graham's blog (#hxh)

Pakunoda, the Touch-Memory Reader

2025-12-23T21:30:00.000Z

Continuing drawing hxh characters based solely on the descriptions of them from Media Club Plus by @friends-table. This is Pakunoda, member number 9^[1] of The Phantom Troupe.

Jack: And we are introduced to them very quickly. We have Pakunoda, who is a sexy lady. She has a lovely piece of animation. She checks her wristwatch, at one point, and she’s wearing her watch like a bracelet with the face on the inside of her wrist like some people do, so she’s, like, looking at the inside of her wrist to check the time.

Jack: But it’s…well, it’s interesting. We learn later that sort of a lynchpin of the back of this episode is the Nen power of another Phantom Troupe member. Pakunoda? Pakunada?

Keith: Pakunoda.

Sylvia: Pakunoda, yeah.

Jack: Who can sort of verify whether something is true by reading the memories of people she touches. We haven't had this power confirmed, but that seems to be the case.

Sylvia: Yeah. I think that’s like a really important thing to draw on is the, like…the way the different founding members sort of step up during this sequence.

Keith: That’s like, the…like, emotional core of these episodes is that Pakunoda, Feitan, Franklin, Machi, Nobunaga, and, uh, Uvo—

Jack: Phinks and Shalnark.

Keith: And Phinks and Shalnark, they’re all founding members and they have all found themselves on opposite sides of this thing. They have like, they have spent years together both developing totally separate understandings of how the Spider moves.

Jack: The violence when they play their hand, not just the Troupe but generally I think about the great scene where Uvo bit the guy’s face off.

Keith: Oh yeah.

Jack: …is really embodied, is really visceral, and is almost always on camera. Y’know, when the anime team commits to one of these moments of violence, they don’t cut away from it. And I like that, y’know, if we want to sell that this world is fundamentally violent and thirteen of our protagonists deal this violence regularly, I think it makes sense that the violence remains shocking when it happens. But, I mean, time for another incredible moment of violence as Pakunoda starts loading her pistol.

Keith: We actually get a good, another new song that I can’t tell you, well not I can’t, I won't tell you the title of this one because it’s, it actually becomes a variation, it becomes a theme of a character that we haven't met yet.

Jack: The spoiler that Keith’s not telling me is that this title actually is called “Pakunoda x Nen Freedom x Reunited with the Troupe.” [Keith and Sylvi laugh]

Keith: Yeah, that’s a real, that is Jack’s best called shot yet. [Jack chuckles] But no, during the whole scene where Pakunoda has, uh, Squala in an armlock and then also the memory stuff that we’re about to talk about, it plays this song. [A few seconds of “Who’s the Bomber[2]” plays]

Sylvia: Ooh!

Jack: Oh, it’s good!

Jack: This is sort of like a 60’s French sort of mystery theme going on here. [Jack and Dre chuckle]

Keith: It is a little bit noir-y, which is funny for what it ends up being used for. It definitely fits better here.

Jack: Pakunoda is kind of noir-y.

Sylvia: Oh, she’s very…

Jack: She, she thinks about people’s memories, she has a revolver.

Sylvia: She’s the…

Keith: Yeah, there’s a lot of detective stuff going on in this one, people are trying to figure out the location of everything. But it becomes, it does not…This is much more noir-y than what it gets used for eventually. [Sylvi chuckles] They replace the strings with a guitar and it’s odd. Odd choice.

Jack: So, no use beating around the bush. Pakunoda can shoot her memories into people for as long as she has bullets, using a Nen power called Memory Bomb.

Keith: Recollection Bullet: Memory Bomb.

Shoutouts to the Friends at the Table Transcription team for their work, which made my job easier with this one: https://sites.google.com/view/fatttranscripts/more/media-club-plus

According to my sources, apparently we do not know whether Pakunoda is number 9 or number 6. She and Shalnark are the only two members of The Phantom Troupe with this sort of discrepancy. ↩︎

Kortopi, the Illusionist

2025-12-23T00:33:00.000Z

Continuing drawing hxh characters based solely on the descriptions of them from Media Club Plus by @friends-table. This is Kortopi, member number 12 of The Phantom Troupe.

Jack: He is accompanied by Kortopi, a one-eyed— or maybe— hmm. A small child in a green raincoat with long gray hair cover— with only one eye visible beneath. Then there is Uvo, a—

Keith: Fully covering their face.

Jack: Yes.

Keith: Like, can't see their face.

Keith: Yeah, this is something that Hunter X Hunter is so good at, is like, I talked about this episode as setting up pins and like, Hunter X Hunter is constantly setting up pins and you just never know when they’re gonna get knocked down. Sometimes it’s two minutes, sometimes it’s ten episodes, sometimes it’s thirty episodes, like who knows? Like, later on we see, uh, it’s introduced that Kortopi has, [Jack: Oh yeah…] that his copies count as En and then like five minutes later that becomes like a crucial part of the plan. And that sort of maneuver is happening constantly in this show, where you learn something and then a little while down the line they pull it and twist it in a new way, and then use it and be like, look, this thing that you learned about!

Jack: I’m so excited to see them fight. It’s so funny. Um, okay. As part of his Professor Layton puzzle, Chrollo asks Kortopi to make ten dummy hideouts. This is another rapid escalation of Nen. Y’know, I’ve now just given up on the sort of upper limit of what Nen can do. [Dre laughs] We’ve seen Kortopi copy things, and now Kortopi, Chrollo says ‘make ten hideouts’ and Kortopi says ‘I’ll make you fifty.’ And they all act as En, anyone who enters them will be seen.

Keith: Yeah, Kortopi instantly makes a fake city.

Sylvia: This combined with the way that Kortopi, like the way they talk about Kortopi’s En, I feel like is like such a big like, oh the roller coaster is cresting the top of its rise moment for these episodes?

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah. This is what we talked about earlier where when they’re making the fake city, uh, as a, to hide their hideout, Kortopi’s like, yeah the buildings function as my En so if they’re walking through it I’ll be able to tell there’s intruders coming. And then they now reuse that ability for, ‘hey, Kortopi, we just realized that we have those Scarlet Eyes, and we know about, that the Phantom— the Chain User also was interested in Scarlet Eyes, why don’t you find the Scarlet Eyes, touch them, and then it’ll bring us to where their hideout is.’ And this be—

Sylvia: We get like a really good shot of them like, digging through crates trying to find the Scarlet Eyes.

Jack: That’s great. They are overwhelmed by their own loot.

Keith: Oh yeah, tons— there’s tons of loot.

Sylvia: The, um, the visual of Kortopi using his En is so cool. I like, love the way that they animate this.

Jack: Yeah, you wanna describe what this looks like? I wrote down, ‘Kortopi vision.’

Sylvia: It’s just like, it’s sort of like is it— would you say wireframe? I don’t really know how to describe the actual…

Jack: Yeah, it’s a bit like the, um, the beginning of Escape From New York. [Dre laughs]

Sylvia: Yeah, there’s like, some, there’s like this representation of the city, and then the red eyes just like, floating in the darkness basically of it? And I like that it’s just the position of the eyes that you get. Like, there are limitations in this. It’s not necessarily like, Kortopi can tell how many people are in the same room as the eyes, he can just tell, ‘oh they’re moving this way and someone has them.’

Jack: [...] Rather than having sort of like a sheet of hair over her face like Kortopi, it is almost like dangling down in these presumably very irritating to draw threads. [Everyone laughs] They are all over her face and body.

Keith: Yeah. And I do like you've got the spooky corner over here. You've got the friends, [Sylvia: Yeah.] the XBox friends, Feitan, Kortopi, and Bonolenov. They play XBox together.

Sylvia: Yeah, except Bonolenov and Kortopi are an item. They go antiquing on the weekends.

Keith: Yes, yeah. [Jack chuckles]

Jack: Feitan and Kortopi have short solidarity.

Sylvia: Of course.

Jack: I think during the screenshot stream I referred to them both as small children.

Sylvia: You did. [Keith laughs] Oh! Can I just say, by the way, there is a lot of, like, fanart of Kortopi being this, like, adorable little cherub underneath the hair while I was looking for, like, a good icon to use for this.

Keith: That’s bizarre.

Sylvia: And it’s bizarre to me, because underneath Kortopi’s hair, to me, it’s Okuyasu’s dad.

Keith: To me, it’s an eyeball floating in a void.

Sylvia: From our JoJo episodes. [Dre chuckles]

Jack: Oh, wow, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we never see Kortopi’s face? I don't really consider this a spoiler, but you know.

Keith: Genuinely don't remember.

Sylvia: I don't remember. I never have thought of it.

Dre: I don't think so.

Jack: Wow.

Keith: It might happen in the manga? Yeah, I have no idea.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: No clue.

Shoutouts to the Friends at the Table Transcription team for their work, which made my job easier with this one: https://sites.google.com/view/fatttranscripts/more/media-club-plus

Nobunaga, the Ronin Samurai

2025-12-22T01:30:00.000Z

Continuing drawing hxh characters based solely on the descriptions of them from Media Club Plus by @friends-table. This is Nobunaga, member number 1 of The Phantom Troupe.

Jack: Also with them is Nobunaga, who is a rōnin with a classic sort of top knot and a robe and a katana

Keith: Yeah, "Dr. Warm-Hearted Miser"?

Jack: Yeah. [Sylvia laughs]

Keith: That’s his other theme song.

Austin: I'm telling you, they're compatible.

Dre: I love that Guilty Gear character.

Keith: That song— both of those songs are the songs of a guy who would steal a trillion jenny from a casino.

Dre: Sure.

Austin: It would make Leorio more like Lupin III and less like Leorio.

Sylvia: He would be Danny Ocean.

Austin: He’d be Danny Ocean.

Keith: Who he looks like. He looks like Lupin III.

Dre: Yeah.

Austin: He’s already a Lupin III type.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: I mean, Nobunaga would fit right in, then. He’d just be, um…

Austin: I'm telling you.

Keith: Right.

Austin: Yeah.

Sylvia: Oh, I can't remember the name off the top of my head.

Austin: Jigen.

Sylvia: Jigen.

Austin: No, Jigen’s the other one. Jigen’s the other one.

Keith: The other one, the other one.

Sylvia: No, Jigen’s not the Samurai, yeah.

Austin: What’s the Samurai’s name?

Sylvia: I don't know.

Austin: Oh, this is brutal. I can see his hair. I can see his— it’s Fujiko, it’s Lupin, it’s Jigen.

Sylvia: It’s Goemon.

Austin: Goemon! Of course.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Austin: Another classic historical thief.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Austin: Magical historical thief.

Jack: Nobunaga introduces a creepy power here. It doesn't help him too much, but it’s probably going to be frightening in future, [Sylvia: Mm-hmm.] and it’s a new Nen ability called En.

Sylvia: Yeah. You're correct. En is going to be on the exam.

Jack: Okay.

Sylvia: Like, this is something to remember, I feel like.

Keith: It’s so great that he introduces it and then we actually don't see it used.

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah, we just kind of get the powerpoint presentation.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: Here is how it—

Dre: And we see, like, the bubble, but.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Yeah. Here’s how it works. He extends his aura out from himself, [Keith: Yeah.] a really quite substantial distance. Not like a city block but definitely, like, an entire building.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And anything that moves within that building can…

Keith: It’s as if it’s touching his body.

Jack: Yes. He says, “I could feel any falling leaf.” We get this sort of image of him surrounded by these falling golden leaves, kind of briefly coming back to Nobunaga as a Rōnin and the sort of poetic imagery of a Rōnin, as opposed to what he has been this episode, a grieving fairly pragmatic man guarding two children.

Jack: Nobunaga is both, um, really really funny. He’s a really funny character. He is scary in a way you never quite know how short his fuse is. He is extremely capable. He cares very deeply for Uvo, and in times in this little arc when Chrollo is out of action, demonstrates himself pretty capably to be able to like, think on behalf of the Troupe.

Jack: Which in the sort of Nen calculus, that’s about as good as it gets. Y’know? We even say this in Heaven’s Arena where it’s like, whoa, what’s his power? And then it reveals itself. So for Chrollo to have this seemingly limitless book. But I think Nobunaga backing down and then it being a trick and then lunging is such a nice illustration in the difference between how Hisoka and Nobunaga see like, worthwhile fights. Y’know, Hisoka has that ridiculous game he plays that I’m now sick of where he’s like, you have to be good enough to fight me, and Nobunaga is like, I’m gonna cut your head off with a katana, because y’know, you betrayed the Troupe or whatever and it’s only Chrollo’s intervention…

Jack: That is the only thing I know about Bonolenov. I’ve seen an image of him and then a bunch of people responding with crying emojis. Which is, that’s funny to me. Um, Machi tells Chrollo about Gon and Killua, Nobunaga, or one of Nobunaga’s two games, Nobunaga actually has three games. Nobunaga game one: I’m going to kill the person who killed Uvo. Game two: I’m gonna fight anybody at the smallest moment’s notice because I’m high strung, but I’m also kind of funny about it. Game three: we should recruit Gon and Killua [chuckling] Those are his three conversations.

Sylvia: And it is just like, so unceremonious and Nobunaga’s being like, I told him not to move or whatever afterwards? And it’s, like, such a nice touch. Again, makes the Phantom Tr— Reminds you that the Phantom Troupe are not just a funny samurai who gets mad and like, his friends and stuff. Y’know?

Dre: Mhm.

Sylvia: Like, oh, yeah, these guys are murderers.

Jack: 56 is, uh, they are talking about Nobunaga, who can take out foes with one strike.

Keith: While Hisoka’s scouting out Abengane with the rest of the Troupe, a song called “Master of Iai” plays. [clip of “Master of Iai” begins]

Sylvia: This has to be a Nobunaga song, right? 'Cause that’s, like…isn’t that the sword style that he does?

Keith: Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. [music ends]

Shoutouts to the Friends at the Table Transcription team for their work, which made my job easier with this one: https://sites.google.com/view/fatttranscripts/more/media-club-plus

Bonolenov, the Mummy with Boxing Gloves

2025-12-13T19:30:00.000Z

Continuing drawing hxh characters based solely on the descriptions of them from Media Club Plus by @friends-table. This is Bonolenov, member number 10 of The Phantom Troupe.

It's been a while since I've done one of these, but I realized recently that a lot more of the episode transcriptions have been completed than the last time I had looked. As always, I'm primarily bottlenecked by how quickly I can assemble the descriptions.

Jack: On the left-hand side of the image is a embalmed person.
Sylvi: [laughing]

Jack: Uh... she is sitting calmly, uh, she is, she is not the focus of this scene, which is so fun. Between the sort of gorilla fellow, uh, uh, in the first image, you know, it turns out not being a main character whatsoever, and this person kind of just framed sideways, you know, in the very edge of the frame. I really like this. Uh, this person has been wrapped, head to toe, in bandages, it looks like. Uh, alternatively, they could be chitinous. They could be, this could be plates, almost like a, like a. Uh, a woodlouse, or a beetle, or an armadillo, or pangolin — [chuckling] the plated animals. But I do think that this is an embalmed person. Uh, she is wearing lace-up, red boots. She is a fashionable embalmed person. And, what looks like possibly sunglasses, something on her face, some sort of, something on her face. She's got a sort of Brendan Frasier Invisible Man type thing — oh, shit, maybe she's invisible. Classic way of revealing an invisible person, is wrapping yourself up in bandages. So that's a possibility.

Sylvi: [giggling]

Jack: Could also just be an embalmed body. Can't tell if she's wearing boxing gloves. Do you see that?

Sylvi: Mm-hm.

Jack: She's got a sort of boxing glove-like thing. That could be a motorcycle helmet. I don't know.

Jack: You know, we are now so firmly— and after the whole shit in the Heavens Arena, we are now so primed to be like, each of these people are Nen specialists, and each of them is going to do something fucking weird. So, as Togashi is just introducing the Phantom Troupe, like, faster than lightning, you know, one appearing almost before the other has left the screen, all you can think is—

Keith: Very conspicuously using each other’s first names. [laughs quietly]

Jack: Yep. Yeah, exactly. Is, “What is this person’s deal? What is their Nen power?”

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Here comes Bonolenov, a mummy who is wearing boxing gloves.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: And shorts.

Jack: [laughs quietly] And shorts!

Sylvia: Yeah. Oh.

Jack: Bonolenov is great. If you are— I know we're kind of blitzing through these descriptions quite quickly. There are 13 members of the Phantom Troupe.

Sylvia: Yes.

Jack: We will—

Keith: This is how it feels in the show, though, too.

Jack: Yes. We will invariably talk more about them as they— as focus falls on them in later episodes. But Bonolenov is a gangly mummy wrapped head to toe in bandages, bright circular eyes peeking out, and wearing boxing gloves and shorts. They are— what are Bonolenov’s pronouns? He/him?

Sylvia: He/him.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: The Bonolenov-Franklin-Hisoka trio has such Dark Universe vibes. [Keith laughs]

Jack: I don’t know shit about Bonolenov.

Keith: He barely has said anything!

Jack: That’s not quite true. Here is what I will say. I don’t hunt down Hunter X Hunter spoilers, and I’ve been really lucky not to have anything absolutely gigantic spoiled for me ever.

Sylvia: Thank god.

Jack: Very occasionally, and I want to keep it that way, very occasionally I will just see a completely contextless screenshot from Hunter X Hunter in some like, image compilation or something, and I saw an image of Bonolenov and a load of like, really sad faced emojis [Sylvi and Dre laugh] which is one of the funniest context-free spoilers to get, because it’s like either something really moving is gonna happen with Bonolenov and I’m gonna be there, or this person cares deeply about this mummy. So that’s exciting.

Sylvia: You know… [Keith chuckles]

Jack: That is the only thing I know about Bonolenov. I’ve seen an image of him and then a bunch of people responding with crying emojis. Which is, that’s funny to me.

Jack: No, I think I, I think I see where you’re coming from. Brief Hanzo aside, Hanzo, and I realized this the other day, is actually fairly high on my list for potential Spiders, potential Spider replacements.

Sylvia: Oh!

Keith: Interesting.

Keith: You don’t think his, uh, his, y’know, ethics or whatever would prevent him from being a Spider?

Sylvia: For some reason I thought you were gonna say his bald head.

Dre: Damn.

Jack: Is anybody bald in the Spiders? Bonolenov might be bald.

Sylvia: Bonolenov, potentially, yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Anyway.

Jack: And Bonolenov speaks in these episodes.

Keith: Yes.

Jack: And there is… [sighs]

Sylvia: Yeah?

Jack: It is so funny. “What is Bonolenov’s power?” is clearly a sort of a mystery that Togashi has been holding onto, and we get an answer to that. But the way Bonolenov starts talking, it’s as though he didn't even realize he forgot to give him lines before.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: It’s like, he speaks completely normally. [Keith laughs] He just has a sort of thin little voice, and he talks like all the other members of the Phantom Troupe. He has questions about what their plan is. He bickers.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: It’s as though he was like, “Oh shit, right, Bonolenov has lines.”

Jack: There's no buildup to this. Or rather, there is buildup, and it was the entire fucking Phantom Troupe arc, of us going, “What’s this guy’s deal? What is going on?”

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Underneath the bandages, Bonolenov is a slim, dark-gray-skinned man with big red eyes, pointed teeth, missing ears, and a pattern of holes all over his body. When I say holes, I don't mean, like, wounds? He is perforated.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Jack: He has a big hole in his chest. He has holes in his fingers, through which you can kind of see through them. And as he moves, wind blows through them, and they kind of, like, whistle and scream.

Keith: Yeah, like a bottle.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: And as he does a lot of complex boxing moves, the narrator appears.

Keith: Yes.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: Who says, “Bonolenov—”

Keith: I have a whole quote of—

Jack: Oh, yes.

Keith: Oh, you have the whole quote? Okay.

Jack: No, no, no. I don't have the whole quote.

Keith: “Bonolenov is descended from the Gyudondond people, a small tribe that was chased into obliteration by industrialization of their land. When the Gyudondond males reach the age of three, needles are used to puncture holes in their bodies. By performing different movements, an assortment of sounds can be made using the holes of various sizes. Before fighting rival tribes or wild animals, they would play a battle song using their own bodies as instruments. They are known as the Bapu, dancing warriors. They believe the more beautiful the sound, the more powerful spirits are believed to be summoned.”

Jack: This is fraught.

Sylvia: It is.

Dre: Yeah. It sure is.

Jack: Yeah. The idea of making cursed music through the movement of your body is fantastic, and the sound design on Bonolenov is great.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: It’s really good, yeah.

Jack: Whenever he moves, there are these sort of, like, two toned, like, atonal whistling. Although there's another sound key that becomes associated with Bonolenov that we will talk about in a second. I know Keith and I are both excited to talk about it. [Dre chuckles] Let me see if there's anything else I want to talk about with Bonolenov. It’s fun, right? Because, like, this is the first moment in these episodes that a previously hidden Troupe power is revealed and is, um…how do I put this? High concept Nen?

Keith: I should say, really quick: I don't think that we said that Bonolenov’s power is called Battle Cantabile, Transform This Melody into Strength to Fight: Prologue.

Jack: Bonolenov drops Jupiter on him. This is really, really funny.

Sylvia: [chuckles] “Drops of Jupiter” would be way better if it was about this.

Keith: Yeah. Sorry, drops a train on him? Is that what you said?

Sylvia: No, drops Jupiter on him.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvia: But my brain went, “Drops of Jupiter.”

Jack: I don't know what “Drops of Jupiter” is.

Keith: No, that song is by the band Train.

Sylvia: Oh, right!

Jack: Oh, I see.

Dre: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack: This is really funny, because it is clear that he is not dropping actual Jupiter [Keith: No.] on him, because that would destroy everything. But the thing that he does drop on him is so phenomenally destructive [Sylvia: Yeah.] and does actually look like the planet Jupiter.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Like a gigantic marble. This thing is the size of, you know…it’s immense. It’s the size of a space station or something.

Keith: It blows a visible hole in the, like, web kingdom.

Sylvia: Yeah, this web kingdom gets fucked up! [Jack chuckles]

Jack: The, like, effects on this are crazy. The camera is shaking. There's fire everywhere. You see explosions from the outside. And, yeah, it’s Jupiter. It is the planet Jupiter tumbles on this ant, leaving an immense crater and a squashed ant at the bottom. It’s brilliant. And then, as the narrator says, you know, “The Phantom Troupe has traveled to Meteor City to protect their home from the Chimera Ants,” we get the ongoing montage. It’s really fun, the way that sometimes they will end, like, episodes midway through a fight at, like, cliffhanger moments where it seems like the characters are going to be beaten. Not really. The Troupe are just kicking the shit out of these ants.

Shoutouts to the Friends at the Table Transcription team for their work, which made my job easier with this one: https://sites.google.com/view/fatttranscripts/more/media-club-plus

Phinks, the Racecar Driver

2024-11-26T09:20:00.000Z

Continuing drawing hxh characters based solely on the descriptions of them from Media Club Plus by @friends-table. This is Phinks, member number 5 of The Phantom Troupe.

Jack: [...] Next to them is a fellow in a racing [unintelligible] outfit.
Sylvi: [laughs]

Jack: Green racing driver's outfit, uh, uh, white shoulders on his jacket, red stripes, green sort of track jacket, almost. Now, next to this person, this is interesting. This is a character I have seen before. I, I don't know anything about —

Jack: We have Phinks! With a P-H. P-H-I-N-K-S.
Keith: Yep. [Sylvia laughs]

Jack: Who is a grumpy racing driver. He’s a man in a sort of racing driver.

Sylvia: Oh, okay. That’s an interesting— I didn't get racing driver from him. I always got, uh, Chris Moltisanti.

Keith: But I get it from the jacket though. Sorry, you get who?

Dre: Yeah, I totally get it.

Sylvia: Chris Moltisanti from The Sopranos?

Keith: Oh, it is.

Jack: Oh, yeah. [Dre laughs]

Sylvia: The, like, tracksuit vibe?

Jack: Yeah, totally. It’s absolutely that tracksuit vibe. I also saw it as, like, a racing jacket or, like, racing colors.

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think you are, like, totally right. I just, when I first watched this, it wasn't— I was just— yeah.

Keith: I don't remember when they reveal what his power is, but it’s very funny—

Sylvia: It’s great.

Keith: And it’s not to drive fast. [laughs]

Keith: I think he’s the most normal one. I actually think that Shalnark is the normalest guy.
Jack: The Dragon Quest kid?

Dre: But I think that makes him less normal.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Okay.

Jack: This is what I'm saying.

Keith: Well, then, maybe it’s Phinks, then.

Jack: Feitan is very normal to me, because he’s— which one is Phinks?

Keith: Phinks is the racecar driver. [Sylvia laughs]

Jack: Oh, sure.

Sylvia: That’s a real—

Keith: He’s just, like, the angry guy.

Dre: Yeah, Phinks is pretty normal looking.

Sylvia: That’s a really funny answer, Keith.

Keith: [laughs] No, that’s from— that’s a callback to last recording.

Sylvia: Okay.

Jack: Yes.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: We've called him the racing car driver, the racecar driver before.

Keith: Yeah, I can't remember who originally said racecar driver, but I thought that—

Sylvia: It was Jack.

Keith: Okay. I knew that Jack would remember.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: When they walk into the room, Uvogin just goes, like, “You clean up nice,” and then, uh, Dolzene or whatever the fuck his name is.
Sylvia: [laughs quietly] Dolezal.

Keith: Immediately goes like, “Oh, I'm fucking dead. I'm dead.”

Austin: Hand through his body from Phinks.

Keith: And then he’s dead.

Austin: Yeah. Yeah, he—

Sylvia: And Phinks puts his hat on.

Jack: Yes.

Austin: His big snake hat.

Jack: Yeah.

Austin: Like he’s a Mega Man villain.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Jack: I'm underestimating—

Keith: This is his first time wearing the hat, so it’s not like he takes off his suit and he puts on the hat we all know. [Austin laughs]

Sylvia: No.

Austin: It’s so funny! [Keith and Dre laugh]

Sylvia: It’s fantastic.

Jack: Underestimating—

Sylvia: Jack, what did you think?

Jack: Yeah. Underestimating Togashi.

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Underestimating the way Togashi moves. I wrote down here—

Keith: It’s so easy to underestimate him.

Jack: And you would think that I would be— well, actually, I have a moment later where I just fully gave over to Togashi’s, [Sylvia laughs] you know, we'll figure that out later. But yeah, my note here says, “The Troupe take off their disguises and kill Dalzollene. Someone in a fancy helmet here is new, I think.” So, I was so overwhelmed by Togashi, I invented a 14th Phantom Troupe member. [Austin laughs]

Keith: Yeah. You could not mentally connect the snake hat man to [cross] Phinks who is the racecar driver.

Jack: [cross] With the racing driver. Yes.

Dre: Yeah.

Austin: Does this change what you might guess Phinks’s powers are?

Jack: No. I can't do this. I cannot do this. I can't make it work. [Austin laughs] To me, this is like trying to see the old lady or the young lady in that drawing that is, you know, both of them.

Keith: Oh, the duck or the rabbit? You gotta see…

Jack: Or the duck or the rabbit.

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: And when your brain sees one, you have to work really hard to see the other.

Dre: Mm.

Jack: Something about my brain is now broken with Phinks, [Austin laughs quietly] where because I see him as the racecar driver, [laughs] I have no idea why he is this—

Keith: What would you have said his power was when you just thought he was the racecar driver?

Jack: Fucking racecar driving, Keith! [Jack and Sylvia laugh]

Dre: He go fast.

Austin: You thought he was a racecar driver because he’s wearing, like, a racecar driver outfit?

Jack: Yes!

Keith: Yeah, he’s got like a tracksuit, yeah.

Austin: He has on, like, the—

Sylvia: Yeah.

Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack: So now he’s a racecar driver from fucking Thebes in 800 b.c.? [Keith and Dre laugh]

Austin: Oh, that’s fun, like a chariot driver.

Dre: Yeah, he’s a chariot racecar driver.

Sylvia: Oh.

Jack: Oh, what is this— 'cause his hat is very much sort of, like, ancient Egypt, or rather, adventure story caricature of ancient Egypt.

Keith: Right.

Austin: Mm-hmm.

Jack: A man with a snake on his hat.

Keith: And what’s his name?

Jack: Phinks.

Sylvia: Interesting.

Keith: Interesting.

Austin: Hmm. Interesting.

Jack: Phinks.

Austin: Uh huh.

Jack: With a P-H, like pharaoh.

Keith: Mm? [Austin laughs] Okay.

Sylvia: Yeah? You're getting so close.

Dre: Yeah, that’s what we're getting at.

Austin: You got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack: Phinks. 'Cause he phinks really hard about what he’s gonna do.

Austin: Yep. [laughs]

Keith: He’s always phinking about Egypt.

Austin: He’s always phinking about…

Dre: Oh, so he’s British. Okay. [Keith laughs]

Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Dre laughs] God, Phantom Troupe but if they were British. No, terrible. Wouldn't work.

Sylvia: That’s a Guy Ritchie movie. [Austin chuckles]

Jack: It is a Guy Ritchie movie. Why do you say, “What’s his name? Phinks,” as though that’s supposed to give me anything?

Austin: Wait, have you not— I thought you were doing a bit!

Sylvia: Have you really not clicked it?

Keith: No, this is— I can tell that this wasn't a bit.

Dre: Oh.

Keith: It’s fine.

Austin: Jack. Jack. Jack. I want you to do a little trick here.

Jack: Yeah.

Austin: I want you to take the final letter of his name and put it at the beginning and then say his name.

Jack: [gasps] S-Phinks. [all laugh]

Keith: Now, that’s a bit.

Austin: That’s a bit. That’s…

Jack: Wait, why is he dressed like a racing driver?

Austin: Well, you can't always be in the uniform.

Sylvia: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, he wasn't at work yet.

Austin: Sometimes Bruce Wayne’s just in a suit.

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: You clock in.

Sylvia: True.

Keith: Then you put your uniform on.

Austin: Yeah.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Jack: But why is he— why here, Togashi? When Togashi wants to do a weirdo, he just, he can't stop himself. He just does the weirdo 110%. Have you seen Hisoka? So now he’s decided to get all coy about it with this racing driver who is also— [laugh quietly]

Keith: I think it’s less coy.

Dre: It’s the Phantom Troupe.

Keith: I think it’s just a new aspect on him being a weirdo.

Austin: Yeah.

Sylvia: Yeah, I think it makes him more of a weirdo—

Keith: He’s like a weird—

Sylvia: —that he picks and chooses when to do it, you know?

Dre: Mm.

Keith: Yeah. Sometimes I'm in my— I gotta— [accent] I'm home, I gotta take off my tracksuit and put on my fucking snake hat. [Sylvia laughs]

Austin: Maybe Phinks is from Jersey.

Sylvia: [accent] I gotta go fucking Tutankhamen mode. [laughter]

Jack: And now say something he’d say when he’s doing his racing.

Sylvia: [accent] Vroom!

Keith: [accent] Vroom vroom!

Austin: Yeah, that’s the one. That’s the quote.

Keith: [accent] Can't wait to get home, put on my snake hat. [Sylvia laughs]

Jack: Shizuku—

Dre: [accent] Ey, I'm racing here.

Jack: It’s great. Phinks manages to screw up using a phone in every way you could use a phone across three separate calls and two separate phones.
Keith: There’s nothing, there’s nothing…there’s only one thing that’s even close to as funny as Phinks answering the phone and immediately having to give the phone to someone else and being so mad about it, and it’s another Phinks moment.

Shoutouts to the Friends at the Table Transcription team for their work, which made my job easier with this one: https://sites.google.com/view/fatttranscripts/more/media-club-plus

A Year of HxH Characters

2024-10-01T07:30:00.000Z

A year ago, a new podcast came out, and with it brought me one of the silliest and most fun art projects I've ever been a part of. There's plenty more art to come, but I wanted to do a bit of a review as I migrated and archived the old art from cohost onto here. Rather than filling up RSS feeds with over 50 drawings one at a time that many of you may have already seen, I've opted for this grid approach. Each one is clickable to go look at the original cohost post. Maybe I'll update them to web-archive once cohost shuts down. Who knows?

Media Club Plus is a podcast by Friends at the Table and its premier season focused on Hunter X Hunter anime based on the manga by Yoshihiro Togashi. I've been listening to Friends at the Table for years, and I knew that the group behind Media Club Plus would be fun to listen to, even if I didn't know anything about Hunter X Hunter (HxH). Part of the conceit of the podcast, after all, was that Jack De Quidt had also never watched the anime nor read the manga, so we would both be going in with basically no knowledge of any of the show.

Originally, I planned to watch some of the anime if it timed out nicely with being free some night when my partner was busy and I had nothing to do. I listened to the podcast regardless, since it was fun and funny and had some interesting stuff to say. It was a delight to hear Jack try to explain what they thought characters' names or backgrounds or powers were in this anime where new people were introduced basically every single episode. In the very first episode of the podcast (covering the first three episodes of the anime) the following exchange occurred^[1], at which point I knew I needed to draw something:

Keith: Well, I mean…have you seen how many gay people are in this show?

Jack: Uh, so far—

Keith: They’re everywhere.

Jack: Fucking loads of them.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: There’s loads of them.

Jack: I don't think…now, let me think. Have I met a straight person in the show so far? [Keith laughs quietly]

Dre: Leorio.

Jack: No…

Sylvia: Mm…

Dre: Mm…

Keith: No.

Dre: Okay.

Jack: Tonpa?

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Uh…

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: I don't know. You hangin’ out with three guys we’re calling the Blowjob Brothers? [Keith laughs]

Dre: That’s— you know what? [Jack laughs]

Keith: Giving them money for something?

Dre: You know what?

Jack: He’s hanging out with them in a straight way.

Sylvia: I'm just saying. [Keith laughs]

Dre: You make a compelling argument. [laughs quietly]

Keith: Covertly handing the Blowjob Brothers a stack of money. [Sylvia laughs]

Jack: Satotz is definitely gay. It’s a fool’s game to name the gay people.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Sure.

Jack: Because it’s all of them.

Keith: Oh, we didn't say, but every time a character is introduced, there’s a little popup underneath that says, “Gay. They’re gay.” [laughter]

Sylvia: Oh, yeah, we did forget to mention that.

Keith: Yeah, it’s sort of, like—

Sylvia: Sometimes it’s less nice about it, which is interesting, but…

Dre: Sure, yeah.

Jack: Yeah. Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, it’s sort of like in the manga how Hisoka’s got the suits of cards under everything he says. In the anime, it just says— reminds you that everyone’s gay all the time.

Sylvia: It says “gay,” whenever Hisoka speaks. [all laugh]

Keith: Yeah. Yeah, at first, it’s just when the main characters speak, and you're like, “This makes sense,” but then it starts spreading out to everybody else, and you're like, “Oh, okay, that— okay, sure. Interesting choice.”

Sylvia: Oh, green bean man too? Okay, sure.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Green green jellybean man?

Sylvia: Green green jellybean man. I really gotta keep up with the Jack naming conventions.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: My bad.

Jack: [laughs quietly] I love green green jellybean man. I think it speaks so much to the—

Keith: Well, he’s interesting, because he has a t-shirt that just says “gay” on it. [Sylvia and Jack laugh]

This led to my first drawing -- of Beans, the Green Green Jellybean Man, wearing his shirt that said "GAY" on it, posted on cohost on September 24th 2023.

I had done a little bit of phone art as a fun way to handle Asks on Cohost, but I hadn't really gotten that familiar with using the Sketchbook app on my phone. It took some time to develop a process that was pretty repeatable, but now I find drawing on my phone to be second nature.

From the drawing of Green Green Jelly Bean Man onward, the project took the form of a very slow game of tellestrations. The hosts would watch the anime and record their descriptions of the characters on air. Some time after that, the podcast episodes would be edited and released publicly. I'd listen to them, try my best to jot down notes of which characters were in which episodes^[2], and then wait for the transcriptions to come out. Some time later, I'd notice the transcriptions were ready, and pull quotes from them about the descriptions into cohost as drafts. I tried to have a couple of drafts ready for art at any given point, so that I'd have no excuse to delay actually working on the art once I had some free time. Then I'd take these descriptions and try to work them into a cohesive design for a character. Finally, I posted characters on cohost and then linked the cohost post in the Friends at the Table Discord server so that someone in the community could post a picture of that character and I could see how close I came. I've seen a dozen or more times where members of the discord hide their images from me with a warning to me so that I don't accidentally spoil myself. So far, there have been very very few characters spoiled,^[3] and I think that's kind of incredible.

I did a lot of this art while in transit or while watching TV. I did a lot of it while unemployed when I didn't have other side projects to work on like Wizard Sokoban or this blog.

The podcast has reached The Chimera Ant Arc and it's wild to hear how little Togashi slows down in terms of introducing new characters every episode. I truly did not fathom just what an undertaking this project would be, but I'm having a lot of fun, and I'm learning both on the character-design side and the phone-art-technique side, so I'm sure it'll all be worth it. Even just looking at these ~50 or so makes me happy. It's hard to believe it's already been a year at this point.

Here's to the next 50!

If you're looking to follow just my art or just my posts about HxH, you can find individual RSS feeds for each of the tags links below.

Shoutouts to the Transcripts at the Table project, which consists of community members who are paid to transcribe podcasts under the Friends at the Table umbrella, including Media Club Plus. Without their work, I would have had a much harder time making any of these pieces. ↩︎
I gave up on this sometime around when The Phantom Troupe was first introduced because the characters -- and therefore their descriptions -- often spanned multiple episodes, so notetaking wasn't as helpful. ↩︎
I saw a picture of Tonpa before I ever posted any art which disqualified him as a character to draw in my eyes. I also had seen a few pictures of Gon because he's the protagonist, but since I couldn't possibly skip the main character^[4] of the show, I decided to just interpret the details given to me very literally and avoid using any other knowledge of what he looked like. ↩︎
Or at least, the main character's boyfriend? You should listen to the podcast. ↩︎