ging can say “he wasn’t trying to sacrifice himself for you” all he wants, but i still find it such a reductive view of kite’s decision. everyone seems to have their own ideas following what happened: morel attributes it to a hunter’s self-serving curiosity, ging attributes it to crazy slots’ special setting, gon attributes it to a nebulous reason that’s always his own fault. others look at a dead man from the outside in, but where is kite’s account? where is kite’s agency? buried with his bones, lost in some half-forgotten purgatory?
but it isn’t. it was there when he saw pitou coming, when he stayed behind to buy the kids more time, when he chose to spend those precious few seconds warning gon & killua to run instead of trying to protect himself.
ging can talk about sacrifice all he wants, but he wasn’t there when kite lost an arm. he wasn’t there when his student was stripped of more than his head or his body but his mind, then suffered a fate arguably worse than death. if ging was right and crazy slots did possess some sort of reincarnation ability, kite sacrificed more than his life. he sacrificed his will. his control. his agency.
and for ging, notorious absent parent, to pretend he knows the true nature of kite’s mind in that moment is incredibly presumptuous. he may be good at reading people, but he’s so divorced from the idea of caring for his son that he can’t imagine someone else possibly, possibly doing it in his stead. it shows. and i simply do not believe kite is the self-serving stereotype ging makes him out to be. if actions speak louder than words, then kite had been screaming. he had always been screaming.
