LogFAQs > #905417598

Episodes 139-148

Recap: Killua has the help of butlers as he eludes Illumi and Hisoka, but when he demonstrates his ability to control Alluka/Something's power, Illumi lets him walk free. The healed Gon swings the election for Pariston (over a dark horse Leorio) and finally gets to meet Ging. Killua and Gon finally take a break as Killua tends to his younger sister, and Gon gets to swap some stories with Ging at the top of the World Tree.

Having a weird time trying to do this writeup.

It's a short, complete arc that has some nice moments but overall just feels out of place. We've gotten used to longer arcs with ups and downs, and there are two concurrent, short storylines . The stakes are low and the tone is light, and while I'm okay with that - I liked Greed Island fine - it just feels like a different show without a ton to talk about. Maybe I'm just sad the show is ending on a clearly non-final note.

Leorio returns, and it's weird having him back. He's a near-pure-comic-relief character who seemed destined to become a lot more than that... and then never did. He yells a lot when on screen here, but because he hasn't been a consistent part of the show, it's not as endearing as I'd predicted it would be when he first appeared. In fact, when I think about it, he seems to fill a very similar niche to Knuckle. Punching Ging is hilariously satisfying, but he's otherwise just... there.

I'm not entirely convinced about the world-building of the show. We're told there are 661 Hunters in the world, and the vast majority of them apparently gather all in one place. And based on character design, they're mostly scrubs. Oh, and dozens get wiped out quickly, lowering the population by around 5% during a harmless arc. Relatively few are born each year. It's all very strange-feeling.

Pariston becomes Chairman after a bunch of bluster in which no one claims to want to become Chairman and two characters pick Leorio, who is there purely by accident. After all this sinister posturing, it's revealed that he just felt like trolling, same as Ging. During this time Cheadle briefly becomes a POV character and spends it (what else?) internal-monologuing at great length about the strategy of everything. In the penultimate episode, pink koala Chimerant returns and talks about his life, which is both touching and hilarious at first, and then drags on waaaay too long, as usual.

The show's penchant for monologue is one of the reasons I've done virtually all of my writeups in blocks - very little happens in an episode at times due to how much time is spent with an infodump or a philosophy-dump. The longer one of these goes on, the more likely it is to lose my attention and idea of why it should be important, much less interesting.

Maybe Gon's return feels more triumphant with more fleshing out in the parts of the story I wanted to see. Seeing everyone's reaction to his return would have been better than the random reunion with Leorio at the gathering, which is just awkward (and just as cheesy).

Hisoka is back, and he actually manages to kill a recurring character in a five-minute battle that's one of the greatest pure battles of the show's run. He's still one of the coolest pure fighters in the series, even though his intimidation factor has to be scaled way down after his truly last major role was in the Heaven's Arena arc. I love that his Nen abilities are actually quite limited in scope and scale, but are used in a manner that requires the utmost of creativity, resourcefulness, and adaptability.

Overall, I liked these episodes just fine. I think I just feel empty because they don't feel final or climactic for the end of the series. Hisoka and Illumi wander free with zero character development, Kurapika is still being emo somewhere, and Leorio isn't a doctor yet. There's not even an "open-ended" ending - just an arc temporarily concluded (and Ging found, even though it's massively underplayed). But at least I can be excited for Hunter x Hunter 2023 now, right?
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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