Anime Discussion Thread - Page 6168

I honestly think the worst part of the chimera Arc is that it introduces so many trash enemies. HxH was always, and continued to be after the chimera arc, about less and more interesting fights. The chimera arc however had ton of longer fights (1-2 episodes) against annoying enemies with tons of trash talk (aka boring as fuck and the reason why I stop watching most battle shounen at some point).

The chimera arc has some really interesting stuff going on. I think the whole Meruem x Komugi part was insanely well done. Meruem vs Netero was pretty decent. The long infiltration fight on the stairs was really good. I think the narration worked well here and because it's usually not used in HxH and the fights are usually a lot different it was a nice change of pace. I enjoyed that a lot but I don't think it would work if every fight was like this. Gon's trauma was pretty good. Killua's fight against Youpi was good and so was the final reveal where his fear comes from. Pitou was awesome. The whole argument/philosophic stuff was really well handled (most shows do it wrong and end up being cringy/prententious).
On the other hand it also featured some of the worst stuff in HxH. The aforementioned amount of trash enemies and their fights. Gon's stupid power up, which made no sense at all. I still hope they will explain it later but still... one thing I always loved about HxH was that there were no sudden power ups and little power creep. HxH also explained most things beforehand so the series didn't end up having a whole bunch of ass pulls every other fight like other battle shounens. Gon's power up was a giant ass pull and I disliked it a lot.
It's a weird arc because it features some of the best and worst parts of HxH as a whole...

My favourite arc is still Yorknew City. Phantom Troupe antics, the tension and atmosphere, the dialouges, the twists, the characters... It's simply perfect. My second favourite is either the election arc or the chimera arc. The chimera arc has higher peaks but the election arc is just rock solid every single episode from start to finish.

I have some more thoughts on that but for now I just want to say I realized something in the shower. Pitou and Meruem may be the most honourable individuals in the whole of HxH. In fact I'd say Pitou becomes the outright heroic character in the show.

In a way I wonder if Gon wasn't supposed to die in his encounter with Pitou. It would have been beautiful symmetrical story telling. Gon a "good heroic" character spiraling down the revenge path into a downright villian sacrificing everything to exact his plan. While you have Pitou this "monster villian" sacrificing everything to protect the love of her(I know Pitou has no gender but dammit she's a cutie) King. She wasn't protecting her own selfish idea of king like the other two but instead embracing him as he was and doing everything to protect that. True heroic loyalty. Much like Gon displayed to Killua when he went to his home. The two are so similar. Just sucks that Gon is the plot armour while pitou doesn't. Would have loved both to go on or both to die. I wonder if his editor changed his mind or he was never going to kill Gon. I guess the issue with killing Gon is we wouldn't have met Killua's adorable little sister!

Meruem at the end would have been a far better leader than 99% of leaders we have today. He grew so much. Do we condemn a lion that learns the value of life? Or do we condemn the human that knows the value of life but ignores it for their own selfish gain?

You had a sense of tension and all of the characters were pretty cool. Pitou was great early on, loved her character and it was sad how they made her the sacrifice for Gon's rage and anger. Personally, if I was going to be critical, it was complete bs that Gon had such a massive increase in power off his rage. This isn't dbz, you don't suddenly ascend to the next level and become so powerful. I think the author realized that he wrote himself into a corner when he made the king's guards, including pitou so powerful and went that route. At least, it's a possibility that I'd like to entertain.

So you can sort of logics it if you really want to believe it's possible and not ass pull by working with the condition system we've seen before in people like Kurapika. Gain potential now on condition I die after it is done.
I'd be more OK with that kind of thing happening. Could imagine a nen user with potential as large as Gons figuring out a way to do something like that as from what we've seen the boon you get always comes with appropriate cost.

Pitou being in that position was perfect though. It showed off rise of Pitou and the fall of Gon. It's just how it ended was kind of shitty. I think the ants had to be so powerful to make sure the sacrifices the human characters made felt required. If it was just a group of hardcore humans it also makes powerlevel go a bit whack. Now he can just say ants were outliers kind of thing. I hear it leads into the next arc as well but no idea since I don't read the manga.

Well, Kurapika's thing is a good point but keep in mind that it's something that's been discussed from the start. Aka, genetics, born with it (from recollection, been a while since I rewatched) etc... In this case, it felt like Gon ascended like mad to the next level. It was way too extreme imo and I'd rather HxH didn't make it so that any and all can do this.

Yes, you sacrifice something but restricting it to several folks is a much better option imo.

Sakurai