so how do you know that machi doesn't hate hisoka?
This "Machi hates Hisoka" thing is something I wanted to address for a while.
See, I know I'm a shipper but since I'll talk about canon here, a little disclaimer before I begin: saying she doesn't hate him isn't the same as saying she loves him canonically. She just doesn't hate him at all before the end of chapter 357.
First, it's important to know what "hate" means. Hate is a strong word that expresses an intense dislike, aversion or disgust towards someone or something and it often leads to hostility. And what happens is, when you hate someone, you tend to start seeing them as "the other", as someone you can't connect with or feel much empathy for, almost as if the person was less human than you are. Yeah, it sounds harsh, but as I said, hate is a strong word that can't be mistaken by a little dislike or annoyance (as it often is).
And if people said "Machi is annoyed by Hisoka" I would agree. Go ahead, Machi is pretty much annoyed by everyone (more on it later). But what people love to do is really put it as if Machi drools out of pure hatred and murderous intentions just by that sound of his name. Which happened only once, and for a very specific reason.
"Don't you dare fuck around with me" just now? When she supposedly always hated him? When, according to fandom, she had always acted like this around him, still that's the only time we saw it? It doesn't make sense.
Fact is, Machi had always acted like her normal self around him, exactly the same way she acts with everyone else. There are just two different things about her interactions with Hisoka: 1) so far, we got to see her interacting more with him than anyone else, and 2) he loves teasing her.
So, if you really pay attention to how she acts when talking to others, it's very clear how she's always cold, but with little patience to nonsense (or what she deems nonsense).
None of the above interactions are with Hisoka. They're all with other Phantom Troupe members. Does it mean she hates them? No, it just means this is her normal behavior.
Now, if you compare it to how she interacts with Hisoka, the only difference -- again -- is the screen time, and how Hisoka not only is the king of nonsense, he also probably loves getting these reactions out if her.
So we have chapter 55:
These are the only moments that her actions can maybe be considered "rude" towards him. Are they any worse compared to how she treats others?
Chapter 92:
I take her expression here much more as annoyance for having to deal with his erratic behavior during a serious mission (and his very glad expression as opposed to hers) than hatred. It's really up to interpretation tho, but I don't think she's fuming here.
Chapter 170:
Just an answer to Hisoka's nonsense asking her to choose a favorite to survive between him and Chrollo. Would she say it unprovoked? "Hisoka, if you fight and kill Danchou, I'll kill you!". She could have said it right at the beginning of this conversation, when he says he's arranging for Chrollo's exorcism for his own sake (keep that in mind). Instead, she simply asks if he's really fighting him, which makes me wonder why she even doubted his intentions -- Machi, with her great intuition. It's also fun how she only would kill him if he kills Chrollo. If she hated him that much, at this point she already had all the reasons to kill him: he's not a real PT member, he betrayed and sold them to the chain bastard which led to two deaths, he actively wants to kill Chrollo and she "hates" him. Why is she waiting for more reasons?
Before moving on to chapter 357, I just wanted to briefly mention chapter 71:
When all of your friends are trash talking someone you hate so much, why would you stay quiet about it? Considering how outspoken she is, why haven't she joined Franklin and Feitan and said Nobunaga all the bad opinions she supposedly had about this guy she "hated" so much?
Anyways, chapter 357:
First off, hatred against someone does affect the ability to feel empathy towards them. So there would be no "she's just being nice" towards someone she hates so much (as fandom claims) out of nothing like this, I'm sorry. I would only buy it if she had stayed behind with Hisoka to dance over his dead body. But no.
This is the sweetest we ever saw Machi being in canon. And this is when she thanks him for doing something that -- as he said right in front of her, with every word -- was for his own sake.
Honestly, there's no reason for her to be there, absolutely none. The money he paid in advance? She's a thief, member of an unscrupulous group, nothing is preventing her from stealing from a dead man she "hates". The gratitude for helping with Chrollo's exorcism? Something he did for his own sake and she knows it very well? Something he did so he could be the one to kill Chrollo, as he was trying to do just a few moments earlier?
Again, did she hate him as people say she did, she would either have left with Shalnark and Kortopi or stayed to spit on his corpse. That would have been the perfect occasion for Togashi to make it clear once and for all how much she's disgusted by him, how little she thinks of him, how she absolutely can't stand him, and what he did was completely different.
He showed how much she cared for him, at least as a PT member, even after knowing he was never truly one of them; even after he had a death match with Chrollo.
Then Hisoka comes back to life right in front of her and instead of fighting him to make sure he stays dead, or warning Chrollo, or at least showing any concern about the fact, she...
Makes sure he had learned a lesson for his future battles (why worry about it?), offers to stitch him up (remember she was there to make sure he was dead, first and foremost, that's her commitment with Chrollo and the Troupe) and decides to head out with a "then you don't need me" when she didn't even have to be useful to him to begin with (even if he had paid her to stitch him after he's dead -- he's alive now!) and turns her back very casually.
Honestly, I simply don't know how anyone can follow all of their interactions to this point and think "look how much she OBVIOUSLY hates him and is OH so disgusted by him!!". Specially about chapter 357, that would have happened in a completely different way if she actually did.
Machi is cold. Machi is short-tempered, with every single person she interacts with. She does get annoyed by him -- and by Nobunaga, and by Franklin, and by Shalnark, and by Chrollo, and so on. Before the end of chapter 357 she had never ever acted specially angry, let alone hatefully, towards Hisoka. And the only time she's angered by him is when he traps her and threatens the PT, including her.
But even when we see her after this, she's not enraged and visibly hostile or letting out bloodlust when talking about killing Hisoka. But someone else is. One day I saw someone saying "how can people ship Machi with Hisoka when she wants his head?". Well, she never said she literally wanted his head. Again, someone else did. Literally.
Don't get me wrong, Machi has all the reasons to be hating him and wanting his head now. I truly believed she would be devastated after chapter 357 but for some reason, if she is, Togashi decided not to make it much visible and focused on how much it affected Chrollo instead. Chrollo, who had always acted so chill even when his own life was threatened. Still, I've never seen anyone talking about Chrollo's hatred towards Hisoka. Go figure.
TL;DR: if Machi had always hated Hisoka, she also hates pretty much everyone she had interacted with and chapter 357 would have happened very differently. Togashi had the opportunity to show how much she hated him -- if she did -- and instead she acted in a compassionate, and then casual, way towards him. And even afterwards, instead of focusing on her hatred, he's focusing on Chrollo's. This is not saying she loves/loved Hisoka, but she didn't hate him before chapter 357, and I'm still waiting to see all of that visceral hatred people claim she has because it still didn't happen in canon.
