((this ended up being a lot longer than i thought it would be so please bear with me!! and tbh i could talk about this for another couple thousand words but at that point it would just be an essay..))
So as we know togashi doesn’t throw random characters into significant plot points without a purpose. an example of this is palm. Palm is talked about a lot in the sense that she’s pretty problematic and pedophilic, and I completely agree with that. The next question is why? Why did togashi make the conscious decision to make her feelings towards gon romantic? Unlike hisoka’s creepiness towards gon, palm’s doesnt serve as any sort of motivator or large plot point for him. So, then, the answer is that palm was put in the story as a catalyst for killua’s breakdown.
Now, togashi could have very easily made palm get a long really well with gon in a platonic way and still dislike killua. It’s really likely killua still would have gotten jealous of palm if her relationship to gon was not romantic. So, Togashi made the conscious decision to make killua jealous of someone with romantic feelings towards gon. He purposefully and obviously made this distinction.
One thing to note is this interaction with palm which occurs in the scene directly after the “you are light” scene we all know so well:
Palm is talking to gon and killua and says this, while she’s gushing about knov:
“I only admire him. It’s not love…
Or anything… but I’m not certain of that either…… but isn’t it important to be able to respect someone you love? Oh, of course I haven’t told him any of this, and I don’t plan to…”
Then she turns to killua, looks him right in the eyes (this panel just includes the two of them), and says “…though you never know, right? Love is something that just /happens/ don’t you think?”
Killua immediately changes the subject to something else and this isn’t addressed.
Alright, so galaxy brain togashi would not add this scene in for no reason, ESPECIALLY right after such an emotionally intense scene of killua admiring gon. If it has no significance it’s just empty dialogue and doesn’t help to progress the plot or any kind of character development, which is not something togashi does often.
It begins to set up killua’s intense devotion to gon during the chimera ant arc, and his subsequent break down, in fact, I would say that palm is the one thing that pushes him over the edge.
it’s interesting to note that the specific point in which killua completely loses it is when he encounters palm in the castle while fighting the ants, and says to palm about gon that: “nobody else… can reach him” and goes on to sob about how he can’t save him, that it has to be palm.
Palm is obviously shocked by this because to gon, his relationship to her is simply friendship or allies, regardless of how palm feels. What ultimately snaps her out of the chimera ant control is realizing just how much killua cares about gon. this so clearly goes beyond jealousy over a friendship, (and always did), it reaches so far into the territory of romantic jealousy that it’s almost even more than that. What I’m saying is that togashi set this all up from the very beginning of the arc, he created palm’s character and her romantic feelings towards gon to pinpoint EXACTLY how killua feels about him, and just how goddamn important gon is to him.
It’s not a subtle narrative technique, but togashi doesn’t come out and say it either. Imo this is just spot on characterization because killua is still just a kid and doesn’t really know what love or romance is on a personal level, not to mention these feelings are towards his male best friend.
Killua’s other break down in the chimera ant art, which comes before the one involving palm, is when he fights that rabbit chimera ant (who looks exactly like hisoka hmm) and removes illumi’s needle. What allows him to do this is his extreme and all consuming desire to protect gon. The whole scene is a mash of panels of killua and gon together since the beginning of the series. Killua repeats in this sequence, over and over again, how gon is his best friend, his closest friend, his dearest friend. He repeats it so much that it begins to feel like he’s saying it frantically to convince himself that that’s all it is, he’s my closest friend I’ve ever had that’s why I feel so intensely, it’s nothing more.
after he get’s illumi’s needle out of his head, he gets so much calmer in his resolve to protect gon with his life. He seems to have pushed all of these conflicting feelings and confusion to the back of his mind, at least until his breakdown in front of palm. And that’s exactly why togashi consciously decided to characterize palm the way he did.
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