Eye candy

As someone who saw that too and wondered, “What the hell?” I did some research a while ago and learned that Hisoka turning the man’s arms into flowers only happens in the anime.  In the manga, the man is kneeling, his arms are stumps, and big shocker – no flowers in sight.  

Pretty sure that it’s meant to show the reader that Hisoka just sliced off his limbs with a card.  I mean, Hisoka himself admits that it’s not an illusion. So I guess in the anime, they wanted to give that freaky magician a much more flashy entrance, because – let’s face it – THIS:

…is a lot more dynamic and interesting to look at than a man just screaming about his stumpy arms.  

That being said, the flower thing was never in the original, so as far as how much it reveals about Hisoka’s Nen or magical powers in the anime doesn’t matter, because technically it didn’t belong there in the first place.  

No disrespect to the people at MadHouse animation, of course.  I like that they made Hisoka’s entrance more theatrical; it does suit his character extremely well and makes for one hell of an entrance.  They also probably bypassed some weird Japanese censorship rule too. But once Nen powers were revealed, this magical occurrence no longer made much sense as far as Hisoka’s known abilities go. 

Notice how I said KNOWN ABILITIES.  We have no idea exactly how many abilities he has or how much Hisoka uses Nen, aside from what we have seen on our screens and what he seems to really enjoy sharing with fucking anyone who will listen.  

Yeah, Machi’s not interested in that shit. 

As far as Hisoka’s abilities in Episode 5 (”Hisoka x Is x Sneaky”) go, those are easily explained away with Nen.  Much of it can be understood after the Yorknew City Arc, if you look back at it and make some assumptions about Hisoka’s skill.  

First, let’s look at the Nen ability “wheel”:

By the time we come to understand Nen well enough, we know that Hisoka is a Transmuter.  We also have learned that skilled Nen users can not only use utilize Nen in their category, but to a certain extent in some of the other categories.  For example, Hisoka’s nen is not limited to Transmuter powers (like his Bungee Gum); he can also use Conjuration abilities to up to 80% capacity.  That is, presumably, how he creates the illusion of Texture Surprise.

Or as I like to call it, Magic Gooey Handkerchief Time!

Conjuration can also be how he creates those smokey doubles we see in Episode 5.  He conjures a double of himself which he leaves in plain sight for poor, unsuspecting Gon to attack, and when Gon’s fishing pole strikes the false form of Hisoka, it dissolves into smoke.  Meanwhile, the real Hisoka maneuvers himself behind Gon, thus creating the illusion that he can disappear and reappear at will.  

Mystery solved, right?  Well, just hold on a minute…because we have…

AN AUTHOR HEADCANON BONUS!  YIPPEE! 

(This contains some spoilers, so you’ve been warned.)

So what if we wanted to pretend that this cool-flower-death-entrance-trick thing actually was part of the canon and that Hisoka actually did turn, this poor, unsuspecting fashion victim’s arms into pretty floating flowers in the third episode? Well, despite Hisoka’s known ability to manipulate it masterfully, there’s really no explanation involving Nen that can make sense of this.  Which left many fans who crave logic and closure, like me, feeling much like this:

Right.  It doesn’t make much sense.  

UNLESS…you’d be willing to accept the fact that Hisoka has some actual magical abilities.  Like actual fucking magic, not anything having to do with Nen.  HOW COULD THIS BE?

Well, I wondered about that, and it just so happened that I was reading the latter parts of the manga (the parts that occur after the anime ends - like everything after Chapter 339 or some shit) the characters begin talking a lot about this Dark Continent place that exists waaayyy beyond the boundaries of the known world, and that place is where magical beasts (like Chimera Ants) come from.  It’s also rumored that Human-type creatures live there. 

Makes you kind of feel small, don’t it?

Oh yeah, and Hunters have been planning expeditions and trying to study the lifeforms and resources on the Dark Continent for years.  And in addition to the magical creatures and weird sub-humans, they found some pretty scary shit.  Like stuff that should not be unleashed:

LIke seriously scary, weird, out-of-this-galaxy shit.

But anyway, we’re talking about Hisoka’s abilities here, so if you really want to hear about those, you should read the manga. 

So I got myself into thinking:  

What if one of the human Hunters on an expedition to the Dark Continent mated with one of these strange, maybe-magical, sub-human creatures they encountered there?  

What if they had a child?  

WHAT IF THAT CHILD WAS HISOKA?  

Yes, you Hisoka.

He would inherit his Nen abilities from his human, Hunter parent, and his magical abilities from his otherworldly, magical Dark Continent parent.  WHICH WOULD MAKE THE ARMS-TURNING-INTO-FLOWERS MAGIC TRICK FINALLY MAKE SENSE.  

I became so obsessed by that theory that I even wrote a fanfiction about it, but that’s just my weird crazed-for-answers mind for you.  I had to put it in writing (and If you’re curious, you can find it here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10661479/1/Secretly).

So that’s my insane headcanon regarding Hisoka’s flower magic. But honestly, that’s all it is; I don’t think that my theory is real, or even all that believable.  So I don’t care if anyone disagrees with me.  In fact, I’d love to have more discussion regarding his abilities (and other characters - I’m a slut for pretty much anything HxH) with other fans.  Hit me up, yo!

TL;DR: The flower-magic was never present in the manga, the original source for the story and Hisoka’s character. The disappearing act fits in with a conjuration ability, which is perfectly canon. I wholeheartedly think that the animators put the flowers there for purely aesthetic reasons or perhaps reasons related to censorship, and that they included some images that unintentionally clashed with all we would later learn about Nen, all to make a character’s first appearance look cool.