Hunter x Hunter is celebratory yet exceedingly
unique, defined by many as an eccentric yet deeply organic stream-of-consciousness of a story that
ebbs and flows and isn’t afraid to wander. But while it can be a joy to be taken on a ride such
as this, it does leave the possibility open of being so entranced in the journey that one can
lose track of important details. It’s easy to undervalue core fundamental character traits when
we’re taken on such a sprawling adventure filled with detours that are as rich in depth and breadth
as anything else in the story. And in particular, I think that this can apply to our main
protagonist and the core basis behind why he does so many of the things he does. I don’t know how
exactly Togashi plans to approach future material, but even given these unknowns, I have no
hesitation whatsoever in saying that the boy we’ve stuck with from the beginning has
one most extensively written psychologies and one of the most complete character arcs,
even if it’s unfinished at the moment, and it’s rooted in something so essential yet
so easy to underestimate. There is an overlying element to Gon Freecss that isn’t dwelt on in
the plot nearly as often as it plays a factor in his mind, and as a result, it can be easy
to forget the core psychological reason behind a lot of what he does. But the truth is that
so many of his actions, mental processes and behaviours have basis in something that
is established from the very beginning. Gon is the most disarming, happy-go-lucky,
idealistic character in the story. And yet, despite appearances, he is genuinely chained
down and unable to be truly free due to a mix of misunderstandings, a sad lack of self worth,
unrealistic ideals to live up to and the curse of expectation - all centered around his absent
father. It’s well established that Gon had a happy upbringing on Whale Island. He was given license
to be himself, explore and learn about the world, and he was showered with affection. In many ways,
Mito did a great job in raising him. However, the very fact that he was left on this island on
the first place meant that he was always going to have a dysfunctional problem. The fact
is, Ging left him there to pursue something else and essentially chose that OVER Gon. Ging’s
abandonment as a concept alone immediately fills Gon with feelings of inferiority and makes
him feel like in order to meet him, he must pass some sort of abstract test. Just to have
a chat with his father. This is essentially it, this is the crux. And while one could say
that no one forgets this or Ging’s impact on Gon’s mentality, I think it’s easy to get
into a trap where we don’t quite realize how extensive an effect this is, and the gigantic
amount of different ways it plays a factor. By his perception, Ging’s absense tells Gon
that he isn’t important enough to meet his father. And he wants to. So how does he become
important, how does he become worthy enough? Ging, through leaving and pursuing this concept,
and through inviting Gon into this hunt, planted a seed in Gon which influences so many of
his actions and behaviours. He planted the seed of expectation, and it’s a factor in Gon’s thinking
consistently throughout the story, not often frontloaded but always present. He needs to reach
Ging. He needs to be worthy of reaching Ging. He needs to be stronger, he needs to learn more about
the world. Of course, some of this, particularly his curiosity, is just an essential part of who
he is and integrates pretty seamlessly with these motives. But a lot of what he feels he needs to
do to be worthy of measuring up to and finding Ging happens to coincide with that. Influenced in
no small part from his early encounter with Kite, who seems to embody all that Ging desires from
him as explained in a great tweet thread about this topic that I’ll link in the description,
Gon conceptualizes himself becoming a hunter and from a more general level, getting stronger
and conflates it with a route towards Ging. That is the path that he decides he needs to blaze
for himself, and it’s a path characterized by an ever so slightly gnawing anxiety that leads to
a subtle panic. And as a result, Gon felt like, no matter what, he needed to consistently
make progress towards this goal. From then, Gon formed an ideal of who he had to become
to be good enough to reach Ging in his mind, and strived to reach that ideal with
immense fervor. But there’s a fine line between fervor and desperation, and
crossing it is where things become muddy. A lot of this has to do with the situations
Gon encounters throughout the story, how much they push him, the nuances behind his
success or lack thereof and how that manifests in his motivations. For instance, he gets a thrill
out of combat, but he doesn’t particularly care at all about reaching Battle Olympia. He doesn’t
care for strength for strength’s sake - he only entered to pay back Hisoka, fight him and
use him as a measuring stick for his progress. Hisoka was marked as an adversary for him and
filled him with excitement because the gap was initially so wide that progress was always
going to be very palpable. And so seeing himself getting within reach to his level
is encouraging, despite experiencing defeat. Because as he frames it - getting stronger means
advancement on the path to Ging. And due to how Gon conceptualizes this, defeat here doesn’t
mean failure. He is so flexible and clever, and he doesn’t think of simple defeat or losses
as a shallow game over. He constantly looks for other ways to use opportunities to improve,
such as when he wanted to get Netero to use his right hand despite not being nearly strong
enough to steal the ball, when he felt the need to force Genthru into using his power on him,
or several other little challenges he gives himself throughout the series. Losing is okay,
as long as it helps him learn and as long as he can compensate in some way. But progress is key.
If he isn’t making progress through his defeats, if he isn’t getting better in some way, it’s
drastically more painful than the alternative. And the reverse is true as well. Gon doesn’t want
to win if it isn’t in a way that’s satisfying to him. He wants to win definitively through his
power, because that is a tangible signifier of progress towards Ging. But he just isn’t
strong as he would like, and since he feels this need to be strong, it’s very easy to find
victories unsatisfying. And in compensation, his immense conviction is what carries him.
What’s notable is that in his confrontation with Hanzo during the exam, it isn’t necessarily
a fight to the death or a measure of strength. It’s a measure of conviction and resolve. The one
to surrender first loses. Gon ultimately proves that his will is stronger than Hanzo’s, and so
he wins fair and square given the parameters of that confrontation. But what does he say when he
sees that he is going to win? That the win doesn’t satisfy him. It doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t
feel like a win to him, he doesn’t feel worthy of earning the Hunter’s license despite doing
exactly what he needed to do to pass the exam. And that’s because his method of winning didn’t line
up with the ideal version of himself in his head, the version that is worthy of meeting Ging. That
version of himself is strong and blessed with a superior mentality AND strength to utterly beat
his opponents in every way. But here, Gon only has the mentality, not the physical strength
he believes is required of him for his goal. It’s consistently shown throughout the series
that Gon’s immense mental strength is his boon and trademark. Characters consistently see
that defeating him physically is not nearly as important as defeating him mentally.
And this pushes him onwards, and gains him success. But it ultimately still isn’t good
enough for him on the grandest of scales, because in his mind he knows that in the end,
he needs to be externally strong. And so of course Gon enjoys the fight to an extent,
but the primary reason for this fixation is because these challenges represent very clear
avenues for improvement and PROGRESS to Ging. You can feel his thirst to get
better through how he beats Binolt, but needs to soak as much experience and skill
out of their encounter to make it as worthwhile for progress as possible. He needs to
beat Hisoka, because it’s a measure of strength for Ging. He needs to beat Razor and
prove that he’s strong, and Razor ultimately conceding and revealing how he is one of
Ging’s trusted confidants raises Gon up, making him feel like perhaps he is becoming that
ideal self. That he is becoming what is expected of him. And it’s invigorating. Gon was able
to persevere through not just determination, but power in the dodgeball game. This bred
immense confidence in his strength, the most he’s ever had. But again.. here is where we go
back to that idea - people always stumble, people always show weakness. And it is in flexibility,
not in being brittle, where we progress. We see early on how frustrating it is for Gon to
feel weakness. Weakness shows inadequacy, and it shows that he’s far from his goal. And so
from the beginning, Gon hated weakness. However, he could compensate for it and feel better about
it because with the stakes relatively lower, he could do simple things to make up for it
and that distance never felt insurmountable. The lower stakes in earlier situations meant
that Gon was able to either compensate or be dynamic enough to feel progress immediately after
hardship. But what happens when you feel closer than you’ve ever been to your ideal self, that
your goal is within reach, and then suddenly you’re shown that not only is the world so
much more dangerous than you can imagine, but your strength was absolutely nothing in
the face of that danger? What happens when it results in such immense and total defeat
that it leads to the death of a loved one for reasons dependent on you? Kite loses his arm and
is left in dire straits in large part due to them, and this is when Gon’s resolve for this
is tested to its limits. How can you be flexible here? How can you bounce back and make
up for mistakes when that mistake is so immense? There is no progress here, and so for his own
peace of mind, Gon has to fabricate a situation leading to false progress. Kite will be okay.
He has to be. The alternative is unthinkable. We’ll get him back. But for that, we need to
be stronger. He’s then defeated by Knuckle, and it’s a devastating blow as he’s reminded
once again of his weakness. But shortly after, he bounces back from it once more. Because
there is still something he can do - get stronger even still to get to Kite. Kite
is gone and left as this husk? Fine. We’ll get him back. But for that, we need to be
stronger. Because it represents what I need to be to satisfy that ideal, and it is the
opposite of what makes me feel inadequate. It’s easier to see strides of progress when
you start at the beginning, but as I said, as things ramp up, properly compensating for
that weakness gets more and more difficult when mistakes lead to worse outcomes. We were
constantly shown situations where Gon would stumble, but we never got to a point where
he was completely faced with his perceived inadequacy in the worst sort of way with nothing
to fall back on. There was always something for him to cling on to thanks in large part to his
flexible thinking. And the more we progress, the more he feels genuine worry about reaching
up to his lofty goals - the expectations the he believes Ging has of him, and as a result, the
expectations he has for himself. So he slowly becomes more desperate, and the complexion
slowly becomes darker as his view narrows, which is shown brilliantly in the
Nagareboshi Kirari ending - he’s fixated, one-minded narrowed in on trying to be like Kite
and Ging as the stakes grow bigger and bigger. This is such a devastatingly dangerous
psychological state and the signs were always there regarding how he combatted adversity,
but he just wasn’t punished prior to this and was instead actively encouraged in Greed Island.
But here, he slowly and subconsciously starts to see his limits and that subtle nagging feeling
planted by his need to get to Ging along with his guilt about all of this causes him to becoming
immensely volatile. How to compensate for the worst outcome of kite being gone? Well, he
has to be okay. Oh, he’s not okay. Well, we have to get him back. What if we can’t? We
don’t think about that. And once again, overlying all of this is that sad, powerful sentiment: I
CAN STILL BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR GING. Ironically, this sort of thinking is what actively makes
him the antithesis of Ging. Gon is completely and totally tunnel visioned in this regard,
and tunnel vision does not allow for detours. He absolutely needed to get Kite back. And
regardless of whether or not something deep inside him knew Kite was dead, he held onto the part of
himself that had to believe. And along with that, there is his primal need to get back at Pitou
- and these two aspects combine to form the ULTIMATE compensation. If Gon can defeat Pitou
and get Kite back, all will be okay. He can prove that he’s strong, make up for his past weaknesses,
save someone so important to him and prove himself worthy to meet Ging. It’s his last chance. He
needs to get to Pitou, and once he does, as he says, he needs to fight Pitou, and then get Kite
back. The fighting may not have seemed necessary given the situation, as Pitou was completely
submissive and willing to save to his demands, but for someone as fixated on strength and power
as Gon, it was nearly as essential as saving Kite. Confirmation of Kite’s state and his worst
fears made everything clear, and as we know, Gon was overcome by guilt and malice and rage
- with so much of this directed at himself. And here, everything is laid bare. There was nothing
left to compensate for, nothing to hide from, no progress. He had failed. He could not
become to person he felt Ging wanted him to be, he would never measure up to that ideal self, and
not only was he not good enough to reach that, but he had become overconfident and failed
so utterly that it lead to Kite’s death. It’s all too much for Gon. His failure,
his weakness, his burdens and self-hatred. Gon raged at Pitou earlier due partly to a very
complex moral situation that he had a lot of trouble handling but the transformation here was
primarily due to his total and complete hatred for himself in that moment and how it coalesced with
how brittle he really was with nothing to fall back on for the first time. He felt responsible
and guilty for Kite being killed. He needed to take him back because of course he cared for
him, but his idealized insistence that Kite would be fine was from the start also a way of
making up for his weakness and guilt. Kite had to be okay. Because he was strong, yes, but also
because he couldn’t stomach the possibility of he wasn’t. He didn’t want to face reality.
And he ultimately gives himself up to die, not caring as the frustration of not being able to
measure up to what he wishes he could be consumes him and in some way, punishing himself for not
being good enough for this unreachable ideal. It’s heartbreaking. He broke due to the guilt, and he
broke due to hating and cursing his own weakness, and turning into the quote unquote strongest thing
in response, which got him nowhere despite utterly beating Pitou and becoming like Kite was from a
shallow level. Ironically yet very fittingly, once he becomes the epitome of strength and the outward
manifestation of his ideal, it was the most hollow he’s ever been. And this need to be strong and
become worthy all has root in finding Ging and his assumption that he needs to make these desperate
strides to become good enough to measure up. Killua and Gon are deceptively similar in that
both harbor huge insecurities pertaining to self worth related to these things that they
idealize. But while Killua internalizes and focuses inward while thinking about how to be
worthy of Gon, Gon’s ideas of how he needs to be better to reach Ging project outward through
the manifestations of all these psychological mechanisms and his eventual self-punishment. And
Killua, through no fault of his own but due to his psychological situation, romanticized Gon. He
was completely correct in seeing all that there is to love about the boy, but he didn’t see his
flaws because he was blinded by his light. He romanticized his blind spots as admirable optimism
or accepted them, and because he never saw himself as good enough, he wasn’t able to properly realize
until it was too late that Gon had faults that needed changing. He wasn’t equipped with any means
of saving him from this and ultimately knew Gon’s state better than anyone, but instead of stopping
it, he resigned himself to potentially having to go out in a blaze WITH him. Not seeing himself as
the answer that he was. And along the way to this, those around Gon who might otherwise have thought
that his mindset was dangerous instead encouraged him for the sake of the mission, and all of
those prior to this who had made note of Gon’s behaviours never once spoke up to try and curtail
them. It was just a darkly perfect marriage of so many elements that lead to this implosion,
and so something like this was always going to happen from the moment Gon set out to become
something that reality would not let him become. But what’s insane about this is that Ging didn’t
even intend to instill this into Gon’s mind. He wanted him to become strong and follow in his
footsteps to an extent, but the reason he was so elusive wasn’t because Gon wasn’t good enough
or worthy. It’s because he was ashamed of being a bad father and too bashful and shy to meet the kid
he had done such wrong to. Not only was what he set out to do impossible, but it was pointless.
Because in the end and past a certain point, Gon’s strength didn’t really matter all that much
when it came to meeting Ging. He needed a license, true, and that’s no easy feat, but it’s
something that he was completely capable of and he accomplished this very early. For Ging’s
plan, he needed to beat Greed Island and Razor, and that is extremely difficult but imbued with
a versatility in how this can be achieved. But there was really no need to try to measure up to
Hisoka, to try and get stronger in Chimera Ant, and when it all came down to it he actually
didn’t even need to beat Greed Island, even if it was extremely beneficial
and key to understanding Ging. Because as a result of Netero’s death, Gon
stumbles into Ging coincidentally in a room full of the vast majority of hunters in the
world and them meeting really didn’t have much to do with him progressing to get stronger and
stronger. There are lots of variables tied to this of course, but really they could’ve easily
met anyway any time after Gon got his license due to the nature of the election. And this, along
with the fact that Kite really ended up being okay in the end, is the ultimate demonstration of
the futility of Gon’s mindset here. Some criticize this decision because of the futility of Gon’s
acts, but that was always the actual purpose and conclusion here. There was never any productivity
to Gon’s acts and acting the way he did was only ever going to lead to eventual self-destruction.
So in being shown in the most overt way that all that he did was entirely unnecessary, and
in finally stumbling into meeting Ging, he is able to see that Ging really isn’t this
symbol to be idealized, and meeting and genuinely talking with the man makes him see that he
really is just a man. (“I met Ging, it was cool, but whatever.” Manga panel, maybe 342/343?)
Wise and learned, experienced and impressive, but just a man nonetheless, one that does not
demand of Gon to be some unrealistic ideal. So in coming to understand this, Gon sees that
he really doesn’t have to live up to that, he sees that there is no need to constantly fixate
and punish himself for not being good enough. It’s a complete self-contained character arc here
from being possessed by expectations and fantasy, to being freed from every chain and given license
to simply breathe, and take things day by day. Gon is freed here, and able to just live - to
look back and see the beauty of his journeys and realize that they were far more important
than his end point, to see detours and immerse himself in them, to live slowly and fully and not
feel this desperation to progress all the time, to learn and think things through with a broader
perspective, this time without Nen. And I’m not sure if Togashi intends for him to ever use his
Jajanken again, but it would be fitting if it faded away along with his childish and narrow view
after his newly gained maturity in the wake of his self-destruction. He has finally learned that he
need not consistently adjust himself to living up to some lofty ideal, and that simply living and
learning is the way forward. He has stumbled, but he is alive. And through simply living naturally,
without this pressure and burden imposed on him, he can find total value in just taking things
one step at a time. Many thanks for watching.
