The fallout from the Chimera Ants is explored and the changes are pretty significant.
What They Say:
Gon, a young boy who lives on Whale Island, dreams of becoming a Hunter like his father, who left when Gon was still young.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While it’s a minority opinion to be sure, and I’m fine with that, I found the last episode to be pretty anticlimactic. Yes, it avoided all the usual tropes for a shonen series in that it ended with a whimper rather than a bang. But it also basically cut out most of the cast that the show has revolved around for so long and didn’t provide certain closure that I was looking for that while I grasped and understand the emotional context and importance of it all, it fell far short of what I wanted to get out of the arc as an ending. It definitely works, but it didn’t work much for me. There is some interesting fallout from the events as we see how the peacekeepers came in, essentially eliminated the non-functioning governments and nations there and then rework it into something else that should be better since most people seemingly agreed to it all, especially since the Hunters Association is working as a kind of watchdog over it all now.
Which is definitely useful since we have the Chimera Any hybrids that are there, the former humans that were warped into something else that are now trying to find their place even if they don’t remember much, if anything, of who they were. It’s an interesting point of context for the different types that exist now and how their memories or lack thereof are providing new definition for their lives. We get to see some of the positive stuff that comes out of it with those that figure out who they were and find a place in life to exist, such as Welfin, but we also get some time with Reina and Brovida as they come to a certain kind of peace themselves, which is nice. Honestly though, as nice as it is, only Welfin was a character that I had any kind of involvement with and felt that his closure mattered while the others are just representative of a more general idea of what the hybrids will do.
With the latter part of the second half, it goes into a few other areas as we see what some of the Hunters are up to as one of the Chimera Ants turns out to actually have a possible decent position ahead of himself if he’s classified as a magical beast. But it leads to a great bit where we see Morel talking to him about the little girl Reina who suddenly starts claiming that her name is really Kite, which is certainly an interesting and exciting prospect to work with. A lot of the smaller closure moments fill out this latter half as we see various people involved getting their end arcs worked on, including the critical position that Gon is in with what needs to be done to ensure he doesn’t die. Bringing the bond back between him and Killua is nicely done here as they definitely went to a whole other level together and Killua really feels a responsibility towards him.
In Summary:
While a lot of time is spent here on a couple of Chimera Ants that I barely recall from this lengthy arc, if they were in it at all, there’s some decent stuff to be had with it in how the NGL is going to be changed in a lot of ways and the nature of those that have lived beyond the entire Chimera Ant incident to forge a new piece of the world. What gets me more interested is what we get in the latter half of the episode with the Hunter’s and some of the other Chimera Ants that have to deal with bigger issues of surviving the damage they’ve taken and seeing how Killua is handling things. All of this is throwing us towards the election arc next though and we get the first taste of it here with a good look at the Zodiacs from behind, which has a kind of excitement about it that I haven’t felt in awhile.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
