Hunter X Hunter Episode 134 Early Access

It seems only proper for Palm, through her powers of Clairvoyance, predict the future demise of the King for us. Knuckle's kind-hearted nature is a contrast that's not often talked about, that really elevates the conflict with Youpi. Early in the arc, always found taking care of a "bunch of strays", as he puts it, refuses to leave behind Morel, Shoot, the entire battlefield even after the chairman's defeat. Being portrayed as someone who would never abandon a comrade, really says something about Youpi, the animal-only ant who was swayed by Knuckle's own language of hope, fueled be the possibility of finding a piece of humanity inside the ones deemed the enemies of mankind and the world. Since he (Youpi) wasn't a bad guy, Knuckle had lost his reason to defeat him. His logic is balanced by sentiment. Outwardly seeming like a thug but inwardly being a softy, having survived more than 5000 battles but refusing to fight against his ideals, delivering lessons through "tough love" to Gon, has the Nen ability that nullifies pain while lending some of his aura - this guy has the biggest Heart of all. ▬ [Props to Aleczandxr in helping me write that]

♦ To give Netero a fight the King himself didn't want to partake in. ♦ Netero using "Meruem" as reward of their contest. ♦ Komugi being the main reason behind Meruem being able to take the old soldier's arm. ♦ After Zero Hand, Poison Rose. Gon letting his monstrosity win over a sorrowful Pitou fixing her arm standing next to a Souless Kite. Killua having the person he most cared about slowly descending to something completely different from the start of the series. ♦ Through boundless compassion Pouf and Youpi rose to the pinnacle of their species, to Queen's kin. ♦ After suffering heavy emotional distress through protecting Komugi - now on more physical terms - Pitou suffer new stress and had her corpse rose with no other purpose than to defend her loved King. While the Ants kept rising, the Humans had no choice but to sunk lower.

I wanted to express my appreciation for the thought process you built right here but couldn't find anything to match it.

Just gonna leave a separate comment since it's not got anything to do with the 702 word monstrosity I left up there, but I find the thing you said about your name in the discussion quite interesting since I've also chosen my own names, some quite recently actually. Just cool to hear about someone else having done something similar albeit in a different context.

Stealth Potato

An absolutely amazing episode, probably my favourite in the entire show. It really pulls a lot of stuff together and is kind of the final point for the arc of the chimera ants as a species. Starting off with the idea that humans are worse than ants works on the surface, as absolutely nothing we've seen any of the ants do is more cruel than what humanity has really done, the ants have their plan for world domination and a way to achieve it with Meruem as the pinnacle of their species. Humans countered with a device we'd already made that's capable of wiping ourselves out, something more terrifying and effective than the ants could ever be at killing us. I always find it fascinating when media from Japan uses nukes or an analogue of them given their unique history with them, and I think that relation just serves to make the use of it here and how its portrayed so much more effective. That said that comparison is a bit more interesting if you consider it further given that just about every single Chimera ant has acted as a human, and I would say is human. We've the ones on our side like Palm, Ikalgo, Meleoron and Colt as the easy examples, it's hard imo to call them anything other than human with how they act. Then there's the enemy ants we got to know like Leol and Cheetu, they all acted in human ways from the start (generally just the greedy and awful kind however) and I can just as easily imagine a human character doing what they did. All of this is a kind of harsh juxtaposition against the idea we are given of the ants at the start of the arc, that being inhuman monsters. The only ones that really fit that description (aside from the goons without any voice lines at the start) would be the king and his royal guard when they just emerge. They serve as a pretty stark contrast to every other ant at that point and that's around when the ants really start getting a lot more complex with Colt switching sides and all. The real interesting thing for me however is how even Meruem and arguably all three of the royal guards also end up being extremely human, the show straight up says it here about Meruem and over the course of the last few episodes we've seen Pitou's entire demeanour change due to Meruem and Komugi's relationship, Pouf's efforts to prevent Meruem from spending time with and remembering Komugi certainly don't feel inhuman, Youpi is a slight exception which kind of makes sense given he's the only ant without any human inside him but even then his interactions with Knuckle and Morel don't at all feel like an inhuman monster. I think these two ideas tie together quite well, humans are worse than ants, the way we dealt with them is beyond them, but at the same time chimera ants without being part human were no threat, the only reason they even rose to this level of threat rather than just threatening a few undefended villages like many animals could is because of the humanity in them. On a more meta level I absolutely adore writing something as a sort of inhuman monster at the start that reveals itself to be human, quite frankly it's impossible for a human to *really* write a sapient being who is truly inhuman since the way they think was imagined by the author. It's a problem I've found in a few shows that try and write alien races like that but when you actually look at the way they are they're just not. The exceptions are things like the Xenomorph from Alien, but if you actually gave it lines and got inside its head and could begin to understand its motivations it'd instantly lose that. It's one of the reasons I generally prefer when alien races and stuff in stories are just portrayed as more human rather than a human trying to write an inhuman personality, and in a way the Chimera Ants are a bit like that and I absolutely love them for it.

Stealth Potato

Remember how Netero said that he must finish his fight quickly before his heart is swayed...

Yuvitek