~ my quick review thread of the latest Hunter x Hunter Chapter 419: Implementation, by Yoshihiro Togashi (@Un4v5s8bgsVk9Xp). Spoilers up to this chapter. Please read the official translation at VIZ and consider supporting the author:
https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/hunter-x-hunter
~2200 words / 12 minute read / Adaptation of my Tweet Thread (links in subheadings) on the chapter:
The Tserrorist Fit
4th Prince Tserriednich has finally escaped his room, the world thinking him momentarily dead and gone – and his ghost self is immediately getting fits off! The hoodie, mask, and big shades combo gives him a totally anonymous yet menacing quality. // He looks remarkably similar to the sketch of the infamous Unabomber. The two men (Tserri and Kaczynski) and their objectives are highly different – but they know how to hide their faces when aiming to commit serious action!
Before he can pull off any serious feats of tserrorism on the numerous machine gun-wielding Royal Army guards around him – 4th Prince Tserriednich must test the limits of his ability in a highly risky real-life escape room scenario…
Meet “Laplace’s Demon”
Formerly: “Parallel Future | Now: “Laplace’s Demon” is much more powerful than initially imagined. We are learning right alongside Tserri.
In the ephemeral 10-second vision, T can carry out offensive acts that will result in illusory injury! This means he can make you think you’re dead!
Effectively, by activating and deactivating his ability with exactitude, Tserri can get the jump on you, with guns aimed at brains in hand, acting accordingly while his foes and reality itself catches up with a parallel narrative.
Laplace’s Demon is a thought experiment named after French scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace dealing with the concept of perfect knowledge of *present* time and space indicating a similarly perfect, predictive knowledge of future time and space.
The notion is: a theoretical ‘demon’ of supernatural talent is able to know the precise location and speed of all particles in the present universe and therefore could, using mastered knowledge of classical mechanics (i.e. force, inertia, velocity, acceleration, trajectory, etc.), perfectly predict the future down to the atoms.
Demon, or daemon or devil, is used because the concept is so impossible for anything but a supernatural being to even contemplate. And yet, here with Tserri’s formerly “Parallel Future” ability — he is totally pulling off a demon act. // In fact, his instinctively summoned secondary Nen beast looks just like one. It is the ‘antenna’ and ‘battery’ that governs the 36 meter radius and it is through its ‘eyes’ that he can witness the future sight during Zetsu. // Question: What other abilities may it have? And is it possible for the 10 seconds or other limitations to be improved upon over time…? One must shudder to think of anymore progression for this pack of bloodthirsty daemons.
My Sum: Ephemeral Ten Seconds: Laplace’s Demon, in full & presumably granted by the Dark Angel Jester Nen Beast, is simultaneously creating two realities, wherein force and injuries on the surroundings can be enacted by Tserri’s intentions during the moment of activation > he watches the world play out for 10 seconds under those conditions, including his own psychic intentions about what he as a physical subject was/is going to do in those same 10 seconds (like shoot some guys, for example) >> and then he can open his eyes and move and act in a new, invisible body while his Illusory Double Self stays behind playing out whatever he chose to do in *that* future, while he makes fresh decisions in a new future he is presently enacting while the old one plays out to the senses of everyone around him…whew, this present-future actioneering while inside a mass illusion, able to be used on repeat, is Hyper-Powered!! Think too long on this and the possibilities unfold without end…
LIMITS: 1) The Anchor Point, the spot where he’s standing when he activates, and 2) Tserri having about 3 seconds to activate his Zetsu — are the main limiting factors, in addition to the primary weakness being that if he’s touched and broken from Zetsu (the Nen state of suppressing your aura and thus making you most vulnerable), he will reveal his true self and illusion — not to mention crossfired bullets or other area-of-effect attacks could rip through him and kill him outright, ending his fancy game entirely!
The keystone feature that makes Laplace’s Demon such a weapon is that he can do it repeatedly, over and over, creating new realities and false positions of his other ‘self’ while he gets moving with perfect invisibility. In this way, the ability is most similar to Chimera Ant Meleoron‘s chameleonic ability: Perfect Plan, where he can hold his breath and become totally invisible and undetectable even by Nen-users with special senses.
The separation of Meleo’s ability is that Tserri leaves behind an illusory double made of flesh and blood and guts, able to act (and speak?) to the others around who must assume and detect that as the true Tserri. Importantly, any violence or death-dealing on the false Tserri looks absolutely real. Thus, he can get up to all sorts of insane trickery and counter-lethality with this under his belt.
Tserri, being a long-time serial killer, under such perfect stealth, is able to calmly and efficiently fire real lethal bullets at the brains of the soldiers in between the < 3 second lead-in time between Ephemeral 10 Seconds. Firing false-real bullets at those under his spell within the circumference during the vision & hallucination on viewers is still effective, as they become incapacitated by their own ‘damage.’ Tserri can thus enact massive half-massacres of real and fake damage mixed together!
From Tserriednich’s psyche & point-of-view, think of the notion of repeatedly seeing yourself and others slaughtered around you, realistic blood splattering and screams of dying, the pain and death…yeah, the dude is twisted, but how can you not be affected by this? The psychology of this ability and how Tserri is using it are truly atrocious and intriguing to consider!
This man sees the world as a playground for his darkest impulses, his lifestyle of violence and death-dealing is just a long feast for his own sensation. // And yet, what happens when he is truly harmed and not his illusory self? How will he react when he realizes he’s not as untouchable as he feels?
Recall this is all possible because Tserri spent so much time mastering the achievement of Zetsu in his room (initially due to the false tip of Theta trying to get him to master the least immediately useful Nen capacity). After ascertaining his power, T knew it was going to be key to his victory, a way to dominate the Succession War. And here is the burgeoning apotheosis of his plan. // Though it is true that Tserriednich’s theatric ‘implementation’ of his power upon the Royal Army has now further locked down the ship and left him stranded on the Tier 1 boat.
He will now have to get creative and continually improvise to escape the all-out manhunt that will soon commence.
It is now rather funny to think of Benjamin and Halkenburg and Camilla and the other major players doing all this running around and hyper-theorycrafting, trying to wage intra-hall shadow warfare, during these past days and weeks…and now Tserri gets to use the boat as candyland because of this broken-ass ability. It’s freakin’ awesome to see play out; you can never predict anything – in universe or out, as the reader – in Hunter x Hunter and with the creative power of Nen dictating the narrative flow!
“We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past could be present before its eyes.”
— Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities
Precision Paneling
I can see why Togashi sensei spoke of struggles when it comes to the blocking of this chapter. So much spatial positioning and precise double-reality thinking.
Tserri is an incredible actor/bullshitter here! Very impressive to do this while bullets fly.
The 4th Prince’s training with the Royal Army is paying off, alongside his former rapport with Borksen and Otocin and the others; the man knows how to talk to military grunts under heavy chain of command and anticipate their actions, eliciting cowardice or courage or foolishness at his will and whim.
Tserriednich, in this way, reminds me much of a character like Hannibal Lecter, who is able to play social games at such a degree because 1) he’s a psychopath, or at least able to *turn off* his more compassionate emotions like taking off a suit, and 2) because he sees most people as prey and has much practice manipulating… #DarkCharisma
What is Satan’s Plan?
Hunter x Hunter has become Tserri x Tserri. He’s getting his own palace invasion sequence, inversed, as a great escape. One man able to deal real damage (to normies) and get away under the cloak of repeatable false realities.
His main risks are rival Nen-users and leaving lots of survivors yet. More times he uses his ability around others the more they will hone in on its true nature. // Continually changing his appearance may become a must the longer he is exposed to encounters.
What is Tserriednich’s initial plan? To escape Tier 1 and get to the lower decks, to make it to the justice bureau? Confront Morena or ask her for sanctuary? Find Borksen or the rest of his old ‘Tserri Squad’?
He wants to dodge more soldiers and Benjamin’s super-powered personal guard, for now. Though vengeance and the actual nuts and bolts winning of the Succession War, i.e. lots more murdering, will need to be confronted later.
Clearly, at the present moment, he wants to stabilize his position and figure out a plan for dealing with Benjamin, either via counter-attack or evasion. On the way, does he commit more atrocities and massacres? How much of his actions are the results of thirsts and desires he cannot entirely control?
The more he uses his power the more ambitious and arrogant he may become. He sure is having a lot of fun right now. And from my position, such abilities cannot be without some further drawback too…
There are still guesswork elements, namely his long-necked freaky-deaky Guardian Spirit Beast’s ability and the storage timing of his Dark Angel Jester Nen beast’s ‘battery’ to maintain the illusory space while Tserri operates within on Zetsu.
Without more knowledge of Nen and its other functions, or sheer counter-active possibilities inside of enemy experts, does Tserri have what it takes to survive for long?
Tserriednich x Hisoka🃏?
Tserri’s priorities: stay ‘dead’ x limit ability usage x kill witnesses x get rich gambling(?) 🎰
Tserri’s reality: he is about to meet a real demon 👹 who can treat him as a plaything and already knows much about trick deaths.
Will these two freaks have rapport? 🃏
居) — the last time we saw Hisoka, the real one, was inside of this very high-end casino area on Tier 1. // We know, from Chrollo’s deductions, that Hisoka is perceived by the Troupe to already be on Tier 1 through a Prince VIP invitation ~ this indicates there is a chance Hisoka and Tserri know one other – or perhaps he was invited by Luzurus or Tyson, as others have theorized with ample evidence. Who knows?
Will Tserriednich find Hisoka – or more likely, the other way around?
Has Hisoka just been dicking around or will Bonolenov’s holy corpse be left below the slots?
What might the relationship be, if any, between Tserri and Hiso? It seems unlikely Hisoka would garner much pleasure from a fight, but mayhap he sniffs the 4th Prince’s Nen potential, fresh off his illusory gambits and local massacring…
Might Hisoka be eager to shelter and groom another hyper-powered Nen-user, presently as master-and-apprentice and in the future as predator-and-prey. Stranger things have happened (and will continue to…)
I just know Chapter 420, the finale of this immaculate batch, is gonna be a show.
Thank you Togashi sensei for the SUCCESSION WAR!!
Next week on HUNTER x HUNTER — Chapter 420: Freak x Freak. 👹👹
END.
No. 430, Background Specification Document Creation Completed.
Good night.
Thresholds of Transformation 