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...And Make It Painful - Hunter x Hunter ep. 122-124: Media Club Plus S01E39 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-03-12 22:52:42
Edited:
2025-03-12 22:55:03
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

Welcome to Media Club Plus: a podcast about diving into the media that interests us and the stories that excite us.

Early in the episode Jack points out that this is a set of three duologues which is exactly true. The King and Netero, Ikalgo and Welfin, and Killua and Palm

This week we cover episodes 122-124, titled Pose x and x Name, Centipede x and x Memory, and Breakdown x and x Awakening. Next episode we'll be covering episodes 125 and 126, titled Great Power x and x Ultimate Power and Zero x and x Rose.

Featuring Keith Carberry (@KeithJCarberry, @KeithJCarberry), Jack de Quidt (@jdq) Sylvi Bullet (@SYLVIBULLET), and Andrew Lee Swan (@swandre3000)

Produced by Keith Carberry

Music by Jack de Quidt (available at notquitereal.bandcamp.com)

Cover Art by by Annie Johnston-Glick (@dancynrew) anniejg.com

This episode was made with support from listeners like you! To support us, you can subscribe here on our Patreon

...Or find our merch here http://friendsatthetable.shop

To find transcripts of the episodes, go to http://TranscriptsattheTable.com

Files

Comments

ann hedonia

Excited to listen to this one but holy hell I am excited for the next episode more than anything.

Robert Lasica

I know people who don't read the manga because Gon and Killua's story is the heart of the anime, and that's fair, but without spoiling anything the manga's heart is 100 little guys with politics and it's great.

Ainsley

With all the such Jack was saying without even knowing too! (Again!)

JJMilez

Never have I wanted two weeks to pass so quickly, lol

Moli Liu

"there's a decent number of people who want to view Pitou as female because that's the only way they can feel comfortable with wanting to have sex with Pitou" ugh so true. justice for the he/they catgirl

TrueLily

The thing that's wild to be about HxH, at least in English, is that I can't actually think of another piece of popular media that uses multiple pronouns for one character, and it's doubly wild that it's for a character with a design as fem as Pitou. He/they catgirl indeed, and I love him dearly <3

Moli Liu

I really felt Jack's analysis of the one-two punch of Killua's character arc, i.e. (1) Killua as an abused child being opened up by Gon's love, and (2) Gon descending into a state where he is no longer capable of giving that love. The genius of Chimera Ant is that those two arcs reach their apexes simultaneously: Killua removes the needle that literally keeps him from confronting the world very shortly before Gon is pushed to lightless rage by his inability to comprehend that people can be both good and bad. I believe that this inability stems from Gon's upbringing, just as Killua's cowardice stemmed from his own. If Gon internalized that people contain multitudes, he'd have to face that Ging is an incredibly accomplished hunter who positively impacted a lot of people AND Ging kind of sucks for abandoning him. Also Gon learns from Ging how to instrumentalize people and get away with it. Unlike Gon, Killua had adults like Illumi and Bisky who, for better or worse, told him how his behavior impacted his ability to be a true friend to Gon. As a first-time viewer who's keeping pace with the podcast, I really hope that Gon can get to that level of self-insight for Killua's sake, even as it's hard for me right now to see his path there.

Albedo12

Two things on "Rook and Bishop". 1) The broken shogi tiles that Gon and Killua fought Knuckle and Shoot for were a rook and a bishop. 2) When Sylvi says the king should have said "Cannon and Elephant", that is, in fact, what those two pieces are called in Azerbaijani. Pretty sneaky, sis!

badletter

honestly when it comes to the different pronouns for pitou i think it’s interesting to use a variety. i am an it/its pitou truther but i think using several is also interesting. but there is also definitely the thing of people want pitou to be a sexy cat girl they can fuck. pitou is also very “i’m probably nonbinary but i have a job so i don’t really care about that right now” to me.

TrueLily

you CAN NOT fuck the Pitou, regardless of their pronouns.

ToastCrust

Re: Rooks and Bishops I'm reading the manga in Japanese along with the show instead of rewatching the anime, and the phrase used here is 飛車角落ち. The rub here happens due to a localization problem, I believe. 飛車角落ち, literally "without rooks and bishops", is shogi lingo for playing with a handicap, but it's *also* a general term for taking a handicap in anything else. So The King's usage of it here in Japanese is slightly pompous and thematic, but it's also a fairly normal thing to say, like "this will be a fine handicap". I'm guessing the problem here for the localization staff is they want to keep the board game flavor of the line, but English has no naturalistic way of saying handicap that is board game themed, so they just forced it through with a literal translation of the line.

J G

RE: when the narrative begins to 'shift' on Gon, I agree that I think the switch begins to happen in the Greed Island Arc. Gon's always been presented as kinda alien to the common sense of most other characters but in earlier arcs this is always framed as essentially liberatory and empowering for him. The viewer can say things like 'well when you think about it, that's fucked up' but the show in those early arcs generally avoids that framing and always positions it as ultimately heroic. Like, the Gon torture scene with Hanzo is horrific but in the end Gon totally owns Hanzo. He comes out of it winning completely and justly, even in a bizarre way. But by the time we're in Greed Island, a practically identical Gon torture scene occurs but this time the narrative is careful to position it as entirely useless. Gon doesn't beat Genthru through his ability to get himself hurt, it's just something Gon is doing for his own pride and Genthru is defeated by the original plan that they came up with in the first place. And by the end of it, Genthru is terrified of Gon. Not just terrified of the damage Gon is about to inflict on him but terrified of Gon conceptually, as a person. He's insane, he says, he's a monster, he's someone who can't exist. I think that's the first time that Gon's essential Gon-ness is presented as something bad, which obviously continues and intensifies into the Ant arc.

Moli Liu

Agreed!! Before GI we saw characters disapprove of Gon (Wing with a strained smile wondering if he's created a monster after Gon catches onto nen so quickly, Zepile noting that Gon has no moral compass), but this always seemed kind of random because the narrative itself had no consequences for Gon's behavior. Comparing the Hanzo (and by extension Canary) vs. Genthru torture sequences is so insightful! I think that it's no coincidence too that GI is also when we learn more about Ging and how he basically created a decade of death and devastation because he wanted to make this weird game instead of just meeting his son like a normal person

Foxmom Niamh

regarding the appearance of Chimera Ant Palm, you all should look up Nana Osaki, and especially compare how Togashi draws Ant Palm in the HxH manga compared to how Yazawa draws Nana O in the NANA manga. i’m fairly certain there’s a direct referencing to Yazawa’s style and character here, as Nana O and NANA in generally is deeply influential for the 00’s anime and beyond (despite its massive legacy often being ignored by anime fans because it’s shōjo/josei). Ant Palm debuted in HxH not longer after NANA went on indefinite hiatus due to Yazawa’s health, a thing Togashi has also struggled with on and off throughout his career. i don’t know if he’s even actually spoken on this, but the way he draws Ant Palm is truly so similar to how Nana O is drawn, and NANA remains the best selling shōnen manga of all time and Togashi was known to reference shōjo as well as shōnen, so it seems unlikely he would have just landed on this look by pure coincidence without an awareness of NANA.

Sean Phillips

Has there been any update on when or if the third dragon ball z episode might get released?

Matthew Cialdella

Great pod as always! Does anyone know the Lasers and Feelings HxH hack Jack mentioned?