We meet the rest of Kite’s team that is hunting the Chimera Ants, and we learn a bit more about why they are so dangerous. The way the reproduce is that the queen eats a bunch of creatures, and the offspring inherit the features. And now that the Chimera Ants are so big they can eat people, they could theoretically gain the intelligence and capabilities of humans. And while Kite’s team, with Gon and Killua now included, is having trouble finding where the Chimera Ants’ nest is located, that is exactly what happens. The queen eats a couple of people, gives birth to a new set of “soldier ants” and one of them can talk and think. I’m guessing that this is what some would call a sub-optimal situation. Unless, you know, being eaten for the growth of a new species is optimal to you.
I was going to do my new opening analysis, but fuck that, I need to talk about those people who got eaten. In most shows, the first victims of the new monster would be no one who would be missed. They’d be criminals or homeless people or Ohio State fans. But, in Hunter x Hunter, it’s a couple of innocent kids. We even get to know them, like how the older brother wants to protect his younger sister. And that does him precisely zero good before he and his sister are killed and brought to the queen as a new type of food. Maybe some of his personality will live on somehow, which would at least be a reason to show this sequence to us. I mean, I’m used to Hunter x Hunter being brutal, but this felt almost cruel. And I don’t even like kids.