If you know me then you know I love anime and manga. I wholeheartedly believe that some of the best life lessons one can learn come from these mediums. One of my favorites is titled Hunter x Hunter. Now while there are already many YouTube videos about the philosophies shown in this story, I will simply speak about one particular character and something he went through that really resonated with me. To be fair, my inspiration for this blog came from a video about Hunter x Hunter I saw on YouTube by a user named Super Eyepatch Wolf.
One of the protagonists of this amazing series is named Gon. He is a young boy around age 12-14 and he is well liked by generally everyone he meets. He has an interesting view of the world and morals where he doesn’t really care if you are “good or bad” but he more so cares about if he likes you. To help you understand, his best friend is named Killua who is from a family of assassins and he grew up killing many people. Gon does not care that his profession is an assassin as he knows Killua did not choose the family he was born into and Gon can see Killua has a good heart and therefore he likes him. Gon is a person who bases who and what he likes based on understanding.
Anyone who watched or read Hunter x Hunter will know that there is one pivotal arc that has an extremely dark tone and themes. To avoid spoiling anything about this I will simply state that the enemies were not human and operated under different rules than human society operates. Encountering them took quite the emotional toll on Gon. Gon is generally an upbeat and happy person but he was extremely focused and angry during this arc. His motivation for fighting was that a father figure like mentor was kidnapped and killed and he felt responsible. When he finally encountered the culprit he found her doing something that was not in the realm of his understanding. Killua noticed how Gon seemed off and was losing his sense of self due to his hatred and anger and confusion and this finally came to a head during said encounter. Gon noticed that the heartless being who killed his mentor and constantly showed no regard for human life was nursing a random human back to health. He was not only angry, but confused and dealing with feelings that things were unfair. Why are you saving her but you killed my friend? Why do you show empathy to one human but slaughter countless ones. In this moment of confronting something he could not understand, the very basis for how he operates life and forms connections, Gon broke. Gon was in a situation where there was no right thing for him to do. He was so angry that he isolated himself from his best friend and even lost his sense of self, basically sacrificing everything he ever worked for just to satiate his anger and negative feelings. Watching this resonated with me because I feel that at some point in our life we are all Gon.
Now how many times have we been faced with situations we simply did not understand? We could be in love with someone who treats us like trash but their words say they love us to death. We could have a parent who seems to avoid any semblance of deep connection with us whilst our siblings seem to be raised with all the affection and leniency we never received. We could be at a job where we work our asses off and an incompetent undeserving person gets a promotion simply because they can breathe. When these things happen we usually have many negative feelings. Even if a friend or trusted partner is by our side we can still focus too much on what is bothering us to notice or appreciate their offers of help. When we don’t understand it feeds our anger. When we are angry we tend to fall into a spiral. This spiral leaves us in a situation like Gon. What is the right decision? Do we speak out at work against a flawed system only to be labeled as difficult or do we sit back and tell ourselves we have to work harder even though we know that wont change anything? Do we separate ourselves from our parents who we know sacrificed much to help us get to where we are or do we continue to maintain a relationship with them that does not benefit us mentally but it satisfies the love we are “supposed” to have for our family? When we don’t know what right is what do we do?
When Gon made his decision to give into his anger and hatred he accomplished his goal of revenge. Though that may seem like a win to some, what he lost was way more valuable. He said some things to his best friend that deeply hurt him, he lost all the things he worked so hard and tirelessly to achieve over the course of his life, and he almost lost his life. Imagine being so mad and jaded at the world that we start to cut off those who really are genuinely there for us. Imagine hurting someone who wants just the best for us because we were too blind to see past what was bothering us that had nothing to do with them. Now imagine after doing all of that, the best friend who you hurt still risked their life to save what was left of yours. How often do we see that? Sometimes we are Gon and sometimes we are Killua. We can cut those close to us because the pain we feel is so unbearable that we tell ourselves we must share it. Sometimes we accept being cut by those we care about because we see how much pain they are in and want to alleviate it any way we can. Either way the relationship we once had now has a scar as glaring as the one received from the aforementioned cut.
Hunter x Hunter has taught me a lot about things such as friendship, determination, and even just carving out a path for your own life. Self discovery if you will. What it also taught me is that at times we will encounter things we cannot understand. Sometimes we will fall short no matter how hard we try and even achieving a goal may not be worth what we lose in the journey to achieve. What Gon taught us in that arc was not only what we lose but how valuable friendship is and how we need to hold true to those who are there for us. No matter how much he hurt him, Killua still took it upon himself to save Gon. When we are at our breaking point and are losing sense of who we are we need to realize that there is someone who can remember us when we forget ourselves. We need to remember that some people will go to the ends of the Earth just to make us smile again. We need to realize that even though the people we love the most might treat us like we are less than dirt it should not let us lose sight that there are people who love us and treat us like the people we deserve to be treated as. I encourage everyone to watch the 2011 anime version of Hunter x Hunter. I believe you will learn much more than I could’ve written about here but ultimately it might resonate so deeply that you are able to see a reflection of yourself in a small broken boy so much that you are able to save yourself from a downward spiral that could ultimately cost you everything.
