LogFAQs > #905149534

Episodes 121-133

Recap: Chairman Netero goads the King into fighting him by promising to tell him his name. When he's unable to kill the King, he detonates a pocket nuke and tells the name, Meruem. Youpi masters his transformation, overcomes Morel, and leverages Knuckle into removing APR. He and Pouf find Meruem's charred body, which is somehow still breathing, and restore him to health by feeding Meruem the majority of their own bodies.

Upon realizing that Meruem (as he now prefers to be called) has lost his memory, Pouf becomes hell-bent on killing Komugi. His clones do everything in their power to prevent Meruem from rediscovering his memory of her, but he's unable to kill her using only clones. He tries to forestall Meruem from using his uber-en to find Palm and Komugi (after already capturing Knuckle and Melereon), but when he realizes Pitou is in trouble and that Youpi has been killed, there's no longer enough time, and he is forced to confess the truth.

Palm is reborn as a Chimera Ant, but the transformation does not take, and Killua breaks through to her. Ikalgo defeats Welfrim in a very strange single combat and learns that he and Welfrim were friends as humans under NGL's King Gyro. Welfrim appears to be the one to kill Youpi when his loyalties are finally pushed there. Palm intones that the King does not have long to live. Indeed, all of Meruem, Youpi, and Pouf have been bleeding, almost certainly as a result of radiation poisoning.

Gon goes with Pitou to Peijing, where Kite is. But unsurprisingly, Kite is already dead and unable to be healed. Pitou heals herself and attempts to kill Gon, but Gon's psychological breakdown results in a SSJ3-esque transformation that enables him to kill Pitou. Pitou's Nen-corpse manages to take Gon's arm, and the sprinting Killua carries Gon off afterward.

---

I think I should address the nuke thing first. Palm's latest comments say that humans are far worse than Chimera Ants, and the Chairman's dying comments are never to underestimate humans - with blackening eyes. The image of the nuclear devastation is superimposed over the Palm's death forecast. We're supposed to despise humanity for this.

That's not really the story that I expected here, but any story that shows the depths of human morality - apparently nuclear holocausts have been very common in HxH's universe - is always pretty interesting. "We're even worse than they are" is a cool message.

To me, the problem is in realizing that humankind was never really in danger. They faced a nasty infestation, but not one that a military assault couldn't have fixed. Meruem has already proven that as a political/ideological enemy, he has, uh, not a lot to offer. Realizing that in fact all that was really going on was trying to shift the blame to the Hunter Association, as opposed to a genuine threat to humankind... doesn't really serve the story well, to me. It's obvious here that taking the nuclear option is meant to show humanity's depravity, but it also lessens the intimidation factor of Meruem, and that was one of the major things he had going for him (prior to his character development).

As for why I'd want the show to be more Dragon Ball-like - c'mon. Gon transforms like a Super Saiyan, there are magic powers, characters have been shown to shrug off bullets, and the villain literally looks like Perfect Cell and is considered to be a perfect evolutionary organism by its creator. Not comparing the show to DB(Z) would be an insult.
---

yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness