Hunter x Hunter 2011

[Buffalobiian]

I thought Killua's situation was exaggerated too much. Perhaps it's partially believable in the sense that Biscuit apparently hammened his weakness in pretty forcefully and thus he can't get over it, but otherwise it feels like the plot is forgetting he's a fricking assassin who has slain god only knows how many people. And it's not like he was a total stranger to more demanding fights either. Yet now he's suddenly too scared to stop his knees from shaking and can't take a step forward. If he really was consistently like that, we would have seen this behavior before. But it seems like it appeared out of nowhere in this arc.

It does seem a little like that. I wonder if it has to do with the number of strong people that are coming up in this arc though. We've been introduced to Killua's way of assessing situations before. I think Pitou "shocked" him into running for his life, and the whole Gon thing is pushing him now.

Honestly his fighting before was pretty smart, and it prioritised being alive above all else. What it doesn't help with, is when you're trying to save the world, which protagonists tend to do. As a simple pay-to-kill assassin and fighter, Killua's doing just fine. A noble warrior, he is not.

[Kraco]

Honestly his fighting before was pretty smart, and it prioritised being alive above all else. What it doesn't help with, is when you're trying to save the world, which protagonists tend to do. As a simple pay-to-kill assassin and fighter, Killua's doing just fine. A noble warrior, he is not.

True, but we have seen the Zoldycks are also hired to off quite powerful targets. Maybe they can afford to default once or twice against especially tricky opponents, but if they fail (run) too many times, that's it. Nobody serious is going to hire them anymore. But I suppose his brother wasn't even training him to be an excellent assassin, just to stay alive no matter the cost. It simply hasn't been shown too well in the show before this arc.

[Carnage]

Yet now he's suddenly too scared to stop his knees from shaking and can't take a step forward. If he really was consistently like that, we would have seen this behavior before.

Like when? Togashi has been almost entirely consistent. I can't think of one time Killua has not tried to run away from a stronger opponent. The only point I can give you is that this theme has only come up now.

[Kraco]

I'm not accusing the story of significant inconsistency, far from it. We have seen, for example, Killua's flashbacks of the cowardly teaching by his brother before, plus it's true he has certainly put a lot of priority on escaping before. However, he has rarely been scared next to witless in front of an opponent he can't really judge but that shouldn't be anything impossible compared to his current state, like Neferpitou. He was so relaxed fighting the bomber sidekick that he could experiment new techniques at leisure. He was perfecly calm when they were captured by the Spider in the hotel, and far from this when they were captured for the first time. What I considered a slight inconsistency is how the contradiction in him now seems so concentrated suddenly. If he had always been like this, he couldn't have worked as an assassin in the first place nor pull off the adventures with Gon. He might now be more distressed for personal reasons, but his life hasn't exactly been a bed of roses up until this point either.

[David75]

I know what you mean.
After all, he even killed that ant that was supposed to be better than average, with ease and even with letting it make their moves on him... to the point he even let himself inject some poison.
How was he so over confident at the time is a mystery... or not.

I guess the very difference comes from Nen powers. Killua never rationnalized that power before he started training it with Gon/Wing.
But deep in his body and subconscious, he had been trained to fear it deeply by his brother. His brother did a good job instilling utter fear, without waking Killua's nen powers. I wonder what were his motives. Was it so that he isn't exposed to threats he would not overcome due to inexperience and young age, so the family needed to seal his powers and wait for Killua to overcome that barrier and show his monstrous powers?
Or was it just jealousy, brother sick love?
Maybe a mix of all that.

Then of course, there's the pitou meeting. I guess he felt an aura that triggered the instilled fear. And now he meets people with really strong nens and that fear is still there. He now needs to overcome that hurdle, the fight is more against himself, rather than against Shoot. And of course, the story is made so that Shoot is in a similar situation, having to first fight his fears so that he goes another level.

[Buffalobiian]

I think the knee-shaking comes from trying to forcefully break the habits, as opposed to "fearing" the opponent per se.

In the current fight, Killua will run and dodge as he finds out more about his opponent. He's also careful not to overpersue so that he won't fall into a trap. As Shoot pointed out, those are very good reactions and fighting skills. There's nothing wrong with that.

In trying to overcome his habits (and by extension: his thoughts - sometimes it's hard to say which follows the other), Killua is trying to do things he previously considered dangerous and suicidal (overpursuing, not backing out after taking damage) - and that scares him.

As for the stinger-girl before, I thought he overestimated the girl - it just turned out to do no damage. He really did screw up there. If we look at the beginning of that fight, he was dodging and sussing her out.

I get what Kraco's saying, and I think David's point about the current fear having to do with Nen may have something to do with it.

[DarthEnderX]

it feels like the plot is forgetting he's a fricking assassin who has slain god only knows how many people.

I think the implication they are trying to give is that he could easily tell everyone before was weaker than him.

Being an Assassin has given him an excellent sense of his enemies strength, and he's completely collected when he already knows he's going to win.

Yet now he's suddenly too scared to stop his knees from shaking and can't take a step forward. If he really was consistently like that, we would have seen this behavior before. But it seems like it appeared out of nowhere in this arc.

I think what you're seeing is a result of his inner conflict with himself.

We've seen him do what she's described all the time. When facing the Spiders, with Neferpitou, his brother. He simply bolts the instant he thinks he can't win. But he was at least confident that that was the correct course of action.

I think the reaction of this fight is a result of his instincts and training trying to force him to flee, but him forcing himself not to. And it's this that's causing him to look so unsteady. Because he's completely unsure.

[Buffalobiian]

Episode 91 is out!!

[MFauli]

ugh, felt super short.

the ants dont make sense. isnt the king´s goal to reign over his kingdom? seems like he doesnt care about having any underlings.

also, damn, feels like watching knuckle walking right towards his death.

[David75]

So Colt really did turn to humans for help. Motives are a bit dull considering what he's been doing until now.
What does it change if there's a chain of command or not when you're similarly killing everyone/everything around?
The only difference would be speed/level of mass murder.
I do not think Colt cares for ecosystem balance...

It might suggest though, that hormonal control was a key factor. You could always think that when the Queen's reproductive organs were destroyed, she also lost hormonal control over her ant army, freeing them... even Colt who can now let some of his human parts take over.

[Kraco]

It seems to me that the best thing any really serious professional hunters and other heavy nen users could do would be to gain a technique to purge foreign nen. Considering that I find it unbelievable such skills apparently are rare. I know if I was now in Killua and Gon's shoes, seeking out and learning that would be among the first priority, no matter how many years it took. They have certainly seen enough to know the uber value such a technique would have.

The development in the ant colony seemed logical. It's not all up to pheromone control anyway; the ants are too intelligent for that. So, it was a combination of such chemical control and a chain of command. Even with the queen still alive, we already saw the chain of command was shaky at best, but it somewhat held together until the king was born. The king, naturally, doesn't give a shit since his purpose ought to be to move elsewhere and create more queens and thus more colonies. Well, going by real insect analogy he should breed with queens from other colonies, but I doubt he could find one close enough to a human, so I assume he's just going to rape human women and wish chimera ant queens were born from such unholy copulation. Unless he's so genetically flawed he can only kill and not breed at all, which honestly wouldn't surprise me at all after his introduction.

I don't see why the hunters would want to spare a single chimera ant. They have no human ethical qualities and only view humans as food. Although listening to Colt makes sense since it's free intel.

[Buffalobiian]

I do not think Colt cares for ecosystem balance...

He does in a way. During their forages, he was strict on taking only enough food for the queen and discouraged recreational killing.

It'd be cool if Pitou is actually the strongest out of the royal guards to offset her lack of flight. I'd suck for her to get the shit end of the stick just because she was born the earliest.

I really don't like how close to Cell the king looks, tail and all.

[TwisT]

The King looks like Cell to pay homage to DBZ. So it is deliberate.

[DarthEnderX]

Penguin! Noooooo!!!

Gotta say, did not expect Gon and Killua to lose. For a second I thought I had missed an episode somehow.

the ants dont make sense. isnt the king´s goal to reign over his kingdom?

As much as it is the commanders' goal to serve in the best interests of the queen and the hive.

But like the rest of the ants, the King is now made up of shithead humans.

So Colt really did turn to humans for help. Motives are a bit dull considering what he's been doing until now.
What does it change if there's a chain of command or not when you're similarly killing everyone/everything around?

They explained this already.

The soldiers, commanders and royal guard serve the queen until she gives birth to the king, at which point the king and the royal guard leave to found a NEW hive.

But the queen and all the lower level ants are supposed to stay and keep the current hive thriving.

It seems to me that the best thing any really serious professional hunters and other heavy nen users could do would be to gain a technique to purge foreign nen.

I don't think you're allowed to pick a whole bunch of unique nen abilities you can create. Most people seem limited to one, or at least, variations on a theme.

If you choose your ability to purge other's Nen, you're giving up your ability to have any other kind of ability.

[Buffalobiian]

I think you DO choose the ability, but it depends on whether or not it falls into your original type.

[Archangel]

You build your own ability based on your type and your fighting style, it should be something comfortable to you.

Why are you discussing facts again? This has been explained by Kurapika's teacher, go rewatch that episode.

[Buffalobiian]

You build your own ability based on your type and your fighting style, it should be something comfortable to you.

Why are you discussing facts again? This has been explained by Kurapika's teacher, go rewatch that episode.

type, yes. I don't think he specifically talked about fighting styles however. Kurapica never used a chain before he started Nen training. He used sticks prior. I agree with the comfortable bit. Pitou for example just developed her technique based on what she wanted after she learned what type she was.

[Archangel]

Kurapika based his ability around his needs, he wanted to trap the spider. Your ability is what you make of it, this is a not my opinion but something that we've been explicitly told.

[DarthEnderX]

I think you DO choose the ability, but it depends on whether or not it falls into your original type.

You obviously choose the ability.

My point was, if you choose your ability to be "I purge other people's nen" then you have an ability that has almost no combat applications.

Given that most Hunters choose their abilities for fighting, it's not at all surprising to me that Nen purging is rare.

[Kraco]

I think you people are looking at this far too stiffly. Far too. We have already seen two specialists whose abilities allow them to use techniques from any category (Kurapika in her spider hunter mode and Chrollo the technique thief). That alone reveals that a human body is perfectly capable to overcome the religious sounding dogma that the few teachers we have seen have been preaching. That whole system is inherently flawed with the specialist category being thrown in there, so it seems like it's taught to serve the needs of the averages who greatly benefit from being able to believe in something systematic that allows them to focus on one or two things and actually get good at them, in time, instead of wasting their time infinitely trying to be masters of everything.

Gon and Killua are, however, one in a million people. If they just forgot the diagram and pushed forward, they'd probably discover there's nothing holding them back and find out Gon's old man is waiting for them beyond such doctrines. In the first place, there's no single technique to purge foreign nen. You can already reject, to a degree, some nen attacks simply by concentrating your own nen to the part of the body getting hit. For all we know, there might be some very simple guru technique of purifying your body from all nen, be it your own or someone else's. Mainstream dogmatic people just would never realise such a thing, being bound by their own rules. It would probably take someone as eccentric as Ging to discover the whole truth.