Hunter X Hunter Episode 132
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)
Hunter x Hunter has done some pretty impressive stuff throughout the Chimera Ants arc, though it’s also had some problematic material as well, especially with the pacing of things. As we saw in the last episode, everything is going upside down for Gon as Pitou was powering herself up and getting ready to take it to the next level while he’s simply falling apart after everything that he’s seen. With this episode, we get another taste of what Meruem is up to in his search, one that has Pouf doing his best to get him back to who he was so they can exact their revenge and rule over the world with a kind of large scale brutality that has never been seen before. There’s so much at stake at different levels and it was all so masterfully presented that you couldn’t look away from it.
With Youpi and Pouf in their pint sized forms doing their best to shepherd Meruem where they need to while his memory is still askew and hopefully coming back, it’s a difficult situation that has Pouf desperately hopeful that things will fall back into place. The big thing they have to deal with is connecting back with Pitou and making sure she doesn’t turn things south even worse when it comes to what’s going on. So when Meruem does start showing his power, making us think that he’s starting to come back in full, it’s a pretty powerful moment as we see all that energy flowing from him. He’s an impressive figure in general, even more so after what we saw him go through with Netero, but the whole presentation of him in this form just ups it a few more notches, so much so that even Pouf is impressed.
And when Meruem snaps into action, quickly taking out several of the group that are out in the city streets, it’s brutally cold and calculated. Amusingly, even as he coldly deals with the enemy, he also see the things that Pouf and Youpi have done and that puts them on his bad side as well, giving them an opportunity to correct things. Meruem comes across as being on a wholly other level now and completely dismissive of all below him. And that has him essentially playing with them, setting them to a challenge in regards to Pitou that will cause them to either live or die. There’s a lot of smaller movements towards the end of the episode as people move towards the positions they need to be in for the finale of this arc to really get underway, but the big takeaway for the episode really is seeing Meruem reasserting himself after being off kilter since going up against Netero.
In Summary:
While I’ve not always been a fan of the King and his personality and the design of him, he’s definitely improved a lot in the later portion of the Chimera Ants are compared to how he was at the beginning, particularly with all the needed time playing games. With him back on track here now with what he’s doing, showing his power level and intensity and the intentions he has, it definitely moves things forward in a pretty intriguing way. Seeing him taking control again after wandering around and realizing that even those like Pouf aren’t excatly on his side definitely sets an interesting tone. There’s some good action to be had here, albeit brief, but mostly it’s about repositioning the character and others to move it forward again now that everyone has largely dealt with the fallout from the last major fight.
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.