What They Say:
Gon and Killua are trying to get themselves chosen as Greed Island players. The judge says that he will make his decision after they show him his Nen. Only 32 of the 200 applicants will pass. Can Gon and Killua make it through?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Gon and Killua having started their adventure when it comes to the Greed Island storyline once again, we do get some time here showing us the movement of the other characters. I rather like that we see that Kurapika is going off to continue his job and to give Gon and Killua some time on their own to focus on training again. But he’s also going with Melody, something that Leorio is really glad to see happen since Kurapika really has opened up to her. She and Leorio have a brief moment here, but it’s one that works exceptionally well and hints a bit more at what some of Leorio will eventually get back to working with. It helps to provide a little bridge to their stories as everything goes back to the younger pair, but leaves you with hope that we might get some time with them along the way.
With the focus shifting mainly to the Greed Island game, we now see how the various copies that were available were all won and that’s left Gon and Killua to simply pin their hopes on getting selected as players so they can go in the game itself and figure out the clues that are there to find his father. Unfortunately, there are two hundred people vying for a chance to play and fight in this dangerous game and only thirty two will be selected. Amusingly, it feels like the old Hunter Exam in a way because of how it works through the first wave of applicants and so many are whittled away right off the bat because they misunderstand the truth of the process. We do get some of the thought process on it from Killua which helps but there’s more to it than that as well. And of course, for Gon, it’s largely that he’s working off of his natural hunches, giving some of that primal nature of him a chance to shine.
With Gon’s plan to chase after his father, things go well and it’s not exactly a Hunter Exam in the same way, so it moves quick enough to move us to the next stage as the core group of players are drawn together for their entry into the game. Once in the game, with Gon lucking out and going first, we get the view of how everything works inside with the Book that holds the Cards that he can transform. As well as the overall goal of collecting all the item cards and the tricks of it all. It’s not hugely involved, but there’s enough quirks to it as well that Gon sort of gets what’s involved but it ends up becoming more than he can really keep track of, having never played anything like this before. Amusingly, a bit of truth about the game comes out when he gets a message from his father and that ends up changing the end goal of the whole experience, but it also frees it up in some ways as well.
In Summary:
While there’s some good fun here throughout, the final couple of moments really sets up what the arc will be like, especially when combined with the ending sequence that makes it clear who all will really get involved in this arc. After the awkwardness of so much of the Yorknew City arc with how it unfolded, something that was interesting but came across as structurally poor, there’s a lot of fun that this storyline ca be. Bringing us back to a Gon and Killua storyline alone will make for a good time but there’s going to be an interesting cast of new supporting players in the game, the whole game world and the details that Gon has to deal with to get out that will make it engaging. And potentially a few secrets that will be revealed about his dad as well, now that we know the truth of the whole Greed Island game.
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.
