#hunter x hunter 395

[chrollc]

what a life of underworld crime does to a man…,,get him his 600 mg Zoloft someone

[earthghostpurrp]

when i tell you i LITERALLY started tearing up 😭😭

ALSO SHEILA’S BACK?!?!!?!

[grizzlybearattack]

The new chapter is so fascinating this is stuff everyone has wanted to know about since foreverrrrr… also preparing for heartbreak next week if we continue w this flashback.

[weebupurplecat]

Y'all, I just read Hunter x Hunter Chapter 395, and Chrollo was such a sweetie pie T^T!!! The entire troupe were so cute!

Now that I've said that, I, like everyone else, am extremely intrigued by what happened to Sheila and what went down with the Kurta clan.

[shizukais]

[lilpatison]

Head empty. Only little Chrollo from the new chapter 😭🤲💞

[popflytheskylart]

dearly beloved

[todo-the-wrestler]

Chapter 395

Phantom troupe flashback

Art by:

K0R0SE on Twitter

HxHDarkContinent on DaviantArt

[anticanonhearts]

Please don't take any more from me.

[baker-chan-senpai]

some cute kids before everything goes to hell in the next chapter

[subdee]

Phantom Troupe thoughts

SPOILERS FOR MANGA CHAPTERS 395 and 396!!!!!

...Ahem.  I haven’t checked the main tag or been on tumblr much in the last few weeks so forgive me if this is old news but... catching up on Hunter x Hunter and can’t believe that in the year of our lord 2022, we finally have canon confirmation that the Sheila conspiracy theorists were right all along!!! 

Sheila confirmed member of the OG phantom troupe!!  Also the book she gave little Kurapika and Pairo in the “Kurapika’s Memories” chapter, that inspired them to want to leave the tribe and attempt the Hunter exam, was probably “Dino Hunter” because it looks the same and Sheila only reads one book apparently.  

This whole thing - Sheila being probably a member of the OG phantom troupe and basically pretending to stay sick so she could keep talking to Kurapika and Pairo - naturally leads to the dark interpretation that after K&P spent months caring for her she turned around and lead the Phantom Troupe back to the exact location of Kurapika’s tribe... Something fans have speculated for over a decade now...

***

On another note, how funny is it that the “Phantom Troupe” started as literally a troupe - as in a troop of actors?  

Or in this case, it’s even more nerdy - they are a troop of fandubbers LOLOLOL. 

...No wonder they were willing to let Hisoka in he probably reminded them of their roots with his theatrical sensibilities LOLOLOLOL so they ignored the creepy vibes...

I am sensing some kind of tragic backstory for Sarasa, btw, even more than the other members of the Phantom Troupe we meet in these panels, because we meet her by name, and she seems like the emotional heart of the troop... Chrollo has the Vision (TM) - more on that later - that gets all of them together, but she’s the emotional glue that helps them all to get along!  Also the only OG member (besides Sheila) who isn’t around anymore at the start of the manga!

From right to left, top to bottom: Sarasa, Uvo, Chrollo, Machi, Nobu/Shalnark, Franklin, Sheila, Pakunoda, Phinks, Feitan.

If Togashi wanted to simplify the backstory (although caveat: since when does Togashi want to simplify anything?), Sarasa could be the thing Kurapika’s tribe “took from” the Troupe (re: the Meteor City motto). 

BUT, and getting back to “nothing is ever that simple in Hunter x Hunter”... these chapters specifically mention that “a female traveler” found and reported the bodies... and that could be Sheila as well

***

...Something occurs to me here.  The Meteor City motto is well known, Kurapika wasn’t present when the Kurta clan was massacred, couldn’t anyone have left the note to frame them?

...Can you imagine if after ll this time, it wasn’t the Phantom Troupe who massacred the Kurta clan at all????  

The only “evidence” reported in the news is the note, after all... we learn Kurapika’s motives really early (like chapter 2) but after all this time, I can’t remember if Kurapika ever explains how he knows it was them!!!!!!!

Here’s when he explains his motives to Leorio... there’s nothing here about how he came to decide it was the Phantom Troupe who massacred the Kurta....   Uvo doesn’t remember (at first) anything about the massacre and Chrollo neither confirms nor denies it... when Kurapika asks if he was the boss at the time of the massacre he just laughs it off and says there’s nothing to say about it.   Everything he says is vague, like he knows that Melody has the ability to detect lies so he carefully only says true things, but without giving anything away (and unlike Uvo, you get the impression that Chrollo would definitely remember the details of his past heists. 

Melody catches the contradiction here (chapter 117):

And here’s what Chrollo has to say about the massacre (chapter 115):

It’s a bit of a stretch, but the way he says this... I mean Chrollo is slippery in general, he doesn’t answer Gon’s question (about how they can kill people with no relation to them) either, so this could just be Chrollo being Chrollo.   But I wonder if he’s being vague on purpose bc the Spiders, for some reason, agreed to take the fall for this one despite not being involved.

...The thing that seems to contradict this is that Uvo does say he remembers the massacre... not at first, but later, after Kurapika has him chained up: 

It’s in chapter 82.. .chapter 83 is when Uvo remembers and it seems pretty clear-cut BUT Uvo is a hot-head who says the thing he enjoys most is killing avengers, and it’s not clear yet that Kurapika really has the upper hand so he could just be riling him up. 

... What he says seems too specific to be just a taunt, but here’s the panels just in case you guys want to decide yourselves:

IDK IDK.. it seems pretty clear cut but the wording here has always been slippery.

Meanwhile, also on the side of “maybe they didn’t do it” is Nobu, who’s pretty vehement in the most recent chapters that the Phantom Troupe don’t indiscriminately murder for no reason and aren’t trying to burn the world to the ground (anymore), unlike Morena’s minions and also unlike the public perception of them.

There’s even a story in the manga about people from Meteor City being falsely accused of a crime (chapter 102):

The message on the corpse’s foot is the only proof that people from Meteor City carried out the assassinations.... remember pretty early in the manga when Kurapika almost kills that prisoner in Trick Tower with the fake spider tattoo because he goes into a rage?   Falsely accusing people from Meteor City, other criminals impersonating members of the Phantom Troupe, and  (some) people knowing about the Meteor City calling cards are all facts in the Hunter x Hunter world.

Not saying the Phantom Troupe aren’t a bunch of thieves and murderers - of course they are and we seem them committing a mass murder on panel even LOL -  but how funny would it be if we, the readers, have accepted for twenty years that the Spiders massacred the Kurta clan because Kurapika said so, but he (and we) have been wrong this whole time????  

No one even thinks to question this because we know they are more than capable of doing it...

Well anyway, it’s a pretty far-out theory and I’m not sure I even want it to be true, because I think the Spiders can be sympathetic/interesting and have massacred the whole Kurta clan, it’s not like they have to be completely innocent to be compelling characters.   

...Incidentally this chapter (102) is the same one that shows the videotape that apparently formed the basis for the Phantom Troupe getting together... to make fandubs of a sentai show** LOLOLOL thanks for finally explaining the significance of this panel more than 20 years later AND making it the most nerdy thing possible, Togashi. 

**Not just any sentai show, but one where the heroes clean up garbage... I mean you can see why it would appeal to the kids in Meteor City... but as a 90s kid it just reminds me of Captain Planet :P  

Not much other thoughts, except that the baby phantom troupe are adorable.... Uvo and Nobu being older than the rest of them and playground bullies, Chrollo’s best friends being Sheila and Sarasa (girls), and Machi refusing to play the princess are all kind of perfect actually. 

^Chrollo and the girls.

I also really enjoy how... well you know, all this time we knew the Phantom Troupe had their own motives for being thieves and murderers and for having that bond with each other, but now we actually get to see why & how the bond was formed in the first place... the Phantom Troupe are the main characters of their own story and Gon and Killua butt into that story (Gon especially) to support Kurapika without understanding anything about their motives actually, in typical myopic-child fashion. 

...I do have other thoughts about the most recent chapter re: toilet-chan, but I’ll put those in another post. 

[chrollc]

hxh chapter 395: “Formation”

me, a blud who thinks they’re on the team:

[earthghostpurrp]

Sheila being in this chapter is HUGE oh my god. I’m not totally convinced that she is Pariston, but the fact that Togashi actually kept her around this long after her introduction but is also seeming to potentially set her up as someone with an affiliation to the Troupe is very exciting. I do genuinely subscribe to this idea that she helped with the killing of the Kurta Clan and this could be evidence to support this theory (linked below, not mine)!!

[grizzlybearattack]

SHEILA……………!………… omG

[gab-has-adhd]

My feels about the newest HxH chapter

[shizukais]