The tough choices are starting to be made.
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)
Hunter x Hunter left us at a bit of a cliffhanger to be sure before as Pouf had entered the room with Pitou and Gon was and yu couldn’t be quite sure what he was going to do. While Pouf has his own motivations, there’s also the fact that Pitou isn’t quite who she was at the start of the arc, so it was welcome to see her call Pouf out since she’s all about saving the girl that the King has taken an interest in. That helps to calm the situation a bit, though it’s not a surprise that Pouf is pretty displeased by all of this since his only real goal and motivation at this point is to just take down the Hunters that have come into the palace and eliminate them completely. Seeing how Pitou is acting doesn’t exactly work well for him but there’s a lot of really good tension at the start of this until Pouf goes off on his way.
Or at least tries to, since Gon is aware of some of the tricks that Pouf could be a part of, even as Pouf himself is sensing what’s going on here as well. This definitely gives it a pretty fun feeling in a way since it’s so controlled and you have to wonder if someone is going to snap. To balance that, we also get some good action throughout the episode that focuses on Youpi and his fight against Knuckle and Morel as their trick has started to show some payoff with the interest as Morel uses a number of the puppets in the field to make it more complicated for Youpi to figure out whose real. These puppets are a plus in that we don’t get to hear Knuckle talk much, but it’s fun to watch them scattering about while Youpi attacks them with glee, and especially since we know Morel is going to be in a tight spot as he’s running on empty after everything that had happened.
This fight does play to the usual nature of the series where while it has some good and intense moments early on, it also slows things down to have some of the narrative gone over, either through Morel speaking or others with their internal dialogue. Youpi has certainly gone to the next level here in his intensity and in some ways he really does feel like a vastly different character from who we saw before. But his actions have totally set off the others, as much as they can, and Knuckle just wants to beat him up hard. But it’s amusing to see how Youpi shifts the nature of the fight as he’s going off to see King and that puts Knuckle in a tough spot, since he wants to go and fight but knows its in his best long term interest to get Morel back on track. It’s good to see how we get some realization from the Hunters about what’s happened, especially as they understand just how badly they’ve been taken down, but that mostly leaves us waiting to see how Gon and Killua will change the situation.
In Summary:
Hunter x Hunter goes for an interesting approach here as it basically puts the team that went in having to deal with the way that things went so badly. There’s a lot going on here and though the dynamic of it shifts hard and fast when it comes to Youpi, enough so that you have to double take with it, it makes sense in the larger scheme of things. And honestly, Chimera Ants aren’t human so they don’t think like people do. Not that the Hunters do either. There are some good choices being put forth here in front of people and seeing the way they lean towards makes for a good episode, especially those opening tense moments where you’re just waiting for Gon to snap to life.
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.
I didn’t really like the turn it took. Knuckle should have let Morel die as much as I do like him. It wouldn’t have been too long until APR finished, then Knuckle could have beaten Youpi. Oh well. Im still a fan regardless of this upset.