blotthis

As March slips from my fingers, it's Hunter x Hunter, for recognito!

Since the end of February, I've read two and a half more volumes, putting me mid volume 13, so I'm just going to consider them along with the volumes I read before Feb.

Hunter x Hunter has been ... an interesting reading experience. As a known shounen-enjoyer, I, and I think everyone else, assumed I'd like it. And I have liked it. Parts of it. But I haven't loved it, and I expected to, which did make me have a kind of hormone-driven breakdown mid-this month. Normal!

Under the cut, I'll talk about what I've liked and not liked, and what I've found interesting and what escapes me entirely; most of this, I admit, is me trying to figure out what I think, and I discuss violence quite a bit. I'm also rather free with spoilers, so, careful, if you mind spoilers for a 20-year-old manga.

I guess the easiest place to start is the beginning. Hunter x Hunter begins with Gon Freecss, an 11-year-old boy who wants to become a Hunter, a mysterious and powerful career, in order to meet his absent father. To do this, he sets out to take the Hunter Exam, an annual set of trials in which hundreds of hopefuls are whittled down to a handful--or fewer. During this process, he meets Leorio Paradinight, Kurapika, and Killua Zoldyck, another 11-year-old boy, this time with a skateboard. They become friends in the manner of shounens everywhere: They agree to help each other, and oops, now we're friends. All this is charming. Gon is very bouncy and naive; Killua and Kurapika have either not enough internal code or too much internal code respectively; Leorio is an idiot who wants to be a doctor and I love him. Justice for Leorio.

I hated the Hunter Exam, and I hated reading about it. People not only kill or maim each other to succeed or for sadistic pleasure, but die by the dozens to the exam design. A bunch of people get eaten by a giant toad frog thing, simply because they're not good enough at tracking stuff, I guess? We don't linger on it. It doesn't appear to matter. The next section of the exam is making food good, and people are disqualified for not making food good enough. In the next section, people die to a maze again.

It seems so stupid and wasteful, particularly when we can see that people can be disqualified without dying first. We don't even really know why someone would want to be a Hunter, for all the time we spend on Gon et al discussing their reasons for wanting to be one. It's also so early in the story, there's no question that our four protagonists are not going to die. Maybe they won't all pass, but they're certainly not going to die. And!! Gon is presented like a stupid boing-boing (my favorite), but he's not stupid; he's stupid in the way that romance novel protags are clumsy. He's just kind of a savant. So it felt like this weirdly stakes-free amount of violence, both to and around our protagonists, inflicted by an organization I didn't know anything about or care about, and which I was beginning very much to hate, as a symbol of authority-sanctioned, consequence-free mass violence. Why would I care about or even want the people I was supposed to be rooting for to become members of this organization? Why would I care about them, to the extent that they thought this was a thing to want?

Now, here's the thing. Things. One, I do actually think it's likely that Togashi also thinks the Hunter Exam and the Hunter Association is bullshit. He certainly suggests that one might question their judgement when they accept Killua's sociopathic evil assassin brother and not Killua because Killua broke the rules. I think he does want to question why anyone would want this, and if the Hunter Association is "good." Two, I did like the end of the arc a ton. Togashi starts to layer in that Gon is Fucked-Up-Actually and Weird-About-Winning and that his and Killua's attachment to each other, as Cute As It Is is also not going to be A Healthy Way To Interface With The World. That rules. That rules.

Three, I also think my distaste, revulsion, and boredom probably stem--at least in part--from simply not knowing enough about fighting anime. Where I can see how Togashi is picking at the bonded!protagonists trope because of my time in the shounen mines, the closest I've come to interacting with fighting anime are the Big 3--Naruto, Bleach and One Piece. "blot," I hear you cough. "You know those have fighting in them. Right? Tell me you know that---" No, no, I'm completely with you. I also thought I had the references.

But I've never watched DragonBall or YYH; I never got into Yu-Gi-Oh! or any of the Pokemon--I don't even know what shows would count. I've watched so much sports anime. But sports anime is about competition and friendship and growth, and while it may consider the possible negative effect of competition of the soul and on friendship and growth (usually because you're Just Thinking About Competition Wrong, Actually!!!!!), it is not about the spectacle of violence. Per se. Naruto--the part of Naruto that I like, anyway--is about reaching other people, and how hard that is, and also yelling a lot and being actually so dumb. Bleach--the part of Bleach that I liked, anyway--was about protecting and saving people. One Piece is about being stupid and also rubber and thoughtless in a violent self-centered way that turns out to restore benevolent monarchies. Which just goes to say: I have enjoyed shounen anime where violence, when it exists, is some combination of 1) Cool! Zany! (thanks, Oda), 2) metaphorical! (thanks, Furudate!), 3) used as an instrument in a larger cause, and, honestly, 4) not really interrogated. I haven't watched nor do I currently intend to watch or read JJK or Chainsaw Man, etc. Is this a personal failing and/or weakness? Almost certainly! We all have our own cardboards. Anyway, it's interesting, for me at least, to look at my extremely positive reaction to the bonded!protags trope, and my ??? reaction to the rest.

All this to say that I spent the Hunter Exam arc both unhappy and on the back foot. That Togashi knew he was making a horrible authoritative organization with disregard for human life was obvious. But I couldn't figure out what he wanted me to do with that obviousness. Is the inversion in the Hunter Exam arc just that it comes so early the lack of emotional buy-in makes it painful? If so, did it work? I read so many Goodreads reviews, trying to find anyone else who was troubled by this, and the most I ever found was people saying they didn't care about the Exam, and/or that they wished the fights were cooler.

Me: nodding.
Me: no, wait------dammit-------

That's got to be part of it, too, right? And that Gon et al. are joining the horrible system, rather than obviously fighting it, like in Bleach, or One Piece? We will not discuss Naruto, which has very few of its own ideas, and once it ran out of HxH to rewrite, fell to fucking pieces---------coughs. But if that's it, what an insane way to start a story for kids? Scrubs at my face. It's not unheard of that a writer be doing two things at once and that it be easy to miss it, says Nabokov---okay, now I'm making wild Comparisons.

The Zoldyck family arc was fun and funny and bonkers, and I liked it a lot. Killua... your weird robot mom...... the person that she is....... Your dad sucks! I liked the Zoldyck arc, because it was obviously funny to me, aside from the butler girl, who I'm still worried about, and it also deliciously added foreshadowing about how good-bad Killua and Gon were going to be for each other. Also the panels of the dog were sincerely terrifying. Togashi is very good at using different levels of realism to denote Scariness. And I like that very much. I do think it's interesting the fandom reportedly thinks this arc is angsty, which I bring up only because I'm interested in what the fuck Togashi is doing or trying to do, and how it gets read or doesn't.

I thought the Heavens Arena arc, in which Gon and Killua enter a fighting-ring tower in order to win money, was largely fine. Some great Killua and Gon bullshit, and some of the first glimmers of that Gon is lying to himself about his motivations/how much he loves fighting and winning and fighting and winning against people that are hard to fight against. I love this. I love that he doesn't know, and Killua does. I love that Killua doesn't really know what he wants. Great. Great. Great shit. Love is real, and you are going to get divorced. Nen is fun and stupid but a great way to get a bunch of stupid shounen BS into your story, and if you're Togashi and you love weird little guys, you're going to come up with a way to get a bunch of stupid shounen BS into your story. Hisoka is very ... God. Togashi keeps making me be like okay, maybe this part is going to be fine, and then Hisoka goes and has everything but a graphic orgasm over little kids and it's like wow I wish this wasn't happening.

Yorknew City.... Okay. Okay. Gon and Killua and Leorio are scheming to get money in order to buy a very special Gon's-Dad's-related video game in the mob auction that's happening in Yorknew City. Fine. Frequently cute. Gon and Killua: Still in Love. Still breaking down literal walls together but Not Their Actual Own! Great. Making friends with a guy who sells antiques. Learning from Guy Who Sells Antiques about how to fool people. It's all largely very shounen-shaped, and it's fun enough.

Kurapika, meanwhile, is on a revenge quest. He has gotten himself into the mob so that he can retrieve, from the very dangerous mob auction, a pair of scarlet eyes that were plucked from the dead body of one of his family members when they were massacred when he was a child for said scarlet eyes. (Behind us, Kishimoto is taking notes. Kishimoto, stop that. You're embarrassing everyone.) However, when all the mobsters are killed on the first night of the auction, he discovers that the people who massacred the mob are the Phantom Troupe (or Spiders), the people who killed his family! He will be normal about this and try to kill them! Obviously!!!!! He's new at this and basically working alone but there! will! be! no! problems!

He kills one of them, Uvo, with his goth chains, and then the story goes... all lumpy. We start spending time with the Phantom Troupe. We learn they have feelings, and backstories, and squabbles, and favorites, and jokes, and fierce protectiveness. We also see them be ruthlessly, extravagantly violent. We spend a few pages on Chrollo, the leader, killing a would-be bounty hunter with Indoor Fish, some paper-seeming prehistoric ghost fish that eat him alive, only while they exist, he can't feel any pain. Chrollo gives no real reason for doing this. Chrollo's eyes are drawn with consistent semi-realism, so you know he's Scary, and it Works.

Gon and Killua are here also? Gon and Killua are escaping from the Phantom Troupe. We're back in time and the Phantom Troupe is forming. Hisoka is feeding information to Kurapika. Chrollo is manipulating a mob daughter so he can steal her ability to get fortunes. We're fighting the mob again. Kurapika is going it alone. Gon and Killua want the bounty. Killua's dad and grandpa are here. The bounty is off. Kurapika is going it alone. Kurapika is NOT going it alone. Gon has a plan. I am forgetting at least half of the things that happen, and I am also doing a bad job of relaying the tonal whiplash!

I am glad, in a weird way, to have written it all out, and kind of get a better sense of how this structure is actually quite effective... That said, I spent all of volume 11 trying to get a handle on the comic's relationship to violence and failing. The Indoor Fish--I can't think of a more accurate word for this--triggered my particular aversion to body horror, which isn't just gore (of which there wasn't much), but of nonconsensual body modification. The man being eaten by the Indoor Fish knows he should be reacting with pain and horror, and instead, he's stuck laughing. Laughing, and wondering why he isn't dead. In that moment, Chrollo nonconsensually modified not only his body, but also his mind, but left enough of his mind for him to be horrified by his lack of horror. Picture me going äAaaaaaäaāa.

Because this was so upsetting, I spent much of the rest of the volume trying to figure out why Togashi had done that to me. What was the point? What was the question? To be 11 volumes in and not feel closer to grasping Togashi's point? Exhausting!! Also kind of crushing, because I felt certain that since so many of my friends and wider circle loved HxH, there was something I was missing.

I asked lito and shannon about it, and they both had some really helpful explanations of what they liked, including, from lito:

the mafia are in their own raymond chandler kind of crime noir arc. kurapika is instead starrring in his own revenge thriller, which is related but not the same genre. killua and gon are in a romantic adventure (double meaning lmao). the phantom troupe are in a steven soderbergh heist
they're each the protagonists of their own stories AND, something that togashi does so well, all protagonists of this manga! and the effect of each of these rubbing up against each other produces some moments that are emotionally very fun AND just fascinating
what if you put goku (gon), a guy who has a childlike inflexible idea of fairness and unfairness as a side character in a heist film? what if you put goku's best friend as the protag of a revenge story? fascinating

GREAT POINTS I'M SURE AND ALSO I HAVE HAD NO EXPOSURE TO ANY OF THE OTHER TEXTS HE REFERENCES-----overstatement. I have some familiarity with romantic adventure (both meanings), and you and I may both recall that's the part of Yorknew I followed the easiest.

But I don't think a lack of familiarity with Togashi's genre-fun-zone references was the only thing that made the themes and inversions hard to follow, although god knows it didn't help. I think being so focused on the framing of violence--because of how fucked up I'd been by the Indoor Fish--meant I wasn't following the actual beats of the story.

Because it was also interesting to hear shannon and lito discuss their pleasure in how many things happen per chapter, particularly in how things that would be 30 pages or several chapters in the hands of another mangaka take place in a few panels; in Togashi moving the characters across the board; in the jumps from Killua's tragedy storyline to Gon's irrepressible-ness; that the pieces tie together like in the end of a mystery, but quickly.

Many of you who might be reading this know I'm a little obsessed with what plot is and how it works because I don't understand it, and it's fascinating to me that several--most--of the pleasures shannon and lito described seem like plot pleasures. I don't think, as above, that's the only reason I missed them, but I'm grateful to them both for articulating it, so at the very least I can keep my eyes peeled for more Plot Happening At Me and That Being The Point (?).

I gave Yorknew a few weeks before I returned, and I can say I did end up liking the ending very much. We spend more time with the Spiders, and get to see more of their humanity, which is kind of an insane decision, since he gave us the horrors first, IN A STORY FOR CHILDREN? Wild. Wild. Perhaps I will come around to just being like well I guess this man is taking us on a ride whose shape I will simply not expect. I also loved Hisoka's decision to leave in that he betrayed the Spiders in his fake fortune. Absolutely unhinged. Hisoka orgasming again. Don't like it. Gon and Killua being liddol in panels. Great. Kurapika, Gon, and Killua having extremely different reactions to Kurapika using friendship to manipulate them and then admitting it. Sick as hell. Leorio being like aw fuck. I'm sorry about love being real, Leorio. Kurapika wearing slutty trousers. Gon asking Chrollo why he kills people. Kurapika's weird pride and underestimating Pakunoda. Hisoka's fucking face when Chrollo is like I can't use Nen :). All chewy fucking shit!

I haven't yet started Greed Island, the next arc. Part of me is dreading it, because I'm afraid it's going to be another Yorknew or Hunter Exam, where I don't really care for it until I reach the end of the arc. Another part of me is interested. When HxH is chewy, it's chewy. And maybe I'll learn about plot????