Gon is NOT What You Think...

gone sucks he really does he's selfish morally great kind of pathetic ability wise and generally a detriment to everyone around him hello and welcome to the new world review your source for psychotic pre-teens my name is Liam and this is something I've wanted to do for a while I have mixed feelings on gone if this character were a cocktail then he'd be made up of one part standard Shonen protagonist one part crippling hypocrisy one part daddy issues and two parts of very very angry little boy depending on who you speak to gong could be one of the most love shown in protagonists or one of the most profoundly hated and a lot of this has to do with the fact that he is a child which is not at all a rare thing for a Shonen series most of its protagonists are children and or young adults which is just a fancy way of saying children but among them gone may be the most realistic incarnation of what would happen if you put a 12 year old in these sorts of extreme situations not everyone is a Goku or a Luffy or an aster and generally kids in these kind of situations and they're probably not going to turn out too great gone is not an inherently good or a bad person it's sadly not as simple as that because gone's own Simplicity prevents that sort of designation the best way I think I could describe gone and probably any pre-teen is that they are a blank slate it's very easy for us adult folk to judge what actions are right or wrong according to a stringent code of morality or societal rules that we've developed over decades however when it comes to the mind of a child distinguishing good from bad it's surprisingly not that easy that's why they're children because they're still learning the things and in that way I would actually strongly compare gone to Maryland both of whom were completely inexperienced children things struggling to Define their place in the world one began in your most standard nurtured human upbringing whilst the other was brought into the world with the mindset of a violent ant creature also this video is sponsored by the ants underground Kingdom the world's first ant-based simulation strategy mobile game available on the Amazon app store where you can save up to 25 on apps games and in-app items using Amazon coins I mean really have you ever wondered what it would be like to become the all-powerful ant king well in this game you get control of your own ant hill to serve as your base for exploration and building plus it features a funky gacha system for hatching hundreds of special ants and you can even learn their real habits in game they're all simply waiting for you to discover cultivate and form the ultimate ant Army plus this game is so damn smooth featuring stupidly high quality graphics and an art style that I would describe as both elegant realistic and cute I said both but then I said three things well I'm not taking it back this game has over 35 million downloads and you can plus one by clicking the link in the description but in addition they've also prepared some wonderful gifts for everyone if you enter the following coding game gifts are nice so do that thing but for now it's back to you me one began in your most standard nurtured human upbringing whilst the other was brought into the world with the mindset of a violent ant creature and yet the two of them really aren't all that different we see both of them grow learn make choices and in the end the monster ends up not quite being the one who it is that you thought it was you said that terribly but I I'm not re-recording it which brings us to point number one as to why it is that gone sucks which is that he is incredibly selfish for the most part anyway because there is something that we need to know to ride out of the gate in hunter hunter gone's character is inconsistent and it's because of togashi's evolving writing style he did not start the series with the intent to corrupt gone and as a result a lot of his actions during the hunter exam and zodiac family Arc actually fit quite perfectly into the standard Shonen protagonist tropes he is kind caring observant and generally portrayed as like a second coming of Jesus Christ because he's always helping healing and saving those around him and whilst gone does have a couple of troubling retrospective red flags during these arcs his Evolution came later along with togashi's abrupt shift in writing from about Heaven's Arena onwards though gone becomes problematically selfish one great example is deliberately disobeying Wing who told him not to take a match on the 204 for two months so that Wing could properly teach him Nan and as a consequence teach him properly not to die but gone heard this and thought yeah you know kind of want to punch some things so he took a match against Guido lost horrifically and risked himself becoming permanently injured or even being killed not for any greater reason mind you in a more standard Story the protagonist could still do this but they would have a much stronger reasoning behind it like maybe their friend was captured and they were forced to fight or they ran a clock and like they'll be ejected from the 200th floor in 24 hours so we've got to take action or perhaps the protagonist just has some serious beef with the person they agreed to fight like oh I'm gonna mess you up and that goes on to teach them a lesson about controlling their emotions gone has none of this he was not forced to fight he had no feelings towards his opponent whatsoever there was no time pressure and no one was in any danger no one except gone who put himself in the danger but essentially gone just did it because he got impatient and I love that because it's exactly what a child would do gone doesn't understand the consequences that his actions will have and really what 12 year old does I call gone selfish which is a fairly negative thing but that's a problem for him as a person however for us as readers and watches it is quite a unique treat it makes gone worth paying attention to because his crippling flaw has the ability to generate some pretty Peak and naturally occurring drama like I said in a more standard series The Hero would need a more convoluted reason to break the rules which sometimes can feel a bit clunky with the wrong author but Gone Gone is unrestricted by all of that he can do anything and everything because he's just a stupid selfish child and that allows him to explore a lot of ideas that other main characters are forbidden from touching on one of which is the fact that gone falls into a very morally gray area and for this I'm going to reference the YouTuber Alexander who made a video essay on gon's moral hypocrisy which is a very worthwhile video to watch but during it Alexander dwells on one of gon's lines during York new city where he asks crolo how can you kill people who have nothing to do with you and Alexander goes on to point out how gone became exactly the type of person that he accused crawler and the troop of being ah I would never join you you bad people I would rather die than become whatever it is you are you naughty naughty spiders and a lot of people would interpret this as gun you know taking a bit of a jab at crawler more or less to display his moral superiority and disapproval of crawler's actions I have a different take though when God asks how can you kill people who have nothing to do with you it strikes me as less of a jab and more pure curiosity the same way that a child would ask their parents how babies are made because they're unaware of all of the sex and stuff I do think that gone is genuinely curious and as we would later come to learn God doesn't have you know particularly strong moral positions on stuff like murder one great example of which is Bernal a very minor yet extremely important character within our journey of gone despite being a cold-blooded serial killer he gets put in an almost tragic situation where he is tortured in a hole for 10 days by our protagonists I'll say that again our protagonists caught a man and tortured him for 10 days in a hole all for the purpose of making gon and kilo are stronger it's okay though because penult he's a piece of right well no actually I made according to gone yes yes it is okay but also according to gone benalts is a pretty cool dude after getting as much out of his victim as possible gone thanks Bernard gives him an honorable bow and even refers to him very respectfully as Bernal son ultimately letting him go despite the fact that doing so could endanger the lives of countless people because again Benoit is a serial killer that is the terrifying magic of gondo his childlike mind is either so pure or maybe so sociopathic that he doesn't see the issue with that because spinault helped him I mean against his will mind you but because spinault helped him that makes gone appreciate him and if that's not morally gray then I don't know what is and like I said before there were red flags all throughout Hunter Hunter like when kilua ripped out that dude's heart and gone's response was you know what I'mma make that guy my best friend yeah again though this is not a bad thing not at all the fact that gone has no clearly defined morality Beyond whatever seems to serve him best in the moment makes him infinitely interesting to follow because it makes his actions and future story developments very difficult to predict and reason number the third why gone sucks is because he is consistently outclassed by almost every other character in Hunter Hunter this is probably where gone sucks the most as a main character he is almost always the weak Link in whatever group he's a part of his best friend kilua is light years ahead of him karapika swiftly advances Beyond anyone's expectations bisky and kite their obvious veterans and even the more rookie Hunters like knuckle display a clear dominance over anything and everything gone is capable of throwing at them not only that but gone does admittedly sometimes have good battle sensors but more often than not he seriously fails to judge the situation correctly gone is nion incapable of reading his opponents instead always choosing to launch straight into battle which almost always leads to dire arm losing consequences and the reason why I love this is again because it is realistic a 12 year old with no combat experience who just learned Nan a couple of months ago would get absolutely trounced by even the lower tiers of power in this world and as a result that makes the world of Hunter Hunter feel very intimidating because we're looking at it through the lens of someone who is simply ill-equipped to deal with the overwhelming challenges thrown his way like you see this duck this duck is every opponent gone faces in Hunter Hunter and as a result every time a fight started I felt a genuine sense of dread because I knew that gone might not do the classic thing of power up or think of a clever idea to get out of this intimidating duck situation every fight gone engages in presents a scenario where he could and has on multiple occasions being permanently injured or even fatally wounded and I like that gone's fight history in Hunter Hunter shows just as many losses as it does wins perhaps even more now to be clear gone does have some or shall we say natural benefits tossed his way with being a one in a million gifted nen user and of course being the son of one of the most powerful deadbeat dads in all of manga but considering that he almost sucks even more because he was born into a natural chosen one-style power and yet at every turn he still usually fails but the true genius here is that eventually Togashi uses gon's weakness that has been on display throughout the series as one of his crowning aspects of character development during the Chimera Antarctic here gone becomes consumed by his own weakness and while it is portrayed as a response to kite's death this has really been a whole series coming kite was the straw that broke algon camel's back before now his shocking weakness had not led to any serious non-arm-related consequences but when faced with the idea that his weakness cost kite his life gone went on to choose the most childlike path possible and he decided to throw a tantrum a very serious and a very emotantrum but to tantrum nonetheless and it shows his emotional immaturity which again he is 12 so this is exactly the kind of thing that it is would happen I mean just think back to your pre-teens every time something slightly bad happened it was like the world was ending it was consuming frustrating and painful and you were probably incapable of seeing the bigger picture around it and now apply that to an event as traumatic as kite's death and I think that gone's reaction is pretty damn spot on for his age gone very rapidly reached a point where his selfishness inexperience immaturity and weakness transformed him into a person that was no better than the Phantom Trooper even but not gone was more than willing to kill komugi a completely innocent person during the palace Invasion all because he was so consumed by his own faults and Lust For Revenge which as we all know eventually culminates in the terrifying transformation to adult gone this right here is the true tantrum where Gone In the Heat of the Moment decides to throw everything away his life his relationships and his ability to use nen all for the sake of taking revenge against an androgynous kitty cat and I know that a lot of people here try to argue that Gomez backed into a corner and he did it for survival but that's not what happened at this point gone didn't care about whether he lived or died the only thing he cared about was cracking pito's head open and feasting on the goo inside making them pay for killing kite thus simultaneously satisfying gon's need for power and in the only way he could think of make the situation right for kite and obviously those happened in her completely Twisted ways but that is the beauty of gone he's one of the only shortened protagonists who has had this option of falling into complete darkness so much so that in my opinion he ended up as more of a villain than Maryland did so what is there left to say about God well he sucks as does that he's very simple-minded with that simple mind generally focusing on selfish desires he's emotionally immature as arguably all 12 year olds are his experiences in life so far have left him in a very morally gray and sometimes quite morally black area despite all of his natural advantages in life he wonders this world being almost pathetically weak compared to those around him and when he finally does achieve that low-class power it is a hollow Victory which came at the cost of everything I mean when I put it like that it's a really tragic story but one that I am very glad I got to experience he's not a hero he's not a role model and he's not even a great friend to those he cares about within the world itself gone just sucks and that's what makes him such a fascinating protagonist

Channel: NewWorldReview

Views: 373,648

Keywords: newworldreview

Id: drC8hX4KR1Q

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 14 2022