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sandra-heart05 · 3 years

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I love hunter x hunter and it’s themes.

There’s the dark vs light thing which everyone and their mom noticed and there’s a subtle selfishness vs selflessness thing and finding the balance.

Dark vs light thing is obvious I think I’ve talked about in this blog before but it’s one of the heavier themes of hunter x hunter alongside the whole humanity in a superhuman whole thing which has been dissected by others and the show itself anyway I’m leaving than alone.

Hunter x hunter kinda has a pattern, at the start of the series killua is the dark one while gon is the light one. Gon is a normal pure hearted kid whose just curious about the world and being a hunter and his dad meanwhile killua is a ruthless ex prossional assassin from a notorious family of elites who view assassination as just business.

But by the time we reach greed island they both feel gray, killua has been growing into his own person away from illumis influences (or so we think) and trying to find a purpose to commit himself to and gon has gotten darker with the whole I’ll sacrifice my hands and stray from the plan just because I’m pissed at you thing with his fight with genthru soo.

And then we get to chimera ant arc and it comes full circle with gon becoming the dark and Killua the light. We all know about gon trademark spiral downwards but I’ll go into a little detail.

Gons character is he’s a normal good happy kid who is curious and wants to find his dad, problem here is normal kids have selfish tendencies they haven’t learnt to think beyond what they want yet which has resulted in gon being a bit selfish at times but that okay cus he’s a kid and kids are like that that doesn’t make him a bad person. Children tend to be selfish as kids and grow out of it as they mature and grow and are taught to think of others, gon is still 12 when the series starts so he hasn’t grown out of it. This is what I like about gons character, he a show of what happens when you put a normal kid into the dangerous environment that is the hunter x hunter universe.

Gons spiral was him working through his grief badly while in the middle of an war zone being expiditided by his youth and inexperience of these things. The selfishness comes in in that that is still there shows gon has properly emotionally matured yet (it’s fine he’s like 13-14 during this arc) and this causes him to lash out at times or take too much on at the time. Gon didn’t know how to deal with his grief in a way and the fact that he was also feeling weak and blamed himself for not being strong enough didn’t help add onto the fact that killua was his support but killua himself didn’t have anyway to help given his messed up childhood with dealing with death and we’ve got gon spiralling into some pretty bad coping mechanisms. Not to mention the adults are ignore the issue Bisuke visits but the most she was berate killua and give them basic training while she should have tried mentally helping them instead of physically, gon needed to at least talk with an adult about what happened to prepare him and killuas habits were thought to have been trained into in at this point so talking to him or try something mental to overcome his conditioning instead of psyching him out would have worked better (just lucky it wasn’t training but the needle I guess)

Talking of the needle, killua started to become the light when he took that thing out. He wasn’t held back by illumis control and influence and he was able to adapt and move forward because of it. Zeno points out how killua had matured and i feel a lot of the growth killua made during this arc would have been stunted if the needle was still there. Anyway killua became a literal light in some scenarios and the imagery is very there. When gon got his nen back from knuckles ability and was told to hit morel killua stopped him with a hand on his shoulder with a white background contrasted with gons dark expression, at this point the transition of their positions has already been made.

Killua says gon is a light but just a light to killua. Gon became a light to killua and Killua became a light to others. He save ikalgo and gave him a chance and offered him friendship and Killua became a light to ikalgo as shown by the light behind killua when he says this leaving the clinic. An argument can be made for alluka in the next arc but that situation is too complicated to talk about here. Then he literally became alight in the physical sense. At the arcs peak gon had made his dark transformation and Killua developed Godspeed, gon went dark meanwhile killua was literally and light of electricity and flowed with it, can’t be more on the nose about killua being a light than actually becoming one than this.

At the start of the series there’s this kinda gon has dark colours but is the light one and Killua is all whites and pale colours but is the dark one. Kinda ironic given what happened in the end. There’s also a kinda a nice narrative symmetry here as well; at the start of the series gon saves Killua from his family but in particular his older brother but at the end of the series killua saves gon with his younger sisters’ power.

There a subtle thing with leorio and kurapika too but rather than this black and white light metephor it seems more a moral argument and is suitable given they are both older so the subject is done a bit more maturely. When leorio and kurapika are introduced leorio seems to be the more immoral one saying his motivation is money and greed while kurapika seems more moral and seeks justice but we learn a bit later that leorio greeed for money comes from a realistic place of grief and that he wants money to use it so he can go on to help others mean while kurapikas u more gradual but we learn he’s not the moral character he first seems as he’s after the life’s of the phantom troupe members and gets involved in some pretty bad things later on in the current manga arc and the yorknew arc.

As a final note I’d like to point out the pattern with each arc; there are light arc’s and dark arc’s.

The hunter exam is a light arc that transitions into the zokdyck family; a dark arc and after that heavens arena was a light arc. The yorknew was a a dark arc that turned away from the main two slightly to get a look at kurapika falling into the dark and then the greed island arc was light despite a few issues and chimera ant arc was the darkest arc of the series and the chairman selection arc was a light arc despite the tension left over from the previous arc.

But despite the light to dark arc pattern this is the hunter x hunter universe and all the arcs got darker as they went. Hunter exam arc to zoldyck family arc; hunter exam ended darkish to transition between the two. Heavens arena was fairly innocent despite death threats, killua going assassin mode that one time and Hinson’s being here (actually this is probably the lightest arc despite the possible and legal death matches if you feel like killing your opponent) yorknew arc was dark with how kurapika had developed and we get a look at that but the others worry over it and in the end manage to get kurapika to reach a solution without killing chollo. Greed island starts out light and optimistic but end gray and dark with razor and the bomber threat nvm the gon vs genthru fight, in the end the transition is opptimi but dark. The chimera ant dark needs not explaining and then we having a dark transition again with alluka having dark powers and the zoldyck family always make it kinda dark but somehow the politics and Killua and alluka’s relationship make it come out light (or is that just in comparison?) we finally end on a opposite note and switch over to leorio and kurapika in the manga.

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