my formal statement on what togashi’s been tryna say since 1998, but couldn’t really say it explicitly until the succession war once gon was shipped back home, killua written off, leorio deep in medicine and zodiac clownery, and kurapika forced to face off against career pedophiles.
i think the point of hunter x hunter is to showcase how the hxh world systemically uses and abuses children to fuel its contracts with the different power sources present in their universe. whether it be feeding dark gods to retain familial nen, or allowing children to join the hunter exam so that the proctors can assess children they believe are worthy of teaching nen to, the hxh universe at large runs on the blood of children. the children who survive the abuse can grow up to perpetuate the cycle of abuse. they can also grow up to do good things in service of others, but they can also grow up to become selfish and uncaring of the people around them.
but the most important thing is that togashi never, ever blames the children for what happens to them. sure, adult chrollo is a bitch, but the child who found his friend dismembered in a trashbag hanging from a tree is not and will never be at fault for what happened, even if he assumes the guilt.
but this statement is difficult to reflect on for a lot of people while gon and killua were still the primary protagonists of their arcs. to this day, people (and even the characters in-canon) look at gon as if he’s some kind of monster for his actions during Chimera Ant Arc, or plain stupid for pursuing a pedophile in Heavens Arena, or an idiot for trying to fight Genthru the way he did.
But i don’t think any of gon’s actions are necessarily reflective of himself as much as they are the world around him that made him that way. take ging for example. instead of being brave enough to visit whale island and tell gon to his face that he doesn’t wanna be a present father, he goads gon into chasing him all over the world, putting him in the path of pedophiles and murders bc why not? if gon cant take on a pedophile at age twelve, then clearly he won’t survive the hunter world. if gon can’t beat convicted felons and chase away pedophiles, then he’s not worthy of ging’s time. gon never had a complex. he quite literally just wanted to meet his father, and created a strategy to do it. it’s the world around him that taught him to put his body on the line, to fight until he couldn’t, to become a vessel for power if need be. but gon didn’t do that to himself. ging did. ging sent him to hell. but at the same time, ging is not the problem. ging is a symptom of the problem.
i think it’s a hard pill to swallow for a lot of readers that hisoka and neferpitou and even genthru aren’t as much of an issue as individuals as much as the forces that allow them to exist in the first place. we learn in the succession war that pedophilia is normalized in the hxh world, that there are actual children who are forced into the pedophile rape factory to keep an empire running, and that these adults have so much power that they can even hunt children in other places as murder tourists. children are THE fuel of hxh. in chimera ant arc, they are literally food. in succession war, they’re sacrifices to retain and or obtain power. children are used as meat for pedophiles, murderers, rapists and groomers.
And hunters too! children are meat to hunters too!! that’s why ging can never take care of gon, bc ging is a part of that violent machine that sees gon as something that can be groomed into a great hunter, and not as what he is - a child!
that’s why netero’s demise is so critical to the story, not bc he was the old man dying for the world, but bc netero embodies the selfishness of the adult man who thinks he’s reached the peak of his power and thus deserves to unleash that power. netero fuels the machine with people like ging. if you’re not hunting, you don’t belong here, but what they’re really hunting for is power, but no one will admit it bc that would mean admitting their world is fucked because they never let the knowledge of nen disseminate across the world and thus allow power to be accessed equally across the masses.
but power also comes in various forms in hxh. it’s nen, it’s money, it’s a population of people and chimera ants. all of it, however, stems from the same fuel - the blood of children.
that’s why i believe the succession war arc needed to send gon home and give killua a reason to live beyond whatever tether he had to gon bc they’re still children in-universe. they haven’t yet realized yet that none of this is their fault.
but kurapika and leorio are adults! they can see how the world of adults is, and how violent these child-devouring institutions are. but it’s also why leorio continues to strive to be a doctor, while kurapika chooses saving boy woble and oito over pursuing his brethren’s eyes. BUT IT’S ALSO WHY MORENA WANTS TO BLOW UP KAKIN AND THEN THE WORLD, AND WHY CHROLLO SOWS CHAOS WHEREVER HE GOES!!!
because in a world with so many wonders, the people in power choose to closely guard the secrets of nen more than they do the children of their universe. bc to nasubi and beyond and the hunter exam and hisoka and the murder tourists of meteor city, children are just meat. they’re fuel. they’re food.
and that’s precisely why nen’s gonna go global and that boat’s getting blown up because the most vulnerable population in the world will finally be able to learn how to protect themselves. it’s why kurapika’s entire arc thus far in the succession war has been teaching others how to use nen, and why leorio’s busting his ass in the clinic. kura and leorio have long-since entered the adult world and know that children are the most vulnerable group in all of lake mobius. but two adults and two children can’t save the children of the world. but maybe they can teach them something. maybe they can teach them how to use the power that’s always been within them.
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