Hunter x Hunter 2011 – 10 Review

What did you say in the previous episode Majitani? You Surrendered? Oh No! XD

Episode 10 – A Chance x To x Reach Out
aka We x Screwed Up x Big Time

This episode finally shines the spot light on Leorio and takes him out of his somewhat “useless” image.

The funny thing with this episode was that last week had made a critical error that had rendered the whole context of this episode baseless.

If you were to look at the ’99 medium and the manga, in both versions, Majitani had not been able to finish his sentence before Kurapica had “knocked him out”. But as the above screen capture proves, this 2011 version made the mistake of yelling out his surrender for the whole world to hear.

Review

The episode was actually a good one this week. If it weren’t for last week dismissing everything that had happened in this episode, I would have definitely enjoyed this quite a bit more with less laughter on my part. =P

In hindsight, I should take back my verdict about the 2011 version of the last episode being better. However, people make mistakes. =D So I shall not criticise this episode based of last week’s mistake as this episode was definitely nicely paced and enjoyable.

This was another true to manga episode that had covered chapter 19 and part of chapter 20. This segment is also in the ’99 version in episode 15 and part of 16.

The Characters

For once in the series, Leorio had cames across as being cool and intelligent instead of useless and annoying. Using his abilities as a doctor to discern the situation and thus getting the upperhand was a really nice thing to see Leorio accomplish. My question would be why Leorio had accepted the bet of 40 hours despite knowing he was going to lose those hours anyway? Was there really no other way around it?

Sadly (or not so sadly) his match had ended on a much awaited cliffhanger. As I had mentioned in the last episode, this series has had a habit of ending things on a sweet note without creating those much-needed moments of frustration due to the wait for the next episode to be released. With this episode, that spell is broken and hopefully this would leave people eager to watch more. \(^-^)/

Moving onto Majitani, he is one hilarious character. He is so much of a wimp that I find it hard to believe that he would have done something so horrible in the past, so much so that it would warrant him having such an extended sentence. The internal monologue in this episode had brought us the light-hearted moments which are now a on-going style for this series. This shows seems to be caught in this limbo between being serious and being fun and this unnatural “balance” is really quite frustrating at times. Scenes end up being too cheerful for their own good when they should be darker.

Look at that agility.

Naturally, Hisoka’s appearance in this episode had added to the darker element of the series. We are once again graced with the presence of Hisoka and his personal flavor Background Music. =D His fight scene was definitely entertaining to watch and probably not something crucial to the plot. The great thing about that scene was that we got to see the sadistic and “powerful” side of Hisoka, and for some reason, everything he does comes across as being so much fun to watch. This is probably what makes his character such a joy to see every week – all due the contradicting nature between his actions and the atmosphere built around his character.

The rest of the gang are finally showing their true nature as well. Gon is as usual unconcerned by the heavy atmosphere surrounding the group and continues about doing his own things.
Tompa’s character is odd. He provides us with all these inside knowledge to what the real reason behind the Examiner’s actions are, yet he doesn’t actually do anything apart from narrating his thoughts and giving an explanation to the events.
Kurapica is proving to be a kind hearted soul that is simply obsessed with the Phantom Troupe.
Killua on the other hand shows us his upbringing through his casual dismissal like attitude over killing someone.

Death Dismissed

I just felt like I had to touch on this topic briefly.

The dismissal of death in this series had always taken on a pretty casual approach, but seeing a group of kids discussing the murder of a person as though it were a casual conversational topic was really the first time we got to see this theme expressed in such a blunt manner. Even though Kurapica was against killing the man, his reasons were more for pride and dignity as oppose to moral beliefs. Killua is screwed-up as we all already know. Leorio was crazy proactive in trying to get the man killed, and that is a very disturbing trait for a future doctor. (I know I would worry if my doctor was so eager to kill off a person). As for Gon, well, he didn’t seem to really care all that much (which should be an issue).

The only time the characters had actually cared about the death of Majitani was when he had been lying in the spot for a long time. None of their actions to follow were due to worry over Majitani’s well-being but due to their personal worry over losing crucial time that may result in their elimination from the exam.

Oh, you sick man! XD
Just look at that crazy look on Hisoka’s face.

Then we have Hisoka’s scene. It was sad that they had to use shadows to illustrate the beheading of the character. But, knowing how much worse it could have been had allowed me to appreciate the fact that we were actually shown something to give us an accurate description of what had happened instead of a blank censored frame.

Overall

I had enjoyed this episode without actually feeling that there was an issue with the pacing of the series. No long crazy pauses nor stare down contest. Sure, there were plenty of panning scenes but all of those pauses were warranted in building up Leorio’s frustration and the passing of time.

Episode Rating: 7/10 – 2011 wins. I definitely love the mood of the 1999 version but that each has it’s own unique style and approach and the 1999 hadn’t integrated Leorio’s fight into the Majitani fake death segment but had dragged the whole thing out instead.

-ra

Ra’s Question Corner:

At which age do you think a child should be exposed to the concept of death and have a fear of it?

I think that it might be a tad scary to educate a kid to early on as it might traumatize them for life, but for 12 year olds, their attitude had seemed even more worrying as oppose to innocent. I can’t remember how I had learned about the idea of death, but I think that the minute a kid is old enough to attend school is the time the kid should at least know what death is and not some sugar coated lie.