The king is born!
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)
With a lot of the recent arc having focused on the training that Killua and gon have been going through, the background storyline that will become the primary focus has gotten a bit of attention here and there. It’s been fun watching the some of the Hunters have been working to thin out the numbers on the NGL and deal with events there, but we’ve also had the gestation period for the new King. That comes to fruition at the start here as we see him birthed and it has a huge Dragon Ball Z kind of feeling to him, both in look and personality as the new King is a brutal beast under a cloak of calm. While this creates factions within the Chimera Ants now since there are those that are still very loyal to the queen, subservience to the King is critical because of the way he presents himself and how many of his own he kills so quickly and effortlessly within minutes of his birth.
Now that the King is out and about and talking, he’s got some real cravings, which is frustrating him all the more since what he’s eating of the Chimera Ants is coming across as pretty bland. What he discovers is that the really good food he got while gestating came from humans that were fed to the Queen and now he’s craving that, which is going to get his faction to come after more people and give him what he needs. The factional aspect of the show takes on a really interesting turn here as well as Colt, in a desperate effort to save the Queen, goes to the Hunters that have been operating in the area and surrenders to them if they can help the Queen. This puts a real schism in things, one that it’s hard to imagine that the King will let last long, but he’s going to be pretty distracted by learning how to kill people to get the best taste. Which is done really brutally here.
The arrival of the King is having a lot of effects on the makeup of the hive itself and we see the way more of the lower class of Chimera Ants are picking sides and figuring out what their best bets are. And for those that were born of the Queen that held positions of power, such as the Squad Leaders, they’re seeing ways that their individuality can lead them to taking off on their own as well. Colt’s independence is really interesting to watch since it has him going really radical in a way and that offers a unique path. There’s a lot of very interesting material at play here when it comes to how this group is going to come apart and reconfigure as time goes on, and so much of it is going to be driven in very different ways.
In Summary:
While often episodes and new characters brought in are called game changers, the arrival of the King here is definitely one of those moments. With just a few minutes alone, you can see the way so many things will change within the Chimera Ants and a good deal of it happens right away in how things factionalize, some become more submissive to survive the short term and new plans are brought to bear in order to live and save those that they care for the most. Hunter x Hunter has been only moderately interesting at best lately with the arc between the boys and Shoot and Knuckle, but this gives it the kick that it needed to get it back on track and hopefully return to the main storyline that has been worth watching.
Grade: A-
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.
WTF how can you just ignore the fact that they don’t even show you the fights between knuckle-gon and killua-othercreepyguy before fastforwarding?