Hunter X Hunter – 18

Okay, I know what I’m going to do this season. The thing is that Ano Natsu, Black Rock Shooter, Inu Boku and Smile Precure are all series that are interesting, yet not interesting enough to be blogged weekly. So instead I’m going to do another Kaleidoscope and blog one of these four shows each week. Hunter X Hunter however has nothing to do with that. This show is great, period. And I’m going to bring it back from hiatus now that Hyouge Mono has finished.

I do want to say though, that it will probably be impossible for me to not blog this as a fan of the ’99 series. I will try to also write some impressions about actual episodes, but blogging this series for the past months, I really realized that I just have to draw comparisons between the two, so I really apologize for being a bit inaccessible to the people who are only now being introduced to the franchise. These comparisons will mostly be in the ’99 series’ favor for the current arc, while the next arc they will be very likely in the 2011-version. And after that, anything can happen.

Gon really impressed me in this episode. For me, the really big difference of the past few episodes between the two adaptations is that Gon immediately recovered from his poison in the new adaptation. Because of that, the moment where he stood out in this arc has shifted. This version doesn’t have the agonizing time that Gon spent, trying to recover from the poison. Instead, he had to wait all alone with his pride hurt and do nothing but wait for his friends. That gave this episode a slightly different meaning here, and instead made this episode really stand out for him. I really loved how he forced himself to help Leorio and the others.

Now, the next episode in the ’99 series was like, my absolute favorite Hunter X Hunter episode outside of the Yorkshin arc. That’s another reason why I really had to pick this show back up, because even though I’ve already seen it again, and the impact probably won’t be near what it was when I first watched it, I really want to see how the creators handle it this time. The ’99 series had a lot more time to devote on fleshing out the side characters. It even treated the characters who were just destined to die or drop off seriously here and this lead to a wonderful side-cast. This new series doesn’t have a lot of that, but I’m still impressed with how they made Ponzu in an interesting character despite only know learning what her personality was.

With this episode however, I can also see that the 2011 series put a lot of time into fleshing out the nine remaining contestants. The questionnaire from the chief was still really great to watch. I also really liked Hanzo here, even though he only appeared for like… 30 seconds; it took me a while to realize, but that guy actually had three tags worth of one point with him. That actually means that he couldn’t find the tag that Killua threw away, and I can only imagine how he desperately had to try and find two other tag holders in order to get the right points. I managed to track one down to being that one guy with long black hair, but I just can’t find out who the other was.
Rating: ** (Excellent)