:-0! Hmmmm! these aren’t exactly all baby headcanons, just Gon childhood headcanons hahaha
– Gon learned how to walk very early on his life ie around 9 months old or so by the time Mito took custody of him, he was well adept at climbing pretty much anywhere his height allowed.
– Mito took Gon on a lot of walks around the surrounding forest when he was young and taught him about all the animals and plants she knew about. Abe sometimes came on the walks too and taught Gon even more.
– By the time he was 5, Gon was already displaying abnormal strength/agility/coordination, so Mito let him go exploring the forests by himself (that and he was a very sharp kid too)
– Gon also wandered around the island a lot and talked to everyone. He learned how about fishing from the fisherman who worked at the port.
– the “dates” Gon went on when were just him trying to get a lot of the women to tell him stories about things or to teach him whatever random knowledge they had. In exchange he acted as a tour guide around town if they were visiting from another island, whereas the local women just played along on these dates and let Gon hang out with them because he was a cute kid (and also one of the few kids around, so many of the women wanted to baby him anyways).
– Gon had a terrible habit as a baby of putting everything he found in the forest in his mouth which never really went away, which also often gave Mito many near heart-attacks whenever he ingested anything of a poisonous nature. Somehow though, Gon never had any truly serious reactions to anything he ate (at worst an upset stomach or throwing up).
“I don’t believe in fate. Or destiny. But I do think that there are certain people in this world meant to find us. And sometimes, we’re the ones who must search for them.”
Gon doesn’t understand. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
She smiles slightly, warm eyes crinkling up at the ends.
“No.”
Gon’s grandmother falls ill the week before Gon’s twelfth birthday.
“You should enjoy the little detours. To the fullest. Because that’s where you’ll find the things more important than what you want.” -Ging Freecss
“If you really want to get to know someone, you should try to find out the things that make them angry.” -Mito Freecss
“Human life is too long to devote to reproduction and too short to devote to learning, in the helix of time” -Diego
“The moment you stop taking challenges, is the moment your life ends” -Isaac Netero
“For the right price, you can buy not only treasures, but dreams, hearts and even peoples’ lives!” -Leorio
“When apologizing to a friend, there’s a rule. Do you know it? …You promise to do things differently next time. And you keep that promise, no matter what.” -Ging Freecss
“Who am I? Why am I here? A king with no name. A borrowed castle. My subjects are mindless drones. If this is the mandate of Heaven I have been given…I fear…I fear nothing…except the tedium that it will bring!” — Meruem
“Hunters are a bunch of egomaniacs. We set aside everything else to get what we want.” -Ging Freecss
“If there is one person in this world, even if it is only one person, as long as someone believes in you, then you will be saved.”
Suddenly thinking of a hxh gem au with a Diamond Gon and a Sapphire Killua, (based on the gems Bisky compared them to during the Greed Island arc.) I could choose to focus on the more interesting aspects of such an au: the repercussions of a diamond with Gon’s personality existing, the reactions of other gems to her “unique” ideas of running her colony, the power imbalances that would be inherent in her relationship with Killua, etc.
But mostly I’m giggling over the size difference they would have based on the canon su diamond and sapphire designs.
I have a headcanon that the Zoldyck family increased the intensity of their training for the most recent generation (re: literal torture.) Furthermore, I believe Killua’s mother, Kikyo, was responsible for the poison training of her children. We have almost no information about her background beyond that she grew up in Meteor City and she’s a manipulator, so I like to speculate about what she brings to the family in particular.
One reason I got this idea in my head most because there’s a scene in the Yorkshin arc (Chapter 98) where where Chrollo cuts Silva’s arm with a poison tipped knife. He immediately makes a tourniquet out of his hair in order to stop the poison from traveling to the rest of his body through his bloodstream. Killua never had to take such measures whenever he was exposed to any kind of toxin (although one could argue the variety Silva encountered was stronger than any Killua experienced in the series), so it leads me to believe he didn’t go through the same kind of poison training as his children (or it wasn’t as severe at least).
I also want to mention, in the 2002 Hunter x Hunter musical, Nightmare of Zoldyck, Kikyo also laments that Killua doesn’t appreciate all the homemade poisoned food she makes for him, and other supplementary material for the 99 anime she takes responsibility for poisoning the family’s meals. That doesn’t mean much in terms of canon, since the 1999 anime added a lot of things that were later contradicted by the manga, but this bit of trivia hasn’t been overturned yet, so I’m hanging on to it until it is.
I also like to think the poison training might have originated in Kikyo’s upbringing, and she went through a milder form of training as a child as well. Following that train of thought, she probably passed at least some immunity to her children by blood. So I think Illumi, Milluki, Killua, Alluka, and Kalluto all have at least a bit of natural resistance to some poisons, although Alluka is probably still more susceptible since she never endured the harsher training her brothers went through. (Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past the Zoldyck family to keep poisoning her food even while imprisoned, but it’s less likely since they wouldn’t want to provoke her.) Of course, all of this last paragraph is pure speculation and has little basis in canon, but I just wanted to get my thoughts out. 🙂
my favorite line in hunter x hunter is gon saying “i’ve tried all kinds of mountain plants and grasses back home, so I can usually taste when something’s bad!” because just imagine gon stuffing a mouthful of inedible grasses in his mouth and mito screaming
Obviously the animation is phenomenal, it has a great soundtrack, and all things about the production value are high (as opposed to volleyball anime which can’t seem to tackle necks). But, there are flaws, mainly the pacing of the beginning and the end. I almost didn’t watch it because oh my god leading up to the Hunter Exam was so boring. Also, the CA battle is agonizing, but I think that’s the point, so it’s debatable whether it’s a flaw.
But, in terms of why you should watch it, there are two words: MORAL AMBIGUITY.
This plays out in two ways. First of all, it results in phenomenal characters across the board. You know who you’re “supposed” to root for, but you find yourself less and less able to consistently do so. Villains have such delightful personalities, interactions, and commitment to their friends that you don’t know what the hell to think about them, despite their admitted and horrific atrocities. The good guys end up doing really messed up things, turning back on their commitments, to the point where ruthless assassins are like “you okay bro?” I still to this MOMENT do not know how to feel about the Phantom Troupe. You’re given JUST enough information to be not sure. It’s masterful storytelling.
The other way is with the main four characters themselves. You have a protagonist whose morality is a very light dusting of “ traditional right vs wrong” over a firm foundation of “is this self-satisfying or not?” The further along the story goes, the more the dust is blown away. You have a secondary protagonist who has no problems with committing straight up murder. At all. And yet he’s so earnest and eager for human companionship that he becomes the most beloved character for most people (not me I should add). Then you have what should be the most sympathetic character, who’s angelic in appearance and voice, endured genocide and is the last of his people, but whose lust for revenge turns him into the very thing that created what he despises. He ignores those who need him the most, and I don’t see how he isn’t on the way to hell. And lastly, an loud asshole, who turns out to be the most gentle, kind, and considerate character of all, and who uses a tool made for fighting to save people’s lives.
I mean, why would you not watch that? I guess I don’t understand why people watch things, if not for the characters, but I watch anime in my thirties so who knows.
I was rereading the election arc recently and noticed something. when Nanika heals Gon, there’s this massive energy spilling out, enough that the more powerful/influential Hunters still stuck in an auditorium trying to vote someone off the island on the next chairman can feel it. and there’s Illumi’s bloodlust but w/e
and when Nanika does her thing for Killua’s wish, we get this reaction from Mizaistom, Cheadle, and Pariston
none of them have any idea what that was, and it’s worrying. for good reason–Nanika is ridiculously powerful, especially if she’s from the Dark Continent. even Pariston doesn’t know what’s going on.
but compare this with Ging’s reaction:
that’s more worried than he’s been all arc. Ging’s pretty unflappable, and he looks pretty flapped to me. and I don’t think that’s a face of someone who doesn’t know what they’re dealing with. I think Ging knows what they’re sensing, and not just ‘something BIG just happened’ or ‘something (or nothing) just healed Gon’. I think Ging recognizes the Ai power spike.
I don’t know if Ging’s been to the Dark Continent yet (he says he hasn’t been, I think? haven’t reread that part of Dark Continent in a while) but he’s already plenty experienced in the weird powerful stuff coming out of there. more than anyone else that felt it at the Association by far. and it’s probably here he decides to go through with going on the expedition. I don’t know what, but I’d bet when Pariston says this the next chapter
Ging has a pretty good idea what just healed Gon. he’d bet on it working. Pariston doesn’t know what it is, but knows Ging does. and, as he tells Cheadle, he trusts Ging as an enemy, and Ging trusted Killua.
I’m probably overthinking this. but now I’ve got more questions than answers. does Ging know about Nanika? would he have been associated with whatever brought an Ai back from the Dark Continent? does this have something to do with Don Freecss?
what do you know Ging and how do you know it
i think something notable is that ging says in a chapter during the DC arc that there are victims of both ai and papu/pap/pup/however it’s being transliterated surfacing in the known world. i’d have to doublecheck which chapter it is.
anyway, here’s some additional thoughts:
i always liked to think, in the absence of more information, that the ai victims ging mentions are the people who refused nanika’s requests – he might not know specific details, but i think he might have enough information to have pieced together “there is some connection between these victims and the zoldyck family”. we know netero was close to the zoldycks, close enough to have known multiple generations of the family, and if what i mention later is significant, netero probably knew/suspected about nanika to some degree.
weirdly enough, i don’t remember ging ever implying (or us getting any indication that he is aware) that he knows killua or killua’s connection to gon. but it doesn’t seem odd to me that he would know – he knows gon is hospitalized, so it isn’t weird at all that he would know killua was there too. presumably, since he never visited, he got this information from another hunter – probably knov or morel.
that said, the link between alluka+nanika and the DC is almost certainly zzigg zoldyck, since he was physically present on the DC (part of netero’s secret expedition) and we are given no indication that he died there. since netero and linne (seen in the election arc as a very old woman) both returned, i feel it’s most intuitive to infer that zzigg returned.
this might not be the case, of course – though it’s widely believed that zzigg was zeno’s father, this is unconfirmed (all we know is that maha is zeno’s grandfather, stated in the manga), so the fact that the zoldyck line continued isn’t confirmation that zzigg returned. even if zzigg was the zoldyck heir, zeno might have been born before the expedition.
zzigg might very well have died on the continent, but the fact that nanika is confirmed to have originated there, coinciding with the reveal that a zoldyck was present on the DC… it feels like we’re meant to connect the dots there ourselves.
but that assumes togashi isn’t dropping a red herring on us, which he very well could be doing.
ging has explicitly stated to gon that he has been unable to obtain permission to go to the DC, but i don’t remember him ever saying he hasn’t actually gone – we learn later that netero went without permission, so maybe ging did as well. i don’t feel like that’s the case, though that could be an explanation. but how the zoldycks would factor into that is unclear – if nanika is connected to ging and don in some way, we have a missing link between ging/don and the zoldycks. in contrast, netero’s expedition has a zoldyck right there.
right now i feel like the most probable explanation is not that nanika has a link to ging or don freecss, just zzigg.
so how did ging know gon would be healed? was it just baseless confidence that things would work out right? maybe – gon and ging are pretty similar, and it doesn’t seem that out of place for gon to blindly believe things will be okay (see: kite). but ging seems a lot less naive than gon, so i feel he knew something else was going on behind the scenes.
he probably knew, or suspected, that the zoldyck family had some connection to a great calamity, and that their kid was hitting the ground running to save his kid’s life – and that killua had complete faith that his method would work, so much that he told knov and morel that the nen exorcists wouldn’t be necessary.
in all likelihood imo? with the information he was able to gather as a prominent hunter (and potentially information from don’s book, if he’s read any of it – i don’t remember if it’s ever stated that he did or not, just that the “east” half of the guide is in the hands of the V6), he drew a line between the ai (probably documented by don), nanika’s victims, killua’s claims, and gon’s condition.
ging’s smart – he’s an obnoxious genius even – and his whole thing is wanting to get to the DC. so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been scrambling for all the info he could get in the past, and if that’s the case he’d have all he needs to realize the zoldycks had a calamity on their hands.
for whatever reason whenever i think about ging being pregnant (with gon, obviously) and grumpy as shit i just become very at peace with the universe, like, thank god for trans ging
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