Just started watching HxH and following along with media club plus, and posted my thoughts about my personal pithy explanation for the "What is shonen?" discussion in the first episode as I was listening last week. It has been unsurprisingly borne out considering what happens in the first round of the final challenge of the hunter exam.
#Media Club Plus
For Hunter X Hunter Episodes 44-47, I've finally cancelled my Crunchy sub (corporate mergers are vile) and booted up the show on my "hacked PS2"
Which didn't affect my experience at all negatively, in fact it looks better and I don't have to deal with the crunchy app being crap. But the "copy" I "found" has seemingly edited some of the Hunterpedias to make Killua and Gon black. Which like, hell yeah, but was also unexpected EDIT - @Bongasaur let me know that, apparently, The Show Just Did That. Their research implied It was apparently due to the episodes having aired at the end of Summer break, and is to represent the kids who came back with tans. Weird!
Anyway these episodes had a lot riding on them. The Media Club Plus cast (at least those who'd seen it before) hyped them up quite a bit. And. Well. I enjoyed them.
Melody continues to be lovely, I especially liked how she brought in her theme diegetically into the show. Love when that happens.
Definitely called what would happen to the ten whatever they were called. What I think really set me off was the designs. Yeah, the four introduced at the start were all weird. But they weren't interesting. There were nobodies in the Hunter Exam arc with more care put into their designs then these 10 jabronies. (Still thinking of you blowjob brothers). But again, they were a useful tool for introducing how strong the Phantoms are.
It was also funny, after like three whole episodes, that we're abruptly reminded that Gon, Killua, and Leorio are Also Still In This Show. It was also a fun rug pull when Togashi was setting up Yet Another Tournament arc only to have it end before it even started.
Okay, let's see. How much else can I write about before talking about the bulk of these episodes. Oh, Yeah! I also really love the twist of Kurapika making further moral compromises by agreeing to work with Anime Joker. Good stuff
Alright, fine. There was fighting. It was good fighting.
But what bugged me. At the end of 44 Kurapika tells us about his wager. That he'll only ever use that move on the Phantom Troupe or else he'll die. And then it repeats at the top of 45.
And it shouldn't have been brought up at all.
The thing that Jojo's does really well is layer on the surprises throughout the action to keep the suspense up. And Hunter x Hunter just does not do that.
Think about How Cool it would've been if we see Kurapika use this move a couple times, and then finally reveal that This Move Could Kill Me if I wasn't using it On You, the Spider I'm About To Kill.
It would retroactively add stakes to what we thought was simply a really powerful move, and it would let the reveal come at the climax of the mini arch, not stuck somewhere in the middle.
It should have been saved! But for some reason he just. Says it. Unprovoked. To the audience. And then its repeated again, to pad out episode length I guess.
It certainly doesn't help that I just finished my Eva rewatch to prepare for my screening of the film Wednesday, And Dungeon Meshi has been Killing It these past few weeks. I have shows to directly compare this against. And yeah, neither of them are truly comparable to HxH, but I enjoy them a lot more. So when I watch this set of four episodes that have been talked up A Lot, but not finding myself enjoying them especially more than any of the other episodes. Well, I dunno. It's a good show, I'll give you that. (even less related Bad Batch has also been great, as well as the Rebels episodes AMCA is covering)
I hope Kurapika meets up with the other boys soon.
Continuing drawing hxh characters based solely on the descriptions of them from Media Club Plus by @friends-table. This is Mizuken, Kurapika's Nen Teacher.