Hi! I love your account so so much! I have a question regarding gon regaining his nen. Ging said there would be a "punishment/penalty". Does that mean there would be imposed limitations or is the penalty physical damage?
Thank you anon, I love you too!
I thought for sure I had a post on this already, but tumblr search is not cooperating… Anyway here’s the exact translation for what Ging says, Liz @hunterxhell has it as usual:
ging uses 罰/bachi, which means like punishment/curse but like coming from a higher power, ie “karma will bite you”. i would translate this as “there’ll be hell to pay”.
https://hunterxhell.tumblr.com/post/177325514147/i-feel-like-the-english-tl-loses-a-bit-of-nuance
I think it means he can get his nen back, but there will be a cost. Honestly it sounds like a nen cost to me… Gon broke his nen contract (a contract with “a higher power” if you will) by living after the battle with Pitou, when he said he’d give up “everything.” When you break a nen contract there’s an associated punishment, usually your life.
In this case, Nanika reversed the curse on Gon that was the consequence of him breaking his contract. She broke the laws of nen to do that, which took an enormous amount of energy. In HxH world it’s like breaking the laws of physics.
It’s actually possible that Ging is wrong (or lying) about the “cost” for Gon to get his nen back, BTW. It wouldn’t be the first time that Ging warned Gon to only get involved with Hunter stuff if he was actually serious…This could be similar to when he left the tape and ring about Greed Island, maybe it’s his way of encouraging Gon to stay home and really think about how much he wants this.
Assuming Ging is wrong (or lying) about the cost… it’s possible that Alluka already paid the cost for the broken contract; and the reason Gon doesn’t have nen right now is because Killua said to “heal Gon” and Nanika interpreted that in a literal way, and restored him to “normal” so right now Gon is “normal” i.e. he doesn’t have nen.
Maybe someone who knows Japanese can look up what Killua says in that panel… like does “heal” mean “restore” or something in Japanese… bc there’s a lot of stories about djinn or genies (and Nanika is a bit like a genie, an entity that can grant wishes) interpreting your requests in a literal way, so you have to be careful about how you phrase them.
If there is still a cost to pay, it could be something like how Kurapika has to give up his lifespan to use Emperor Time….except we already saw that once with Gon-san (where he gave up his life/potential for power now) and I don’t know if Togashi would repeat himself like that. It’s also possible that Gon will have to see a nen exorcist, and pay whatever the cost is for the exorcism before he can get his nen back… since that’s the normal way to lift a nen curse in HxH world.
Before, none of the Hunter Association nen exorcists had the power to lift Gon’s curse, because it was so extreme… Maybe even Nanika didn’t have the power to fully reverse the consequences of Gon’s decision, so there’s still a cost left for him to pay?
I wrote a little bit about nen contracts and Alluka’s powers before BTW, here’s the post if you’re interested:
https://subdee.tumblr.com/post/617297191031242752/mobiuslake-subdee-replied-to-your-post-hey
The short version of that is that in HxH world, when you take out a “loan” by getting power in advance there’s a huge associated cost that you end up paying later. Gon got a lot of power out of his contract, so there was a huge cost to pay afterward. Then he dodged the cost, because of Nanika. Either she’s totally paid it off, and he could start training again; or there’s still some residual curse left that he’ll have to break the normal way.
Anyway, to sum this up… I don’t know XD it is a mystery. Also, it’s Togashi :P He could just invent something new next week (month, year, decade, whatever) to keep us guessing. I do think that if Gon shows up in the manga again, he’ll get his nen back… because while HxH values balance, family, domestic things, etc more than your usual shounen, it would be kind of a boring manga if Gon just stayed on Whale Island doing his math homework.