I did the thing where I made a set of HxH teas because it was fun. I’ll be trying them over the next few months… after I finish the teas I already have no i’m not a tea addict hahaha what are you talking about
So I’m actually working on a longer meta on the five Zoldyck siblings and how they all foil each other that I am hoping to post for Killua’s birthday next week (I’m lame I know) so I miiight save a lot of my answer for then if that’s okay, but in short: absolutely. Honestly the parallels between Alluka, Illumi, and Killua are probably the strongest since they are the three Zoldyck siblings who have received the most focus and development so far.
All three of them display fairly controlling and codependent tendencies in their relationships. And when I’m talking about Alluka here I’m talking mostly about Nanika, whom Alluka seems to accept as a part of herself and wants treated likewise. Of course Alluka and Killua’s issues are far less toxic than Illumi’s, but they’re still definitely present.
Illumi is willing to die to ensure Killua’s success and to ensure that Killua will love him forever.
Alluka/Nanika will do whatever anyone asks, no matter who has to die, to receive basic affection (like being patted on the head).
Illumi hurts others in his attempts to control people.
Alluka/Nanika hurts others when they refuse to answer her requests even if it is not their fault.
I’m not saying we are supposed to equate them because the point of foiling is that a similarity will shine a light on their differences. Alluka’s a kid, first of all, and there are also differences like that she’s been legitimately locked up her entire life and isolated. Illumi too probably had an isolating childhood without his siblings around during his youngest years, but like, still. But there are definite patterns of behavior in terms present in the Zoldyck kids, just manifesting themselves in different ways, and codependency is one of them. And it’s very heartbreaking.
So my simplest answer to your question on how the narrative handled
Ging is: I think Togashi has just begun with him and so it is difficult to say how he will be used
and explored in the future.
As a matter of fact the Election arc where Ging appeared for the first time is basically a short
arc which serves both as a closure to the first part of the manga with
Gon and Killua separating and each one ending a significant part of their arc:
And
as an introduction arc to new characters like the Zodiacs who will be
at the centre of future arcs. Among these characters Ging and Pariston
in particular are set up as important and will probably get arcs of
their own.
In short, right now trying to predict where Ging’s
character will go or to give a final judgement on him would be
equivalent to basically doing the same with Gon based on the first three
volumes of the manga.
What’s more, I think that thoughts on Ging should be divided into two categories.
a) Thoughts on him as a central part of Gon’s arc since he has been Gon’s main motivation up until they met.
b) Thoughts on him as a character with his own arc and personal involvement into the main plot.
So
I’ll try to give you some thoughts on him by foiling him with two other
characters: Silva Zoldyck and Gon himself. In particular the first will
help me analyze him as Gon’s father, while comparing him to Gon will
help me trying to define him better as his own character.
I love Illumi Zoldyck, so thank you for asking about him! I really, really love him, and I’m always happy to talk about him. Killua, Alluka, and Illumi are my top three and honestly it cycles between them as for who is my very favorite. I love all the Zoldyck kids, actually. The adults can… I don’t with them. Lol.
Soooo I’m not sure exactly how it will play out. I would obviously love a redemption for him, though Illumi hasn’t exactly been obviously set up with a redemptive structure like, say, Shiragaki in BNHA or Mutsuki in TGre. But of the three major antagonists (Hisoka, Illumi, and Chrollo) he has been set up as by far the most likely to survive the ending and to get a measure of redemption imo. I think Togashi understands what’s behind him as a character: abuse, and a desperate grasping for freedom.
We see that in how Illumi and Killua foil each other, which Killua even acknowledges when he embraces Nanika and Alluka, telling Nanika he’s sorry for telling her to go away, telling her that he does not want to be like Illumi specifically. And we know what went into making Killua the way he is: his parents are controlling AF and abusive, subjecting all their kids to all measures of tortures.
Let’s consider the ages of the kids for a bit. Kalluto, Alluka, and Killua are all within like four years of each other. Then you have Milluki, at least five years older than Killua, and Illumi, at least five years older than Milluki. All of Illumi’s siblings would have had each other to help cope with the literal torture they were subjected to as part of their training.
Illumi would have had no one.
No one except his parents, Zeno, and Maha. Is it any wonder that of all the Zoldyck children, Illumi is by far the most robotic and obedient and seemingly the perfect assassin? Because the only way he would get attention or affection or praise or any form of family love was from his parents from the earliest of ages, and the only way for him to earn that was by being the perfect assassin to make his parents proud. But we know Illumi does occasionally disagree with his parents, and I’ll get to the Alluka situation in a bit.
Anyways. So Illumi is everything his parents trained him to be, and starting from the ages of 10-12 he was entrusted with raising Killua. Of course he treats Killua how he was treated, almost certainly. Of course he doesn’t understand Killua’s desire to have something else, to have friends and fulfillment through others besides his immediate family and specifically his immediate parental figure/mentor–which is Illumi, in Illumi’s mind. Because Illumi never had that.
Illumi is everything his parents trained him to be. And yet. And yet, that’s not enough for them. He’s the oldest son and he’s still not the heir because he’s somehow less talented than Killua. I don’t think Illumi is a-okay with this like he says he is. I mean, would you be? He’s done everything how they want, and it’s still not enough. But, he’s entrusted with training the heir. So he can still be the heir, in a sense, if the heir loves and trusts him, and obeys him. Illumi is too fragile a person to reject Kikyo and Silva, but he still steal back some measure of agency and desperately grasp freedom if he can control the heir (Killua). Illumi is not “uwu power for power’s sake.” Illumi’s actions to grasp power are the desperate graspings of someone who is being smothered.
Illumi prioritizes family first and foremost. But Silva says Alluka is not family, so Illumi says okay, then I can kill her because Alluka is a threat to his control of Killua and therefore to both his desire for freedom and his desire to be loved. And then he thinks it’s better that he can control Alluka and thereby Killua and thereby get it all–the brother he loves safe and with him forever, and control beyond his wildest dreams because of Nanika’s special abilities. It all stems from Silva and Kikyo, those terrible parents, and Illumi’s desire to be both the perfect son and to be free of them–though I don’t think Illumi even realizes he wants to be free of them in some ways.
The Election Arc really parallels Ging’s terrible parenting with Silva and Kikyo’s. Milluki is absolutely terrified of his parents and that’s clear in his protests and his clear understated asking for approval from his parents (in their conversations as they watch Killua and Alluka together in the vault). And then there’s the line about Silva being the one who asked Illumi to insert a needle into Killua. Silva is the one controlling the strings, controlling Illumi, controlling Killua thereby. The fact that Togashi said this outright does convince me that the ending won’t be like, Illumi taking the fall as the Bad Zoldyck and everyone else gets to recover.
Anyways, like I said, Illumi is Killua’s shadow. You don’t kill your shadow, you accept it and integrate/learn from it. Whether or not Illumi survives a final arc, should we get to that point in the story (and no Killua would never hurt him), I do think understanding between them is entirely likely.
I
think Nanika is nothing more than a child who is asking for love and that her
power and its rules can be used to underline exactly this.
First
of all, it is clear as day that Nanika is characterized as a child and i is
obvious in how she acts and talks. Actually her way of speaking is even more
childish than Alluka’s. What is more, I think there is a rule which clearly shows
us how childish she is:
Killua
uses this rule to argue about Nanika’s kind nature. According to him the reason
why Nanika won’t ask for compensation in case of a wish used to healing/fixing
is because said wish is considered selfless. However, a vision of the world
where destroying/transforming something is synonymous of bad and fixing
something is sysonymous of good is extremely simplicistic. I mean, would asking
Nanika to cure a person who may end up killing a lot of other people be better
than asking her for a lot of money in order to be able to study medicine and
cure people for free? I think it is debatable. My point is simply that such a
black and white vision of good and bad may be exactly what a child may come
up with.
Another
interesting aspect of Nanika’s ability which is directly linked to love is
the way in which her victims are selected in case of a failure in granting her
requests:
This
is extremely interesting because we can say that love is used as a criteria of
choice for the lives asked as compensation for Nanika’s ability. Both criteria,
thus, are bound to include in the payment a certain number of people who are
either loved by the person interacting with Nanika or have still a high chance
to have meaningful relationships with them (we usually spend the majority of
our time with people who are linked to us in a meaningful way). In short we can
say that in a certain sense love (or at least personal relationships) is
what is asked as a form of compensation by Nanika when her requests aren’t
fulfilled.
However,
if what Nanika asks as payment for her wish when the person fails to fulfill
her requests is love in an indirect and twisted way (the people loved by the
person) and if love is what she genuinely desires then why do we have her
asking people such cruel things in the first place?
This
line is extremely important imo. If we consider the requests Nanika makes when
she is in a normal state (so when she is not influenced by a previous wish), we
can see they are mostly games or interactions with people. They are exactly the
kind of requests a child who craves attention and wants to play would make. She
starts asking cruel things only after a particular great wish has been asked of
her. Why is that so? The answer lies hidden in the fact that Nanika is a child
and children do imitate how the
adults around them act. After she is granted 3 requests Nanika will grant a
wish and I think this ability is born from Nanika’s desire to make other people
happy, so that then they can give her more love. However, let’s look at the
kind of wishes those around her have asked her: money, a computer, to kill
others. All these requests are either materialistic or straight up cruel and
dismissive towards others. The problem is that if a child sees the adults
around her being happy for such things, she, in an attempt to be happy herself,
will start asking for something similar. This is the hidden meaning of Nanika’s
powers: her ability is probably born from her wish to make others happy and to
be loved, but it becomes twisted if the adults around her teach her that being
happy means damaging others and having things.
Actually
Nanika’s whole mentality (which is expressed through her nen ability) of having
to be a good girl to receive love is wrong because it is an idea of love which
is conditional while love should be unconditional. However, Nanika even in her
interactions with Killua shows this tendency. She asks him if she is a good girl and when he tries to make her disappear she starts repeating to him that she loves him in an attempt to gain his love back.
Killua
is the only one who gives her what she truly wants i.e. love. It is said that
Killua does not pay for Nanika’s powers, but he actually does since after she
obeys an order she demands to be patted and to be praised. In Killua’s case the
order of things is simply inverted: Nanika grants Killua’s request and later
asks for her prize which is always the same because Nanika knows perfectly what
she wants from Killua. There are two things which are interesting in Nanika and
Killua’s relationship:
1. It is not as strictly structured by
rules like Nanika’s interactions with other people are (her using her powers is
after all Nanika’s way to interact with the world).
2. The requests Killua asks Nanika are
usually of a different kind than the ones the others ask.
To
be more precise these two points are intertwined since the reason why Nanika’s
relationship and interactions with Killua are more fluid and do vary is because
Killua treats Nanika as a person to begin with and this is clearly shown in the
kind of things he asks her to do.
1. To kiss him on the chick
2. To cure Gon
3. To wake up
4. To make Illumi go home
5. To disappear
6. Not to listen to others’ wishes
anymore
All
of these things with the exception of curing Gon and of making Illumi go home
are things for which Nanika’s powers are not required and they are things you
would ask a person and not a thing. What is more, curing Gon is considered a good wish according to Killua and Nanika’s standards. Even when Tsubone lets
Killua have her wish Killua asks Nanika a good wish (to cure Tsubone) which
would not require any cruel payment. It is
not by chance that Killua tells Tsubone and Amane he does not want to use Nanika
after he has used her power to avoid a confrontation with Illumi, so after the
only time he used his privilege to give orders to ask a selfish wish. As a
matter of fact Killua avoids asking such things if he can help it and the fact
he did it in such circumstances simply proves how deeply scared of Illumi and
of his family he truly is.
I
saw people wondering why Killua didn’t use Nanika’s power to arrive faster to
where Gon was or to do other things. It’s because Killua sees using Nanika’s
power as using her. At the same time, though, Nanika interacts with the world
through said power. This is the paradox Killua faces in his interactions with
Nanika and is the one he will probably try to solve in the progression of their
relationship. To understand this paradox we can use a popular theory according
to which Nanika is an Ai, a creature from the Dark Continent also known as the
Desire of Codependence. I think this description fits Nanika since the way she
tries to approach her relationships is to make others dependent on her powers,
or at least willing to use her abilities, so that in exchange she can depend on
them too and be loved and desired. Her relationship with Killua risks to become
codependent as well since right now he is the only person who can use her
ability and he may be tempted to use those same abilities to protect both himself
and Alluka/Nanika. However, I think Killua will eventually defy this risk and
teach Nanika to interact with others in a different and healthier way.
hamliet 