How Gon Became A MONSTER!

main characters they are the conduits through which our favorite fictional stories of all time were towed through and while some main characters play a massive role in the universe in how all the historical events in the universe pan out like Naruto other main characters work more as a way to introduce us to other characters who will carry the story for the large majority of that story's run like Yuji and this is the beauty of main characters there's as many main characters as there is fictional universes and while a lot of Shonen main characters feel as though they're being copy and pasted from some grander scheme on how to make the perfect Shonen MC there are some shown in MC who truly break that mold however since interacting with a fictional universe is pretty much the most individual thing that one can do a lot of people have differing opinions on different MCS a main character that you could think is nuance and underappreciated incredibly complicated and cool other people could deem as OneNote a character who doesn't break the mold but is a perfect example of the mold and there's nothing wrong with that technically as people are into visuals so are the experiences they're gonna have with certain pieces of fictional media but the reason that I'm saying all this is because my favorite main character in all of fictional media is somebody that a lot of people refer to as OneNote as boring as a symbol of the mold and personally I just don't see it see my favorite main character of all time across all media is gone from Hunter Hunter but I stand relatively alone on this hill see a lot of people referred to gone as a boring MC citing the fact that he's a child who's protected by the people around him and never really displays much in the way of character development and anytime gone goes through something truly consequential that should have made him develop as a character he kind of shrugs it off however for as long as I've known gone that is to say since I first consumed hunter hunter in either anime or Manga form I've never seen that but since Andre was one of the first anime I ever saw it sent me into a spiral in the early days of my weebdom it got me thinking do I enjoy boring OneNote MCS am I a fan of the mold that they used to cast these Shonen MC's over and over and over again these soft Soul archetypes that are a ray of sunshine in their universe and only ever truly get angry when you hurt their friends these symbols of Perpetual all innocence in the massive amount of power that they have to hold on to said Perpetual innocence and what I realized is I do like that kind of character I like Goku more than I like Vegeta I like Naruto more than I like Sasuke I like Ichigo more than I like or you or renji or Rukia I like Luffy more than I like Zorro I am incredibly drawn to these archetypal main characters because I myself am forever The Optimist my job is to yell about anime I've held on to my innocent I live a childlike existence and thus I find these characters these rays of sunshine these Perpetual monuments to child-like innocence incredibly relatable but that doesn't mean that gon falls into that categorization see what I realized is that while I do love the molds it's why I gravitate towards those Sunshine characters gone doesn't exist within that mold though at a surface level it might appear as though he does in actuality once you begin to peel back the onion that is gone you'll realize he far from that mold going well-being that archetypal MC that ray of sunshine that only truly shows their darkness when you hurt their friends is also much more than that see for those of you who have consumed Hunter Hunter's background noise gone might seem one note child blundering his way through a complicated world and every single time he runs into a problem he's able to get just strong enough to get over that problem and in that capacity he's very similar to all of the other previous Shonen protagonists that I've listed a character who's always as strong as he'll need to be but as you get deeper into Hunter Hunter and deeper into gone as a character you begin to realize that he's actually nothing like that but what is he like what is the true archetyping of gum and how does he break the mold of your typical Shonen protagonist well we're going to be answering all those questions in a whole lot more today guys but first please for me like this video subscribe to the page and hit that notary Bell and if you like the idea of me doing deep dives into some of your favorite anime characters guys you're gonna love my anime podcast talk is anonymous or me and Daddy Mata break down everything that happened in anime this week it's available on YouTube Spotify and apple podcasts see as somebody who's personally watched Hunter Hunter I believe five to seven times I have a very close connection to the story and thus the city horse and be like oh how did you guys miss some of these subtle undertones would be pretentious it's my favorite anime it's my favorite manga it has my favorite characters I consume it over and over and over again unless I'd like to think that I'm able to make connections in the hunter under universe thematically that your average person on one watch through may or may not have made so I don't want this video to come across as oh you simpletons couldn't even figure out Going's character I just have a close personal connection to him as a character and the universe now that I have that incredibly important caveat out of the way let's get into the video see everything I've pretty much said in this video up to this point has just been lumping going in with all the other archetypals shown in MCS kind of flying directly in the face of the point that I'm trying to make however the biggest differential between gone and all of the other previous Shonen MCS that I've listed is the protection of Innocence see characters like Naruto or Goku or Luffy represent the protection of childlike innocence they're people who are thrust into incredibly scary and mentally scarring situations however their sheer power and the sheer power of the determination allows them to protect their childlike innocence Naruto fights an entire War where 20 000 people die he lives through the death of his father and his mother he's shunned as an orphan his only friend is a swing and yet he never loses his smile to use a well-known but unfortunately religious analogy Here Naruto is supposed to be the Jesus archetype a man born into a world filled with evil and even when that world would try to shove their evil onto this Golden Boy that Golden Boy would arise and become a man a Shepherd to lead these people out of their evil ways and the way that these MCS achieve that is through overwhelming power so even though the world to the universe is filled with these massive powerful bad guys trying to impose their evil Wills on The Golden Boys and the world around them these main characters are always able to get just strong enough to defeat that evil and thus since they're in this Perpetual cycle of Victory they so close victories they never truly have the Innocence that they carry destroyed and therefore an incredibly derivative terms they use their power to protect their innocence which makes sense Shonen an anime is specifically targeted towards young boys young boys who live with the ideology that they can take on the world and that they can bend the world to their will through Power and friendship an entire subgrouping in the population that hasn't truly realized what the Earth can be like and thus these main characters walk out in front of us as these jesus-like archetype characters who are meant to represent what Humanity could truly be if we had enough power to protect our innocence but gone doesn't represent that maybe on a surface level it appears as though he represents the asgone just like all of the other MCS that I've listed get strong enough every single Arc to defeat the big bad that he's up against at least that's what it appears like but while these other MCS might represent protecting their innocence through the means of power gone actually represents the loss of innocence in essence he is the antonym of this typical Shonen MC gon starts a story with the same level of childlike innocence as any other MC in history however unlike every other MC in history gone can't protect this childlike innocence and Arc after Arc that innocence is stripped away from him and if that childlike innocence isn't Stripped Away From Him in an arc it's because somebody who has a better grasp of what Humanity in the earth can be like is protecting that innocence for him in this way while gone is the main character of Hunter Hunter the timeline is a time bomb until eventually either gone isn't strong enough to rise to the challenge or there isn't somebody strong enough to be there to protect gone in this innocence the story is a game of Jane except instead of a tower of blocks you're pulling blocks out of a dam till eventually the damn bursts see cone realizes Arc after Arc that he doesn't have the power to protect those around him and he especially doesn't have the power to protect himself he realizes slowly but surely that the world is outside of his control and that is very astutely symbolized by the fact that gon starts his story on a small island catching the biggest fish on the island going rather clearly in this moment is displaying the fact that he on this small fishing island has become the biggest fish in a very small pond and thus asgone has become the biggest fish in this very small pond he wants to see the world's other Pond the bigger pawns and maybe see if he's still the biggest fish in those and thus gon goes off to the hunter exams we're gone very quickly realizes that he's not even close to the biggest fish in the hunter exam gone goes toe-to-toe with the likes of hisoka and Nero people whose power he may never reach he battles against Hanzo somebody who we as an audience and go and as a character didn't even know was that powerful and yet the level of class difference between Hanzo a relatively non-character so far as we knew and gon our main character is so glaring there's nothing gon can do going can't even so much as get up without being knocked out again by Hanzo however gone persists as Hanzo isn't allowed to kill him until eventually Hanzo Taps out of the battle and gone moves forward but I know what you're saying mix seems like gone was able to win through childlike perseverance but what we have to realize here is that gone does not care about protecting himself that has never been the core tenet of what gon is about in fact gone more often than not will almost die in order to save those around him and therefore gone succeeding in a battle against Hanzo by letting himself get knocked out a bunch is not a victory foregone so far as his moral standing would say because what gone is actually most interested in is protecting his friends of which he has three in the hunter exams kilawa karapika and leoria however after gon's battle against Hanzo he's knocked unconscious and the scone isn't in a situation where he can either help or watch his friend's battle in their Hunter exam battles and thus kilowatt technically loses his battle when he kills the person he was battling against and there was nothing that gone possibly the one person who could have broken kilowatt out of his hypnotic State could do because of gun's weakness and inability to battle against somebody like Hanzo in a traditional matter and thus going for all intents and purposes at least tagon has failed in this Hunter exam Arc passing was obviously important to him he needs his hunter license to one day find Jing but his friends passing and more importantly his friends being with him is just as important if not more important than him passing and that's a stark reality for who's now essentially realized that his current power level cannot protect the people around him and that's the first thing that going does upon Awakening from his coma is going to find kilowatt but once again as gon arrives at the zolta compound he's too weak to even get in in fact go and liorio and kropica all together are too weak to get in however after some training with the guard they're able to enter into the soul that compound where objectively they all probably should have died see as the Oreo crappie cut and go and make their way deeper and deeper into this old dick compound they have to start dealing with some real obstacles the canary the butler who won't let Goan pass a certain line and over and over and over again gone puts his body on the line to try and cross this line because once again gone isn't strong enough to get past Canary in a conventional sense however once his determination causes Canary to waver even a little bit hikio kilua's mother shoots her in the head with an end bullet now Kikyo and kalato in that moment could have killed all three of them very easily however In This Moment all of them were being protected by Silva zoldik see Silva the patriarch of the family told kikio to not kill them because Silva wanted kilowatt to go out with them Adventure the world and then come back to the zodics when he was prepared as Silva understands that kilowall one day will be stronger than either him or Zeno but simply for the small crime of intruding upon the soul that compounded gone very easily could have been killed and forgotten about So In This Moment gone is not only being protected by Silva but also kind of kilowatt which will be a trend mind you after kilowatt is retrieved from the zoltic compound him and gone go to York New City to participate in the heavens Arena and for a while about 190 levels it appears as though kilowa and gone are in fact the big fish however as kiloan gong make it to the 200th floor they realize they're lacking something and that that something is net in that monsters like sasora and Guido and hisoka exist on the 200th floor and they can use an ability that neither gon or kilua know how to use but here's the thing even technically after gon and kilua learn how to use nen gon isn't prepared for his fights go and battles ginskito and for those who don't remember all the names in Hunter that's the guy with all the tops who also is himself a top and not like in the you get it however going while using nen still loses to this other nen user it has his forearm shattered and thus gone even though he's able to recover from injuries very fast isn't in a situation advantageous enough where he can battle again on floor 200 without being demoted but kilowar isn't in a similar situation kilowatt not only wins his fight against the electric whip user but also sneaks into sadaso's room with a knife and says if you try to fight me or goad I will come back here and kill you and what heaven's arena is supposed to depict of us as viewers is the fact that kilua is necessary in maintaining gone sense of Innocence it's supposed to depict to us that gon's lactadasical nature won't actually help in the real world when things get tough and kilua is acting as the blueprint of the level of brutality that one needs to make it through the darkest sections of the hunter hunter universe and therefore because kilua was raised as the monster with a level of brutality you would never see in a child his level of brutality is able to protect the level of innocence in love that exists in gone but this isn't the only time that gone is protected gone on floor 200 also gets his battle against hisoka where he's able to land one decisive blow against hisaka however if you've read the Manga Beyond where the anime ends you'll know that one punch is definitely not enough to put hisaka down however the referee of the fight understanding that he's is way more powerful than cone quickly gets the fight over with by giving hisaka 10 points protecting gon from Grievous bodily harm and once again we have somebody who understands the brutality of the world and understands the day danger that hisako represents to this child who's nowhere near him in terms of power level and gets going out of that fight as fast and safely as possible and thus the irony of gun's characters while he's singularly motivated in protecting those around him he's usually the person being protected because fortunately even though he's blundering his way through an incredibly Dark and Dangerous world there's people around him that are strong enough to make sure that that dark and dangerous World never breaks that damn but after Heaven's Arena it only gets worse for go and we begin to see those first cracks in that damn see after the heavensarine arc we have the York New City auction Arc we're going and kilo are trying to use the money that they got from Heaven's Arena to buy a copy of Greed Island however while this Arc is supposed to be a light and jovial Arc about two kids trying to get enough money together to buy a video game it's anything but that see the York New City auction draws the Phantom troop the world's most famous and deadliest assassins and thieves and they want everything everything from the York New City auction they want to take as a massive bounties put out on members of the Phantom troop and go to kilowatt need the money to buy a copy of Greed Island they begin tracking the members of the Phantom troop and as they now believe that they've mastered Nan and zetsu they believe that they should be able to deal with people like the Phantom trip but once again gone goes through a study of hubris Cohen has always been able to track things without them knowing that he was there he was even able to hide from hisaka during the hunter exam and thus for all intents and purposes he had no reason to believe that the Phantom troop would know that he was tracking them but they did and they caught gone and kilua twice and it was as golden kilowatt came face to face with members of the Phantom troop like Nobunaga that they realized they weren't even in a pond they weren't even in a lake they were in the ocean weaker members of the Phantom troop like pakanoda were still massively stronger than gonan kilowatt combined let alone combat focused members of the Phantom troop like Nobunaga and thus when gon gets brought back to the Phantom troops hideout in Nobunaga insists that they arm wrestle defeating him time and time again almost breaking gone's hand bone gets angry this is truly the first time that something hasn't been between gone in unbridled evil and its wild gone is arm wrestling with nobunaka that we see the first crack on the dam see gone becomes infuriated not because Nobunaga is hurting his hand or beating him in arm wrestling going becomes infuriated because of how many people the Phantom troop have killed he wonders how they can go about their day-to-day lives knowing that they've murdered dozens if not hundreds of people and gon lets his anger out and it manifests as Ren that going channels into his arm to overpower the likes of Nobunaga and in that moment goon's possible hysterical anger driven in power is hinted at but before going can manifest enough strength the battle against any members of the Phantom troop Phaeton grabs it by the back of the neck and cranks his arm behind his back see some will push back against this point and say that Gohan has been dealing with unbridled evil for a long time I mean he's been around tisaka since almost episode one but hiseka is an enigma and also gone doesn't know he's a member of the Phantom troop gon simply knows that hisaka's nen freaks him out in that he's cuts a person freaks him out as well as understanding that hisaka is strong but that's about it gone understands the Phantom troop is evil gon understands that the Phantom troop hurt other people and that's what makes gon upset not that he's been hurt but that they've hurt other people but gone wouldn't be done with the Phantom troop as the next Arc after York New City auction is Greed Island and one of the first things that go nikilo will have to go through after entering into Greed Island is realize that all the people who tried to recruit them into a group so they could work together to gather all the cards have been marked with bombs however since gun and kilowa decided they wanted to complete the video game on their own they've been spared from the bomber but once again let's remind ourselves that gon has never once been interested in Saving himself and thus all of these relatively nice people who wanted to work with gun in kilwa in a Cooperative fashion have now been killed and once again there was nothing gone or kilowatt could do in the circumstance gone is completely into utterly confronted by the greed and brutality of human nature as the bomber wants a clear Greed Island and gather all the cards of the people he's killed for the possible monetary benefits at the end and thus the entirety of the Greed Island Arc is wrapped around stopping that bomber less for revenge for the people he's already killed in more to stop him before he kills anybody else and thus gon and kilowatt link up with biskey and they Master Nan and this leads us to a final blowout battle at the end of Greed Island where cone once again puts his life on the line to defeat the bomber going so far as to let the bomber blow off one of his hands but gone couldn't have accomplished this by himself bolt pisky and kilua had to take on members of the bombers crew as well as set in a leopard trap forget through the bomber to fall into So Gone could be victorious however once again in this battle against gendra we see gone begin to tap into this monsterized idea of how to acquire strength as he sits there with one hand left using Jaja Cannon a borderline defenseless man to knock him unconscious to steal his cards you begin to realize that gon's innocence is slowly slipping away from him demeanor changes he uses scowl on his face he despises getting through for everything that he is and he's willing to kill this man as he douses a bomb user with gasoline in order to be victorious however the true reality of Gohan's character shift doesn't happen until the Chimera antarc the Chimera antarct for many is considered too long or boring or the worst arkan Hunter Hunter which I think is inaccurate on all three counts I actually think the Chimera and dark is Hunter Hunter is best dark I think it's the best written I think it has the best pacing I think it is the best job at fleshing out the Universe I think it has the best characters but more than anything it is also the best at developing gone as a main character and in a very non-traditional way mind you see the problem with the Chimera antarct is that it's the first Arc where there is no one strong enough to protect gone sure in the early days of the Chimera and dark kite seems to be this incredibly powerful Hunter he is an end weapon able to manifest different kinds of nen weapons depending on the lottery pool his design is cool he was once with Jing everything about him seems like an immovable mountain of a man who was going to clear out this entire Arc for gone like people had done forgone in all the arcs prior but that is not the case and in actuality the Chimera antarct would be the first Arc where gun truly has to face the reality that he's been protected from for the entire show see what kite seems like and really is an incredibly powerful Hunter the Chimera ants in specifically the royal guard are different beasts entirely characters so strong that pretty much nothing in the universe can take them out and thus even though kite is designated as the protector of this Ark he dies and quickly see even kite a man who saved gon's Life as a child a man who trained with jing a possible three-star Hunter one of the strongest Hunters on Earth is killed like he's nothing and while gon had dealt with loss on his periphery in places like Green Island where people he knew were killed by the bomber in this circumstance the one thing that gon's entire personality is built around his core tenet is broken gone the child willing to lose his own life to protect those around him causes kite to lose his life protecting gong and thus In This Moment gone begins to realize every single situation throughout the duration of this entire story where he's been protected and while in every other situation things had turned out squeaky clean in this situation the person who was strong enough to battle against the malevolent forces of the other side was yanked away from go and thus it's in this moment that the dam that's protecting gon's innocence is destroyed and therefore so is gone see gone up until this moment was innocence personified he fell into your archetypal mold of an MC but what happens when you take that innocence away what happens when you make the main character realize that not only can they not hold on to that innocence but they're not strong enough to protect that innocence some characters will get more powerful so they can get to the new threshold that they need to be at in order to protect that innocence and that's not what gon does and that's why he breaks the mold of your archetypal shown in MC sigon instead of trying to get stronger kind of loses himself I mean yes he does train with knuckle and shoot to get stronger so he can enter into the Chimera ants territory he didn't be somewhat useful and while Going's primary focus hasn't really changed all that much as gon doesn't know whether or not kite is dead Going's primary focus would change very soon see obviously going trains with knuckle and shoot in order to be strong enough to get kite back which could very much be classified as protecting his friends however the childlike idealism that kite is still alive is actually supposed to work as the Perfect backdropping Two Guns character development but asgone works his way into Chimera and territory he realizes that kite can't come back but even after going figures out kite is dead he believes that Pito should be able to bring kite back to life and this childlike idealism and inability to actually grasp the actual situation is supposed to enunciate this loss of Innocence that gon is going through to show that once that innocence the entirety of gon's personality is destroyed what's replaced is a monster product of the evil that gon's damn has been keeping out this entire time but now that there's a vacuum where that innocence once was the evil of the outside world is coming in and filling that vessel and once that last bit of childlike Whimsy and innocent is Stripped Away from Gone he's no longer gone he's the adult version of himself a monster created by making a pact to give up the entirety of his life in order to get revenge because once again Going's life has never mattered to gon however Going's life has never mattered to gon in matters of saving his friends but in this moment of gone monsterizing he's not saving his friends he's getting revenge he's equalizing with a world that he's just now interacting with for the first time and as he smashes pito's head over and over and over again making it essentially a paste cone is in anguish over the loss of Innocence that he's gone through punching away at the personification of the evil that's been trying to chip away at gun for his entire existence as gun's body in its adult form is symbolic of the fact that gon wasn't ready for the world the level of power that gone would need in order to beat back the evil of the world and hold on to his ideals he wouldn't be able to get until he was full grown and the price that he paid for believing that he was a fish big enough to swim in the ocean was his life now obviously gone doesn't die he's saved by Alika but figuratively gone does die and is Reborn as a much smaller fish see when God is brought back after the Chimera and dark he's brought back with no nen see the contract that he made with himself is that he would take all of the men he would ever have in his lifetime to destroy Peto and now that he's been reborn his power has been adjusted to how powerful go now realizes he is in the greater scope of the universe which is nothing see gone is a character study in hubris he's the Icarus of the anime world he shows us how the lackadaisical approaches of Anime characters to real life issues wouldn't work in an actual circumstance and that without divine intervention or somebody else more powerful and more verse in How the Universe works there to protect you you'll lose or at the very least if you win it'll cost you your life gone is cumbersome to those around him dangerous where there's no one left to protect him he is a personification of the rage that a child feels when they realize the Innocence they were raised with doesn't work in the real world he's a walking study of the feeling that every child turning into an adult has felt when you realize that the superpowers that you thought you had as a child weren't real and they can't help you God is a child raised to believe that he is the strongest amongst Humanity however when he's thrown into the anime equivalent of high school or college or the corporate world he realizes that change can't happen alone he realizes that the world eats the innocent and destroys the people who believe they can change it on their own Gohan separates himself from every other MC because not everything works out for him he gets tripped up gets powerful gets in some fights loses everything and heads home weaker than he started his representation to all of us that will sometimes we believe that we're bigger and badder than everything the worlds could ever throw at us without help and humility one day we might realize we're just a big fish in a small pond and thus I say to the people who believe that gone is one note that he's not one note you just can't read the sheet music but what do you guys think do you think going is an interesting MCU depicts the loss of Innocence or do you believe he's one note and boring tell me in the comments below and why you guys are down there please for me like this video subscribe to the page and hit that note about so blue I'm flaking so much and I'm in pain [Music] I remember

Channel: The Weeb Commander

Views: 49,009

Keywords: anime, anime explained, nchammer23, weeb commander, manga explained, manga, gon freecss, gon, freecss, hunter x hunter, hxh, hunter x hunter explained, hxh explained, gon explained, gon freecss explained, adult gon explained

Id: CYaTJxl5JGU

Length: 29min 4sec (1744 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023