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 gave us a good bit of fun the last time around as we got a bit more on Welfin and his transformation, which in turn lead to us having a lot of time spent with the transformed Palm. Having her captured by the Chimera Ants and reworked in their vats and processes definitely gave us a dangerous and creepy version of her and that made it quite the challenge for Killua to deal with since he’s gained quite the conscience since meeting Gon all that time ago. While it does end predictably enough with how she managed to remember herself and fight against what she was turned into, there’s still some neat ideas at work with those that get put through this process and what it actually means.
What we’re also seeing is more people coming to the room where Pitou and gon are and that has the comical moment of Pouf being the one to kind of keep things in balance since he agreed to what Pitou wanted to do, but to do so he has to deal with Knuckle in another place since he arrived there as well and is kind of just confused by the whole process going on in there. There’s some interesting things that go on here, especially since we do get Gon to utter a word or two, and Pouf utters his challenge in a way that even Gon may not be able to ignore. Of course, he does it in a way that’s comically cute with the way he does it but it also forces Gon into a position where he makes it clear that Pitou has only so long to work on the girl before he’s going to move on to what he needs to do. His patience is not endless and the challenges that he must face are piling up around him. And while he gave her an hour before, compared to the three or four she wanted, she’s down to minutes now because of this.
With this setting the stage in the first half with the promise of a good fight, the second half takes us back to the King and Netero once again, where we still crave for there to be a really good fight. Getting more back story on Netero at this point is certainly nice since I suspect his character could support a series of his own, something few others here really feel like they could. So seeing him power up and get serious about dealing with the King works well as it’s flashy as hell and impressive in scope and power. Not surprising though is that it’s a fairly drawn out process here as the two start to go at it, but it’s the kind of forward momentum that you hope is infectious as the series needs to really start dealing with events and hitting what’s going on rather than just growing the tension to the point where it deflates from its own weight.
In Summary:
I continue to enjoy Hunter x Hunter a lot but I’m likely not alone in the frustration in the way it’s drawn out to achieve its goals. I’m not surprised by it either, having experienced the series to date and having multiple instances like this so far. There’s a lot to like with the story at hand and what it’s doing but episodes like this just up the frustration with it as even as they pull out some great looking sequences and tense moments, it feels like we’ve been having tense moments for twenty-five episodes or so no without any real changes to the status quo. Hopefully things will shift soon and the series will feel like it’s moving forward again, and not just in the same five or ten minute window of time.
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.
