Kevin's Arena - Hunter x Hunter ep. 34-36: Media Club Plus S01E11
Transcriber: Parker (grimportents) [0:46:33]; Colourclad [0:46:33-2:59:50]
[“The Boy in Green” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]
Keith: Welcome to Media Club Plus, a podcast about diving into the media that interests us and the stories that excite us. As always, we are brought to you by Friends at the Table. This season, we're watching 2011's Hunter x Hunter, based on the manga by Yoshihiro Togashi. My name is Keith J. Carberry. You can find me on X.com and Cohost.org @Keithjcarberry. You can find the let’s plays that I do at YouTube.com/runbutton. With me today is Jack de Quidt.
Jack: Hi, I'm Jack. You can find me on Cohost @jdq and you can get the music featured on this show and any of the music that I make at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.
Keith: Sylvi Bullet.
Sylvia: Hey, I'm Sylvia, you can find me everywhere @sylvibullet and you can check out the show’s TikTok @friends_table.
Keith: Andrew Lee Swann.
Dre: Hey, you can find me on Twitter @swandre3000.
Keith: And special guest, Austin Walker. Hi Austin.
Austin: Hi, I'm here. You can find me on Twitter @Austin_walker and @Austin on Cohost.
Keith: You haven’t been here since the first episode.
Austin: Kicked it off!
Keith: Which we recorded so long ago but actually only came out like, [Austin chuckles] two months ago.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh.
Keith: Have you kept up with the show or did you just watch the surrounding episodes of this? I mean you’ve seen the show so you [cross] don’t need to watch every episode.
Austin: [cross] I—It’s a mix, I did a mix of that, right, because I was gonna come on on an earlier set of episodes, and then didn’t, the schedule didn’t line up, but I had kind of like jumped ahead a little bit to watch—you know, so I've watched basically from the end… From the Zoldyck arc [cross] to now, basically, is what I've watched.
Keith: [cross] Okay, yeah. Yeah.
Sylvia: [cross] Okay.
Austin: So, so, you know. Yeah. It’s a show, Hunter x Hunter! [cross] Y’all watch this?
Keith: [cross] It’s a show!
Austin: To be clear I've watched this before if people somehow [Sylvia laughs] forgot that from the first episode. [cross] I've watched this show before.
Keith: [cross] And—if there’s—people still try to tell us that this isn’t a show. It is! It’s a show!
Dre: [cross] Oh, it’s a show.
Austin: [cross] It’s a show.
Keith: [cross] Hunter x Hunter’s real, you can go watch it. And…
Dre: You should, I would argue. [cross] You should go watch it.
Keith: [cross] And you can listen to this show, which you’re already doing, and then you can go to Apple Podcasts and rate and review the show.
Austin: You can rate and review the show, you should.
Keith: [cross] That would be good.
Austin: [cross] And tell someone about it.
Keith: [cross] Tell someone about it. Are you a big Hunter x Hunter—are you hanging out in forums or on Reddit where people are talking about anime or Hunter x Hunter? Tell someone there about it! [cross] That would be great.
Austin: [cross] Make clips, put them on Tumblr!
Keith: Yeah, put them on Tumblr. [cross] People on Tumblr like anime.
Dre: [cross] Yeah!
Austin: [cross] Put ‘em out there.
Jack: Are you reading the church announcements? [laughter]
Austin: Yeah! [cross] Sneak it in there!
Jack: [cross] [???] Joe Pera.
Keith: [cross] Are you Joe Pera? I know you like anime because [cross] I saw that Dragonball Z thing.
Dre: [cross] Hey, are you a deacon?
Jack: [laughs] Are you a deacon? [cross] If so…
Sylvia: [cross] Do you think we could get Joe Pera on this show?
Austin: [cross] I think we could get Joe Pera for something.
Dre: [cross] Hey are you the person who runs the Twitter account @heyitsgoku? If so…
Jack: [cross] He’s not here though.
Sylvia: [cross] [doing a Joe Pera impression] I saw a boy practicing Nen the other day… [laughter]
Sylvia: [regular voice] That’s my Joe Pera.
Austin: That’s a good Joe Pera!
Sylvia: Thank you.
Keith: This is—something that struck me about these episodes is, it is the most fighting by far that we’ve seen in this show. This is like—
Austin: We are in a battle anime.
Keith: [cross] We are in a battle anime.
Sylvia: [cross] This is shonen-ass shonen.
Keith: All of a sudden we’re in a battle anime. They have been like teasing and denying fights this whole… [Sylvia laughs] And it didn’t even occur to me that like, we hadn’t seen a lot of fighting. We’ve seen like, a lot of posturing. We’ve seen a lot of like… This looks like it’s gonna be a fight and then it’s over in one second—
Austin: Right.
Keith:—or this looks like it’s gonna be a fight but actually it’s just an adult ninja beating the shit out of a kid [cross] for four hours.
Dre: [cross] Yeah.
Austin: [cross] Yes, yeah.
Dre: We think it’s gonna be a fight but then Gon teaches everyone about the true power of friendship and they decide to dig through a wall.
Keith: You think it’s gonna be a fight but you actually smell these two different were-creatures and they become your best friends.
Austin: That’s part of why the end of episode 35 is just like, one of the hardest things ever. It is just like, oh, we’re hoopin’.
Keith: [cross] Yeah, yeah, right.
Austin: [cross] Like, we are fight-ing. We are doing it.
Keith: [cross] Yeah, yeah, and I can’t wait to get to that—
Austin: Yes.
Keith:—because it’s phenomenal. We get—this is what we get. We get Gon’s rematch with Gido, Gon and Killua’s fight with Riehlvelt, and Gon fighting Hisoka. But before we get any of that, we are learning about Nen for a period of time. Specifically, Hatsu, the final of four Nen components, which is basically like a personality test, that they immediately then go “yes, this is basically a personality test” in the show. We get a lot of Nen exposition, and paying off training, showing Gon and Killua’s Nen progress; immediately complicating that, which is fun. We get a little more Hunter talk kinda for the first time? Like they hadn’t—
Austin: Mhm.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith:—almost hadn’t said the word “Hunter” in ten episodes. And they tease, maybe a little trip back home at the very end. I like these episodes, there’s some—we talked at the very beginning of this arc that my first time through these episodes I was like, “This is taking so long and is so slow.” But every other time I've watched it I've been like, “What was I talking about? This is ten episodes, it’s totally fine.” And I think a lot of that is because they pay off a lot of the stuff that’s going on here later, in such big ways. But, I dunno, how did other people feel about these?
[pause]
Sylvia: Oh, I think this is a really good chunk of episodes that we’ve got this week. I think in particular it’s the, episode 35, the middle episode we watched—
Keith: Oh yeah.
Sylvia:—is like, one of my favorite we’ve seen so far. [cross] But, yeah.
Keith: [cross] I’ll say the moment when we get there. But there’s two moments—this is not typical behavior for me. There’s two moments in this show that, and people who listen to RunButton and Friends at the Table may have heard me tell this story before—there’s two moments in this show where when they moment happens I stood up out of my seat [Austin: Yeah, yup!] with my arms in the air [Sylvia laughs] and yelled, “Yes!” [all laugh]
Austin: [cross] Yeah, it’s good.
Keith: [cross] One of them is in episode 35.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: And one of them is in like episode 100 and something.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Austin: Yes. Yup. Mhm!
Jack: I'm so excited to talk about this, especially because; [sighs] I found 34, the way we sort of go into this, to be—there were some points during this chunk where I was really sort of forcing myself to watch the episode.
Dre: Yeah.
Jack: And I have a pretty high tolerance for a slow burn. But, as we were just oscillating between fights with people I didn’t really care about—that is to say, Gido and Riehlvelt—and exposition from Mr. Wing, I just longed for something like, for example, Trick Tower! Which was a similar sort of arena setup, but almost every combination of opponents in that arena presented some interesting new problem to rotate our heads around, rather than… Just a much more classic slug-off in the ring.
Jack: But all of that sort of—there is this moment as 35 develops—yes, it’s halfway through 35—where Gon has set the date for his fight with Hisoka. And the show knows that they are building up to this moment that everybody’s been waiting for for a long time. And there’s this great tense little montage of people going out and buying tickets, and taking their seats in the stand, and they pull the music out and you just hear the crowd noise of everybody getting ready to watch this fight. And from that point onwards, I really enjoyed this chunk of episodes.
Jack: You know, once we’d got the business with Gido and Riehlvelt out of the way, and to a certain extent, once we got this Hatsu stuff out of the way (although we can talk about that a bit more) it was off to the races. This is Gon versus Hisoka, we’ve been waiting for this—we’ve honestly been waiting for this since the first time those characters met.
Keith: [cross] Yeah.
Sylvia: [cross] Oh, yeah.
Jack: [cross] You know, you see them meet and you’re like, “oh! [snaps fingers] A fight!”
Keith: Yeah.
Jack: There’s gonna be a big fight [cross] in future.
Austin: [cross] Yeah.
Jack: And the show really puts it’s foot down in terms of the way it animates that fight, the way it paces it. It’s notable that you earlier, Keith, talked about how we haven’t really seen capital F Fighting for a long time. And the show is clearly aware of that and is giving us what we want—while also having these horrible little lacunas in the middle of the fight where Hisoka talks.
Austin: We can’t—one second, we can’t go into—we can’t just talk about that fight right now.
[all agreeing and laughing, overlapping]
Sylvia: [cross] We gotta work up to that.
Austin: [cross] You’re dropping a bunch of things that we all want to respond to; we can’t get there yet, [cross] we have to get there naturally.
Keith: [cross] Yeah.
Jack: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah.
Keith: Big teaser!
Jack: [cross] Okay, so let’s start—
Keith: [cross] We’ve blown up a big water balloon, we’ll pop it in…
Austin: Yes, yes.
Jack: [cross] That’s how the show works, right?
Austin: [cross] The cup is overflowing! Let me tell you, the cup it is…
Keith: [cross] Oh, and speaking of the cup—
Austin: [cross] My leaf is on the table.
Dre: [cross] Oh, so you’re an enhancer, okay!
Keith: So let’s go all the way back to the very beginning where we’re not even thinking about fighting, we’re doubling back to see more of Killua—
Austin: Uh-huh!
Keith:—kind of intimidating the—
Jack: [laughs] Just going on a little tour!
Keith:—these three goons who go back on their word and kidnap a nine-year-old boy in order to force the twelve-year-olds into fighting them [Sylvia: [laughs] Yeah!] in an arena. [laughs]
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: To be fair, a lot is on the line.
Keith: A lot is on the line for them.
Austin: We learn what it means to be a Floor Master!
Keith: R—yes. We do learn what it means to be a Floor Master which is you get a private floor to yourself…
Austin: Yeah!
Keith: You get, basically, it’s just the rest of your life is set up for you if you can be a Floor Master.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: [cross] Is what they—
Jack: [cross] You get to train people too, right?
Dre: [cross] I guess—
Keith: [cross] Yeah, yeah.
Dre: [cross] Unless you lose it. Right?
Keith: I think [cross] at some point it’s like, ‘cause they—
Dre: [cross] Because once you’re a Floor Master you can lose it.
Austin: [cross] I don’t know that you can lose it.
Keith: [cross]—talk about opening their own martial arts school.
Austin: Can you lose your floor mastership?
Dre: Well, and I guess—if you get beat you do. But I guess it’s also like, once you’re a Floor Master, even if you lose it, when you go tell someone, “Yeah, I was a Floor Master at Heaven’s Arena” they’re like [cross] “oh, fuck.”
Austin: [cross] Yeah.
Sylvia: [cross] They do talk about it…
Keith: [cross] It’s enough to have a successful school, you know.
Sylvia: The way they talk about it is very similar to the way people would talk about being a Hunter in the early episodes of the show.
Austin: [cross] Right.
Keith: [cross] True, right.
Dre: [cross] Totally. That’s a great point, Sylvi.
Sylvia: [cross] Like, when you become this thing you’re just set for life.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: It’s just like a whole other violent avenue to being—to having the easy life, which is what—
Sylvia: Feels like there’s a lot of those in this world, huh!
Keith: Yeah. [laughs] Get fight quick scheme.
Austin: Mhm.
Dre: Mhm.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Keith: But it’s funny because what they’re doing—we talked about this a little on the last recording, is that they’re using cheap tricks in order to squeeze wins out. And this is not the way to be a Floor Master! Not out of some sense of honor and respect for the title, but just: you’re gonna get your fucking ass beat!
Dre: Yeah, that’s! Yeah, I was just about to say that, Keith, because it’s like: okay, once you get up to fight the Floor Master, [cross] you’re still gonna have to win!
Keith: [cross] Right! You’ve gotta beat the Floor Master to be the Floor Master!
Austin: [cross] But you only have to fight when someone gets their ten wins.
Keith: But there’s already a Floor Master that’s gotten ten wins waiting for you [cross] to get your ten wins.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: [cross] No, you get a floor!
Keith: You think so?
Austin: That’s the rule! The rule is you get a floor. Right?
Keith: I sort of understood it as, and I think this [Austin: Hmm.] maybe is a little vague, I don’t think this is a misunderstanding [Sylvia: Uh-huh.] really.
Dre: [cross] I'm gonna go onto the Wiki.
Keith: [cross] My understanding is, you get a floor—but I think all the floors are filled. In order to be a Floor Master you’ve got to beat the person that's already got that floor.
Jack: Hm.
Dre: That was my understanding as well, Keith.
Austin: Yes, [cross] you’re right. Then you must challenge a Floor Master—
Sylvia: [cross] Sort of like an Elite—Floor situation?
Austin: Elite Floor, yeah yeah yeah. Totally, but that’s my point! Once you do that, if you manage to pull that off…
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Which, you’re right, maybe Gido… [laughs]
Keith: [cross] These people are nothing!
Austin: [cross] I don’t know that Gido… but here’s the thing! Wa-wa-wa-wait, here’s the problem!
Sylvia: [cross] Are you doubting the abilities of the Tornado Top technique?
[laughter]
Austin: The Tornado Top technique might be better than whatever the previous person was, because that other person may also have tried to game their way in!
Keith: [cross] Sure, yeah.
Dre: [cross] Yeah. I guess it is also worth remembering that these three, who are seemingly not thinking about the consequences of their actions, are also famously the people who showed up to the 200th floor without knowing anything about Nen.
Keith: Right.
Sylvia: [cross] That’s a good point.
Austin: [cross] They didn’t know—?
Keith: [cross] Well, we know two other people like that. We know two—
Austin: Oh oh oh.
Keith:—very talented little boys [laughs] who also [cross] showed up.
Austin: [cross] Right. Right, because they got initiated, right.
Keith: [cross] Yeah, they got initiated. That’s why they’re portrayed as like, scary and deformed, as like… yeah.
Sylvia: We talked about that last time, they get called the Nen Initiates. On top of the unfor—like you just said, the unfortunate way they’re presented.
Keith: [cross] Yeah.
Dre: [cross] Mhm.
Keith: So, speaking of them, the one with the melty skin, whose name I don’t know—
Austin: [cross] Sako.
Jack: [cross] Sss…
Sylvia: [cross] Sadaso?
Keith: [cross] Sako, yeah.
Austin: [cross] Uh—yeah, Sadaso.
Sylvia: [cross] It’s Sadaso I think.
Keith: At the end of the last episode and the start of this one, we sort of get two halves of this scene of Killua basically kicking him out of town, like. “You’re gone. [cross] You don’t live here anymore!”
Dre: [cross] Oh yeah.
Jack: It’s real sort of either Wild West or Roman exile; [Keith laughs] [Austin: Yeah.] Of just like, “Get out of my town, [cross] we run this place.”
Dre: [cross] It’s a Loser Leaves Home match!
Austin: It is!
Jack: [cross] Yeah!
Sylvia: [cross] There’s so much wrestling going on in these episodes!
Austin: [cross] But there’s no match! It’s a Loser Leaves Home conversation.
Dre: [laughs]
Jack: Yes! [cross] And something that is notable—
Dre: [cross] Because it’s a match were to happen, you’re fuckin’ dead, buddy.
Austin: [cross] You’re fuckin’ dead, bro!
Sylvia: [cross] [laughing] That would be a Loser Leaves Life match! [Dre and Austin: laugh]
Jack: An LLL.
Keith: Sorry, go ahead JACK.
Jack: Killua has these conversations and the thing that Sadaso specifically brings up, and this is something we hear Riehlvelt talk about later, is how frightening he found Killua’s eyes. Sadaso says,
Dre: Oh, yeah.
Jack: I looked into Killua’s eyes and there was nothing there. [cross] You know, there was—
Sylvia: [cross] I have the quote written down.
Jack: Yeah!
Sylvia: It’s, “His eyes were of someone who lives in the darkness.”
Jack: Yeah.
Sylvia: And I think he says, “I was overcome with fear when I looked into them.”
Jack: Which is—
Sylvia: Might have been “despair” or “Dread,” you know.
Jack:—notable specifically because of the way Illumi’s eyes have been talked about and have been portrayed.
Austin: Yeah.
Dre: Mmm.
Jack: And the way that eyes—Mike, as well, the guard dog at the Zoldyck’s, there’s a lot of eye imagery;
Dre: Oh, yeah.
Jack: Also Killua’s mother with her visor, her single red visor.
Sylvia: Yeah, absolutely.
Jack: There is this real—we’re seeing Killua basically constantly going through an internal dialogue about whether or not he should move towards or away from his lineage, and the skills that his lineage have brought him. And I think that seeing all this reference to Killua’s eyes in this moment is like, oh, this is him turning his Zoldyck training and the kind of fear that he knows he can command to looking out for Gon and Zushi.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: Right.
Dre: I would add, JACK, to that list of eyes we’ve seen: a lot of the Hisoka bloodlust stuff is also framed around his eyes being wide and bloodshot and haggard.
Jack: [cross] That’s true, yeah.
Keith: [cross] Or extremely narrow, and like… [cross] Yeah.
Dre: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah.
Jack: [cross] It works!
Keith: [cross] There’s a lot of eye stuff. In anime in general there’s a lot of eye stuff, but this is like, very mood—[cross] a lot of other shonen will do…
Austin: [cross] I mean, if we’re broadening out…
Sylvia: [cross] There’s a lot of eye stuff…
Austin: You’ve left important eyes off this list. From this show.
Dre: Oh, Kurapika!
Sylvia: Kurapika’s, yeah!
Dre: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah! The most important eyes!
Keith: [cross] That’s what I was gonna say, is that a lot of shonen have very technical eye stuff, like Kurapika, but they’re also doing mood eye stuff, [cross] with any other person.
Jack: [cross] Technical eyes!
Keith: Say again?
Jack: Technical eyes!
Keith: Technical eyes, yeah! [cross] Any eye—
Sylvia: [cross] Technical eyes technicalize technical eyes!
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Boo!
Keith: Any eye that someone might want to steal from you is a technical eye.
Austin: [laughs] I see.
Jack: Yeah yeah yeah! Um…
Keith: Um—sorry, JACK, you have something?
Jack: Uh, no, just that Sadaso doesn’t show up to his match with Gon so Gon beats him by default—
Keith: Right, so that’s—
Jack:—much how it happened with Killua.
Keith: Mhm. And tries to warn the others! Commits—I'm going to call “Shonen’s Folly,” [Sylvia laughs] is like, “he isn’t just some normal kid!”
Dre: [cross] Yeah.
Austin: [cross] Yeah.
Keith: [cross] Anytime you describe something as, a normal person wouldn’t do this, and it happens five minutes later too, they do it a second time.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Keith: This is constantly—”no normal human could do!” Okay, well this is a show about—do you know where you are? [laughs]
Austin: [laughs] This is—
Dre: [cross] Yeah.
Keith: [cross] You don’t—
Austin: [cross] This is, I am a side character!
Dre: [cross] We are once again back to, there are so many fucking murder children in this world, and yet—
Austin: Yes.
Dre:—everyone is shocked when they meet a murder child.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: You’re still—you’re just finding out that Killua’s not a normal child? The kid who knows Nen, is at the 200th floor of the battle arena?
Sylvia and Jack: [laughing]
Austin: Get outta here, man! Go home! [cross] It is not safe for you out here!
Sylvia: [cross] You shouldn’t be out here!
Austin: [cross] You shouldn’t be out here!
Keith: Just the fact that a kid is even around! You should know…
Dre: Yeah!
Keith: Not only that it’s not a normal kid, but just by him being a kid, I should be really careful because a kid being here means something is wrong.
Jack: [cross] Very concerning.
Austin: [cross] Kids are already scary.
Keith: [cross] Right. Yeah.
Austin: [cross] You know? Kids don’t—they’ll do whatever to win.
Keith: And then kids being where they’re not supposed to be? That’s scary.
Jack: Have we met a normal child in this show yet?
Austin: [cross] Zushi!
Keith: [cross] No.
Dre: Zushi’s [cross] pretty normal.
Keith: [cross] No, Zushi is one in ten thousand! No, one in a hundred thousand.
Sylvia: [cross] [doubtful noises]
Dre: [cross] That’s true.
Austin: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah.
Jack: [cross] One in ten thousand, trained by Mr. Wing.
Austin: [cross] That’s regular!
Keith: [cross] That’s regular, comparatively regular.
Sylvia: [cross] We saw Zushi like punching, defeating giant muscular men.
Dre: [cross] That’s true, Zushi is not a normal child, you’re right.
Keith: [cross] The closest…
Austin: [cross] He’s regular, I—no. No.
Keith: [cross] The closest to normal…
Dre: Zushi is like, has the brain of a normal child.
Sylvia: [cross] That is arguable, okay.
Austin: [cross] This is what I mean.
Sylvia: [cross] The brain of a child, yes.
Austin: [cross] Zushi can’t pay taxes!
Keith: [cross] Uh, Leorio then? Is Leorio a normal child? [laughs]
Sylvia: [laughs]
Dre: [cross] No. Well—
Sylvia: [cross] No, we saw what he did in Trick Tower!
Dre: [cross] Yeah.
Austin: [cross] Yeah.
Dre: [cross] I feel like, I don’t know, we probably saw—
Keith: [cross] Nicholas?
Dre: [cross]—a normal kid on like Whale Island or something.
Sylvia: [cross] [laughing] Nicholas might be the best answer, actually.
Keith: [cross]Yeah, Nicholas might be the normalest—
Austin: [cross] Wait, who's Nicholas? Is Nicholas from—
Keith: [cross] Nicholas is the kid with the laptop.
Dre: [cross] Is that the nerd with the computer? Yeah.
Austin: [cross] Ah, the laptop.
Dre: [cross] He’s not normal either though, because he could run like, 50 miles.
Keith: Yeah, but Zushi probably could too.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: [cross] Yeah.
Dre: [cross] Yeah, but Zushi’s not normal either.
Austin: Zushi doesn’t go through the Hunter Exam.
Keith: Alright I have the real—
Sylvia: Because he’s a genetic freak and he’s not normal.
Dre: [laughs]
Austin: [laughs] This is what I mean! Is that like… Zushi is a regular kid the way like the best Pop Warner quarterback is a regular kid.
Keith: [cross] Okay.
Austin: [cross] You know what I mean?
Dre: [cross] Sure.
Sylvia: [cross] Yeah.
Austin: [cross] Or the best like…
Dre: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah.
Keith: [cross] But…
Austin: He’s still afraid of his geometry homework.
Dre: [cross] Okay, yeah.
Keith: [cross] I have one counterexample to this. Is that when he fought Killua. He made Killua afraid of him.
Austin: That’s true.
Keith: Twice.
Dre: That’s true.
Sylvia: Here’s the thing with Zushi. Zushi is… I think I'm on team “Zushi is a normal kid” because Zushi is a shonen protagonist of a different series.
Austin: Yes!
Dre: Yeah!
Sylvia: And this is also the second arc in whatever series Zushi would star in.
Austin: [cross] Karate Boy Zushi!
Keith: [cross] It’s called My Zero Academia. [laughs]
Austin: [laughs]
Sylvia: I mean, kinda!
Austin: [cross] [laughing] My Zero Academia!
Dre: [cross] Hey! Listen. Don’t insult Zushi like that by telling me he’s gonna be in My Hero Academia.
Sylvia: [cross] That’s already what it is.
Austin: [cross] Aww.
Dre: [cross] Put him in a good show!
Austin: He feels like the lead of a 1970’s karate manga.
Dre: [cross] Totally.
Keith: [cross] Yeah, yeah.
Austin: [cross] You know what I mean? For little boys.
Dre: He’s, uh… Fuckin’, what’s the boxing anime? Haji No Ito? Is that what it’s called?
Sylvia: Hajimo No Ito, yeah.
Dre: Yeah yeah yeah. He’s the karate version of that.
Sylvia: There’s like… It’s more at the end of these episodes. But there’s, like you mentioned, the one in ten thousand conversation that they have—
Keith: I wanna say, I was right: it is hundred thousand. I don’t wanna sell him short.
Sylvia: Okay.
Keith: [cross] Shorter than he is.
Sylvia: [cross] It’s one of those things, where it’s like: there’s a very common trope in shonen anime of the protagonist who is not as naturally talented but through hard work they become better than the geniuses that they know.
Jack: Right.
Dre: Sure.
Sylvia: And Zushi’s very much presented in that way, but is very much not the main character of this and I think that’s a fun thing to bring in.
Keith: You’re saying in five years he’s Rock Lee.
Sylvia: [cross] I'm saying he’s Naruto.
Dre: [cross] No, you’re telling me Zushi is Vegeta. That’s what I'm hearing.
[pause]
Sylvia: Eh—
Dre: Wow, just the silence after [laughing] I said that!
Keith: Vegeta’s the prince of all Saiyans!
Austin: [cross] Vegeta’s the prince of all Saiyans.
Sylvia: [cross] Vegeta’s the prince of all Saiyans. Vegeta is Killua!
Keith: The only thing stopping Vegeta was that he didn’t know you could train until he met Goku. [laughs]
Dre: [laughs]
Austin: [laughs] That is true.
Sylvia: [laughs] It’s canon!
Austin: The thing that like—all these shonen comparisons I feel like have never been more appropriate than in this set of episodes, [Sylvia: Mhm.] where it is the most in that set of battle shonen… [Keith: Yeah.] Tropes and characters and fight stylings. And eventually we’ll get their kind of power meta-structure lore dump that explains why everyone can do all of this stuff. All of this is so deep in this particular genre of shonen.
Dre: Mhm.
Austin: Already, just in the Hunter x Hunter we’ve watched so far, we’re exploring “what can a shonen be?” In the same way that there’s, “what is a Hunter?”, “what is shonen?” [Sylvia: Yeah!] is a question I think you can ask that Hunter x Hunter tries to answer across it’s many arcs. And so far I think we’re still really tight on a certain subset, but as the show continues you can continue to come back and see it do it’s versions. And it’s not doing—it’s not always doing deconstructions. Sometimes it is! [Sylvia: Yeah.] Sometimes it’s playing it straight, or it’s doing the thing of a deconstruction where you have to play it straight long enough to establish what the thing is—
Dre: [cross] Sure, you have to build it before you break it.
Austin: [cross]—so you can then later deconstruct it. Yeah, exactly. So I think it’s really in the build mode of battle manga.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: This is definitely something that I think at least once every arc we’ll be coming back to talk about. [cross] This feels notable—
Austin: [cross] What is a shonen, and what is…
Sylvia: [cross] The “what is a shonen?” thing!
Keith: [cross] Yeah!
Austin: [cross] And the subgenres and…
Sylvia: [cross] And how Hunter x Hunter moves through the different flavors of it—
Austin: Yeah.
Dre: Yeah, totally.
Sylvia:—in different ways.
Keith: But there’s also this other thing; there’s this mirror image of that idea. Okay, you have to set up the battle shonen in order to show how it’s playing with those, but then the flip side of it is: we just had thirty-something episodes of really playing with the expectations of a normal audience who is reading or watching this, and is having expectations subverted in a lot of weird ways. Austin, in the episodes you weren’t on we talked about how, they kept implying that there was going to be a tournament arc, and then—
Austin: Right.
Keith:—cutting ahead of the tournament and then—
Austin: [cross] To show—yeah, yeah.
Keith: [cross] Flashing back. Like, they tell you who wins! They just totally destroy all of the tension of what you would expect from a tournament arc which is: how is the fight gonna go, who’s gonna win the fight?
Austin: Right.
Keith: And instead the tension is like, how are people handling what we learn immediately happens. Like with Killua not passing the Hunter Exam, or with Gon [cross] getting…
Austin: [cross] Gon being all fucked up.
Keith: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah.
Austin: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah. For sure.
Keith: So then it’s like: we’ve had 30 episodes, 33 episodes of that. Let’s do normal show! [Keith and Austin laugh] We need to give people a little normal show.
Austin: Let’s make him fight this guy with a fishing rod.
Dre: Mhm.
Austin: [cross] Let’s do it.
Keith: [cross] Let’s make him throw a piece of the stage.
Sylvia: Do we have anything else to talk about with Killua’s thing at the beginning here?
Keith: I do! [laughs] [cross] I do.
Austin: Oh, okay!
Sylvia: I was gonna otherwise be like, “we should get into that fight then.”
Keith: I have only a couple of things. I just want to highlight a couple moments, so. There’s a really phenomenal moment where the two remaining, Gido and Riehlvelt, are like [laughs] “we’re definitely gonna keep cheating” and [JACK laughs] Killua shows up in the shadows like, “are you sure about that?” And they’re very scared, [Sylvia laughs] and they look and he’s not there, and he’s behind them again. And it’s a very great intimidating moment where he’s proving the other guy whose name I can’t remember right…
Sylvia: Sadaso?
Keith: And then he’s immediately—yeah, Sadaso. And then he’s immediately like, “I'm gonna be wherever you are! Whether it’s sleeping, or taking a dump.” And he totally ruins—
[all laughing]
Dre: [cross] I forgot!
Austin: [cross] He does say that.
Sylvia: [cross] He says that, yeah! Dooming these men to never have a normal BM for the rest of their lives.
Keith: And then he says maybe the coolest thing—it’s so good, it’s a great moment, especially being right on the heels of them being like “we’re definitely not listening to our friend.” He says, “Without the rules, the only ones benefiting would be us.” And then just leaves. It’s very good.
Jack: Because, presumably, I’ll kill you.
Keith: [cross] “I’ll kill you,” yeah.
Jack: [cross] If you break the rules—
Keith: [cross] The rules are what’s preventing me from killing you.
Austin: Which of course we’ll wrap back around to at the end of this.
Sylvia: This is also one of the first moments in these sets of episodes that is a—I don’t know, I read it as a callback to the Hunter Exam where Killua is basically doing what Netero does.
Keith: Yes! [cross] Yeah, totally.
Sylvia: [cross] When he approaches them on the airship, which is the, you think he’s in one place and then he’s in the other.
Austin: [cross] Mhm.
Jack: [cross] Oh, yeah!
Dre: [cross] Oh yeah! And what the doppelgänger guy did to Killua when Killua went to go check him out.
Austin: [cross] Riiight.
Sylvia: [cross] There’s a lot—a couple moments in this of Killua doing techniques from that he’s seen other people do before, it’s cool.
Keith: It’s nice, especially because we watch him notice what Netero does.
Sylvia: Mhm!
Keith: Gon’s a little bit confused, and then Killua sort of implies, like, “I don’t know what you did, but I know you did something.”
Sylvia: Yeah.
Keith: So that’s very cool. Or maybe he knew it all along because of being an assassin. I don’t know. We’ll get a little bit back to this maybe during the Gon fight, but they show us again Killua not telling Gon that he has avenged Zushi and also intimidated these guys into not showing up for their fights. I'm pretty sure that’s how this happens. He just doesn’t say that he’s been doing this.
Jack: Yeah.
Keith: So when we get to Gon’s fight with Gido he just doesn’t know. He’s like…
Sylvia: Yeah!
Keith: He’s out to get his own kind of revenge, [cross] and that’s the tone of the fight.
Dre: [cross] Yeah, totally.
Keith: Is that where we are now? Or, do we have…
Sylvia: There’s a little bongo Nen montage with the really good—they do that a couple times in this set where [cross] they get the bongo track playing.
Keith: [cross] Oh, yes!
Austin: [cross] The bongo track. The bongo track goes!
Sylvia: [cross] I love it! It goes crazy!
Jack: [cross] The bongo track is great.
Austin: [cross] And they let it run for the first time, really.
Keith: [cross] It’s really interesting because I looked it up because I was like, I know this track. It starts with a really standard sort of like rock beat—
Dre: [cross] Yeah, it’s like a drum thing, yeah.
Keith: [cross]—that then goes into the bongos. But that’s actually the second half of a song called “Stalwart” something… “Stalwart’s Glaring.” And it’s normally used [cross] in the middle of a battle.
Jack: [cross] [laughing] From the New Earth Hegemony!
Keith: [laughs] It is, it is! It’s normally used in the middle of a battle and they totally repurposed it here to do a montage.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: A very tense training montage.
Dre: Mhm.
Keith: It’s very interesting if anyone goes to listen to “Stalwart’s Glaring” you’ll be like “oh, this is that fight song that I've already heard two or three times.” And then they totally repurposed it for this.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Did anybody notice—this might have been in the previous episodes, but I only noticed it this time—that in Wing’s apartment he’s covered up the broken wall with a tapestry?
[all laughing]
Sylvia: [cross] Oh my god! I missed that!
Keith: [cross] I completely missed that! I totally missed that.
Austin: [cross] It’s so funny!
Jack: [cross] It’s such a great—
Dre: [cross] [sighs] Of course this fucking loser can’t fix his goddamn wall and has to put a blanket over it.
Austin: Damn!
Keith: How many times do you think he’s trained some kid and has punched a hole in his own wall, [cross] forgetting…
Dre: [cross] Oh, so many.
Keith: [cross] Yeah, yeah.
Dre: [cross] And he still hasn’t learned how to drywall.
Jack: [cross] Well, cause he intended to do it!
Keith: He really did! [laughs]
Jack: He went into it going “watch this.”
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: It wasn’t like an Adam Driver in Marriage Story moment where he did it just out of…
Sylvia: [laughs]
Dre: [cross] Jesus!
Jack: [cross] He’s running out of walls to break!
Sylvia: [cross] Every day I use Nen…
Austin: [laughs]
Jack: But it really is… Just the way this show is so invested in these little moments of characterizations. Hanging the—breaking the wall in a demonstration and then offscreen, hanging a tapestry over the wall, is an extremely Mr. Wing maneuver.
Dre: God, and then also crying apologizing to Zushi for breaking his juice [laughs] in that [cross] other episode!
Jack: [cross] Oh yeah! I forgot about that.
Austin: [cross] Yeah.
Jack: Gon versus Gido! Gon has brought his fishing rod!
Sylvia: Hell yeah he has!
Dre: Hell yeah he has.
Austin: [cross] He has a plan.
Jack: [cross] He gets right into the fight, yeah. Gido does his usual trick: spins around like a big top. Gon blocks all the tops; he shoots all his tops at Gon like a [cross] shotgun blast.
Sylvia: [cross] Shotgun Blues!
Dre: [cross] Shotgun Blues!
Jack: [cross] Shotgun Blues! My favorite Dashiell Hammett novel.
Keith: [cross] Any time you’re naming attacks…
Jack: Yes?
Keith: I love it!
Dre: [cross] Yeah!
Jack: [cross] Oh oh, alright. I thought you were about to say something like, “it’s bad news for you.” [cross] But no.
Keith: [cross] No, I just like—
Austin: [cross] No, no.
Dre: [cross] I mean it might be bad news for the character but it’s great news for us!
Jack: [cross] Yeah!
Austin: [cross] Yeah!
Keith: [cross] I just like hearing what other people come up with for their little attacks. [cross] They go like okay, I've got my tops…
Sylvia: [cross] I like when…
Keith: Go ahead.
Sylvia: Gido’s got a musical theme cause he’s got Battle Waltz and then he’s got Shotgun Blues—
Jack: [cross] Oh, he has!
Keith: [cross] He does!
Sylvia: [cross]—and then he doesn’t carry it over to Tornado Tops, so it’s just Tornado Tops, which is really funny!
Austin: [cross] I wonder if Tornado Tops is named something else in the manga.
Sylvia: Oh, okay.
Austin: I'm wondering, I have no idea.
Sylvia: Oh!
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: Hm.
Sylvia: Wait, I’ll look it up.
Austin: Look it up!
Sylvia: Let me just google tornado top real quick!
Dre: [cross] Uhhhh?
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: [cross] Yeah, you go ahead and do that. Get that safe search on.
Dre: [laughs]
Keith: While you’re searching that I noticed during [cross] this fight—
Austin: [cross] Dancing Tops!
Keith: [cross] Dancing Tops.
Jack: [cross] Oh, sure!
Dre: [cross] Okay, there we go!
Keith: [cross] It was.
Austin: [cross] They’re dancing tops, right? So. Oh no, I guess it is still called—
Sylvia: Uh—yeah.
Austin: That other one is… It’s both. His overall thing is Combat Dance or Dancing Tops, but then, yeah, this says Tornado Tops.
Sylvia: Yeah. Damn.
Keith: I'm gonna take that as a little bit of characterization. Gido cannot stay on theme.
Austin: [cross] Yeah. Sure doesn’t.
Sylvia: [cross] True.
Keith: [cross] Doesn’t have what it takes to win in the ring, doesn’t have what it takes to come up with three moves that are all on theme.
Jack: These three are very thin characters that are almost [Austin: Yes.] exclusively trading on their character designs.
Dre: Yeah.
Jack: We’ve talked about their character designs in the past. They are at least visually interesting. I think Gido maybe the most, but really, we don’t know much about these people other than that they just deeply want to cheat children. They’re there to hustle.
Keith: They’re just horrible and resentful for having been maimed when they came up and they’re just like, “We are now out to be the maimers.”
Jack: By any means necessary. Pulling the ladder up behind you and then hitting them with it.
Jack: Gon develops a new tactic almost immediately. Using his fishing rod, he pulls up one of the floor tiles in the arena—
Dre: Love it.
Jack:—and flips Gido. Because he wisely figures out that he cannot really mess with Gido while he’s in spinning top mode, so he’s just gonna up-end the whole Beyblades table. Gon likes flipping the tile so much—
Dre: [cross] He does it so many times!
Austin: [cross] Well, to be clear: it’s not that he develops this technique in the battle. He came in with this plan.
Dre: [cross] No yeah, he had this plan.
Sylvia: [cross] Yeah, that’s very important.
Austin: [cross] He tells Wing, “I plan to use this!” and gestures as though he’s holding a fishing rod. And it’s just, you know he was laid up in bed recovering, thinking, how do I beat him? And his thought was, I can flip the tiles over. I could destroy the ground.
Keith: It is a very funny moment too. Wing goes like yes, I understand, to the [Austin: laughs] hand motion that sort of—looking back, yeah, that was definitely a fishing rod. I don’t know how Wing under—it’s just very funny that [cross] Wing understands this.
Sylvia: [cross] I mean…
Dre: [cross] I don’t know if he did!
Keith: [cross] We just gotta move this show forward.
Sylvia: [cross] It’s one of the two objects Gon has. It’s his Hunter Exam card and his fishing rod! That’s his inventory!
Keith: Maybe I'm giving Wing too much credit in thinking that he knew that not only was it the fishing rod but that he was going to use it to flip the tiles.
Austin: [cross] Right, yeah. Who knows.
Dre: [cross] Yeah. I don’t remember how Wing responds to this during the fight itself either.
Keith: He sort of stares contentedly.
Dre: Sure, yeah.
Sylvia: This, to me, I had a thing when I watched this where the—do you guys remember during the Hunter Exam, there’s the scene where Gon is watching other people hunt and Pokkle does the thing with the arrow. And then he’s like, “I expected you to dodge that! There’s a [cross] sleeping paralytic agent on the arrow!”
Austin: [cross] Riiiight.
Keith: [cross] Ohhhh.
Jack: [cross] Oh, yeah!
Sylvia: And this felt like that.
Austin: Mhm.
Sylvia: Like Gon trying that out.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Gon being like, that’s what a feint is, let me try it. And this is his interpretation of that. [cross] I don’t know, I'm trying to keep—
Keith: [cross] That’s great! It really is his only experience being [laughs] a Hunter, too, so…
Sylvia: [laughs] Yeah! It was just something I kinda got caught onto early in this set of episodes and really enjoyed watching. There’s already a lot of very blatant callbacks to the Hunter Exam, but including some stuff that is open to interpretation as to whether it’s even an intentional callback…
Dre: Sure.
Sylvia: …Does make it feel like they learned a lot of stuff through it.
Keith: Something I caught onto early and was really enjoying was Killua psychoanalyzing the fight, taking Kurapika’s place. Because there’s no Kurapika, we need someone—
Dre: Ohhh, that’s right.
Keith:—who is sitting and analyzing everything and trying to figure out why people are doing what they’re doing. And it was really fun. It makes sense that Killua’s doing this, but also there’s no Kurapika. Someone has to!
Austin: Someone has to.
Sylvia: [laughs] We get someone doing a Kurapika powerpoint, [cross] at some point.
Jack: [cross] We sure do!
Dre: Yeah, we sure do.
Austin: What do we think about Gon’s anger here?
Dre: Yo, it’s… I feel like this is the first time we’ve seen Gon like this, right?
Austin: I think this is the first time, yeah.
Dre: This is, in my mind, this is cruel and vindictive almost.
Jack: Yeah, so what happens?
Dre: Um, boy. I forget how we get to this point. [cross] I guess is it right after—
Keith: [cross] The fight just goes really well really fast.
Dre: Yeah, it’s right after he flips the tile and Gido’s on the ground, right?
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Dre: Gon just kicks his prosthetic leg and breaks it!
Austin: He doesn’t kick it, he punches it—
Dre: Oh, that’s right!
Austin:—so hard that he—first off, he pulls back to hit him, and Gido is terrified.
Keith: [cross] Yeah.
Dre: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah.
Austin: And instead of punching Gido in the face, he punches and breaks the prosthetic with such force that it causes himself to bleed.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: And tells him, “If you’re willing to do whatever it takes, I won’t hold back. And if you touch Zushi again, I’ll smash your face in.” And he’s shaking, his fist is shaking, it’s covered in blood. It is a promise.
Keith: It is sort of—the way that they frame it at first is… I think visually is, they’re showing you, oh he’s gonna punch him in the stomach or in the face. And then he punches and you’re like oh I guess he didn’t. Did he choose to not do anything? And this sort of combination of, he took out his leg and also is almost uncontrollably angry, brings it right back to: this felt almost like a mercy or gon’t holding back, but it really isn’t.
Dre: Yeah. He’s doing the same thing Killua did.
Keith: Yeah. ‘Cause he doesn’t know that Killua did that.
Dre: Yeah.
Jack: The other moment that I think this is in conversation with is when Gon goes and threatens Illumi at the end of the Hunter Exam.
Austin: Right, yup.
Jack: Which is another moment in which—obviously it’s a moment in which Gon is looking out for someone that he loves very much. Someone that he cares deeply about and is prepared to take angry, violent action for them. But it’s also a moment where Gon is… Gon is regularly characterized as experiencing multiple emotions simultaneously.
Dre: Mhm.
Jack: Which is of course something that everybody does, [Sylvia laughs] but in this broad anime sense, the narrator, and Gon, and Killua will often talk about: I was feeling excited and I was feeling scared. I was feeling this and I was feeling that. And I think both in this moment with Illumi and in fighting Gido, and in a moment later during the fight with Hisoka that I want to make sure we talk about then, we see Gon at a bright flame of clarity in his own emotional state.
Austin: Yup!
Jack: The thing he is feeling is fury.
Austin: Gon feels so big.
Dre: Yeahhh!
Austin: Which is to say, not that he feels big like large to me, but his feelings are large.
Dre: Mhm!
Austin: He feels in a large way. And I think so much of what makes him move is the thing in children that hasn’t been burned out of them yet, that is, “why don’t we just make the world better for people? Why don’t we just fix the thing that’s broken?”
Jack: Right.
Austin: And in this moment, he is in the exact one place where, through force of will and power and emotion, he can do that! And it fixes the situation, in his mind, because he can go beat these guys, and fix people, and help his friend Zushi from ever being hurt again, from ever being threatened again. And in some ways, it’s like, damn! We all need a little more Gon in us! We have to carry—I wish we carried that energy more, forward! But also it will be interesting to see how this develops for Gon as the show continues and it’s not in the battle manga anymore. You’re not in the Tournament Arc. Can you do this when you’re not in the Tournament Arc? What’s the way, with Illumi, how does that end up coming back?
Jack: Totally.
Austin: Cause that’s not—again, at the beginning of this episode is Killua saying, “the rules prevent me from doing more.” At the end of this arc of episodes again we’ll come back to “the rules stop this from being something else.” And what happens outside of the rules when you feel big and decide, “I'm going to help people no matter what.”
Jack: Being in a Tournament Arc gives Gon [Austin: Yes!] a vocabulary of choices [Austin: Yes!] that he… Because the thing is: he threatens Illumi. There’s that great image of him holding Illumi’s wrist, do you remember?
Dre: [cross] Oh yeah!
Austin: [cross] Yeah, and break the—100%.
Jack: But Gon does not take violent action then, in part because I think he recognizes that he is outside of this heightened space of a Tournament Arc and Illumi might just kill him.
Austin: [cross] Right.
Keith: [cross] Violent action apart from breaking his wrist.
Austin: [cross] Yeah.
Jack: [cross] Does he break it? Oh, he does!
Austin: [cross] He breaks it.
Keith: [cross] He does break it.
Dre: [cross] He does.
Jack: [cross] He does break it and Illumi is just like, “oh, this is fine.” [laughs] Illumi no-selling it had made me think that Gon didn’t break it.
Austin: [laughs]
Jack: It’s a really interesting moment. And then the show sort of… It’s got other stuff to talk about. I feel like we don’t sit with that anger in Gon.
Dre: Mhm.
Jack: [cross] For very long.
Austin: [cross] But the name of the episode is “Power x to x Avenge.” And obviously partly that is Killua’s power to avenge, at the very beginning. But it is also gon’s, with both of these combatants.
Jack: Yeah.
Keith: Do we have any ideas of why Killua hides/doesn’t reveal [Jack: [laughs] Yes!] what he’s been doing to gon?
Jack: Yes, and I would like to present two pieces of evidence to the court. One: Hanzo, beating the shit out of Gon at the end of the Hunter Exam. Two: Canary beating the shit out of Gon as he tried to enter the Zoldyck’s. I think Killua has learned that Gon has such a particular kind of obstinacy, and such a particular kind of desire to do things capital R Right, or the Right Way.
Dre: Yeah.
Jack: That I think that were he to say to Gon that he had taken this action, Gon would just continue to throw himself into situations that he would get deeply harmed in, for the sake of wanting to do things right.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: But what about after it’s done? Go like, hey, I did this—this is what happened, I figured out they kidnapped Zushi and then I threatened them and that’s why we won both of our fights, [cross] cause he—
Jack: [cross] Retroactively, it would poison, it would sour it. It would sour it. You ever play—
Keith: [cross] It would sour it like Hisoka giving the badge back?
Jack: [cross] Yeah, I think so.
Dre: [cross] Ooh, that’s a good comparison!
Austin: [cross] Yeah! Yeah yeah yeah.
Jack: [cross] I think it’s absolutely—it’s also, you know, you’re ever playing sports? You’re playing soccer outside as a kid and you absolutely bash your shin on something and you’re like, “oh, I don’t even want to play anymore, this has ruined the whole thing. The whole evening of play is now sour to me.”
Austin: Or like learning that someone—you’re playing something against someone else and you realize they’re going it easy on you.
Sylvia: No one wants to know that you let them win. [cross] No one ever wants to know that.
Jack: [cross] Even retroactively.
Keith: It is interesting to see, reading into it only a little bit, so early in the show Killua being aware of this. And being like, “I have to manage this situation, and part of managing that is managing Gon, [cross] and not telling him about this.”
Dre: [cross] Mhm.
Austin: [cross] Yeah.
Jack: Yeah. But this is something that Killua has had experience with! Being surrounded by powerful weirdos with complicated and sometimes counterintuitive—
Keith: Magic!
Jack:—responses, to—
Keith: Oh! [laughs]
Jack: [laughs] —to the way he might act. Killua has been managing people around him his whole life. I think this is the first time he is managing people around him that he loves in a way that he doesn’t love his family.
Keith: Compared to Illumi and his mom and Milluki, Gon’s probably pretty easy!
Dre: Yeah, I mean, what Killua has done up to this point is to manage people’s actions in order to protect himself as opposed to manage other people’s actions out of a place of affection and care.
Jack: Yeah.
Keith: Do we have anything else about the Gido fight?
[pause]
Sylvia: [quietly] I think I'm good.
Jack: Yeah.
Keith: Is the next—
Jack: The Riehlvelt fight!
Sylvia: We go straight into Killua’s fight after this.
Austin: [cross] Yeah, Killua fights Riehlvelt.
Sylvia: [cross] There might be—
Dre: [cross] Oh, yeah, we do.
Jack: And this fight has bonus snakes! [laughs]
Sylvia: Oh, I apol—I did think that when we were, when I was watching it being like, oh gosh! I didn’t realize those whips were snakes.
Keith: [cross] I forgot that those were snakes!
Jack: Riehlvelt begins with—so, first, Killua leaps right over Riehlvelt, [cross] and Riehlvelt uses—
Sylvia: [cross] This fight rules. I like this fight.
Jack: [cross]—his wheelchair’s rocket boosters to shoot him out of the way!
Dre: [cross] Aura Burst!
Jack: Really great animation on the blue flame from these rocket boosters. And then Riehlvelt moves into very similar tactics to Gido. He pulls out these two maroon colored whips and creates a corona of violence [Dre laughs] around him such that if anybody were to get close they’d just get—
Keith: Sorry, any normal person.
Jack: Yes!
Dre: True.
Austin: [laughs]
Jack: Gido says, “No normal person could withstand this!” and flings his whips at Killua.
Austin: Or, Riehlvelt, [cross] Riehlvelt, not Gido.
Jack: [cross] Sorry! Yes!
Austin: Gido’s not back.
Jack: [laughing] Riehlvelt, sorry. And Killua in a real Lord of the Rings “I can be beaten by no man” type move says, “Well, I'm not normal!” [laughs] [cross] and catches them!
Austin: [cross] Crowd goes wild.
Dre: [cross] In the dub he says, “Well, I'm not normal, sorry about that!” [laughs]
Jack: It’s great! [cross] Then Riehlvelt—
Keith: [cross] Classic shonen’s folly!
Jack: This isn’t my favorite Killua line in this fight which comes later—there’s a Killua line that just destroyed me in one second—because the whips reveal themselves to be two snakes, or possibly robots that look—I think that’s sort of a robotic—[cross] I don’t think they’re real snakes.
Keith: [cross] They’re weird, magic, machine-snake things.
Austin: Mhm.
Dre: Yeah.
Jack: And they bite Killua and they put one million volts into him. And at this point I paused the episode and looked up, “what is one million volts?” I wanted to know.
Dre: Oh, great question!
Austin: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah!
Jack: [cross] I wanted to know—and of course this is very difficult because voltage is actually a very fickle measurement for electricity. You obviously don’t want to fuck around with a million volts, but a million volts could be harmless and could just cause your hair to rise slightly—
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: [surprised] Really?
Jack: [cross] Or it could just set you on fire.
Dre: [cross] Yeah, it depends on if the current can pass through you or not and all that kinda stuff.
Austin: [cross] Oh, sure, right.
Jack: Friends at the Table does not endorse you electrocuting yourself.
Dre: No!
Jack: Please don’t take what we’re saying…
Sylvia: Eh…
Keith: If you want an endorsement for that you can go to Runbutton.
Dre: [cross] Okay yeah, fair.
Jack: [cross] Killua is getting electrocuted mega big time, but he grabs the whips and pulls Riehlvelt straight out of his chair. And then he delivers this unbelievable line, he says: “I'm trained to withstand torture.” Beat. “But it isn’t like it makes me happy.” Beat. “It still really hurts a lot and everything.” Beat. “That’s why I'm a little pissed.”
Dre: [laughs]
Keith: [laughing] It’s so good! It’s really good! It is almost as if he is talking to a man on the street.
Austin and Sylvia: [laugh]
Keith: How do you feel about this thing that annoys you? This is something that might air as part of a compilation on the local news.
Sylvia: Someone’s TikTok is going up to people and asking them what they think of electricity!
Dre: [cross] Mhm.
Austin: [cross] Yeah, exactly!
Dre: [cross] That’s a great TikTok idea.
Jack: [cross] I feel like the specific localization writing of the line, “it still really hurts a lot and everything” [Keith and Austin: laugh] as you are being electrocuted with a million volts is just lovely character writing. It’s great. And then of course he, Gido’s, oh my god I did it again, Riehlvelt’s like I'm gonna fall and Killua’s like I'm gonna catch you don’t worry and he catches him.
Sylvia: ‘Cause he whips him in the air, did we mention that like he whips him into the air?
Keith: [cross] Oh yeah, there’s—
Dre: Yeah, yeah.
Jack: He like flicks him into the air.
Keith: There’s this great moment of Riehlvelt laughing maniacally at the one million volts and then instantly we cut to he’s a hundred fifty feet in the air.
Dre: Yeah.
Jack: Bang!
Austin: He catches, the whip with lightning still running through him so..
Keith: Yeah.
Jack: Gido doesn't show for his match with Killua, Killua wins by default—
Austin: [cross] Oh also we get, wait wait wait, we also get Killua leaving and doing the one fist up, victory walk out, cool guy pose.
Jack: [laughs] it’s so funny.
Keith: This is also the, this is barely a fight. This is the most that we’ve seen Killua fight, at all! In the whole show. [cross] Just to echo something from earlier.
Austin: [cross] Is that true? I think so.
Keith: The only other thing that compares, that would count as more fighting than this would be the tag team fight, uh, [cross] the Netero, on the airship. But it’s not really a fight?
Austin: [cross] The Netero? The Netero dodgeball... The dodgeball with tag.
Sylvia: Which, I'm glad you mention ‘cause he does start this the way Gon starts the Netero thing. Which is jump really high to distract them.
Jack: Yeah.
Keith: Yes. Doesn’t hit his head though.
Austin: Yeah.
Dre: [laughs]
Sylvia: Well, ‘cause there’s a higher ceiling! If Gon did that in a place with a higher ceiling!
Keith: [cross] Yeah, higher ceiling, yeah.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: If that had happened in Heavens Arena they would have won!
Dre: They would’ve won, true.
Sylvia: Straight up!
Jack: Take that Netero! Oh, it was great. Killua is, you know, it goes without saying. Killua is extremely cool—
Sylvia: He’s the best.
Jack: Has not gotten less cool over the course of the show. I have to imagine is only going to get cooler. [Sylvia laughs] Or will he plateau? I don't know, is this like terminal velocity where past a certain point, [Dre laughs] Killua [cross] can not get cooler.
Austin: [cross] Can not get cooler.
Sylvia: [cross] You’ll have to just watch and find out.
Austin: [cross] That happens in shonen a lot—
Austin: That does happen.
Sylvia: [cross] For real!
Jack: [cross] Oh really?
Dre: [cross] It's true…
Sylvia: You know what I think there might be a point.
Keith: I think—
Austin: But for Killua?
Sylvia: Genuinely yeah.
Keith: [cross] I don't wanna say…
Dre: [cross] Naw, no.
Sylvia: [cross] I think maybe actually— I don’t know this is a conversation for months from now.
Austin: [cross] I don’t… no ‘cause the coolest Killua moment is way late in the show.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah, that's true, you're right!
Austin: I get what you mean, I get what you mean though.
Keith: There’s a—
Austin: But yeah, there's like a power, like Dragon Ball Z is like the touchstone for me because it's the one that was big when I was a kid, I am not a Naruto, you know, girlie this is just not my generation.
Sylvia: I got you covered.
Austin: Thank you. But in Dragon Ball Z they [cross] like it was the most nineties thing it could be—
Keith: [cross] It was a sickness.
Austin: Because it was, they introduced after Dragon Ball had already run and there was a really broad range of power levels at the end of Dragon Ball. Uh, but it was never specific. Dragon ball z immediately introduces this idea that these aliens show up with scouters. With these little like, Kalvin Brnine has one of these, Jack.
Dre: Yeah yeah yeah.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Jack: Oh, what? Famed—
Austin: Yeah yeah yeah.
Austin and Jack: Famed revolutionary terrorist?
Austin: Yeah, Kalvin Brnine. Has one of these like monocle, single lens thing that hovers in front of your, well it doesn't hover really, rests in front of your one eye. And it just tells you how strong someone is. It just says, their power level is five thousand, their power level is six thousand. And a thing that just happens with cool characters in Dragon Ball Z is they don’t, their power level does not exponentially increase any more [cross] but Goku’s does.
Keith: [cross] I know, they flame out.
Austin: They might still go from a hundred thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand but Goku’s at five hundred thousand and it just doesn’t. You’re not gonna hang any more. You know? So—
Jack: How many numbers do the aliens scouters account for?
Keith: They break really early. [Dre: Yeah] The, one of the jokes about the scouters is they only really show up to be a device that lets them [Austin: Yes] underestimate Goku.
Austin: Yes.
Austin: ‘Cause the first thing Goku, one of the first things Goku ends up learning is, and not just Goku, the whole earth defense force crew, learns, the Z Fighters, apologies,
Dre: The Z Fighters, please.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Learn that you can hide your hide your power level, which is—
Sylvia: They learn Zetsu, yeah.
Austin: Yes, yes, exactly.
Jack: It’s Zetsu!
Sylvia: That I think is something that is intentional in this. [Austin: Yes] I would have to look at the release, like how the releases [cross] line up but I'm pretty sure—
Austin: Oh it’s undoubtable to me, there's no way it’s, before Dragon Ball Z manga?? There’s no way, right?
Sylvia: Yeah, I don't think so, I don’t think so.
Keith: No, no no no, you’re right.
Sylvia: Yeah, right.
Keith: Yeah, Dragon Balls…
Austin: Hunter Hunter didn't start until ninety eight.
Keith: [cross] Five, six?
Austin: Ninety eight.
Keith: Ninety eight really?
Austin and Dre: Yeah.
Keith: Oh wait, we looked this up ‘cause I was like. It w— Surely it couldn't have been that close to the 99 anime but it totally was, that's why it wasn't finished.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Where as with Dragon Ball Z the manga starts in 89 [Sylvia: Okay] so like this is what I mean.
Sylvia: Time is fake to me.
Austin: It’s in the, it’s in the, it’s 100% referential to that.
Sylvia: Yeah, okay.
Austin: But, but yes,
Keith: Well it’s all, all based off of, you know, this sort of, root of the martial arts chi thing of like, [Austin: Yes, yes] we’re building power we’re suppressing, we’re channeling, we’re moving things around, and different shows do different things with this and it’s largely all doing Dragon Ball z.
Austin: But even that is doing kung fu movies—
Keith: Right, yeah yeah yeah.
Austin: It’s doing martial arts epics and is doing, you know. Which we’ll talk about when we talk about Nen a little bit and look at charts and shit, so.
Dre: Ugh.
Jack: Um, time for Gon to fight Riehlvelt.
Sylvia: Very quickly, I did just want to point out that like, this fight with Killua and Riehlvelt is the most typical shonen aethetic fight we get, I think. Up until what we get, the fight we get with Hisoka later.
Austin: Hisoka, yeah.
Sylvia: But this one felt like, so Naruto to me [Austin: yeah] in a lot of ways, especially with the music choices and everything.
Austin: Theres a shot where Killua has Gaara’s eyes? I don’t know if you picked this up [Sylvia: God] but while he’s getting electrocuted uh, he has like, the under eye, you know, thing that Gaara has you know?
Kieth and Sylvia: Yeah.
Keith: Just wait until we hear what show we think, uh, the Hisoka fight reminds me of, it’s going to be very funny.
Austin: I’m gonna put this in here so you can see what I’m talking about.
Sylvia: Oh yeah, just like a minor not on that that I wanted to get before we moved on.
Austin: [cross] For sure.
Keith: [cross] Oh yeah, yeah, the electrocuted, he does look like Gaara that’s—
Sylvia: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: he looks like Gaara here like 100% he has the liner, anyway. But I’m not a Naruto guy so.
Keith: [cross] He really does yeah I love Gaara.
Sylvia: I love Gaara, shout out to Gaara, they should have made, named that series Gara.
Keith: [laughs] it should have been called Gaara and it should have been about Gaara meeting plucky underdogs and turning them evil.
Austin: Sound great.
Sylvia: Yeah! What? What’s wrong with that, that sounds great!
Keith: Yeah, it does sound great! Instead of Boruto they should have just gone back and done an AU about Gaara making the world worse.
Sylvia: Yeah!!
Jack: That’s the tagline: making the world worse.
Keith: We get the same fight just redone with Gon, it’s almost equally as fast.
Sylvia: It’s faster I think even.
Keith: Oh wow okay.
Sylvia: It feels faster at least.
Keith: Oh there’s less, like, less patter, I guess that’s the—
Dre: Theres definitely less back and forth, there’s less talking.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: There's a real element of let's just get this guy out of the way, this is a mini boss now.
Dre: Yeah yeah yeah.
Keith: We’ve already established these guys are nothing.
Austin: He should've just run, he should've just not come back.
Jack: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: But again he really wants to be a floor master so I get it.
Jack: [cross] And he gets—
Sylvia: [cross] And they say if he loses one more he has to start from the beginning and a forfeit is still a loss, right?
Dre: Well I can’t remember had he already… hadn’t they already signed up to do their fights ahead of time,
Austin: I think you’re right.
Dre: Like before Gon beat up Gido and all that stuff?
Sylvia: I think so…
Dre: Okay.
Keith: They did sign up for a number of fights, I don’t remember which ones exactly were already planned. But if he's gonna run away he’s gonna loose no matter what so he might as well just run away ‘cause [pause] he lost, he lost bad.
Dre: It’s true.
Jack: [cross] This is kind of a—
Austin: [cross] This is kind of—
Jack: Oh, go ahead.
Austin: [insistent] You go ahead.
Jack: This is kind of a creepy fight. This has kind of a creepy ending. This has Gon—
Austin: More of Gon being mad!
Austin: It’s played for laughs but I’m glad that I wasn't the only person that was like, that’s a little twi— Gon joker moment, you know?
Jack: Gon introduces his new tactic, mess around with the floor tiles. Um and, disarms Riehlvelt and gets his whips and threatens to electrocute Riehlvelt and [cross] he’s already—
Austin: [cross] Oh and he does the wrist break again.
Sylvia: He does he breaks both his wrists like he breaks Illumi’s wrist.
Keith: [cross] Oh he does? I think I missed that.
Austin: [cross] That’s how he gets him to drop the whips.
Dre: [cross] Oh yeah! Yeah, that’s right.
Jack: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah.
Jack: And then he says like a joke, oh how high can I turn these things up. And then says only joking, and it's too late because we cut to Riehlvelt passing out in fear foaming at the mouth as Gon threatens to electrocute him. And I just wrote down victory, period.
Sylvia: This was also the fight where we get Hisoka doing a little power point presentation.
Austin: Yep, speaking of people going joker mode.
Sylvia: [cross] Yeah, yeah.
Keith: [cross] Oh god I forgot about this, it cuts back and forth between Killua and Hisoka doing this.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Sylvia: Basically it’s just Hisoka explaining the technique, the way Gon’s specific rock throw works in this fight.
Keith: I thought you were saying it's basically just Hisoka. Killua doesn't do anything. [laughs]
Sylvia: Now I wouldn’t, listen. How dare you. [pause] Yeah, it’s not really a plot important thing, he’s—
Austin: No but he’s doing like, the telestrator, he’s doing like the—
Sylvia: He’s! Absolutely, he’s doing ‘see when you do this it makes the move this way and so theyre open for attack’ and it’s real like…
Austin: It’s very fun, I like the diagrams, the fight diagrams are fun.
Sylvia: Hisoka’s the Tony Romo of Hunter Hunter.
Austin: Yes 100% yeah.
Dre: [laughs] God.
Austin: Tony Romo, don't sue us.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Dre: Also Tony Romo don’t do most of the other things that Hisoka does.
Austin: [cross] Yeah, don’t, please.
Sylvia: [cross] Yeah, don’t do, we dont, we just mean in this one regard mister Romo.
Austin: [cross] Allegedly! Allegedly! Hisoka is the, the Tony Romo.
Dre: [cross] Yeah, Tony Romo turns on the sunday morning football, sees Josh Fallon and goes shwing.
Austin: Yo- whoa oh my god.
Sylvia: [yelling] No!
Keith: I forgot that the shwing was in these episodes.
??? [cross] I did too!
??? I didn’t.
Austin: I can’t believe I was like ‘I don’t wanna do the earlier episodes of Heavens Arena I wanna do these ones the one with the leaf image in it’.
Keith: Its, I wanna be there for the shwing.
Austin: I wanna be there for the shween.
Dre: Be there for the double shween too.
Keith: I wanna be there for the full Hisoka ass.
Austin: Orgasm episode, yeah, uh-huh.
Sylvia: [noise of discomfort]
Dre: I guess that’s technically next episode sorry I jumped ahead.
Austin: It’s not this episode, yeah, uh-huh.
Jack: Um.
Dre: It’s bad though.
Austin: So if you’re doing a weird thing where you’re listening to each segment of the episodes then going to watch the next episode we’ve just spoiled something for you.
Jack: [laughs]
Keith: We’ve never been good about that.
Sylvia: Hey if you’re doing that, are you okay?
Dre: Yeah, are you okay?
Jack: Just like if you send me the workprint because I want to hear what it sounds like.
Sylvia: Yeah…uh...
Austin: Ugh...
Keith: We have never had good demarcations between episodes this is the, we are the point where the episodes change, I like to think, a very fun little blur.
Jack: We do tend to say and now we move on to x.
Sylvia: We try!
Austin: Have you considered making it so that everyone’s voices become water color and then like a Dio song starts playing? Because that's what the show does.
Jack: Yeah, oh we need a little subtitle at the bottom that just says Hunter Hunter media club plus! Then as Gon leaves Hisoka is in the tunnel clapping, he compliments him creepily which, [Dre: Ugh] Hisoka has never delivered a, Hisoka's never delivered a none creepy compliment in his life.
Sylvia: Get a job, get away from her.
Dre: [laughs]
Austin: To be fair! Gon just did some Hisoka shit!
Sylvia: Oh he absolutely did!
Austin: It’s on him he shouldn't have done Hisoka shit!
Jack: Ah, yeah! And we talked about—
Dre: Well…
Austin: Don’t fuck around and be the joker if you don’t want the joker to show up!
Keith: Yeah…
Sylvia: Straight up!!
Keith: Maybe they should've gotten Gon to think a little bit, you're doing stuff that Hisoka admires…
Austin: This is what I’m saying!
Keith: Yeah, I mean Gon goes from being basically like I mean he’s living in the woods he’s little Goku he doesn't know about fighting he just knows he's really strong for no reason he knows about his dad I guess that's one up on Goku.
Austin: One Goku, yeah.
Keith: Who only knew about his adopted grandfather, shoutout to Gohan and then all of a sudden unlike Goku thrust into the most horrible violent world of all time. Full of adult psychos who barely even notice that you're a kid, let alone treat you like one and then, and now he’s a little freak! It took thirty four episodes, thirty five episodes and now Gon is a freak.
Dre: Yeah, he’s freakified.
Jack: We’ve talked in the past about how the show likes to draw lines between Gon and Hisoka as sort of, if not mirror images, two planets orbiting around each other and I think yes, I, the thing I picked up in this moment is Gon is being scary, between the breaking the leg and the electrocution threatening I didn't draw that line straight to meeting Hisoka in the tunnel because then the thing Hisoka says is ‘you've met the grade, set the time and place, I’ll take you on anytime’ which is like yeah, I feel like we can draw that line. The ways in which Gon and Hisoka are becoming similar—
Keith: And the show's about to draw that line so explicitly, also.
Jack: The show is about to draw that line literally as explicitly as it possibly can.
Keith: And weirdly though, weirdly? Them drawing that line so explicitly? To me it's so obvious that they're actually drawing a different line. Which we’ll get, they're using—
Austin: That Hisoka.
Keith: The fact that they're... They're drawing that line as a way to suggest something different which I think is really interesting which we’ll get to. I think ‘just kidding’ was really funny. Just to get it out there.
Dre: ‘just kidding’ [makes sticking tongue out noise]
Keith: ‘just kidding’ I thought that was funny, I mean it’s sick but it’s funny.
Austin: Tongue out.
Dre: Stick he tonguey out.
Sylvia: No, it is funny but it’s also you know, jokers kinda funny.
Keith: Yeah, it sometimes is funny, to be evil.
Dre: ‘s true.
Jack: [laughing]
Austin: Keith J Carberry.
Austin: Before we go to the second episode super important question. How many Coco’s are there?
Keith: [laughs]
Dre: Good question.
Austin: Did y’all not watch the post?
Keith: The Hunterpedia, yeah.
Austin: The Hunterpedia.
Jack: No! I didn’t see the Hunterpedia.
Dre: I forgot that was a thing, the Hunterpedia.
Sylvia: I only watched one of them this week, yeah.
Jack: Please, please, tell me, what happens?
Austin: The Hunterpedia this week is Coco! Does everyone remember who Coco is?
Dre: She’s the announcer.
Jack: Coco is the extremely fun announcer, she is basically a character entirely through her vocal performance. The actress playing her is doing a great job.
Austin: Yeah. So, so, Gon is like we’re introducing Coco she’s the one who does all the fights, announces all the fights at Kevins a— Kevin’s arena?
Sylvia: [yelling] Kevins arena?!
All: [laughing]
Keith: [as Kevin] Hey every welcome home, this is Kevin's arena, grab a seat.
Dre: [as Kevin] This is my place.
Austin: [as Kevin] Yeah, it’s cool if you fight.
Sylvia: Kevin is the name of one of the floor masters, in the Heavens Arena martial arts school.
Keith: [as Kevin] If there’s a stain on the seat, it’s dry.
Austin: [as Kevin] Don’t worry about it. I tried to get it up with lemon juice it only made it worse.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: And Killua’s like oh she’s the one who’s always talking, right? And Gon goes I wonder how many of her there are? And Killua gets like, uh-oh eyes and goes there’s just the one! But I think Gon is right. How is she announcing all the different fights at 200 levels at once!
Keith: [laughs]
Jack: Oh, that’s a good question.
Keith: I think you just get assigned. You know, every boy gets assigned a Coco.
Austin: She’s assigned?? No! That doesn't make sense.
Jack: No, ah, listen listen listen, it’s Nen! It’s Nen doing it!
Austin: [gasp] she has her ability, she a um—
Jack: She’s a conjurer.
Austin: A conjurer! She’s conjured, see? It’s all paying off already, you hate it but it’s paying off.
Sylvia: But she can’t see Nen.
Austin: Oh well maybe it doesn’t work.
Sylvia: Oh well maybe she’s just pretending. She’s just pretending! You’re right! I’m wrestling fan I should know this shit.
Jack: And you wanna know the real thing?
Dre: Yeah, it’s a shoe??? Brother.
Jack: This is you can go on, read my fanfic about this. [Dre: Uh-huh.] There, you might think which one of her is the real one? And which one are the Nen projections? The answer is all the announcers are Nen projections and when you get to floor 253 then you get to meet floor master Coco, the real one.
Austin: Mmmm.
Sylvia: It turns out it’s the sleepy lady at floor 200 that’s summoning the Cocos.
Dre: That’s why she’s so sleepy.
Austin: That’s very fun.
Jack: Yeah! That’s why she’s an announcer, because she's learning people’s tactics. That she then. ‘Cause she sees them all come up.
Austin: I love this.
Dre: Yeah, you know I’m in love with the Coco.
Keith: I can’t believe they used that sleepy girl and then never brought her back.
Sylvia: [to Dre] Shut the fuck up.
Dre: [laughs]
Jack: The sleepy girl was real because that’s me, I'm the sleep girl. 24/7.
Dre: What a mood—
Keith: Biggest unanswered questions: why was she so sleepy?
Sylvia: Why not.
Dre: I bet it’s hard to work there, man.
Keith: [cross] Yeah. Having to deal with like people depressively…
Jack: [cross] People keep getting—killed…
Sylvia: You have to do clerical work for Hisoka like… come one.
Keith: Everyone’s letting out their blood lust around you and you’re just trying to file papers.
Sylvia and Dre: Yeah.
Dre: Hisoka, I’m just trying to get you to sign this ipad that says you’re gonna fight, can you not.
Jack: Hisoka is creepy to everyone, right? Not just to Gon? I’m trying to think. We’ve seen—
Austin: Hmm, not like this.
Jack: [cross] He’s especially creepy to Gon.
Keith: [cross] He asked out his co-worker, weirdly?
Sylvia: He’s taken a special interest in Gon, very clearly.
Jack: Oh, yeah yeah yeah, but he’s not like a chill guy to other people.
Sylvia: No, I think the closest we’ve ever seen him to being a chill guy is when he interacts with Illumi, right?
Jack: With Illumi, another monster.
Sylvia: Well.
Dre: Well.
Keith: And the Nen stitches girl.
Dre: Yeah, the Nen— the other member of the phantom troupe.
Sylvia: He’s still a freak to her. He’s real weird to her.
Austin: He’s weird to her.
Keith: He’s real weird to her and asks her out on date and she says no by just leaving.
Austin: And—
Dre: Hey! I shoulda asked this then, do you think he was actually asking her out?
Sylvia: No I thi— I always interpreted it as him going like, I wanna fight you…
Dre: Okay.
Keith: I think that, it’s ambiguous, I always read it as legitimate.
Jack: The way those scenes play for me is about, and I’m putting such heavy inverted commas around this word, ‘humanizing’ Hisoka. We see Hisoka in his apartment, we see Hisoka in the shower, we see him in different outfits, and so the thought of him asking someone out on a date is consistent with how this scene plays for me. We’re seeing Hisoka in a different fucked up mode.
Dre: Yeah.
Dre: Hisoka tinder profile…
Austin: But like this is the thing, it’s humanizing so that he can be more of a monster, right?
Keith: Right, that’s exactly what we said last week. ‘Cause if he was just, I’m listening to the episodes as they come out, I'm not getting early cuts of this or anything and so the most recent episode. Someone raised is Hisoka even a human, is Hisoka a hu—
Sylvia: That was probably Jack.
Austin: I think it was Jack, yeah, [Keith: Yeah] and the thing is like, they show you yeah, he is and that's why, and that way you don't give him that out for being the way he is, right? It’s a it’s a very a well established choice of how to vilify this dude, is to make him have to get surgery, [cross] now it’s magic surgery but yeah.
Keith: [cross] The line specifically, the line specifically was quote ‘I don't know if Hisoka and Gon are the same thing’ is, is what Jack said.
Austin: Yeah, that’s exactly.
Sylvia: It was such a good sentence that we should just keep in mind.
Keith: Yep! That's what I have here is ‘that's the kind of definitive statement that we should keep in mind see if it’s affirmed or refuted.’
Austin: Yeah. And you know what can I say something ‘cause like this manga’s still going! I guess neither do I. I don't know shit.
Keith: Yeah yeah yeah.
Jack: Well.
Austin: I don't know anything about either of these motherfuckers.
Keith: We just know a hundred twenty episodes more of nothing.
Austin: Right.
Jack: [laughs]
Dre: Hmm.
Sylvia: Eh.
Jack: Episode 35 begins, you can tell because my voice has gone into watercolor.
Austin: Mhm.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Jack: It's time to study hatsu.
Keith: It’s time for school.
Austin: It’s time for school.
Jack: After which Wing says our heroes will be able to develop their own Nen style. And this, this was a really nice moment for me, I've talked about this in the previous episode I’m so, I have such little interest in Nen theory and I love seeing weirdos do weird magic and so as soon as Wing was like oh you're actually gonna start to be able to express yourself in the way that we've seen like, Hisoka express himself with his Nen, good I'm excited about that. And here comes a powerpoint about hatsu, because it turns out that ina addition to sort of doing like a categorisation of the world through magic through Nen. Nen is also subdivided further into six different sorts of Nen user. We talked about them earlier as personality test almost like star signs [Austin: Mm-hm.] this sense of are you a capricorn? This means you’re like this. Or whatever. And there are six types of Nen. And I'm just going to run through them really quickly so that if you are not watchingalong you can get a sense of what we’re talking about.
Jack: Enhancers strengthen and reinforce their natural abilities. Emitters propel—
Austin: That’s a weird… wait wait wait that’s and important, ‘cause that’s what it says in the dub, right?
Jack: That's what it says in the sub.
Austin: Okay no ‘cause it’s important, they enhance themselves or objects. Maybe it's in the sub versus dub that Wing explicitly says in one of them that they enhance objects and themselves is an object. [Jack: Hmm!] But this is, it's important that it's not just run fast jump high. You know what I mean? It’s also, he says—
Keith: This is why the water moves.
Austin: Right in the subtitles it’s enhances are able to enhance objects, is what he says, [Jack: Hmm] so yeah. It is also run jump, run fast, jump high but yes exactly Keith it's why there gets to become more water when we get to the water test.
Jack: Transmuters change the quality of aura from one thing into another. Conjurers create things out of aura. This is how Coco in my award winning, multi kudos fic [Austin: Mm-hm.] runs Heavens Arena. Manipulators control things with aura. And then specialists are those with a unique and distinct aura.
Austin: You skipped one.
Jack: Oh.
Keith: It, two? Did you skip two?
Jack: One two three [Austin: No] four five six I thought I said six.
Austin: Did you say emission?
Jack: Emitters, yeah, I said emitters [cross] propel aura.
Dre: [cross] Emitters.
Austin: [cross] Emitters, you said emitters, right, yeah. Okay.
Keith: iI, oh I thought the one that you skipped was transmuter.
Austin: No, that was, they said that right after enhancer.
Keith: Well good job, you got all six and I'm a bad listener and so is Austin, I guess.
Austin: Yeah, terrible.
Jack: [laughs] Um, Wing highlights that it’s very important to find an ability that suits you. [Keith: Yeah.] and then [cross] he introduces—
Austin: [cross] You're born into it, also it can change. [Jack: Yeah.] The premise is a little star sign, it's a little, it's a little you've got to find yourself as you're growing up and get, make sure you assign yourself the right Nen type based on your experiences.
Keith: It’s—
Austin: The example that they give is like hey! You know, Gon’s naturally, has these great senses, Gon can hear and smell [cross] really well.
Jack: [cross] He has springy muscles.
Austin: He has springy muscles and then he grew up in the island. He grew up on whale island where all that stuff was being put to the test in wilderness, you know, and so he has this deep connection to nature that kind of, you know, it enhances him further.
Keith: It enhances his enhancer.
Austin: Right, exactly.
Jack: And this is fascinating because it comes right back to what we were talking about with Hisoka. It stops us from having the easy out of oh well Hisoka was just born under an evil star or Hisoka was just born under a magicians star. There were circumstances that made Hisoka go uh—
Keith: it's really like nature plus nurture plus Myers Briggs.
Austin and Jack: [laugh]
Austin: Kind of yeah.
Keith: Including that they say it can change later in life. You can just keep—
Austin: They do say that.
Keith: Yeah, they do say.
Jack: Um, and he draws a six pointed, what is this shape called?
Sylvia: [cross] A hexagon.
Dre: [cross] A hexagram?
Jack: A hexagon.
Sylvia: That is that is very funny, the, given the [cross] Friends at the Table season Palisade.
Austin: [cross] Palisade, uh-huh, that’s a hexagon.
Jack: Look, no, march named that, that wasn't me.
Austin: Right right right, yeah, uh.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Jack: And these, they are. They're ordered around this hexagon sort of deliberately. Uh, in the sense that the ones that are closest to your own, so the categories that are closest to your main category will be easiest for you to learn and the ones that are further away will be harder for you to learn.
Austin: Right, you can [Keith: I—] do a lil dip, in the parlance of like, an RPG. An enhancer could dip into an emitter skillset more easily than they could jump across, and try to use specialization or like, the slightly closer conjuration or manipulation ones.
Keith: Yeah. So I, when this arc first started I warned that my first time through this arc, it felt so much longer than it actually is. Ten episodes. But some of this Nen stuff really dragged for me. In a way that rewatching it I really appreciated. But something that I loved begin, from the very very begging is this explanation, this graph, and then specifically the illustration of why uh, that guy that Hisoka fight who’s name I'm blanking on right now, with the white hair.
Sylvia: Kastro.
Austin: Kastro.
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Keith: Why was so easy to beat, despite [Sylvia: They—] having been very strong. And they go not on— he was an enhancer, not only was he trying to master a manipulator tactic he was also trying to master a conjurer tactic.
Sylvia: It made him like, even more of a punk.
Keith: It made him seem like the dumbest guy, who's ever lived.
Sylvia: It’s so funny like, I called him Yamcha last time we recorded [Keith yeah!] [cross] And they Yamcha the fuck out of ‘im.
Austin: [cross] Damn, he literally does have wolf fang fist.
Keith: He does have wolf fang fist!
Sylvia: He does have wolf fang fist! That is literally what I said! Thank you!
Austin: And they say! They say! Wolf fang fist is good! He should’ve just gotten really good at wolf fang fist!
Keith: He shoulda just got really good at wolf fang fist.
Sylvia: You know!
Dre: Mm-hm.
Sylvia: Yomcha fucked around with that spirit ball too and it didn’t work out for him.
Austin: [laughing]
Keith: Yomcha has that one thing that no one else has, that no one else can say they have. Which is the brains—
Sylvia: Yamcha fucked around with that spirit ball, too, and it didn’t work out for him.
Dre: [cross-talk] Noooo it didn’t.
Keith: Psychos But—!
Austin: [laughing] It didn’t!
Keith: Yamcha has one thing that no one else can say they have, which is the brains—The—
Austin: [cross-talk[ A-A good ex-girlfriend? Or— I don’t know, what’s—
Sylvia: I can say that.
Keith: He had the—He had the good—He had the good sense to just stop training after the Frieza arc. He just goes, “Nah, I can’t hang anymore.”
Austin: [cross-talk] Oh yeah.
Sylvia: [laughing] He retired!
Keith: He retired!
Austin: He went to baseball—He goes back to baseball, right?
Keith: He goes, “I got, I got cucked harder than anyone’s ever been cucked in the world—
Dre: [cross-talk] Jesus.
Austin: [far away] Jesus Christ!
Keith: My girlfriend went to another planet to bring me back—
Sylvia: [cross-talk] Yeah—No—For—Listen!
Keith: And while I was coming back to life, she got knocked up by the guy who killed me—
Austin: [cackles]
Keith: And! And, my best friend is one-million times stronger than me? I'm going home.
Austin: Wait who’s his, who you calling his best friend?
Keith: Goku.
Austin: That’s not his best friend.
Keith: He, Goku’s not his best friend but his—
Sylvia: You know, it’s his best friend, Goku— it’s not Goku’s best friend— it—it’s—
Austin: Isn’t his best friend the little guy?
Keith: [cross] B— okay, no, so besides…
Sylvia and Dre: [cross] Puar?
Keith: No, that’s his husband.
Sylvia: That’s his…
Austin: Yeah…
Dre: Okay, yeah, no, you’re right.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Keith: They love each other, that’s different.
Austin: Oh. Okay.
Dre: Are you sure you’re not thinking of? Of? Tien and uh…
Austin: And Chiaotzu.
Dre: They definitely love each other.
Keith: I think there’s and argument there but there’s a part where Puar sees Yamcha again for the first time and Puar is like, I, the sun didn’t look the same since I last saw you.
Austin: Aw!
Dre: Damn.
Austin: Damn…
Dre: Things I did not expect Keith J Carberry to say cucked. And knocked up.
Sylvia: Oh, I loved it.
Dre: No, me too!
Sylvia: I’m gonna be thinking about that for a week.
Austin: We live in this world now.
Dre: [laughing]
Austin: Anyway! [Sylvia: laughs] Here we are six different types of Nen.
Jack: Yes! Now all this talk about personal Nen abilities and you know, learning that our characters might have, or do, or do have but we don't know what they are yet. Do have these fields of Nen were seeing them get put into RPG classes. Really does speak to the possibility of like, getting to see our characters do distinct and interesting Nen activities. And that's exciting to me.
Jack: [cont.] On the other hand there is something flattening about the way that all the magic in the world, that appeared in the Hunter Exam as this outlandish regularly deeply surprising sort of maneuvering [Austin: Mhm] first gets boiled down into Nen and then further boiled down into six pokemon types [Austin: Mhm] of Nen [Sylvia: Yeah] feels like it. I don't wanna be out here just like oh man why does everything have to have like a label or whatever [Sylvia laughs] if the ways I am being guided to think and talk about this world are— if I am being pushed towards, oh right, I need to think about this person as an enhancer, rather than oh, this is Gon and Gon behaves this way or whatever [Austin: Right.] I feel like I am watching, uh, I feel like I am running into mirrors in a mirror maze.
Austin: Mmm, mmhm.
Jack: I’m just like what I thought was a door is actually a mirror.
Austin: Yeah, it’s funny because this is why I wanted to be on this episode, right? [Jack: Yeah] This is the episode where I came to understand how you could get 160 episodes out of this show. Because this is, for me, who does a lot of world building the forward thinkingness of this is so. It's a relief in a way. Because I have tried to do settings where the magic is unfettered and it hurts. Because eventually you do a thing you can't take back, and you can't conceptualize why it worked that way and something else doesn't work that way. Or why does the rule apply here and not here? Um, and the screenshot I sent in for the screen shot episode is the test that they’re about to take to reveal what type of Nen user or Nen variations they have the most affinity towards or whatever, right? And it’s because the way that this stuff ends up working is one of my favorite things about this show. But without getting, without getting deep into the how’s and whys I just, really just looking backwards, what I would say is: it sets the show up to do what you just said, kind of over and over again which feels like: okay! Now we understand there's a world where everything, where there are rules that apply and then people are gonna keep doing word things and it's going to be, you're going to find yourself surprised again in a way you wouldn’t if the only thing you knew was, everyone can do special powers.
[cont.] You know, it's one thing for someone to go learn how to do a special power in a world where there's a bunch of other people who can already do special powers. I think it's something else to be like oh, they're learning how to do this special power because this is the type of thing that they are or they don't know h— that's not what they are and they're learning the special power anyway! Right?
Keith: Or they have one of the six that's like: I don’t know this is, I don't know what this is.
Austin: I don't know what that is. Or you spend a 100 episodes thinking you basically understand what the gist of enhancement is and then you meet a character who’s an enhancer that does something really surprising. And it’s not, there’s a, there’s kind of two reasons that I like this. One is as a writer: having those boundaries is also having prompts. As soon as you have this stuff you can start playing with it. As soon as you have that language. And I like it when a story gives the language to the reader or the viewer or the player rather than keeping it to a secret bible that only the writers get to have access to, right? And the second thing is, this is a show for children. And children like to look at things and go ooo! I'm a transmuter! Ooo! I'm an enhancer. [Sylvia: Yeah] I'm gonna write my OC who’s an emitter but they can also— they can shoot an energy ball but then they use manipulation to control the energy ball and turn it into a guy and then it's an energy ball guy that fights next to me. And I love you know, when genre media gives the reader, especially the young reader the language to start playing in it’s world directly. There's a reason we have five Stels in principality— in uh, Partizan and Palisade, right? In the Divine Principality, right? It's because—
Keith: And we have a compatibility wheel.
Austin: And why we have a compatibility wheel between them all! Like that helps suggest a like, a kind of identification play with the reader, right? Like ooo! I like that the Apostolosian’s have mechs that have moving parts and they have these cool, this cool relationship with their self and their selfhood and their pronouns. Then someone else is like, I really love the sort of like, bulky mech of the Orion, of Stel Orion I love the battle tech vibes that are going on over there. Then someone else really likes the religious themes of Stel Nideo, right? You're giving people the sort of playground materials that, and then the rules to begin playing with and undercut. And do I think this is the episode that presents all that in the most exciting way possible? I say no except like the episode doesn’t finish 15 minutes in, you get the rest of the episode and I think that that is, and the secret of the rest of the episode is you don’t see anyone use any fucking Nen techniques. Right? [Jack: Yeah] They’re powered by Nen but we’ll come back around to what that particular fight is but it spends 20 minutes, 15 minutes or whatever it is being like here are diagrams and, you know, split screens of you looking at Kastro fucking up and here they’re gonna go do this water test—
Sylvia: [laughing] it’s the cringe compilation!
Austin: It's the cringe compilation!
Keith and Dre: [laugh]
Austin: And at the end you get like, hey hey hey hey hey. Fuck all that. It's time to box. You know? [Jack and Sylvia: Yeah] and that structurally means, that this episode pulls itself out of that stuff out of any sort of like, you know the stuff you know Keith you keep talking about it s slow arc you remember it thinking it was a slow arc [Keith: Yeah.] you remember this episode feeling like it was slow. And I think there is a slow act in this three act structure. You know? But really it's like a slow four minutes, you know?
Keith: Yeah, the real slow part for me was at, towards the beginning of this, the first time that they learn about Nen but—
Austin: Oh yeah, early on where they're going through— Where he lies to them about the different types of—
Keith: He lies to them and then he's grounded, yeah, that, [cross] that is like, a little slower.
Austin: [cross] And none of that lands the same because we’re not speaking, we don't read or speak Japanese.
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: Oh yeah.
Austin: Like I don't know if y’all talked about this in that episode or not. But like, he’s doing, there's a gag happening in that episode which is that, he has, in that the kanji are incomplete, or modified.
Keith: Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, that we talked about.
Austin: Okay that episode hasn't been released yet.
Keith: They explain it, they don't put it in those exact terms in the show but you watch Wing like, change the word on the board to be like, look it was a pun.
Dre: Finish it.
Austin: Exactly.
Keith: Uh, and yeah, that leads into the actual explanation of Nen and then it leads into Gon like, being grounded for two months. And it's fine, I watch it now and I appreciate what's happening and I like Wing and I think he’s a really interesting kind of mentor figure. But I do remember being like, right off of the Hunter Exam and then the Zoldyck stuff like [Austin: Yeah] like we’re supposed to be in the battle tower and we’re like, at school. But now I like all that stuff. But I always liked that graph. I always loved the graph. It plays with, for me, one of the things this show does well is , it’s giving you information— it’s like not consistent in how it’s giving you information, it is totally willing to give you tons and tons of subtext with like watching one character watch another character or watch a character notice something or watch a character not notice something [Austin: Mm-hm.] but it's also willing to tell you to your face like, I'm Wing, direct to camera you let there you gotta remember emitter transmuter enhancer manipulator conjurer and specialist. You gotta remember that!
Jack: Well this is, this is like something that you missed on previous episodes Austin is that a lot of the rest of the casts response to me saying I'm sick and tired of Nen has been I understand why you are saying this the first time around, but this is going somewhere, we, we are, you will feel differently about this later. And on one hand that's stories, [cross] story at the end of it is different to story at the end of it.
Austin: [cross] Yeah, of course.
Keith: And that’s part of why it was important for me at the start of this to tell you that I felt that way when we went through this.
Jack: But it's interesting that that is consistent with what you are describing, Austin, in terms of this being— although it might be being presented as a flattening or a foreclosing structure actually being the bottom tier of a pyramid that we are about to see open up.
Austin: Yeah, I want, like— If you've seen this show before a—, which is everybody on this podcast except for Jack, and probably a lot of people listening, I want you to close your eyes and think about some of the powers that get used by the end of this show. And think about like, those fit into this categorization still.
Sylvia: Mm-hm.
Austin: And how that is like, unimaginable, there is stuff unimaginably interesting and innovative and cool and weird—
Jack: Beyond your wildest dreams!
Austin: Beyond your wildest dreams. That is being, and in some ways I'm undercutting that by saying this out loud, right, and I understand that, but like I say that because I think that that is what's so exciting to me about any time I am reading about a fantasy book and someone presents a magic system. It’s like, the thing that I'm actually interested in is why you needed this to, where are you actually going with this because it ain’t magic missile. You know what I mean?
Jack and Sylvia: Mmmm.
Austin: The, you're gonna do some wild bullshit with this or and if you fail to and that's on you you know what I mean but gimme the systems that you're playing with so I understand and can be hype when something wild happens down the road.
Keith: And something else that I really like is, you know one of my favorite shows of all time that I loved growing up that I watched way way before I saw Hunter Hunter was YuYu Hakusho [Austin: Right] the previous manga and anime written by Togashi and that's a show that does have like a really squishy magic system in it. Like they don't explain a lot of the rules. Like there's little like rules like, you've got a gun you can only fire it once a day. But as you get stronger you can fire it more times. Stuff like that. But there's—
Austin: It's a spirit gun, to be clear .
Keith: Yeah, it’s a spirit gun it’s a gun that fires Kamehameha.
Jack: It's not a gun that has the little timer on it that I use to turn my Christmas lights on and off.
Keith: No, you have a gun for that?? [laughing]
Austin: [cross] No, but that sounds like an ability that could show up in—
Dre: [laughing]
Sylvia: [cross] Welcome to America.
Austin: That sounds like a gun that, an ability that could show up in Hunter Hunter to me, Jack.
Jack: Also here’s the thing, right, it's like, I think I'm getting a sense of what you're describing, which is that I have been shown six things and I have been reading these six things as like oh, right, fine, it's a banana, it’s an apple, it’s an orange, it’s a kiwi, it’s a grape and it's a melon, and you're looking at those six things and going alright, over there is fruits, over here is.
Keith: Right.
Austin: I’m looking at those and going, well what the fuck is bungee gum because it’s one of these, it’s in one of these and what’s next to it. Like if bungee gum is transmutation, what else could be transmutation.
Dre: Yeah.
Jack: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: They say that that's not me spoiling anything, bungee gum is transmutation.
Jack: [cross] Yes, because we learned it—
Dre: [cross] It has the properties of rubber and gum.
Austin: It has the property of rubber and gum.
Keith: God I, every time they say that in any context I lose my mind I love it.
Dre: [giggling]
Austin: The crowd goes wild.
Keith: [laughing]
Jack: Also because Hisoka loved this brand of gum when he was a child.
Austin: Oh it's so good.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: And [yelling] but who even knows! He!
Jack: Oh, yeah.
Keith: That could just be a total lie!
Austin: Yeah... How did—
Dre: [cross] You know what, I don't think it is.
Austin: [cross] How did I get these scars, except how did I like this gum.
Keith: Yeah, it’s just a little.
Austin: Which gum did I like.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Jack: Um and so—
Austin: That gum Hisoka likes is coming back into style.
Sylvia: I was trying to figure out that bit.
Austin: Phew we got ‘em all we can move on.
Sylvia: Yeah yeah yeah.
Jack: Um yeah, there's a method for finding your auras type and in the way that I feel like this show just has a really good instinct for cutting from one scene to another. Not just cross cutting from scene happening in place a and then place b but saying we’re moving on from one scene to another in this same room. So this is Wing, they say is there a way to find your aura type and Wing says yes there is. And then we get this close up of the of a glass of water almost overflowing. With a meniscus of water on the top and a leaf falls on the glass of water as we go into this place—
Keith: Ahh look familiar?
Jack: And I said! Here we go! The screenshot! This is water divination and your ability will be revealed depending on what happens. Wing gives a little demo and reveals that he is an enhancer because a bunch of water comes out of the glass.
Keith: And to me, to me that's a plot twist. I'm like Wing’s an enhancer?? Clearly Wing is a conjurer based on his personality.
Austin: Mmm—
Jack: [cross] He’s the teacher though, I would have said.
Dre: [cross] Ooohhh… I didn’t think of that.
Jack: And here now, here's the thing Keith, this is not, the personality bit, there's a—
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: The personality gets involved with Nen— what are these things called? Nen archetypes?
Austin: Somethin’ like that.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: I think they just call them types. Nen types.
Jack: Nen types?
Keith: Maybe archetypes is totally fine I think.
Jack: Um so I wasn't really thinking of it in terms of their personality. I was just thinking, oh, Wing is a teacher and this is like learning what your university professor did their PhD in or whatever.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Dre: Hmmm!
Jack: Oh Wing’s, Wing’s PhD or whatever is making a bunch of water come out of a glass. [Dre laughs] Uh, Gon is an enhancer bu— and it's very sweet he can’t produce as much water as Wing but he tries.
Keith: This is a great example of, just really really quick. Look at— we’ve never seen Wing fight. But like look at Wing and Gon are the same thing on this list.
Jack: Mm!
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: That's weird! [laughs]
Sylvia: Well it also, by doing that there’s definitely, they’re inviting you to draw comparisons between the two of them and look back at some of Wing’s like, sorta like.
Austin: Wing punchin’ the wall—
Sylvia: Wing punchin’ the wall or like—
Austin: Bein’ sloppy.
Sylvia: [laughs] [cross] Yeah, true!
Dre: [cross] Oh yeah!
Keith: He is sloppy yeah, he is.
Sylvia: Or like how he slices through the juice without thinking. He does act on impulse the way that Gon does sometimes and it's not to be like, all enhancers are like this. They're one to one. But there are definitely like they're like oh yeah, there's the similarity like, you can do that now.
Austin: Can I tell you another thing here that this is? What did they say that enhancers do? They enhance themselves or other objects. [cross] Wing is a teacher.
Keith: [cross] Oh, like a teacher.
Austin: Yes, yes.
Jack and Dre: Oooh—
Sylvia: Damn! Damn!
Austin: Uh-huh.
Sylvia: We just got Austin Walkered.
Austin: Boom!
Jack: Makes you think.
Austin: Makes you think.
Keith: Yeah, enhancers when they’re teachers make you think.
Austin: That's right.
Austin: I think also, I would believe that he’s lying [cross] I don’t think it’s real.
Dre: That he’s an enhancer?
Austin: But what if he’s faking it.
Jack: Because he’s good enough to. Right?
Austin: Yeah. Yeah.
Dre: Yeah…
Jack: Wing is a skilled enough [cross] Nen user.
Austin: [cross] Well we learn.
Austin: Is this the scene where we learn—?
Keith: No no, it’s at the very end of 36.
Jack: I just, I just threw my, oh we’ll get to it but I just, raahh!!!
Dre: [laughs] you good?
Jack: But yes, he could be lying. Um, I think that the whole, he’s a teacher and he’s enhancing other objects is too good to, that that makes me think that he’s really one.
Keith: I think it’s real.
Jack: Zushi is a manipulator, the leaf moves around!
Austin: The leaf moves around.
Keith: [cross] Just a little bit.
Jack: [cross] There's something so simple about this test. It really does, they call it water divination and it really does feel like the divining for water with divining rods or sticks or something. Almost folk magic you know? [Dre: Mm-hm] Nothing happens when Killua tries, bless his soul. And for a second I was like [feigning distress] [gasp] Killua can’t do it… [Austin: Mmm—] but no the water has gotten sweeter because Killua is a transmuter and I think you know it is, I don't think the metaphor is particularly subtle but I do think that there is something interesting in Killua making water taste sweeter.
Austin: Yeah…
Jack: Something becoming sweeter attached to Killua is notable.
Sylvia: I think also just, straight up like the, uh, change is gonna be a big thing with Killua. And like transformation out of like… you know it's a bit of a, maybe this is a bit of a reach but like the thing with the water is like, they expect it to taste the same but it tastes different now. Where Killua is like expected to be this assassin and a lot of his plot is, not— him fighting against that and wanting to do something else.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: And I think, I think like that's something to keep in mind.
Austin: Yeah, a thing that is like super interesting, the— there's no word done to like, retroactively put Killua's abilities into this schema like, what’s the—
Jack: Oh, yeah.
Austin: Rhythm the assassin rhythm walk?
Keith: Rhythm echo.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: Rhythm step isn’t like, they're not like, and that was an enhance ability you were doing back then. Like no that's just some weird assassin shit that he knows.
Keith: [laughs]
Jack: Zoldyck family stuff.
Austin: Yeah, um but it's not but it's certainly not transmutation [Jack: Yeah] so, it's fun to have that. He has this set of abilities that are his family's abilities but now, we’ve found out he has this whole other thing. We’ve never seen him do anything that I would call transmutation. So, exciting to see what that might look like.
Jack: Which is that the— The recognition that you are more than the abusive environment that you have been, [Austin: Mm!] right? That you have a capacity, oh I never realized that I could do these things. Or that I was this kind of a person.
Jack: Um there is a kind of patience and reserve here from Togashi. Togashi has already shown himself to be really good at telescoping in to a really tiny moment. We’ve seen this in the way he shows character's interiority. This kind of bouncing perspective. But there's such a really beautiful little reserve to these deeply consequential discoveries and realizations about, sort of, selfhood [Austin: Mm!] being focused down to tiny changes to a leaf on a glass of water. That kind of like, collapsing of scope is just a nice scene here. And then to have this scene end with Gon setting the—telephoning Hisoka to tell him that he is setting the date for the fight to july 10th is like coming crashing out of this moment of focus. It’s great.
Keith: I’m looking at my notes and I was wrong, Austin it's not the end of 36 austin it is after this scene. After the ass scene.
Austin: Oh, that? Oh—
Sylvia: Hah!
Austin: Yeah, you're— yeah, it is because it, there's a picture of who shows up. So yeah, we get the call, Killua, uh, Killua jesus, Hisoka, uh, you know radiates murderous intent AKA casts a spell as we know.
Keith: Just happens to be nude for the call.
Austin: Happens to be nude for the call.
Dre: Just happens... Yeah, uh-huh.
Jack: I like this! I like nude Hisoka! [Sylvia laughs] I think for exactly the reasons—
Dre: We’re seeing him naked a lot recently…
Jack: Yeah, we are! I think exactly for the reason, well I think it does two things. Hisoka has this horrible psychosexual thing going on. That's sort of coming naturally to—
Austin: We’ll talk more about that momentarily.
Jack: We’ll talk more about that momentarily. But I think, also, it does what we talked about in the last episode and Austin what you were talking about earlier. We can not— We can no longer say Hisoka is not a person. Well I mean, I don't know. I don't know.
Keith: Human is up for grabs, it well, person.
Austin: He takes showers.
Keith and Jack: He takes showers.
Austin: He he doesn’t use clown magic to clean himself or some’—
Jack: And he is reduced down to a naked state standing in his apartment or whatever.
Keith: He has people that seem like they're friends that he admires.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Yeah. Especially because this is— I suppose this is the brief moment to talk about it. Hisoka has this very distinctive costume and one of the elements of the costume.
Austin: Did y’all talk about the costume change by the way?
Jack: [cross] We did.
Keith: [cross] We did, I didn't notice it at first.
Jack: And in fact there’s a little flashback later in this chunk of episodes to Hisoka in his first costume. I think I prefer his first costume. I like the novelty of his black costume but the pale blue of his first bodice when we first meet him is great.
Dre: Yeah.
Jack: He has this pink sort of under shirt that he wears below his black sort of bodice or the pale blue one that is shaped like a ball. [Austin: Mm-hm] And it almost looks like he’s got this ball joint instead of a torso and it’s very interesting because until we had seen him naked I had no idea whether that was like, the shape that his body was or whether he was composed of two components clicked together like a top— like a toy or something.
Dre: Hisoka’s a gunpla.
Austin: Right, right.
Jack: Right!
Austin: That’d be fun.
Sylvia: [cross, quietly] Bungee gum-pla…
Jack: [cross] No he’s not, he’s just a guy— [laughing] bungee gum-pla…
Sylvia: [quietly] sorry.
Jack: Ah, okay and then.
Keith: There must be a special property to that.
Austin: Yeah…
Jack: All hell breaks loose because we’re ringing the Hunter ball again. By god that's the Hunter Exams music.
Sylvia: I was so happy.
Austin: Oh, it’s so funny. It’s so funny.
Sylvia: How did you feel Jack? I wanna know you— because this is, we knew this was coming but how did you feel that releasing this was part of the Hunter Exam?
Jack: Exhaustion! [Austin and Sylvia laugh] Here's what it felt like you're doing the dishes and you've been doing the dishes for an hour and then you turn around and there's still dishes on the stove that you forgot about.
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: Um, ‘cause Wing says—
Austin: Actually Jack it's more like if you were doing the dishes and you were doing the dishes and then like an egg timer went off and it says ‘dinner’s done!’ and actually you haven't been doing the dishes you've been making dinner.
Jack: [laughing] the whole time… oh god I was making! Ah, this was, this was! I was making! This was another dinner! Because this was, Wing says Gon has passed quote the other Hunter Exam. One can not be a fully fledged Hunter without learning to use Nen. Then he says some thing [cross] fucking bonkers.
Austin: [cross] Why? Why why why, why can't you? Why do you need to know Nen?
Keith: I— [cross] I—
Sylvia: [cross] I love that they do explain the reasoning.
Keith: I do have the whole quote here, do you wanna say it or can I read the verbatim—?
Jack: Please read it.
Keith: So I just wanna say the dub calls it the secret Hunter Exam which is fun.
Jack: The sub calls it ‘the other’.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Keith: Yeah, the sub calls it the other Hunter Exam. ‘You are required to learn Nen before becoming a Hunter, as professional Hunters are uh, [Jack: Yes?] expected to be exceptionally strong.
Jack: Uh-huh. Why?
Keith: One of your basic tasks as a Hunter will be apprehending evil poachers and criminals’ somewhere Kurapika’s ears are ringing ‘you must be strong enough to fight—’
Austin: Somewhere Hisoka’s ears are ringing! Like we’re— Bad news! We’re black dynamite!
Keith: Well—
Keith and Dre: [laughing]
Keith: This is a deeply ideological statement from Wing, so, we’re gonna have this is another things that we’re gonna have to see, will this bear out? Will any of it? Will it—
Jack: He says ‘you must be strong enough to fight crime’! Hey! Are Hunters cops? Is that it? Is the answer just cops?
Keith: ‘However, this power is highly destructive. If used for the wrong reasons,’ oh sorry — ‘if used for wrongdoing, revealing the existence of Nen during the exam would be dangerous [cross] as if—!
Jack: [cross] Every single person we’ve—
Keith and Jack: [laugh]
Jack: Every single person we’ve met who is powerful, and without fail every single evil person, except Tonpa, has literally been radiating Nen.
Keith: And they, and he also says this as if the Hunter Exam’s not dangerous!
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Hundreds of people die!
Austin: Ye but no no no no, but it would be dangerous for society if you told Tonpa Nen existed.
Keith: Sure. Sure.
Austin: Is what he’s saying.
Keith: So this test, this test is only administered to those who pass the public exam.
Jack: The public exam!
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: Where it cost millions of jenny to enter and— Also, wait no sorry it doesn't cost millions to enter.
Austin: Yeah, they do.
Jack: Millions of people enter. Isn't it also really expensive to enter?
Dre: [cross] I think it’s probably not.
Sylvia: [cross] No…
Keith: [cross] I think you just have to find it.
Austin: [cross] I think you just have to do it, you have to find it.
Jack: Um. Hey. Yeah, the idea of societal responsibility ‘s so funny. Th— I don't know if society is real; as far as the Hunters are concerned.
Dre: Mm, yeah.
Jack: I, to say one of your duties as a Hunter will be attempting to apprehend evil poachers.
Austin: Mm-hm?
Jack: Okay and we’re going to train you for this by throwing you through the squid game.
Austin: They're really evil poachers. The—
Jack: And it doesn't even work, Austin, because are they more evil than Hisoka? No.
Austin: Well Hisoka knows Nen before he gets to the Hunter Exam, that's the thing.
Jack: That’s true. The first thing we see Hisoka do is obliterate someone's arm with Nen.
Austin: Right? This is the thing, right? It’s, it’s he goes through this list, right, he says. They say what about everybody else. Hanzo and Kurapika found different teachers.
Jack: It’s sweet…
Austin: Is it Pokkle? Is still struggling with it?
Jack: Struggling with Ren.
Austin: Oh Pokkle, you’ll get there one day, bud. Leorio has been in med school. He’s studying for his medical exam. He’s never looked hotter. Hot Leorio is here. [Jack: Yeah.] in the library.
Sylvia: He’s in the credits looking like this.
Austin: [cross] Is he?
Sylvia: [cross] This is the exact—
Sylvia: Yeah, if you look in the credits this is the like, they have him in this like, sexy reading pose.
Austin: Bu— top button down.
Dre: Oh yeah, that’s true.
Jack: Well they say—
Sylvia: He’s unbuttoned two.
Austin: And then they say Hisoka and Illumi already knew Nen so they don't need to do this.
Sylvia: Which I think is the, this might be the first time we get confirmation that Illumi knows Nen.
Austin: Yeah, I think that's true, yeah.
Keith: They. They heavily imply it by saying that Hisoka’s Ren feels just like— oh and Wing’s Ren.
Dre: And Zushi’s.
Keith: Yeah, when Killua is intimidated by his brother it’s Ren.
Sylvia: They hint at it but this is the first time it’s.
Dre: Yeah, it’s explicitly said, yeah, you're right.
Austin: So those are people that know about it and that didn't go through the Hunter Exam to learn it. So imagine if you're just out here teaching anybody who shows up. What's the point of the Hunter Exam before now? That feels like the right time to tell somebody about Nen?
Dre: Mm.
Dre: [cross] Seems like the Hunter association—
Keith: [cross] I'm gonna say it. This is why the Jedi kidnap kids.
Austin: This is why the Jedi kidnap kids.
Dre: It seems like the Hunter association is not very well run.
Austin: No.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Austin: And who’s the chairman again?
Dre: Uh, Netero, who is also Wing's, the master of the kung fu school.
Austin: Of the school.
Sylvia: Shingen-ryu.
Austin: Shingen-ryu, yeah.
Keith: So…
Austin: Great cut in from [Sylvia: Oh!] Netero giving the peace sign, and being like neeeeh.
Sylvia: It's so good.
Austin: Your goofy grandpa’s here.
Keith: Well that’s the thing! That's the thing about Netaro, everything we know about Netero. Even to this early stage is suggesting that, you know, things are operating A-Okay as far as the people who are in charge are concerned. That this is what they want. It is funny to pretend it is like, like, it feels right for Wing to have this very sort of high minded, Kurapika -esque description of what a Hunter is supposed to do. Paired with the like, the sort of like social concern of like well we can't teach Nen to anybody ‘cause it’s so dangerous. And then the like reality of what we've seen of the Hunters which is like, phenomenally antisocial like organization. That is—
Jack: Anti social, anti society, anti life [Dre: Yeah] this is the three things that the Hunters are.
Keith: And tax leeches.
Austin: Well that’s what makes the— yes.
Dre and Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: Well that's what makes the fact ‘you go after poachers’ or something, is goofy. Is that the— in some ways the Hunter, from what we know at this point, and I'm doing my best to not think forward. And honestly even thinking forward doesn't change much of what I'm about to say here. I think the stuff said here, the stuff we’ve seen before: it feels like the Hunters believe that without them or, they believe that like the world is fundamentally ah, a place of, you know, evil, competition and conflict [Dre: Mmm] that there is like a state of nature where everyone is, like it's all against all and it's up to us the Hunters to get out there and protect people from blah blah blah. That's the way Wing is describing this, right?
Dre: Yeah, right.
Austin: Um and so the irony of being like and one of the ways we have to go do that is to literally protect the natural world from poachers is like, I don't—, is that what you need to be doing? [Jack: Yeah] Couldn't you just be like, investing in schools? I don't, I think there's more ways to invest in the deeper societal problems here, man.
Jack: Two things here, right? First that this is absolutely consistent with that great joke at the end of, I mean, at the time it is deeply sad. Where they're like and you get free bus passes [Austin: Uh-huh.] and the banks will talk to you, you know,the sort of like…
Austin: [cross] You're a first class citizen.
Keith: [cross] You get a like, you get a line of credit equal to a major corporation.
Jack: [cross] This sort of futile… at the end of this death game.
Jack: And then at the same time we know the show is aware of these kinds of questions of how a society works and operates because Leorio’s backstory, right? Is that he was friends with, his best friend died because he was unable to pay for treatment, his family was unable to pay for treatment. Meanwhile flashcut to Wing we’ve got to stop the poachers. You can, plug your pass in and you’ll get milk in the morning for free if you get it from the Hunter’s milk spot.
Keith: And it. It speaks to the priorities of the Hunters and to like how I think the stock that maybe Togashi puts in their opinion of themselves. We haven't seen a poacher. We have seen one poacher.
Austin: No dude. No one's poachin’.
Keith: We haven't seen one! We, we haven't seen—
Jack: They're poaching peoples eyes but the—
Austin: Right, oh yeah, right, uh-huh.
Jack: But I mean— that in and of itself is um— they're sort of the ???aur poacher. A sort of force of such [Austin: Yeah] spectacular bounty hunting evil [Austin: Exactly] and malice that they—
Dre: And also seemingly none of the Hunters are doing anything about them.
Jack: No—
Austin: Well that's the thing they are still carrying forward question wise is, okay. Let's say there are Hunters in the world. Who deploys them to go stop the poachers? Or to go stop criminals? Who do they end up working for is a great question. Again, we’re in the battle arena right now, we’re in Heavens Arena, we’re hanging out in Kevin’s arena and that gives us certain affordances where being a Hunter makes sense [cross] and get justice.
Keith: [cross] I can afford a soda for $1.25.
Austin: Exactly. And you can get justice in the arena by winning a fight, whether that's justice for your friend being kidnapped or justice for that time that the asshole let you win in the Hunter Exam and now this is the palace of pure combat where you can make that right. You know the battle arena is a place where the Hunter seems to make sense. But out in the regular world: carry this question forward of like, if we now know what a Hunter is and the Hunter is someone who fights poachers and criminals and uses Nen. They have to know Nen ‘cause you're not a Hunter otherwise if you don't know Nen. What does that actually leave you as, who do you end up working for? What— how often are you— who is directing that power towards good ends…
Keith: I’ll say one thing…
Austin: You know towards the ends at all.
Dre: Or not.
Keith: I wouldn't, I won’t say this is in support of Hunters but this is like, this is like an evidence uh, that like all, all we have for these like it’s a suspicious lack of evidence is what we’re dealing with. We do have this one bit of actual evidence and it's from Satotz who tells Gon the only thing we know of any Hunter doing anything is Gon’s father going around like restoring…
Austin: Mm-hm.
Dre: Mmm.
Keith: Restoring cultural sights with his own money and then like, turning it, them into free local museums. [laughs]
Austin: Philanthropy, uh-huh.
Keith: This is like the one thing that we’ve heard of a Hunter has done [Austin: Yeah] and he seems famous for it. He read about— Satotz reads about this in a book and is inspired by it. Um like, that's our one bit of— and that's like, I guess that's not so far off from hunting poachers. But it also doesn't seem like exactly something you need Nen for.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah…
Jack: I'll give you another thing that we know Hunters do. [cross] They run prisons.
Keith: [cross] Okay? They put on the Hunter Exam?
Keith: Yeah, they do!
Dre: Yeah, they do run prisons, yup.
Austin: Yeah, they run prisons. Yep. Mm-hm.
Keith: [cross] Although we don't know for sure that that guy’s a Hunter, but I think we’re supposed…
Dre: [cross, inaudible] Yeah!
Austin: They support prisons.
Keith: Yeah, we’re, I think he’s implied to be a Hunter simply by being a proctor in the Hunter Exam. At the very least.
Dre: Oh yeah.
Austin: I think so. That's the thing I was trying to get at before, right? Is like, their vision of the world is one where without us everyone who knows Nen would be like Hisoka or the criminals in the tower [Dre: Mmm!] or you know whoever, or Illumi that like, oh know we need to put up, we need to protect this secret. That is Nen and the best way to do that is to have this establishment that, you know, effectively scares of or kills anyone who is power hungry but isn't disciplined enough to succeed at this test.
Jack: Sign.
Keith: And—
Austin: And they seem to believe that to become disciplined enough to succeed at the test [Keith: Right.] means to, on average, become more like Gon and Killua or even more like hanzo than like Illumi or Hisoka.
Keith: Right totally this is the—
Austin: Who already know Nen anyway.
Sylvia: Call out post for the Hunters association they're gate keeping the extremely powerful magic.
Austin: And—
Keith: [laughs]
Keith: This is yeah. We've talked about this a little before and it is. Yeah, that's exactly right, where it’s like the, the, the evil Hunters that is seen as like a fatal flaw [Austin: Right.] that will keep them from succeeding in the way that they need to. And even if their evilness makes them a massive danger a weaker but gooder person will just counterbalance that in a way that is somehow desirable— it really doesn't make— it doesn’t make sense but I don’t think it’s meant to make sense.
Austin: Sure. Yeah, no no no.
Keith: Uh—
Austin: Yeah, we I think mm. I think we are not meant to be asking that many questions [Dre: Sure] about the Hunter association at this point in the show. I think mostly we’re supposed to be watching a fun shonen show and I think that's what Togashi expects from us.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: But for the close reader I think there are lots of open questions about: Hey, what is this world, how does it run. You know and who has access to what? And that will continue to, that will continue to be raised. I don't want to introduce the false hope that this will be like a leftist show that’s interested in power dynamics in the you know contemporary world cultures, but it is—
Jack: It’s just a show that—
Jack: And—
Keith: It contains power dynamics.
Austin: It just contains power dynamics. Which is to say like, I mean that's not nothing.
Keith: That’s not nothing.
Austin: You know what I mean? That is something it means that it thinks about those things it does think about where do people come from, you know? A thing I think may be worth thinking about going forwards is that, I think weve got a pretty good idea of where Illumi maybe got— or learned how Nen exists and stuff but I have no fuckin idea where Hisoka does it at this point, right.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: How does someone like Hisoka learn Nen? Who teaches it to him? You know? Where do other people learn what Nen is? What's the—what’s the surgeon…‘s name? [cross] the phantom troupe— is she not named?
Jack: [cross] Ohh, she hasn’t been named yet but she was named by a subtitle.
Austin: Ah. That’s named.
Jack: The name is… oh this has come up a few times. Machi.
Keith: Machi, right.
Austin: Machi. You know, If Machi knows Nen who taught Machi Nen, you know? I think those are interesting questions. So.
Jack: Speaking of Hisoka.
Austin: Yeah?
Jack: The time has come. And in a brilliant piece of music supervising the soundtrack drops out of the show. We have spent a lot of time with Hisoka. Hisoka, much like Gon Hisoka has one character theme associated with him. It’s this great piece of flamenco guitar we heard all though the Hunter Exam, and then the first time he fought Kastro in the arena it got sort of upgraded to this full scale terrifying orchestration, but now as him and Gon get ready for their fight. Gon lacing up his boots and Hisoka notably absent in the getting ready montage. The crowd getting ready, no music at all, silence, crowd noises, people taking their seats—
Austin: People are yelling things like how much longer?
Keith: People yelling things like Gon where's your fishing rod, [Austin laughs] how you gonna catch Hisoka without it?
Austin: People are yelling uh—
Jack: Because this fight begins like a like a full on big ticket wrestling match. There's fire projections.
Dre: Oh, there's pay per view.
Sylvia: This is the fuckin’ Tokyo Dome baybe!
Austin: This is the Tokyo dome 100%.
Keith: Hisoka, Hisoka's obviously a big deal. Gon is becoming a really big deal.
Austin: Gon’s a big deal! Gon uh—!
Keith: He’s like famous here.
Austin: How could he not be! Not to like the classic Idle Thumbs if Max Payne was real it would be the only thing on news 24/7 but if Gon existed in the world it would be all we’d be able to talk about. Is—
Sylvia: We also, there's a plot point in the earlier episodes, where he's like climbing the tower they have those moments of like, it's the boy who wins with just a push! [Austin: Yeah!] People are like, betting on him and stuff? [Austin: Yeah!] like there’s some dude who bought a house because he bet on Gon.
Austin: Oh my god.
Dre: Absolutely.
Sylvia: And he’s on twitter all the time being like—
Austin: Yes… yes…
Sylvia: Yo where my Freecs freaks? You know?
All: [laughing]
Sylvia: He is, he is the, it makes sense to me that at this point, he’s got a crowd behind him.
Jack: And! It's not just gon! The match up is incredible. Even setting aside the fact that the crowd doesn't know Gon and Hisoka’s history. This is the clown pervert whom everybody loves to see fight because every time he kills his opponent—
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh.
Jack: Going up against the wonder boy who got Jim his house after he won that bet.
Dre: Mm-hm.
Austin: Right.
Jack: This is brilliant. Red fire bursts and Gon appears he's standing there he doesn't have his fishing rod ‘where's your fishing rod gon?’ this is notable because Gon’s last big match up w Hisoka was sort of predicated on the fishing rod. [Austin: Right.] the thing that Gon [Dre: Oh, yeah.] went into Zevil Island thinking was, I can't beat Hisoka in a fight so I am going to have to snatch the badge with the fishing rod. So I think it is sort of… there is a power in the image of seeing Gon squaring off with Hisoka without the fishing rod.
Keith: Yeah, I can do it, and I can do it without the trick.
Jack: [cross] Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Austin: [cross] Right, right.
Austin: And has to. He has to do it without the trick. If he has to do it without the trick then he didn't do it.
Jack: What's the purpose of this fight, yeah.
Dre: Right, yeah.
Keith: He has to do it his was because that's the only thing, ‘cause this wouldn’t, to a normal person this wouldn't matter.
Austin: Right.
Jack: Yeah, yeah. Blue fire as Hisoka appears and Coco tells us that if he wins today he can challenge a floor master.
Austin: Right, there it is yes.
Jack: Um, this is when we get Hisoka’s psycho sexual gambit.
Austin: [laughs]
Dre: Mm-hm…
Jack: As Gon narrows his eyes and steps forwards Hisoka says don't look at me like that it's really turning me on. And we zoom into Hisoka’s crotch with the subtitle swing? Shween?
Dre: Shween!
Austin: Shween!
Keith: Shween!
Sylvia: Shween…
Dre: It's the worst.
Jack: Yeah, you know…
Jack: [cross] And it continues—
Keith: [cross] Maybe the most famous image from this show by the way. I think that's true.
Sylvia: One of them.
Jack: It continues but in a, I think in a much more interesting way in the next episode I think actually.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: Oh, is it the next episode [Jack: Yeah] the big like…
Jack: Yeah…the psychedelic orgasm, is brewing.
Austin: Psychedelic orgasm is the next episode okay, yeah.
Sylvia: I think like the ‘swing’ is next episode too actually.
Austin: No, it’s here.
Sylvia: Isn't that how we start next episode too? Okay.
Dre: No it’s this one because the Hunterpedia of this episode is Gon and Killua a double [cross] swing at each other.
Keith: [cross] They do a double swing at each other yeah.
Sylvia and Jack: Oh my god…
Jack: Sylvi! [laughs]
Austin: Oh, it’s bad the, the, you know [Jack: Yeah] the psycho sexual peril clown is not original— is not an original invention of Togashi.
Jack: [cross] Nope!
Dre: [cross] Oh absolutely not.
Austin: Um, it is of course… you know, there’s a version of… the thing that’s happening, right, is: Gon is the pure boy. Gon is the pure big feels boy who wants to protect his friends and wants to do things the right way and wants to do the honorable and wants to be strong and wants to find his dad and wants to find out what was so good about being a Hunter that his dad never came home. Right? [cross] And, Hisoka’s also—
Keith: [cross] And this is it!
Austin: And this is it! And this is, the thing is: Hisoka knows what it is and it's the feeling of breaking a person. Which might not be what, who knows what other Hunters believe, what other Hunters believe that they're doing is , Wing thinks it's stopping poachers. Hisoka probably thinks that Wing actually also likes to break people. Fundamentally what you like is breaking people. And you might break people different ways but Hisoka has this sort of like, classic corrupt nihilist perspective. [Keith: Right.] Slash hedonist perspective. Right? Like he—
Keith: Hey if the people you like to break are poachers that’s none of my business.
Austin: That’s none of my business! You break whoever you wanna break buddy! Right? But it is— and that is the thing. It's not just the threat of harm it's not just the threat of psycho sexual harm it is the threat of psycho sexual corruption that the pure boy could be corrupted by this homoerotic paedophilic clown monster man um and could be— become someone who like to break people [cross] because he’s gotten too close—
Dre: [cross] Oh! Like breaking someone's prosthetic leg? So bad that they can’t walk.
Austin: [cross] Like breaking someone's prosthetic leg so bad that they can’t walk—
Austin: Exactly. Or like doing a little trick on and not zapping them but threatening to zap them.
Dre: Mm-hm.
Austin: Which of course catches all this stuff up also in a bunch of like you know, Hisoka is not just the like, queer peril threat clown but is also the S&M* threat clown so it's— there’s other ways to get here than schween. But I get like, the core of it is our pure boy is under threat is the core of what the story is. And he’s not under threat in terms of damage or harm or direct assault. The real harm, the actual stakes—
Jack: It’s a spiritual or—
Keith: Will Jesse Pinkman break bad. Is the actual core of the question, right? ‘Cause Walter White already broke bad. That's not up for grabs. What’s up for grabs is will our pure boy get corrupted. Right? So, Jesse Pinkman.
Sylvia: I think Jesse Pinkman would also be an enhancer.
Austin: I think so t— we know that.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: He cooks good.
Dre: [laughs]
Austin: He enhances the object.
Jack: I think that um, who would work better in the other person's show? Walter White in Hunter Hunter or Hisoka in Breaking Bad?
Austin: [laughing] In Breaking Bad!
Dre: Oh, Hisoka!
Jack: They take each other's roles.
Sylvia: Oh my god!
Austin: That's so good.
Keith: Well, he could sell the drugs then bungee gum them back.
Austin: [laughs]
Dre: Shit…
Sylvia: He would name it after his favorite rock candy from when he was a child.
Austin: His favorite— yes, rock candy! Mm-hm!
Dre: Christ.
Jack: Okay! And then Hisoka’s, is it called Ren? The evil, the purple evil? The Hisoka thing.
Keith: Yes, yeah, yeah.
Jack: Yeah, Hisoka's evil purple aura appears. This was like genuinely very exciting for me. I think in part because as we’ve said over and over again in this episode this is what we’ve been wanting to see for a long time. You know. This is, this is the hero and the villain squaring off and the fact that it is wrapped in the apparatus [Austin: Yeah…] of a area battle just brings that feeling up. It was really exciting. And the fight beings straight away—
Austin: Well, also it feels like the episode is over. Thesis is the classic: Next time, they fight. [cross] But that doesn't happen.
Keith: [cross] And instead there are like seven minutes of sinister violins and really fast up-close combat.
Jack: Yeah.
Sylvia: The combat! This fight is so fucking good.
Jack: This is animated so well.
Keith: I don't know if anyone caught that those violins sound like they're from a horror movie.
Jack: Yeah! So the way that they've orchestrated this is really cool. It’s almost ambient so there's no music as they fight. And this is a show that loves to have music as people are fighting. Here—
Keith: And there’s a great moment of that, in the — later.
Jack: Here it's this like, very dynamic sort of like, rushing sound. Almost like blood rushing in your ears, or the sound of wind moving, for the most part, and then the sound of their feet on the floor. Or Gon’s feet, Hisoka hasn't moved at all. He's just been dodging. And then like Keith said, these tiny little tiny string cues, they’re not even a melody, there’s not even a real consistent rhythm to them. They're just these little sort of emanations of violence coming up through the violins. It’s really really lovely and yeah, this fight is just gorgeously animated. If they were saving time and saving animation budget on the early fights with Gido and Riehlvelt. The complexity of what is happening here, and sometimes, sometimes it’s a sort of classic Hitchcock cutting of like, we are being, we are filling in a lot of gaps of what is happening but there's also a lot of stuff happening on screen. Punches being thrown, punches being dodged.
Austin: Yeah, they're showing it.
Keith: Gon is moving in a way that we haven't seen him move before. Not just like, through fidelity of animation but literally his posture, his, like the way that he’s moving the, the, the, the feints that he’s choosing, the punches that he’s taking [Dre: Mm-hm.] he looks, he looks, there's two things. One: he looks desperate. Like immediately he’s like on the, it’s like a desperate offensive and he looks to me like Pikachu from the Pokemon anime.
Austin: He does look like Pikachu from the Pokemon anime.
Sylvia: He moves like a cat.
Austin: Right? He moves like a cat.
Keith: He’s... Yeah. He’s fighting like a Pokemon like he’s on all fours, he’s jumping to the side making big leaps.
Austin: And the camera’s doing special things here, right? There's a lot of sort of handy-cam style the cameras trying to keep up with the action or it's moving down and up to support— you know when people are watching and like, jumping out of their seats the camera has to move with them and it's like a split second delayed. There's a lot of the camera being seemingly attached to a character. So like, when Hisoka, he does like an overhand hit to, or a kick to Gon that causes him to spin in the air. The camera is locked on Gon’s collar looking at his face. So the world is pinning to the right of the frame but Gon’s face is locked upright on the left of the frame. There's all of these tricks that we have not seem the show use before—
Keith: They also do a lot.
Austin: To try to communicate the act— the dynamism of the action.
Keith: They do a lot of work to make Hisoka look so much bigger than him [Austin: Mm-hm.] like we know the size difference between them. Hisoka’s an adult and Gon’s a kid. There’s— he’s like it has to be half his size. Even including the hair. Uh, but this is like, there are shots where Hisoka looks four times the size of Gon.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: Yeah. And this is. We have seen fights that have been. This fight is chore— the fight choreography is just brilliant. In terms of like Austin said making a fight feel good in any medium is about giving your character— is about bringing your character’s personalities out through the way they’re fighting and then just giving the fight interesting visual and emotive stages. You know, Moving from one stage of the fight to the next. Moving from one move to the next making those things flow free— I mean this is wrestling as well, right? [Austin: Yeah] we’re talking about wrestling again. But the fight choreography here is just lovely.
Austin: And we again can lean on some rules which I think is so important for this fight, which is they have set up early on in this arc what you get points for in a fight. And there are ways to get hit without it counting as a point against you. If it's not a clean hit or because you recovered more quickly and can get back into the fight before the ref can assign a point. And so this opening salvo is Gon coming in with a lunge or a punch and missing or a series of punches and Hisoka dodges them all despite not moving at all. Um and countering but before the ref can say anything Gon is back up and back on his feet, giving attacks and so there's a real like, you're just rooting for Gon to just keep getting up and [Jack: Yep] moving quick enough that the fight can’t take a— You're holding your breath, the whole arena’s holding their breath, the ref is holding his breath. [Dre: Mm-hm.] What's this opening salvo going to turn— it's like a tennis match more than anything else almost. You know?
Keith: They break this in a really great way too. The— We’ve referenced it a couple of times but the moment. I don’t— There's two moments, I don't remember which one exactly comes first I think it's like Coco comes on is like ‘I haven't even said anything!’ [Jack and Austin: Laugh] and then it cuts to Hisoka being like I haven't even moved from this spot. Like, aren't you gonna come attack me? And then Gon is just like, very frustrated but like in kind of like a surprisingly childish way. He’s been so desperate and so like, kind of like vicious in his attempts to do any amount of damage and it just totally breaks and he's just like aah! Are you kiddin god damn it! [Austin: Mm-hm.] It's a very bizarre way to break, like, what is like the moment of the show to this point. Like, this is the most important scene of the show so far and I'm saying, I think the show is saying that, I don't know if— I'm not— [Austin: Yeah] eh, I think that's true.
Austin: Yeah…
Sylvia: Ahh I think so.
Keith: But not yet! Not yet! The next bit of it is. Um.
Austin: The next bit is yeah.
Keith: Yeah, and so the— and it’s not the only time it get— like it gets these periods of intense fighting gets broken up by like, casual conversation and jokes. Which is kind of funny.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Break the tension stuff.
Keith: Yeah. Yeah. We also get a moment inside of Gon’s head. It might literally be the first time that we hear Gon thinking. Um , [cross] Gon has this—
Austin: [cross] That can't be right…
Sylvia: It’s the first time he’s done it.
Keith: It— it is?
Austin: No I said it can't be right. Is’t the first time he fights Gido he’s like oh no I can't do [Sylvia: Oh…] blah blah blah.
Keith: Maybe…
Sylvia: I was just making a joke that it's the first time he’s thought.
Keith: [laughs]
Austin: That's what Keith said. Right?
Keith: It’s close if it’s not the only time.
Austin: I'm fairly sure.
Keith: Maybe during the Gido.
Austin: Or when he’s doing the fishing stuff in the, in the Hunter’s exam and he’s trying to prep— you know, perfect his cast...
Keith: Anyway we spend a lot of— we’ve heard a lot of inner monologues from other characters.
Austin: From other characters yeah.
Keith: We do get him like strategizing to himself. And then the violins kinda get slowly replaced by the normal battle music of the show. And they go right back into this really intense volley. And then they do the last Jedi.
Sylvia: Whu?
Austin: Which part?
Sylvia: Explain this to me, a non star war.
Dre: Uh-huh, yeah.
Keith: Uh, so I don't remember the beat by beat action of this. I only remember how the soundtrack plays it. Which is like: Gon gets his footing, he’s sort of strategizing to himself. He has this funny moment of ‘let me think!’. And then he goes back in once he’s figured out oh I should just, like, I should be feinting, I shouldn't be attacking so hard, I should be thinking better about what I'm doing. The scary violins drop and the battle music fades in and then as it's going…
Jack: Because—
Austin: Gon’s stone flip. The big attack.
Sylvia: Oh, it’s so good.
Jack: Gon, the apotheosis of Gon’s tile technique. Uh, he uses the tile technique and launches a hail of rubble at Hisoka and then—
Austin: Wait then, sorry, wait wait wait. He launches the tile and then breaks the tile [cross] that's the thing that’s the important thing.
Jack: [cross] Yeah! It’s great.
Sylvia: Yeah, it's so good.
Dre: Mm-hm.
Austin: That isn't what he’s ever done before.
Sylvia: No, yeah. It’s the third evolution of his attack.
Keith: He’s iterating.
Austin: And he knows Hisoka has seen.
Keith: He knows, yeah, he knows.
Sylvia: Yeah! He so frickin’ knows!
Dre: He knows! [laughs]
Austin: Does he know? It's the coolest shit. He flips over— he flips over the tile. He does all these feint attacks then slips, like, bounces off again and flips up the tile, jumps behind it and Hisoka is like ‘yeah, okay here we go he's doing the tile thing’ and then Gon kicks it and destroys it and Hisoka gets worried. And he’s like ‘ah shit there's all this rubble I have to start breaking the rubble and we get this incredible shot of— Hisoka’s like ‘where is he’ and from behind Hisoka there's like a piece of rubble that just like, we just get the shot of Hisoka with the rubble falling behind him and then from behind the rubble where you didn't even realize it wasn't actually a background element it was a foreground element [Jack: There he is!] there’s Gon face sneaks out from behind the rubble! And now he can get the clean hit in.
Austin: It fucking rules! [cross] He hits him in the face—
Jack: [cross] He socks Hisoka in the face!
Sylvia: We get a three time instant replay.
Austin: We sure do!
Sylvia: Which we also also got when Gon broke the glass too.
Austin: Ohh! Yes, true!
Sylvia: And I fuckin love it.
Keith: The music just cuts out. And there’s like total silence as it cuts like from character to character to character with zero, not just no soundtrack, no audio at all.
Jack: [cross] Oh yeah.
Austin: [cross] Right that moment, yeah yeah yeah.
Keith: And then, the end theme kicks in [imitates opening bars of Hunting For Your dreams] it’s very good.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Sylvia: [laughs loudly]
Keith: I'm—
Austin: It causes him to bleed! He makes him bleed!
Keith: I'm in, like 2016, I'm in my office [Jack and Austin: Laugh] with my headphones on. Lights are low. The hit connects, I'm standing with my arms in the air, out of my seat. This was un. Believable.
Austin: Yeah, I feel you.
Jack: what was your— What was the specific delight? Was it the catharsis of like, we’ve been wanting this to happen for so long or?
Keith: It was like—
Jack: Or that it was so improbable.
Keith: It was part of it was the improbability I didn't know how this fight was gonna shake out [Austin: Yeah…] I was just like a massive he did it, he got his one, he wanted one. It's like the same thing as one the ship with Netero where he's like [Austin: Mm] I’m just tryin to make him use his other hand now. Like he set his term. He set an ambitious but realistic goal. And it was still crazy to get there and it was still is he even gonna be able to do it and then he gets it and it's so good.
Austin: And the execution is just so good. The fact that it plays off—
Keith: And just the memory of how mad and sad he was when Hisoka saves him.
Austin: Mmmm…
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah…
Dre: Yeah...
Keith: And being like I’ve cast that off. I can cast that— physically I can give you this back now.
Austin: Which he does.
Keith: Which he does.
Austin: Does he do it in this episode or at the beginning of the next?
Keith: It’s the very beginning of the next episode.
Austin: Okay, okay.
Jack: But yes the, the end credits music kicks in. Um, and— as the narrator says oh also we get this great shot of Hisoka looking up with blood on his face. [Austin: Right] and a typically opaque Hisoka expression. Ah, it's not opaque, he, we can hisecre— oh my god… We can can see Hisoka is feeling four emotions simultaneously. As the narrator comes in to end the episode saying, you know: Gon has landed a clean hit on Hisoka but it won't be long before Gon experiences Hisoka’s true power. What a great way to end an episode!
Keith and Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Mid way through a fight. The villain’s about to show his true power. This is television.
Keith: The narrators always given’ you exactly what you're supposed to be getting. [laughs] I love it.
Jack: My favorite thing is when the narrator asks questions.
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Jack: N— beyond just ‘what will Gon do?’ But I like when he asks ‘what could Gon be thinking in this moment?’ We've heard him do that a few times, that's always very fun.
Jack: Episode 36 begins and we actually jump back just a moment. We open in triumph seeing Gon land the punch again. But Hisoka is fine. Or seems fine, and so there’s a brief sort of discussion from Coco as to whether or not this counts for points. And then a weird thing happens.
Dre: Uh-huh.
Jack: [sighs]
Austin: What happens?
Jack: We smash cut to a white haired, green eyed person in the booth.
Sylvia: Oh, yeah.
Jack: With his hand on his chin like Hisoka. Saying how the referee is perfectly entitled to award points as he pleases. And then Coco looks at him and goes ‘who are you?’ and he doesn't appear in the rest of the episode at all. But I think someone has a note about this guy?
Sylvia: I know who this is.
Keith: I also know who this is.
Sylvia: I did research on who this is.
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: Yeah, I looked this up.
Jack: Who this weirdo is. Because he has like, sparkles on him. The camera is picking him out as an important character.
Keith: Before—
Sylvia: Can i…?
Keith: Before Sylvi tells you who this person is. I wanna say this is a joke that Togashi has done before. YuYu Hakusho also has guy who shows up during the official announcement of a tournament and just becomes a second announcer to the kind of annoyance of the actual announcer.
Sylvia: It’s really funny.
Keith: It’s very funny.
Austin: That’s so funny.
Keith: It’s even funnier in YuYu Hakusho because the bit lasts for like, multiple episodes. But it [cross] it is funny to double dip on—
Austin: [cross] Is it this guy?
Keith: No, different guy.
Austin: Oh, okay.
Keith: It could have been this guy! But it wasn't.
Austin: Okay. Who is this guy?
Sylvia: Okay. I'm just gonna read my note here which is partially— I wrote thing down after looking up who this was. Some of the exact dialogue, exact wording, is lifted a little from wikipedia but I think it’s funny that way. The commentator questions the referees decision and Prince Baka, and I put a question mark there, from the Togashi sci-fi manga Level E, two question marks, interrupts. He is the effeminate prince of the planet Dogura, three question marks. He has an exceptionally high IQ and has little interest other than using it except to torture those around him, four question marks. Should I watch this? Five question marks.
Jack: [laughs] [cross] The effeminate prince of the planet Doguru?
Keith: [cross] He’s four thousand years old!
Sylvia: [cross] Dogura, yeah.
Austin: [cross] Dogura, yeah, uh-huhhuh.
Jack: Love this guy.
Austin: Everyone refers to him solely as Prince or Prince Baka.
Sylvia: But his full name is Baka Ki El Dogra.
Keith: Huh.
Jack: [cross] Huh.
Sylvia: [cross] This guy’s name is Prince Dipshit.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: [laughs]
Sylvia: [cross] Is kinda what we’re aliding here, yeah.
Dre: [cross] Oh yeah, sure is huh.
Austin: [cross] Baka OG. Stupid prince.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Sylvia: Smokin the baka og.
Austin: [laughs]
Dre: God!
Jack: He appears and leaves but as Hisoka approaches Gon silently, Gon reaches into his pocket and takes out the 44 badge to give to [cross] Hisoka.
Sylvia: [yelling] it’s so good!
Austin: It’s so good.
Jack: This was great this got me [cross] more than landing the punch.
Austin: [cross] The sickest shit. Ugh.
Jack: But the two went together— and so the pacing of this moment is great. Hisoka walks towards Gon. Gon takes the badge out of his pocket and gives it to Hisoka. Hisoka takes the badge and dashes away, with the implication being he approached Gon specifically to collect the badge. [Dre: Mmm] That this, the moment of focus here being like. [Dre: Yeah] Okay you hit me, we’re gonna pause in the fighting we need to, we have made a trade [Dre: Yeah] and I need to take this back.
Sylvia: [cross] This is like—
Keith: [cross] Terms fulfilled.
Sylvia: Yeah, this is the reason you want to fight me. This is the actual purpose of— for Gon, this is the purpose of what this is, and—
Jack: It's such a good moment.
Austin: You get those little flashback shots too, which is where you would see—
Jack: Where I saw him in this nice outfit.
Sylvia: It’s great.
Dre: Really quick I want to jump back to the— to prince baka or whatever.
Jack: [laughing] Oh, sure…
Dre: Because also in the— the wiki for this, for that character it points out that in the earlier anime, I guess that's the 1999 anime? Right?
Austin: Yes, that's right.
Dre: Is that when that came out? The character is actually, it’s a different character and that is a long haired person called Togashi.
Jack: [cross] Oh! Huh.
Austin: [cross] Oh… interesting.
Sylvia: [cross] Oh my god… that's very funny.
Austin: [cross] That’s funny.
Dre: [cross] In the 1999 anime, Togashi just shows up to have this dialogue.
Jack: This is Kojima showing up in every game he’s ever made [Dre: Yeah] to offer some—
Dre: Totally.
Sylvia: This is, uh, Sam Lake.
Jack: [laughs] Oh, yeah.
Austin: I wonder if that's who shows up—
Jack: Oh yeah.
Austin: In YuYu Hakusho.
Jack: Oh, I wonder if it is Togashi just showing up.
Austin: To do… yeah.
Keith: It is , it is a, it is a non human creature.
Austin: Oh, okay.
Dre: Okay.
Jack: Okay sure, that's even funnier.
Austin: It's not the little dog face thing that Togashi uses, right?
Jack: Um and then Hisoka just in af, I like Hisoka’s little magician flourishes. You know we talked about him [Austin: Agree] as the pervert clown panic and the queer clown panic but one of my favorite Hisoka modes is he's a funny little magician.
Keith: He is.
Dre: Mm-hm.
Jack: And he just makes the badge, like, triple in his hands. He just suddenly has six badges or whatever and then they all disappear in a puff of smoke. You know it's— it’s sort of like he, he was, he was willing to offer Gon the kindness of well like I understand that this is a trade and I'm taken the badge back but as soon as he dashed back to the other side of the arena he was like: this is nothing to me. I can make six of them, I can make them disappear, you know? [Austin: Right] it’s nice and easy for me.
Austin: And then he lays out his Myers Briggs test.
Jack: Yes! Because now it's time—
Dre: Yeah, he does.
Jack: [cross] The vacuum of Kurapika.
Keith: [cross] This is so funny.
Jack: In the show has meant that people are now just giving powerpoints left and right. [Dre: Laughing] come on bring my boy back we need, we need him to reassume— I want the restoration fantasy for Kurapika returning [Austin: Laughing] to give powerpoint presentations. ‘Cause Hisoka has a powerpoint presentation. And he says there is a way you can tell someone's aura type from their personality. Enhancers, that is Gon, are simple and determined. Emi—
Sylvia: He’s right!
Jack: He’s right. He’s right!
Austin: He’s right…
Dre: [laughs]
Jack: He’s right, says—
Austin: About Gon at least.
Jack: Who is, who is it who keeps saying he’s right?
Sylvia: [cross] It’s Killua and Zushi. Yeah.
Keith: [cross] They cut to everyone here…
Dre:[cross] I feel like multiple people.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Keith: So yeah, so they do it for Gon and it cuts to Killua and…
Sylvia: I think it’s Zushi.
Keith: Zushi and Gon.
Dre: They cut to Zushi and Wing, I think. And Zushi’s like oh he’s right…
Keith: He’s right… And then they do the same thing for transmitters.
Jack: Transmuters are whimsical liars. He’s right!
Keith: He’s ri— it fits exactly!
Jack: [laughs] emitters are short tempered.
Sylvia: He says that about himself too. He's like we’ve whimsical liars, like me! And everyone’s like yeah, that's true, he is a whimsical liar.
Jack: It is true. Is he much of a liar? He is— true— serious question, is he much of a liar? I feel like Hisoka’s been very honest so far. He's been very cruel but—
Sylvia: Ah…
Austin: Hmm, mmm…
Austin: [cross] He did say he’s a liar.
Keith: [cross] He's definitely been manipulative. If like, not honest during his manipulating.
Dre: Yeah.
Jack: One of my malicious clowns always lies and one of my malicious clowns always the truth.
Austin: And they're the same clown.
Jack: Oh, and they're the same clown…
Keith: And they are conjurers.
Austin: [laughs]
Jack: Emitters are short tempered. Specialists tend to be independent. Conjurers are high strung and nervous, I'm thinking of Kastro, that’s— [Austin: Mm-hm.] he’s right! And manipulators are argumentative. And then, and we are really just deep in Myers Briggs zone here, Hisoka says that he and Gon are compatible, opposites attract. Which is, yup.
Austin: Well, what else does he says.
Jack: He says but be wary transmuters are known to be fickle. What was once treasured can easily become trash. And there are two things happening here. [Austin: Mm-hm.] the first is that this is classic abusive manipulation tactics from Hisoka, right? Of like, you are like, in the warm sunlight [Austin: Yeah] of my good graces until I decide the shadow will fall on you and then you're done. He's also talking about Killua. Right?
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Mmm.
Jack: He’s psyching him out. [Austin: Mm-hm!] he’s saying to Gon ‘look buddy. Your best friend and the one you are staking your optimism about the world on, might just leave you behind.’
Sylvia: [cross] There’s—
Keith: [cross] He’s like me!
Sylvia: Hisoka really does sound like some people who tweet about BPD* sometimes in this bit.
Jack: [laughs]
Dre: Jesus christ! You are so right for that, Sylvi!
Austin: Mm-hm.
Sylvia: Like it really like, the pop psychology is off the charts.
Austin: [laughs]
Jack: It’s is so funny—
Austin: Say more, say— say more. Say more…
Sylvia: It's just like the way he talks about the— oh what the specific phrasing? Something about things that one day seem golden will turn to trash? If you've ever experienced this you probably have this… I don't know the internet's stupid is my main point here.
Austin: Yeah… it is.
Sylvia: I don't know I found it particularly insidious of Hisoka to go after Killua and Gon’s friendship. How dare you.
Austin: It the specific— it’s the targeted thing of it sucks so bad, yeah.
Sylvia: It’s, uh. I mean it's terrible and it is very consistent with Hisoka.
Dre: Mhmm.
Sylvia: Like uh—
Austin: Doubly so because you know Hisoka and Illumi have the connection.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: So it's like, there, it's not like Hisoka’s a third party. Hisoka’s already involved. In the family politics, you know?
Sylvia: And—
Keith: Yeah!
Jack: I think Hisoka co—
Keith: I mean we still don't know, never mind that's not true never mind take it back.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: I think Hisoka can tell that… I meant what I said earlier about Gon staking his sort of nescient view of the universe, his optimism about the universe on his relationship with Killua. [Austin: Mm-hm.] You know, Gon looks at Killua and says ‘there is brightness in the world and I know it and I can show that to you. You don't have to be Zoldyck assassin Killua’ and I think that Hisoka has spotted that. I think that, you know, it's so similar to what you were talking about earlier, Austin. The moral question, you know, or the, yeah, the moral question around Hisoka and Gon is: will Gon get dragged down into Hisoka’s sort of, violent nihilism. And I think that kind of central to that is Hisoka’s… Hisoka has already spotted the other way that it can go. Hisoka has spotted the way Gon is spending time with Killua.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Cruel. I mean it is, I think it is. This is. I think the show goes a lot of the way to make these things explicit. But this is the value of being able to talk this out in this podcast, right? You see Hisoka and Gon and you go ‘ah right, he's an abusive clown and [Ke literally] this is a deeply unpleasant relationship.’
Austin: [laughs] Yes.
Jack: And then the more you talk about it the very specific vectors of his manipulation [Dre: Mm-hm.] Kind of rise to the surface.
Dre: I mean another like classic you know, abuser manipulator tactic, right, of like oh you can't trust your friends. [cross] It’s interesting there.
Sylvia: [cross] That's exactly what I was gonna say, yeah.
Sylvia: This is an isolatory move on Hisoka’s part.
Keith: This is, this is— Also wrapped up in this is what is the first thing almost that Hisoka says to Gon is like, you should be out there making good friends.
Jack: Yeah..
Austin: Right he does say that, yeah.
Dre: Mmm…
Jack: Yeah... Creepy! What a well written character. Nasty piece of work.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: He’s— he is a gross and we’re gonna talk more about how he’s gross. Very quickly though. Just going off Hisoka's personality test I like to say, I think I might be a conjuror.
Austin: Ooh…
Sylvia: High strung and overly serious. Stoic and nervous.
Jack: Oh, let me see.
Dre: Oh yeah. Alright, let me go look at these descriptions again.
Sylvia: You know?
Austin: Look at these descriptions again…
Dre: This is, this is the fun buzzfeed quiz that we should be doing.
Austin: This is the fun buzzfeed…
Sylvia: I was gonna, I looked for a quiz, I couldn't find any good ones that didn't have any spoilers in.
Austin: Ooooh.
Keith: A lot of the quizzes have spoilers in.
Austin: That makes sense.
Keith: I also looked for quizzes. The problem is the good quizzes work like this. I'll tell you exactly how they work. It'll give you a question and have you rank it 1 to 6 on how much you agree with the statement and they have ordered like, well a 1 on— if you answer a 1 you're an emitter if you answer 2 you're an enhancer. And that produces a really, like, slingshotty test. Where oh if you just happen to say three instead of two you can totally bury something that you otherwise would be scoring really high in. So the tests are very rarely made well.
Austin: Enhancers are simple and earnest. I don’t think I'm an enhancer.
Jack: That’s me.
Austin: That’s you, that’s you, Jack, I think you're [Keith: Yeah.] I think don’t that’s. Simple is rude but—
Jack: Oh no, I’ll take it, there's lots of different simples.
Austin: Transmu— transmuter.
Keith: I think I'm a transmuter.
Austin: Fickle and dishonest?
Sylvia: Whimsical?
Keith and Dre: Whimsical!
Austin: [cross] Sorry, I'm reading the subs.
Keith: [cross] I'm fickle!
Austin: Does he say— does he say—
Sylvia: I'm looking at the one that we have in the working doc.
Keith: Oh yes, there’s—
Austin: Oh, we have, we have one in the working doc.
Keith: Yes.
Sylvia: Yeah, if you scroll down to the additional notes.
Austin: I see I see I see.
Sylvia: Which like, I don't know.
Dre: I'm not sure!
Sylvia: I could see a couple.
Keith: Here's the problem. Specialist is designed for almost everyone to want be— want to say specialist.
Sylvia: Well, yeah, it’s the sigma male is what specialist is.
Dre: [laughing]
Keith: It’s the sigma…
Austin: I think that's entrapment. We don't have a specialist character in this show yet, right?
Jack: [cross] Uh, no, not as far as we know.
Dre: [cross] Uhhhh, I don't think so.
Sylvia: [cross] Ummm…
Austin: Not that we've had noted.
Dre: Right.
Austin: And like I think that's a trick. And I think you’re gonna fall into that because when I think about specialist, I think about a thing, when I was a kid I liked the x-men a lot but then I learned what mutations actually are genetically. And was like if they're really mutants it's super lucky that like, cyclops can shoot laser beams, it's not lasers beams I know, shoot laser beams from his eyes. And not like, his knees. Because the way mutations work is you [cross] just get laser knees.
Dre: [cross] Hmm.
Jack: [cross] Mmm.
Austin: And oh that didn't help me at all. Because mutations, the mutations that are useful get passed on but people don't—You don't— the mutations aren't good necessarily. You know what I mean? You might get—
Keith: Right. This is the world that my hero academia supposes. Like, sometimes you get—
Austin: Is it?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Okay.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: Sometimes you get super flame blast powers. Sometimes you're a fish man. [cross] Like, and you're just like, a goldfish.
Austin: [cross] And that's why I think specialist might just be.
Austin: What if you're just goldfish. I don't— You know what I mean? I don't wanna be a, I don't wanna be a specialist and wind up with laser knees.
Sylvia: Yeah…
Jack: Gonna have to wear cut offs all the time. I live in Michigan it’s gonna be fucking cold.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Austin: You’re gonna be cold all the time.
Dre: Mhmm.
Keith: ‘Cause i—
Austin: I think laser knees would be emitter, I guess, but—
Keith: I’m a little impatient. I'm not detail oriented but I don't really have a short temper and I'm not really volatile. I don't think—
Dre: What?!
Keith: Maybe I'm a little volatile.
Dre: You're not volatile in that you like scream and go off the handle at people but I think you're a person who’s volatile in an impulsive way.
Keith: Well, it paired with short tempered.
Dre: Yeah…
Sylvia: This is why I wanted to have this conversions [Dre: Yeah] this is the type of stuff that I was on about before.
Dre: Yeah, we should not say what type we think we are. It should be us telling each other what types we think we are.
Austin: Oohh, like a nickname situation.
Dre: Sure, yeah yeah yeah.
Austin: I think I grew up a manipulator and I've tried to get away from a manipulator. And towards conjuror. I started argumentative and logical when I was like, in my early twenties.
Jack: [laughs] you upgraded to—
Austin: I didn’t up— I don't know if it's an upgrade I think it’s a side-grade and I don't know that I'm like good at the conjurer abilities necessarily, you know what I mean?
Jack: Keiths a transmuter.
Keith: I am a transmuter, yeah.
Austin: Prone to deceit and fickle? I don't think of Keith as fickle…
Sylvia: I don’t think Keith has done— I don’t think fickle but like, Keith would be deceitful for a bit! Yeah, absolutely.
Keith: I do? Wait, I do wha?
Austin: I think more impatient not detail oriented.
Keith: Well, it’s the, I think I leaned more emitter and now I'm more transmuter.
Sylvia: Keith's fake laugh bit was a transmuter moment.
Dre and Keith [laugh]
Austin: Right sure, sure.
Sylvia: Also can make any sound?
Austin: Also can make any sound.
Dre: Oh, that's true.
Sylvia: That feels like something a transmuter can do.
Dre: [cross] Maybe a specialist.
Austin: [cross] But that emission.
Sylvia: Would that be an emit—?
Austin: That's you’re emitting any sound. You detaching your aura from your body.
Keith: But am I not transmuting my voice?
Sylvia: Hey, here's the thing. Write a five star review of the podcast and tell us what Nen types we are.
Dre: Yeah! This is great! Good idea Sylvi.
Sylvia: I'm a manipulator because I just did that.
Dre: [laughs]
Sylvia: I'm manipulating the audience.
Austin: Manipulating the audience, yeah, mm-hm.
Austin: Controlling animals an— controlling animals?? And inanimate things? Oh, controlling animate and inanimate things. Sorry this is very tiny on my screen.
Dre: Control animes…
Keith: It is small, I didn’t wanna ruin the actual stuff that we had here.
Austin: Yeah, I got you, I got you, it make sense.
Jack: Dre, Enhancer?
Dre: I'll take that.
Austin: Dre, enhancer.
Sylvia: Yeah, enhancer feels right.
Austin: …Yeah.
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Jack: Enhancer, conjuror, enhancer or conjuror.
Sylvia: We all have some degree of anxiety so conjurer —
Austin: [cross] We’re all going to be conjurors.
Dre: [cross] Yeah, true! [laughs]
Keith: Well it’s Myers-Briggs so everyone’s gonna be like, well I’m sometimes all of these.
Austin: Yeah.
Dre: Yeah, totally.
Dre: I feel like it’s important for me to say, just briefly, hey fuck the Myers Briggs test.
Austin: Let's go.
Keith: Ye-yeah yeah yeah, it comes up a lot. Fuck Myers Briggs test. But also like, you know, fuck all the other things that are like that too.
Dre: Oh, for sure.
Keith: But the Myers Briggs one is the one that I think is fun. To do.
Austin: Mmm mmm.
Sylvia: It’s fun, but it's not like— you shouldn't put any stock in it.
Keith: I don’t put any stock in to it.
Dre: It shouldn’t be used to, say, decided whether someone gets a fucking job or not.
Keith: No, obviously that's insane.
Austin: No, no.
Keith: It’s like deciding you get a job or don't get a job based on your astrological sign.
Austin: Yeah, [cross] but I will say Hisoka is.
Keith: [cross] It's just that I don't find astrological signs fun.
Austin: Hisoka’s definitely a Scorpio though.
Sylvia: Oh my god, yeah, of course.
Keith: I don't know, I genuinely don't know what any of them mean [cross] except for Cancer because it’s the good one.
Sylvia: [cross] Killua… maybe Pisces? Killua’s a Pisces.
Dre: I know what a Pisces is because that's what I am. [Keith: Yeah.] So you know.
Jack: I was gonna say, can I have mine, my moon sign for the archetype chart.
Dre: Hey what time were you born? I think that's what you need to know to know your moon sign.
Jack: I was born… Can I dox myself by saying what time I was born?
Austin: Don't say anything about it, don’t…
Sylvia: Don't do it, we don’t want people getting our charts and being able to—
Austin: [cross] No no no no no one can ever look my chart.
Jack: [cross] Oh, that's actually— that’s actually—
Dre: [cross] Yeah, yeah. Leave my chart alone.
Sylvia: [cross] Figure out our movements.
Austin: I don't believe any of this shit but don’t get my chart. My chart is my chart. Don't worry about what's on my chart, it's my chart.
Sylvia: It’s my chart, you don't need to know my rising sign.
Keith: Someone gonna find out, somebody’s gonna learn what time Jack was born and find out they're British.
Jack: [laughs]
Sylvia: Hey, write a five star review and tell us —
Dre: Fucked up.
Sylvia: What you think our sun, rising and moon signs are.
Dre: Yeah, there you go.
Austin: God…
Jack: I uh—
Dre: [laughs]
Sylvia: Hey write a five star review, please.
Jack: Please write a five star review on, probably apple podcasts since they're the ones that power it up.
Sylvia: Whichever, any of ‘em.
Keith: I think that's the only one, I don't think you can review it anywhere else.
Sylvia: You can rate elsewhere…
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Give it five stars and we’ll…
Dre: Do they not have that on spotify?
Sylvia: Think about which Nen type we are.
Keith: The reviews, I've started saying this on Run Button. I don't care how good your comments are on Run Button videos— I don't care how good your review is on itunes, but a review is very important, not just the rating, so, just type in whatever.
Sylvia: I care!
Jack: The fight begins! Again!
Austin: The fight begins again.
Sylvia: The fight begins again…
Keith: Yeah.
Jack: The fight begins again. Hisoka launches tons of attacks and Gon dodges about four percent of them, [Keith laughs] Gon just getting slapped around the arena. Although to a certain extent Gon has… got what he wanted, he’s given the badge back. [Austin: Yeah] But the fight is continuing. And I've wrote this down uh, I noticed that there wasn't a lot of Nen being used up until this point. But I hadn’t put it together, Austin, [Austin: Yep] with how that we spend the first chunk of this being like alright listen fuckos, it’s Nen. And then the first half of this fight being like, that won't help you [Austin: Well—] if you are— well!
Austin: Well, except Nen has been being used, hasn't it.
Jack: Would you like to see the most obvious metaphor in history? It begins!
Dre: [laughing]
Austin: Would you— are you suggesting that, that, that he’s manipulating gon? That he has Gon on a string?
Jack: Hisoka has launched some bungee… oh, what’s this thing called? Bungee…
Keith: Bungee gum! [cross] It has the elastic properties of both rubber and gum.
Sylvia: [cross] Or elastic love.
Dre: Mm-hm.
Austin: It has the properties of rubber and gum!
Jack: [laughs]
Keith: There’s— oh my god! There’s a moment in here where he just thinks that, in his own head. He just thinks ‘I've used my bungee gum, [Austin laughs] it has the properties of rubber and gum.’
Sylvia: He loves it, you know?
Keith: He loves it!
Dre: No, he’s a freak, he loves it.
Austin: It’s really funny…
Jack: Is bungee gum flavored? Yes. Of the gum that he loved when he was a child.
Dre: Yeah, yeah yeah.
Keith: Yeah. Yeah.
Sylvia: It’s bungee flavored, yeah.
Jack: [laughs] [cross] And of course as we—
Austin: [cross] Gon should have bit it.
Sylvia: Gon should have bit it…
Austin: Gon should have said it’s gum? Bite. Chew. That's the secret.
Dre: It does seem like a very Gon thing to do, yeah.
Austin: Right?
Sylvia: Should be powered like pop aye after he did it.
Jack: Listener, in case you're wondering what the flavor of bungee taste like it taste like the feeling of falling 400 feet.
Austin: Ooh!
Sylvia: Oh!
Jack: Uh, yes.
Dre: I was gonna say rubber but yeah.
Jack: Hisoka attached—
Sylvia: Also a little bit of that.
Jack: Gon his elastic love. Elastic love. He says you will never escape me now [Austin: Ah!] Gon is on, Gon is not just on a leash, he is on an elastic leash, which I think is interesting. There's something about the freedom— or the perceived freedom of movement. The freedom of movement within someone else's parameters that an elastic leash gives you. You will always come back no matter how far you think you can get away.
Jack: And then Hisoka does a little quiz. ‘Cause he’s a freak.
Austin: Whu— I just want to really emphasize what you said because it’s a clear visual metaphor but the if Gon thought it was over now, oh you got your badge you got to turn the badge back well you've another thing coming, I've got you leashed to me. [Jack: Right ]This is not over yet, is I think a really important way that Hisoka is thinking about it, and that's what the visual metaphor partly is, you know?
Keith: And then we get a, we get a really sad resolution to that metaphor in— what Gon decides to do about it.
Jack: Yeah. So—
Keith: Which is to run straight at him and stay really close.
Austin: Yeah, yep.
Jack: Yeah, first um—
Keith: And then ends this fight, I wanna be brief because I don’t wanna jump too far ahead, ends the fight having accomplished his goal but is immediately thinking of like, how can I beat Hisoka, how can I get one over on— [Austin: Yep] like why are you thinking about this? I thought this guy— you, you sho— I thought this was it with this guy? And he’s like nope! Now my new thing is that I wanna win.
Jack: You. Yeah. Hisoka asks Gon when he attached the bungee gum and if he answers correctly he’ll get a free hit. Hisoka cheats, he gives Gon like a A-B-C multiple choice and it turns out that it was D. And it was when he gave him the aura personality analysis. This is notable because it's sort of extra to the fight. Hisoka— Hisoka attached— Hisoka got his hooks in outside of combat. Which I think is consistent with this whole sort of broader metaphor being drawn out to like, this meeting has been long foretold. You know? Way before this, way before these fights Hisoka was already planning these kinds of manipulations. This very kind of consistent that he would attach the bungee cord during a time where he wasn't quote unquote fighting Gon.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: But yeah, Gon presses forward, he is trapped and he still decides to move towards Hisoka, and this is when we get this really well animated unsettling, Hisoka has like, a psychedelic orgasm.
Austin: Yep.
Dre: Mm-hm…
Jack: It's like…
Sylvia: Yep!
Jack: Really impressive color work as we just like, zoom in. It's— There’s lot of like, elastic imagery with Hisoka, probably consistent with the like, bungee cord. But his like, limbs are stretching, it's almost like there's a fisheye lens, [Austin: Mm-hm.] as the camera is like, passing over his body. It's this real sort of like nightmarish, fever dream, psychedelia sort of like, apotheosis—
Keith: [cross] He’s space jam Michael Jordaning.
Sylvia: [cross] He develops—
Jack: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah, he develops the properties of rubber and gum.
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Oooh, yeah yeah. And like, black light Led Zeppelin posters.
Jack: Yeah, and I think—
Austin: And he's like, licking his lips and he's rendered in like, a JoJo style at one point, you know what I mean like—
Sylvia: It’s— cross hatched…
Keith: They give him that kind of visual a lot yeah. The like, JoJo thing.
Sylvia: There is um— there’s is a lot of Dio Brando.
Austin: There is a ton of that—
Jack: Yes absolutely.
Austin: He’s a violence pervert. Right? Like that's what he is. It’s that archetype—
Sylvia: Yeah, but they also very much do the ‘oh you're walking towards me’ thing—
Dre: [laughs]
Austin: Yeah… yeah…
Sylvia: That a very iconic moment in JoJo, and I feel like, I don’t know, I’m gonna be that guy on the show where it’s like that’s a mother fuckin JoJo's bizarre adventure reference… but um, this in particular, like, I don’t know, worth mentioning some of the characters [Jack: Yeah] that Hisoka’s archetype is in conversation with.
Jack: This, I mean they are doing different things, I really think that the like, the shwing bit earlier was like played as kind of like a horrible joke and this is more of an abstract, frightening—
Keith: I mean literally it’s right out of Wayne’s World.
Jack: Right. But this scene— if we are settling in for a show about Hisoka's psycho-sexual feelings this weird moment worked for me, so much better for me [Austin: Mm-hm.] than look we’re zooming in to Hisoka's crotch, that we got last time. It was at least visually interesting and it was scary and it worked well for me. Hisoka willingly takes a lot of punches because of the classic like, what does he call it? Unripe fruit thing… [Dre: Hmm] it’s… we’re back to Hisoka’s [Austin: Mm-hm.] classic game here.
Jack: Then we get Gon sort of pulling back and this is what I sort of talked about earlier with Gon’s clarity in his emotions. He says ‘I'm scared’ says Gon’s internal voice which is notable because in the past when Gon has been explicitly asked how he feels about Hisoka, and fighting Hisoka, he’s said oh I'm excited and scared [Austin: Right.] and I think to have that emotion just ring out like a bell in this moment is notable.
Austin: Yeah. The other plot line happening here is… you know, there's a moment where Hisoka pulls Gon in for a huge heavy punch and Gon manages to block it an stand up and then the ref awards points anyway.
Jack: Oh, points to Hisoka.
Austin: Points to Hisoka anyway yeah.
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: Even though Gon just laid into Hisoka with like, a dozen punches and none of those got points. ‘Cause they didn't knock Hisoka down and they didn't count as clean hits for whatever reason. And the people in the crowd are like ‘[scoffs] the refs I swear to— [Ke yeah] it’s scripted’.
Keith: [cross] The ref can tell what we can—
Sylvia: [cross] Fuckin’ Adam Silver wants Hisoka to win.
Dre: Uh-huh!
Austin: [laughs] exactly!
Keith: The ref can tell like we can tell that Hisoka’s taking these punches on purpose.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: Yes, yes.
Jack: Yeah, there's a great punchline to this [cross] little subplot.
Austin: [cross] It's so funny.
Jack: That comes right at the end. But yeah, the crowd is turning against the ref and then out of nowhere in a very similar way that Gon came out of nowhere behind the sort of, the chunk of brick to hit Hisoka. Gon is just taken out by a chunk of brick attached to a bungee cord. It's the final point, Hisoka wins. We get a lovely cut to Killua letting out this relieved breath that the fight is over and Gon is still alive.
Keith: And then we see Wing is like, you know, pleased with this. I get it from a sort of ‘oh he didn't go too far and he didn't die, and he did what he wanted to do…so I'm proud’ he did just get absolutely beaned in the head with a 20 pound piece of concrete.
Sylvia: Oh, yeah.
Austin: But he's already kipped up he's already back on his feet…
Sylvia: We’ve established that Gon is immune to CTE [Keith: Yeah] or much more like how Killua— it’s much like how Killua is with electricity.
Austin: With electricity, yeah.
Dre: [laughs]
Sylvia: Where it's like it still hurts [cross] but he's immune otherwise. Yeah.
Austin: [cross] The damage is already done, you know. Yeah.
Jack: What a guy.
Sylvia: His brain has the properties of both rubber and gum.
Austin: Of both rubber and gum.
Dre: [laughs]
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: [groans]
Jack: Simple and determined.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Keith: I should say just in case anyone caught this, I didn't realize until just now, I remembered during this last bit, that Gon did get two points for all his punches [Austin: Sure.] it's just that Hisoka got five points—
Austin: Yes.
Sylvia: Yeah, it was.
Keith: Each got a critical hit, or a— yeah, a critical hit. Hisoka was awarded a knock down even though [cross] Gon wasn't knocked down.
Sylvia: [cross] It was four.
Austin: It ended up being one four and then ten to four and so it’s over.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And of course, what Hisoka says is ‘you know if we had ten more fights then maybe you would stand a chance against me. At least if those fights were at Heavens Arena’ which…
Sylvia: If we had ten more then we’d have ten more we’d have a good fight.
Austin: ‘That’s why I’m not fighting you here again. We’re gonna fight somewhere— In the real world without any rules or restraints.’
Keith: Where I can kill you if I decide that that’s what I want.
Austin: Our lives will be on the line, yeah, exactly.
Keith: So…
Austin: You know.
Jack: Gon leaves in good spirits.
Keith: After hearing that somehow.
Jack: He learns something secret in the fight. And they all sort of… [cross] let’s talk about Wing.
Keith: [cross] They are never—
Keith: As far as I know, I could be wrong. They don't, do they tell you what that is? I don’t know. I think I know what it is. I think like, it's just a little bit of context from the fight. I don't think that there's something really specific. [Jack: Huh] unless someone is gonna dm me [Sylvia: Um] and go you've forgotten something obvious. But I was like ‘something secret?’ and then I rewatched it and was like I kinda see... I can kinda see what but I don't know.
Austin: Does this not come up in these next episodes?
Keith: No.
Austin: Huh.
Keith: I could be wrong, I could be wrong.
Austin: We'll find out.
Jack: Interesting.
Keith: Yeah.
Jack: But then we get a little goodbye, the life of a Hunter is one of meeting but it's also one of parting. Wing wishes them well and says ‘look buddy, you gotta figure out your own style of Nen. That’s your real goal.’ Zushi says that he's really glad that he met them and that he hopes to surpass them someday.
Keith: What does Killua say?
Jack: Wing gives— what does Killua say, I don't remember?
Keith: He says ‘you won’t’ [Jack laughs] ‘you never will’
Jack: What a little freak. Wing also gives Zushi the world's worst backhanded compliment, is that at this point?
Keith: That actually, I was wasting to bring this back up until when we got here.
Austin: I forgot about this.
Keith: That was actually at the end of last episode. Or near the end of the last episode. Sorry it was between the hatsu stuff and the start of the fight, is when it was. And sneakily [cross] it was also in the Hunterpedia.
Jack: [cross] That’s sad.
Keith: It was like the third Hunterpedia, Gon and Killua say this.
Jack: Oh yeah, it was, yeah, I remember that, huh.
Keith: Yeah. Okay.
Jack: Yeah, Wing says to Zushi.
Keith: Whos very worries, he's like worried and anxious about being not being a good student.
Jack: He's like ‘look buddy, you're one in a hundred thousand’ and Zushi’s like ‘that's great thank you so much for saying that Mister Wing’ and Wing looks at the retreating backs of Killua and Gon and is like ‘and they are one in ten million’ or something.
Keith: [laughs]
Jack: [cross] Zushi’s like.
Austin: [cross] It’s so fucked up.
Keith: He starts sobbing.
Jack: Zushi starts sobbing and he's like. He has like, a internal line I don't remember what it is.
Keith: That doesn’t make me feel any Mr Wing.
Jack: That doesn't make me feel any better.
Sylvia: once the current manga arc ends Togashi’s gonna start the Zushi returns as a villain arc.
Austin: Yeah!!
Keith: [laughs]
Sylvia: Where he’s the most power— he trains so much he's the most powerful Nen user ever.
Austin: That's so good.
Jack: I would absolutely read it.
Austin: I need it, I need it. Dark Zushi.
Jack: Gon is— Gon’s got a plan. He's going to go back to whale island and show Aunt Mito his Hunter's license. Because now he’s given his badge back to— now he's given Hisoka's badge back to him he feels like he’s you know— he's a real Hunter and Killua’s gonna come too [Sylvia: Yeah!!] gonna go on a little road trip. And then they wave heaven's arena goodbye and I wave heaven's arena goodbye too.
Sylvia: Yeah, that’s Heavens Arena’s.
Austin: I guess technically, that is the end of this arc, right.
Sylvia: Yeah, absolutely. At least how I remember it.
Keith: These next two episodes are kind of floating in between it’s kinda hard to— [cross] but yeah, I really think it is the next thing.
Austin: [cross] Yeah, they set some stuff up for the next time so. Yeah.
Jack: Exciting! What are we watching next time?
Keith: Was that? Who was that?[1]
Jack: I think Sylvi was coughing.
Keith: Oh, I think Discord was like tried to half mute it [Sylvia laughs] so it sounded like you [makes muffled speech sound]
Austin: It’s uh, that was Kevin, [as Kevin] ‘kay you know thanks for coming to the arena, everybody, uh, hope you had a good time.
Jack: [as Kevin] My arena.
Austin: [as Kevin] My arena.
Sylvia: [as Kevin] Thanks for coming to my place, this is actually a house show so just make sure— if you could just make sure to clean up after yourselves.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh.
Jack: [laughs]
Keith: [as Kevin] Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Austin: [as Kevin] We’re— we're going to julies next weekend, we’ll be at Julie’s.
Keith: Julie’s arena.
Sylvia: Julie’s arena.
Austin: Julie’s arena.
Keith: [laughs]
Jack: [laughs] um what are we watching next?
Keith: We’re watching the next two episodes those are episodes—
Jack: Oh, we’re just doing a little one.
Keith: Yeah, just a little one because they really don't go anywhere… they I mean there's nothing wrong with.
Austin: Well! This is—! Uh! Mm!
Sylvia: I think there’s some stuff to talk about [cross] in the next couple.
Austin: [cross] Yeah!
Keith: I think there's stuff to talk about. It's just it doesn't fit with like, we can't do three because if we do we be doing— three would be weird and then we’d be going into four or five episodes or we can just have two in the—
Sylvia: Two episodes is the cleanest break we can have, I think is the easiest way to put it.
Keith: Yeah, it's the cleanest beak. So those are episodes 37 ‘ging and gon’.
Austin: Yeah!
Dre: Mm!
Keith: And episode 38 ‘reply from dad’.
Jack: Oooo!
Austin: But whatever they’re no big deal, it's not a big deal.
Keith: Yeah. No big deal.
Dre: No big deal. No big D.
Jack: Whoa. I wonder who’s dad they're talking about…?
Austin and Dre: [laughing]
Dre: Leorio’s.
Austin: Oh, Leorio’s dad… twitter username ‘Leroio’s dad’!
Sylvia and Dre: [laughs]
Jack: Let me see, hang on.
Dre: Itunes user review left by ‘Leorio’s dad’
Austin: [laughs]
Jack: ‘Leorio’s dad’ this account doesn’t exist.
Austin and Dre: Ooooh.
Austin: Not yet.
Keith: He got banned!
Dre: Not yet.
Austin: Yeah…
Dre: [cross] He was way too rowdy.
Sylvia: [cross] All the posts when you search for Leorio’s dad are more about Leorio being someone else's dad.
Austin: [laughs]
Jack: Oh, sure. Oh, Leorio’s dad banned for tweeting at the sea lions.
Sylvia: Oh my god wait I searched for this and I got the hot Leorio that we were talking about.
Austin: [wildly] Yeeaahh!
Sylvia: Like, hold on…
Austin: This what I'm talking about!!
Sylvia: Here we go. It’s a good one too shout out to ‘roydusoleil’ on twitter.
Jack: Roy of the sun?
Keith: Oh, look at that.
Jack: [cross] Oh, that is great.
Austin: [cross] That's it! That's the moment.
Sylvia: It’s only got two likes! So…
Austin: Damn… blow it up!
Sylvia: Yeah, ah I'm not gonna retweet this three year old post.
Keith: [laughing]
Austin: You should!
Keith: [more laughing]
Austin: If anyone’s allowed to it’s you!
Sylvia: Nah I'm not doing it.
Austin: They're not even on twitter anymore… it’s too old.
Sylvia: Are they not? Okay.
Austin: It’s not, they’ve not post— they've not posted in years.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Okay sick that’s all I care then is upset— is making them feel weird so…
Austin: Yeah, their last post—
Jack: I literally just saw the one retweet appear, Sylvi, as you…
Sylvia: You're welcome.
Austin: Hell yeah!
Sylvia: I'm doing my part.
Austin: They— two years ago they had a post in March of 2021 and then a post in December 2020 and that was about YuYu Hakusho, so… you know? Shout outs.
Jack: Thank you for joining us on this episode Austin.
Austin: Yeah! You now know what was going on in that picture.
Jack: I do! This is my first— Well, here's the thing, the one on, there is one picture I can extrapolate. [Keith: Yeah.] I don't know what is happening in it but I have seen the phantom troupe [Keith: Sure.] and I can confidently say [Austin: Yes.] that is the phantom troupe. [cross] But I couldn't tell you what's happening.
Keith: [cross] [spooky voice] But what's the context.
Jack: But what's the context!
Austin: But what's the context…
Jack: They're all gathering around [laughs] they're all gathering around a glass with a leaf in and they're trying to figure out their Nen styles…
Keith and Sylvia: [laughs]
Keith: Yeah, the phantom troupe doesn't know their Nen styles yet.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Jack: Oh my god I bet the phantom troupe are gonna be—
Sylvia: Machi’s just like I don't know what this is. It just happens.
Austin: God…
Keith: I've gotta go back and double check. Like what— ‘cause we talked a lot about that one and you had a lot of guesses for what was going on there.
Austin: I'm very excited.
Keith: Like the leaf one was great we had a lot of discussion with the leaf but there was so much.
Austin: There was even discussion of if there was a leaf.
Keith: Right, you didn't know— I'm calling it the leaf. Jack did not know there was a leaf until—
Austin: Was not shown.
Keith: Yeah. But just because the sheer volume of people in the other one it was, there was a lot of like, supposition about what might be happening in that scene. So I should go back and see if anything tracks, ‘cause I don't really remember.
Keith: Anyway, anything else before we, I think we hit everything but is there anything else we missed in these episodes tha anyone else wants to say? Before we go to plugs.
Sylvia: Oh! I really liked the— I did watch the one Hunterpedia about Gon and it’s really cute that Gon sort of looks around the whole time while Killua talks about him.
Keith: [laughs]
Jack: Oh, that's so sweet.
Austin: Yeah…
Sylvia: It’s a really cute one, that's a very like—
Keith: Yeah, that's from the, 36.
Sylvia: I think so.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: No anything else I could add is uh, there's like fun stuff that you can notice in the opening and the ending themes now, I think, with the context of Heavens Arena. But I'm not going to point it out.
Keith: Oh, yeah.
Austin: Sure.
Sylvia: You can go figure it out yourself!
Keith: Go figure it out yourself. We don't have time for that!
Sylvia: You said it like— go tell it to the birds.
Keith: Go tell it to the birds, go watch it, tell it to the birds.
Sylvia: [laughs]
Keith: Any plugs before we go? Austin you're a guest here do you wanna plug anything?
Austin: What am I doin’? I mean people already know Friends at the Table, Palisade’s been really good…
Keith: Palisade has been outrageously good.
Sylvia: It’s been very fun.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: I don't know where we’ll be when this comes out, who knows where we’ll be, right?
Keith: Yeah, this will be months from now yeah.
Austin: Months from—? We could be done palisade. Palisade finale comin’ up folks, who could say. Good luck to everybody, I hope it goes well. A More Civilized Age is— has probably— nearing the end of Kotor, not nearing it, we’re done. That was the old republic that was fun. And Shelved By Genre will have finished it’s run of Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. The first season of that was really fun. We’re not actually done recording it yet we’re finishing up it in the coming weeks, but by the time this comes out again that will be over and we’ll be on to whatever our next thing is. Which I don’t— don’t 100% know what that thing is but I bet it’ll be good, go listen to that. For people who don’t know that’s me, Cameron Kunzelman and Michael Lutz doing genre read along podcast. It’s been fun.
Jack: Is he a wolf? Have you figured that out yet?
Austin: Gene? Yeah, Gene, yeah, g— Ging Wolf. Is a wolf. It's actually Ging Freecs and Gene Wolfe combined.
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: They did a fusion dance and, yeah, they are transformation types, transmutation types and they turned into a wolf. That's right.
Sylvia: What— what Nen type is Severian the torturer.
Austin: Enhancement, right? Well!
Sylvia: Probably.
Austin: How, are you listening? I don’t want— I can't say anything else spoilery ‘cause I know Jack is listening along.
Sylvia: I, no, I just started listening along. I started listening. And then I bought the books and I'm pausing until I read them.
Austin: Until you read them, I will not spoil. ‘Cause some stuff happens, that changes— there's some stuff that happens in those books.
Sylvia: His Nen type changes? Okay.
Austin: I think his Nen type changes, I think he, he—
Keith: That's tough to do.
Austin: It's tough to do! It's tough to do.
Jack: Here is actually a specifically plug that I want to give— Austin talked briefly about Palisade, but I want to address you the listener [Keith: Me?] that has been enjoying Media Club Plus but has not necessarily dipped a toe into Friends at the Table, which is the show that we all work on together, along with a lot of really talented incredible people. It is an actual play podcast focused on critical world building, smart characterisation, and fun interaction between good friends. We've been doing it for a long time and I think it's a pretty good show.
Sylvia: Yeah, it’s alright.
Dre: [laughs]
Jack: We tell long running stories in really interesting settings, really interesting characters, and we have two places you might want to jump in. You can jump in wherever you want but there are two we would sort of guide you towards. The first is a dark fantasy series called Sangfielle, if you are interested in Bloodborne or Book of the New Sun or in… what are some other nice touch stones for Sangfielle…
Keith: That's the second time [cross] we've talked about Sangfielle and a train’s showed up in the background.
Austin: [cross] Vampire Hunter—
Austin: Trains, if you're interested in trains that are haunted.
Jack: If you are interested in Cormac Mccarthy.
Austin: Sure.
Jack: Check out Sangfielle it’s got goat ppl, it's got vampires, it's got a cured desert. The other place that you might want to join in is the show Partizan which is the story of a holy moon far out in the middle of a vast galactic empire and the burgeoning rebellion that begins to brew in unlikely circumstances on this tiny holy moon. They're both really really, really good shows they're got great music and you might want to check ‘em out.
Austin: Hey who made the music?
Jack: Oh, I couldn't say, I know that they're a very handsome enhancer.
Austin: Mmm… [laughs]
Keith: Yeah, I did it, I made the music. [Sylvia laughs] I'm an enhancer now.
Austin: Deceit! I see it now!
Sylvia: That was whimsical and deceitful of you, Keith.
Jack: Oh, whimsical and tricksy.
Jack: Any other plugs that people wanna give.
Sylvia: Go to our patreon if you like this show.
Keith: Yeah, go to—
Sylvia: Go to friendsatthetable.cash if you'd like to support it. This show is technically a stretch goal that we reached for our patreon.
Austin: That's true.
Sylvia: That’s why we’re doing this but if you want us to you know... Keep up the good work and also like, afford rent and food and stuff. [Austin: Mm-hm.] you know... That’s a good way to help us out.
Austin: Not wrong.
Keith: It is— yeah, not wrong.
Sylvia: Also I don’t know, can we tease that we’re thinking of doing some patreon bonus stuff for this? Is that like, [cross] we don’t need to get into the specifics.
Keith: [cross] Oh, that might even be out before this, even though we have recorded it.
Sylvia: A reverse tease.
Keith: A reverse tease, but if you didn't know—
Austin: You should add— you should let people know that when the episodes… [cross] come out.
Keith: [cross] Yeah yeah yeah, we will.
Sylvia: Oh, we will.
Keith: For sure yeah, the episodes that will tease that is probably coming out in a week from today.
Austin: Okay, great, love it.
Keith: Or is Tuesday? What the fuck day is today?
Sylvia: It’s Thursday.
Jack: Today is a Thursday my friend.
Keith: Two, three, four, five days then.
Austin: Okay.
Sylvia: Which means nothing for anybody because this is like four months ago for them.
Keith: [laughing] Right, yeah.
Keith: So people will be alerted to— that we are watching some Dragon Ball some original Dragon Ball [Austin: Exciting] if you didn't know we been watching— we watched some original Dragon Ball.
Jack: [cross] I'm finally gonna meet Goku.
Keith: [cross] We’ll have watched some original Dragon Ball.
Sylvia: And more importantly we’ll have met Jackie Chun.
Austin: [cross] Mmm, true.
Keith: [cross] We’ll meet Jackie Chun.
Keith: God Jackie Chun stuff is great, season seven of Dragon Ball is where were gonna watch a handful of episodes.
Sylvia: So hey if you want more of us talking about things related to Hunter Hunter then also go over to friendsatthetable.cash.
Keith: And this is deeply related to Hunter Hunter.
Sylvia: I mean yeah, dragon— I think our plan is to just thin— anything that's intersect with the themes and discussions of Hunter Hunter, but Dragon Ball is like the primordial ooze that Hunter Hunter climbed out of.
Keith: Right yeah.
Dre: [laughs]
Keith: And a very interesting way sort of side steps Dragon Ball Z which is the primordial ooze that a lot of other shows [Dre: Yeah] come out of. [cross] Not that there's no Dragon Ball Z but still.
Sylvia: [cross] I think Hunter Hunter is better.
Sylvia: We’ll— we can get into this another time.
Keith: We'll get there.
Sylvia: This is a three hour recording we’ve done.
Dre: It sure is.
Keith: Just on my end real quick, again—this will be old news but uh, last week Kyle and I recorded an entire Sonic Superstars let’s play.
Austin: Aw hell yeah, exiting.
Keith: So those have started coming out on youtube and it should be, the entire thing should be out by the time this comes out. That was a very fun day where we did it kind of in a row which is something we haven't done since dream cast era Sonic when we did our twenty years of Sonic let’s play. The games not very good and they want you to play sixty dollars for it, yikes.
Austin: So just watch run button play it.
Keith: Just watch run button play it.
Austin: Yeah, that sounds great.
Keith: Yeah, so you can find that over at youtube.com/runbutton.
Keith: That's it. Thanks for joining us again Austin.
[Music - The Boy in Green starts]
Austin: Love to be here.
Keith: And thanks to everyone else that joins us everytime.
Jack: And goodbye!
Sylvia: Bye, bye! You really sounded like you had more there Keith.
Keith: I got distracted, mmm…
[music ends]
[1] Sound was removed.