The main match with Hisoka is looked at in a lot of detail and attention.
What They Say:
Kastro has used his ability to create a clone of himself with Nen to sever Hisoka’s arm and take an advantage in the fight. However, despite losing both arms, Hisoka appears to be perfectly calm. Kastro loses his cool and attacks Hisoka.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While we’ve certainly seen some interesting moments when it comes to how Hisoka fights from the Exam period and the way he’s got quite a lot of control and intensity, we haven’t really seen him go all out. And we don’t really, really see that here, but his fight against Kastro brings out more of his skill and talent than we’ve seen before with a good flair for the dramatic as well. Kastro’s attempts to take him down shows that he was paying some attention, and he has a neat trick of doubling himself in a way that’s not truly an illusion, but there’s also the fact that Hisoka is just an intense player with an array of tricks up his sleeve -and in his arm – that just makes him unpredictable.
The match takes up the first half of the episode and as it goes on, you get to see more and more that Hisoka really is just playing with everyone he deals with. There’s a feeling that comes from him, even when he takes a hit or two, that he’s really just like a cat playing with a mouse and his opponents don’t truly realize just how dangerous he is and what he’s capable of. Seeing what happens in the match and the aftermath of it when he gets healed up just shows something really different than we’ve seen before but it simply adds to the growing number of mysteries and diversity of this world and what it contains.
The second half largely deals with his post-fight recovery and the things that he gets to use in order to do the unusual thing of sewing back on an arm and getting healed quickly. It’s not a cost-free event of course as he’s working with someone else that can perform this trick, but there’s a lot to be said for the cool and composed way that Hisoka handles the whole situation. The blow by blow breakdown of what happened during the match towards the end when things got serious is well done, and for fight fans that like that really dig into the details it’s pretty interesting, but it’s also a bit of a slowdown even when you get down to it. But there are some key revelations mixed in as well about what’s coming down the line for Hisoka and the series in general since very little is done in the series that doesn’t have an impact later.
In Summary:
While Gon and Killua don’t get much time here at all, just a smattering towards the end as they deal with the post-fight themselves, the episode really goes into detail when it comes to the fight between Kastro and Hisoka. Getting a chance to see Hisoka use more of his ability than we’ve seen before is pretty well done and necessary to show that he’s more than we saw at the exam phase of the series. We certainly got a good look at him before but we also know just how many things he’s playing at and the way he views life as just some wonderful mixture of a game and a hunt to enjoy. There are some wonderful little twists here, but it takes until the end to really get to the good stuff that will make you grin like a fool.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
