#hxh reread

[pikamemfo]

HxH Reread Chapters 8 - 14

• Biggest question is why anyone would run this exam without pay? (Aside from Hisoka the Lunatic and Tonpa the Weird, that is)

• Love how the first things established about Killua are his conflicting desires for a) competition, a way to prove his skills (perhaps the lingering touch of the Zoldyck pressure, a need to prove yourself worthy of the name); and b) his desire for safety. Here, for example, he tells Gon to stay close as someone he feels he can compete with confidence that he'll emerge without any serious harm, whereas he runs from Hisoka knowing he's a threat.

• Simultaneously, Gon demonstrates his perception and ability to judge a person's character as he instinctively denies Killua's admittedly accurate claim that he's like Hisoka despite only knowing him for two hours.

• Woahh, Leorio withstood a direct card attack from Hisoka? Really sad they cut this out in the anime because it's a pretty cool thing to note indicating that he really is Hunter material to have gotten through to this stage, and also adds some reasoning to why Hisoka lets him "pass" aside from just showing reckless bravery which doesn't seem to be the kind of thing Hisoka would approve of unless it's substantiated by some hidden physical strength.

• Speaking of which, I do like the rather crazed look Hisoka has when killing people. I think I personally prefer the anime's serene depiction of this atrocious clown as it's a bit more chilling but there's definitely merit to the sheer insanity emanating from his maniacal laugh.

• Not that I think it makes a significant difference, but it is interesting that the manga has a rando next to Leorio and Kurapika who survived Hisoka's initial onslaught and is actually the one who came up with the plan to run in the first place. It's nice to see that even our rational blonde is so startled at the sheer force that is Hisoka that he just follows the plan without any monologuing.

• The dialogue above is about Hisoka but I think it offers an interesting framework to view transmuters in the series, specifically Hisoka, Bisky, and Killua. All three individuals rely heavily on their instincts (as Bisky says at one point, she herself has lied so much in her life she can tell instantly when she's in the presence of someone else who's faking something) and they're quite adept at judging people (Hisoka's the one who came up with the nen-MBTI test which is, more often than not, quite aligned with the characters we see). That said, perhaps because of the efficacy of their own judgement, these characters find it especially hard to take someone else's word for it unless they themselves are thrown in the face of the facts themselves. For example, Silva told Killua to stay away from the Phantom Troupe but Killua doesn't truly consider that advice as legitimate until he's staring down Machi and Nobunaga first hand. There's a similar concept behind Killua finding it so hard to break away from the instinctive feeling of fear telling him to flee.

• It's interesting that the first person who has ever judged Gon's strength/potential specifically with no knowledge of his relation to Ging is Hisoka. In turn, Gon liked the excitement of that pressure, of being judged and deemed worthy, of fighting for Leorio's safety and feeling useful which are all things he is looking for in his journey.

• I think it's a pretty sweet moment when Kurapika tells Gon to keep the incident with Hisoka silent knowing it would undoubtedly worsen Leorio's mood by making him feel incapable, but I can't tell if saying the following is his genuine attempt of comfort or just another one of his roasts 😭 (Second two are def insults--Kurapika's a mood for sure):

• I wish we got to see more of these interesting subsects of hunters like the gourmet hunters or the disease hunters later on…if we do make it to the Dark Continent, I hope these characters and professions take the spotlight since we spend much of the story taking a look at the overarching ideology of a Hunter but not necessarily their day to day lives which would be fun to investigate

• Hanzo is such a dork—I can’t believe they made him so serious in the anime:

• They really changed this part of the exam a lot in 2011's adaptation. Not that I think the anime version is horrible, but I wonder why since the sushi element really helps its characters shine. Like, for example, we see Kurapika falter despite having an advantage due to his weirdly widespread knowledge (seriously, what books is this guy reading to learn about such random, specific things that no one else knows like cultural chastity symbols and the ingredients in a foreign dish) because it doesn't occur to him that Menchi could be judging arbitrarily and not as a proper examiner. Granted, he's not wrong to expect her to be as reasonable as the...er, highly functional and esteemed establishment that employed her (okay, maybe he should have guessed), but it does illustrate a blind spot in his logic that comes from the unexpected he can't prepare for beforehand.

• It's a really small moment but I love this panel where this guy who devalued gourmet hunting coming around to really appreciating not just the danger involved in the craft but the merit of its product and someone else's treasure. Just a bit of heart added to the story!

• I wonder why Menchi came around to liking Hanzo after yelling at him during the exam and blaming him for her decision to fail the entire cohort. Power of sushi, I guess. Similarly, it's an interesting tidbit that Killua was Satotz's favorite...no clue why though.

• Love the reiteration from Satotz that it's the Hunt that fulfills the hunter's Desires, not the item itself that they're searching for. I know I keep harking back on Ging's advice at the end of the election arc but it's such a coherent throughline embedded into the story. It's a little ironic, even, that Gon becomes a hunter to look for Ging, but only truly becomes a hunter when he embraces this mindset after he's lost his nen and comes to stop idolizing his father. (Sidenote: Hisoka is one of the character I think best embodies the Hunter philosophy even though, as Kurapika says, he's incredibly blood thirsty and has no tangible goal he's seeking aside from self-fulfillment.)

• I love how Killua admits he throws on this aloof cute-child act so no one ever gets close enough to know what he's actually serious and cares about. It's a defensive mechanism to prevent his enemies (or his family, really; looking at you Illumi) from finding out what matters to him as they could use it as a threat to force his obedience. But Gon is able to detect when he's lying or not, knowing that he's not quite like Hisoka although his family are assassins (in fact, Gon probably guessed, although he might not know why, that Killua threw out this statement to gauge his reaction). And because Gon is listening completely unbiased (and this is part of his ambiguous morality coming in, because Gon straight up doesn't care that Killua's a murderer so long as it's of his free will and he hasn't done anything to Gon or his friends specifically), Killua starts to feel more comfortable letting his guard down around Gon throughout the story and revealing his true self

• Is the echo rhythm just a movement technique kind of like Assassination Classroom's stun clap, or is it an application of nen that Killua uses without knowing he's using it (like Gon using zetsu before he knew what aura was)? I feel like this instance might be the former, but the claw sharpening thing seems a little too biologically strange to not be a nen-based application in my opinion.

• I stand corrected from chapter 2, we do see Kurapika voluntarily sleeping at least once more!

• Killua giving off Hiei vibes here, tbh. He really does have a lot of similarities to Hisoka like the intrinsic bloodlust and need for challenge.

[anotheryellowapple]

So many sketches from this week

[stingray-art]

i loved how creature they looked in their first appearances in the manga!!

for the black and white enjoyers like myself:

[metanarrates]

literally love that yjh and kdj's method of communication is beating the shit out of each other. the secret hidden way to overcome The Wall is actually to just fucking hit each other until you come to an understanding

[timeskip]

He's enjoying this too much

[kosmo-5]

i just found out there is a colored version of the WHOLE (or nearly the whole) hxh manga, and i these panels are just gold

i looked only trough york new arc, and only briefly, but here are my favs so far:

[neonoddeye]

How it feels trying to make sense of the new hxh chapters with the only other person I know who’s caught up

[justxtalking]

one of my favorite killugon things

pretty simple: how much they smile and look at each other

they do it almost all the time: it usually depends on the context and the reason may vary, but a lot of the times they look at the other because they are on the same page and are happy about it, since they understand each other so well. sometimes it's just because they are so excited they instantly look at each other, and so on.

an example with killua

an example with gon

them smiling at each other at the same time

and of course i had to add this random smile in the middle of their serious conversation with kurapika. it always makes me giggle

[your-favourite-plague]

I really like that both Spiders and Kalluto tear their enemies to shreds. He fits right in <3

[realvicoba]

I LOOOVVVEEE the little character details in hxh

They're sprinkled all throughout the Manga, 99 anime and the 2011 reboot

For one, Gon can peel a potato perfectly with a knife. That's actually a pretty sick skill!

And Killua seems to sleep with his dogs out. Scratch that, with his entire legs out!

And in the first image, it looks like him and Alluka were holding hands while sleeping too. Killua seems like a very physically affectionate kid, which is soooo adorable 🥹

And he takes good care of his hair in the 99 version!

Aunt Mito later mentions how soft and fluffy it is, too. Especially when compared to Gon's tougher, thicker hair!

The detail of Kurapika reciting verses for his clan to calm and prepare himself is my favorite part of '99 kurapika.

"Allow our scarlet eyes to be the witness."

His brethren watch him sink further into despair and self destruction. Are the witnesses joyous at the sight?

Anyway!

Does Gon go into a state of Zetsu when he's deep in thought?

And he washes his clothes! Lil guy knows how to do his chores 🫶

And something I find interesting is that Leorio opens the testing gate on his own in the manga, but that's not the case in both the '99 and 2011 animes

They did bro dirty

Anyway, just wanted to share the brainrot 🫶

[littlemissmedicalmalpractice]

kurapika. my wonderful magical perfect blorbo. TURN OFF EMPEROR TIME i am BEGGING u

[pikamemfo]

Re-read the succession war of HxH and was hit with the strong urge to continue procrastinating life so here we are! Here's a splatter of some random thoughts going through chapter one!

(Note: As this is a re-read, I might reference events that have occurred later in the manga!)

• Some beautiful imagery to kick us off—in general, the style of this chapter definitely invokes a lot of nostalgia both for HxH as well as the aesthetic of that time

• WHO IS THIS??? (Lmao, compared to Killua and other characters later on, there are less changes between Gon at his introduction and his current appearance but it is fun to see how Togashi refined and changed some his initial character designs, especially since his art style changes arc to arc.)

• It's really slight, but you can see the core themes of the story slid into a lot of the small dialogue moments. For example, here, Mito's grandmother notes that it doesn't matter why Gon sets out on his journey, just that he does, reinforcing the idea repeated at the World Tree where the alternative end is discussed, noting that the goal (Gon meeting Ging) didn't matter as much as the actual process of Gon getting there (by making friends, going on adventures, discovering himself, etc.).

• I love how spirited some of these panels are like the way Gon is jumping so animatedly or the adorableness of the foxbear tackling him

• To this day, I will never understand why 2011 removed this Kite flashback. It's the equivalent of not having Shanks lose his arm in romance dawn or not telling Yoki's story in Brotherhood. I don't even think the "We thought people saw 1999 and would get bored" argument works because they adapt pretty much everything else and this is such a critical scene to counter the "Gon's a psychopathic monster" takes floating around by offering a clear glimpse into the invisible trauma that helps form his, perhaps unconventional but also understandable mentality (not to say he isn't a flawed character, he is, that's the point—but there's a lot more nuance behind it than "Kid raised like animal. Selfish and primal. Only saves people he likes.")

• Kite is introduced with the perspective that anything that can threaten a human should be killed, regardless of how unfair or cruel it is (referring to the baby fox cub who had just lost its mother and therefore has the potential to cultivate a grudge against all humans). Although pre-emptive, this is a rational thought. It's why hunters existed in the first place, to acquire food and to protect against wild beasts. Gon of course, in this touching scene, resonates with this cub as someone who had lost his own parents and can't bear to abandon it to its death, even as it scratches angrily against him:

• As someone who has been abandoned (though right now, it's more metaphorical than literal since he thinks his parents just died instead of setting up a fun, peril-filled obstacle course for him to follow—Ging is a fantastic character who makes terrible choices, I promise 😭), he cannot bear to inflict that same pain to someone else which is why throughout the series, and especially in the next few chapters, he's always rushing in to support people who are left behind by others and taking detrimental risks to that end. Of course, this need to hold close, alongside a quality dose of fatherly idolization and a fear that Ging won't even look at Gon if his son doesn't meet an arbitrary standard of strength, are the qualities that are stressed to cause the fallout we see in the Chimera Ant Arc. It's hatred and brashness forged in the aftermath of love and hurt.

• Additionally, Kite plays such a pivotal role in Gon's goals, arguably more than Ging himself. Obviously he literally gives Gon the Hunter's License and his goal by telling him Ging's alive, but if it wasn't for meeting Kite, Gon probably wouldn't have decided to become a Hunter even knowing Ging's story. He goes because he looks up to Kite dearly, and Kite admires Ging so in Gon's mind, to earn Kite's respect, he may have to meet Ging's standards first.

• I love the depiction of Mito being a clearly nurturing character, but also flawed. Not the perfect mother you're led to believe in the anime. She is manipulative in hiding Ging's uh...life from Gon, which was not a choice that's morally up to her to make, and it's not solely out of love for Gon that she hides it either. She, herself, is hurt from Ging leaving her behind time and time again, and is scared Gon's going to do the same. And you know what, Gon does.

• And Gon's choice to leave is also not a naive decision. He knows full well that he's hurting Mito by leaving, which is why he apologizes, telling her that being a hunter must have been such an important job it's worth leaving behind your family (rationalizing Ging's decision), and says "like you said...I am his son, after all."

• But of course, Gon is wrong. As Killua shows, there is a need to escape strict familial oversight so you're able to discover who you want to be outside of the external pressure trying to box you into predetermined paths. But again, the end goal is not as important as this discovery process, and it's the people who care about you and affect you that matter in the end. Which is why characters like Kurapika continually find themselves drawn back to connections they try to hide and Gon returns back to Mito at the current end of his arc, perhaps a little more unburdened than when he left.

And that's a wrap for chapter 1! This was fun—as someone who hopes to write my own story one day, it's really cool to see how coherent the thematic throughlines of this story are written, as well as how a single chapter can clearly establish so much meaningful characterization.

[anotheryellowapple]

He's too small to fit in the panel :(

[camarilla-arts]

super fast concepts of Delicious X Hunter au ideas. taking the dungeon meshi lore and concepts and throwing the HxH cast into the deep end. Whale Island dungeon!

[mari-lair]

working on the next ant gon chapter

[timeskip]

God of COURSE Morena wouldn't work with the normal Heil-ly mafia after she became their boss. They're the ones who have helped perpetuate her abuse. Also, in addition to taking the place of the real Morena and losing her own identity for her own goals, she also took on the role of the Heil-ly leader, turning it into her own. But via contagion she's constructing a different violent system, going after everyone other than her own people in the name of destroying the whole world.

This is of course exactly how the Phantom Troupe were initially, but the troupe bonded together later and were a very harmonious group even if they enacted violence (including genocide) against people weaker than them. They hated the world, and they saw Meteor City as the only people they had to protect, so they turned their backs against everyone else. Morena, on the other hand, completely let go of humanity as a whole. There is no mafia "balance" with Morena, she's playing outside the system by taking over the Heil-ly and changing its relationship with the royal family in order to destroy it; meanwhile, the troupe are doing extreme violence while keeping the system already in place (the troupe aren't fixing Meteor City, they're still letting Meteor City children go into the mafia/families like the Zoldycks/etc in order to keep those relationships strong) because it seems their main goal is keeping the most depraved dehumanization (ex: hunting Meteor City children) away from their people via fear and control of the narrative around Meteor City.

Both of these ways of doing things are flawed, harming the people of the out-group (the in-group being Morena's "children" and Meteor City/the troupe itself, respectively) but I'm interested to see where the two groups diverge--as we see from Nobunaga's conversations with the mafia, it seems like part of it is that the troupe doesn't want the same massive amount of destruction Morena wants anymore, their goal changed from actively wanting to kill the out-group for the sake of violence against those who wronged them, but they still don't care if people unrelated to them die while the troupe steal and murder for their own gain/pleasure.

Morena and Chrollo both have these identity issues and roles that they gave themselves. Chrollo is clinging to this identity as the head of the Spider even as he spirals deeper and deeper into misery, losing his friends and trying to sacrifice himself for an ideal Spider that may never exist again. And Morena... I can't even begin to guess where her arc is heading right now. She's discarded her old self to dive fully into being Morena Prudo and owner of contagion. Both the troupe and Morena are shaped by their dark circumstances but have come out the other end with a desire for destruction, one that forces their leader to discard their "self" in order to become the parent/head.