Though three of our four primary heroes passed their Hunter finals at the end of the second Hunter X Hunter (Viz/Shonen Jump) anime DVD box set, the tests and trials continue. The first six of set three's 16 episodes follow our trio of newly licensed Hunters — impetuous village boy Gon, vengeance seeking Kirapika, and over-reactive "grown-up" Leorio — as they struggle to reconnect with the fourth member of their group, Killua, scion to a family of assassins. Getting into the Zoldyck Estate, where Killua is being held and punished by his harsh family, proves a daunting task as the estate is a fortress designed to keep out bounty hunters and similar avaricious visitors.
Thus, our heroes are once more made to undergo a series of puzzles and endurance tests before they can even see Killua, who we're first shown hanging from a wall as he's whipped by his brother. Central protagonist Gon is put to another grueling physical test, this time by an unyielding girl guard who knocks him back every time he tries to pass her. All three need to figure out how to pass a monstrous hungry guard dog and beat the estate's sinister butler in a life-or-death game of coin toss. The lads may have become Hunters, but their world remains one giant proving ground.
In fact, though Gon and friends have received their licenses, it turns out the Hunter Exam isn't fully finished either. There's a Secret Hunter Exam, the nature of which is kept secret through most of this set (though the moderately attentive will figure out what it entails long before it's revealed). Each of us is tested in small ways throughout our entire lives, Hunter creator Yoshihiro Togashi seems to be saying — not an unusual theme for stories of this ilk.
After our gang hooks up with Killua (you never doubted that they would, did you?), they separate — Gon and Killua heading to Heaven's Arena to build a stake in a series of one-on-one fights against a series of colorful opponents; Kirapika seeking out a mysterious agency for a job; and Leorio using his license to sign up for medical school and begin his training to become a doctor — with the focus primarily staying fixed on Gon and Killua. The two friends learn about "Nen," the ability to control at will the life energy contained with your body's aura. The concept seems an awful lot like the use of "chi" in the Naruto series, though here it's filled with a series of complicated stages and categories that frankly lost this viewer midway into every lecture delivered on the topic. The main thing you pull from all this is that each Nen master has a specialty attuned to their personality, though even here the distinctions get a bit murky.
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