What Were Playing

This chapter brought the bad news everyone had been fearing: another hiatus. Togashi Yoshihiro, the mangaka of HxH and formerly Yu Yu Hakusho, is notorious for taking long breaks and occasional stretches of unfinished scribbled artwork. Nobody knows how long this one will be. Sometimes they’re only a few months. The last one was a couple of years. Volume sales of HxH have always been incredible, often outselling just about everything except One Piece. Shonen Jump popularity polls are different, though. Because of all the breaks, the popularity of HxH among the newer generations of kids is pretty low. It’s being supported by old fans instead of making new ones. Anyway, I hope this is a short hiatus, and I hope that HxH doesn’t die and get a sudden, odd ending like Yu Yu Hakusho did.

As for the chapter itself, it’s pretty surprising that Yuupi got killed offscreen by Werefin. I guess getting 6/7th eaten by the king took a lot out of the royal guards. The weakling chimera are traveling to Jairo, the mysterious chimera ant who somehow maintained his twisted human identity and used to be the head of the NGL drug cartel. The king finally remembered a bit about Komugi. It looks like whenever HxH comes back from hiatus this arc will finally end, but the fate of Gon and how the King will be defeated or convinced to stop remains a mystery.

One of the coolest things about Hunter x Hunter is that it’s hard to predict how each arc will end. Rarely does the main character simply undergo a generic power up and defeat the main bad guy.Well, this time there is a power up and some ass-kickery as the arc draws to a close, but certainly not a generic one. Who exactly could have predicted this?

We finally get to see the end result of this new “Dark Gon”. The chapter start’s with that Terpischore ability again. We still don’t know what it does exactly, just that it activates quickly and is apparently named after one of the nine muses, a dancer. It appears Neflpitou could use it to manipulate himself like a puppet. Gon is still completely in Pitou’s head, but Pitou’s had enough of it and finally tries to kill him for the sake of the king. Now that Pufu tricked Pitou into believing that Komugi was safe, what’s to stop Pitou from doing it? Well, Gon for one. It looks like Pitou’s fears were valid all along: Gon is now on a whole new level.

Read More…