Nowadays, I started reading romance again. I've always been a fan. However, my experience now as a hxh fan is finding a lot of romance tropes Togashi used for his work, which is fun! (I feel validated bc I've been saying he uses a lot of romance tropes since the first time I've read his work).
Nonetheless, I wanted to talk about one specific scene: "Gon, you are light". The parallels of light and darkness is commonly used in shonen (and it always ends up being so gay), but something that may happen in romance is the following. The love interest seems to shine in front of the protagonist (and vice versa), and it usually happens when the MC is feeling so much love for the other person for one reason or the other. The emotions are so strong that well, that person seems to be shining because they are so bright. It's a vulnerable moment for the characters.
And I can't stop thinking about that and then this scene.
And since I couldn't stop, I remembered some other times in which Gon must have shone so brightly that Killua had to physically look away (since I'm sure this wasn't the first time it happened, he literally said "sometimes", refering to more than once).
And when are some other times in which Killua physically had to look away?
The "I'm really glad I met you" scene.
The dodgeball scene.
I'm sure there's a lot of more times in which Gon shone. For instance, during Gon and Hanzo's fight. Killua was literally having a whole moment trying to understand what was happening (of course, it adds to the other conflicts that I'm not mentioning).
That scene is kind of a theory of mine (I don't usually see it being talked about), but I do believe it's really important. Some chapters later, we see Killua really excited and talking about that fight to his dad.
And then this scene. Illumi explicitly says that to Killua, Gon is "a radiant presence".
I really love how Togashi wrote this metaphor since the very beginning and how he continued to developed it. And I can't stop thinking about it so now I'm here on Tumblr. I avoided the angst of the Chimera Arc, of course.
I find the dichotomy of Kurapika with the group in the beginning versus when he leaves for his own arc frankly hilarious.
When he's traveling with the boys he's got a young noble warrior kind of energy, a bit standoffish but he warms up to the others quickly and tries to act levelheaded to balance out the team. Parts ways fondly and promises to meet everyone again soon. And then the second he's on his own it's full ice-cold-lone-wolf-revenge-quest mode and he's making blood chains of vengeance that will kill him if he uses them wrong as his new weapon of choice.