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 × Hunter, based on the manga by Yoshihiro Togashi. My name is Keith Carberry. You can find me on x.com and cohost.org at @KeithJCarberry. You can find the let’s plays that I do at youtube.com/runbutton. [music ends] Tons of good stuff over there. You can find the four of us here and the rest of Friends at the Table at twitch.tv/friendsatthetable and then the VODs of those streams over on youtube.com/friendsatthetable. With me, as always, is Jack de Quidt. Hi, Jack.

Jack: Hi, Keith. I'm Jack. You can find me on Cohost at @jdq, and you can buy any of the music featured on this show—or Friends at the Table, where I do most of my composing—at notquitereal.bandcamp.com. Jack’s seasonal update this week is I went tubing down the Huron.

Sylvia: Oh, that sounds great.

Keith: Down the what? Down the what?

Dre: Oh.

Jack: The Huron, the mighty Huron.

Keith: Oh, okay. Okay, yes, yes, yes.

Dre: You went tubin’?

Jack: I went tubin’.

Keith: You went tubin’?

Jack: And it was lovely.

Sylvia: I love this.

Dre: How fast was your tubing? Was this, like, relaxing tubing, or was this…?

Jack: Oh, it was great, because the first hour was exciting tubing.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Went down some little man-made rapids. You know, sort of just like a theme park ride. You know, nothing particularly strenuous. And then the next two hours was just a gentle float down the current of a river.

Sylvia: Ohh.

Dre: Okay.

Keith: That’s great.

Jack: We saw swans. It was great. It was a combo.

Keith: One of the joys— this is not tubing, but one of the joys of my life is a lazy river at a waterpark.

Jack: See, I've never been on a lazy river before.

Dre: It is tubing-adjacent.

Keith: It is tremendous. It’s tubing-adjacent. There's this fun little game, because the river doesn't care what you do, but the guys who work at a waterpark do. [Sylvia and Jack laugh] And so, like, you can get, mm, 60% of the fun from a lazy river by following the rules, and then the 40% you've gotta, like, sneak in when nobody’s looking.

Jack: What’s the secret fun?

Keith: Uh, you're not really supposed to get out of your tube or go underwater or splash or play.

Jack: Oh, what?

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: But it’s fine, because they get that their job is to stop people’s natural mostly-totally-safe impulses, so they're not great watchmen.

Jack: Mm, mm-hmm. Yes.

Keith: But it does introduce this subtle game of cat and mouse.

Sylvia: [laughs] You get to become the Moriarty of the waterpark.

Dre: Mm. [Jack laughs]

Keith: When you're in the— yes, when you’re in the lazy river, you are a little bit of a Jerry.

Jack: Who is Jerry?

Keith: Uh, the mouse.

Sylvia: Oh, well, he’s the friend of Tom.

Keith: He’s the frenemy of Tom.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Ohh.

Sylvia: He’s Tom’s, uh, sub.

Jack: I heard— is that so?

Sylvia: No, actually, no. I think he’s the dom.

Jack: I heard you say cat and mouse, and then I completely forgot that we were making a metaphor.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: And when you said Jerry, I thought you were briefly talking about Jerry Seinfeld. [Keith laughs]

Dre: Oh, I thought— my mind went to, like, oh, we're talking about, like, [Sylvia: Yeah.] Germans from World War II? [laughter]

Jack: Oh.

Keith: [imitating Jerry Seinfeld] What’s the deal with this river? It just goes round and round! [Sylvia laughs]

Jack: [imitates Seinfeld theme]

Keith: [imitating Jerry Seinfeld] Why doesn’t it meet the ocean? I don't get it!

Sylvia: Oh my god.

Jack: Who else is on this podcast?

Keith: Andrew Lee Swan.

Dre: Hey, you can find me on Twitter at @swandre3000, where I'm about to post a short YouTube video of tubing.

Sylvia: Oh.

Keith: And Sylvi Bullet.

Sylvia: Hey, I'm Sylvia. You can find me everywhere at @SYLVIBULLET. You can find my emo band on Instagram at @xxemoboyskissingxx. Also, just to direct you towards the YouTube and Twitch again, Keith and I are— we thought we’d be done our 999 playthrough. [laughs]

Keith: We really thought we’d be done. We really thought we’d be done.

Sylvia: There’s a fun, uh— look out for the stream that we thought was going to be two hours and ended up being five, because you can hear my mental state deteriorating the longer it goes. [Sylvia and Jack laugh]

Keith: Yeah. You got so upset by the end of that.

Sylvia: I was so— so, here’s the thing. That was a really long stream. That stream was longer than the amount of sleep I had the night before.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Dre: Oof.

Sylvia: And I felt really bad afterwards for not ending it earlier, before I got cranky, but I think it’s still probably a fun time.

Keith: The problem is that it was impossible to tell that we weren't butting up against the end at every moment.

Sylvia: Right around the corner? Yeah.

Keith: Yeah. And, like, to the point where it didn't even occur to us to check, like, “Hey, is there maybe, like, three hours left in this?”

Sylvia: Yeah, until…

Keith: ‘Cause it felt like it was about to end.

Sylvia: Until it was too late.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah. [Jack chuckles] So, we'll finish that soon. But hey, one more episode. That’ll be nine total episodes of 999.

Sylvia: Exactly.

Keith: Because I'm splitting that one into two, because it’s too long.

Sylvia: Yeah, you have to.

Keith: I have to.

Sylvia: You have to.

Keith: Never happened before. I've never done that on the YouTube. I've never taken a—

Sylvia: I'm a pioneer.

Keith: Actually, that’s not true.

Sylvia: Oh.

Keith: I just did it for a Janine video, because she played two different games. She played Life Makeover and then switched to a game called Go-Go Town!

Sylvia: Okay.

Keith: But different circumstance. That was technically two streams in one video.

Sylvia: I see, I see.

Keith: Do we have anything…? Oh, Jack, we just did another Crusader Kings. We should do more Crusader Kings. That’ll all be up.

Sylvia: Oh, did we mention the bonus stuff that we've done for this show?

Keith: No, and we should do that, because [Sylvia: Yeah.] when this is out, the previous week—it’s already up—is Dragon Ball Z. We watched Dragon Ball Z. Dre hosted a Dragon Ball Z bonus episode.

Sylvia: Did a great job.

Keith: One of two to three Dragon Ball Z bonus episodes that we're going to do.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Keith: And Dre, correct me if I'm wrong. We did Dragon Ball Z Kai.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: Episodes 13, 14, 15, and 16.

Dre: That sounds right to me.

Keith: Yeah. So, you should go watch those episodes, sign up at friendsatthetable.cash, and then watch us talk about those episodes. I cannot overhype the bonus episodes. I think that they're great.

Sylvia: They're so much fun to make.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Especially the Dragon Ball stuff. It is just, like, a torrent of Dragon Ball information, latent Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball facts, [Sylvia laughs] exploding from our brains and into Jack, who—

Sylvia: Yeah. [Jack laughs]

Keith: You know, we mentioned on the Dragon Ball episodes—or maybe it was referencing the Dragon Ball episodes on the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure episodes—just, like, this energy of, like, finally being able to unleash all the stuff that we have to say and not having to hold back like in Hunter × Hunter.

Sylvia: Just barfing them out.

Keith: Yeah. So it’s a great release, just personally, as a personal endeavor.

Sylvia: It’s cathartic.

Keith: Yeah, it’s cathartic to just be able to not censor for spoilers. [Sylvia laughs quietly] And there's so many Dragon Ball Z facts that, like, that I could just say a random thing that Jack has no idea about. Like, Jack, do you know that there's fusion in Dragon Ball Z, and the characters can merge together?

Jack: I did not.

Keith: Did you know there's actually multiple ways that they can do that?

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: And if Goku and Vegeta fuse one way, they're called Gogeta, and if they fuse another way, they're called Vegito? [Jack laughs] And they have slightly different personalities?

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: I didn't know that. [Keith laughs]

Sylvia: And one of them involves earrings.

Dre: And they look different. That’s true.

Keith: One of them what?

Sylvia: Involves earrings.

Dre: Involves earrings.

Keith: Yeah, one of them involves earrings, yeah.

Sylvia: They wear matching earrings and then become the same person. It’s very lesbian-coded of them.

Keith: They do. Well, the other one, they do a dance, that then becomes…

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: So, it’s…

Sylvia: So, Goku and Vegeta are very sapphic, is what we're saying.

Keith: Yeah. [Sylvia laughs] They also love being merged together.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Vegeta hates the idea of it beforehand. Once they're merged—

Dre: Goku kind of does too.

Keith: Yeah, Goku’s more willing.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: They don't like doing it.

Dre: Yes, for sure.

Keith: But then, once it’s happened, they're like, “This is the best. I'm Gogeta. I fucking love being alive.”

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: [chuckles] I've been birthed now. [Keith laughs] Speaking of things getting birthed.

Keith: Yes.

Sylvia: Oh, there's a lot of it.

Keith: Okay.

Dre: Oh, good segue.

Keith: Do we want to talk about this a little bit, or do we want to go right into the intro?

Jack: Let’s go right into the intro, I think.

Keith: Okay.

Sylvia: Let’s get a summary, yeah?

Summary [0:08:45]

Keith: Yes. Today, I have a very important question. I want to ask you: what are the contents of a soul?

Jack: Ohoho!

Sylvia: Wow.

Keith: Something between nothing and everything. As the ants continue to devour humans, they continue to change, or do they just continue? Can a soul remember?

Dre: Mm.

Keith: Can a soul remember, Reina? [Jack chuckles]

Sylvia: Oh.

Keith: There's conflicts between ants. Dutiful loyal subjects of the Queen defending order of their nest against individualistic bloodthirsty ants, whose disdain for humans leads to them killing for sport and leaving good nutrients for the Queen out to rot in the sun. Meanwhile, Pokkle and Ponzu are exploring the forest of the NGL, hot on the trail of the ants, just as Kite and his team are crossing the border. Pokkle becomes the first known rare human, brimming with life energy worth 1000 humans alone, [Sylvia chuckles] but also represents a new threat to the ants. Kite, Gon, and Killua encounter their first ants as well. Rammot, a bizarre-looking rabbit bird man.

Sylvia: Oh my god.

Keith: And Yunju, a man-snake centaur. That’s horse on the bottom and man-snake on the top. [Jack chuckles] Just as we learn definitively that the ants are short work for Kite and his team, there's a new threat on the horizon.

Jack: Whew. I think the first thing I would like to say, before we start going through this piece by piece, is how impressed I am at…once again, I think that Togashi and the adaptation team’s pacing is really singular. And I don't always mean that positively, but here I definitely do. I mean, in the last run of episodes, it ended with the ants starting to discuss names and the value of names and sort of beginning to hint that the internal politics of the Chimera Ant sort of, like, horde are getting muddied and complicated by the fact that humans have been introduced into the Chimera Ant line. And I think a less interesting show would have worked through that really meticulously, sort of making sure that B followed A and C followed B. But by the time episode 79 begins and we join the Chimera Ants—because, of course, Togashi is making them protagonists now—they've figured out a lot of this stuff already, or if not figured it out, they are well in the throes of, like, a lot of the stuff that was only just beginning last time. A bunch of them have names now. Do we want to talk about the Chimera Ants that we know that have names?

Sylvia: Who’s your favorite?

Jack: Who is my favorite Chimera Ant?

Sylvia: Yeah, that’s actually— like, named Chimera Ant. Like, who stands out to you, that you're like, when they're on—

Keith: Favorite name or favorite character overall?

Sylvia: No, like, when they're on screen, you're like, “Oh, I want to see more of them.”

Jack: Um, that’s a really good question. I think that…and we can talk more about why later.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Jack: I think that Leol and Zazan are really interesting Chimera Ants.

Sylvia: Hmm.

Jack: Leol is a big, uh, catboy.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: And Zazan is a scorpion lady. And they both represent kind of, like, different versions of Chimera Ant commanders with Colt, who is the original Chimera Ant, the man whose name we bleeped in the last episode.

Sylvia: I described Colt in my notes as the last honest cop on the force. [Dre laughs] Like, that’s really the role that he’s playing in this show. [Keith laughs]

Jack: I think Colt—

Sylvia: And maybe that’s partially 'cause I've been watching The Wire.

Dre: [exaggerated shocked voice] What do you mean you planted the drugs on that last arrest? [Keith and Jack laugh]

Sylvia: For real, though.

Jack: Colt is great.

Keith: That’s actually true. He has, like, a little…he has a little sort of group of, like, non-fighter ants. Like, the logistics ants [Sylvia: Yeah.] who are, like, in the background planning things.

Sylvia: Oh, Peggy’s mine, by the way. Peggy’s my favorite, by the way.

Keith: I love Peggy.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: Peggy is the penguin.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Peggy’s great.

Keith: I really like Peggy. I love Koala. I love Meleoron.

Sylvia: Yeah, Meleo—!

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: I got so excited when my boy showed up.

Keith: Yeah, yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Oh, Meleoron is really cool.

Dre: I like Cheetu.

Sylvia: Cheetu’s fun.

Keith: Oh, Cheetu’s really fun.

Jack: Cheetu’s great. [chuckles]

Keith: I like that Cheetu is like, mm, like a dumbass.

Dre: Yeah, no. He’s great. [Keith laughs]

Sylvia: Yeah, he’s Sonic the Hedgehog.

Dre: He is a dumbass. He’s just here for the vibes.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: You also get the impression that, like, Colt kind of likes him. They have these, like, really nice little moments of, [Sylvia: Mm-hmm.] like, “this fucking guy” bickering, whereas you get the impression Colt really resents and doesn't care for some of the other commanders.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Jack: But, I mean, you will have heard from us just going through a torrent of names, by the time we pick up, the ants have names, and they also are starting to fracture internally into various…and it’s not just that they have different ideas about how best to serve the Queen. They have different ideas about, like, what it means to be alive and what’s good.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Some ants just want to eat people and view working for the Queen as being sort of a nice way towards eating people. Some ants, like Colt, are like, straight down the line, “We have to birth the King. This is our focus.”

Sylvia: Pure sense of duty.

Jack: “I'm going to serve the Queen.” And then you have, like, a whole squad of ants that don't give a shit about being Chimera Ants, basically. They're just like, “We're out here in the world wreaking havoc,” and they are some of the scariest ants that we have met so far. We will talk about them later. The last episode we watched today was a real doozy for some frightening ants.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: I wrote, “Individualism is ruining the hive.” [laughter]

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Like, individuality is running amok.

Jack: Colt says as much, like, four times.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Well, I…I like— there's kind of, like, this tension in that, where Kite and Colt have, like, kind of different reads on what’s happening to the ants, which I think is kind of interesting.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Keith: Like, two…and it’s interesting that I kind of think Kite is more right, even though everything he’s saying is just a guess based on, like, observation.

Sylvia: Good instincts.

Keith: It’s kind of funny that Colt can't really see what’s going— maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm exaggerating this tension, but it seems like Colt is kind of missing the forest for the trees, like being too close to the problem because he’s, like, in the society.

Dre: Mm-hmm. [chuckles]

Keith: But they see the ants as, like, becoming more individualistic because they're becoming more human; where Kite sees they're not becoming more human, they're just eating worse humans.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: [laughs] Our diet’s suffering.

Keith: Yeah. [laughs]

Jack: We're going to get to this, and, you know, we are sort of jumping ahead.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Jack: But right off the bat, the fact that you are hearing us talk about the— you know, we are, what, four episodes into the Chimera Ant Arc, [Keith: I know.] and the ants have invented society? [Keith laughs]

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: And I mean that—

Dre: And then we get a bunny bird man who’s the Joker, so…

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: We do get a bunny bird man who’s the Joker.

Sylvia: Hisoka’s fursona. [Dre laughs]

Keith: He sort of reminds me of the Grinch from the Jim Carrey live action The Grinch.

Sylvia: Oh my god.

Dre: Jesus, Keith. [Keith laughs]

Jack: This is Rammot.

Sylvia: Somebody stop me from killing these children! [Keith and Jack laugh]

Jack: The little dog with the horns.

Episode 79 [0:15:53]

Jack: But we actually start with getting into the NGL.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: We get horses in Hunter × Hunter for the first time, I think.

Sylvia: We also get, like, just straight up, like, world map that shows— isn't it in the first episode, where it’s like, “this is where the NGL is—”

Jack: Yeah, it is.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: And it shows how close we are, kind of.

Keith: Shows it in relation to Yorknew City.

Sylvia: Yorknew City, yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: Which I think is, like, really helpful, 'cause going into this, I was like, “Fuck, I gotta update the map from forever ago,” and then the show was like, “No, no, no. Sylvi, we got you.” [Jack chuckles]

Keith: Actually, we'll give—

Sylvia: We'll just show you how far it is from Yorknew.

Keith: If we can take a, mm, like a 25 second pause, I can play a fun song and talk about it real quick.

Sylvia: Please.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Okay, hold on. I'm going to pop out, so I don't get Sylvi talking over it by mistake, which is fine, I just didn't know that’s how it would work last time with the Big Green.

Sylvia: Yeah, no, it’s fine. Yeah, put me on blast. It’s cool.

[brief pause]

Jack: And there he goes.

Sylvia: Okay, so now Keith’s gone, so I can just talk as much as I like, you know?

Jack: Just talk, just as much as you want.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah. Not silencing women anymore.

[cut]

Sylvia: Hey.

Jack: Hello.

Dre: Hey

Sylvia: We weren't talking.

Keith: That’s fine. [laughs] You can talk! That’s why I left, so you could talk.

Sylvia: No, we weren't talking.

Keith: Oh, okay, good.

Sylvia: We were quiet the entire time. [Dre chuckles]

Keith: This is some…the song that plays when they're showing the map is great, because it’s one of those instances of, like, being able to dive deep into this catalog. Like, obviously using— taking music that you've written and, like, reusing it thematically is, like, [Sylvia: Yeah.] what a score is. It’s the definition of a score. [Sylvia chuckles] But it’s this really fun thing of what happens when you get 80-something episodes deep into a TV show and all of a sudden have this really huge bag of things to pull out. This song, “Morning Market”, plays in, like, episodes one and three of season one and then never again until this map shows up, and it sort of becomes like the theme of the Mitene Union.

Jack: Mm.

Keith: Because I think it’s the— I think it originally plays when they stumble on that market in the first couple episodes.

Sylvia: Oh.

Keith: And it’s sort of, like, “I'm in a new exotic kind of place” song, and then they reuse it for the Mitene Union, being in a new exotic kind of place. This is…

[clip of “At the Morning Market” begins]

Sylvia: Oh, yeah!

Dre: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[music ends]

Sylvia: This renfaire-ass tune.

Keith: It’s super renfaire, yeah. [Dre chuckles] But I was like, I noticed it, and I was like, “Is that new? What is this?” and I did a search through the website I use to find all this, and I was like, “No, this played in episodes one and three.”

Jack: Oh, wow. That’s great.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Jack: Yeah, Pokkle and Ponzu are slightly ahead of Kite and his team, and this is going to become important later. [Sylvia laughs] They are more the tip of the spear than Kite’s crew, and they are riding in on horseback.

Sylvia: That’s a nice way to put it. [laughs quietly]

Jack: Yes.

Keith: They reveal that actually 10 other groups made it before Kite’s team made it.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Which is kind of like…

Jack: Yeah, but weirdly…

Sylvia: It’s the truck driver who says that, right?

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: The guy bringing them in?

Dre: Yeah, the truck driver’s like, “I drove a whole bunch of you crazy people over to the NGL.”

Sylvia: I love that when he calls them weird. He will not stop calling them total weirdos. [Keith laughs]

Jack: And none of them are picking up. We can't actually contact any of those 10 other Hunter teams, but it’s probably fine.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Well, yeah. They're in the NGL. They don't have phones.

Keith: They don't have phones.

Jack: Yeah. I also—

Keith: Or bees. Most of them don't have bees either.

Dre: Yeah. [laughs]

Sylvia: Sorry, did you say beads?

Keith: Bees.

Sylvia: Beads?

Jack: Bees!

Keith: Beads, yeah, beads.

Jack: Gob’s not on board.

Keith: Yeah, they don't have beads.

Jack: I really liked this truck driver calling them all weirdos, because it revealed—and this happens sometimes in this show, when normal regular people get involved—how bizarre and opaque the world of Hunters and Hunter pursuits must look to just a normal person. You know, a person even more normal, for example, than the announcer at Heavens Arena. You know, this guy just drives trucks and is just driving, [Dre laughs] like, 10 trucks of absolute weirdos deep into the depths or into the border of the NGL and not really understanding why. But this sense that, like, something is moving out here beyond my ken.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: And, you know, what’re you gonna do? There's trucks to drive.

Keith: All of a sudden, a bunch more people want to come here than usual.

Sylvia: There's a real, like, beginning of a horror movie vibe with this guy, to me.

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: 100%, yeah.

Sylvia: Where it’s like, he’s the local dude being like, “I don't know why you guys are going up to that big creepy house on the hill.”

Keith: Yeah, they say that hill’s haunted.

Sylvia: Yeah, like, for real though, right? Like, that is totally the purpose he serves, and it’s like, didn't really click until we got into the actual content of the episodes, and it was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, there’s a lot of…

Jack: No, I think you're right. I mean, there is some stuff towards the end that is almost explicitly horror writing.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: But I think that even prior to that point, as soon as we get into the NGL, these episodes play out like a haunted house movie where the haunted house is an entire country.

Keith: Mm.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: They know that the ants are out here, but they don't know where. They suspect that the ants are attacking people, but they don't know that for sure, until they find that out quickly.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: And then they just— we have scene after scene of our heroes stumbling into, like, a village just full of blood and there's nobody there. And when the ants start showing up, they show up like slasher movie villains or something, where, you know, they will interrupt a scene midway through and appear seemingly out of nowhere, and we'll have to deal with the ants. The—

Sylvia: There is a ton of, like— oh, sorry, Jack. You can finish your point.

Jack: Oh, I was just going to say that, like, the physical space of the NGL, at this point, feels like creeping around a haunted house.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: There's also kind of a tragedy to this bit, where, like, Kite had been so diligent in tracking the ants that then ends up being here way after a bunch of other Hunters had, like, found that leaked recording and gotten here.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: And like, how much easier would this have been had they gotten here five days earlier or whatever? 'Cause the ants moved so quickly. Sorry, Sylvi, were you going to say something?

Sylvia: I was just going to say that there's a lot of horror influence in this arc so far.

Keith: Oh, yeah.

Sylvia: I think that, like, we get— there is a moment in the last episode we watched that’s very reminiscent of zombie fiction. There's a lot of this stuff that feels— I don't know necessarily if you'd consider Jurassic Park like a horror anymore, but a lot of the stuff where they're going through the forests in the NGL feels very much that sort of, like, [Jack: Yeah.] “we're in the wild unknown” sort of thing that happens in some horror.

Keith: Mm.

Sylvia: Usually goes to some interesting—and by interesting, I mean racist—places. But it’s just interesting to note the— I wrote in my notes that, like, there's a moment in these episodes that I consider where the vibe shift in Hunter × Hunter is complete, where I stop considering it a children’s television show.

Jack: Yeah. The going through the checkpoint as well is, like, a classic—

Keith: I love that.

Jack: You know, in the last episode, [Dre: Mm-hmm.] we were talking about this as, like, a techno thriller or as like a Michael Chrichton-esque.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: That’s just Jurassic Park as well, is going through the checkpoints.

Sylvia: Oh, absolutely.

Dre: Oh, yeah.

Jack: And then we have, like, Junji Ito references later, in the way that characters’ faces are drawn, and we also have…there is very possibly a Cannibal Holocaust reference in one of these episodes.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Which is wild. The show talks about shrikes, you know, the birds that hang their prey on bushes.

Sylvia: That’s literally what I was thinking of, Jack, was that thing. [laughs]

Jack: But I think it’s also— you know, it could— in the genre space that we're in, it could very specifically be a reference to this, like, quote, unquote “classic” exploitation film of the ‘70s?

Sylvia: Yes.

Jack: Called Cannibal Holocaust.

Sylvia: The aforementioned racist horror movie. [laughs]

Jack: Oh yeah. They were making them all in the ‘70s, and then they never stopped making them. They just moved them into different genres.

Sylvia: Yeah. [sighs]

Jack: But yeah.

Dre: Oh, like Star Wars.

Jack: Like Star Wars or like, for example, Homeland, or…

Sylvia: I mean, listen. Eli Roth is still working.

Jack: Eli Roth is still working, but he shouldn't be. [Sylvia chuckles] Has he ever made anything I like? He’s good in Inglourious Basterds. He’s a good performer.

Sylvia: Yeah, I don't mind him as an actor.

Jack: Okay. Bit of a hint here that Pokkle and Ponzu are an item.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: As they are riding on this horse, she kind of, like, rests her head on his back.

Dre: Oh, yeah. Big horse snuggles.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Although, at the same time, I feel like horse snuggles is just a classic part of the way you shoot two characters on a horse.

Dre: Well…

Keith: It’s very deliberate. She, like, leans in and closes her eyes.

Sylvia: Does a little smile.

Dre: Sure. We also get other alternative ways to shoot two people on a horse later.

Keith: [laughs] We do, yes.

Sylvia: Yeah, we do. We get a really good alternative way.

Keith: Yeah, how come Ponzu didn't just do this?

Jack: Oh, god.

Dre: Oh yeah, why didn't Ponzu just fucking T-pose on top of the horse? [Keith and Dre laugh]

Jack: Yeah, let’s talk— 'cause then Kite’s crew— let’s actually do getting into the NGL all in one go.

Keith: Okay.

Jack: They arrive, and they arrive at this big tree, which is described as both a checkpoint and an embassy, [Keith: I—] and it is notable as— mm?

Keith: Oh, I love this tree, because it’s such a fakeout on, like, what the interior is going to be like.

Dre: Oh, yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: They're like, anybody who doesn't have to cross this border, this might as well be, like, the fucking Keebler Elves.

Jack: [chuckles] Can you say more about what you mean?

Keith: Well, it’s— so, the embassy is two big trees, and they're like, “Yeah, the embassy’s inside the trees,” and it’s like, oh yeah, 'cause they're nature people, right? And then you get inside, and it’s full of, like, metal detectors and ultrasounds and X-ray machines and…

Dre: Dudes on computers sending email.

Keith: Like, 40 dudes on computers. And everyone’s like, “What the fuck is going on? Aren't you supposed to be the NGL?” And they're like, “Yeah, but to run a country these days, you kind of have to have a bunch of computers, so.” These are the— you know, we're technically outside the border.

Jack: They also say— it’s outside the border, which is great.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: And then they put everybody through this very rigorous sort of testing process.

Keith: Did anybody catch what they said to Kite, like, when they first showed up? Which I thought was really interesting.

Sylvia: No, go ahead.

Keith: Um…

Jack: Oh, yeah.

Dre: The part about how they can't deny him entrance?

Keith: Yeah. “If you're Pro Hunters, then you know we cannot deny you entry.”

Sylvia: They’re Jedi, huh?

Keith: Yeah. I actually call Kite Qui-Gon later on. It’s a very specific moment when he’s Qui-Gon Jinn.

Jack: It’s not just technology that they have to remove. You know, phones, cameras, all that sort of stuff. It’s things that have been produced by technology. Now, if this is sounding vague to you: yes. That’s fine.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: But they have to produce— sorry, they have to remove metals, petroleum-derived materials. No prosthetics or implants. If you have, like, gold fillings in your teeth.

Dre: Can I have glasses?

Keith: Glasses, braces, fillings.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: “No silicone implants,” they pointedly say. [chuckles]

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: And then cut to the girl. It’s like, okay.

Jack: And if you— they're quite happy to say, “All right, turn around. You can't come in.” You know, you wouldn't have to remove that stuff. I was wondering whether there would be, like, this awful thing of, like, “You can come in if you have your teeth taken out” or something.

Sylvia: This is what it feels like going through the TSA [Jack: Yes.] as a transgender person.

Jack: This is the NGL TSA.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: It did mean we also get the…right up there with shots I never expected to see, Gon going inside an MRI machine.

Keith: Yeah. [Dre and Sylvia laugh]

Sylvia: That should have been a screenshot! [Keith laughs]

Keith: Yeah, the…

Jack: Well, the thing is, I'd have just been like, “I guess he’s sick,” and then you'd have said, “He’s actually in an embassy.”

Sylvia: No, I know, but then we would have spent this entire show with you being like, “When’s Gon get cancer?” [Keith laughs]

Jack: [laughs quietly] Yeah, why is Gon going to to go into the MRI?

Keith: One of the workers here at the embassy says, “People have smuggled guns by hiding the parts inside their bodies. We often find cameras or cell phones inside their rectums. People have even trained animals to carry laptops across the border when they themselves are inside.”

Sylvia: Do you think that’s what the monkey guy from the Hunter Exam did? Do you think they're talking about him?

Jack: Oh, yeah.

Dre: Ohh, I bet.

Keith: Yeah, that’s him.

Sylvia: Or Goreinu, maybe. [Keith laughs]

Jack: Served up as a rare human. [Sylvia laughs] But also, this is, you know, this is exactly what Ponzu is about to try and do.

Keith: Yes, although…

Jack: They just don't know that…

Keith: Refreshingly analogue.

Dre: I do want to make a point here that we get some new outfits.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah, we do.

Dre: And that my wife specifically said, “Wow, Killua’s new outfit kind of looks like that outfit that the Rock wore or that Steve Jobs wore.” [Sylvia laughs]

Keith: It’s true. It looks just like that, and it’s great, because Killua has been so specific in his style, to this point.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: Fastidious, you might say. That the shot of him in his new clothes— well, everyone in their new clothes. He’s, like, pulling at them, like, “what the fuck?” [Keith, Jack, and Dre laugh]

Sylvia: Yeah. It’s really cute.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: I do love the sort of, like, Ryu and Ken alt palettes thing they have going on with Gon and Killua.

Dre: Oh, yeah.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Sylvia: Where they both are like, “Yeah, we're the shoto characters of Hunter × Hunter.” [Dre laughs]

Jack: Because only five people have been able to get in. Kite, Killua, Gon, Stick Dinner, and Podungo are the only people who get in.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: [laughs quietly] That Stick Dinner got let in is crazy.

Keith: Stick Dinner got let in.

Dre: Stick Dinner is fucking dressed up in, like, a fucking karate gi. Like, he’s about to go throw down.

Sylvia: Yeah, he’s ready to go.

Keith: Oh, yeah. I also like Pokkle didn't have to change his clothes at all. He got to wear what he wore in.

Jack: Oh, yeah.

Keith: He already was wearing natural clothes.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: That’s a really good detail. I hadn't noticed that.

Dre: So did Ponzu, right?

Keith: Yeah, Ponzu too, yeah.

Jack: More classic horror movie stuff and also war movie—this is, like, a trope shared by both of them—is Kite says to the rest of his team that he will be back in two weeks. “Wait for me here.” And this is, like, right out of the playbook of, you know, “I'm just going out and I'll be back quickly” or, like, “the war will be over in X amount of time.” And it’s never right. [Dre laughs]

[0:30:16]

Sylvia: No.

Jack: And as they enter, Kite says, “Now the hunt begins.” There's a lot of made of, like, hunting in these episodes.

Keith: Yeah. Right.

Dre: Uh huh.

Jack: And we'll talk more about that as—

Keith: The different things hunting means.

Jack: The different things hunting means.

Dre: They types of people who are excited about hunting. [Jack chuckles]

Keith: Yeah, ringing the bell for the first time in a long time: what is a Hunter?

Jack: Yeah. Yeah.

Dre: Who is a Hunter?

Keith: Who is a Hunter?

Jack: Who is a Hunter?

Keith: Are ants Hunters?

Jack: But we do have to talk about the horse, right? We have to talk about Killua on the horse.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Do we want to jump back to— or do we want to keep with these—?

Jack: No, no.

Keith: Okay.

Jack: Let’s cut on them journeying in.

Keith: Okay.

Jack: That final shot of them sort of on horseback.

Keith: It’s unbelievable.

Jack: Why? Why is he doing this?

Keith: Why is he doing this? [laughs]

Jack: What is Killua doing? He is standing perfectly on the back of a horse like a circus artist.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: That is being ridden, I think, by Gon?

Sylvia: It’s Gon, yeah.

Keith: Yeah, it’s Gon, yeah.

Dre: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack: Why is he doing this? I thought they were going to make a joke about it.

Sylvia: Why not?

Dre: Because he’s gay, and he can't sit normal. [Jack laughs]

Sylvia: It reminds him of skateboarding.

Jack: Ohh.

Dre: Ohh.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Why did Killua sit like that on the back of the horse? I'm going to be wondering that.

Keith: Yeah. Welcome to the rest of your life.

Jack: It’s weird, because Killua is not particularly showy, [Sylvia: Hmm?] except when he’s just about to kill someone.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: And in his fashion. He doesn't like—

Sylvia: I was going to say. Killua’s not particularly showy?

Jack: I mean, he's very, um…

Keith: Reserved?

Dre: He’s not ostentatious.

Jack: He’s reserved, and he’s not— well, he’s a bit ostentatious sometimes. But like…

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: You know, why’s he there on the back of the horse doing that shit?

Keith: Maybe they could only get a certain number of horses.

Jack: No, you can also sit back there. [chuckles]

Dre: That’s true. We just saw it.

Jack: Gon is a kid.

Dre: We just saw it.

Keith: Yeah, but—

Dre: We just saw two people sitting on a horse very normally. [laughs]

Keith: You know, I think, uh…the worst way to defend yourself from accusations of being in love with your best friend is to hold him while riding a horse.

Dre: You know, you're onto something there.

Jack: Hmm.

Sylvia: Nah, he should hug him.

Jack: Okay. It’s ant time. We've sort of spoken a bit about what the ants are doing here, which is that they are inventing, quote, unquote, “society.”

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: With all the various things that that implies.

Keith: They have sectors.

Jack: Yeah. Really quickly, the ants have mapped the regions into sectors, and the penguin, whose name is Peggy, is the sort of operations manager. Peggy is rarely seen without his book. He’s just bopping around, [laughs quietly] telling the ants where to go, what to do. There's a lot made in these episodes of, like, the ants are becoming more human, and more specifically, they're becoming more evil. They are taking on the traits of evil humans. And this very, like, particular impulse to, like, categorize and know and map and how you can use a map to exert control feels very much like the instincts of humans bubbling up through the ants. Colt is named very casually in conversation. They're just throwing the names around now.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: We sort of made reference to this in the last episode but bleeped the names out, so you wouldn't have heard it, but Colt’s name is very very similar to Kurt, the boy that he once was, and that is no coincidence. We're going to get back to that later.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: There is perhaps more of Kurt left in Colt than he suspected.

Keith: They were already not subtle, and now they're just telling you this is Kurt.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Yes. And let’s just lay out the kind of grips here. Colt believes, oh, of course, we're trying to feed humans to the Ant Queen so she can birth the Ant King. Colt says, “You requested a number of humans. No more, no less.” Some of the ants are like, “Well, if we give the requested number of humans, can we not just kill a bunch more humans for fun?” to which Colt says, “Well, no. You're just taking out the future stock of humans.” And then a third group of ants says, “Fuck the quota. Let’s just go and start killing humans.”

Sylvia: This isn't proper police procedure!

Jack: This isn't proper police procedure!

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: Colt’s banging on the desk.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: He’s going to take Rammot’s badge. [Keith laughs]

Jack: And Peggy is kind of with him. Colt and Peggy are worried about…well, so…

Sylvia: They're worried about guns, right? Like, this is the thing. Oh, am I still connected?

Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith: I can hear you.

Sylvia: Okay, sorry. Everything went quiet enough that I was like, “Huh?” Like, don't they also talk about how they've been losing soldiers in this scene, or is that later? I feel like they have talked about humans fighting back here, but I might be wrong.

Keith: I think that that’s later.

Sylvia: Okay, my bad.

Jack: But they are worried about, um…they pin it on names. They say, “There is rising individuality within the ranks, and this is going to be a problem. And we could maybe deal with this by getting more soldiers.” And I really like Colt’s response to this, which is, “If we don't deal with the individuality problem, we're just going to get a bunch more soldiers that will then emerge as a bunch of individuals. We need to nip this in the bud, you know, sort out the inter-ant discipline before we start thinking about getting more soldiers.” Because some of the ants have not been appearing at meetings. Oh, right. They've also invented meetings. [Keith laughs]

Sylvia: Yeah. [Dre chuckles]

Keith: Well, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, “invented” is, like, the other side of remembering. They remember about meetings from being alive.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Yes. Yes. And the Ant Queen is completely separate from all of this. She is a sort of, like, perfect target for them, in the sense of, like, we need to provide goods for the Ant Queen. We need the king to be birthed, et cetera, et cetera. She’s like a saintly figure up there that is also kind of, in the way that a lot of saints or oracles are, rendered flat. You know, she doesn't really involve herself. She’s just something that you strive towards.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Meanwhile, all the ants are like, we've got meetings. We've got plans. We've all given ourselves names now. Colt has taken a name, which is interesting. You know, there was a bit of me that was like— I suppose he’s taken a name because he thinks it is useful, not because he wants one.

Keith: I don't know. It’s hard to say. I don't— this is, for me, a lot of the tension with the ants, is like, misinterpreting their own society by, like, by being too close to it. I don't think that Colt is necessarily, like, less individualistic because of being an earlier ant or whatever. I think that he's just as close to—or closer to, maybe, even—to his human, 'cause he’s the only ant we've seen remember something. You know what I mean?

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: To his human side, it’s just that his human side was particularly loyal and, like…

Jack: Yeah, I think that’s worth saying, right?

Keith: Died in a moment of loyalty, even.

Jack: And so it’s very easy for him to say…oh, well, we can just talk about it now. Later on, he says, essentially, “I'll do anything for her.” You know, I'm going to be loyal.

Keith: Talking about the Queen, ostensibly.

Jack: Yes. “I'm going to do anything for her. I'll do anything for her, Reina.” Which is, of course, the name of the sister. And Peggy says, “What did you say? Who’s Reina?” And Colt turns around and says, “What the fuck are you talking about?” [Keith and Jack laugh]

Sylvia: It’s like…

Keith: Oh, did we lose Dre?

Sylvia: Oh, we did.

Jack: We lost Dre. Oh no! Okay. We'll just wait for Dre’s internet to come back.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

[cut]

Keith: Do you want to see the art that the website uses, the soundtrack website uses to categorize miscellaneous and unreleased Hunter × Hunter tracks?

Jack: Yes.

Sylvia: Of course.

Jack: [laughs] In case this makes it onto an episode—

Sylvia: Oh my god.

Jack: It is a still of Gon, Killua, Leorio, and Kurapika in a karaoke room.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Gon is singing into the microphone. Killua is, like, probably was singing but has been interrupted by Leorio, who is saying, “I'd like a turn now,” [Keith laughs] and is turning and looking angrily at him. And Kurapika is sipping some orange juice in the background.

Keith: It’s great. It’s really good.

Jack: There's no way that’s official art, right?

Keith: I don't know. It looks official to me.

Jack: Those look like the way that those characters are drawn.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a cover to some soundtrack.

[cut]

Keith: We were talking about Reina.

Jack: Yeah, Sylvi had something.

Dre: Oh, hey, who’s that? [Jack chuckles]

Sylvia: Hey, what’s that translate to in English from Spanish?

Keith: I don't know.

Sylvia: It’s queen. It’s queen.

Keith: Really?!

Sylvia: Yes.

Keith: [in unison] Wow.

Dre: [in unison] Wow.

[Sylvia laughs]

Dre: These motherfuckers.

Keith: These motherfuckers.

Sylvia: I thought you guys knew that!

Keith: They got me!

Jack: Wait, so—

Sylvia: Yeah, Reina means queen in Spanish.

Jack: You know, I've often said that sometimes the best weapon, as far as subtlety is concerned, is a hammer. He’s doing great. I love Togashi.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: But yeah. We're going to be going down here more and more.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Jack: This line of, like, you know, this is where Colt’s— this is why Colt’s character is interesting.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: I don't think that this is going to be the last we see of this. I will say that Colt is a really likable character, despite his, like, stickler inflexible hyperfocus.

Sylvia: Oh, absolutely.

Jack: There is something about the way he is played by his vocal performer and the way that he is animated, where you get the impression that he’s just, like, tired and grumpy at all these ants.

Sylvia: He ends up feeling more like a noble knight than, like, cranky wet blanket.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Yeah, yeah.

Sylvia: Which I think is, like, a really…

Keith: Well, he’s surrounded by lunatics.

Sylvia: Yes, exactly. Like, because of the—

Keith: He’s surrounded by the weirdest guys.

Sylvia: The absolute chaos of the other ants just means, like, oh yeah, Colt’s the closest that we got to regular guy.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Jack: He, uh…might be worth saying again. Colt seems to be a cross between a bug, a human, and an eagle. He has these big white angelic eagle wings.

Sylvia: Angel wings, yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: He has a humanoid but, like, bug carapace body with two arms and two legs. It’s notable to count the arms and legs, because we will meet bugs who don't.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: And a notably human face, despite the bug bits.

Jack: Yeah, he has a beak, a sort of—

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: But like a curved bird of prey’s beak, not like a big pointy one.

Sylvia: His hair…I know it’s not the same, but for some reason, whenever I think of him, he has Vegeta hair, but he doesn't really. He’s got, like, a weird, like, curl.

Dre: He does have, like, a widow’s peak, though.

Sylvia: He has the Vegeta hairline but not necessarily the cut, you know?

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: I sort of think of it as, like, a Cindy-Lou Who Dr. Suess style, you know? [Dre laughs]

Sylvia: Oh my god.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Sylvia: We've got so many Dr. Suess characters.

Keith: We do. [laughs]

Jack: I know.

Sylvia: What if Cindy-Lou Who was the commanding officer of the Grinch?

Jack: [laughs] Of the Grinch. And he’s always posed with his arms crossed over his chest and his wings folded up really tight behind him.

Keith: Eee.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: You know, you get the impression that his shoulders are, like, drawn up around his ears. He’s just very tense and just, like Keith says, dealing with the weirdest ants. And two of— well, one of them [Sylvia chuckles] appears out of nowhere, literally out of nowhere. This ant is Meleoron.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Who is a chameleon ant. Really sort of no better way to put it, right?

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: My dude. My absolute dude. I love this lad so much.

Dre: What would you say is his two most notable features, Jack?

Jack: He has perfect round golden eyes that appear—

Dre: Yeah, what do they do?

Jack: They, like, boggle around in his head. [Keith laughs]

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: And like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, you know, when the cat disappears but the smile remains, Meleoron’s eyes are always the first to appear and the last to leave when he sort of phases in and out, in this really nice animation.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And then I'm trying to remember. He has a weird tail or he has weird hands. What’s his…?

Dre: Oh, I was going to make fun of his dirtbag soul patch that he has. [Keith laughs]

Sylvia: I love him!

Jack: He does also have a little dirtbag soul patch, doesn't he?

Dre: It rules.

Sylvia: This dude is a member of the band Len. He’s about to play bass for “Steal My Sunshine”. [Keith and Dre laugh]

Jack: And the vibe that you get with Meleoron is that he is an ant that is going off piste, maybe not quite as off piste as some of the others.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: But he can't be trusted, and he is going to try and worm his way into the good graces of whoever he thinks is, like…

Keith: Yeah. Oh, sorry, go on.

Jack: Just whoever he thinks is, you know, closest to him at that moment, right?

Keith: I think he immediately tips his hand as kind of like a coward.

Jack: Yeah, he’s very cowardly.

Keith: Like, he’s kind of spineless. He doesn't want to be yelled at. He gets in trouble for not being at the meeting, even though he’s there. Colt thinks maybe he is there, which is why he shows up, 'cause Colt, like, yells for him, and he was, like, there the whole time, and he’s like, “Please don't yell at me. Everyone is always blaming me for everything! Sure, I know where Yunju went, but it wasn't my fault. Just leave me alone.”

Dre: [chuckles] Sure, I know everything you're mad at me for not telling you, but come on! [laughter]

Sylvia: He wants to go down to the meatball room and just smoke a blunt and…

Dre: Play some pinball.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: But there's another scene later where he kind of reveals that he’s also sort of a shrewd operator.

Jack: Yeah, this is what I mean. He’s like, he is that character archetype who is a coward who is also pretty good at clawing his way into, you know, positions of leverage or positions of power.

Sylvia: Work smarter, not harder, right?

Keith: Mm.

Jack: Work smarter, not harder. It is great to see these Chimera Ants showing up. [laughs quietly] Every episode introduces a new fucked up weird Chimera Ant, and I don't think Togashi has any intent to stop. He’s just going to keep drawing them, and he keeps giving them names and also voice actors. These ants just, you know…

Keith: They just keep talking. They can't shut up.

Jack: It would be one thing if it was, like, a background ant. But, you know, when each episode brings a new voiced, named ant.

Keith: One of the big surprises of the Chimera Ant Arc, I think, is that it has maybe more talking than any other season. [laughs quietly]

Dre: Oh, yeah.

Keith: We meet fucking so many characters, and they don't shut up. They just talk and talk and talk.

Jack: And we are spending so much time with the ants. And, to be specific, we're spending time with Colt trying to bring the ants in line. The sort of second team of ants; those are represented by an ant called, um, Mizan, who is a sort of sexy scorpion lady.

[0:45:07]

Keith: Yeah. Zazan.

Sylvia: Sorry, Zazan.

Jack: Zazan.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And Leol, who is a buff tiger?

Sylvia: Is that…?

Keith: He’s a buff something.

Dre: Uh, hey, Jack.

Sylvia: Did you get that name from the subtitles, Jack?

Keith: No, they say it. They say it in these.

Dre: Jack.

Sylvia: Do they say Leol?

Keith: They do, yes.

Dre: Jack, what are the first three letters in Leol?

Jack: Leo.

Dre: Uh huh. What sort of big cat would you associate Leo with?

Jack: [sighs] That’s a good question. I don't know, maybe a panther or something? [Keith and Jack laugh]

Dre: Oh, is this a uniquely, like, American thing? 'Cause—

Keith: I think Jack’s messing with you.

Jack: [laughs] No, I'm messing with…

Dre: [sighs] God damnit, Jack.

Jack: Is he a lion?

Dre: Yeah. I think that’s the vibe, anyway.

Sylvia: Yeah, what?

Keith: Well, I mean, this is a joke from later. Can I spoil it?

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: He’s a tiger. He calls himself Leol, because he wants to be a lion. He is a tiger. [Jack laughs]

Dre: Oh!

Keith: Someone calls him out on it, and he’s like, “Shut the fuck up.”

Dre: I just fell for his trick.

Sylvia: Sworn his name was…

Keith: Yeah, you fell for his trick.

Jack: Leol’s Trick!

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: And I thought I had briefly fallen for his trick, [Keith: Yeah.] but I hadn't, but through ignorance. Leol and Zazan are sort of of the approach where they can say to themselves, “Well, you know, killing human is actually pretty good.” Leol has a really great line later, where he says, “It’s good humans can speak, because you get to know exactly what they're thinking as they're dying.” And that sounds pretty evil, but he is of the ant faction that, at least at this point, is still within “let’s bring tribute to the Queen.”

Keith: Right. I love this, like, position that the ants have immediately took of, like, humans are food, so they're nothing. Like, it’s a surprise when they can do anything.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Like, oh, they have guns? That’s crazy. Oh, they can talk? Like, oh, how lucky for us. Which is so funny, because, like, the humans, like, begot the talking ants. [Jack laughs] They're so aware of, like, their descendency from the humans but not in a way…like, Peggy I think would obviously be like, “Of course they can talk. We speak their language,” but the rest of the ants just kind of float through, like, that kind of thinking. They don't really…

Jack: Unaware that they are picking up both the strategic advances of humans and also the sort of, like, the worst aspects of humanity. Yeah, because there's this third faction of ants, led by Yunju, or Yunju is one of them, who has run off to hunt humans by himself. He was really enraged by the attack by the white-clad machine gun wielding people, and he has headed off to hunt ants for himself. As far as Colt is concerned, this is bad for two reasons. Reason number one: hunted humans need to go to the Queen, [Keith: Mm.] and any humans we just hunt for ourselves are a waste. Reason number two: why aren't the ants doing what I tell them to do? [Keith laughs]

Keith: The other thing that’s funny is that Colt isn't their boss.

Jack: No, Colt—

Keith: Colt is their equal.

Jack: Colt is ostensibly— yeah, and they bicker about this constantly.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: But Colt kind of is their boss, [Keith: Yes.] because he is the first human Chimera Ant.

Keith: He has seniority.

Jack: And I don't—

Dre: Well, he’s, like, the first squadron leader? Is that his title?

Keith: He’s the first squadron leader.

Jack: Yeah, he’s the first…yeah. Because the ants have also invented, like, military hierarchy.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: But yeah, you're right. They are essentially all on the same level, but…

Keith: Even the Queen is the one who says squadron leader, by the way, which I think is really funny.

Jack: Yeah. That is odd. I actually wrote a note later about how I thought it was really notable that the ants are picking up humans’ desire and ability to categorize within organizations, but that note is kind of moot if the Queen— I think the ants are doing that, but if the Queen gave them that. Although the Queen does say that maybe she had some human DNA in her. You know, I don't know.

Keith: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Hegemony of the food chain.

Jack: Hegemony of the food chain.

Keith: Two kinds of hegemony.

Jack: Okay. And now we are essentially caught back up to speed.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: The Hunters are in. The ants are bickering and destroying their own organization even as they're building it. And pretty quickly…oh. No, wait, hang on.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Mm, I want to see if…oh, just a little note here is that the NGL has sent people who they say are translators and intermediaries to follow Kite’s team.

Keith: Oh, the spies, yeah.

Jack: But they're actually spies. I mean, I'm sure they would translate, whether or not they would…

Keith: Does anyone have the flashback that Kite gets from talking to one of the border guards? It’s something they've touched on before, but I thought that it really encapsulated the larger issue here. Kite’s just sort of interrogating— because Kite’s being like, “I never expected these people to be any help anyway,” and then flashes to interrogating one of the guards, who says, “Any sightings of giant insects? I haven't heard of anything like that, and even if there were any such creatures, I doubt the citizens of this country would make much of a fuss.”

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: “If any of us are attacked or killed by animals, we simply accept it as nature taking its course, nothing more.”

Jack: And there is something weird going on with this that I would like to talk about a bit later, when we learn a little more about the NGL organization and when we say things like, “It’s just nature taking its course,” but lets put a pin in that and come back to that, because a pink koala ant in a business suit is threatening a human.

Keith: Unbelievable, this scene.

Jack: I genuinely don't know what to do with this. [Keith and Dre laugh]

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Because here is what happens. A human— we've seen these things a few times, right? Humans sort of, like, falling to the Chimera Ants and having a moment of terror and fear and, like, wonder as they are killed. And this scene starts out looking like it’s going to be that. There's a bit of a wrinkle in it, in that the Chimera Ant is a pink koala wearing a business suit and drinking from, like, a little gourd bottle.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: With the voice of, like, a gangster. He talks like a Yakuza.

Sylvia: Do you want to hear some of the celebrities that this voice actor, Kenyuu Horiuchi, is the Japanese dub voice for?

Keith: Sure.

Jack: Yes.

Sylvia: Brad Pitt, Charlie Sheen, Ben Stiller, Ben Affleck.

Keith: Oh my god.

Sylvia: Ian Ziering, Brendan Fraser, and John Stamos.

Keith: So this guy’s huge.

Sylvia: Especially for Jesse Katsopolis in the ABC sitcom Full House. That’s verbatim from Wikipedia. [Jack chuckles]

Dre: Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

Jack: Okay. And I'm pretty used to seeing odd-looking Chimera Ants, but there's something about this combination of…and this guy is drawn like a teddy bear as well.

Keith: He’s super cute but in a business suit, like a black suit.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Ohh.

Keith: With the meanest look on his face.

Jack: And he has—

Dre: Mafia Baby 2.

Jack: Yeah, so, I was going to say as well.

Sylvia: Oh my god.

Jack: This is very much, like…

Sylvia: Krillin got eaten!

Jack: Also, I feel that, like, cute animal in a business suit is, like, a well-worn image, at this point, in, like, children’s cartoons? Or in, like, I mean, this is also kind of The Boss Baby to a certain extent, right? [Sylvia laughs] Like, it’s a little, cute…

Keith: For some reason, this has come up before, but if anybody remembers the episode of the cartoon Doug where Doug keeps having nightmares.

Sylvia: Oh my god!

Keith: And in one of his nightmares, Porkchop, his dog, is like, evil.

Sylvia: Yeah, that fucked you up, right?

Keith: It fucked me up for some reason, and this koala is very much that evil fucking dog from Doug’s nightmares. [Sylvia laughs] Like, flipping a quarter, leaning against a wall in a leather jacket, being like, “I'm gonna fucking get you!” [laughs]

Jack: This is also Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear from Toy Story. And when we say he’s pink, he is—

Sylvia: It’s Chucky.

Jack: Yeah, it’s Chucky too.

Keith: It’s, like, bright magenta, yeah.

Jack: He is bright, bright pink. And there is something about the…this show is a cartoon, but there is something so cartoonish [Keith laughs] about this ant’s appearance, even among alligator ant in a boxing suit [Keith: Right.] or Zazan or somebody like that.

Keith: He’s uniquely strange, even among these freaks.

Jack: Yes, and it completely wrongfooted me, because we haven't seen him before anywhere. His character design and his affect are so distinctive that you're like, “Well, this character is important,” but he's introduced so suddenly, and he…the human sort of, in his fear, stands up to him and, you know, is calling him a monster, and the ant says— and I love this. I wrote this line down verbatim, because the way it is phrased is so good. He says, “Why don't you explain how you and I are different?” which is sort of, I think, the thesis statement of where we are going.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: At least for the first chunk of the Chimera Ant Arc. But having this business suit ant show up and immediately start interrogating the differences between humans and ants and him not be part of the Colt/Zazan/Yunju crew of main ants, very very odd. I don't know. We'll see.

Keith: He’s also drinking out of, like, a gourd. He’s maybe drinking sake out of a gourd.

Jack: Yeah, and then he kills this human by spitting— am I interpreting this right? He, like…

Keith: He spits a sake bullet or water bullet into his head.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And his, like, eyes and ears explode with water.

Keith: Explodes out of every hole in his face. It’s crazy.

Sylvia: It’s nuts.

Jack: I don't…this guy’s going to come back, I have to imagine. You know, this is a character with a capital C, but in our notes right now, he is just koala.

Keith: [laughs] It’s unbelievable. I just love this guy. I distinctly remember my first time watching this season, like, this guy shows up, and I just lean forward and I'm like, “Okay, I think I'm maybe starting to get this.”

Jack: [laughs] It’s great.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: It’s really, really good. Colt catches up with a new ant. Colt, sort of out on the prowl, not only for—

Keith: Oh, we should say real quick that Meleoron is here, sees the koala kill this guy.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: And this is where he has a sort of shrewd talk with the koala, being like— sorry, with Koala.

Sylvia: “When you said, ‘Don't move,’ you were telling me not to move,” I believe is what Meleoron says.

Keith: Right, 'cause it didn't really make sense. “Don't move a muscle. If you die, it won't be my fault,” seeming like it’s talking to this guy, like, “don't resist and I won't kill you,” but no, he was going to kill this guy the whole time. He just didn't want to accidentally kill Meleoron, who basically sort of half heartedly tries to convince him, “Hey, you should really stop killing people, because it’ll get you in trouble, and I won't be there to bail you out.”

Jack: Yeah, to which the koala sort of continues to stoke the rivalry within the ants, right?

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: He sort of says, you know, “What’s this guy doing giving you orders?”

Keith: “Humans like that one irritate me. They should be put in their place. I much prefer to see them running, terrified for their lives.” And then Meleoron said, “Yesterday, you shot a kid in the back while he ran away screaming.”

Jack: Yeah, so they know who this ant is.

Keith: The sub, by the way, says “you shot one,” like, shot a human, not kid. They changed it to kid for the dub, I guess to give it a little more sting.

Jack: Mm.

Dre: Mm.

Keith: “If you like killing so much, you should volunteer as a feeder,” which is a fun little dig.

Jack: Yeah. Colt, on the prowl, encounters a new ant. This ant is called Rammot. He is huge. He has green hair. He is a sort of bunny ant.

Keith: He’s like a bunny bird.

Jack: He’s sort of like a bunny bird. He also, perhaps because of his long ears, sort of gives elf vibes. He’s very elfin.

Keith: Mm.

Dre: Yeah, I would agree with that.

Jack: And Colt interrupts him taking a child, seemingly to eat, and Colt can't really tell— he describes taking children as worthless, at least explicitly because he’s like, you know, they have very low nutritional value.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: The nutritional value of humans becomes pretty important.

Sylvia: It’s so funny.

Jack: But it’s very possible that he is saying this because, you know, you know why he’s saying this, listener.

Keith: Because of being Kurt.

Jack: Because he’s Kurt.

Keith: Right.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Because he was a child, and because he believes that Chimera Ants shouldn't be killing children because, you know.

Keith: I love this play between Kurt’s identity as, like, a loyal protector making him, you know, an excellent worker for the Queen but this sort of, like, underlying humanity that stops him from killing people for fun or sport, like seemingly every other Chimera Ant, which just sort of reinforces him as the Queen’s best little boy.

Jack: Yeah, it’s brilliant. I wrote down that he can't really tell whether he’s saving kids [Keith: Yeah.] because of his nature or because it’s inefficient to take them, and he’s not interrogating that.

Keith: No.

Dre: No.

Jack: I don't mean that in the sense that he can't tell because he’s looking inside himself and he’s like, “Oh, I don't know if it’s this or that.”

Keith: There's a real, like, textual cognitive dissonance going on.

Sylvia: It feels like it’s, like, the ant brain and the human brain fighting each other in a lot of ways, right?

Keith: Yeah, but then compromising to, like, just create a personality that doesn't have to worry about it.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith: It’s great. It’s so good to me. I love it! [laughs]

Sylvia: Oh, yeah. When I say this, I also say it in the…

Keith: Yeah. It’s so good.

Sylvia: I fucking adore it. I think it’s really deft writing how Togashi keeps weaving in the sort of, like, instinctual “for the Queen” stuff [Keith: Yeah.] that’s going on there [Dre: Mm-hmm.] with the struggles of these personalities coming out the more and more humans they eat.

Keith: Yeah. It’s like…

Jack: Well, because…

Keith: Go ahead, Jack?

Jack: You could write it like this, and it would be so much worse. You could do a sort of Jeckle and Hyde thing, right?

Keith: Mm.

Jack: You could have Colt clawing at his head and saying, “These thoughts! Why do they bother me so?”

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: No.

Jack: You know, “I have these awful guilty feelings.” And instead, he just folds his arms and looks at a Chimera Ant carrying away a child and thinks to himself, “That’s probably inefficient.”

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: And that’s great.

Keith: My reasons for behaving this way are my own and entirely reasonable. [Jack and Dre chuckle]

Jack: Pokkle gets attacked by ants. Pokkle has a little crew of people. One of them is called Balda. One of them is called Pekuba.

[1:00:03]

Keith: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jack: They're not going to be around long. [Dre laughs]

Keith: One of them is around a little—

Dre: Yeah. You don't need to worry about getting their names right.

Keith: One of them is around a little longer than you'd expect.

Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Dre laughs] This is our first official ant encounter with a person. With, like, a cast member, you know?

Keith: Right, yeah.

Jack: The ants we've seen— I say “a person.” God, that’s so… [Dre and Jack laugh] That’s some narratology going on there. You know what I mean.

Keith: The rest of them are just drawings.

Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is Pokkle meeting an ant, and it’s also the first time the ants have encountered a little thing called Nen.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: But.

Keith: And how do they fare against it? [Sylvia laughs]

Jack: Well, this is notable for two reasons. One, for most of these episodes—and in fact for all of them, until a really great moment at the end—the word Nen is never spoken.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: This is really good. We are so firmly in the ants’ POV here that Nen, this thing that we have been taught about ad nauseam, just gets, you know, the language falls away from us here.

Keith: There's even frames where, for the first time in forever, when a character is using Nen but we can't— not every time, but they're using Nen and the camera can't see it, because the ants can't see it.

Jack: Yeah. It’s great. Nen obliterates Chimera Ants.

Keith: Yeah. Pokkle uses his Nen arrows, Seven Spectrum Array: Red Arrow, which is like a fire arrow.

Sylvia: It looks cool. It’s a cool ability.

Keith: It does look cool. Yeah.

Sylvia: I'm so excited to see how Pokkle uses all the different colors in his quiver. [Keith laughs]

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Mm-hmm. Well, it’s another systematized Nen power, right?

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Togashi is now even doing this without drawing attention to it, that we have Pokkle shooting these rainbow arrows. Last time we heard, Pokkle was struggling with Nen. Do you remember the little, like, “how are the others doing”?

Keith: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: He’s really figured it out now.

Keith: Well, maybe not REALLY figured it out.

Jack: Maybe not really. [Keith and Jack laugh]

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: He’s doing a lot better than he was.

Keith: Right.

Jack: And Pokkle also has a really good instinct but maybe came just a smidge too late.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Listener, don't worry. Pokkle is going to survive for— well, maybe…

Sylvia: A good long time.

Jack: Yeah, a good—

Keith: Pokkle doesn't die in these episodes, as far as we know.

Jack: As far as we know. But not in this scene.

Sylvia: He’s fine.

Jack: Pokkle, wisely, is like, “Oh shit, we gotta call all the other Pro Hunters. This is serious.” [chuckles] And to your point earlier about Kite being late, Keith, this is Kite’s nightmare, right? Is like, showing up, and it’s gone horribly wrong.

Keith: Yeah. It’s already happened.

Jack: And it’s already happened. And you get a sense that Pokkle, in this moment, realizes it. You know, like, even Pokkle arrived too late.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: This has all gone wrong. We need to retreat, and we need to get more Hunters.

Keith: It was only a couple episodes ago where Kite was like, “Jeez, these ants might even be, like, two meters long.” [Jack chuckles] Like, Kite was thinking of a hive full of things that looked like the very first ants that we saw or maybe even more like the Chimera Ant Queen, and he shows up, and it’s like, they've got government. [Keith and Jack laugh] They're essentially a country.

Jack: Yeah, within another country.

Keith: Right.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Actually, I have a question about this.

Sylvia: Their country now.

Jack: Yeah, their country now. Um…okay. I'm trying to figure out how best to ask this.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Jack: I don't think this is a question that, like, has a spoiler. I mean, it might have a spoiler answer in the sense of, like, there's plot that will be recovered, but I don't think asking it. Here is how I imagine it would usually go with Chimera Ants. [Sylvia laughs] Chimera Ants show up in a place.

Sylvia: Uh huh.

Jack: They are about the length of a fingernail.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And they are still really dangerous. They are a Quarantine Level A, because they eat species to extinction. So, the Chimera Ants show up, and they just wipe out all the ladybugs in a thing, and then they wipe out all the aphids, and then they wipe out all the butterflies, and maybe if you're unlucky, if you let it get really bad, they wipe out all the frogs. And of course, that’s an ecological disaster in and of itself. So, in come the Pro Hunters, like Kite and Kite’s research team, and they eradicate the Chimera Ant infestations [Sylvia: Mm-hmm.] before they start getting really bad, with the sort of horrified unspoken knowledge, like, “If we ever let this get really bad, theoretically, Chimera Ants could—” you know, the narrator says if they ever ate humans we’d be done for. That’s what’s supposed to happen, but what has gone wrong here somehow is that a Chimera Ant Queen is two meters long, and we don't know yet why that is, right? I haven't missed why the Ant Queen is—

Keith: There’s the assumption that somewhere there’s some human in her.

Jack: Yes, yes, that we are actually seeing a little further down the chain of Chimera Ants.

Dre: Yeah. ‘Cause she references that, right? Like, when they had the thing about names?

Jack: She says maybe there is, yeah.

Dre: Yeah, yeah.

Jack: And that she was cast off, cast adrift, and now we're seeing her really digging her heels in to build the Chimera Ant society. But that’s probably how it would go, right? In the, quote, unquote, best possible circumstance.

Keith: Sure, yeah.

Jack: Is just the ecological devastation of, you know.

Sylvia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith: Yeah, yeah.

Jack: Insects and small mammals, and then the Hunters come in. It’s just all gone pear-shaped, because the Queen is so big, and that has given them a real advantage. Okay. Time to meet the wildcard ants. [Sylvia laughs] These ants are amazing. There are three of them. Their names are Yunju— Yunji, sorry. Yunji is a—

Keith: Oh, I think it is Yunju.

Jack: I've written in my notes “Yunju,” and then I just looked at your thing and saw Yunji. I think it’s Yunju.

Keith: I think it was just a typo. It’s Yunju.

Jack: Yes. Yunju is, as Keith said earlier, a snake man centaur.

Keith: Right. Snake man up top.

Jack: Yep. Snake man up top.

Keith: Horse down below.

Jack: He’s got a great character design. A lot of the Chimera Ants, following the design of the Queen, have— the Queen has this very distinctive mark on her forehead, or I guess where her forehead would be if she had a human face, and the ants all have, like, different variations of this mark.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Yunju has a horrible forked tongue, which he flicks around. This guy is scary.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: He is accompanied by Mosquito, a Chimera Ant wearing a surgical mask.

Sylvia: Uh huh.

Dre: Uh huh.

Keith: And those are the only things about her.

Jack: Tits out.

Sylvia: We gotta say: Togashi… [Keith laughs] Some of these ants, man.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: You were horny.

Dre: Mosquito makes Zazan look like just a normal-dressed lady.

Sylvia: I'm not even talking about Mosquito. I think, uh, was it Yanju? Is that the name of the centaur guy?

Keith: Yunju? Yeah.

Dre: Yunju?

Sylvia: Yeah. Horny as fuck, that design too.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith: Oh, yeah. He’s doing a whole psychosexual thing with a couple humans.

Dre: Especially the way he, like, is sticking his tongue out all the time and, like, licking his lips, and…

Sylvia: Yeah. A bunch of the ants come out with slutty underwear too. Rammot’s got his little fucking underwear that always looks like it’s falling down. [chuckles]

Jack: I find this so charming.

Keith: Cheetu wears booty shorts.

Jack: This, to me, is like—

Sylvia: Cheetu wears booty shorts!

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: This is like the apotheosis of Togashi’s “everybody’s just hanging out” philosophy, of like, all the ants are just kicking it in cool underwear all the time, for no reason. [Keith chuckles] Yeah, Mosquito has a surgical mask. I didn't know why, until I did. We'll get to that. He’s also accompanied by Centipede, one of my favorite Chimera Ants so far. Centipede is a humanoid man with the correct number of legs and then eight arms, but they are descending in size from the top, so they sort of, like, fan out from him.

Keith: Yeah, they get slightly…bigger?

Jack: Uh, smaller.

Keith: Smaller. They get slightly smaller as they go down.

Jack: Yeah, the vibe is he looks a bit like a sort of cobra, except it’s just all hands. And he is animated so well. The animation team clearly looked at this guy and said, “This is going to be a real headache. Let’s go for it.” He’s always, like, wringing his little hands. He has a fight later. He looks great.

Keith: We're going to meet another character with a lot of hand wringing.

Jack: Are we?

Keith: Yeah. Spider?

Sylvia: Oh my god.

Jack: Oh god! [Keith and Jack laugh]

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: There are so many ants, I've forgotten the ants that show up. But yeah, Yunju’s crew, who are the wildcard ants who want nothing more than to hunt and kill and slaughter, have broken into a weird facility. This is— well, turns out Kite was right and that the NGL is in fact a cover for a drug manufacturing operation, and not only has Yunju found their factory, he has also found the headquarters of their shadowy ruler, as the narrator comes in to tell us. And we get a shot of this shadowy ruler. He’s just a figure in a black hood, sitting at a chair that is definitely not yet shredded and covered in blood but will be the next time we see it.

Keith: Hell yeah.

Sylvia: Yep.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: And that’s the last shot, is on that chair.

Jack: Yeah. Do we have anything in 79, before we move on?

Keith: Um, I don't think so. We get a couple new songs right as the next one starts. Does anybody have…? I jumped the gun. Does anybody have anything? What Jack said.

Sylvia: No.

Dre: Mm-mm.

Jack: Togashi— oh, sorry. Nope, we're good.

Sylvia: We both said no. You go ahead.

Jack: Oh.

Dre: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Episode 80 [1:09:39]

Jack: Togashi is inventing a new thing to do with the camera at the beginning of episode 80, and I love it.

Keith: What is the thing?

Sylvia: What’s the thing?

Keith: Oh!

Jack: Earlier in the show, we had talked about how— I was talking about how much I loved the narrator, and you said to me, [Keith: Mm-hmm.] “There are going to be stretches of this show where the narrator just takes over, and it becomes the narrator’s show for a bit.” Not in the sense that it’s about the character the narrator is, but in the sense that the narrator is fully taking the reins of the story and guiding us through some stuff.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Jack: And episode—

Keith: You know what’s funny?

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: This isn't even what I was talking about. [laughs]

Jack: No. No. Watching this, though, which is the first five to six minutes of this episode, is—

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Well, so, the narrator just tells us outright. The shadowy don of the NGL is a man called Gyro. Or Geero? I don't know how it’s said.

Sylvia: Gyro.

Keith: Gyro, yeah, Gyro.

Sylvia: It’s Gyro in the voice acting, yeah.

Jack: Gyro. And the narrator gives him, like, a six minute narrated backstory. This is shot in a different art style. It is very distinctive. It is a little blunt and exploitative.

Keith: We've recently seen two exact things of this.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Jack: But I actually think this one works a bit better.

Keith: It does.

Jack: There is a little more time paid on it. Characters actually act within this flashback, rather than just sort of having, like, one single swing of a character output.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: There is, like, a little bit of a story. And I wondered if this is sort of, like, the first rumblings in the show’s storytelling structure of handing the reins to the narrator and seeing what he’ll do with it.

Keith: It is so over-the-top, is my biggest issue with it.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: It’s like—

Jack: So, what’s happening here? Let’s talk through it.

Keith: Okay.

Sylvia: Yeah. Give us the melodrama.

Keith: Gyro spends his first eight years of life on a construction site, learning to lay bricks and mix concrete before he could speak.

Sylvia: Couldn't speak til he was seven, correct?

Keith: He could barely speak before he was seven years old.

Jack: He has an extremely abusive father, who guides him not to speak, or rather, enforces that he doesn't speak and also enforces that he doesn't, like, move in his bed so that the wood doesn't creak, so he has learned to sleep without moving a muscle.

Keith: Yeah, when he—

Jack: I rang the bell here for, like, Hunter × Hunter is so— and I think shonen is really interested in talking about, like, specific control of the body. You know, when do you cry out? When are you able to sleep? When do you move? et cetera. And the father says, “Don't make trouble for others.” You know, sort of teaches him this lesson.

Keith: Yeah. He says, “That was one lesson his father taught him. He never bought him anything, not even a toy, so this lesson was his only gift.”

Sylvia: Hey, does this remind you of anybody? You guys— not to be the Boss Baby guy about deadbeat dads, but this remind you of anybody? [Jack chuckles] Anybody ever get any— I don't think it’s one-to-one, but there were definitely times where it was like, oh, this is evil Ging and Gon.

Jack: Yeah. Yeah. It really is. And, you know—

Keith: I don't know, I think it’s the opposite of Ging and Gon.

Sylvia: I guess it is the opposite, 'cause the dad stayed around.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: The dad stayed around, and it’s so much worse.

Sylvia: It is so much worse.

Keith: It’s so much better to be a father that leaves, and even as an absentee father, Ging left Gon many more gifts than, you know, telling him to shut up.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: I think the thing that— the only thing that actually ties together with these two is more the way that they talk about how he felt about his dad after he gets his, like, fever that he cares for him.

Keith: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sylvia: Is very, it’s like, oh yeah, he talks about his dad the way Gon would talk about Ging, except he gets immediately told, “No, that was the neighbor who did it.”

Keith: It is another dysfunctional corrupted [Sylvia: Yeah.] father-son mentor-mentee relationship.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Jack: It’s also— and we talked a little bit about this with the scissors pervert, Binolt, and there was another bizarre “I had a sad childhood” flashback, or I might just—

Keith: Kite.

Jack: Oh, it was Kite. Yeah, it was Kite.

Dre: Oh, yeah.

Jack: And we've mentioned this a couple of times. This is so firmly within the realm of melodrama, and also, it keeps reminding me of, like, high Dickensian melodrama, to a certain extent as well.

Sylvia: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: Where it’s like, the revelation here is, you know, he idolized his dad, because he cared for him when he had a fever, and you could absolutely see Charles Dickens getting really excited about, you know, giving that to the audience in the first third of the book, and then in the last third of the book, as our character is dying or our character’s friend is dying, being told, “That wasn't actually your dad. That was the neighbor.”

Keith: Which is what happens.

Jack: Which is what happens.

Keith: There's a couple songs. So, these two things back to back are really funny kind of interesting musical thing. These are the— for how many new songs we got in the last episode, these songs don't have a ton. Sorry, last Media Club Plus episode. This Media Club Plus episode doesn't have a ton of new stuff, but we do get some new stuff here, and again, it’s like, it’s kind of a sick joke. They play a horrible joke on Gyro here, in the soundtrack. “Kingdom of Predators” is what plays when they talk about the early years of Gyro’s life, before talking about why he idolized his father. They say that, to Gyro, his father was like a god, so he never misbehaved [Sylvia: Yeah.] because of this memory that he had of him taking care of him when he was sick. But it’s called “Kingdom of Predators”.

[clip of “Kingdom of Predators” begins]

Sylvia: That’s where Hisoka’s from.

Keith: Yes. [Jack and Keith laugh]

Sylvia: Thanks. [Dre chuckles]

Jack: This is an ant cue, through and through, right? Like, this is…

Keith: They do use this a lot, and there is some…you know, there's some narrative thread tying, like, the sort of…the horror of the ants to the horror of Gyro’s early life and then the horror that he wants to inflict. [music ends] He also was sort of eaten and reborn as an evil thing, in this flashback.

Jack: Yeah. And speech was something that came to him or was gifted to him late.

Keith: Mm-hmm. And then, when he’s talking about— or when the narrator is explaining why, even though he was treated so horribly, abused and kicked and forced to stay in his bed any time he wasn't working and then beaten for staying in his bed too loudly, they played the song “Understanding”. This is why Gyro still loves his father.

[clip of “Understanding” begins]

Keith: It’s very just slightly slow and sad.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: To create just a tiny bit of pathos for this horrible man, then just to rip it away, being like, “It was a lie, actually.”

Jack: Yeah. Yeah.

[music ends]

Jack: Gyro kind of comes to realize, you know…the lesson that he takes from this is that the universe doesn't give a damn about him, and the narrator is using “I” in this sequence. You know, we are firmly in this realm of this sort of, like, very melodramatic here, as the narrator begins to embody this character in the storytelling. And, you know, Gyro sort of came to realize that what his dad was actually telling him was “don't make trouble for humans,” and so he came to the conclusion that he must not be a human.

Keith: The line here from the narrator I think is, like, the big standout for me in this section. Like you said, he’s sort of quoting Gyro’s inner monologue. “If I live, I'll make more money. If I die, I'll free up a little space. That’s all.”

Jack: Yeah. I don't think any of this is particularly clever, and I think it’s actually…

Dre: Mm-mm.

Jack: Perhaps the move that I think is really interesting is that we get all this backstory and then Gyro is presumably killed and fed to the Queen. You know, there’s going to be—

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: There’s a good match cut in here. [chuckles]

Jack: What’s the match cut for? Oh, is it— Gyro kills his dad with a hammer. That’s something that we should probably say.

Keith: Okay.

Sylvia: Rules.

Jack: Did we get, like, a load of his dad lying down in a pool of blood, and then we cut to Gyro’s bloodied chair in the base?

Keith: Um…

Jack: I mean, that’s not a match cut, but.

Keith: Oh, maybe we did, but there's— no, I'll give you the match cut. This is when the bully who reveals the truth to Gyro. This is the shot that we get.

Jack: Let’s see.

Dre: Oh!

Keith: It’s a closeup of his eye and then the pupil of his eye becomes the Earth.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: “The universe doesn't give a damn about me,” is what it says.

Jack: Yeah, it’s great. I actually really do like how hard we go into this backstory and then it is so cursory to just be like, all right, and now he’s been captured [Sylvia: Yeah.] or he’s been killed and eaten by Yunju.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah. Did we mention—

Dre: We will literally never show you him on screen outside of this, like, this 10 minute, like, introduction about this very important person. Ah! He’s dead.

Sylvia: He’s not even rendered, like, as a person.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: He is specifically rendered, like, shadowy. I think when his eyes open up in the flashback, it looks incredible.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: Like, I thought that this— I compared this tonally to— if anyone’s played Metal Gear Solid 4, the like, sob stories about the Beauty and the Beast Corp. that you get after each boss fight.

Jack: Oh, god. Yes. [Dre laughs]

Sylvia: It really reminded me of that tonally. Like, I thought it was a little silly at times, but at the same time, it ends up being, like, put together visually so well, like, presented so well, that it ended up winning me over, you know?

Keith: There is something— there's something interesting, and by “interesting” I maybe mean not interesting, about—

Jack: [laughs] The opposite of that. [Keith laughs]

Keith: Why is Togashi, like, stuck on this thing of, like, showing a bad guy or showing someone and then, like, revealing that they've had this horrible, you know, beaten, downtrodden childhood? Like, it’s so brief with— they compact so much character change into the Binolt thing.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Keith: Like, they show, you know, a minute and a half of his backstory, and then his life is changed when they go back to the future. And then we learn about it with Kite, and how it was sort of Kite’s avenue out of that life was, like, running into Ging, who happened to notice that all these animals liked him. And then now this. It’s like a very strange thing to now have happened three times in 15— uh, in, like, 25 episodes.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Yeah. I think I know what it’s doing here, which is it’s saying this is what the ants are getting.

Keith: Yeah. Oh, totally.

Jack: You know, this is what is going into ants. [Sylvia laughs]

Keith: But why this mode? Why this mode of doing it?

Jack: Yeah, I don't really know.

Sylvia: Togashi likes doing these short stories.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: Like, Togashi— like, we got the little one— we talked about how with whatshisname, not Battera— was it Battera? Who…wait.

Keith: Binolt?

Sylvia: What’s the name of the rich man? No, the rich man.

Jack: Battera.

Keith: Oh, Battera, yeah.

Sylvia: It was Battera. Binolt also. This is very much a second run at the Binolt stuff, it feels like.

Keith: Yeah. I forgot, yeah, Battera’s a fourth one of these.

Sylvia: Yeah, Battera. We get the little story about him and his, uh, “it’s totally cool that I'm dating her; don't worry about the age gap” girlfriend.

Keith: Isn't the dub actor for Battera also the narrator? Didn't we learn that?

Jack: Yes, we did.

Keith: Wow. See?

Sylvia: Yeah, I think so.

Keith: That’s crazy. That’s really funny.

Jack: I bet this works a lot better on paper.

Sylvia: Probably. [Dre laughs]

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: I bet if I read this in the manga, it would not feel so jarring and odd.

Sylvia: That’s what we said about the Battera stuff too, right? Where it’s like…

Keith: Maybe we did, yeah.

Sylvia: Again, I keep meaning to catch up on the manga and then not having the time to, given our recording schedules and life and such.

Keith: Yeah. I mean, we barely had time to keep up with recording the episodes.

Dre: Yeah. [laughs]

Sylvia: I'm just so curious to see how this was paced in print.

Keith: Same.

Sylvia: Because I wonder, again, if this is one of those “an entire chapter condensed into five minutes” things.

Keith: I'm right on the verge of trying to catch up with the manga, so we'll see. Maybe next time I won't be totally caught up, but my promise is: by next time we record, I will have read a chunk of manga.

Sylvia: Yeah. I mean, my plan is to just pick up at Chimera Ant, and then…

Keith: I'm reading the whole thing.

Sylvia: Damn, good for you. [Jack laughs]

Keith: I thought about— this might end up becoming a thing where, because we've had to reschedule a couple times on episodes that Ali was going to be on, I thought that maybe, as a last resort, we could have an episode of just manga catchup with Ali.

Dre: Mm.

Sylvia: Ah.

Keith: Who’s been pretty much reading the whole manga while we've been recording, and so I thought that that would be a good…

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Maybe a main feed bonus thing to do.

Jack: That’s a good possibility.

Keith: I don't hate this. I should say I don't hate this. I liked learning about Gyro.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: I love the narrator. It’s just odd that it’s happened four times recently, and it’s pretty over the top.

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: I like pairing I with Yunju, as this ant that is— so, we come out of this explicitly saying that Gyro, quote, “wanted to spread evil through the world,” with D², the drug that he makes with the NGL, being the first step in achieving that greater goal. And we are told that he has been handed over to Colt to be taken to the Queen. So, all of that is going to be— I think all the time, Keith, about the way you describe Fortnite as paint thinner. [Keith chuckles] You say, “It’s paint thinner! [Sylvia laughs] Put it all in there, and stir it all up.”

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: And it’s a good expression of what I actually kind of find charming about Fortnite, at the same time as I find it horrifying.

Keith: Mm-hmm. [Dre laughs]

Jack: But Gyro has been— Gyro is in the paint thinner, in the ant paint thinner. Stir it all up. And it just so happens that, you know, Togashi has taken the time to tell us that what is in that mix is really unpleasant and is really sad and comes from a really painful place.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Just as Colt died protecting his— sorry, “Colt.” Kurt died protecting his sister and has now been transmuted into this loyal, [Keith: Right.] haunted by something that he doesn't even begin to understand, entity.

Keith: They do such a good job of showing, like, how bad things can get with the ants by showing you how good they can be with Colt.

Jack: Yes. Yes, that’s true.

Keith: Like, Colt is an expression of his opposite.

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: Yeah, you're right. And similarly, you know, it’s this thing that we keep coming back to, of like, it’s not that the ants are becoming more humanlike, it’s that they're eating evil humans.

Keith: Right, which is something Kite picks up on right away.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: He’s, like, actively worried about this.

Jack: We are now so far into the realm— [Keith chuckles] and we're going to get even further into the realm of, like, “all right, okay, let’s see where he’s going with this,” [Sylvia laughs] that previously, earlier in Hunter × Hunter, I would have written down a note like, “Oh, good and evil is objective and can be rendered out through ants.” [Keith laughs]

Sylvia: Nah.

Jack: And at this point, I just sort of went, “Uh, I have more concerning things to think about right now.” [Keith and Dre laugh] I'm just going to take this one as read. We're going to move with it.

Keith: Can you believe how deep into ant shit we are, this early on in the season? Like, knowing that it’s mid-60s episode length?

Jack: The thing is, even taking into account where I think this is going to go long, doesn't even get me close to the length of it. [Dre and Keith laugh]

Keith: It’s crazy how fast we got here, with how much there is to go still.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: Yeah, 'cause I'm like, all right, it’s the Ant King is important, and ants with Nen is important, but that’s not fucking 60 episodes.

Keith: No.

Jack: Where are we going? We'll see. Yunju has taken the factory as his fortress.

Keith: Right.

Jack: He has now gone completely off piste from the Queen. This is our first sort of, like…

Keith: I'm going to be my own King.

Jack: Yeah. He actually says that later. This is our first official “the ants have invented society; the invention of the plane was also the invention of the plane crash.”

Keith: Right.

Jack: The ants have also said, “Actually, fuck this.”

Keith: What if Rome fell?

Jack: Hey, Rome? Rome’s great, but Rome can also fall, and that’s even better. Then, a— god, do we have a name for this ant?

Keith: Who?

Jack: There's a gun ant. He’s not even— you haven't even put him in this doc. [laughs quietly]

Dre: Yeah, I don't think we get a name.

Keith: If he’s not on the doc, he doesn't matter. Maybe Mantis?

Sylvia: I call him Fishface.

Keith: Maybe it’s Mantis?

Sylvia: The guy who’s just dual wielding, right?

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: I'll send you a picture of Mantis, and you can tell me if that’s who he is. You can keep talking. I'll find it.

Jack: Oh, so, an ant has discovered guns and is picking up the guns and firing them and is just—

Keith: Oh, that guy! The fucking echidna guy.

Dre: Yeah, he fucking loves these guns, bro.

Keith: He loves these guns, yeah.

Jack: And he is just cackling in the middle of the forest, and there is an amazing shot of Pokkle crouched on a ridge, listening to gunfire and cackling. And we get a lot of this, actually, lots of distant gunfire and screaming in these episodes. And Pokkle sees ants flying, holding people, and he says, “What the hell is going on here?” Because he doesn't really know the scale of the project. You know, by this point, he knows the ants are dangerous, but he has no idea, you know, that they have developed an operation.

Keith: I have two answers for you. This character is unnamed in the anime. The Wikipedia calls him Gun-toting Ant. [Dre chuckles] In the manga, he is named. His name is Gyogan, which means fish-face or fisheye.

Jack: He’s great.

Dre: Oh.

Jack: Now we're back on the names, I cannot stop thinking that Reina is Spanish for “queen.” [chuckles]

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah. [Jack sighs]

Dre: I have a quick question that just popped in my head.

Sylvia: I thought that was super obvious. I'm so glad. [laughs quietly]

Dre: And I don't remember if this gets answered. Is it ever explained how Kite knows so much more about the Chimera Ants, whereas, like, other Pro Hunters like Pokkle, like, don't know anything?

Jack: Oh, good question.

Keith: Pokkle is a new Magical Beast Hunter.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Kite is specifically, like, a biologist.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: So it’s just— it’s so far, [Keith: Yeah.] at least as far as we know, it is just a reflection of being a much more accomplished, better Hunter than Pokkle.

Sylvia: Pokkle is a park ranger, and Kite is a zoologist.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: Like, has a PhD.

Dre: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: I think, even more specifically, when we get to Kite, I think the implication is that he had been already out there studying Chimera Ants for, like, a few weeks.

Dre: Sure.

Jack: Yeah. The ants are clever, and they have— they are really figuring out this, like, systematizing and organizational thing. I say “clever” there not…hmm. How to put this. There is a particular kind of human cleverness that the ants are picking up, and one of it is, like, bring the bodies back and figure out what killed our ants.

Keith: They're doing autopsies.

Jack: Yes. [laughs] Yes. Yeah. And they find out that something is out there killing ants with a projectile weapon that is not a gun. We know what it is. And at this point, when Peggy says, “If it’s a human power, then I'm sure we can learn to use it,” [Keith: Yeah.] every single viewer goes, “Oh, god.”

Keith: Oh, god.

Jack: This is going to be bad.

Keith: We get a new song here. This is when…yeah, Peggy’s talking about, like, describing the soldier ants, like, describing what they saw, which was a guy pretending to fire a gun, and then all of a sudden everyone was dying.

Jack: I really liked that line. “He mimicked firing a gun.”

[1:30:01]

Keith: Yeah. And then Peggy sort of, like, cautioning Colt, saying, “The humans’ real strength is their ability to learn things. If humans ever find out that the Queen is where we're most vulnerable, they'll do whatever it takes to kill her.” This is where Colt says, like, “I'll protect her. I'll protect Reina.” But while we are hearing this, we're hearing a new song called “Concentration”. This is one of the most important songs. It’s very subtle. It’s sort of— I almost didn't put it on here, but then I realized that it plays 43 times this season.

Jack: Oh, wow.

[clip of “Concentration” begins]

Keith: It’s called “Concentration”. This is everywhere.

Jack: Yeah, I also noticed this track, this beautiful little piano, just this piano chime in the right hand.

Keith: Yeah. And it’s very much like this. Actually, you know what? Why don't we see if it changes further in.

[song continues, with added strings and more piano]

Keith: Oh! There’s that. That’s what I was looking for.

Jack: Hirano is so good.

Sylvia: Really good.

Keith: Yeah. Great stuff.

[music ends]

Jack: You’ve gotta write as little music as is necessary. That’s the goal. As little sound as is important.

Keith: And you gotta know what…you know, like, what…that could have been something more sinister and louder and in your face.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: It could have been just as sparse but more intense and worked not as well.

Jack: Yeah. Really, really, really good composing, but this is no surprise by this point.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: I'm now just excited to see what new stuff he is going to be writing.

Keith: That’s the last new thing for these episodes, although I do have a couple other music notes later on.

Jack: Pokkle, attempting to pull out and get reinforcements, is attacked by ants. One of his comrades gets his head punched off by an ant.

Sylvia: It rules. So cool.

Jack: Sort of immediately. Do you want to talk about how they shoot this, Sylvi?

Sylvia: Isn't it, like…this isn't— I might be getting it mixed up later. They love to do the POV camera trick thing.

Keith: They do it a couple times.

Sylvia: This one is just, like, a hard cut though, isn't it? When the— it flies out of the ground, it swings, and then it, like, is a hard cut? Am I…?

Jack: What happens— yeah, it’s a hard cut, but we’re just on, like, a mid shot of the guy, not the ant, and the ant’s massive arm just comes into the frame and knocks the guy clean out of the frame.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: It’s really, really well done.

Keith: He pops out of the ground behind him. He’s like a wasp. He’s like one of those ground wasps.

Dre: Ugh.

Jack: Yeah, pops out of the ground behind him and just, like, kicks him straight out of the frame.

Keith: Knocks his head off.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: And then he is a decapitated head watching his body die.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: It’s crazy.

Dre: And screaming, “They're here,” or “It’s here.” I forget what he says.

Keith: Yeah, “It’s here,” yeah, “It’s here.”

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Again, horror movie.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: Yep. And then this fight just…you know, kicks into a high gear really quickly. Pokkle fires arrows, and then his arrows get caught.

Sylvia: By this pervert.

Jack: By this— by, um…

Sylvia: Ugh.

Jack: A terrifying spider.

Dre: By this weird green spider man that sounds like Yoda and Grover mixed together in the English dub.

Sylvia: Yoder.

Keith: He does sound like Grover. Yeah, he sounds extremely Grover.

Sylvia: From Muppets?

Keith: From Sesame Street.

Sylvia: Sesame Street, thank you.

Jack: The spider’s name is Pike.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: He has big pink eyes. He has—

Sylvia: I hate him.

Dre: He sucks, dude. [laughs]

Sylvia: He has a butthole that they keep showing on the screen. [laughs quietly]

Dre: Uh huh.

Keith: He has extremely high blushing cheekbones.

Jack: He is infatuated with Zazan, who is his squad leader.

Sylvia: He’s simpin’.

Jack: He’s simpin’.

Keith: Right.

Sylvia: Yep.

Jack: He is constantly crawling around and rubbing his horrible little hands together, and he’s also just catching Nen arrows out of the air. This is—

Keith: Yeah, he catches it, and he’s like, “This is what they couldn't see? This is the thing— this is the invisible arrow that they were talking about? I can see this.”

Jack: Yeah. I…and it’s about—

Keith: Do you remember what Pokkle says?

Jack: Um…no, I don't think so.

Sylvia: “He caught my Orange Spectrum Arrow, the fastest of the arrows!”

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: Yeah, he puts up his death flag immediately. [Jack laughs]

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: He goes, “Wait, that was my best move.” [Keith and Dre laugh]

Jack: It’s at this point that I remembered that all humans have the capacity to have Nen.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: They sure do.

Jack: Because I was like, “How come the commanders can see Nen, but the grunts can't?”

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And then I remembered that all humans have Nen, and so, you know, the ant commanders, that have probably been given more human capabilities or more human…I don't want to use the word DNA, because we are not in that world.

Sylvia: Eh…

Keith: No, we're in the realm of spirit.

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: Oh.

Sylvia: Well, we are also in the world of Phagogenesis.

Dre: Yeah. [Jack laughs]

Keith: Sure, yes.

Jack: Phay-go-genesis, please.

Sylvia: No, that's—

Dre: Nope, nope.

Sylvia: I listened to the dub!

Dre: Killua specifically calls it phag-o-genesis.

Keith: They all say— no one ever says anything other than phag-o-genesis. [Jack laughs]

Sylvia: Yep. I'm allowed!

Dre: Listen. We've already established Killua is allowed to say it.

Sylvia: I mean, I'm allowed outside of this, but I'm extra allowed. [Dre laughs]

Jack: Yeah, and this is concerning. [Sylvia laughs quietly] Ants can see Nen, but luckily, they don't have it yet.

Sylvia: [laughing quietly] It’s concerning that I'm allowed to say it?

Jack: Let’s see. Yes, Pike grabs a soldier and just bites his head off completely.

Sylvia: It rules.

Keith: Yeah, and then he’s like, [imitating] “Oh, I took a bite by mistake!”

[all imitating Pike’s voice]

Jack: He says, “I wasn't thinking, and I took a bite out of it!”

Sylvia: “She’s gonna be so mad at me!”

Jack: There's a great moment where he’s trying—

Dre: “And then she’ll never show me her boobs! Urgh!” [Keith laughs]

Sylvia: “Argh! I'm not going to be a premium subscriber anymore!” [Jack laughs quietly]

Keith: They've decided straightaway that Pike is going to be the dumbest ant that we've ever seen. [Jack chuckles]

Dre: Well, he’s like the dumb horny old man trope.

Keith: Sure, yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Well, he picks up the ant, and he’s like, [normal voice] “I'm going to make sure to take these to the Queen.” [switches back to Pike voice] “I'm going to make sure to take these to the Queen!”

Sylvia: Thank you.

Keith: And then, in the next frame, bites its head off and goes, “Oh nooo!” [Jack and Keith laugh]

Jack: My favorite Pike line so far is when he’s trying to fight Pokkle and he apologizes because all his hands are full. [Keith laughs] He’s like, “Oh, my hands are full! I can't fight you properly!” He’s great. And then Pokkle is taken out by Zazan’s tail. My note here says, “This doesn't bode well.” He is poisoned and dragged away.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Ponzu flees.

Sylvia: [sighs] Yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: And manages to send a message out.

Sylvia: Yeah, she got away!

Keith: She got away.

Dre: Mm-hmm. [Sylvia laughs]

Jack: And then the Gun-toting Ant [Dre: Unless!] shoots her in the head and eats her.

Keith: And then shoots her a hundred more times.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: This is the scene. This is my “the vibe shift is complete.” This is not a kids’ show anymore.

Jack: Shooting the dead body of…

Sylvia: It’s the shot of who I've been calling Fishface [Keith: Yeah.] just emptying the clip into Ponzu’s…

Dre: And her body twitches.

Sylvia: It’s the twitching, yeah. It’s the twitching.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: It’s the closeup on the hand with the blood splatter on it. It’s, like…

[jaunty music starts to play and is quickly cut off]

Keith: Oh. [Sylvia laughs]

Dre: Yeah, that’s not the vibe, Keith. [laughs]

Sylvia: No, no, no! Yeah. I'm doing a jig on Ponzu’s body.

Dre: Fuck your bees, lady.

Sylvia: It’s really effective, though. I remember, the first time I watched this scene, getting, like, actually kind of upset. Like, it was genuinely upsetting to me the first time it happened, 'cause I wasn't expecting it.

Jack: Is this our first, like, main-ish character death? No.

Sylvia: Uh, no.

Dre: No…

Jack: We've had Uvo. The Troupe are—

Sylvia: Yeah. Uvo.

Jack: And we've had, um…oh, can I remember her name? Pakunoda. Yes, but they are the villains.

Keith: They're the villains.

Jack: Ahahaha.

Sylvia: But also we had Squala.

Jack: Oh, we did have Squala.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Oh, yes.

Sylvia: Who I would consider the same tier of character as Ponzu, like a supporting cast.

Keith: Maybe even slightly higher, yeah.

Dre: Mm.

Sylvia: Uh, yeah.

Keith: Squala and a few of the other…

Jack: She’s the one we've been with the longest.

Sylvia: Kind of.

Keith: It’s true.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: I think she had a lot less screen time than Squala.

Sylvia: Yes.

Jack: Yes, but she was one of the first that we met, I suppose is the thing that I mean.

Keith: Although, they share a death song.

Dre: Oh.

Sylvia: Really?

Jack: This is the same sort of, like, what you just played? This sort of, like, it feels kind of ‘70s?

Keith: Yeah, yeah. I played it and then didn't stop it. I'm going to delete that, and we'll listen to it because specifically Sylvi called it out as a song that she likes.

Sylvia: Thank you.

Keith: This is weirdly the song— it first plays when Squala dies. It then plays several times throughout Greed Island, because it’s called “Who’s the Bomber?”, and then it plays now.

[clip of “Who’s the Bomber?” begins]

Sylvia: It’s so nice.

Jack: Really interesting music supervising, to be like, “This is how we score her dying.”

Keith: I love, love that bit [music ends] where it goes down and back up, the [imitates]. Like, that bit.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: It’s beautiful.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: It’s at the very end of the song, but I made sure to get that part specifically.

Jack: The cackling ant eats her, saying, “Hunting is so much fun.”

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: This is this sort of hammer subtlety that I talked about.

Keith: He’s covered in nipples. I think he’s an echidna.

Sylvia: Sure. Whatever, man. [Keith chuckles]

Jack: Oh.

Dre: Are echidnas covered—? We can't talk about this.

Keith: Yeah, they are.

Dre: We gotta keep going. We gotta keep going.

Jack: Good news: Kite has got Ponzu’s note. Bad news: it was much too late.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: He sends Stick and Podungo to warn the Hunters, and then Kite, Killua, and Gon run away so fast that they scare a horse.

Sylvia: Important line. If you can't— isn't it, like, “I'm not going to slow down if you can't keep up,” or something?

Keith: There's a lot of very important stuff [Sylvia: Yeah.] and a huge difference between the sub and the dub here.

Sylvia: Oh.

Dre: Oh.

Keith: Huge in impact, not necessarily in, like, literal words.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Let me get the…okay, so, in the dub, Kite says, “It’ll be risky. Are you sure you want to come along?” but in the Japanese translation, he says, “It’ll be dangerous, but could you accompany me?”

Dre: Oh!

Jack: Oh, that is distinct.

Dre: That’s super different.

Keith: In the Japanese, he asks them to come with, not offers to let them stay.

Jack: Wow.

Keith: And then, yes, “If you can't keep up, I'll leave you behind,” is what he says.

Jack: Yeah. There are also a lot of moments of, like, “we're professionals, not children.” That’s not true.

Dre: Mm-hmm. Two things are true.

Jack: I can understand why they are working through this stuff, because it’s, like, core to the way Gon and Killua see the world and see their relationship with adults. And the way that Gon and Killua are on, to put it tritely, a learning journey is, you know, kind of right at the core of this show.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: There is something about seeing Gon and Killua working through their personal hangups vis-à-vis whether or not they are being taken seriously that, set against the background of the Chimera Ants, feels like this is not what we should be worrying about right now.

Keith: Yeah. It reminded me of, in the last set of episodes that we watched, talking about, like, Ging and his plans and how much of what has happened has been orchestrated in order to lead Gon to this place to help him become, like, a better Hunter, to help him on his journey to find his dad. And the thing that I like about this and about the note, like, I was thinking about it when Kite is, like, looking at the note, the bloody note from Ponzu, and being like, “Uh oh, I'm pretty sure that these ants are killing-Hunter level strong, which is really really bad news,” and also thinking of the earlier times when I think it’s Kite is narrating, like, the one in a million chance that an ant could become, like, a real human-level threat, that it’s like, an eventuality, something they always knew could happen and that they would be unprepared to deal with it, especially that it would happen, like, in a secluded place like the NGL. It’s like this huge spoke in this idea that, like, Gon is supposed to be with Kite, because this ant thing is not supposed to be what’s happening.

Jack: Yep.

Dre: Mm.

Keith: No one could have ever foreseen this ant thing.

Jack: Well, you can, and that’s why you put the quarantine thing on, but it really is just this sort of perfect storm of…

Keith: Right, but it’s like, if Ging wanted Kite to train Gon, the ants were not part of that plan.

Jack: Oh, right, yes. [chuckles]

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: Yes, I see what you mean.

Keith: Right.

Jack: No. Or Ging is more powerful than we could possibly have imagined.

Keith: And so it feels like a failure in the moment, like, “oh, I was supposed to be trained by Kite, and I'm here saying I can't hack and I have to go home.” Like, it is just a coincidence of the situation that that’s maybe the prudent course.

Jack: Yeah. Yeah.

Keith: But no, they go. They're not kids. They're Pro Hunters.

Jack: Yeah. Kite correctly says, “It’s possible that the rulers of the NGL have already been fed to the Queen.” Yes.

Keith: Yep. [Dre laughs]

Jack: We see—

Dre: Correct.

Jack: Yep.

Keith: It’s so funny watching Kite, like, being one step behind at every turn.

Jack: And not being able to do anything about it.

Keith: Not being able to do anything about it.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Mm.

Keith: This is why it’s so important that we keep spending so much time with the ants, that when we get back to Kite, he’s always, like, one or two steps behind the threat.

Jack: Yeah. Really, really interesting.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: The Queen is sitting on a pile of skulls now. She eats these sort of weird meatball things. There was a reference to, like, eating meatballs earlier, and I thought that was a joke, but it turns out that they, like, process the humans into food for the Queen.

Keith: Well, so, this is, I think, explained more later on. There's two kinds of food for the Queen. There's like, oh, this guy died, he’s still fresh; we'll process him into meatballs. I think that the idea is that they should go alive into those big pods and they should be kept alive in the pods.

Jack: Right.

Keith: And then the Queen can eat them alive.

Jack: Yes.

Dre: Ohh.

Jack: Otherwise, it’s meatballs.

Keith: Otherwise, it’s meatballs, right.

Jack: It was at this moment, with “It’s possible the rulers have already been fed to the Queen,” and then a cut to Colt that I realized that a Colt ant also implies a Gyro ant as well.

Keith: Right.

Jack: You know, I think that, you know, in retrospect, that is pretty obvious. That is where we're getting with the backstory. If not directly, you know, we're saying the ants, you know, Gyro’s going into the paint thinner, et cetera, et cetera. [Dre chuckles] But, you know, we know that Colt ants exist, if only one.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And here we have an ant— sorry. Here we have a human with a really distinctive backstory that has been fed to the Queen. So, you know, if there's one, why aren't there more?

Keith: Yeah, there's not, like, 10 Colt ants running around— or Kurt. There's not 10 Kurt ants running around. Kurt is one ant named Colt.

Jack: And so, in theory—and, you know, we may or may not see this—we're going to get a Gyro ant. And that’s going to be really scary, because we know what Gyro’s— we know the crucible out of which Gyro came, and we know the philosophy that he plans to turn on the world. What if the Chimera Ant King is Gyro?

Keith: I don't know.

Sylvia: I don't know.

Dre: [“I don't know” sound]

Jack: And it becomes Colt as the, like…‘cause then you could play a story of, like, Colt as the loyalist footsoldier coming to realize that his leaders are evil and being challenged in his own loyalty in that moment. And I think an efficient way to get there is make Colt the brave— sorry, turn Kurt into the, like, brave footsoldier type and make Gyro, the leader of the NGL, the Ant King. We'll see.

Episode 81 [1:46:55]

Jack: Episode 81 begins, and Kite and Killua are running in the same gait. We have very— we have a couple of, like, “Kite and Killua are the same person.” You know, not literally, maybe, but Gon and Ging, you know, Kite and Killua. And we see this right at the beginning of episode 81, where Gon is running with his arms by his sides—you know, he's doing that, like, Gon Freecss jog—and Kite and Killua are running with their arms behind them, and I thought that was just a really nice visual.

Keith: Yeah, they're Naruto running.

Jack: They're Naruto running. [Dre laughs] But it hadn't been invented yet. Back in those days, they call— Naruto’s post-Hunter × Hunter, right?

Keith: Well, it’s post the manga but before the anime. Well, this anime, anyway.

Jack: Right, so it should really be called Kite and Killua when they run to try and hunt the ants.

Keith: Lots of— this is a very anime way to run. It’s in a lot of stuff. Even Sonic the Hedgehog runs this way.

Jack: I just liked that Kite and Killua were doing it.

Keith: Yeah. Oh, yeah, I like that too.

Jack: The ants, however— [laughs quietly] It’s so funny how Togashi keeps saying, “No, no, no, but let’s focus on the ants.”

Keith: Yeah. Well, we have rare humans to talk about.

Jack: Oh, we do? Oh, oh, right, I see. I thought you meant we have a rare sequence of talking about humans.

Keith: No, no. [Dre and Keith laugh]

Jack: But we do have rare humans to talk about.

Keith: In the very end of 80, Zazan feels Pokkle’s Nen and says that he has nutritional value—

Jack: Zazan is [cross] the hot scorpion lady.

Keith: [cross] The scorpion lady. Yeah. That Pokkle has the nutritional value of a thousand humans. And then they sort of expound on this. Most of the opener of the next episode is Zazan explaining about rare humans and that— because the Queen has, like, asked them to double their quota. I really like this, because everyone is sort of mad about the Queen saying— or not everyone. Colt is fine, but a lot of the ants are kind of being like, “Ugh, it was such a chore bringing in 50 ants a day.”

Jack: 50 humans.

Keith: Sorry, 50 humans a day. “It was such a chore. Now we have to double it? Like, that's so many people. It’s a ton of work.” Meanwhile, we know that they're just, like, killing— well, we learn more later, but they just killing humans for fun.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Not bringing them in and not counting them towards the quota. So basically they're mad that, like, bringing in more humans is eating into their murdering humans time.

Jack: Some of them are, and then there's— really Colt is the only sort of true stickler. Peggy is probably also one of them.

Keith: Bihorn?

Jack: Oh, yeah, Bihorn, who is a huge ox.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: Just an ox. No other— just sort of like a minotaur, kind of.

Jack: Yeah, it’s really funny when the Chimera Ants seem to not really do the chimera stuff. There's a Chimera Ant later who’s just a blonde girl with sharp teeth, [chuckles] and I kept waiting to be like, “What’s her weird ant thing?” and it might be hidden under the hat, but for now, she’s just a blonde girl.

Keith: It’s so funny how it’s a total crapshoot how much of anything any ant is going to be.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Sometimes you get a full koala. [Jack laughs]

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: Sometimes you get a full ant. And anything in between. A human bug ant snake with wings? Sure. [Keith, Jack, and Sylvia laugh]

Jack: Could we do one that’s just a dog? Conceivably.

Keith: Oh, let’s hope there's one that’s just a dog.

Jack: Just walking on all fours like a golden retriever.

Keith: Yeah, it barks.

Jack: Chimera Ant that’s a golden retriever. Yes. [Dre laughs]

Keith: We saw a different kind of dog.

Dre: That's true. We saw two of them.

Keith: We saw two different kinds of dog.

Jack: We saw Mike.

Keith: No.

Dre: No. We saw Spot and Rover later.

Jack: Oh.

Keith: We saw Spot and Rover.

Jack: Oh, Spot and Rover.

Sylvia: God.

Jack: We'll get to Spot and Rover. It is so funny to me and so…I think it is such an enjoyable imaginative thing to do with your magic systematizing like Nen to suddenly introduce a new group of people who think about it in a completely different way. To my point, we have heard a lot about the Nen Wheel. We've heard a lot about your position on it. We've heard about, you know, Kurapika’s out here making Nen contracts and everything. The ants don't know anything about Nen. They don't even know that people have it. They say that they— they call them rare humans or rares, and they understand Nen only, at this point, as an expression of nutritional value.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: Yep.

Jack: And that is— it’s so cool to me.

Keith: I love that they call them “rares” like it’s a trading card.

Dre: Uh huh.

Jack: Yeah. [Keith laughs] They don't really know where they come from. They just know that they— [chuckles] one of the ants later is just like, “Well, we'll just get loads of rares, and the Queen will love that,” and everyone has to be like, “Why do you think we call them that?”

Keith: We've only met one rare.

Jack: But yeah, after all this business with Nen, it essentially getting broken down to the calorie count on the back of a packet of snacks, as far as the ants are concerned, is great.

Keith: Right. And it says something about—

Jack: Just demystifies it.

Keith: It says something about what…I mean, I guess it could say one of two things. One, that like, somehow Nen makes the meat of your body extremely calorically dense, which I don't think is true.

Sylvia: Hmm.

Jack: I don't think that’s true.

Keith: Or—

Dre: It’s a life energy.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Or that the Chimera Ants are, like, eating life force, not necessarily the meat.

Jack: I think that’s absolutely what’s happening.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: But it’s great. The ants are now getting very excited about rares. Bihorn, who Pike calls Lord Bihorn—

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: They are already getting, like, honorifics.

Keith: I want to say real quick that the reason that most of them are excited is 'cause they're like, “Oh, we can work for one day and then fuck around for 10 days.”

Jack: Yep. Invention of the plane, the invention of the plane crash. The invention of working, also the invention of…

Keith: The invention of slacking?

Jack: Yeah. Fucking around.

Keith: Yeah, Colt is like, “I'm excited to feed my Queen.” Everyone else is like, “I'm excited to have a week off.” [Sylvia laughs]

Dre: Fair.

Jack: Colt is so likable. It’s like you said, by making him, like, this sort of noble soldier but also making his— if they made him being, like, a workaholic stickler really sincere— no, or really, um…it could have been so much more annoying than it is. Instead, his sincerity either comes across as noble or just kind of funny. Like, he’s the only one clinging onto this game, long after everybody else has moved onto something else.

Keith: Right.

Jack: I think Colt is great.

Keith: The extent to which the ants can be kept in line and fulfilling their quotas is basically the extent to which they [Jack laughs] are intimidated by Colt and find hunting humans fun, not necessarily killing them.

Jack: There's an amazing joke later that I didn't write down, but I'm glad that I remembered it. Otherwise it would have completely disappeared. The ants don't have time in their work schedules to organize, like, full team meetings, so Colt has to go out and handle them all individually.

Sylvia: It’s so funny.

Jack: And I love that they've, like, their office is falling apart, because their work schedule is…

Sylvia: They've invented the middle manager. [Dre laughs]

Jack: Yes. It’s great. Yeah, Bihorn tries to strangle Pike, the creepy spider ant.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Generally, I feel like the names are pretty distinctive, but as these ants just keep getting more and more— you know, more and more ants keep getting introduced, I'm trying to remind the listener, every time we keep coming back to them, which ant that is.

Keith: Right. Thankfully, a lot of them are named— it’s funny. I think that some of them, like, heard that they're doing names, but they're not particularly attached to their human identity, so they're like, “Um, I'm kind of a mosquito kind of looking thing, so I guess my name’s Mosquito.”

Jack: [chuckles] Yeah.

Keith: But then some of them are like, “I'm Peggy.” [laughs]

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: “I'm Rammot.” Pike escapes from Bihorn by shooting his horrible web out of his asshole, and he kind of scutters away across the ceiling.

Sylvia: Again, closeup on the sphincter.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Like, I cannot emphasize enough that every time we get this cut just, like, of…

Jack: Ugh.

Sylvia: For, like, two fucking frames, basically. [laughs quietly] It’s really funny.

Keith: I've gotta say: it is, of course, a sphincter, but it is not technically an asshole.

Sylvia: Yeah, that is— that’s why I switched up verbiage. [Keith laughs]

Dre: Mm. It’s important to be correct.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: It’s a spinneret? No, the spinnerets are the tiny little hands that they have, right?

Sylvia: I don't know. I don't know enough about spiders.

Keith: Yeah, I don't know.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: I think it’s an asshole now.

Jack: There is something here that I actually, I really liked.

Keith: Oh, he’s got that mark above his ass. He’s got the, like, the little diamond things.

Jack: Ugh, god, really?

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Okay. We are never shown, really, where the main body of the ants sleep or where they hang out outside of the meeting rooms or where they eat, and so it produces this effect where the ants just keep appearing and disappearing, even to each other.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Over and over, we have these meetings where another ant will just, like, you know, the chameleon appeared on the wall, or like, Pike will— not Pike. Colt will just walk into Leol’s, you know, meeting room or something. It makes the ants feel like they are constantly popping up out of nowhere, even to themselves, even within their own organization.

Keith: Yeah, it just kind of feels like there's just a camera in the office [Jack: Yeah.] and we're just watching the ants come in and out. [Sylvia and Keith laugh]

Dre: Colt’s just doing Jim Halpert face at the camera every time he finds out somebody else has eaten a human.

Sylvia: Oh my god! Oh, fucking christ.

Keith: It’s very funny. I meant office, not the TV show.

Jack: I will say that the—

Keith: But it is very funny.

Sylvia: I can't believe Meleoron put Colt’s stapler in jello. [Keith and Jack laugh]

Jack: The way the ants are written and the way this sort of, like, burgeoning organization inside the ant fortress is developing really makes a lot of the Phantom Troupe stuff seem kind of rudimentary.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: It’s like a different— they're doing a different thing. You know, Yorknew City is like a revenge story and a hostage situation much more than it is about the internal relationship of the Phantom Troupe, and in fact, that is really only what it becomes towards the end. You know, for the majority of that, there's not much, like…we can tell the Phantom Troupe care for each other. We can tell that there's some weird internal politics, but that doesn't really become the focus of the thing until it does at the end there, you know? Whereas these ants are just, there's all these weird little orbiting circles of resentment and obligation [Keith: Yeah.] and work and interest, among just this crew of ants.

Keith: I just have to say, for the record, that Colt is not Jim. Colt is Dwight.

Dre: Oh, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith: Colt is Dwight Schrute.

Sylvia: Didn't I say that Colt’s stapler got put in by…?

Dre: No, you did. You did.

Keith: Oh.

Sylvia: Okay.

Dre: I said Colt made Jim Halpert face.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Oh, I thought that that was both of you that said that.

Sylvia: No, no, no. I would never.

Keith: I think that, uh…

Sylvia: Meleoron is Jim, 'cause he’s secretly a shithead. [quiet laughter]

Keith: Who is?

Sylvia: I said Meleoron, but that’s just 'cause…yeah.

Keith: Okay. Maybe Leol?

Sylvia: Leol, yeah.

Keith: Uh…Meleoron might be, uh…

Sylvia: I'm doing an extended riff about a show I hate. [Jack laughs]

Keith: Ryan. That’s who Meleoron is, is Ryan.

Dre: Which one’s Stanley?

Keith: Stanley is, uh…

Sylvia: Peggy. I don't know. [Dre laughs]

Keith: Let’s see.

Sylvia: I don't know.

Keith: Stanley is Small Bear.

Sylvia: Small Bear. Sure.

Dre: Sure.

Keith: Zazan is Pam. [Sylvia and Jack laugh] Uh…

Sylvia: Yunju is Ed Helms.

Keith: Hina is Mindy Kaling. [Sylvia laughs]

Dre: Sure. Uh, Koala is Creed.

Keith: [laughs] Koala is Creed!

Sylvia: And Gyro is Ricky Gervais.

Keith: Okay.

Sylvia: That’s actually— that’s a pretty good one.

Keith: That’s really funny. Okay.

Jack: I've never seen The Office, so this is all…

Sylvia: You're so blessed.

Dre: Yeah, don't worry about it.

Keith: It’s fine.

Dre: I've seen bits and pieces of it. Yes, it is the most fine show ever, I think, for the most part.

Sylvia: Eh…

Keith: It has aged from being pretty good to being fine/really annoying.

Sylvia: It’s insufferable. Fuck it. [Jack laughs] I'll be the one who’s a hater.

Dre: Oh, go for it.

Keith: People who have watched The Office a million times are the people who are insufferable. The show itself is fine.

Sylvia: I've tried going back. I don't like it. I stand by it. I stand by my take.

Dre: No, same. I also don't like it, but like, eh.

Keith: I haven't watched it in 20 years. I only have my memory. Well…

Dre: I have no strong feelings about The Office.

Keith: No. I don't.

Jack: Meanwhile—

Keith: The thing that is insufferable that I have really negative feelings about is Parks and Rec. That’s the show that I feel is…

Sylvia: That one’s even worse.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: That show is insufferable.

Sylvia: That one’s actively evil.

Jack: Meanwhile, Rammot is eating horses. Rammot, remember him?

Dre: Sure is.

Jack: He is the bunny/elfin/tall…you know, that sounds like I'm describing a nice guy, but he’s actually pretty fucked up.

Dre: No, he’s the Joker.

Jack: He’s the Joker. He’s the the one who tried to get—

Keith: He’s the Joker/the Grinch.

Jack: Who tried to take that child, and Colt stopped him, for reasons that he’s not going to interrogate.

Dre: Yeah, don't worry about it.

Jack: Don't worry about that. Rammot is growing to resent Colt in a major way and is just chowing down on horses. He’s eaten an entire stable, and then—

[2:00:02]

Keith: He's meeting resentment with resentment, because Colt is not happy with Rammot either.

Jack: Yeah, Colt is not happy with Rammot, because— and this might not have come through. Rammot has sort of emerged as exemplifying the ethos of hunting that Colt thinks is not only abhorrent but inefficient, which makes it even worse.

Keith: Right. And he’s also not got an outlet for that evil, because Colt is the only squadron leader that doesn't tolerate any murder.

Jack: Yeah, all of them— there's a great scene later where— and we can sort of— we can talk about this scene now. [Dre chuckles] When Colt goes to see Leol, the tiger or the lion, and basically says, “People on your squad are eating humans! What are you going to do about it?” and they're like, “Everyone eats humans.”

Sylvia: Eat more humans.

Jack: Yeah, eat more humans. This isn't a big deal. This is when we get the “It’s good humans can speak, because you get to know exactly what they're thinking as they're dying” scene.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: Banger line.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Yeah, and this is…this, you know, all ties into why Colt is not happy with Rammot. Rammot senses the Nen of Kite, Killua, and Gon arriving as they stumble upon first his trail of blood from horses and then three horses speared onto trees, like shrikes, which are a type of bird that hang their prey on thornbushes.

Sylvia: Between that and the caloric intake thing with the Nen users, you guys are giving me a lot of just, like, Hannibal thoughts now.

Jack: Yeah. Yeah.

Dre: Mm. Fair.

Sylvia: They call him the Minnesota Shrike. It’s a serial killer name.

Jack: I need to watch Hannibal.

Dre: Oh.

Sylvia: Oh, hey, we should think about that. [Jack chuckles]

Jack: Yeah, this is great. This is another one of these moments where the show— this, for me, was like a real…there’s this image of, like, the setting sun and then these three horses speared on the trees that was, you know, it’s striking. This is not a kids’ show. It might still be being sold as a kids’ show, but it ain't.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Again, just a reminder to people who are not super familiar with shonen or the way that these are made and sold and bought and read, this is a magazine that is, like, targeted from, like, 8 to 18 year olds, so. And boys specifically is who it’s marketed—

Sylvia: Targeted but consumed by older…

Keith: Consumed by even wider of an age range.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: But like, one of the reasons that shonen can be so childish and then also graphic and violent is because, like, the sort of baked-in idea of the genre is that it’s 8-18, which again is an outrageous age range. [laughs] There's like, almost nothing I can think of that’s suitable both for a 9-year-old and an 18-year-old.

Jack: You know, there are instances of this happening elsewhere.

Keith: Sure.

Jack: I think about Poltergeist, which is directed by Toby Hooper [Sylvia: Mm-hmm.] who is a really distinctive, well-regarded— is Toby Hooper still with us? I don't think he is.

Sylvia: Uh, I'm not sure. I'll check. I don't think so.

Jack: Horror director, and he directed Poltergeist.

Sylvia: No, passed away.

Jack: Which was, like, an ostensibly light-ish horror film [Sylvia: Mm-hmm.] that wasn't going to hit a hard R rating that families could come and see. But, you know, they get a man who has a horror pedigree to design it. Toby Hooper is, of course— “design.” Direct.

Sylvia: Well, yeah.

Jack: He is most famous for writing and directing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in the ‘70s. And of course what ends up happening, as what is happening here, is that Toby Hooper makes, in Poltergeist, a fucking scary movie.

Keith: When I watched Poltergeist, it was the last horror movie I watched for, mm, I want to say 13 years.

Jack: Yeah. I feel like the thing people say about Poltergeist is always, “I watched that when I was a child, and it scared the shit out of me.” And that is—

Dre: That’s the one with the tree in it, right?

Jack: It does have a tree in it. It has a horrible clown. It has the TV, the static on the TV. “They're here.” Poltergeist is great, [Sylvia: Yeah.] and I recommend going back to it. They remade it recently, and I am fascinated by that. I haven't seen it, and I'm sure it’s probably not good, but I want to figure out why.

Keith: Hmm.

Jack: But yeah, you know, trying to hit that age group of, like, we want to make a horror movie that young people can see with their families, and the man we're going to get to do it is Toby Hooper. Um…they square off. This is their first ant. And almost immediately, Kite—

Dre: Oh. There is something important that we did not note here.

Jack: Mm.

Keith: Oh.

Dre: Which is that, uh…oh, I'm forgetting his name already, 'cause I'm just thinking of him as rabbit man.

Keith: Rammot.

Sylvia: Rammot.

Jack: Rammot.

Dre: Rammot, yeah. He can conceal his presence.

Sylvia: Yep.

Jack: Yep.

Dre: Hey, who else do we know…

Keith: Mm, much like the Grinch conceals presents.

Sylvia: Yeah, exactly. [Keith laughs loudly]

Dre: Who else do we know who learned how to conceal their presence without knowing about Nen?

Jack: Yep.

Keith: Gon.

Sylvia: That sure was our friend Gon Freecss, yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: It is—

Dre: Just want to point that out.

Jack: It was staring me in the face the whole time. I was so worried—and if I'm honest, I am still worried—about the Ant Queen eating people who have Nen, but I had completely neglected the fact that Nen is just a property of everyone.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And the ants are everyone.

Keith: Do you remember what happened in the last episode we recorded, where you had a guess that the ants were going to learn Nen and how they were going to learn it?

Jack: Yeah. I guessed they were going to—

Keith: And your guess was that they were going to eat people with Nen and then birth Nen ants.

Jack: Yes. And I think that that is still going to happen, but I think that the much cleverer, much scarier thing is it’s just like…

Keith: It’s the exact way that our best friends learned it.

Jack: You just learn it.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: They got punched with Nen.

Jack: Yeah. It’s just there. So. There's this great french horn cue that starts playing. It’s sort of like a very stately cue as the crew stare down their first ant.

Keith: I've got this.

Jack: Really good weird-looking ant to be their first ant.

Keith: This is two back to back Yorknew City songs.

Dre: Oh.

Keith: “Those In The Next Midnight” plays, and then “As For Those Outlaws, Unrivaled Strength” plays. And I have both of those.

Jack: Not enough songs start with “As For” and then…

Keith: Yeah. [laughs] Let’s see. Here we go. Here’s “Those In The Next Midnight”.

[clip of “Those Next In The Midnight” begins]

Keith: I love this, 'cause it fits right in with the other sounds we've been hearing in this season.

Jack: Yeah, yeah.

Keith: It sounds sort of ethereal and spooky and horror/sci-fi kind of tinged. Is this the horn?

Sylvia: This is another, like, sound of the fucking season.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Of Yorknew?

Sylvia: No, this feels— like, this is so deeply into Chimera Ant for me.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Is this the horn you're talking about, Jack?

Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith: Yeah. Okay.

[music ends]

Keith: That’s enough of that. We'll talk about the other one during the fight.

Sylvia: That’s enough of that shit.

Jack: Kite immediately steps down. He says— well, first his Nen burns purple, which was great. He, like…he looks like he’s going to go into a Zoldyck shadow step here [Keith: Mm.] for one second, which I thought was really nice. I'm always on the Kite and Killua train, of like the parallel there.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And as he, like, drops his hands very slowly to his sides and burns in purple Ren, I thought, “He's going to do a shadow step.”

Keith: He is very— he does have a very similar look to Illumi as well. Like, Illumi with white hair.

Jack: Oh, it’s Gittarackur again.

Dre: Mm, yeah. [Keith laughs] Ah, fuck!

Jack: It’s Illumi! It’s been Illumi this whole time, [Sylvia: Oh my—] and weirdly, he’s nice now.

Keith: Do you remember how important Gittarackur was? [Keith and Jack laugh]

Dre: Man.

Jack: Oh, it’s a good show. But yeah, then he steps back. He basically says, “This is a weaker ant,” and hands it over to Gon and Killua as a test. And then there is an amazing cue that starts, just this frenetic, intense, chittering string cue as the fight begins.

Keith: So, this is “As For Those Outlaws, Unrivaled Strength”. This has, I think, Jack’s favorite Hirano thing, which is a ton of really good drums.

Jack: Yes.

Keith: And then it goes into some other cool sounds.

[clip of “As For Those Outlaws, Unrivaled Strength” begins]

Keith: How about that, huh?

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Oh, and it’s great. It’s like two or three different sets.

Keith: I'm going to jump forward to more stuff. Oh, maybe I don't have to. Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah!

Keith: That’s it.

Jack: There's like a cowbell playing. It’s so good.

Keith: This is so good. The breadth of sound design in the show is unbelievable.

[music ends]

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: The ways that the sound just leaps into all of these different genres and almost back to back. One second ago, they were playing fucking [Jack: French horn.] John Carpenter 1984 music.

Jack: [chuckles] Yes. Yeah. It’s great. But, you know, you're right, it is distinctive, but I think that there are also hallmarks, really clearly identifiable hallmarks. You know, Hirano is really good at writing drums.

Keith: Yes.

Jack: He really likes this, like, high drive electric guitar part, the evil, you know.

Keith: Well, he’s a guy that goes back to the well, but he has, like, seven wells. [Dre laughs]

Jack: And he’s really good at them, you know? Yeah. He’s a great composer. The shonen fighting here is kicked into a high gear when they are fighting the Chimera Ants. They're fighting someone bigger than them with a humanoid but not fully human silhouette, and so both here and in the fight in the next episode, it is really exaggerated. Lots of, like, big leaps. Lots of, like, you know, the balletic fighting of the fight with Genthru that they were taught by Bisky sort of falls a little bit into the background as we see Gon and Killua just, you know…I was watching, and I was like, “Gon does fight like Pikachu.”

Keith: He does. [Dre laughs] And they're also in, like, using moves territory.

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: Killua conjures a ball of lightning and then shoots a beam from his finger.

Keith: And there's a really great, like, second and a half, two seconds of another adult Hunter being impressed and surprised at Killua’s Nen.

Jack: Yeah. Yeah. Also, is it evil people shoot beams out of their fingers? That’s what we've learned from Dragon Ball?

Keith: It’s mouths.

Jack: Oh.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, fingers is just a thing that I think you've forgotten that it’s not that a few times.

Jack: Wait, no. Chiaotzu shoots a beam out of his finger.

Keith: Chiaotzu’s not evil.

Jack: Oh, Chiaotzu’s evil.

Sylvia: In Dragon Ball 1 it’s a little bit evil finger beams.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Like, I'll give Jack this.

Keith: It is true. Finger in Dragon Ball [Sylvia chuckles] is more evil than palm.

Sylvia: Doing what? To what?

Keith: Finger in Dragon Ball is a little more evil than palm. [Sylvia laughs]

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: But mouth is the most evil.

Jack: Right. Sure.

Dre: Yeah, no, that’s true. That’s true.

Sylvia: Yeah. That’s what my pastor said.

Jack: And just before they can kill him, they kick him into the sky with Gon’s Rock, and then Colt snatches him out of the sky.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: He gets goosed by his own boss.

Keith: Yeah. He got gooser.

Jack: Yeah, and—

Dre: He’s very mad.

Jack: He is very mad. But we have a brief reminder that we are and will always be on the shonen power treadmill, as Kite says, “You just need a bit more experience if you want to get stronger. This is a perfect opportunity.” Which is, you know, yep. That’s…

Keith: Yeah, I really like— they fail the challenge, technically.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: But Kite says basically you passed. Your attack just now? They weren't that bad.

Jack: Then he says, “From here on out, in victory or defeat, it’ll be hell.” And this is, again, like, hallmarks of war storytelling, right? You know, like, whether or not we win or lose, this is going to be awful, and we are descending into it now.

Keith: Yeah. One of— it’s so important, I think, you know, it’s a little hamfisted, the line in episode 79, I think, where Kite is like, “This is where the hunt begins,” or whatever it is that he says, but it is— this is like the first real hunt that they're on.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Like, Gon is on his own hunt, I guess.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: And Kurapika was on sort of a hunt, but like, this is a capital-H Hunter Association hunt.

Dre: Yeah. Yeah.

Jack: It is.

Keith: In a real way, this is like the most official answer to “what is a Hunter?” that we've got. A Hunter is someone that, like, enters a country during an emergency, pulls “you can't kick me out” Hunter rank, and then tries to stop a disaster, in a way that’s very dangerous.

Jack: Yeah. Rammot is furious, and I want to give a huge shoutout to Rammot’s vocal performance here.

Sylvia: Really good.

Dre: It’s so good.

Jack: He is spending this whole episode screaming.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Screaming all his lines, sometimes just screaming wordlessly. He’s been really badly wounded by Gon and Killua, not killed.

Keith: His VO’s good in both, by the way, if anybody…

Jack: Yeah, I'm listening to his Japanese VO.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: But this actor’s not playing this one note, for a character who has to be screaming all the time. He is moving through these, like, gutteral, raspy, sort of like the sound is just burbling out through his throat. He is bursting into coughing fits. He is dragging words out. He’s juttering up and down in pitch. For like, a really demanding vocal performance, and I think it works so well, because Rammot is going through it. I think later Colt says that he is in critical condition, which seems pretty accurate. But now the word has gotten out that rares exist, and the rival squads are also hunting them. Colt hears about this, and he takes his usual Colt line: this is wrong, and it’s inefficient, so stop it.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah, this is— I think we talked a little bit about this earlier, with the conversation with Leol, where Leol, like, lies and says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll definitely not hunt any rares. You can tell Rammot this, and maybe it’ll stop him from being an asshole.” And then Colt walks away, and he’s like, “[chuckles, sarcastic] As if.”

Jack: Yeah. Colt says to himself and to Cheetu, who is sort of his weird friend. Cheetu is so strange. [Sylvia laughs] He is like a cat ant, but he’s also been sort of stapled onto the body of a stick bug [Keith laughs] so he has this cat face and sort of costuming.

Keith: Yeah, and fur and stuff.

Jack: But whenever you get him in a wide shot, he is just, like, spindly and gangly, and he has this really odd, like, massive stride, because his legs are too long.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: He’s, like, a really good example of the chimera bit of the Chimera Ant, where he is actually one kind of weird creature smashed into another weird creature. And then Colt says, “Opinions aren't necessarily a bad thing, but too many of them are selfish.” [laughs quietly] I love this guy.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: This is also kid logic. I could so clearly hear Kurt saying this. You know, like an adult has said to him— when you're a kid, and you're figuring out, like, “Oh, adults keep saying to me that it’s good for me to have my own opinion, but they also keep saying that I shouldn't be selfish, and like, I can't be rude to my sister,” and I felt like there was a bit of that bubbling up here.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Cheetu, another one who— actually maybe the closest— a lot of the dub voices aren't, like, doing an approximation of the original Japanese VO. Cheetu kind of is. Like, Cheetu has, like, in both versions, this sort of, like, weird bubbly, like…he just feels like if he wasn't in the NGL he might have been in a boy band or something. He’s just got this, like…

Dre: Yeah, he’s kind of a himbo.

Keith: He’s kind of a himbo. He’s got, like…

Sylvia: I stand by the Sonic the Hedgehog comparison.

Dre: Yeah, no, for sure.

Keith: He also is sort of like Sonic the Hedgehog, yeah.

Jack: Yeah. You know—

Keith: Well, he’s dumber. It’s like a dumber Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sylvia: Yeah, he’s like— he’s Sonic from Sonic Underground or something, you know?

Keith: He’s like what if Sonic had the personality— what if Sonic and Knuckles had the same— were, like, fused.

Sylvia: He’s Archie Comic Sonic.

Keith: [chuckles] Oh, sure. He’s Archie Comic Sonic.

Dre: Ohh.

Jack: Whoa. Archie Comics Chimera Ant Arc. They'd do it.

Sylvia: Media Club Plus: Archie Comics Sonic.

Keith: Oh my god.

Sylvia: It’s not happening, but it’d be funny to… [Jack laughs]

Dre: Don't you— don't.

Sylvia: No, we can't.

Keith: $55,000 a month.

Sylvia: I have— oh, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’d need a— to get me to go back to that? We’d need an extreme paycheck.

Jack: At the beginning—

Dre: You don't want to read about the guy who compares the Sonic comics to the Holocaust? That’s not what you're here for?

Keith: Who does that?

Dre: The writer of the Archie Sonic comics.

Jack: Oh my god.

Sylvia: Ken Penders? Was that Ken Penders who did that?

Dre: Yeah, Ken Penders. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh huh.

Sylvia: Yeah. Don't worry about it. We need to move on.

Dre: Yeah, don't worry about it.

Keith: What about your bracelet that says, “Do it for Princess Sally”? [Sylvia laughs]

Dre: No, it says, “Do it with Princess Sally.” [Keith laughs] That’s what Sonic’s bracelet says.

Sylvia: Not mine! Not my bracelet.

Dre: [voice] Yeah, no, no, not mine. No, no, no! I gotta go! [Keith, Sylvia, and Jack laugh]

Jack: At the beginning of the episode, you asked me which my favorite Chimera Ants were, and, you know, now we've kind of spelled out a bit about how the ant faction structure is working, I can say more explicitly that I think why Zazan and Leol are so interesting to me is that they are ants who are trying to, in a very relatably human way, split the difference between “Well, yeah, sure, I mean, we are working for the Queen, but, A, we would like some time off, and B, could we not just kill and eat humans in the meantime?”

Keith: Yeah, and they're sort of, like, politicking.

Jack: Yeah, and that kind of, like, weird semi-justification that isn't quite the hard-nosed sticklering of Colt or the complete off piste, you know, madness of…what’s his name?

Keith: Yunju and Rammot?

Jack: Yunju and Rammot, yeah. I think makes them really fun characters. As the episode ends, Gon has found the factory seized by the ants, which we know is now— WE know [Sylvia laughs] is the headquarters of Yunju. And then the closing credits go, “La la la la la,” every time. [laughs]

Sylvia: It’s great.

Jack: The little song. It’s really, really good.

Keith: I love that song.

Jack: I've been wondering. Is there a Hunterpedia version for Chimera Ant, or we just go straight into credits always?

Keith: There is not. Yeah.

Jack: There's nothing like that stuff?

Keith: There's no more Hunterpedia.

Dre: Yeah, there's nothing.

Keith: Nothing like it.

Sylvia: It’s just the “next time on.”

Keith: It’s just “next time on.”

Jack: Wow. I ask because I didn't get Hunterpedias or I didn't get the Greed Island Encyclopedia.

Keith: Yeah, sorry. [sarcastic] Chimera Ant is serious. We don't have time for, like, jokey bullshit.

Sylvia: I would love it if we did, though. I would actually love that.

Jack: “Chimera Ant is serious” and then you show me the ant in the wrestling singlet.

Keith: I have a practical answer, which is that I think they just decided they need every second.

Sylvia: That, I think, is true.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: They need that time to have more stuff.

Jack: And we actually see bits of it. As we move into the next episode, there are some, like, slow horror beats, that in a shorter time, you would cut or you would constrict them, [Keith: Yeah.] and they wouldn't hit as hard.

Keith: Another thing we have shorter of. You know, it’s miniscule. It’s seconds; you know, 10 seconds here, 25 seconds here, but for a 22-something minute thing, it’s meaningful. But the little recaps at the beginning are getting shorter as well.

Jack: Oh, interesting. I don't watch those, but that would also make sense. Can we take five?

Keith: I've noticed it, because I skip over them, and I can see on the bar how long I'm skipping.

Jack: Oh, yeah. [Sylvia and Jack laugh] Can we take five minutes before we begin the next episode?

Sylvia: Cool.

Keith: We totally can, yeah.

[cut]

Episode 82 [2:20:35]

Dre: Episode 82.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Episode 82.

Jack: As Gon looks out over what the narrator calls “the cliff with peculiar openings,” I feel like, again, the particularly unsubtle but fairly enjoyable thing that they've been working here comes into play, where we have these structures that look like ant-like structures, [Keith: Yeah.] anthills or termite mounds or things like that, but were actually built by humans. What’s the difference between humans and ants? Uh…

Dre: Who could say?

Jack: It’s not a lot.

Keith: Not a lot. It’s a short list.

Jack: It’s not a lot. Here’s one of the differences.

Keith: Weird little claws? Having two weird little claws?

Jack: Yeah, and that the ants figured this out 46 minutes ago, whereas the humans have been, like, [Keith: Right.] figuring that stuff out for, you know, longer. They enter this cliff with peculiar openings, and this episode turns into, uh…what’s that great JoJo episode that, Sylvi, you had us watch, where they go into that haunted house?

Sylvia: Oh, it’s the Nijimura Brothers Part 3.

Keith: Right, yeah.

Jack: And if you would like to hear that, you can go to friendsatthetable.cash and support us on Patreon, where we talk about JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, we talk about Dragon Ball, we talk about Dragon Ball Z, and we also make a bunch of additional bonus content that you might be interested in. But I do bring this point up—

Keith: I can't emphasize enough how much you won't regret spending $5 there.

Jack: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I bring this up not just as an ad but to say this turns into a horror movie. We have a little bit of sensing things in this abandoned base. There's nobody there. Well, “abandoned.” Abandoned by the humans, 'cause they were all taken. And then the confirmation that, you know, this is a drug operation. They're making D² here. And Kite figures— Kite is almost a Kurapika-like figure, in that he is able to say with some authority, “Here’s what I think is going on here.” You know, he says, “I suspect that the NGL leaders know about this operation, know that it’s all a front, but the followers do genuinely believe it.” And again, this is, you know, this is like internal faction stuff. Who actually believes in what they're doing, and who is doing it cynically for another purpose. But then there is an awful dragging and moaning sound, as we know some ants are going to emerge from the tunnels, but before the ants emerge from the tunnels, something else emerges.

Keith: What emerges?

Jack: It is two men—

Keith: Oh my god. [laughs]

Jack: Two naked men.

Dre: Oh yeah, Spot and Rover.

Keith: I totally forgot.

Jack: Crawling on all fours. This is an image…

Keith: It’s disgusting.

Jack: That is as stark and unpleasant as any we have had in this show. These are two older men, naked with chains around their necks, begging for their lives and walking on all fours.

Keith: Tears streaming out of their eyes, snot streaming down their nose.

Dre: And they're, like, drooling snot. Ugh.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: They're drooling. They're dripping everywhere. They look like the fucking guy that got shot with the water from Koala.

Dre: Yes.

Keith: Just exploding liquid everywhere.

Sylvia: Again, Togashi, horny as fuck writing this shit.

Jack: Oh, yeah, but this was also a big Junji Ito moment for me.

Sylvia: Oh, for sure.

Jack: Of like, something Ito is really, really good at—and you can check out Austin, Cameron, and Michael on the show Shelved by Genre on the Ranged Touch Network, where they're talking about Ito right now—is he will pace his mangas to guide you towards these, like, awful full panel revelations, like, grotesque revelations. You'll turn the page, and you'll be met with just this massive awful image. And this image shot from the ground, looking up at Yunju, with these two men in front of him who he calls “the dogs,” was, like, this real Junji Ito-ass “look at the gross thing that I've drawn for you” image. One of them starts begging, and he says, “You're a dog, remember?” and crushes his head with his hoof.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: This is Togashi in head trauma again.

Sylvia: Like, straight up, like, real curb stomp vibes to this.

Dre: Yeah, mm-hmm.

Sylvia: It’s really gnarly.

Jack: Yeah. And then the other guy begs for his life, and Gon goes to save him, and Kite holds him back. And, to his credit, Gon stays back. I don't— what do you think is being made with this moment of Gon— 'cause I could definitely see a version of Gon that would just, like, leap forward and try and save that guy.

Keith: He did.

Jack: No, but then would leap forward following Kite’s, you know, saying, “Stop, don't do that.”

Keith: Oh, sure. I think it says a lot about how he feels about Kite.

Jack: Mm, mm-hmm.

Keith: That Kite can override the Gon that we've seen a hundred times. This is where I called him Qui-Gon Jinn. I said, “Qui-Gon Jinn stops Gon from saving the human dogs.” [Sylvia and Dre laugh]

Jack: He might also be afraid of this ant. This is when we have Kite say the line, you know, “Consuming malicious humans has had an effect on these people.”

Keith: Yeah. “They've always been aggressive, but consuming malicious humans has had an effect on them, and it’s made them even more evil. If we don't deal with them here, there's no telling how many will be killed.” And this is Kite basically saying, “Don't get yourself killed now, because you need to be able to kill ants before you die.”

Jack: Yep. Win or lose, this is going to be hell.

Keith: Yeah. It was hell right away.

Jack: It was hell right away. They split into three to fight.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Killua goes to fight, um, Mosquito.

Keith: Mosquito, yeah.

Jack: Gon goes to fight Centipede, the man with the eight legs. And Kite stays back to fight Zazan. This is exciting. You know, it’s always fun. We've seen this in the show several times, and we also saw this in Dragon Ball, right? The like, the master figure finally, you know, preparing for a fight, and we're going to see the master fight.

Keith: Yeah. Kite is fighting Yunju.

Jack: Oh, sorry. I said Zazan? Oh, yeah, no.

Keith: Yeah, yeah.

Jack: Kite is fighting Yunju.

Keith: Opposite horny monster.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: How do we want to talk through these fights?

Dre: Do you want to just do, like—

Keith: I think we should start— I think we should do it in the order that they do it and resolve them in the order they resolve them.

Dre: Okay.

Keith: Because the first fight that we get anything of is Gon’s fight with Centipede, I'm pretty sure. Yes.

Dre: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Keith: He gets a couple blows in. Gon gets a couple blows in. There's, like, some classic shonen fighting, fists flying all over the place. And I think Gon even lands a Rock Punch, and it, like, really doesn't do anything, and he says, “Damn, these guys are tough. They have hard shells of insects and the agility of humans,” which is just a funny thing to say out loud to me. [Jack and Keith laugh]

Jack: It is.

Keith: It’s like these guys are some sort of, like, chimera ants! [laughter]

Jack: Yeah, oh, how strange. Meanwhile— oh, the animation on this centipede ant. If we thought his animation was good when he was just hanging around and waving his little arms around, in the fight, it’s brilliant.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: His arms are, like, rippling. At one point, he’s like, “I'm going to do my 20 billion punch that no one can block,” and sure enough, [Keith: Mm-hmm.] Gon has trouble with it.

Keith: Well, he dodges it. He dodges that one.

Jack: Oh, does he dodge the thing?

Keith: It’s like, he can't block it, but I can dodge it.

Jack: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Killua, stepping in to kill Mosquito, says, “It’s been a while since I flipped my switch on,” and I thought to myself, “Hmm?”

Keith: I was cheering.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: I was popping so hard, man. I was, like, standing up out of my chair.

Jack: ‘Cause this is Zoldyck assassin shit, right? This isn't Nen.

Sylvia: Yeah, we get assassin Killua with his weird snake arms.

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: He says, “I'm going to— since I turned the switch,” and then you see him, like, look down and look back up, and it’s, like, evil killer Killua.

Sylvia: He’s going to that place!

Keith: He literally flips a switch, like, with his head. [all laugh]

Dre: Yeah, he locks in.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Killua Zoldyck AMV, I bet that that space, that genre space flourishes.

Keith: I bet— if you've ever wanted to hear some butt rock, I bet you could find some there.

Jack: This is what I'm saying. I obviously can't look at them, because it’s going to be all of Killua’s—

Sylvia: I'm on it.

Keith: AMV…

Jack: All of Killua’s moments, including when he gets killed by the Grundler.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: But.

Sylvia: All right.

Jack: [chuckles] He gets taken out by the Dog That Eats Killua.

Keith: [laughs] Oh my god, when they introduce…

Sylvia: Oh. Oh, I found a 17-year-old Killua AMV. Hold on.

Dre: Oh shit! You found the deep lore.

Sylvia: From the 1999 anime.

Jack: Oh, and I can see that one, because…

Sylvia: OH! Yeah, this is peak! This is peak! Hold on. Hold on! [Keith and Jack laugh]

Jack: Wait, vet it, vet it. Make sure that I can see it.

Sylvia: I'm vetting.

Keith: Well, if it’s from the 1999, it can't…

Sylvia: ‘Cause ‘99 doesn't go past anything you've seen, Jack.

Keith: Yeah, it can't have anything.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: Yeah, but I want to make sure they haven't spliced something in from—

Keith: Sure.

Jack: Although, if it’s that old, then yeah.

Sylvia: It’s 17 years old, dude.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, it’s impossible.

Sylvia: This has a DivX Video. Like, this is— like, this is—!

Dre: Oh, I found it, yeah.

Sylvia: This is peak!

Jack: Link! Link!

Sylvia: It’s linked.

Dre: Oh, wow.

Sylvia: Sorry, it’s peam. I forgot we're saying peam now.

Jack: What? What?

Dre: What?

Keith: “Darker Side of Me.”

Sylvia: It’s peam instead of peak. It’s fine. Don't worry about it.

Dre: Why do we say—? What is peam?

Sylvia: Oh, listen, I'm just going off of what the zoomers tell me, okay?

Dre: I don't like peam.

Sylvia: If I've been led astray by my 23-year-old friends, it’s fine.

Jack: Oh, yeah.

Dre: Are you really into photoemission electron microscopy?

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Okay.

Jack: [chuckles] This is fucking great. Okay.

Keith: This is exactly how I thought it would sound.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: I'm going to say some shots of what we're seeing. We are seeing— oh, Killua’s design is slightly different here.

Sylvia: [imitates Three Day Grace’s “Animal I Have Become”]

Keith: It’s closer to the manga.

Jack: Lots of Killua on his skateboard.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Kurapika being punched and screaming.

Sylvia: I did, while looking for— we had a little chat in our Discord chat about this. I was looking for some Togashi interviews, just 'cause I'm curious to get more of his process, like, in mind while we do this, and he does list a couple influences for Killua’s design.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: Particularly the work of I think it’s Shou Tajima, who did MPD Psycho, and…Atsushi Komijo is the other artist, who I think, like…I haven't read any of his work, but a lot of pretty boys with white hair when I Google Image search, and I'm like, “Ah yes, I understand this.”

Keith: This is such a funny video. [laughs]

Sylvia: Yeah. While you guys are watching the Three Day Grace “Animal I Have Become” AMV.

Dre: God. Killua fucking skateboarding through the Zoldyck dungeon is such a beautiful image.

Keith: There's, like, this thing that’s really sad about anime maturing as a form that has, like, necessarily evolved out of some of its more ridiculous tendencies that I miss so much when I see something from the ‘90s and I'm like, “Hell yeah, this is ridiculous. This is insane.” [Keith and Jack laugh]

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: It’s just like…

Jack: This was the moment. You know, this is where it was really kicking.

Keith: Well, there's people operating on, like, a totally different threshold of cool and an even more different threshold of, [Sylvia: Yeah.] like, slightly embarrassing.

Jack: Yes. Yes, I agree.

Sylvia: This is my idea of cool. Like…

Keith: Oh my god! Ash Ketchum!

Sylvia: What?

Keith: Sorry, there's a shot of Killua wearing a Hunter License hat, and he looks exactly like Red from Pokémon.

Jack: Oh, wow.

Keith: Hold on.

Dre: Who?

Keith: Red, from Pokémon Red?

Dre: Is this woman in the 1999 anime not in the 2011 one?

Keith: Who?

Dre: The one that’s, like, trying to kill Killua, it looks like at the Hunter Exam.

Keith: Do you have a timestamp?

Dre: Um, let’s see. She first shows up at, like, 1:34?

Keith: Hmm. Oh yeah, I don't know who this is.

Dre: Let’s see. She has a badge on, so I'm going to look up her badge.

Sylvia: What?

Keith: It’s Hanzo. It’s Girl Hanzo.

Sylvia: I don't think I can link this, unfortunately, but someone did do a “Wet Ass Pussy” mashup with the Zoldyck theme. [Jack laughs]

Dre: Okay!

Sylvia: And made an AMV.

Keith: Oh my god.

Sylvia: But no, there's a lot of Chimera Ant in here.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Yes, this person’s name is Anita, and she’s only in the 1999 anime.

Keith: Damn. Filler?

Dre: She’s not even in the manga, it looks like.

Sylvia: Killua got that shit on, Keith.

Keith: What’s that?

Sylvia: With the hat? That looks great.

Keith: Right? He looks like Red.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Um…okay.

Sylvia: [laughs] Sorry.

Jack: Let’s get back to it.

Sylvia: Yeah. The detour’s ended. My bad.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: No, you're all good. Killua Zoldyck technique here is Serpent Work, these weird loose hands that, you know, he whips his arms around as though they have no bones in. It looks, like a lot of Zoldyck techniques, both very silly and undeniably cool. The ants are hollow inside, you know, the way an exoskeleton is, because he knocks off, I think— what does he knock off? One of her arms? I'm not sure.

Keith: Yes, yeah, her arm. Yeah, she, like, goes in to grab him, and he just sort of deletes half of one of her arms.

Jack: But then she launches a stinger from her mouth and another from her tail, poisoning Killua. She says, “Once I get—”

Keith: A proboscis and a probuttscis.

Jack: Oh, yeah. [Keith chuckles]

Dre: Ohh.

Jack: Oh, that’s the technical term.

Sylvia: Ohh.

Jack: Kite’s biology knowledge allows him to know this.

Keith: Yes. [chuckles]

Jack: She says, “Once I get him addicted, we'll have another human dog.” Oh, yeah, they're all taunting everyone at this point. They're like, “I'm gonna get three dogs next.” But then Killua— she’s looking at Killua, and the camera suddenly rotates upside down, as Killua breaks her neck and says, “Poison doesn't work on me. Sorry.”

Sylvia: It rules!

Jack: And she says, “Ah, I see.”

Keith: It’s so funny to do a fakeout again, two fights in a row.

Sylvia: I wrote, um…oh fuck, where is it? I was like, “Aw, she thinks poison’s going to work on Killua Zoldyck. She doesn't knooow!” [Jack and Dre laugh]

Jack: She doesn't know! It’s also—

Sylvia: I'm making the Riddler face but in a “she doesn't know” way.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: She doesn't. It’s the fucking laxatives from the Hunter Exam all over again.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: You can't poison Killua.

Sylvia: That is [long bleep] immune to poison. [others laugh]

Jack: And then he decapitates her with a red silhouette over his face. Whenever Killua is in assassin mode—

Keith: Do I have to censor that? Sorry, do I have to bleep that out?

Jack: Yeah, cut it out. [Keith laughs] ‘Cause I think we've talked about—

Sylvia: Eh…we’re good.

Jack: We haven't talked about how it works, right?

Keith: Just in case. Just in case. [bleep] There we go. ‘'Cause I can just move that.

Sylvia: Sorry, I said [bleep] again.

Dre: Oh. [Sylvia and Jack laugh]

Jack: At this point—

Keith: The Chimera Ant King’s name is [long bleep]. [Sylvia cackles]

Jack: [voice] Listener, what you're about to hear was too rude for television. [Keith, Dre, and Jack laugh] The American standards agency…

Sylvia: I'm sorry. I keep saying Phagogenesis. [Dre and Jack laugh]

Keith: Phagogenesis.

Sylvia: [laughs, delighted] YEAH! Thank you.

Jack: Cuno, you've gotta stop saying that. [Keith laughs]

Sylvia: Oh. Am I the Cuno of the show?

Jack: No.

Keith: No.

Jack: Just Cuno would love to say Phagogenesis.

Sylvia: Anyway.

Keith: We don't have a Cuno.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Killua Zoldyck is the Cuno of Hunter × Hunter. [chuckles]

Keith: That’s true.

Jack: At this point, we are really entering new “we're cooked” realms, as Rammot, still furious, still injured, seemingly through sheer force of will, manifests a Nen Aura around his hand. This is awful. This is…

Keith: Yeah. This is bad.

Jack: This is bad news.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Meanwhile, the ants are still fighting, and we actually— we are firmly in the ants’ heads during this fight. This is not a new Togashi trick. You know, we've seen it happen a lot in shonen, of, you know, the protagonist will be looking at the villain and saying, “Oh, he’s going to do this. I reckon he could do that,” and we even sometimes get the villain looking at the protagonist and saying, [Keith: Mm-hmm.] “I think I could figure out what he’s going to do.” In this fight, it’s all the ants looking at Gon and Killua and trying to figure out what to do.

Keith: So, we get a portion of Gon’s fight. Then we switch to Killua, who starts and finishes his fight in about a scene and a half.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: Then a Chimera Ant discovers Nen.

Keith: Then a Chimera Ant discovers Nen. Then we jump back to the NGL factory, and it’s like a stalemate. Gon is charging up a Rock Punch.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: And the centipede is like, “Oh brother. I don't know how to deal with this. I gotta do an interior powerpoint analysis of this fight for about 30 seconds.”

Dre: I think— does he use the word “simulation”?’

Keith: He uses the word “simulation”.

Jack: He says, “I'm just going to run a little simulation.”

Sylvia: Yes.

Dre: Yeah, hmm.

Keith: “I'm going to run a little simulation,” yeah.

Dre: Hmm.

Sylvia: He goes Gon with it.

Dre: Yeah, uh huh.

Jack: What are you thinking there, Dre?

Dre: Just…they’re just really laying it on thick here.

Sylvia: Weird how the line between ant and human continuously gets blurred.

Dre: And the hunter or the hunted.

Jack: Mm.

Sylvia: Fuck!

Keith: How does this fucking NGL idiot even know what a simulation is? [Sylvia and Jack laugh]

Dre: Oh, that’s true! He was one of the people at the tree for a while.

Keith: Oh, sure. Maybe he was of the—

Jack: Oh, or maybe—

Dre: He put on a VR headset.

Sylvia: Ohh, they ate the tree guy.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Or he was one of the people, the…I just remembered that the NGL, they have guns. He’s just one of them.

Jack: They do. Yeah, I think he’s…

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: I do think he’s one of those.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: He runs a little simulation, and he’s got a great plan, and he is proud of it, and he tells us about this plan maybe three separate times.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Do you remember why he has to come up with a plan to take this punch? It’s very funny to me.

Jack: I don't.

Keith: I have— “I don't want to fight this guy, 'cause he can kill me with this punch. I can tell this punch is going to kill me. I don't know why I can tell.”

Jack: [chuckles] Oh yeah, I remember this.

Keith: “But if I don't fight him, Yunju’s just going to kill me anyway.”

Dre: Oh, yeah. [laughs]

Keith: “So I might as well try and win.”

Jack: [chuckles] It’s great. You know, we've talked about Togashi and the anime team’s fast characterization. Centipede is a real fun Chimera Ant to show up. His plan is this, and it’s actually weirdly similar to Genthru’s “you have to sacrifice bits of your body to fight me,” which I don't think is deliberate, but it is nice. He is going to block with some of his arms, probably destroying them. Then he’s going to grab Gon with his other set and then bite him, injecting horrible poison into his body.

Sylvia: Yeah. Do you know what this plan reminded me a lot of?

Jack: Mm.

[2:40:01]

Sylvia: The Bomber fight.

Keith: Sure.

Jack: I just said it. Yeah.

Dre: Oh, yeah.

Sylvia: Did you say that? Sorry.

Keith: Oh. Yeah, I also—

Jack: No, no, it’s good.

Keith: I also missed it. Sorry, Jack.

Dre: Yeah, me too.

Sylvia: Okay, cool. I'm so glad.

Dre: Whoops!

Sylvia: The two ADHD bitches like, “Buh?” [Jack chuckles]

Dre: Ah, three.

Sylvia: Three, sorry. Sorry. [Jack and Dre laugh]

Keith: I was trying to think of the order that the fight happened in.

Sylvia: I didn't want to include you in forgetting, though, Dre.

Dre: Mm. Fair. [Sylvia laughs] No, I forgot.

Jack: Do you know what this reminds me of?

Sylvia: The Genthru fight?

Jack: It’s the Genthru fight, yeah. [Sylvia and Jack laugh]

Keith: Oh, that’s funny, because it does, to me, have echoes of the Genthru fight.

Dre: Uh, it kind of reminds me of the Bomber fight, though.

Keith: Yeah. [Jack laughs]

Sylvia: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the Fred from Scooby Doo fight.

Jack: Oh.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: Oh, he is kind of Fred from Scooby Doo. [Sylvia laughs]

Dre: No, that’s Stick Dinner.

Jack: Yeah. But then we're going to cut away again, because here is some extremely cool fight choreography with a centaur. What does a shonen fight look like if we have one tall angular human fighting a centaur? Answer: pretty good.

Keith: I love the part where Kite, like, throws Yunju unto the ground. It looks great.

Jack: He does it a couple of times, right?

Keith: Yeah. The first time, though, looks, like, very fluid and cool. But yeah, Kite is like, “I'm trying to fucking watch Gon fight. Can we hold on?” and Yunju’s like, “No.” And it really is just Gon standing there and Centipede thinking how to not die.

Jack: And then any time Yunju makes a move to fight Kite, he gets shut down immediately. Kite is so clearly the more capable fighter here.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: But he doesn't want to leave anything to chance, so he brings in the Mad Clown. The Mad Clown? What’s his name?

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: What’s his full name?

Keith: Crazy Slots?

Sylvia: Mad Clown, Crazy Slots?

Jack: Mad Clown, Crazy Slots.

Keith: Crazy Slots.

Dre: [voice] Hey, i'm Crazy— [normal] Oh, it’s the Great Mad Clown, Crazy Slots.

Jack: Great Mad Clown. In case you have forgotten—

Keith: Not to Kite, he’s not.

Jack: Crazy Slots is Kite’s Nen power. He is, like, personified. He talks.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Kite hates him, and he hates Kite. He rolls a random number, and that’s the weapon that he gives Kite. Crazy Slots is fucking funny, and they basically play the end of Crazy Slots in this sequence as a joke, 'cause it’s great. He arrives and immediately starts bickering with Kite. He’s angry that he only gets summoned when he’s in trouble. He rolls a 4, which is a gun. Kite says that’s a bad spin, and Crazy Slots says, “I don't have any bad spins, ungrateful bastard.” [laughter]

Sylvia: That’s a bad sign.

Keith: I've gotta talk about this gun.

Dre: Is this the same gun that we got earlier?

Jack: It is.

Keith: No, this is a different gun.

Jack: Oh, it’s a different gun?

Dre: Oh.

Keith: This is a different gun. So, it’s got, like, a— it’s like a pistol. Like, you think about a World War I machine pistol. It’s kind of like that.

Jack: Oh yeah, it is like a machine pistol.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: But then, instead of having a normal small stock that you'd have on a machine pistol, it has this giant tree trunk extending six feet back. [laughs]

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah. It’s like a sniper stock.

Keith: And terminating in Crazy Slots’s head.

Dre: In some Call of Duty multiplayer, this gun had to be banned because it was, like, so fucking broken.

Jack: [laughs] Yes, definitely.

Keith: And he…I cannot emphasize how insanely huge the stock of this gun is. It’s almost the size of Kite himself. The whole gun looks huge. The whole gun might be taller than Kite. I can't picture it, because I can't picture it. [quiet laughter] But he does—

Sylvia: I'm picturing it right now.

Keith: He fires it— fuck off. [Sylvia cackles] He fires it like a pistol. He doesn't, like…

Jack: And he fires it very cursorily.

Keith: Yes.

Sylvia: It’s so cool, the like…

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: Like, instant win kill that he gets, basically.

Jack: Oh, he just kills him immediately with this gun.

Keith: Yeah, one bullet to the head.

Sylvia: Yeah, it feels like…

Dre: It’s like the samurai sword thing.

Sylvia: I was going to say.

Dre: But with a gun.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: With a gun and a tail.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: I take it back. It’s the same gun.

Dre: I thought so.

Keith: Yeah, it’s the same gun. It just fires in a much different way instead of being…

Dre: Oh, yeah. Before, it’s like, rapid fire. [cross] And this time, it’s just a single shot, yeah.

Keith: [cross] Yeah, and this time it’s just one shot, yeah.

Dre: He’s got that trigger discipline.

Jack: Back to Gon’s fight. The plan goes pretty much as expected, if you count “going as expected” not going the way you thought it was going to go at all.

Keith: Yep.

Jack: Gon launches forward and, to the surprise of the viewer as well as the centipede, casts Scissors, cutting the centipede in half.

Keith: First Scissors.

Jack: First Scissors. No buildup. No Gon is trying a new tactic. No hint.

Sylvia: So cool.

Jack: It was lovely. I'd been wondering what this little simulation was building up to, because it was definitely building up to something.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And I thought the punchline was going to be “this motherfucker thinks he can block Gon’s Rock, but he can't.”

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, like, maybe the Rock will just explode through his whole body or something.

Jack: But Gon suddenly pulling out a new ability, I thought was really really good.

Keith: Yeah. Cuts him in half. Although, there's a weakness to cutting an ant in half.

Jack: Well, so, it leads to maybe my favorite line in this group of episodes. The ants are so funny. I love the ants.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Half a centipede lying on the floor says the actual line: “Hold on a minute. This could still work in my favor.” [Keith and Jack laugh]

Dre: I'm not cooked yet.

Jack: It’s just so good.

Keith: I mean, this is a guy who truly understands that he has two options and one of them is dying.

Jack: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. He’s also an optimist, I think.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Because he, you know, we—

Keith: Centipede is fundamentally an optimist.

Sylvia: He’s got that Joe Biden pre-COVID mentality.

Jack: Yes.

Sylvia: He’s not going to drop out for anything.

Jack: No. No reason at all. [Dre chuckles] Hold on a second. What’d he say? “Hold on a minute. This could still work in my favor.” This is a callback to the head and the body surviving separately that we know the ants can do. And he leaps to bite Gon and then is shot out of the air by Crazy Slots. The fight is over. This was a fight with the ants that— ah, we're in a really interesting position here, because the Hunters can fight individual— like, skilled Hunters can fight individual ants pretty well. Doesn't matter. There are more ants, and if stuff starts slipping through the cracks, it’s going to get really bad for the Hunters really quickly. You know, the Hunters are now in a situation where they can't simply fight one big enemy to get their way out of the problem, because not only are there, you know, thousands of Chimera Ants, they're also, you know, gaining and learning new Hunter tricks. It’s really interesting.

Keith: We start to see paying off, like, some of…and he’s not been on screen very much in these episodes, so we haven't had a big update on this, which is funny. I mean, it’s really like Kite, Gon, and Killua are maybe 15% of these episodes.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah, probably.

Keith: But in the last set of episodes, we had a lot of Kite, and every single scene was this, like, looming dread of, like, feeling too late. Feeling like there's nothing that he can do to get there on time [Jack: Yeah.] to stop things before they go out of control. And we're sort of seeing that being paid off, where this is just such a bad situation. [chuckles] It’s so bad.

Jack: Well, and it also is a sort of horrible vindication for him, where it’s like, I just won a fight against a Chimera Ant in one second, and it’s not enough.

Keith: No.

Jack: We need to be able to move here on a scale that, you know, a Hunter individually can't really work at. This has gone beyond our capabilities.

Keith: Gon Freecss beyond our capabilities.

Jack: Gon Freecss. Much like the viewer, Killua zones in really quickly— oh, they sort of come out of this fight sort of…you get the impression that the episode is moving towards an ending, so they come out of the fight pretty quickly, and Killua zones straight in on: Crazy Slots talks. And Kite pitches Crazy Slots; you know, the weapons can't be exchanged. He says, “It’s incredibly annoying,” and Gon, to himself, says, “Okay, well, why did you make it that way?” And I think, you know, we know the answer to this. It’s not been said explicitly, but WE know that it’s like, it makes it more powerful.

Keith: It’s so funny. They're like…it’s like, they have no patience. They're so confused by why did you make a— it’s one thing that it gives him more power by not being able to choose. It’s another thing to, like, give it a horrible personality that you can't stand. [laughs]

Jack: Yes. Yes. Oh, and it can't stand you either.

Keith: Maybe, you know, this is like total, you know, assumption. Just, like, why would it be this way? On the one hand, it’s just funny. I think Togashi’s a funny person and does some stuff just because it’s funny, but I think he’s also someone who thinks a lot about the implications of what he’s writing and does take those things seriously.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Keith: And the only thing that I can think of reasonably is that we've seen the extreme end of a Nen contract with Kurapika.

Jack: Mm, mm-hmm.

Keith: And maybe the very shallow end of a Nen contract is like, if this thing is annoying, I get a little bit stronger. [Jack laughs] If I am frustrated with my— even being frustrated with it is enough of a contract. Like, maybe you only get— you know, I've played RPGs. I know about what you'll do to get an extra 2 or 3% out of a weapon.

Jack: Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. He’s picked up the cursed item that gives him, you know, a little more.

Keith: Yeah. It’s 5% stronger but frustrating to talk to.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: It’s a bad conversationalist. [laughs quietly]

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And it’s going to be, like, a gently antagonistic relationship nonstop.

Keith: Imagine having to use Crazy Slots in a situation where you're trying to be stealthy or quiet.

Jack: Yeah. And also, he has rolled it enough times that he probably has a favorite, and any time it doesn't come up, he’s like, [frustrated] “Oh my god.”

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: This motherfucker is playing Balatro, you know, every time he uses his weapon. [Sylvia laughs] As we—

Sylvia: “God damnit. My banana disappeared again.”

Jack: Exactly.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: As we leave this episode…

Sylvia: The +15 mult. I needed that.

Keith: Do you think he has a favorite that he wants all the time, or that he has one in mind for the situation each time?

Jack: I think it’s both, right?

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: He has one in mind for the situation, and then he’s also like…you know, I choose the instruments that I'm recording with based on what the track wants, but then I'm also like, “Ah, but it’s really nice to play the piano, and I hope that I get the piano.” But this would be if instruments were selected randomly for me before I started composing, which would be fun, but, you know.

Keith: Hmm. Did we say Crazy Slots has nine different…?

Jack: Nine, yes.

Keith: Nine, yeah.

Jack: Interesting. Leol and his team, having learned about the rares, promised to Colt that they're not going to hunt them, have set off to hunt them, and they're going to go to the factory, but—

Keith: Yeah, I missed— I didn't pick up on this. Why did they know that the rares are out there? Can they just feel them like Colt could feel them?

Jack: I think it is ant communication. Not like— I don't mean that in necessarily in the sense of, like—

Keith: Oh, the telepathy that they have?

Jack: No, I don't know if it’s the telepathy. I think it might just be office gossip, you know? We know that Yunju is out there. We know that— eh, maybe they can sense them, I think.

Keith: They said specifically something about that the rares were over there by Yunju.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: And I just missed how they knew that.

Dre: Mm. I think it’s because, like, they know the squad, like, is basically dead.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: The squad that was over there is dead, and so they're like, “Oh, I guess the rares are over there.”

Jack: Yeah. That might be it.

Keith: That might be it.

Jack: You know, something is taking out the ants.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: But as we leave it, we leave it with extremely bad news, because Rammot is no longer expressing Ren around his hand. Instead, he has stood up in the middle of his sort of pain circle, where he’s been hanging out for most of the episode, and Ren burns around his whole body. And the narrator says, with a real formality, “And with that, a Chimera Ant has become a Nen user.”

Keith: I love the narrator.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: Narrator rules.

Keith: He’s great.

Sylvia: I love that Togashi planted the seed of “being attacked by Nen can release your Nen” back in Heavens Arena, and we get this, like, payoff for it now, as it being kind of the thing that sets off the powder keg.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: ‘Cause like, this is what happened to the Nen Initiates, right? Like, we get told that the reason that Gido and his crew…

Keith: Yeah. Yeah, it’s what happens to Gon and Killua.

Sylvia: Yeah. Well, yeah, but not in the same way, right? Like, it’s not…

Keith: Mm…

Sylvia: They get exposed to—

Keith: It was a safer version, but it’s the same process.

Sylvia: It was a safer version of it. It’s the same process, but my point is—

Keith: Nenologically.

Sylvia: My point is more that it’s because they were exposed to Nen through violence and survived it, as opposed to [Jack: Right.] Gon and Killua just having their pores opened up. Like, we get some payoff for that, after so long.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: I also think just kind of ties into a lot of the stuff going on with the ants, that it’s like, oh, some humans give it their best shot; use, like, what they consider their ultimate weapons in a lot of ways.

Jack: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: This thing survives and becomes even more powerful because of it.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: Little bit “cockroaches will survive a nuclear weapon” vibes too, but slightly different.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: Yeah. It’s great.

Keith: I love— this is one of those things where the Heavens Arena stuff, like, ages really well for me, like with how many times the stuff that we learned has been so useful and the way that we learned it is useful, of like, a character just saying out loud, “This is how this stuff works.” It makes it really easy to draw straight lines from, like, we learned it, and then we saw it. And this is, like, what, 70 episodes, 60 episodes later?

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Like, we learned about the pores opening up. We learned about being punched and having the shock of the Nen awaken your— open your nodes. And then now, for the first time since then, since Gon and Killua had it happen to them, since the Nen Initiates had it happen to them, we're seeing it on screen. And it’s like, it just becomes a really useful resource for remembering how Nen works.

Jack: Yeah. It’s great.

Keith: We also learn Kite’s En radius is 45 meters.

Sylvia: Yep.

Keith: I had fun writing that down. I wrote, “Kite’s En is 45 meters,” and then was like, I love this kind of note. I love just the little bit’s of Nen… [Jack and Keith laugh] I just like when I have Nen stats to write down.

Jack: It’s great, and we've also seen, like, En radius being used as a “Ooh, wow, look what they can do!”

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Not as good as Kortopi’s.

Keith: Not as good as Zeno.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Less than a quarter.

Jack: Power scaling, aren't we?

Sylvia: I mean, you know. That’s Zeno. [Jack laughs]

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Keith: I'm just saying! What do you think Ging’s is, you know?

Jack: They've gotta bring in the Zoldyck assassins to deal with the Chimera Ants. Actually, some of them are cool.

Keith: Some of the ants are cool?

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: They're going to recruit. [laughs]

Jack: Oh no! [laughs]

Outro [2:56:08]

Jack: Is there anything else that we want to talk about?

Keith: Not me.

Dre: Nope.

Jack: Not me either.

Sylvia: No, yeah, I'm good.

Jack: I think I'm good.

Keith: Does, uh…

Sylvia: What song would you use for Killua Zoldyck AMV? You guys. What would you use?

Dre: Uh…I mean, my first go-to, like, gut answer is, like, very stereotypical but I still think fitting. “In the End” by Linkin Park.

Sylvia: Yeah, okay.

Jack: What’s the song

Sylvia: I'd do “Faint” by Linkin Park, if I'm picking a Linkin Park song.

Dre: Ooh.

Sylvia: “Faint” is one of my favorites. I don't know if that is my pick, but if I'm picking Linkin Park, it would be “Faint”.

Dre: [sighs] I'm going to…

Sylvia: ‘Cause the, like, “Shut up when I'm talking to you” would go kind of crazy with Killua.

Dre: I'm going to find a deeper cut, though. Hold on. What’s, uh…

Jack: I think it’s gotta be…what’s the Evanescence song where he sings, “Wake me up inside”?

Sylvia: Oh, that’s “Bring Me to Life”?

Jack: Yeah.

Dre: “Bring Me to Life”, yeah.

Keith: I'm going to tack here and go “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton.

Sylvia: Nice. [Jack laughs]

Dre: Ohh.

Sylvia: I was going to say “Such Small Hands” by La Dispute, but yours is funnier.

Jack: Ah. [laughs]

Dre: I'm trying to remember the name of this song. “The Crimson” by Atreyu.

Sylvia: Fuck yeah. Oh, wait. No, it’s, um…fuck, what— is it “36 Quite Bitter Beings” is the song? Wait.

Dre: Is that another Atreyu song?

Sylvia: No, it’s a CKY song. It’s “96 Quite Bitter Beings”, and I just think that if every time Killua showed up the intro riff played, it would make sense to me. [Jack chuckles]

Dre: Is that the [imitates song]

Sylvia: [imitates song passionately] Yeah! [Jack and Dre laugh]

Keith: I don't know anything of these songs.

Sylvia: It’s fine.

Keith: I don't know the Linkin Park songs. I don't know these songs.

[“The Boy in Green” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]

Keith: Sorry, I know the one that Dre said. That’s the one that I know from the radio.

Sylvia: I love butt rock.

[all are quiet for a moment as music plays]

Jack: Oh, wait, wait, wait!

[music cuts out abruptly]

Jack: What are we watching next time?

Sylvia: Oh, yeah, that’s important.

Dre: Great note!

Keith: That’s not important. Who cares?

Sylvia: [imitating “96 Quite Bitter Beings” again] [Keith and Dre laugh] That’s important.

Keith: Uh, next time…okay, so, we have a couple…the episodes are 83, 84, and 85. Those are titled: “Inspiration × To × Evolve”, “A × Fated × Awakening”, and “Light × And × Darkness”.

[“The Boy in Green” by Jack de Quidt begins playing again]

Jack: Don't feel good about “A × Fated × Awakening”.

Keith: Mm.

Sylvia: Don't worry about it.

Dre: Eh, it’s probably fine. [Jack chuckles]

[music plays out]