What They Say:
Leorio is in a gambling showdown with their remaining time limit on the line. Soon enough, Leorio only has 10 hours remaining. With no room for error, Leorio turns to a bet involving rock, paper, scissors. Leorio was confident going in, but he falls to his opponent’s mind games. Two wins, two losses. The group is in a tight spot and their fate rests upon Killua.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After an amusing round that had one of the criminals basically playing possum for as long as he could to try and run down the clock, which certainly makes sense considering their situation, the show moves to a new and more specific round as Leorio gets to go up against Lourette. When she reveals herself, she’s definitely a cute and wild haired young woman, but she strts the tone off right by making a gamble with him about whether she’s really a she. And since verifying the claim involves getting quite hands on with her, his dirty old man self comes out swinging in a big way.
What Lourette ends up working over with him is a series of bets that will challenges with their time being bet against each other at different levels. Lourette thinks she’s playing against an older man based on his looks though and doesn’t realize that Leorio is just a teenager himself, simply a really older looking one. The challenges are more mind games than anything else as she plays him against himself, especially as he’s down to his last ten hours to bet with. And since Lourette is just trying to draw things out herself, it’s to her advantage to play with him as long as possible. Leorio’s personality is one that definitely doesn’t handle this kind of threat well and looks to be at least one of his weaknesses as he gets in a panic over the way things unfold.
Thankfully, this only takes up the first half of the episode since you kind of feel bad for Leorior and it moves on to Killua who gets to go against the next and final member of the criminal opponents as things are all tied up. Amusingly, the final opponent is one that even the other criminals are scared of and we get a really good look at why right from the start as he’s just a brutal personality. Johness is a criminal with a nearly thousand year sentence because of the severity and brutality of the murders he’s committed over the years and even the game runner in the Trick Tower really didn’t want to let him go and be used here, hoping things would finish out before hand. Setting him against Killua is perfect though since it gives us a great look at both of them and the power sets that are really involved. Especially when it comes to personality and temperament, making it a truly impressive sequence in its very own special way.
In Summary:
Changes haven’t been huge here when it comes to the original manga, being a fairly faithful new adaptation with some different pacing and a bit smoother of an approach. We get a neat little twist that speaks far more of Killua’s personality here with the result of his match which I found to be rather neat and cruel all on its own. Leorio’s match is simply amusing to watch and that helps bring some balance to the episode overall so that it’s not so dark and not so silly when you get down to it. This part of the Trick Tower always felt like the longest since it was going through the five person majority rules gig, and it felt it even more so in watching it weekly. But it still kept me pretty interested in what was going on and seeing the challenges that they had to go through. Now things are close to moving to the next phase and I’m eager to see what’s next.
Grade: B+
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
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