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a thread on why gon is a great main character and excellently written because y'all cant behave
MAJOR HXH SPOILERS DONT READ IF YOU HAVENT FINISHED IT
i spent a long time on this so rts would be appreciated!
MAJOR HXH SPOILERS DONT READ IF YOU HAVENT FINISHED IT
i spent a long time on this so rts would be appreciated!
"what's so great about him he just had his rage moment" after tons of buildup and foreshadowing my guy. it's the perfect reflection of his character, he didn't go super saiyan, he sacrificed everything he had for that one moment. all of his fury and rage exploded, in an extremely
unhealthy outlet. he wanted someone to feel the pain that he felt, he didn't know what to do. but in the end, pitou was the winner in that battle. they achieved everything they wanted, protecting the king. they were satisfied with dying knowing that gon wouldn't be able to use
this power on the king. physically, they lost. but mentally they were the clear victor. killing pitou didn't take gon's pain away, it just made him feel empty. and it almost killed him, if not for alluka. in yorknew we learn about covenants and restrictions in a healthy
(or not so healthy) introduction from kurapika. wing TELLS gon that he should never do that, he WARNS him. gon put them on himself because he doesn't know what to do, he's terrified and he blames himself for kites death. gon doesn’t know what to do with this guilt and it’s eating
him alive. “isn’t it a bit of an overreaction, he barely knew kite!!” that’s just due to madhouse’s garbage handling of kite. in chapter 1 of the manga, we see kite rescuing gon. compared to when we see him in episode 76, kite leaves a much larger impact. kite is the one who
tells him about his father, kite is the hunter who saved his life and he never forgets. you see this? gon recognizes kite immediately. he only met kite once, years and years ago, yet kite’s name and face have been engraved in his mind. kite is the reason the whole story began.
he gave gon the motivation to go seek out ging, after aunt mito claims to gon his father is dead. in a way, kite is the driving force behind the story. and when kite dies, gon breaks.
there’s also more foreshadowing for gon’s transformation, it wasn’t an “asspull” togashi did for the plot. if it was, it would’ve been used against meruem instead of pitou. pitou’s death was basically inconsequential, gon didn’t kill them because he needed to, but because he
wanted to take out his rage on something, and pitou just happened to be there. it didn’t help, either.
back to covenants and restrictions, the reason why gon became so powerful was because he gave himself such a strict restriction and such a consequential punishment. in trade for his nen and for his potential for growth, on top of the fact that it would’ve killed him if not for
alluka (his covenant), gon gained the peak strength he could’ve obtained if he trained vigorously for all his life. the restriction was that he gained this power only until he defeated neferpitou. it in no way was an asspull, in doing this there were serious consequences that
would affect him for the rest of his life. he gave up everything he loved, adventuring and growing stronger, in exchange to let out his fury in an unhealthy outlet, which in the end didn’t make him feel better at all.
in chapter 51 of the manga, after gon’s first fight with guido, wing worries that he has awakened some kind of monster. and he has. wing stated that not many people know about nen, because if it went into the wrong hands it would be an extremely dangerous tool. in that superhuman
state of his, gon was a monster. perhaps wing blames after learning about gon’s incredible feat, because he was the one who taught it to him in the first place. not only for the fact that gon gave up everything, but for the fact he unleashed such a dangerous force on the world.
in chapter 88 of the manga, zepile notices gon’s immorality. he has a strict moral code, either you are “good,” or you are not. gon is probably one of the most childish and selfish. he sees things in black and white, there is no “gray area” for him. it doesn’t matter how morally
correct you are, if you are useful to gon you are good and if you aren’t you are bad. gon becomes friends with people like killua, who are objectively bad, because killua is good to gon. he doesn’t care about how many people he has killed, he has already decided that killua is
“good.” zepile notices this, and realizes how dangerous that makes him. in the anime, he says something similar. “he didn’t react with accustory glares or by plotting his own evil deeds. his reaction was very simple. innocent curiosity! he opens his mind to everything that
impresses him, right or wrong. which means that he’s dangerous…”. this is a perfect summary of gon’s fucked up moral compass. his “innocent curiosity” is childish, because gon is a child. gon is extremely selfish. he hurts so many people, especially killua. gon can’t see past
the outer layers, that’s why he says to killua that he doesn’t care. killua does care, he would die for gon in a heartbeat. but because of his cool demeanor, because he doesn’t react in the way that gon would react, gon assumes that he doesn’t care. so why should killua interfere
with his business with pitou if none of this means anything to him? gon can’t see that people react in different ways to things. he has a lack of empathy. but doesn’t this make him a sociopath, or other terms people like to toss around? no. it makes him a kid. gon sees things the
way a child would. if an average twelve to fourteen year old was put in the situation gon was in, they would react in a similar manner. we’re used to shonen main characters being righteous and good. however, that is extremely unrealistic in the real world. gon is morally
ambiguous, even if he sees his way as “good”. that’s what makes him such a great character, so relatable. gon is human.
