Hunter X Hunter Episode 111
What They Say:
Gon, a young boy who lives on Whale Island, dreams of becoming a Hunter like his father, who left when Gon was still young.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While the last several episodes have been interesting in their own way, they’ve also been kind of slow in getting to the point. There is an appeal to that with some shows in how they savor dialogue, atmosphere or nudging certain plot points and development forward. Hunter x Hunter wants to be like that but falls short, which makes a lot of what’s going on up until this point in the arc feel like it’s dragging more than anything else. Especially when they want to do the narration to try and drive home the whole point of what the characters are dealing with, such as what we get early on in this episode with Pitou. But as we see with the events in the Apartment Complex zone, the Hunters are getting ready to move and that sense of anticipation really sets the mood right.
Unfortunately, while the build-up is great, a lot of what we get in the first half is done more as stills with a bit of mild animation to it and a lot of narration as it gets moving. The initial strokes of the battle do move quickly, but it has a shortened kind of feeling in a way because of how it’s approached. We get the sense of power and importance to what’s happening, but it’s also so restrained in the way it’s done that I found myself frustrated by it. I did like that we get to see Netero really taking the forefront here and coming across as imposing with a great deal of power behind him since it’s something that everyone has acknowledged in the present and we get to see strands of it play out here. But I also really like that we go back to when he was “younger”, a spry forty-six, with the kind of training he went through in order to repay a debt. Admittedly, I like knowing more about Netero, but the placement of this flashback bothers me just as we’re moving into the meat of the current story.
This back story bit goes on for a good part of the second half and even if it frustrates, I love getting a look at this younger Netero and what kind of build he has. The dedication and inner strength that we know in the present is certainly here as well, but seeing him go through his training and then to showcase it in the dojo in front of everyone is great to see, especially his faster than sound moment. His skill is something that is simply taken in a great way, though admittedly it’s hard to reconcile his “old” voice being in the younger body. Tying that all back to the present does work well in the end, showing his faster than sound skills in a way that hasn’t truly been brought into the show so far, but I’m still in that camp that wishes authors would seed this material earlier instead of spoon feeding it to us in the moment, which in turn detracts from the moment itself and lessens the actual payoff.
In Summary:
Hunter x Hunter gets to the point where you want to just latch onto it and savor what it’s going to do, but like a lot of shonen series it simply manages to undercut itself with what it’s doing. There’s a lot to like here because we get some good stuff with Netero and I really like the sense of power and importance to what’s happening, but it’s counterbalanced by some really terrible narration that takes away from the whole show me – don’t tell me aspect of visual storytelling. It’s filled with so much potential here that I’m hoping this is just a crutch to get to it and not how the whole thing will unfold.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.