Hunter x Hunter 2011 – 11 Review

Episode 11 – Trouble x With The x Gamble

Sorry for the late review! My internet had been giving me issues all of yesterday and by the time things started working, it was pretty much time to sleep. =(

So this is the long awaited deciding episode for the 2011 series – featuring Killua’s battle.

This episode will decide whether Madhouse will do a good job of animating the violence and gore presented in the original Hunter x Hunter manga, or if they’ll seal their fate as a sanitized version of the original story.

Review

Sad to say, the episode was a disappointing one with Killua’s scene being not as great as I had hoped it’d be, and with Leorio’s part being pretty much a drag to watch.

Leorio

It amazes me how a character can go from Hero to Zero in a moment. Last week, Leorio had finally shown has a “cooler” side to his personality, whereas this week had pretty much brought him back to his original perverted, weak ways through his seemingly irrational decisions.

It really didn’t make any sense how his character would willingly allow himself to sacrifice 10 precious hours in order to cope a feel when in the previous episode he wasn’t willing to sit around and waste a single minute of his time for fear of failing the exam. He was the one who was busy ranting about how important their victory was and yet he had simply thrown away 10 hours over a perverted reason by picking the choice that was most likely the wrong one. It honestly baffles me that such a change in character personality is meant to be believable.

Then comes the Rock, Paper, Scissors game. Leroute had said that she was betting on her victory.

Now, it is true that she did win in the end, but since the last episode was so focused on the technicality of the words, then couldn’t Leorio have claimed that the first draw was not considered a victory? Leroute hadn’t bet on Leorio not winning the game, but instead bet on herself winning it. So by that logic, a draw should be Leorio’s win shouldn’t it? Why bother with playing a round two? XP Oh well, the show had to turn out the way it did in order for Killua to get his moment, but it was bloody tiring to watch that scene drag out.

Which brings me to the other issue of that battle. The high amount of dialogue. This series has always had an issue with it’s execution of the dialogue heavy scenes. Most of those moments are simply filled with the characters standing around and talking whilst doing nothing much. It had gotten really boring to watch in this episode (just like in the others) as Leorio’s internal battle had came across as being sadlya over-the-top foolish.

Killua

Whilst I am glad that the show hadn’t resorted to nice fluffy flower petals in order to represent the blood, nor did they result to mere shadows to depict the slaughtering scene, the show did tried to cover up the gore and brutality of the scenes as much as they could. Literally.

Where did that cloth come from? =_=??

There wasn’t enough cloth missing (if any) from the prisoner’s shirt. I won’t bother asking how long a heart is able to beat outside of the body since that is not important. But I was sad that the show had decided to play up the uneasiness of the situation using sound effects instead of actual visuals. =/ The beating of the heart did make me uncomfortable, but covering it up and showing us so little blood was really a let down.

Then came the part where I had expected Killua to crush the heart into pieces. Instead of doing that, he had simply gently returned the heart to Jones. That scene was interesting for me as although it hadn’t have the blunt brutality of what I had expected to see, it did have this poetic aura surrounding the scene of him giving back the heart in such an innocent and playful manner after the guy is dead. I am honestly not sure which way was more effective in showing us Killua’s true personality. Hmmm….

And so the verdict on the animation execution of this series is that this is probably as far as Madhouse is willing to push the gore in the show – by being as indirect with the scenes as they can. I am not sure if I should be happy that the scenes are not censored with a white/black glow or if I should cry since this means that we won’t be getting a more “gorier” version of the series, even in the DVD release. (Have you guys seen the cover for the DVDs? They look quite terrible).

Another issue that I had was the way they had depicted Killua’s hand, his hand had appeared more like a morphing hand that grew nails rather than him strengthening the muscles in his hand in order to pull the heart out. =/

Another interesting thing about the scene was how the character designs for Killua changes when Killua had shown us the “darker” side of his character. The significant change in his eyes did well in making his character come across as being more sinister and evil. But my question is, how much change is too much? The amount of difference in Killua’s eyes was really pushing the line of making it believable that it was not a totally different character design altogether. Sure, the manga had done the “eye changing thing” as well, but that doesn’t change the fact that Killua looks really different in that scene.

Overall

I guess this brings me to the end of my rant. The pacing was slow and the dialogue was too much. I honestly wish that more time had been spent on Killua’s scene as I had always felt that that scene was way too short for my liking when compared to the others. While on the other side of things, I wish that Leorio’s scene was cut short as it had dragged out for much too long. Naturally, the execution of Killua’s battle wasn’t as great as expected, but for the fresh eyes on this franchise, I would think that the scene did relatively well in portraying the first moment of “real violence” shown in the show in such a brutal manner.

Episode Rating: 6.5/10 – 1999’s episode wins this week

-ra

What? No scene of Jones the Cutter ripping a piece of flesh off the police’s arm? Awww…

Hunter x Hunter 2011 Question of the Week

What do you guys think of the execution of Killiua’s scene? Is this where you leave the series behind or are you happy enough with the outcome to carry on with the show?

Although I am not happy with how things turned out, it could have turned out a lot worse. So for now, I am still happy to continue with following the series.

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Blog Note: As for when the Mirai Nikki Review will be written… Hopefully I will be able to get that done tomorrow. =)
Until then, take care folks!