Hunter x Hunter 06 Reaction

1 thoughts on "Hunter x Hunter 06 Reaction"

1. Before I get into my thoughts on the episode, I would like to point out one little fun fact about this episode. Right before this show was announced for Toonami, I checked out the first 5 volumes of the manga at my local library, which contains everything prior to the Heaven’s Arena arc. I bring this up because in the manga, this phase of the exam was a little different. Instead of having both Buhara and Menchi taste the pork, the applicants had to make pork for Buhara only, and after everyone passed that part, the applicants then had to make sushi for Menchi. She reacted the same way to the applicants’ sushi as she did to their pork, only it was just her without Buhara. I assume Madhouse just combined both parts due to time constraints, and in all honesty, I really like this change. The way they implemented it was pretty clever, and it kept the episode from dragging on too much, which was a bit of a problem I had with this phase when I was reading it in the manga (by the way, if you like the show, I would definitely recommend checking out the manga as well, since it’s back from hiatus now). That aside, I thought this was an alright episode. There wasn’t much going on in this episode, but I still enjoyed the character dynamics, and the way Leorio and Gon tried to make their pork look more appealing did get a chuckle out of me. Not much to say here other than this episode was fairly uneventful, yet still kind of fun. However, this is a trend I’ve discovered so far.

   The entertainment value of an episode seems directly correlated to the amount of Hisoka in an episode. Of course, that’s based on a pretty small sample size. But last week was clearly the most interesting ep of Hunter x Hunter in my view, and this one – largely Hisoka-free – was not nearly so good. I’m not weighed down with the bias of comparing this series to the 1999 one, but the tone this week definitely felt lighter and less substantial. The new characters – gourmet hunters Menchi (Hirano Aya) and Buhara (Kanemaru Junichi) and Exam Committee Chairman Netero (Nagai Ichiro) didn’t really make much of an impact, though one will have a much larger impact in the future. Their Iron Chef exam challenge was fairly predictable, and Netero’s intervention afterwards felt oddly stilted and artificial. We had our requisite contributions to the body count in the re-exam, the hunt for spider eagle eggs, which was somewhat more interesting. And I do respect the notion that gourmets are accorded the same respect as any other hunter. I just didn’t find the episode as entertaining as the last one. In a long series like this you’ll have peaks and valleys, and H x H is clearly no exception to the rule. Hopefully things pick up next week as Netero appears ready to step into a more direct role.

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