is blithly confident, says, no, of course there are people here.

And at that exact moment, a door opens and a procession.

This is such a striking image of

white-robed people in gas masks and brightly colored shaggy hair.

I love the way this all looks.

Yeah.

This like western, this like broken down, like western frontier looking town in a lot of ways.

Or like kind of like a like an abandoned town in a JRPG as well.

Yeah.

This is a place that has buses and skyscrapers and then also you're in Dragon Quest.

Yes, I just mentioned earlier.

Which is like, there are parts of the world like that, to be clear.

That is not a...

You know, the world is very.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's not just that you're in Dragon Quest or in a Western town.

It's then that these people come out like attendants in a Bloodborne

level.

And then what are they stage?

Yeah, they have a little stage.

And just to add a little bit of flavor to that, they come out like attendants in a

Bloodborne, but they also come out like they know about Bloodborne and they're acting.

One of them is holding a raven that is crowing rhythmically.

One of them is holding like a tambourine.

One of them is holding a horn and they are carrying a little square.

There's too many of them.

There's too many of them.

They can't all fit on the stage.

Some of them are all do stuff either.

Yeah.

It's like there's not enough horn.

It's like a bike horn.

Right.

It's like you squeeze a little ball and a horn goes.

One of my favorite moments.

Which this guy does great.

One of my favorite moments in the show is that this guy that squeezes the bike horn, like they're trying to be spooky and weird and enigmatic and create a high-tension moment for hunters.

It is a pass-fail single-question, yes-or-no quiz.

Quiz.

Run by an older guy.

The guy with the bike is just the bike horn is just a little off on his cues.

And you can tell it's a little comes in a little late.

And you're like, oh, to me, I was like, oh, these are just guys.

Like, they just live here.

Yeah.

Or they live nearby or something.

Someone was like, I'll give you 500 bucks if you come out with this bike horn.

These guys are all on like hunter exam payroll for sure.

These are the wait, this is the waiter in the Existence Cronenberg movie going, Is the game over?

Am I still in the game?

You know, these are just these like low-paid.

I don't know.

Are they paid?

It's like Austin said, Do these people work for the hunters?

Who fucking knows?

Can I jump forward by five minutes, even though I know that we want to get to this thing?

Yeah, we should be able to jump.

The proctor of this exam, after it's over,

tells Leorio, like, oh, I just love meeting people like you.

Don't worry about the thing that you did that we're about to talk about.

I just, I love meeting the hunter exam weirdos.

That's like, why get out of this?

This is a joy to me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay,

does someone want to talk about this quiz and what we see about this?

Yeah, I would love to.

So we get this sort of like old lady.

She's the only one not wearing a mask there.

And she asks, she says that this is a past fail quiz with one question.

And the guy following them, who I checked, he's only named in the 1999 one.

His name is Matthew.

So Matthew.

And she asks, the question is, if you could only save your

mother or your lover and the other would die, who do you save?

It's one for, I believe it's one for your mother, two for your lover, or it could be reversed.

But the point is that it's a binary choice.

He selects his mother because his logic is you can always

find another lover.

And then

he got like they point, they say you may pass, and he goes off.

I'm sorry if you already said this, Sylvie, but they also only give him five seconds to answer this.

Right, I did not mention

there is a time that is again, pass, fail, hunter exam.

exam and a crucial detail about what the solution for this right and he thinks to himself and we get to hear it because we're the audience these idiots.

I'm gonna get the first question right I'm gonna move on in front of them and then I'm gonna set up traps behind me because

The hunter's game is self-perpetuated this weird game that the the game of being a hunter or examining a hunter doesn't even require like fully fledged hunters to be involved.

You know, he's essentially giving them had he gone ahead to do this, he would have set up a sub-task for these people.

The game is sort of making itself out there in the world for the hunters.

Which we can kind of see in the third episode.

We do see that, yeah.

There is competition between them,

between the hunters in such a way that replicates that same sort of, there's always, you always have to look over your shoulder.

Someone's always trying to get one over on you.

A very common hunter

prospect mindset is like, oh, the more people drop out the faster, the better for me.

And we see that like kind of all.

Unclear if that's true or not.

Totally unclear if that's true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, what's his answer to this question?

Or we've said the answer somewhere.

Oh, yeah.

I did say his answer.

But so he goes ahead, and then I believe it's revealed shortly after that he was wrong, correct?

They don't reveal that he was wrong until after the state.

They get the second thing.

I mean, so Leorio is pissed.

That is like the thing that's happening.

Leorio is furious this entire time.

So when they're asked it, the timer starts, and he is like,

I believe what he does is he goes over to grab like a piece of wood and he's about to hit the

old woman, but Karapika swing it in the air, sort of threateningly while their climbers are sticking down.

Because he's like,

this question is immoral.

Like you can't answer this question.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, that you get realization on Karapika's face.

Like it cuts to him being like, oh, yeah.

Yeah, and when Karapika figures it out, Pikawiz Lady is like, don't say anything.

If you say anything, I will disqualify you.

Right.

You're not allowed to talk about the question.

You're not allowed to talk to each other anymore.

All you're allowed to do is give an answer.

And the answer turns out to be

silence.

The correct answer to advance in the quiz is to not give an answer.

This is what the like the way she reveals it.

She mentions that she's only said that that guy could pass, not that he's going the right way.

We have this really, the moment that I really want to highlight here is when they notice that Gon's still thinking about it.

And he hadn't noticed that

they had passed already because he's like, well, what would I do if I was in that situation?

Oh, yeah,

he's visibly upset about the idea that this could happen if there comes a day.

And he doesn't know what he would do.

And

this is then, again, this is another moment of the Real Hunter exam because the old woman is like, this is actually why we asked this question, to make people think about this.

So again, we have one per episode so far.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jack.

I do really quickly, this isn't the question I'm about to ask, I really want to quickly call out one of my favorite gone moments in this episode is as the terms of the quiz are being described,

oh God, Netflix won't fucking let me screenshot this, will they?

You have to turn off.

Here's a little tip for everybody.

Go into your settings in your browser.

In my browser, in your browser, and turn off, and you go ahead and turn off hardware acceleration.

Do a little search for hardware acceleration.

You turn that bad boy off.

You can screenshot whatever the hell you want.

They can't stop it.

We're learning.

This is part of the hunter example.

Very happy.

Very happy

with my plex this week.

Hunter, plex, hunter.

Jack, what are you looking to screenshot?

What's your

timestamp is

somewhere around 7.05.

They're describing

the structure of the quiz, and in the background, Gon is just grinning directly at the camera, presumably because he's excited that they're doing a quiz.

It is such a cool moment of like Karapika and Leorio arguing or are stressed or whatever, and Gon is just motionless, delighted.

excited but i did look it up and jack do you know what he says right after like the first thing he says after this which is i'm so good at quizzes

so just like you did empty this one what's going on is he excited to see them do the quiz i don't i think yes genuinely i don't oh he's embarrassed

he's embarrassed about about not being good at quizzes yeah

I have to feel that between them not being good at quizzes and feeling embarrassed or also just had empty grinning, I might be gone.

I don't know if I'll change this as I go, but

I watched Sailor Moon and out of all of the Sailor Scouts, I'm like, yeah, I'm Sailor Moon.

And I feel like that transfers to Gone.

Gun is over there

which characters were killing.

Just watching Hunter Hunter.

He thinks he's me for real.

Ghon's a very interesting character because, so this is interesting.

I resisted watching the show for a really long time.

I can't even,

I cannot

empathize with the version of me that thought this.

I like, I'm so far removed from it.

But I like fully rejected the show based on Ghan's character design.

And I was like, who could like a show that that's the main character of?

And

I think that the reason was like, well, he just looks like a knockoff Akiratoriyama Dragon Quest character, sort of Goku-ish in the face.

See that.

And sort of Akiratoriyama in in every other part of it and including the clothes but then i'm watching the show and i'm like oh that is because goan is in a lot of ways literally go

um yeah i mean that's yeah right i mean this whole we you're gonna have to keep coming back to this every arc to be like hey what's going on with this arc and shounen Is this arc, what's this guy think about Goku?

Right.

Like, what's this guy think about Yu-Gi-Oh?

What's this guy think about blah, blah, blah.

And is like a big question, is like, it's a common thing you're going to come back to.

I don't think that's a spoiler, but like, uh, but the

knockoff, it's in conversation, and that's how you get away with it.

You say, oh, I'm actually in conversation with Kira Toriyama.

Well, it's not just, it's not just

sorry, there's like a through line for me because I also think a lot about Dragon Ball Z or Dragon Ball specifically, actually, when I when I play um uh Yakuza games because I think Kiryu is also in a big way like very Goku aggrained, yeah,

absolutely, and uh,

there's a bit in Dragon Ball Jack where

he can't fly yet.

Flying comes in Dragon Ball Z.

If you know that Goku is a flying character, you might be confused here.

But he receives a cloud that if he's pure of heart, he will be able to fly, given to him by his disgusting martial arts teacher, who, of course, cannot fly the flying Nimbus.

He's too horny to be on the bus.

He's too horny to fly the flying Nimbus.

Goku, of course.

My horny ass could never pilot the flying nimbus.

Of course, Goku can instantly fly the flying nimbus and it becomes sort of his like

friend.

It is kind of alive.

It becomes his friend.

It's a little bit of a carpet from the Latin vibe.

Yes, exactly.

That's exactly it.

Yeah.

There's this sort of like

this thing that exists in

a lot of shows try it, but it's hard to pull off of like this

sort of like this sort of pure of heart sort of thing.

I love that Kiryu has it because any problem that he has, he can punch his way through.

So he's like allowed by the fiction to trust anyone that he talks to because if they lied to him, he can destroy their bodies and will and will do that.

And

Goku's similar.

Gun is sort of the same way where it's sort of like

he's allowed to trust whoever he wants and put his faith into other people because of like this weird thing where well i i'm just on the path that i'm on and if this causes problems for me uh i'll deal with it when when we get to it because i'm invincible right because like when you're invincible and i'm not saying that going is invincible but that's like the way he sees him that's the way he holds himself is like there isn't a problem i won't be able to force my way through right push my way through not force which is part of why he is being realistic about his abilities.

Right.

And that's why he, that's why I think this

question halts him.

Is these, he faces this question of like, oh, wait, what if I'm in a situation where literally I have to make the decision between two people?

And it's not a thing I could just willpower my way through and save both of them.

Shit, I hadn't thought about a situation like that.

And there's your conversation with Goku.

That's that's where that brings us.

And yeah, just like a first, kind of like a foreshadowing of some of the best flavors of the show, I think.

The manga is fully out by this point.

No.

No.

Only recently there was some new stuff released.

How far ahead

of the show was the manga at the time this episode was released?

I guess here's what I'm saying.

This is a very loaded line.

If there's a day where you have to choose between two important people, what will you do?

It's a thought experiment for Gone, Gunn, but it is also.

Yeah, and I am curious about whether this line was written to read differently to people who knew where this story was going to go.

I am checking this as we speak.

So I know,

well,

this was in the 96

show.

Right, but what Jack's asking is how far ahead was the manga when this was in production?

So I call this.

I can tell you, but

yeah, okay, I'll tell.

If you have it exactly, this episode comes out October 2nd, 2011, so it's in production in 2011, 2010, 2011, probably 2011.

And the 28th volume of

Hunter Hunter is coming out in 2011 in the summer.

It comes out July 4th, 2011.

And that

is in the middle of Chimera.

That's very interesting.

Well, that's very very interesting.

I'm going to send.

I'm.

God, good for

him.

Good for Togashi.

I'm just going to send it to you.

So when this is done, really quick.

The implication that I'm getting is: yes, this line does read differently.

If you know what is going to happen.

If you know more about the series, it reads differently.

I think this, I feel like this might still be

a line regardless of when I'm going to look, I'm going to check the differences page because each,

the people running the

sort of fandom wiki for it have done a very good job of listing differences between the manga and the anime.

And there's none listed for this one, so I have to believe that

that quest that that is still the like point of that.

And that like

I don't know

because of things that are cut at the beginning.

Sorry, I sent them, I sent the rest of the crew

where this came out.

Okay,

that's wild.

That's wild.

Good for Togashi.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, I can't.

We'll come back to it.

No, we can come back to this.

We're going to get there.

But

this is very interesting.

Let me move into kind of like the last act of this episode

in which they arrive at the pine tree and

encounter.

I do want to say something about what I just said, about this, really quick, which is I already said this in the middle of Chimera Ant.

Jack, you've already said you've heard people talk about the Chimera Ant arc.

This show is very far away from talking about Chimera Ant at this point.

It's a later arc and it's a very long arc in the show.

And I think a thing we're thinking about then is that's an arc that's that

is in the middle, it's in the middle when this show is coming out.

And so you have to think about what the show then is doing as a product.

And what it's doing partially is funneling people to the ongoing comic, right?

And so, yes, you have to think about the show as being in conversation with what is happening.

in the manga at the same time and being able to signal certain things as being important, which is what you started by.

That's why you asked that question, right?

But it's explicitly happening at the height of what would become and was already the longest arc in the book at that point, right?

So I think there is something happening there, and it's worth thinking about that.

Um, uh, because that is like that, this is part of what you do, right?

It's like, oh, the new anime is out, the new movie, the new Marvel movie is out.

That means we're going to do a big run of the new, you know, Miles Morales movie is out.

Let's do some Spider-Man stuff in the comics right now to try to like build off of that.

Let's put these two things in relation.

And like, yeah, that seems like it was happening.

By the way, thinking of that funnel, I think, does a little bit to also explain

stuff that was cut from

the

first anime and from the manga in order to really, really efficiently streamline the first

stuff.

This stuff, all this early stuff.

Interesting.

Like, I think it's great.

I think they do such a great job.

I've never had any issues with how this

show starts, except for Togashi's other anime, Yu Yu Haki Show, does have the first, the best first three episodes, I think, of any show I've ever seen.

But it is like so, there is so much more time given to each character in the 99 series.

Again, we're on the stuff that we're covering now is episode four of the 99 series.

Okay.

And there's like a whole episode of just Leorio and Ghone

before they get on the boat, hanging out at the docks of

hanging out of the docks of Whale Town.

Sorry, Whale Island, Whale Island.

And

there's, you know, and we referenced earlier the stuff that shows up at the very, very beginning that isn't in

the 2011, which is kind of a weird cut.

Like, I kind of.

I don't know how they could have fit it into the episode, like, without adding episodes you couldn't have.

So I see why why they cut it, but I'm sort of like, oh, maybe you really should have that.

That's like the one thing that I'm like, sorry, I'm being so vague.

I don't want to.

But anyway, that's just very interesting how, like, it does sort of feel like we're getting to the stuff quick in this.

Yeah.

Get into the mix.

I will say that I feel like I have a good handle on these characters at this point.

Obviously, obviously, we're going to get more of them, but I don't feel like there are big sort of gaping misunderstandings about how these characters operate.

I've been given lots of opportunities to see them in the world.

The 99 series feels like Zelda.

The whole time, I was like, whoa, this is so much more Legend of Zelda.

I've never thinked about Legend of Zelda when I watched the 2011.

I think about it when the narrator says, untold treasures and wild monsters, and they're showing pictures of like big mushrooms that people could climb on.

And I'm like, they should make this.

It is wild to me that we don't have a really dope Hunter-Hunter JRPG.

I was going to ask about this, actually.

I was going to, after I finished episode one, I was like, I want to play a video game on this.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't exist.

No.

Not really.

I mean, you can play a fighting game.

You want to play a fighting game?

No.

Actually, it should be mentioning there is a Legend of Zelda connection to this show in the English dub.

Oh, yeah.

Which is Killoa's voice actor is in Tears of the Kingdom.

Oh, yes.

You're right.

And it's basically just doing that the same voice, same voice.

I've watched both the dub and the sub for this show, and I think the dub is pretty good just to put it in the middle.

I agree, and I do, I think, uh,

sorry, say it again, Austin.

I was just gonna, oh, I thought I was gonna say something.

Oh, okay.

I started to, but I stopped.

Oh, okay.

Um,

uh, is I can't remember her name, Valenzuela, maybe?

Uh, Christina, uh, yeah, uh, Christina Valenzuela, uh, Christina V, kind of like colloquially and

colloquially known, really great in the dub.

I also really love Karapika and the dub.

I think they both do great jobs.

Um,

And a character,

my last

shout out in the next episode, Tompa is my, the dub for Tompa is really good.

Speaking of magical creatures, like in The Legend of Zelda,

what happens in this,

what happens in this, this forest?

Who are the Kiriko?

More, more secret observation from the hunter, the pre-hunter exam.

The crew shows up to uh, what they are told is the navigator's house.

Uh, there's beware, is beware of magical beast signs.

Is that what the signs say?

Everywhere.

We only see, I think, one or two, but Liara's like, oh, another one of these signs is beware of magical beasts.

Yeah, right.

Open the door to the navigator's house that it takes hours to get to.

And there's a

what this thing is like a tall,

a very oddly shaped wolf creature, hyena thing.

Would you say it's Renamon adjacent?

I'll bet.

There's definitely that sort of like fox-like face going on.

Yeah.

There is like bunny ears.

There's a bit of a kangaroo vibe to it with the way they spring around.

It's got the long alligator snout of a cartoon wolf.

I mean, I guess they're worth.

I mean, I guess it all kind of ties into the reveal later in the episode of like what their abilities are, right?

Yeah.

Well, they say that right away, oh, they're shapeshifters.

Right.

Kropiga knows that they're shapeshifters shapeshifters right away because Karapika is smart and knows stuff, that sort of Karapika's thing.

Oh, by the way, just really quickly, we've talked a little bit about Goan's smelling and

nature abilities.

He's also super athletic, seems very, very strong.

Karapika seems smart and very observant.

We see a lot of Karapika observing people.

A lot of episode two is like looking at Karapika sitting, sort of looking like he's doing nothing, but actually he's watching and absorbing everything and like learning all of the things that we're learning.

And

Leorio is a guy.

Leorio.

So people, there's important stuff to what Leorio does here.

People like Leorio.

People like Leorio.

Yes.

That is totally Leorio's thing.

Yes.

I was being facetious, but yeah, that is like in the same way that Ghon can smell people like Leorio, even when he's actively giving them reasons not to.

And I do mean actively.

I want to talk about this quickly at the end of this episode, but we get into a big chase

as everybody splits up and starts pursuing these shapeshifting creatures.

Goan does something really funny during this that

reveals that he's a little bloodthirsty, like not literally bloodthirsty, that's wrong.

That he likes fighting, violence is one of his tools.

Violence is one of his tools, and he's comfortable with

instigating and

making fun in a way that'll shake up the opponent and give him an opening.

Yeah,

the thing here is that he learns that the Kuriko can talk, and he goes, great.

This works perfectly.

So he runs behind the Kuriko and just goes like, hey, Kuriko, or I think he calls it a silly Kuriko.

And it looks back like, huh?

And then he smashes him on the head with his big

fishing pole.

This monster being able to talk was a real moment for me.

We're going to get there, so it's worth saying that these monsters work for or are part of the hunters guild.

And so, you know.

But I tumbled into an existence suddenly where these monsters that are being hunted presumably have speech and have cultures and have societies.

And I wrote down, ah, the monsters can talk.

What is monster society?

And I'm so curious to see how we could explore this, if the Kiriko can talk.

Are there other

quote-unquote evil monsters out there who can talk?

You know, again,

what are hunters?

We get a beautiful shot of a Kiriko crouching on the tree against the moon.

It looks really sick.

They look like a fucking werewolf.

And then Gon realizes that they're actually dealing with two Kiriko because he can tell them apart.

And I think a good line, uh, one of them says, How can you tell us apart?

And Gone says, Oh, it's extremely obvious to me.

Yes, right, I can just tell instantly.

He's stunned.

The Kiriko is stunned, like, literally, he bursts out laughing at this.

Yeah, like calls off the thing, right?

They're like, All right, all right, it's all okay, everybody.

That's Ash and Kutcher here.

We're just the camera, they look right over there.

We got a camera right over there.

I think, yeah, well, actually, they call it off, and they're like, This is Ash and Kutcher.

Gohan is punking us, Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

And we learn that, you know, they are actually all Kiriko, two of them taking the form of humans, and two of them, you know,

as the beasts.

And they say, well done.

Hey, everyone, Keith jumping in here just to make a quick note about the audio from this point forward.

You might notice that Sylvie sounds a little bit worse than in the rest of the episode.

It's not a huge deal.

It's totally listenable.

And everyone else is going to sound pretty much the same the for the whole thing.

Okay, bye.

I mentioned this, but my Discord was being weird, and I don't think it came through.

The way that Gon recognizes the separate Kiriko is just like he immediately tunes into like one's voice is higher and that their faces are different.

Like, you look completely different.

Yeah.

It's very cute.

Yeah.

And then we get the reveal that they're this little family.

Yeah.

And they go through all the different details that the team noticed.

Does someone want to like?

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Does someone want to go through the grading or are we satisfied with just saying that they all passed?

We didn't even mention, actually, what Leorio does.

Leiro very quickly jumps to help one of the apparent humans on the floor who had been sort of slashed by a Kiriko, opens his box that he's been carrying around, and there's doctor tools in there.

Yep.

Yeah,

I don't think we need to go through all of them, unless folks have stuff they want to talk about.

But I did think it was really notable that so the Kiriko kind of like draw out the noble traits of the candidates.

So they're like, oh, you're passing because of X, you're passing because of Y.

And they specifically read Leorio as considerate,

which is really interesting given that.

Yeah, more considerate than a doctor.

Yeah,

more skilled than a doctor.

Yeah, more skilled than a doctor, yeah.

I will end your bloodline, Leorio.

Mr.

Leorio.

This is sort of why I brought up

Karapika in episode two, like how we see most of that episode kind of through Karapika and watch him being observant

and then joked about Leorio because this is really the first time that we like see Leorio

do something

and it's that he treats this he effectively treats someone who appeared to be pretty messed up which is wild too right because it's like oh yeah that means that they these

creatures these monsters attacked their own child in a way that is genuine.

Like, the twist, every I've seen this episode about three or four times is.

I just realized I've watched the first 10 episodes of this four times or something because I bounced off of it multiple times.

And then finally last year, it hooked me and I actually finished it.

So I've seen this many times.

And each time I go, oh, Leorio is going to realize it's not really injured, or like the injuries are in non-essential places, or, and that doesn't happen.

This actually hurt.

I have a different read on this,

which is that I just thought that they could shapeshift themselves into looking hurt.

That's what I thought.

But wouldn't Leorio have realized, oh, you're not really hurt?

Oh, I mean, like, could actually, well, maybe it would still hurt to do this, but like,

I think having my thing open and then Leorio is maybe.

It's also easy to be like, if there's non-visible wounds, like the guy, Leorio, sure, yeah.

Be like, I think I hit my head.

And, like, it would not be beyond the scope of this show.

But when they come in, the guy is all bloody.

Like, there is blood.

So it's like, that's real blood.

Leorio isn't like, oh, that's Raspberry Jam or that's fake blood.

No one says it's fake blood.

You know?

Yeah.

And they say you did a good job of taking care of our injured son.

Yeah.

It's definitely not beyond the scope of this show to have someone,

you know, slash themselves or get slashed by their parents and have them sort of be genuinely wounded for

what seems like a kind of minor ploy.

Like, they could have written any scenario they wanted.

They happen to have the right one for Leori.

I mean, it makes it raises questions like, did they know it was this trio on the way?

What I'm talking about, Austin.

This is fascinating to me.

How much of this is

by

the numbers that we learn in episode three, there's at least 30,000 applicants

thereabouts,

if not more.

And so one of something that the captain says on the ship is like,

we are here in order to like trim off the people who wouldn't make it anyway so that the actual hunter uh uh group doesn't doesn't have to like spend too much time like they can just get right to the people who actually make it to the exam

And I don't, I don't know if it means that's so big and so complicated that they're like, they know who's on the way.

I don't know.

Maybe it's like look at three scenarios and it's like radio in, one scenario, two.

Or it could just be like, yeah, we just totally randomly, it's not worth it to the hunter exams to be that thorough.

If you have like two versions of a trap, right?

We have the buses and the boat, which is like hundreds of people at once are getting disqualified because they couldn't, they couldn't hang.

The boat just knocked them out.

They got on the buses, they're out.

And then we have this, and we have the lady and the masked people

who are carving one or two people away,

and the others are getting through.

You know, like, how many people are even meeting the Kiriko?

How many, how many of these mini steps are that?

Did the captain also tell somebody else, okay, actually, you don't want to get on the bus.

You want to go into a little cave that's on the second tier of the, or is he saying go to the cedar tree to everybody?

I don't know what the answer is to this.

Yeah, yeah.

It's very, I, and I, it does sort of feed into

like the hugeness of it that it could really.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like the whole thing about the, like, the way that all of this is laid out immediately is that it makes the hunter exam feel massive like right at the gate to me.

I don't know.

Like the fact that they're able to set up.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry.

I did my, I did my math wrong because I forgot that there's other, there's other people that make it.

It's not 30,000 applicants.

It's 4 million.

It seems like the way.

Because of the way they...

access the exam in episode three,

I would and I would hazard a guess, and this is like me inferring, obviously, that like

there are multiple, there are many ways to qualify for that phase of the exam.

And then, and because you immediately be like, oh, like, like you're saying, like, oh, how many people met the Kiriko?

That question makes the hunters feel like a much bigger deal because you're like, well, no, these people, they can't all couldn't all have been there

within the past hour, you know?

Yeah, now things that they had to succeed at to even get there.

Exactly.

Right.

Like, I bet the the carry core are running this again in two hours but i bet they're not running it with you know i bet they're running it in an hour long increase maybe they're not maybe it's a 15 minute in and out thing maybe it's like a haunted house

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that seems like it would take a while um maybe each each sort of sub-proctor has their one navigator each navigator has their one path that they send at people um but there's only ever ever a handful that succeed.

So it's always like, okay, I'm going to have between zero and five people on my boat of, you know, a few dozen.

I'll send them this way or something.

Yeah, I don't know.

Do you think they have quotas?

Do you think the captain was like, you got to get rid of 200 people?

You've got to.

You cannot let more than five people through.

I mean, he did go Tony Hawk Pro Skater on those waves.

And he's like trying to get a combo score higher to knock one more person off.

Yeah.

And like, there was a fourth person who almost made it, and he had to be like, I have to hit that 900.

Hit that Christ error.

So

my math error was

Gon Kilua.

Sorry, not Gon Kilua.

Gon, Karapika, and Leorio represent about 30,000 failed people.

Each.

Each.

Right.

Oh, no, not each.

Each one represents about 10,000 failed people.

Okay, gotcha.

Right.

So the three of them, that was the third.

But then we get eventually to downstairs.

But let's

eventually downstairs.

Because that does give us a firm answer on how many people qualify for

him as well.

We do have a little bit more of what is a hunter to play

because

that is the end of episode two as we learn.

We get more in-depth into this sort of

ideological disagreement about what a hunter is.

If I can read verbatim something or two somethings.

According to Leorio, a hunter is someone that makes the most money in the world.

Every year, over 50 hunters make the list of the world's 100 richest people.

Once you're a hunter, most countries give you a free pass and no charge to use public facilities.

Fame and money, that's why people want to become hunters.

Love to use public facilities for free.

From any country.

Yeah.

From any country.

Or, well, most countries.

You cannot use the bathroom unless you're a hunter.

You might have to pay.

Customers and hunters only.

Yeah.

And then we have from Karapika: hunters are the most noble people in the world.

The hunters work to protect people and the natural order.

Hunters have many difficult and important responsibilities, such as preserving cultural artifacts and endangered species, as well as capturing wanted criminals and unscrupulous hunters.

Profound and unyielding conviction.

Those are the qualities on which hunters pride themselves.

Very different answers.

Oh, yeah.

They're either right.

Do you think either of them is right?

Karapika's answer sounds very hunter-commercial.

Joy in the hunters.

Yes.

This is an army proud.

Yeah.

Because, like, we've seen the kinds of people that want to become hunters, and they certainly don't seem the way that Karapika is describing.

Yeah, a lot of them suck.

Well, this is the thing.

At this point, we hadn't seen them.

What we'd seen is these three, and then that guy who tried to cheat or tried to follow them.

So a bunch of randos who couldn't hang.

It is true that they couldn't hang, but like, that's the sort of people who are trying to get in at the very least.

Right.

Yes, totally, totally, totally.

But I'm just drawing a line between this episode and next episode

where we truly learn what type of people make the cut to get to the true hunters exam.

I was so excited in the screenshot stream that we did with Jack that we got to show them the lineup of freaks in that one screenshot

and got to hear how Jack described everyone in that lineup.

This this is giving this is what gave me a similar feeling of like when they get down there like oh the the basement of this

this like steak shop is actually the entrance to the hunter exam very good gag where they pretend like it's this big building that they get to and they're like no no it's in the steak shop.

And there's, yeah, 400 other people.

We get a really good look of a bunch of weirdos.

Yeah.

Do we want to take just five minutes before we begin the last part?

Sure.

Yes, please.

Jack, while we were on break, you mentioned that we didn't want to miss talking about the music.

Also, Sylvia mentioned talking about the theme song.

Those are the two halves of this idea to come back in and talk about music.

I think that since the theme song starts, do you want to talk talk a bit about the theme song, Sylvie?

Oh, I love the theme song.

This is just like, it kind of has become,

at least in the circles I run in, I like canonical anime theme.

Like, it is like a thing that people think about.

And I don't, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to be like, this is kind of the theme for the whole show.

Yeah, I've heard this.

You know, it's funny because that is the sort of Togachi special because the incredible, absolutely phenomenal intro to Yu Yuhaka Show, Smile Bomb, is also the theme for the whole show.

Yeah,

I gotta hear this.

I won't smell that.

Oh my god, Smile Bomb is so good.

Oh my gosh!

I haven't even watched Yu Yuhaka Show, but I've listened to Smile Bomb.

Yu Yu Haka Show is great, but oh yeah, this song rules.

Yeah, this song, this song rules.

That is, I think,

I like this more than the anime intro of all time.

Like, song.

Ever.

Yo, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't think I don't use an anime intro song that's better than Smile Bomb.

It's probably a City Pop jam.

It's good.

I don't know.

I think that

the.

It makes sense that you say that this theme is going to stick around mostly because I think that there is enough emotional depth and range in what we've got here that it can carry you through a lot of different styles and tones.

I mean, when I'm writing themes for the show, I don't know where we're going to go, but I know that this is going to be what people hear at the beginning and at the end of every episode.

So I want to sort of try and write for a wide enough latitude of feelings.

And listening through to what we've got here at the beginning,

that seems like

you could go a long way with that music.

I'm curious, how familiar are you with the idea of an anime theme song or like OP?

Much more familiar than I am with the genre or with the show.

Yeah, I think

because

they are both so stylized and because they are shorter buy-ins and because they usually have these like extremely elaborate title sequences with them, I have seen a lot of title sequences for shows that I haven't seen.

I think that probably not having seen the shows that they are attached to means that I miss some of the context of how they work

sort of as structural pieces.

But I've definitely seen my fair share much more than I have seen, you know, examples of the genre in and of themselves.

So, like, an example of this is that, like, Full Metal Optimist Brotherhood has 64 episodes and has five opening themes across those 64 episodes, right?

Right.

Um, uh, they tend to be deployed after the end of a major arc, uh, seasonal, you know, which is to say, often between seasons, a new season of the show starts with a completely new theme.

Uh, they are often carry are in the same genre space, you know.

Um, you have something that is like doing some sort of like emoji rock thing.

It's going to stay doing emoji rock, but the maybe the band stays the same or the singers might stay the same across,

but they the you know, the song is different and the actual opening animation is going to show different characters and stuff from

different parts of the show and blah blah blah blah blah.

And so, to some degree, the fact that it doesn't change here really surprised me the first time I watched it.

Um, uh, but it means it this really

solid identity, right?

Starting an episode of Hunter Hunter makes you feel away because it's that song, you know?

It's this song playing.

You always hear those like same open, that like opening, like,

like, I don't even know how to describe the sound that it actually starts with.

It almost, it feels like a count in to me, but it's not.

Yeah, it does feel that way.

Yeah.

It's worth saying we had talked about the idea of me hearing it for the first time and then writing the music based on that.

We didn't end up doing that because

we reached this goal faster than we thought we would and then put it into production and past a certain point it became more important for me to actually start watching the show than it did to do some sort of silly game with the music.

I don't know what I've done with the music yet.

I've got some ideas but I wanted to head it off at the pass.

What you heard at the beginning was not my interpretation of the hunter-hunter theme

from anyone.

That is a good note for the people that were expecting that.

I'm sure we would have said it if we had done that.

Yes, I can in fact specifically not confirm that.

What I think I am actually going to do more of,

which leads into talking about the rest of the music, is that there is a real varied palette of music throughout this.

I mean, we already have themes that are coming up again and again, you know, themes to convey threat or humor or certain characters.

But there is a real,

you know, in the show notes, Austin, you're talking about...

What do we think about the world?

What's true about the place?

What year is it?

What buildings are there?

You know, how much technology do they have?

And I think that this is reflected very intensely in the music, not the opening, but the music that runs through the episodes themselves.

You know, one moment we will have a marching band playing, then we'll have like these weird overlapping delayed string parts that sound really good, then we'll have like calimbers and guitars playing.

And it feels really consistent, it feels really coherent.

The composer, I don't know if it's just one composer or a team, are doing something in the way that they are structuring

their arrangements that allow for a real feeling of consistency, even if they are swapping in and out different instrumentation.

But I've been really impressed with it.

And I think that the show gives the music time to breathe.

I don't know if you feel the same way, or if this is something that's going to kind of continue as we watch, but there have been a lot of moments where I think we've been invited to listen to the music

as we've been seeing what's going on.

Yeah, I think

what I notice about the music listening to this is less like the specifics of how it's made because I'm not like I don't I'm not tuned into you are Jack, but that there's like they do a really good job in the first three episodes of introducing a lot of like recurring leit motif and like recurring like

when there's like certain songs that play when it's like oh things are wrapping up in a positive way with this like little flute in it

or there's like a like I've come to town music at the beginning of an adventure music music hits a lot and it's great and it's like oh and here we are we've made it to our destination or or the adventure is about to unfold in front of us it really has like it gives you the feeling of like you're cresting a hill in a lot of ways it's great because like they do such a good job of of um

like finding really

um of really telegraphing what each of the songs does and is meant to do so good that when i was looking for the name of one of the songs a name that i did not know i typed into into Google or I typed into YouTube a Hunter-Hunter Adventure theme.

And the song is called The World of Adventures, Gone's Theme.

It's the exact song that I was looking for.

I mean, that song is great.

Just the

extremely like, all right, we're heading off kind of song.

If it's the one that you do.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

My suspicion is I'm probably going to do something with that.

Yeah, that is the one I was thinking of.

Especially because, you know, the theme for this is not going to have the same length as a Friends of the Table.

It's going to be closer to a more civilized age.

And I think that

I have a very good model in the way this show uses music to be like, hit a theme hard and get out as quickly as you can,

which is really great.

But yeah, I don't think I have anything else on music.

I'm curious what the, for people who've gotten deeper into the 99, I guess no one here has gotten too deep into it.

I'm curious what that sounds like.

It sounds more like Zelda.

right?

Okay, which again, like, I actually think this is flutes, this isn't that far in terms of the

emotion or the feeling, but it is not the same music.

Yeah, it's not the same music.

Uh, it's it's like gentler and slower,

and

they

there's a lot more

like

the beginning of this show really hits you over the head with like guns enthusiasm and his sort of like uh like real kind of um

like need to get out there and start doing it like he really really wants this hunter thing uh

and

the 99 show it has a lot more space for

for gone to be thinking about other things

so far anyway.

And the music reflects that there's a ton more of Antmito.

There's a whole other character that

we haven't seen in this that is in that, like in like five or six scenes.

Goan has an animal friend that is not in this show at all.

Huh.

What is the animal?

He trains a fox bear.

Oh, whoa.

He trains a fox bear cub and it becomes his friend.

It is massive.

I mean, it's like three times the size of a grizzly bear or something.

It's huge.

And there's a whole like subplot about fox bears and about his connection to animals

in the

show.

That's so interesting.

I really want to go back to that, and maybe I'll do that as this is going on, too.

That might be my, like, the way I get my fiction.

I like it so far.

I mean, it's good.

I'm dead.

The dub is definitely way not as good as the 2011 dub.

The 1999 dub is the thing.

Yeah, the 99 dub is like not very difficult.

I'm just saying, like, in the 90s, the dubs were different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They were different.

Yeah.

So, like, it's kind of a

in a way where I would never tell someone not to watch the 2011 dub.

Like,

I feel very,

you know, dub sub.

I'm just not, it is not an argument that I'm interested in at all.

But sometimes one of them is better than the other.

And I would never tell you not to watch the 2011 dub.

I think it's really good.

But the 99 dub, I don't know, Gunn sounds like he's 20.

It's weird.

It's very different.

It's very weird.

The last thing on the music here is like, it really does also continue the thing of this show feeling more Dragon Quest-y to me.

And like, listen, the Dragon Quest composer is an absolute piece of shit, or was.

I guess he's dead now.

Rip Bozo.

Huge nationalist and like real, real piece of work.

But.

Like truly, I have no qualms with saying that into a microphone.

But

the music in this reminds me of sort of the jaunty adventure stuff there.

And more broadly, over on shelved by genre, the fantasy, sci-fi, etc.

We'll do crime fiction at some point.

We'll probably do romance fiction at some point with Michael and Cameron on Range Touch.

In an episode that I think is coming out,

will definitely be out by the time you hear this, thinking about our release schedule here.

We talk a lot about the Picaresque novel

and the sort of like

the story of the character, the person who wants to go off and be a kind of roguish hero going from town to town, who's like, you know, bouncing from place to place and

these very, very vignette driven, very like, okay, who's the, like, not quite monster of the week, but like town of the week, encounter of the week,

you know, corrupt sheriff of the week or something, right?

Popular in fiction.

And this sometimes has that quality, right?

We're like, all right, today's adventure is boats.

And then the next one is these shape-shifting guys.

And then the next one is,

and I think it's interesting to think about this show as having that character right now during this.

And to think about how that sticks in some ways and changes in other ways because it's a long show.

But thinking about genre in those ways and not just like, it's very easy for us to keep coming back to Shonen.

But I think that things like the music push us into these other directions, like fantasy and picaresque.

And so I think, you know, what's the holistic genre space that we're playing in?

Because as much as I think this is a show that's wildly in conversation with Shounen, it's also playing in a bunch of different spaces.

And like video games is definitely one of those spaces, right?

This is a show that does feel like a JRPG right now.

Goan is getting his party together.

It's one of the things that's that's interesting in how much overlap there is specifically with original dragon ball which is like kind of a style of shonen that goes extinct for for how massively influential it was like it's hard to find a show that feels like dragon ball and hunter hunter in a lot of ways even as it changes a lot feels to me like oh what if someone what if we kind of had this genre like living through the 90s into the 2000s and what would it look like and um i think like i think hunter hunter sort of is like the

the it feels to me like oh what if there was a bunch of dragon ball style shows that that were more recent and this was just still my favorite of those

speaking of things that look weird We talk about these freaks.

I link the freaks.

I have several pictures of freaks here for everyone.

I would really like quickly to just shout out the ending theme as well by Japanese electronic war band Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, who I fucking love.

That's all.

I just wanted to mention that they're really good.

Check out their stuff.

Yeah, so they see this, you know, we touched on it briefly.

They see this big skyscraper, and they're like, oh, wow,

this is where the hunters are.

And then our guide pointed a little, you know, tumble-down

stake place and says, oh, no, actually, no, it's actually in here.

And at first, it seems like the lesson that they're being taught here is, you know,

you should be humble, you know, you know,

not all that Glisters is made of gold or whatever, you know,

lower your expectations or whatever.

Except, when we enter this and descend in an elevator 99 floors down what is revealed to be an upside-down skyscraper,

we are back in the game of hunters again, because the thing that you actually learn is something like wondrous things hide beneath unlikely places.

You know, in part the lesson is be humble, but it's just as much a lesson about, like, oh, you never know when a little steak joint might actually have an upside-down skyscraper beneath it.

It's really, really interesting.

And they emerge in, this is such a good shot.

Well, and this is where they say out loud, this is where millions of aspiring hunters come to test their skills, which I guess is over time, which is wild.

Anyway, where do they emerge?

Oh, we also get the, we get the real quick, I think this was a little bit before that.

This is where we get the statistics of

only only one in 10,000 applicants actually make it to the Hunter exam proper, and only one out of every three years does a single rookie pass the Hunter exam.

Jesus.

Bad news for our heroes.

Bad news for her.

The amount of ink that is being spilled, giving us the

rules and regulations and statistics and reputation of the hunters versus explaining clearly what they are is wild.

Goan still has no idea at this point what a hunter is, does.

We know that they're either no.

I'm trying to eat some steak.

Goan is like, where is my steak?

Goan is hungry.

Yeah.

The steak combo that'll open your eyes to the light.

Love a good secret password.

That's so good.

They're in a huge underground tunnel.

A massive.

I cannot.

If you're not watching, I can't tell you how big this tunnel is.

It is wide enough that standing in the mouth of this tunnel, facing them, must be 500 people.

We know there are 405 people when they enter the room.

There's actually 406 because there's a weird little green jellybean man

who appears

to be a little bit more detailed.

Yep, well, I don't know if we get it here, but we do eventually get it.

We did get his name, Dre, because I wrote it down in my notes.

It's green, green jelly bean man.

yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, that's it.

That's it.

Okay, so we didn't get his name, so I did not get his name.

This guy's great.

He appears in one shot.

It is so funny to me that you say, yes, we know this man's name.

He's going to come back.

I could not.

Gun to my head.

If you put a gun to my head and said, Joe, point at the characters that we're going to see again in this show, I would die.

Well, that's not the same.

You had no idea.

You had no idea, but when we were doing the screenshot thing, like, I knew the whole time how good of a game it would be to try to get you to say who was important and who wasn't.

And

describe what about them makes them look like they're important.

Yes, this guy

is a green, green jellybee.

That really is what he is.

And all these people are wearing little numbers on their chests, and they're milling about in the dark, kind of hostilely.

And kind of, it's like those guys in, well, they're not as hostile.

They are more hostile than the guys in Workmaster Harmonies, Austin.

This is the town square with all the people hanging around next to the like braziers.

Well, like, they have sniper rifles and arrow quivers and monkeys and weird pins all over their bodies.

And one of them has a baseball bat type thing with a beehive on the end.

And one of them is just a little kid with a computer.

Now, this answered a question that I had right up until this moment is: hey, can women be hunters?

Um, and what's the answer?

Uh, well, per this scene,

probably,

However, as far as the story is concerned,

not a single one of them has spoken.

We have not been introduced to the idea that...

Put it this way: hunting has been portrayed as a purely masculine or purely male practice.

But yeah, as we pan across this crew, we see a few women, but none of them will speak in this episode.

Oh, yeah, yep, that's true.

Another thing that we get is we're immediately confronted at the end of the last episode with the idea that you might have to retake the hunter exam.

And then that's in this episode.

Oh, you're right.

This episode is.

And then we get kind of an episode all about having to retake the hunter exam.

It turns out

pretty much everyone here has been here before

because we meet a character named Tonpa.

Does someone want to give me Tonpa's nickname?

The Rookie Crusher?

Thank you, Dre.

The rookie is the rookie crusher.

The rookie crusher.

We don't know this at first.

We don't know.

I bought it.

This is why.

You're a fucking gone.

Look at you.

Wow.

Well, because what I actually wrote down was how cool a character archetype the guy who's done it 39 times is.

What I didn't do was take the follow-up step of like, why has this guy done it 39 times?

As soon as it was revealed, I was like, oh, yes,

I know why.

But what this guy does is he has a whole stick.

It's great.

He shows up and says, all right, well, I'm going to give you the clues.

We're going to be friends.

And then I'm going to give you my shit.

Real information.

Yeah, he's like, that's Toto the Wrestler.

Not only is he powerful, he's super smart.

Yeah.

There are these three brothers.

They always do really well because always, by the way, always do really well.

Not

only and Amory.

I have the names.

Thank you.

I also have the names.

They always do really well because they have great teamwork.

Like, these are tips.

These are genuine tips that they're getting.

Would you like to sip?

Would you like to sip?

By the way, by the way, would you like normal juice?

And then before they sip it, and this is just good writing, as it is raised, as it is raised to their lips, we suddenly, and we do this for a lot of this episode, this suddenly becomes a show in which Tompa is our main character.

Because we get his little POV saying, aha, little do they know.

And then, you know, they all spit it out for various reasons.

Gone can tell that it's poisoned and then everybody got poisoned.

He can tell that it's spoiled and

kind-hearted.

Yeah, yeah.

Saves the others.

Saves the other two who all spit it out.

And a weaker show at this moment would pull us back out of the perspective of Tonpa.

You know, he's been like foiled and we're switching back to Gon and Co.

Yeah.

No.

Why are we very threading in advance?

For basically the rest of the episode and we get a little side story of him being like

he becomes the narrator, and we start following him around independently of the other characters.

In his efforts to crush the rookies, and he tells us about it.

There's something wrong about this year.

This year's rookies are

weird.

So, we meet a ninja called Hanzo, who is looking for a scroll of illusions, the mightiest ninja scroll.

He presents himself with a sort of gone-like earnestness.

Yeah.

He's sort of walking around telling everyone, everyone, don't tell anyone, but I am a ninja.

I'm here for

very important scroll.

The ninja with no subtlety is such a funny character idea.

Like it is so good.

Yeah.

Because it's never, he's never presented as incompetent.

He's just not subtle.

Right.

He has a set of rules that he that are designed to protect him as a ninja, and he knows them and he follows them and they work.

And he is free to be

himself otherwise.

And he's like a chatty guy, right?

Like you kind of see him talking to other people in the background in a really enthusiastic and open way.

It's so funny.

Yeah, yeah.

But he refuses to take it because he's a ninja and he makes it a point to not take food or drinks given to him by other people.

And he's very sorry.

And he's very, all of a sudden, serious when he says this.

His whole

body buys it.

Yeah, yeah.

Tompa's like scared of him.

This is why Tompar is valuable as a POV character.

Having been led through his various traps and knowing that he's done this so many times, we can...

Gone can't, but we, the viewer, can trust his experience of these people.

He can be like, I know how it usually is.

I know what these people are like, and now I can see how they're different.

Because

a man barges into another man who turns around and dissolves him into flower petals.

This is Hisoka or Hisoka, a playing card magician,

who

looks like he's from Jojo, actually.

pale white face

also Sailor Moon.

He looks like a Sailor Moon character too.

Sure.

Pale white face playing card marks on a pale lime green doublet, pink hair.

And this man is no fucking good.

He is a really nasty piece of work.

And in fact, I think one of the characters, Gone, says, well, why is he allowed into the Hunters exam?

And Tompa says, Well, this is sort of how it works.

You know, if you can meet the criteria, even he says, Even demons and fiends can be hunters.

Me underlining again what are hunters in my

direction.

I believe that's when he gives them the drink.

Yeah, uh-huh.

Yes.

To be clear, the thing you just described happens before he gives them the laxative drink.

He's just started talking to them for the first time before Hysoka shows up and eliminates a man from reality.

Just his arms, I think.

Okay, well he screams.

He fills the floor.

I apologize.

He's definitely, yeah, he is still there.

You're right.

Good luck with the Hunter exam.

You've not trained for this.

No, he is.

Sorry.

This is pedantic.

He is eliminated.

He is pulled out from the exam.

And

we do get

Proctor saying that we lost one person.

But I think they do specifically say that he's not dead.

That's good.

Good for him.

We're very happy about it.

He'll try again next year.

I mean, how else will he learn his lesson and not be rude if he dies?

You know, 100%.

Right, right, right, right.

100%.

That's what we're hearing.

And then

he meets a fancy boy on a skateboard.

And I went, it's Killua.

Because I am Killua.

Killua's got a real,

you know, an entrance befitting of his status.

He drinks the laxative juice and cannot and will not ship.

Hey, mister.

It's so fucking good.

Sorry, can I please?

It's my favorite part of these whole episodes is that when Killua, like, he's like, hey, can I get some more juice?

And he has a sip and then he's like, what the hell?

This kid's had so much juice.

He should be pooping his brains out.

He's going to die.

He's going to die if he doesn't stop.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's going to die of dehydration.

And then we got this close-up of Killua and he gives him this shitty little luck.

And he's like, actually, I'm immune to poopy juice because I've had so much poisons in my body all the time.

I've been trained to be immune to pooping myself like a baby.

It's so funny.

It's so fucking good, and

it also just like is such a, it's such a good moment for Kiloa because you're like, oh, this, what the fuck is up with this kid?

Yeah.

Yeah, fully.

He's great.

Worth mentioning his character design since we've

he is going to become part of the main cast.

You would not think so from this episode if you didn't know that.

He's introduced along with some of the other assassins.

He is in in the intro.

That's true.

That is a very good point.

He is in the intro and the outro.

Yes, you would go, that's the guy from the intro.

Unlike the little boy with a computer whose superpower is has the intro.

Oh my god,

Nicholas.

He has Wikipedia.

He is a great power.

Tompa says, Out of all these people, the one I hate the most, and he pans over to a little Wolfgang looking fucker talking on his computer is Nicholas.

And it just killed me.

It was so good.

He's fucking Martin Prince from The Simpsons.

Yes!

Like 100%.

Killua is

maybe Gon's age, has white, spiky, sort of puffy hair, like a flame above his head, almost.

He is wearing a white shirt, like a white, long-ish t-shirt.

He looks well-dressed.

He's carrying a skateboard.

Is that a skateboard or a hoverboard?

I couldn't see it.

That's the prop that he got when Gone got the fishing rod.

Yeah,

he doesn't know how to unequip it.

Yeah.

And is there anything?

I mean, I just love Keilo showing up and, like, his first thing is sort of putting on a like a, hey, mister, could I have some of your drink?

Sort of like naive thing just to fuck with him.

Like just to fuck with him.

Just to fuck with him.

He knows.

He knew right away.

You don't want to be

on Xbox Live with Leorio.

You don't want to be in a Fortnite lobby with Killer.

In the same way that Goan also knew,

but just isn't going to drink a bunch of laxatives because

for whatever reason, laxatives work on Goan.

He sort of describes it by being sort of living in the woods.

I've had a lot of grasses and stuff, so I know about how this tastes weird.

Me too, Ghan.

Yeah.

Anything else about Killer before you want a last rookie?

Who's the last rookie?

We only briefly see the last rookie, but we get a very fun line about him.

I don't remember this, Keith.

I think I know who you mean.

Yes.

I think I know who you mean, but I don't remember.

Okay, I'll go on.

We can double back.

Yes.

We can double back tequila if there's anything else after.

But the guy who walks like he's made of

clock pieces and is covered

face and body in pins.

Tony's going to get more of him.

I can't even go near this guy.

He's so scary.

I've written down Rattly Pin Man because he's not like.

So he looks a bit like what if when we make

Partisan and Palisade, so if you if you you should check out friends at the table.

It's an extremely good actual play podcast we make.

You can go to friendsatthable.net.

Something we talk about in one of our most recent seasons is that there is a society or a culture called the Columnar who tend to make a lot of toyetic stuff.

That is to say, stuff that both evokes toys and also plays into the production and culture and politics of toys.

Is that fair to say, Austin?

Yeah, that's fair.

I would describe this rattly pin man as like a toyetic pinhead from Hellraiser.

Right, yes.

Yeah, what if pinhead was

and like importantly, I don't mean an expensive figma of pinhead.

No, which is what if you go to KB Toys in 1994 and buy pinhead,

He is.

There is some.

I have already seen some really startling character and creature design.

This guy looks amazing.

And yes, he doesn't have any lines.

He walks past and he rattles.

Yes.

And he's startling in a whole other kind of way.

Well, and it's like, okay, this is hunters.

Hunters are woman with sniper rifle, little boy with computer,

clown magician who can turn you into pedals,

little boy with skateboard who's immune to poison, and Toyotic pinhead.

What's a hustle?

A guy

with a blow dart gun that looks like a beehive.

Right.

Sorry.

None of these people are hunters.

None of them have passed the exam.

These are the type of people that the

exam draws.

These are

the top 400 out of 4 million applicants to become a hunter.

And to be clear.

Right.

Also, lots of background people we haven't mentioned because they're just guy in hoodie.

And it's like, oh,

you're not going to win.

Good luck.

Hey, in a minute, they're going to give you a chance to leave.

And

you can't take it.

It's like that Voltaire quote, you know, like if God didn't exist, man would be forced to invent him or something.

I feel like

what we have here in all these people is the kind of world that the idea of hunters is born out of.

You know, like you don't get hunters unless you are living in a world where it's like

iPad baby, superboy,

small skateboarding boy who can't do poison, rattly pin man.

You know, when you are in that world and at the same time, you know, there are massive

pine trees with shape-shifting monsters underneath them,

steak shops that descend endlessly into massive underground caverns full of people.

This is how you get the hunters.

Well, it's very chicken and egg because is it the reverse?

Is do you have these people because you have a world that there's hunters in?

How many years do the hunters have to be around before you start getting people who

they

just grew up into someone who carries a sniper rifle and sunglasses and wears a cool vest?

Or let's go one further step down.

My granny runs the weird mask quiz, and every Christmas she ropes me in.

I'm not even a hunter.

I don't even want to be a hunter, but we live in the hunter's world.

And every year I have to put on the mask and get the raven

do you think the guy who doesn't have a shirt on but has the the number badge right on his chest has made a foolish error or is this him displaying strength this is number 100

um where is he is nothing this is not a guy this is a background motherfucker okay his name is a hundred his number is 100 it's once they start walking it's just a guy who's in the mix and he's just put the badge on his chest uh directly Trying too hard.

Trying too hard.

The monkey has a human face, Austin.

I don't think you mentioned that when you said this person has a monkey.

Sometimes monkeys have human faces.

Wait, where's the monkey with the human face?

I may have missed it.

He's number 115.

It's in the top screenshot that Keith posted of all the weirdies.

Oh, I see.

I see.

I see.

I see.

Yeah, that's fucked up.

I hate that.

And then Rattley Pinhead is also there.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

This is RDC World.

RDC World just dropped a video called Showing Up to a Fighting Game Audition, But You Sorry.

That's this.

That's a lot of these people here are about to learn.

They don't have it like that.

Worth reminding of what we said

at the beginning of the episode of like, Leorio is the one we are closest to here.

Yeah, Leorio is just a guy in a suit.

There is a sort of like

Socratic energy to

these people where it feels like

the more intensely they feel like they belong there, the more more you know that they are gristed for the mill

um you know like leorio might look like a guy but he's also like cautious and kind of like quick and kind of smart you know he maybe fell for the bus thing but he was also keeping an ear out right you know but if you showed up with a monkey come on Come on.

You're not going to be the monkey hunter.

You don't think there's going to be a monkey hunter?

Get out of here.

Come back next year.

Lose the monkey.

yeah

we've already got a monkey hunter

this fool

to our friend from the screenshot stream gorilla

right right oh this is great because i i am now realizing correct me if i'm wrong

the screenshot stream is never going to end The experience of watching Hunter Hunter is constantly going to be being shown things that you do not understand and being asked to reckon with them.

There's going to be a dip, but yes, from beginning to end, you know, maybe reverse bell curve.

Like you're going to feel, you're going to feel like you know more and more and be more confident, then it's going to get thrown out the window, I think.

And then we have final, one kind of like final sequence.

It's really good.

It's, it's, it's just great.

A big wall lifts up and behind it is a man with a

big mustache, but no mouth.

Right.

But a voice.

Butter voice.

And he says.

His name.

No, I'm saying his name is Buttervoice.

No, his name is is Satots.

Yeah, his name is Satots.

And he says, if you'll follow me, please.

Now, keen-eyed viewers should ask yourselves, is a hunter trial about to begin?

No, say all these people.

We're instead on our way to a hunter trial.

But as Satots begins to run in this beautiful, long, weird stride, like

a Ghibli character almost.

There's a very uncomfortable

moment where he's doing this weird stride and people are walking behind him.

And all of a sudden, nothing changes about him, and they're finding themselves sprinting to catch up while he just sort of like glides along the ground with his massive steps.

And

whoever is directing this episode or storyboarding it or whatever lets us sit in that kind of uncomfortable moment for a second.

You know, we realize almost as the characters do, that yeah, there are gaps opening up here.

And I think Karapika says, What's happening?

And someone says, Oh, the people at the front have started to run and that's when you learn that like uh Satots is is moving faster it's just a great music cue here as we get him turning in one move and beginning to stride down and this marching band cue is starting up in the background really nicely coordinated but it was at this moment that I realized that this is the stupid butler from Majora's Mask the

guy who goes backwards and you have to chase him down the long weird corridor.

That is Satoz and all these people.

And I think the episode ends midway through running, right?

We cut on the moment.

Yep, yep.

Oh, it's clear.

It does become clear it is explicitly a test.

He is actually

the test from the first phase.

I'm taking you to the second phase.

This is the test.

Right.

The first test is to get to the second test.

And I guess importantly, we get more Karapika being smart because he says to himself,

This is going to cost us a lot of mental strain.

Right.

Not running in the dark, running aimlessly.

Running aimlessly.

It will measure our willpower.

It's not just about can I keep the keep my physical body up.

I'm surrounded by a bunch of weirdos.

This is this is, you know.

Actually, I don't know.

Is this Karepico or is this the narrator talking?

I think this is Karepico.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm muted.

I have the it's playing, but it's muted, so I wasn't sure.

So yeah, what a wild,

great end to this first little section.

It makes it.

Oh, go ahead, Keith.

Oh, I just like, um, I don't remember exactly how long

they run for.

We'll find out.

Well, I was going to say, it is.

Hmm.

I'm coming back to Squid Game again, which was like, you know, not just because they have numbers on their chest, but because of this idea of a large-scale game played by multiple people, the bounds of which the participants don't know as they are in it.

And there is something

with a death penalty, yes, that's true.

But

we have been told that people die in the Hunter trials or whatever, the Hunter exams.

You know, the setups gives us that warning, you know, turn back.

But something that is interesting about the way Squid Game works is that some of the games are complex or are weird.

You know, you're either playing that game with the big robot that turns around or you're playing the thing where you have to cut the shapes out in the candy.

But sometimes the game is just a tug of war, you know?

Sometimes it's just cross a glass bridge.

And I do think that there is something interesting after the elaborate shape-shifting game of the

people, the navigators, that task one is just run in the dark.

Right.

There is something very straightforward and cold and, you know, okay, you're the best of the best.

We are dispensing with the bullshit for a bit.

Follow me in the dark.

I am faster than you think I am.

Which I like a lot.

We're in it.

We're in it.

Yeah.

We're not really

at the beginning of it.

Yeah.

We're in it, but there's a lot of different it's to be in between here and the end.

We're in the hunter exam.

Yeah.

We are in the hunter.

We are in the hunter exam.

We are.

Yeah.

Have we entered the first arc proper?

The hunter exam has begun.

Is there, are there any final thoughts?

Full, no, no thoughts barred.

I want to know, just based off these three episodes, like, who, who's everybody's favorite in the crew so far?

It's Leorio.

Oh, okay.

I was, that was me fishing for Jacks the most because we've all seen this.

Yeah, it's so hard to answer.

It's hard to answer.

I just, I genuinely, I love all of them.

I really love them.

Same.

I'm...

A Kurapika girly, especially based on

these three episodes.

Kiloa, my darling boy, will get more time to shine, though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What a fucking first impression, though.

I know.

It's a great show.

Yeah, I think it's unfair to kill to

judge this before we get more gone and Kiloa interaction.

It was hard to put the line here when I knew the next, but

I think it had

right.

I think it was the right call.

Yeah.

But

I do love that second episode.

Here's one.

For those of us who've already seen this once, who's a side character or background character who popped more for you this time than

the first time you watched?

For me,

it was the random shipmate who kept fucking up and they ended up saving, who was just like

for a couple of reasons, and I'll be quick on this.

Katzo.

Katzo.

Who

Gome sees Trip and fall early on

and get made fun of by his shipmates.

And Gohan doesn't intercede, but clearly feels for Katso in that moment.

Gohan is in observation mode and does not do the thing where he's like, stop it, you big meanies.

Why don't you pick on someone your own size?

And they go, like, someone like you, kid.

Like, that's, there's 18 other shows that will do that there.

Yeah.

Going watched, and at the end of the day, saved him and, you know, from falling over the ship.

But I i think that was a really fun telling moment also i just thought that character was kind of cute there's something else about that character too where

they try to show you that he's sort of weak in being picked on yeah but actually he's one of the only ones who's got his sea legs at the end of the day

um and uh

and is helping Goan take care of these people who are like, who are bullying him.

Sometimes the steak shop actually is a hundred foot down or 100 story downwards secret skyscraper.

For me, it was,

I mean, barely in it, but I could not get over the late horn honk on the

really good bit.

Yeah.

The whole segment like stood out to me a lot more.

This watch through.

Yeah.

I think my answer is: I've always been like, oh, yeah, Hanzo's funny.

Like, I think of Hanzo and I'm going to be like, ha ha, yeah, funny bald head.

Slap him on the back of his head, make a loud noise.

But personally, I think just his introduction this time really got me.

Yeah.

The way that just like Tanta reacts to him and like setting him up immediately as this sort of foil for Gone is very good.

True.

He just looks fun.

True.

Are you asking which person popped to me?

Yeah, popped.

The guy with the blow dark gun.

Sure.

Oh, yeah, sure.

That guy's cool as shit.

Yeah, he's very cool.

What's his name?

We don't know yet.

No, no, no, no, no, because,

yes, sure.

Oh, okay.

He's one of the people called Juretta or Jaretta.

Right.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Has the like

the big like Elizabethan collar

on,

but also like a cap.

Yeah, it's great.

Great outfit.

Yeah,

great crew.

Good crew.

Uh, any, do we want to, do we want to end with, do we end with plugs?

Let people, uh, sure, we end with plugs.

We should let people know what to watch next.

Um,

oh, so next, like literally the episode names, Hope and Ambition.

Hisuka is sneaky and a surprising challenge, which is fun.

I feel like a lot of the challenges have been surprising challenges already.

So let's see what the show thinks is a surprising challenge.

Four, five, and six.

Four, five, and six.

Yep.

Let me just double check that I don't have us watching four by mistake.

Judging,

I think I remember where that ends off, and that sounds like a good end point, but.

Yeah, it does.

Oh, am I.

Oh, I really got to bookmark this because I checked my docs and it's not there.

You just typed, I just typed docs into it.

You sent me a DM that said docs.

Yeah, well, because I know that I sent it to you.

It is four to six.

It is those episodes.

All right.

Can you link me then?

I'm bookmarking it myself.

Yeah, often I try to search in our messages because I knew that I sent it to you.

You did send it to me at some point.

Right, we are specifically not putting this in because we don't want to spoil Jack for

stuff.

Right.

So, yeah, four to six.

Um,

uh,

I have one last thing to say because we've said the words Sailor Moon a few times, and if we don't say these, if we don't say it, someone's gonna, people have already sent the emails in, right?

Yes.

Uh, but, but, uh, Togashi is married to Naoko Takuchi, who is the creator of Sailor Moon.

Yes, um, that is, uh, the best.

Um, there are little comics from her about their marriage that are very cute.

They've both done little comics that I have.

Have they both done

manga for Hunter Hunter?

Agoshi will end chapters with little, like, I have very specific memories of like a drawing he did of their little like furry for so like cute personas going on their honeymoon.

Very cute.

So cute.

Yeah, it's really good.

I love that.

What a power couple.

We'll say again, friendsofthetable.cash.

That is the friends of the table patreon.

That is the patreon that made this show possible, made it possible faster than we all thought that it was going to be possible.

I have such a recent memory of Austin saying that

he thinks we'll hit it in September, which is so funny.

Now, now it's funny.

Then I was like, yeah, I could see September.

Uh-huh.

And you can follow Friends of the Table on TikTok.

You can follow Friends of the Table on Twitter.

And co-host.

It's friends underscore table on all of those except co-host is friends dash table.

and the twitch where we're streaming kind of a lot at twitch.tv slash friends at the table.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you have come here for Hunter Hunter, Friends at the Table is an actual play podcast where we tell stories using dice and cards and Jenga towers and mouse and brains.

And mouse and yes, and mouse and brains.

Tabletop games specifically if people aren't familiar with the

actual play.

If you've been thinking of getting into friends at the table, you could start with a dark sci-fi story of revolution and

the hunt for justice and equality

with the series Partisan.

Or you could check out a strange, twisted,

dust-blown horror fantasy series called Sang Fial.

Those are probably fun places to begin.

We definitely have some like hunter-like characters in both of those shows.

Definitely.

Oh, yeah.

It's hard to not, it's hard to not,

you know, because hunter, because what is a hunter,

right?

Because at this point, we have no idea.

We good?

We're done a good clap?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

All right.

Welcome to Media Club Plus.

Wow.

Already.

Welcome to Media Club Plus.

I'll get there.

It's all good.

You'll get there.

I'll get there.

Welcome to Media Club Plus, brought to you by Friends of the Table, a podcast about diving into the media that interests us and the stories that excite us.

This season,

yeah.

We got to do it the other way.

Stories that excite us and the media that interests us?

No, no.

Brought to you by Friends of the Table.

Welcome to Media Club Plus, a podcast of blah, blah, blah.

Because if you say it the way you just said it, it sounds like you're describing Friends of the Table, Friends of the Table, a podcast.

Okay.

It works in text, it doesn't work in speech.

Say it again.

Say it the way it's written one more time, and you'll hear what it is.

It's a Media Club Plus, brought to you by Friends of the Table, a podcast.

Right, got it.

Oh, I see.

So we had to write it.

Originally, I had it written as,

but it didn't sound good with the word plus in there.

I had

welcome to Friends of the Table.

Sorry, welcome to Friends at the Tables Media Club Plus

or Media Club.

I think you should say

brought to you by Friends at the Table.

Welcome to Media Club Plus.

Like, we're doing a Warner Brothers.

Yeah, I love that, actually.

Or, like, we're doing like a special edition of Inside the Actor Studio that's been presented by

NPR.

This is, I don't think people will buy

NPR from me.

I'm not saying don't do it as NPR, do it as Keith.

Yeah.

Welcome to Media Club Plus, a broad.

Welcome to Media Club Plus, a podcast about driving.

Wow.

That's cool, though.

Yeah, a broadcast about driving.

What's everybody got these days?

Um.