Recap

Pouf needs to dispose of Komugi before the King regains his memories, while the hunters and their allies rally to defend themselves.

Euri’s thoughts

After last week’s crazy episode, things are slowed down quite significantly to focus on the King and the remainder of the royal guard. We get to see an interesting side of the King in that he continues to feel like he can’t remember something. While it might not seem like a big deal, I think it goes to show how much Komugi means to him. After all, it’s not like he was going through the same headache-like symptoms trying to recall Neferpitou. It’s for this reason that I have to assume he’ll remember her eventually, even if he doesn’t come into contact with her. That, and I’m not really sure how the hunters can ever win against him any more. The best I’ve got is if the royal guard dies and Meruem decides not to be evil. It wouldn’t be a bad result even considering the King’s previous atrocities, but when he’s essentially a super saiyan, you might as well take what you can get.

Pouf still wants to see his master slaughtering every human, so he ramps up his Komugi execution plan into “painfully obvious” mode. Seriously, I’d be more that a little irritated had the King not called both Pouf and Youpi for their obvious bullshitting, but I must say I’m curious as to why he so willingly excepts such a dumb challenge. He’s obviously suffering over trying to remember Komugi, and he could get this information out of Pouf if he really tried, but he’s willing to look the other way just because Pouf and Youpi thinks it’s in his greater interest? I wouldn’t have thought that the King would be more curious than that, especially as he wouldn’t exactly expect it to be an emotional reason as to why Pouf thinks they shouldn’t meet. He’s an unstoppable force, so why not make Pouf tell him what’s obviously scaring the royal guard? The King would also have been convinced about his own power with his quick disposal of Knuckle and Meleoron.

Going back to the remaining hunters, we see Killua is on his way back to the castle with an unconscious Gon. It’s a little hard to tell, but by the looks of it Gon is know longer in an adult form, but he has retained the hair from his form change. It’s good to see that he’s likely returned to his kid form, because I’m not sure I could deal with him being an adult in the next arc. With Knuckle and Meleoron captured, Palm and Ikalgo are left to get as far away as possible with Komugi in tow. I’m a little suspicious of Ikalgo, and I highly suspect him of being a Pouf clone. Now, I know that they established he couldn’t use clones while blowing scales on the humans outside the castle, and we know he retained his size when he transformed partially into Komugi, but I don’t think that’s enough to rule out what he’s doing. He may not want to tell Youpi that he plans to kill Komugi as that’s another liability, so I wouldn’t be surprised if his limits are also false. If he is masquerading as Ikalgo, Komugi is in a very dangerous situation. Pouf would just need to lead Palm away from Bizeff’s creep town.

Random observations

• Retaining all that extra hair after a transformation is exactly how it works in Yu Yu Hakusho, one of Tohashi’s older manga.
• Ikalgo better hope that he doesn’t need to use the brakes on that truck.
• It makes you wonder what might have happened had the King decided to go for Palm instead. By discovering that Pouf and Youpi hid her existence from him, what would he have done?