🐇

chimera ant arc is my fave but i really like the genthru fight in greed island. you get these little hints that gon is not particularly stable here and there and then you get to the genthru fight and it's like ohhhhhhhhhhh that boy ain't right. just such a good subversion of the shonen protag determination thing. mr serial killer being like 😰 i have made a mistake this little boy is fucked up beyond belief. chef's kiss

more organized thought: hxh does a really good job subverting shonen trappings because it gives you the tools to analyse it as being straightforwardly What It Is for a really fucking long time. there are darker than usual moments for sure but i think its easy for the average person to wave them away as part of like, i am watching/reading lower stakes dragon ball. you might question hisoka teaming up with the main characters but ultimately you can recall one billion shonen villain/mc teamups and be like yeah thats just what happens in these stories. you might see characters calling gon a monster and be like teehee i remember when piccolo said that about goku. you might see the massively uneven application of regard for life the characters display and be like oh yeah its just characters existing in a world of where morals are a mechanism of the story and characters exist by communicating their values through contest and struggle, just like (other story here). that is not a thought you can reasonably hold on to after you see the main character let his arm get blown off so he can kick a guy in the face, a guy he has no reason to kick in the face at that point beyond like, some exceptionally fucked up view of how he has to exist and justify himself in this world. you see him yell osu! thru his little crushed windpipe with half an arm missing and it doesn't feel like the hero just won, it feels like something profoundly sad and unecessary just happened to someone who sees this kind of violence as the justification for his presence in the world. gon destroys his body to assert the worth of a worldview that his stupid fucking dad abandoned him for. and that's the other thing, it's so much more than "what if shonen was fucked up" by virtue of examining the kinds of people that would need to exist to make these worlds function. you don't get "here's a fucked up shonen protag" you get "here are the mechanisms that would produce these thoughts and actions". you understand how this world functions through the people who live in it and the way their world shapes them in turn. and as such the lighthearted silly time with your good friends moments mean all the more. they could be normal, they often are, but they live in shit sucks world with one million serial killers and a world spanning organisation that reifies and values the production of individual power above all else

Bjork is in a lesbian relationship yall

the bisexual woman is so crucial to the atmosphere