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geminicluster · 2 years ago

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On Hunter's Fighting Style and Eclipse Lake

So: Hunter and fighting. Thank you @carpisuns for enabling me.

What he does is he sets up a guard position, and immediately tries to move to an enemy’s blind spot. He would have learned that to compensate around a casting opponent before he had magic--his only hope without a magical staff would be “defend defend defend” and get close enough to break their guard. The goal is a decisive blow to the head or neck to end combat. The priority is staying up because if he’s pinned or disarmed, he’s screwed.

The ability to teleport means that he starts in a strong defensive position and basically gets a sneak attack, rinse/repeat/adapt. Generally speaking he has to end fights as fast as possible, and given that he trained without magic his whole strategy is built around DEFEND first, decisive strike, DEFLECT magical force (a stick can't hope to counter it without magic). We also see a little bit of this implied training with his parkour abilities. Without the ability to fly, or the ability to summon plants to carry him to his destination, he would've had to learn all of this physically. Let's dig into some of the details of how this separates Hunter from most of his opponents. Let's talk about FIGHTING!

Most witches take their magic purely for granted. Because of this, it is likely uncommon for people to turn their own bodies into extremely efficient machines like how martial artists or athletes are required to. In their own way, these skills are generally probably pretty impressive to the average witch outside of combat — and within it they're surprising at least for the first few seconds. And in combat, seconds are really what matter. Most actual fights are over in less than 10. And one of the things that separates a trained fighter from a casual brawler or the average person defending themselves is the conditioning it takes to actually respond in time.

Most people don't respond to fight stimuli by fighting. Most people go into freeze or flight. When it comes to serious fight training, one of the first things that happens is called conditioning. For sports that means getting the body into a particular kind of well, condition — but for combat the conditioning is also mental. If you've seen stereotypes of things like Army boot camp where the drill sergeant is yelling at people and slinging abuse constantly, that's actually part of it. I am reliably told they try not to do this as much anymore. But if you're doing something like Krav Maga which is more or less brutal streetfighting but formalized in a dojo environment that is absolutely part of the training (or at least, it was part of mine!).

Specifically, when you're learning the throw punch or doing a series of them, what they will have us do is scream and swear at our opponents (and they will sometimes scream and swear at us during spars or drills) in order to condition our minds as well as our bodies for the ugliness of an actual violent confrontation. Yelling, intimidation, insults, swears those are all part of the human "puff up and look big" thing. The other thing about conditioning in this way is the instructor teaching someone how to be hit and actually hit back. As I said before, most people tend to sink into freeze or flight. The average person who has not been trained needs to be hit an average of six times before they're able to summon up the nerve to strike back. By then, the confrontation is almost always over.

The reason I outline all of this is because it highlights the conditioning gulf between Hunter and the others, as well as trying to explain how he’d be approaching most enemies and WHY. Speed and dexterity is obviously critical, but the approach matters immensely as well.

This is especially true when you have a combatant like Hunter who is starting from a punishing disadvantage against the vast majority of his casting opponents. Without magic, the only weapon he has is his body. When you train on a weapon, that weapon becomes an extension of your body. As such, a critical part of this kind of training is gaining an awareness of the body in order to hone in mind-to-muscle control. Martial artists, dancers, etc have a scary amount of precise control in this way, not that much different than an excellent musician who understands their hands and the intimate ins and outs of their instrument. Developing awareness, control and practice is what creates reliable muscle memory. This more than anything is Hunter’s (and any martial artists tbh) superpower.

Witch's magic is shown to be driven by emotions, thoughts and feelings.

This gives them the benefit of reflexes helping them out in the face of sudden danger, but nobody is invulnerable to the sudden appearance of somebody inside their personal bubble hitting them in the temple with a really big stick. If Hunter is on target and playing for keeps the confrontations is over, witches duel: won. Even without magic.

Once Hunter has access to magic, his muscle memory is the same, with added oomph and a battle style combat-ready witches would be baffled by. Brawlers would be exceedingly rare on the BI except for niche sports and probably those highly unusual witches and demons who practice a form of magical martial arts. One or more of these unusual individuals would have helped train him (someone had to and Belos seems like he’d move like a broken ikea chair on his best day when he’s not a bone-rotted goop monster). Likely more. Hunter was obviously not allowed to get close to any teachers (I would expect that they were under strict orders to stay distant or otherwise motivated).

So most of this is context to kind of the depth I saw and how Hunter's fighting movements are animated, but now let me go into how his actual personality and emotional conflicts affect his ability to fight.

Over the course of the show, we can see a pretty direct correlation of his emotional state and priorities to his efficacy and fight. Basically, when his goal is directly aligned with how he feels about it, he’s very good. But when those things have conflict, his effectiveness goes down. When we first meet him as the GG, he is very intimidating and using heavy amounts of magic from the staff Belos gave him. He rolls easily through his first encounter with Luz, etc etc. And even though neither Eda or Luz are capable of putting up too much of a fight, he's goofing around for the entirety of that encounter, you can hear the smile even while he's dodging — and it's one of easy confidence. He can trust his body to do most of that pretty much automatically which frees him up to pontificate.

Against Kikimora he was effective because despite the fact he was self-sabotaging his mission, it was within his moral alignment. He was defending himself, but Luz had moved him, and he protected her. Protecting, generally speaking, his Hunter’s preference and his entire fighting style is based mostly on defensive forms. And being by nature a gentle person, defense feels better — especially when he knew Luz was doing the right thing in protecting the Palismen. It was one of the instances that we see where his intelligence was able to overcome his brainwashing long enough to act on it, and the Avenue was Luz's respect and kindness. That being said, fighting Kikimora was more of a struggle or at the very least a more even contest. Even debilitated by the sleeping nettles, Kikimora was not a pushover and he did end up letting his guard down pretty significantly and that she did get the first hit on him, distracted as he was by his emotional moment with Luz. The giving of the name was an explicit show of vulnerability that was immediately exploited by an opponent who if she had aimed slightly to the left would've caved his skull in.

Now, Eclipse Lake is a little more interesting. There were a ton of factors that led to him fighting to a standstill with Amity. I wouldn't really call it a loss either, but I'll get into that in just a second.

Hunter is at this point fueled by anxiety. He started the entire endeavor by deliberately disobeying a direct order from the mouth of the Emperor to try and make up for a recent failure that Belos has let Hunter believe is affecting his favor. Already that's an unbelievably emotional place with incredibly high stakes. At this point, we're well aware of the fact that Belos treats Hunter brutally. The best case scenario for returning empty-handed after disobeying a direct order is a beating that would probably leave him with more scars than he started, but what Hunter actually fears is being replaced. While at this stage he doesn't regard his life as something that necessarily belongs to him, but the successful outcome of this might as well be life-and-death.

Deliberately disobeying the Emperor does actually have a material impact on how Hunter arrives at the Knee. Because this is a stealth mission, he wasn’t able to bring his mechanical staff--the thing that would give him away to Kikimora. Flapjack had not fully become his palisman yet. Which means that Hunter hiked up that mountain after Kikimora and her party, navigating waist deep snow knowing that if he was caught she would kill him. He also knows that she is currently surrounded by her partisans, and it is super unlikely that any of them would stick up for him in a way that would put them at odds with her. With no support, no ability to take a break and probably no rations he was probably pretty hungry, tired and dehydrated by the time Eda and Amity had made it up there. And they had the benefit of being able to fly. That's one thing I don't see people talking about enough when it comes to considering the relative strength of Amity and Hunter. The little rag-eared bastard had already had a very very long and physically arduous and miserable day, maybe even more than one!.

He also bit off more than he could reasonably chew with those disadvantages in mind. He only has to make one mistake and he’s toast. He didn’t account for Flapjack dragging him to Eda and Amity’s feet. As far as he knew, they could have really hurt him, or left him--having no guarantee or even expectation of Flapjack’s assistance. But none of this changes the fact that Hunter spends the next couple of hours tied up. Amity wasn't gentle (why would she be?). We see him rubbing his wrists and stretching his shoulders out once he is free.

Cartoons often don't make anything of this gesture, but the truth of it is this: if you been bound for any length of time, especially in the position that Hunter was, what it does is it yanks on your shoulders, your chest, it hurts the hell out of your elbows and you lose feeling in your hands. The minute you’re released, all the blood goes back into those areas and it hurts like hell. IT REALLY HURTS. And you're stiff.

Which finally brings us back to the actual confrontation between Amity and Hunter. Hunter has experienced incredible emotional highs and lows over the course of this journey. There were probably at least three or four times where he was almost killed. He is tired as hell, frozen stiff, probably in pain, almost certainly hasn't eaten or had anything to drink for a very inappropriate amount of time and he has no weapon. He's also on the brink of despair and crackup. And his mission? At this point, he’s staring down the barrel of guaranteed failure. When Amity is talking to him and trying to comfort him, he is so up a creek that for a moment he actually is hearing what she has to say. Given the depth of his devotion to Belos at this point that is saying a lot about how he feels about his prospects at the moment.

So when he sees the key, he attacks her out of desperation. Pure emotion. He has to at least try. There is no scenario where an unarmed combatant can wrestle the armed abomination prodigy with auxiliary support. Then Flapjack joins the fight, and that changes everything. You can see it in how his expression changes once he takes what's offered: magical aid. Suddenly he has a fighting chance. A fighting chance.

However, he is now using a weapon he's never used before — and I think that has a huge impact on how that fight went. Palismen are shown to respond to their wielder's thoughts. Later, in ASIAS, we can even see Flapjack responding to Hunter's mind when he's doing all the staff tricks to impress the students. This leads me to believe that wielding a Palisman staff is less like swinging an inert stick and more like moving a limb. And when your entire fighting style depends on knowing exactly where your own center of mass is at absolutely all times, that would change Hunter's balance, and throw his timing and physicality off.

All things considered, given the unbelievable disadvantage that Hunter started with, I kind of wish the fandom gave him more credit. With his emotions in absolute tatters in addition to being a physical disaster and using a new weapon, he is absolutely at his worst here! Amity is fighting from a position of knowing she has backup coming in addition to the backup she already has in King. Even then, she's fighting to get away from him. And Hunter, in addition to using a new tool and all of the aforementioned problems is going full out on the attack-- which is very contrary to how he prefers to fight. When you go this feral into a combat, the emotional place itself is a disadvantage.

And even after all that? Amity didn't beat him. They fought to a standstill.

She has a blade to his throat, he had Flapjack on her hand. With Flapjack in his possession, if for any reason she tried to open his throat he would still have the option of flash stepping away. She might have cut his neck enough to bleed, but not enough to kill him instantly. In holding the way she did, she missed her chance at a fatal opening (and she's never killed anyone before. Interpretation is out for Hunter, I generally don't headcannon him as ever having killed directly with his own hands although I do think he's done some real damage).

He says to her, "Listen. You're strong, and I'm tired. If this continues, you'll probably escape. But here's the thing: we know where to find you--and your human."

The first part of that statement has way less to do with Amity's training or skill as an equal to Hunter's (she clearly has a little, but if you're as good as Hunter is at his age, you would've started at around three years old and that probably was not the case for Amity), and more a statement of the fact that Hunter is actually physically exhausted and there is the slight possibility that Amity might be able to outlast him in terms of endurance. But what I think is a lot more pertinent is the reality that Hunter has an incredibly small window of time to achieve victory before Eda the HARPY OWL LADY comes flying through that tunnel to beat his already exhausted ass.

He also says: "If this CONTINUES". And he even says probably. He's incredibly fucking tough at least in terms of what he's capable of enduring before he falls down and can't get up.

If Eda did come through to help Amity, the best case scenario for Hunter at that point is they leave him senseless or in too rough of a shape to escape from Kikimora. Kikimora openly despises him, is extremely petty/cruel, and is surrounded by her own partisans (who have demonstrable willingness to murder teenagers!). She screeched about how excited she was about exacting revenge (and unbeknownst to Hunter she absolutely knows how disposable he is in the grand scheme of things!).

She’s a lot more interested in Hunter’s blood than Titan’s blood at the moment. Hunter would die BADLY and slowly at her little claws if she got him.

So he tries a last-ditch measure by leveling a threat Amity that he couldn’t hope to carry out even if he wanted to. It's ironic that the only reason that they were both able to achieve a partial victory here is because Hunter was able to effectively empathize with her enough to see his own vulnerability in her and squeeze it.

To all that stuff about how his emotions affect his ability to battle, if we look at what happened on the day of unity, at that stage he was still unable to confront his abuser and would-be murderer. He did not strike Belos once, and spent the whole time playing defense on behalf of his friends, taking up a defensive position and otherwise moving them out of harm's way. He's in the process of actively dying and his right (dominant) arm is paralyzed, so his form is pretty crap but this speaks to his iron will to stay breathing for as long as he can. And he's lasted a lot longer than the most affected adults. The lack of a bile sac probably comes into it a bit...but it's not the only factor here.

So yeah! I hope that this provides a little bit more nuance to the conversation! And again, thank you to the animators and storyboarders for taking such time and care for portraying Hunter’s fighting with respect to his personality and arc.

For anyone interested in my meta and analysis, please check out the "ash's owl house meta" tag on this blog and/or follow @idlescree for my video essays! We have more in the works coming soon :)

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