This is the known Hunter Hunter World. It contains a lot of very familiar looking continent things because most of the Hunter Hunter land masses are just real-world continents that have had a bit of a trip and a fall. Which is very handy to give you a sense of scale.

The Hunter Hunter world is about as big as Earth, at least the human part. Because the truth of Hunter Hunter is that the entirety of the human realm exists within the center of a mind-bogglingly gigantic patch of water known as Lake Mobius. And beyond that lake is an inconceivably and unmeasurably large land mass that is collectively known as the Dark Continent. And whether it was planned or not, the Dark Continent is more or less the catalyst for every event that has ever happened in Hunter Hunter. As reaching this location is the goal that Ging left to accomplish. It's a destination full of treasures and discoveries that could elevate humanity to a new form of existence overnight, as well as calamities that could erase humanity's existence even more swiftly than overnight, probably more like by lunchtime.

But the truth of the Hunter Hunter world is that everything humanity has done is woefully insignificant to the concept of Greater Life on this planet. Humans are a teeny tiny ant colony that has only been allowed to exist as long as it has had a locational advantage. And in fact, humans are even lower on the pecking order than ants because we've already experienced the Dark Continent's equivalent of ants, which came startlingly close to easily causing an apocalyptic scale event. And as a bit of a terrifying statistic, if you add up every known voyage to the Dark Continent, there is a combined survival rate of 0.04%. With everything we know about the Dark Continent, there is a resounding conclusion that this is not a place that we should dare step foot. Because even their lowest form of life threatened the existence of the human race. So what hope does anyone have once we start encountering the secondary and even apex predators of this planet?

Well, surprisingly, there is a little. Several centuries ago, the most important book in the Hunter Hunter world was published. It was called Journey to the New World, and it detailed the findings of a certain explorer who had traveled to the Dark Continent and apparently literally survived to tell the tale. And this book was met with very poor reception, terrible Amazon reviews. It was considered to be fiction, and not only that, but like real bad fiction. Journey to the New World was review-bombed into obscurity, dismissed as the ramblings of a lunatic, and its invaluable information was lost to the world.

Until a series of unexplainable events started to occur. Strange and horrific things started happening all across the human realm. Human remains found twisted into grotesque shapes, people withered and shrunk beyond all recognition, severed body parts regrowing themselves and clinging to life, decapitated bodies with unknown growths residing within them, as well as sightings of terrifying paranormal creatures that put the governments of all of the world's major nations on high alert. And all of this phenomena was detailed in Journey to the New World, which was then adopted as mandatory reading for those in high-level positions. Now aware that the very fate of humanity lay within the writings of a lunatic.

In reality, what the human realm was experiencing were the calamities of the Dark Continent. Creatures that had been unintentionally brought back from previous voyages, of which there have been many. But there are five calamities in particular that threaten to destroy humanity on a now daily basis.

The first is the Botanical Weapon, Breion, native to a labyrinth city located 400 km north of Lake Mobius. It's a species that wiped out all but two members of an expedition led by the United States of Sahara, appearing as a human body with a botanical sphere attached to the head. What's horrifying about Breion is the unknown. We don't know if this visual is the entity or if the entity has infected and fused with a human host. One clue we do have is what looks like a victim of Breion stored in the V5 facility. It looks as if the sphere was removed and the stomach ruptured to reveal an unknown substance within. All in all, it doesn't look to be too pleasant of a fate to endure. And ultimately, what we do know is that it was unstoppable and killed hundreds of elite explorers like that.

The second calamity is the Twin Snake, Helbell, native to the swamplands directly south of Lake Mobius and encountered by the Federation of Oima, much to their misfortune. As Helbell is capable of infecting its prey with pure homicidal desire, which wiped out 99% of their expedition party, leaving only 11 survivors. Of the five calamities, Helbell is the only one that we don't have direct evidence of yet in the human realm. Helbell is there, lurking somewhere, and its effects could very well be masked because it's ultimately the prey of Helbell that does all the killing. So any mad murder spree could be a result of Helbell. That, or humans have just been lucky enough not to stumble upon Helbell's new habitat yet.

For a more enduring fate, the third calamity is named Pap, which was located in a mountain range slightly east of where Breion was encountered. And this is a calamity which human eyes have never actually seen because the Pap remain lurking in the darkness. However, they administer pleasure to people and feed off their life force in exchange for that pleasure. So the Pap keeps you as food whilst making you think that this is a great deal for you. Not just food, though. It is specifically mentioned that the Pap enjoy keeping humans as pets, which brings a whole new sinister layer to this arrangement, indicating that the Pap enjoy keeping their humans. However, they are eventually discarded. With previous victims of Pap having been found in the human world, indicating that the Pap are very active and are an ever-present threat to humanity. And there was the misfortune of the Burger Roa Union, who encountered Pap on the Dark Continent. And on that expedition, they had a survival rate of 0.7%, the lowest rate of any calamity. Because whilst other calamities naturally strike fear and horror into the user, Pap has this thing where it circumvents the human survival instinct. It makes you feel like everything's going well, in fact, better than well. Things have never been this good. I love this. And so the Pap convince you to forfeit your life for them.

Our fourth threat is also a codependent calamity, this one being named Ai. And you should be very familiar with this one because Nanika, the entity within Alluka, is a confirmed Ai. They are referred to as the codependents of desire, a gaseous creature that inhabits a host and then grants desires at an equivalent, if not greater, cost. And because we know about Nanika's power in such detail already, it's pretty easy to see how this threatens humanity as a whole. Because big wishes cost big human lives. And in theory, if you were to make a big enough wish, that cost would eventually extend to every human in existence. Which is what the Mimbo Republic endured when they discovered the Ai species. At first, this would have been phenomenal use for them. Mate, a species that gives them whatever they ask for. This Dark Continent is pretty all right. But by the time they realized the cost, all but three members of their expedition had been killed.

And we have very much the opposite problem with our fifth and final great calamity, Zai, which is not a creature but a disease. One which the expedition team of the Kuuku Kingdom were infected with, killing all but one of their infected survivors, who now lives in a state of morbid immortality. Zai is known as the immortality disease because if it doesn't kill you immediately, then you're going to suffer an even worse fate. It will never allow you to die. What it does is deteriorate the mind of an infected host to a very primal state, who continuously lives by eating their own flesh, which rapidly regenerates. And this goes on and on and on until, look, I don't know if it can ever end. Even if you put someone infected with this in a position that they weren't able to eat themselves, I imagine the disease would probably find another even more grotesque way to survive.

Now, one thing I should note is that the expedition team that found Zai featured Beyond Netro, the son of Chairman Isaac Netro, who returned apparently uninfected. Although this has led to a theory that Beyond Netro is the host of his Zai disease but has managed to retain his sanity and now lives as an immortal being among us. That's pure speculation at this stage, though. However, the danger of these five threats cannot be understated. Other Dark Continent calamities have made their way to the human realm in the past. As it's speculated that all magical beasts take their origin from a Dark Continent creature. But as stated before, the Chimera Ants were also from the Dark Continent, and they were classified with a threat level of B. Meanwhile, these five calamities are all a threat level of B+ to A, meaning that each and every one of them could end our species with even greater ease than the Ant King Meruem.

And I'd like to put that into some even more terrifying perspective. Every calamity that we've encountered so far have been coastal calamities, absolutely bottom of the pecking order stuff, compared to what we see inland. Such as this enormous hand emerging ominously from the horizon line. Well, these three unbelievably colossal shadows, each one of them potentially twice the size of any given continent in the human realm. And then there's whatever the crap this is, which looks like a huge floating head. And speaking of floating, one really cool thing identified on this map is the existence of sky islands that float within the Dark Continent in a manner best described as somehow. Although I don't think the word island really does them justice, because each of these islands are the size of the entire human realm. So I guess they might be nice for a bit of safety. Because at the very least, everything on the lower plane of the Dark Continent is capable of killing you in unimaginably horrific ways.

So with that in mind, we should probably answer a very basic question: which is, why are we trying to get to the Dark Continent in the first place? It doesn't sound particularly pleasant, and every recorded human voyage has resulted in terrible things happening. To explain this, it's important to note that the Dark Continent itself is a reference to Africa. "Dark Continent" was a term used by Europeans, commonly believed that it was to reference how little they knew about Africa. This dark, mysterious, magical land, but magical in a dangerous way. Although in reality, Africa was one of history's greatest marketing endeavors. As the mysterious nature of the continent was mostly hyped up by merchants who were looking to sell their acquired African goods at a very high price. So merchants would sell the equivalent of tourist trinkets and claim that they had mystical African dark continental properties. But when it comes to the Dark Continent in Hunter Hunter, all of that is actually true. The Dark Continent is capable of killing you again in unimaginably horrific ways, but it's also capable of granting you equally good news.

As each of the aforementioned five calamities were encountered on a mission to acquire a revolutionary substance. One of which was Nitro Rice, known as the ultimate secret to longevity. And in theory, could keep you living as long as you desire, so long as you keep consuming it. Nitro Rice is also speculated to be the reason as to how Isaac Netro lived well beyond 100 years. And in fact, he may have been several centuries old. Another highly desirable substance is the Unmanned Rock, a mineral or that would further solve energy problems. As even the teeniest tiniest pebble can generate up to 20 megawatts of power per day. There's also a herb that can cure all illness, as well as substances known as the Trinity Elixir and Metallion. Their benefits are admittedly vague, but they are said to form a new foundation of their respective fields. The greater point is that if you set foot on the Dark Continent and all you do is, you know, pick up a handful of dirt, if there's no ants in that dirt, then you'll probably find something that will make you a billionaire. Which is one reason why people keep trying and failing to send teams in.

However, it's important to note that not every voyage to the Dark Continent ended in catastrophic failure. Previously, I brought up Isaac Netro, and he's a curious existence because he's actually been to the Dark Continent twice. And he went on at least one occasion with Lin Out and Zig Zalaic, with the reason being to find a strong opponent. In his words, he sought strength as an individual. He sought an opponent with either victory or death as an outcome. However, what Netro encountered could give him neither. There was no possible victory to be had on the Dark Continent, and no satisfying defeat to be had either. The only option available to him was to survive. And so he did, twice, becoming one of the only known humans to have survived a Dark Continent voyage, as well as one of the lots that tried and failed to find what they were looking for.

But something that's always struck me as odd is the question of why Netro made a second journey to the Dark Continent, given that he already knew that what he was looking for wasn't there. This journey is something that we know about, and my best guess is it was likely in an official capacity as a guide on behalf of another entity. And whether or not they succeeded is currently unknown. But what we do know is that eventually there were enough failed voyages that Isaac Netro lobbied to ban Dark Continent travel altogether. And also something to do with his son. We'll talk about that in a bit. But this was a ban that was successful, and one that would not be lifted until after his death. An opportunity that has been readily seized upon by a total of six nations and the Hunter Association, who have pulled their resources for one big push to conquer the continent. If I had to speculate, I'd say that it's probably not going to go very well.

But this situation opens up the sheer logistical nightmare of a question: that is, how do you even get to the Dark Continent in the first place? This journey is unimaginable to mankind because after passing through a barrier known as the Far Ocean Boundary, sea travel becomes impossible for human technology. Simply speaking, the waves are too big, the ocean predators are far too big, and the distance from the boundary to the actual continent is so very far. Big, it is too far to endure. And mankind has never successfully made a recorded trip to the Dark Continent on their own. If you look at Yoshihiro Togashi's map, you can see that there's a certain point where the waters become completely uncrossable with waves and wpes the size of countries. But also a Litany of sea beasts, including Krakens, colossal whales, Leviathan, Umi-bozu, which is a yokai from Japanese folklore. And most curiously, there's even a mermaid and or siren ready to lure sailors to a watery grave. Much like everything else, to be clear, it's hard to know how much of this is literal sea monsters. Like this used to be marked on real-world maps as well. But it was less to say, "Beware of the giant Leviathan," and more to say that, "Look, mate, you might want to hold off because these are uncharted waters." It was mainly to denote the unknown. And the Dark Continent has a whole lot of unknown. But what we do know about that unknown is that humans cannot physically sail there on their own.

And so the way you actually get to the land is by negotiating with a clan of magical beasts known as the Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper, singular, although it is a race. We don't call them The Gatekeepers for some reason. We have yet to see these beings appear, but they control the only known safe pathway to the Dark Continent. However, they don't exactly ferry people there through the goodness of their own magical beast hearts. And there is a great cost to using their services. In order to successfully navigate to the land, the Gatekeeper summons another entity known as the Guide. Which I imagine is an N Beast they create to accompany humans with a special set of restrictions and instructions. The Guide doesn't just ferry people to the Dark Continent, but I believe also remains with them through the duration of the journey. However, the biggest role the Guide actually plays is inevitably when the journey fails. Because assumably, the Guide is the one responsible for returning the very few surviving humans. But it's also the responsibility of the Guide to then curse mankind with a Dark Continent calamity, a punishment thought up by the Gatekeeper to disincentivize Dark Continent travel, to serve as a warning for any other humans wishing to embark, or to simply rid the world of humanity for daring to cross this boundary one too many times. I mean, it is called the Gatekeeper. It could be their responsibility to keep the human realm in the center of Lake Mobius safe. Some sort of ancient provision put into place.

Because that's something that often gets overlooked with the Dark Continent. It's highly likely that humanity originated from the Dark Continent. As there is at least one recorded built city, which is where Breion was found, a species that may very well have required a human host to survive. But furthermore, in the King Empire announcement broadcast on IBC, Beyond Netro claims that the ancestors of humans originated on the Dark Continent. Although Beyond Netro is far from a reliable narrator, and his word should always be taken with great skepticism. However, the fact that the Dark Continent is a reference to Africa helps a lot with this point. Because the ancestors of real-world humans first appeared in Africa and then spread across the globe. So the idea would be that thousands, potentially even tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago, in order to keep their species safe, humans could have purposely set up shop in the center of Lake Mobius.

Although there is at least one human still on the Dark Continent traveling as we speak, and that would be the author of Journey to the New World, Don Freaks. A man who is at least 300 years old and likely sustaining his existence with Nitro Rice as he continues his mission to walk all around the shoreline of Lake Mobius and log his findings. Because his book at this point is only half complete. What was found centuries ago was Journey to the New World: East Edition, cataloging half of Don Freaks' journey. And that's all we currently have. Because it's speculated that he's still writing the other half as we speak. However, in the meantime, we need to turn our attention back to Beyond Netro.

Because while his father may have sacrificed himself to protect the existence of humanity, Beyond Netro is currently threatening to sacrifice humanity to further his own incredibly bold and frankly terrifying desires. Beyond Netro is the son of the late Chairman Isaac Netro, and the individual who is at the core responsible for almost every single event that has happened during the Dark Continent and Succession War arcs. However, his story begins long, long, long before any of this. An unknown number of decades ago, because dude is really old. Isaac Netro traveled to the Dark Continent on two occasions, a location that went on to captivate his son, Beyond. Who, 50 years ago, because Beyond is also old, followed in his father's footsteps and was hired to lead his own expedition by the Kuuku Kingdom. However, Beyond Netro ignored all of the warnings his father had given him and insisted on taking an unexplored route. This led his expedition team to the calamity Zai, the immortality disease, which claimed all but seven lives. Beyond was fortunate enough to survive. However, this disaster did not deter him. If anything, it only made him more excited to go back.

However, Isaac Netro predicted that the impact his son's recklessness would have on humanity was unacceptable and successfully lobbied the V5 Nations to ban all travel to the Dark Continent, primarily in order to remove any avenue of access that Beyond Netro would have. This is known as the Inviolability Treaty, and it was designed so that each of the five powers wouldn't do something like go off on their own and put each of the others in jeopardy. And each and every single V5 Nation ignored it, going on to conduct their own secret voyages. Because in politics, all of those voyages failed, brought back new calamities to the human realm, and then, and only then, did the V5 actually begin taking this treaty seriously. But in addition to this framework, Isaac Netro personally forbade his son to go back to the Dark Continent until after he had died. An event that came to fruition during the Chimera Ant arc, where Chairman Netro gave his life to kill the Ant King Meruem, thus fulfilling Beyond's condition. Who wasted no time in implementing a new voyage to the Dark Continent.

As a side note, it's also heavily speculated that Beyond Netro was the one responsible for causing the Chimera Ant outbreak. That the ants were a calamity that he had brought back with him from his voyage and released in the one part of the human realm that would allow them to rapidly grow into a force capable of killing his father, so that Beyond could finally conduct a new expedition to the Dark Continent. Something that he'd already been planning for the past five decades at that point. Which was all very necessary time. Remember, going to the Dark Continent is the goal that Ging Freaks has been working towards his whole life, and he's barely gotten anywhere trying to implement it. According to Ging Freaks, you need four things to access the Dark Continent: the qualifications, the means, permission, and a contract.

Now, Beyond already comes equipped with qualifications because he's been to the Dark Continent before. He also has the knowledge of his father's previous journeys, although he will actively choose to ignore that. But still, that's one tick. However, attaining the means, aka the finances, the people, the transport, and the equipment, is something that no single Hunter could achieve on their own. Hence why Beyond Netro has spent an exceptional amount of time ideologically seducing King Nasabe of the Kakin Empire, one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, and very conveniently a nation that is not associated with the V5. Beyond told stories to King Nasabe about the vast territory, the resources, and the riches awaiting anyone willing to colonize the Dark Continent, which Nasabe was very eager to take advantage of and solidify his place as a historic hero of the Kakin Empire, essentially granting it a second explosion of life. What Beyond likely neglected to tell King Nasabe, however, was about the extreme dangers of even attempting to sail there, much less the certain death that awaited them simply setting foot on the mainland. However, ultimately, that probably doesn't matter because King Nasabe isn't a fool being taken for a ride here. His personal agenda very much aligns with that of Beyond Netro, and he has his own extremely sinister reasons for wanting to conduct a voyage to the Dark Continent. Being the succession contest, a life or death battle royale, which we will go into detail about at a different time. But what I will say is that Nasabe, he has very few worries about the Dark Continent because the results of this contest should theoretically ensure the Empire's safety. And with this, Beyond had succeeded in attaining the means for the voyage, which culminated in the construction of the Black Whale 1, a colonization vessel equipped to carry 200,000 passengers, almost all of whom were to be selected by lottery, with the exception of some very special people like the Kakin royal family, who got to avoid that system. Although, as it turns out, the lucky ones were the people who weren't selected. You really don't want to be aboard the ship for so many reasons. But that's two ticks for Beyond: qualifications and the means.

However, what he still needed was permission and a contract. The former of which was achieved almost laughably easily. Beyond Netro's personality has been noted by the Zodiacs as being practically identical to his father's, especially in the field of charisma. So much so that upon hearing Beyond Netro speak, each of the Zodiacs were left in stunned silence. Because it was as if Isaac Netro had been reincarnated before their eyes. Which I wouldn't blame anyone for actually thinking, because reincarnation was a big part of the Chimera Ant talk events. But this means that regardless of his Nen affinity, Beyond Netro is an extraordinarily skilled manipulator. So what he did was schedule a global live stream with King Nasabe, their intentions to travel to the Dark Continent, and during that stream, he gave the following speech: "No matter how many obstacles stand in the path to our goal, I promise I will remove them. Age, gender, nationality, employment, race – none of it matters. Everyone deserves an equal opportunity. I will turn down no challenger. Anyone who wants to win this new land is my family. Each person will have a role to play. All you need is the courage to step forward. Come one, come all, let us go to the new world."

This speech was then uploaded to IBC and got over a 100 million views in an hour. So Beyond Netro was pulling in numbers that would make even Mr. Beast jealous. And what this accomplished was lighting a fire across the world. Not only did Beyond reveal the existence of the Dark Continent to the vast majority of the planet who had no idea there was an outside world, but he also made it sound like a wildly appealing place to explore again, selectively omitting the key dangers. But this put the V5 Nations in a very difficult position, as the Kakin Empire were going to set sail with or without their permission, which obviously puts all of humanity at risk. But the only way to really stop them being to declare war, which was a strongly considered option. As according to Clauses 7 to 9 of the UN Basic Relations Treaty, military intervention is permitted in the case of any perceived threat involving contagious biological hazards and unknown menaces. Unknown menaces describing the Dark Continent calamities quite well. However, the V5 ended up selecting a much more peaceful, yet much more greedy, option.

Remember, I previously said that each of these five countries have violated their own treaty to travel to the Dark Continent on at least one occasion, all of which driven by greed. And now they've come together, unified by their greed. So here's the plan: the V5 invited the Kakin Empire into their organization and officially became the V6. Then, together, they would pull their resources to conduct the first official successful Dark Continent voyage and split the rewards between the six nations. That was the public position. The private position was that the V5 made a secret plan to dump the Kakin Empire on a land mass known as the New Continent and pretend it was the Dark Continent before moving on to explore the real Dark Dark Continent themselves. And on this occasion, Togashi has perfectly depicted the hubris of humanity. Because the V5 aren't trying to prevent Dark Continent access to save humans, they're just trying to make sure that they're the ones that end up with all the rewards.

And all of this was foreseen and taken into account by Beyond Netro. Because his speech triggered a lot of pressure from business leaders and assorted political donors to explore this option, thanks to all of the wild promises of the untold discoveries and therefore newfound profit. Speaking of, it's also worth noting that Beyond Netro also has a public and private position on this matter. What I quoted before, that wonderful speech about equity and opportunity, that was Beyond's public opinion. But now here's the speech that he gave to his personal expedition team in private: "I want to go where no one has gone before, meet people nobody has met, acquire things nobody has touched. I want to explore without bounds in the great wide opening, leaving my mark on virgin territory. I won't turn down anyone who joins or chase after anyone who leaves, but I'll crush anyone who tries to interfere." And there you can see the stark contrast between the man that Beyond projects himself as versus the man that he actually is. In his public speech, it was all about "we" and "us" and how "I," Beyond, will protect you, the "we." But in private, it's all about "I" and "me," and how "you" will be crushed if you get in my way. Which is pretty much the exact sentiment of Beyond's late father.

Something very key about Isaac Netro is that he was an incredibly selfish individual, whose selfish goals usually just happened to align with what was best for humanity, such as sacrificing himself to kill the Ant King Meruem. Netro didn't do that entirely out of the goodness of his heart; he did so for the opportunity to finally face a worthy opponent. And Netro's leadership is what molded the Hunter Association and specifically the Hunter Exam into a trial designed to cultivate the strong and cull the weak, so that the strong could go on to grow and again eventually give Netro that challenge he was looking for. Which you can see with the Zodiacs, who were handpicked for their unique abilities to challenge Netro in their respective fields. All of this is to say, imagine that selfishness but geared in the exact opposite direction. Isaac Netro's desires may have aligned with humanity's prosperity; however, Beyond Netro's desires threatened to destroy the entire human race. And I think the key difference between them can be quite starkly drawn with the Dark Continent. Isaac Netro saw no personal value there for himself; there was no single challenge that he could defeat, so he lobbied to ban Dark Continent travel, thus preserving the safety of the human world and the cultivation of his little challenge-lings. However, Beyond sees great personal value in the Dark Continent, so he concocted a plan to breach that safety and put existence as we know it into risk.

Although, in the end, they're both as bad as each other. Because Isaac Netro hasn't exactly helped our current situation. In fact, he's the reason why every top member of the Hunter Association is now involved in this expedition. Because he left a very special DVD to be played in the event that someone just popped out of nowhere and claimed to be his son. And on that DVD, Isaac Netro explained Beyond's motives as well as their history, and finally gave the Zodiacs a single request, which was to successfully explore the Dark Continent before Beyond Netro. And I'd like to point out that Isaac Netro refers to this as not an order, it's a selfish desire of mine. Which I obviously agree with, because it would seem that Netro is only willing to put humanity at risk after he's been removed from it, after he dies. "Do whatever. In fact, you know what? Help me out here and allow me to defeat my son one last time from beyond the grave." It's even been suspected by Misom that Isaac Netro made his death the condition in order to inspire Beyond to try and take his life, to cultivate his own son into that ultimate challenge that Isaac Netro had been seeking. That's just how the Netro family are, pretty relentlessly selfish.

Now, most of the remaining Zodiacs were Netro loyalists, and they do want to complete this last will for him. However, the Hunter Association was in a pretty tough spot regardless, because the decision was very much out of their hands at this point. To bring economics into it, the V5 are the Hunter Association's biggest customers. So if the V5 make a decision to travel to the Dark Continent, then they'll be expecting the Hunter Association to comply. And so they did, with the Hunter Association now in charge of expedition transport and security. So in addition to gaining permission from the V5 Nations, Beyond Netro also acquired significantly more means and qualifications for the journey. Although, rather shockingly, Beyond Netro then turned himself into the Hunter Association and was promptly arrested. Because after his announcement, the V5 Nations requested that the Hunter Association hunt him, because they needed him under their control in order to enact their Kakin plan swiftly. Reaching an agreement where the Hunter Association and the V5 will supervise a Dark Continent Expedition with Beyond under their strict control.

So to clarify, the reason why we're taking Beyond at all, despite knowing how dangerous he is, is because one, even though he is going to 100% try to betray them, he is still the best guide we have. And two, because they need Beyond Netro's cooperation to fool the Kakin Empire when they get to the New Continent and drop them off. They essentially need Beyond to say, "Yep, this is our continent. This is the place I was talking about. Enjoy." And as part of this deal, Beyond even signed a contract to remain in the custody of the Hunter Association, thus technically fulfilling all four Dark Continent travel requirements. However, on the side, Beyond Netro has already formed his own expedition team with his escape plan already in motion. And this team is primarily composed of temp Hunters with specialized Nen abilities necessary for survival. And these guys, some of them look kind of funny, but they are no joke. Do not underestimate them because they are temp Hunters. Because Ging Freaks himself has ascertained that each and every one of them is a Nen expert. In fact, this group is likely capable of power that would rival the entirety of the Zodiacs.

Doo, we should talk about that. Ging is here, in addition to some other familiar faces. For one, it was confirmed that Sawou of the Zodiacs is actually a traitor and working for Beyond Netro. However, Beyond himself doesn't know this. And that's because Sawou is working with former Zodiac Pariston Hill, who was something of a vice commander of this expedition team. And it was revealed that his whole time at the Hunter Association was spent purely setting up for this voyage, recruiting Hunters with necessary abilities, gathering power, and eventually resigning from the chairman role to enact the plan. And then, of course, there's the third Zodiac in the mix as well, or in this case, former Zodiac Ging Freaks, who also resigned, sensing an opportunity to make his ambition come to reality. He then gate-crashed Beyond's Expedition team, causing a lot of tension with Pariston. Also, quite funnily, Beyond has no idea about anything that Ging's been doing because he's currently in prison and will be theoretically for the duration of the voyage. As it is, Beyond is currently lying down quite comfortably in a cell guarded by three Zodiacs at all times, being fed to the Dark Continent, quite literally, without him needing to lift even a single finger. However, Beyond does have an escape plan that will commence at some point. And also an unknown number of extra expedition members. Because Beyond's agents have also infiltrated the security of the Kakin royalty, such as Bill, who is currently guarding 14th Prince Woble with Kopa. However, all of them have since become embroiled in the deadly succession contest, with the very concept of their survival now in extreme doubt before even setting foot on the Dark Continent.

The succession contest is the oldest known event in the Hunter Hunter timeline. It is a once-in-a-generation event commenced by the first king of what would become known as the Kakin Empire. In ancient times, Kakin was a micronation located smack bang in the middle of extremely contested territories, each ruled by their own respective warlord. And in order to prevent Kakin from being swallowed up, the first king came up with a rather cunning plan. As it turns out, the first king was a Nen user, a conjurer to be precise. And he conjured the Seed Earn into existence, a device that was then used to have his children fight to the death until only one remained. With the sacrificial energy of each dead royal being absorbed by the Seed Earn and being used to make the ultimate survivor more powerful. This survivor also went on to inherit the position of king. And over many generations, Kakin would conquer and unite the warring territories in order to become one of the single largest and most wealthy nations today. But despite the prosperity of the Empire, Kakin and its rulers only grew more and more hungry for delicious powers and dominance. And so the succession contest ritual never ceased.

Which is where we now find ourselves in Hunter Hunter, trapped in the midst of a battle royale between 14 princes, which is escalating to the point where it's threatening the lives of every single person currently heading to the Dark Continent. And what we're facing right now isn't just the power of the modern Kakin Empire because the succession contest is essentially a cumulative Nen ability. It is the combined history and sacrifice of every member of Kakin royalty, as well as the deeply rooted cultural drive to make Kakin greater and greater. As soon as a royal prince is born, their mother is made aware of the succession contest, and it is the role of the queen to prepare her child, or even children plural, to be the sole survivor. As explained by Eighth Queen Oer, "The wife's role is to raise the king's child with the unwavering belief that they will one day be king. That's what a king's child is. They think it a matter of course that there will be an opportunity to be king and that the throne will be theirs, and that such an opportunity should never be renounced." The king instilled in them that anyone raised to believe otherwise would not be his child. It's not hard to imagine the fate of deserters, implying that they would be killed, or even worse. Worse is surprisingly an option, which I find very interesting.

Because the succession contest is technically an optional event. Princes can decline to participate. However, they also can't, because that would go against the culture in which they were raised, and they may very well be considered deserters. Which is why each of King Nasabe's 14 legitimate children did in fact choose to participate, despite half of them wanting nothing to do with the contest. Although many of the higher order princes are practically salivating at the thought of being able to kill their siblings. So let's meet them.

First Prince Benjamin is the son and the epitome of raw strength, so much so that he was introduced to us wrestling and killing a lion, which is almost certainly a reference to the first labor of Hercules, which was to kill a lion that was terrorizing some place. Benjamin is also the deputy military adviser of Kakin, and as a result, he has a small personal army of Nen users at his disposal, putting him in by far the best position to win the contest at the outset. He's even already developed his own personal Nen ability named Benjamin Baton, which allows him to inherit the Nen abilities of his deceased loyal soldiers, in essence making him a multi-Nen user, much like a certain Croo Lucifer. But Benjamin also has a very inflated view of his right to be king because he is, of course, the eldest. However, despite that, Benjamin is somehow one of the least selfish princes and is driven mainly by patriotism. In his words, "I, Benjamin, will personally prune the diseased branches," by which he's referring to the princes. "I swear here and now to protect the great tree of Kakin." After which point, he ripped off his shirt because, why not? So apart from the shirt ripping, he is a very traditional prince. He has sworn want to uphold the existing values of Kakin and defend against even the most minor notion of change.

Then we have the firstborn daughter, Second Prince Camila. A much more selfish individual who always speaks in the third person. "Camy wants this, Camy wants that." Camy happens to be a bit of a [ __ ] I added that last one simply because it is true. She has very little respect for the existing values of Kakin and despite being the second oldest prince, often publicly disregards etiquette. Gasp. However, Camila also already knows Nen and has a personal Hatsu called Cats, which immediately kills anyone who kills Camila and then funnels their life back into Camila, thus resurrecting her. In terms of her extended forces, Camila took the reverse approach to Benjamin, who quite rudely commandeered the entire Royal Army before anyone else got there. But instead, Camila essentially built an army out of poor people. This class is known as the Kakin Have-Nots, and Camila gave the outcast citizens of the Empire an opportunity to elevate their status, you know, somewhat, in exchange for all of them becoming Nen-curse wielders, ready to throw away their lives in exchange for killing a particular target. So Camila currently has one of her Have-Nots assigned to every other prince, meaning that when the conditions of the Have-Nots are fulfilled, each and every other prince could die overnight. And in order to preserve their own lives, each prince will need to eliminate their respective curse bearer. However, none of the other princes are aware of this as of yet.

At this point, I should note that "prince" is a gender-neutral term because gender has no relevance in Kakin society. Which might sound a bit weird because King Nasabe has eight wives with 14 legitimate children and lots more illegitimate ones. However, if the king was female, then this would just be reversed, and a more buxom king would likely have just as many husbands. And what we'd have is a bit of a One Piece Big Mom situation happening.

Moving to Third Prince Zang Le, he is a stoic and quiet figure, easily the best diplomat of his siblings. And he has been described as preferring to avoid bloodshed, but would not hesitate to enact it. He is both kind and cruel, equally as capable of acting on both sides of the coin. Meanwhile, Fourth Prince Ryck is the man likely being set up as the primary antagonist of the arc, a sinister Nen genius who has mastered the basic principles in less than a week and unconsciously conjured both a personal Nen beast and a Nen ability. Ryck is also a bit of a snob, to say the least. If you don't have a high academic mastery of geography, politics, and art, then he doesn't consider you human; you're just a pig to him. With Ryck's core belief being, "Not realizing one's own ignorance is the greatest sin of all."

To Fifth Prince Tobeppa, now she is a dedicated scientist and holds a particular hatred for princes 1 through 3. Tobeppa sees them as repulsive, arrogant, greedy, and indulgent, coming to the conclusion that they should be purged for the good of the nation. And Tobeppa is in a very interesting spot, having now formed an alliance with both Ryck and Kopa, aka an alliance with our antagonist and our protagonist. Her oldest sister, Sixth Prince Tyson, is a religious cult leader who has built herself a reverse harem of very handsome men and plans to prevail with the philosophy that love will always triumph. And this may be a result of Tyson's Guardian Spirit Beast ability. But even IUN Navi has recently become convinced that Tyson becoming king could be the best possible outcome. And there's also some existing confusion over Tyson's gender because the official translation has referred to Tyson as "him" which was before Tyson was introduced, and once Tyson was introduced, his translation just never corrected it for whatever reason. But her older brother, Seventh Prince Lerus, has been repeatedly referred to as a prince with no ambition. Although, in my personal opinion, I think he's just the best actor amongst all of the princes, able to deceive each and every one of his siblings into overlooking his candidacy. I also think he's currently deceiving us as readers because he has yet to show up his true nature either.

Although true nature is something that we get a lot of with Eighth Prince Salis Salah, who is a glutton obsessed with food and intercourse. And this is a fantastic example of the "bread for the king" mindset, because it can be used as a great benefit for princes because it molds some of them into ruthless, efficient leaders. However, it can also have the exact opposite effect, as with Sal-Salah. Because ever since he was a baby, he's been instilled with that unwavering belief that he will become king one day. And with that information, Salah-Salah has elected to do nothing with his life. He spends all day in his massive bed with an army of women, just waiting for someone to rock up and crown him. Unlike Ninth Prince Hulkenberg, who desires to abolish the monarchy and up until recently was a strict pacifist. He's currently gone off that after experiencing just how efficient a bit of violence can be. And alongside Ryck, he's one of the two princes who, in a ridiculously short amount of time, has managed to develop his own personal Nen ability, which takes the form of an unblockable hour that does some complicated body-swapping stuff. It is not important right now. What is important are 10th Prince Kro and 11th Prince Fugetsu, twins with implicit trust in one another, who plan to work together to be the last remaining survivors. Although it should be noted that Kro is heavily disliked because she puts on an insufferable and villainous persona in order to protect her sister. Very sweet. Let's see if it pays off for them. Then there's 12th Prince M. She's a child. Then we have 13th Prince Mariam, and he's an even smaller child. Then finally, 14th Prince Woble, who doesn't even qualify as child status yet, still very much occupying the realm of baby.

Those are the contestants. So, would that let the contest begin? After agreeing to the official terms of the succession.

Contest to officially submit yourself as a candidate. A prince must offer a drop of blood into the seed. Done. And from here, things are well. They get a bit weird because what you do right is you stick your hand into the pot, and then a magic Nen fairy appears and feeds you an egg. Although the princes are unaware of this, even if they know Nen, they cannot see it. It appears to be a condition of the seed's own ability that anything conjured for the succession contest is invisible to those competing. But after being fed this egg, it will then manifest into a Nen Beast known as a Guardian Spirit Beast to assist their respective prince in the succession contest.

And the venue for this event is the Black Whale One, a ship built for the purpose of the Dark Continent Expedition. And we'll talk about why this venue was chosen in a bit because there is a deeply disturbing answer to that question. However, for now, only tiers one and two of the Black Whale have been designated as "hunting grounds." Tier one is where all of the princes are housed, as well as some of the V5 politicians and an assortment of other dignitaries. Whilst tier 2 is for celebrities and other generally money-having people.

And the contest officially began when the Black Whale departed and finished sounding its whale horn. And very importantly, as is consistent with Ken values, if any attempt is made to leave the battlefield, the punishment is immediate death. Meaning that each prince must remain within tiers one and two of the Black Whale, even in the worst-case scenario. West say the ship is sinking and they need to escape.

But there's a lot more to this contest than just the princes, and I mean a lot more. One important stipulation is that the succession contest has to abide by the law. You can't just walk up to another prince and kill them because that is murder, and you would be arrested and charged accordingly. And the same goes for more indirect measures, like saying, ordering one of your people to assassinate a prince. That is also against the law, and if that person is caught, then you would be charged for giving them that order. So, each prince needs to meet their demise in a manner worthy of a mystery novel where no suspect can be identified.

All of which is designed to reflect the challenges that the eventual King will face in the day-to-day activities of ruling the nations and engaging in all sorts of foreign affairs. It's not good enough to simply be the strongest, or the smartest, or the most charming. The correct King needs to have the perfect mix. As King Nasab says, "Beasts with only fangs and claws will go extinct before long." Which is why the bulk of this contest is actually conducted by Royal staff and bodyguards. It's very much a war by proxy.

And in this area, the succession contest is decidedly skewed in favor of the older princes. To explain the bodyguard structure, the lower-ranking princes have a series of guards assigned by the Royal household depending on their ranking. And the lower-ranking a prince is, the more restricted they are in their ability to choose Royal household guards for themselves. For example, as the lowest-ranking prince, 14th Prince Woble doesn't get to select any Royal household guards at all and had seven agents assigned to her, all of which were chosen by the opposing seven Queens, essentially making all of Woble's guards a series of spies and assassins, practically guaranteeing her death. Which is why many of the low-ranking princes posted job openings and hired hunters to be their bodyguards.

Meanwhile, one step above Woble is Mariam. And thanks to his ranking, he actually gets to choose one of the Royal household guards for himself, with six guards being assigned. Then 12th Prince M gets to choose 12 for herself, with five being assigned. Fugetsu chooses three for herself, with four being assigned, and so on and so forth. Essentially, only princes six and above get to choose their entire staff.

And matters get even more complicated because certain princes have special powers, like first prince Benjamin, who, as stated earlier, is the Deputy Military Advisor of Ken. And as such, he has the power to assign his own military Royal Guards, which he has done to many of the lower princes. Although certain princes have the power to refuse this because the Kian hierarchy is also heavily based on the Queen ranking. So, for example, fourth Prince Ridik is the brother of first prince Benjamin, and they are both the sons of first Queen Unma, meaning that Sadik can refuse Benjamin's orders because they are equal in terms of their mother's Queen status. Whereas Camila and Zangl, who hold higher prince rankings than Sadik, cannot refuse because their mothers hold lower Queen rankings than him.

Which then results in some really stupid stuff, like Queen Ooo and Queen Kopa legally needing to allow Benjamin's subordinate Vincent into their quarters, despite the fact that they knew he was there to assassinate them. But if they didn't let Vincent in, then that is a crime, they would have been arrested and imprisoned on the spot. And not only that, but if they move to strike Vincent first, who again, they knew was there to kill them, then again, they are the ones who get arrested.

I'm not going to lie, trying to keep track of both the prince and queen rankings, as well as who each bodyguard is affiliated with and who they outrank, it is an absolute nightmare. It's one of the reasons that the succession war is so, so dense, and it's the sort of thing that people have constructed complex charts to have on hand as quick references whenever confusion arises. But again, it is mostly the bodyguards who do the actual fighting in this contest.

However, the overall win condition for the succession contest is not as simple as it may seem, and it's been left quite open-ended by King Nasabi. The official win condition is "the sole survivor is the heir to the throne." And apparently, that's not as simple as it seems. Both Princess Camila and Zangl have argued that the term "survivor" can be defined and interpreted in many different ways, with Camila requesting that the contest be redefined as an event where only biological deaths are accepted as dropouts, implying that there are mechanisms to end one's participation in the contest without dying. And to this, King Nasab cryptically replied, "The sole survivor is the official heir to the throne. How you interpret that is part of the contest."

So, the way that higher-order princes have interpreted that is a fight, a battle to the death. However, many of the lower-order princes have a very different reading, and they are actively supporting ninth Prince Hulkenberg, as they believe his desire to overthrow the established system opens up a path for both his victory and their safety. But thus far, we are currently 10 days deep into the contest, and we've already suffered a lot of notable casualties.

The first to be eliminated was 12th Prince M, who unknowingly exerted her very limited aura through her Guardian Spirit Beast, leaving her exhausted and in need of a nice long nap. At which point, a bodyguard affiliated with another queen snuck in to strangle her to death. So, more accurately, the bodyguard conjured and used a Nen double to strangle her, which meant that there was no evidence of him or anyone else entering the room.

8th Prince Sal Salah was next to meet his demise after Rehan's Predator deep-throated his Guardian Spirit Beast, leaving Salis Salah defenseless and eventually he was poisoned by the nobility of another member of Prince Benjamin's guards. And 10th Prince Kacho also left this world after attempting to escape from the Black Whale One with her twin sister, Fugetsu. Fugetsu managed to make it back onto the ship. However, Kacho was killed as punishment for breaking the succession contest rules. However, her situation is complicated because people think she's dead. However, her Guardian Spirit Beast then activated and took on Kacho's form. The spirit beast then interacted with select people, and now certain people think that Kacho is alive because the beast is pretending to be her. And in a weird way, no one's correct. Kacho is both alive and dead. Shoing is Kacho, if you will.

And as for who's going to die next, it's actually looking very possible that it could be 11th Prince Fugetsu, who, as of chapter 400, has been spotted with an escort of malicious Nen spirits and has become mentally unstable due to not having the aura experience to combat them. We don't know exactly what's happening here yet, but this could be the curse of Camila's Haves taking effect, slowly eating away at Fugetsu's aura and mind until a state of death is achieved. But it could also be a consequence of trying to leave the battlefield alongside Kacho, just with Fugetsu's punishment being a more drawn-out affair. But whatever is happening here, I fear for her survival. I don't think it's very likely.

But I also fear for everyone else because this contest is not what it seems. There's an extra sinister layer to the succession contest that is currently unknown to anyone except for Prince Nasibi. And this is the primary reason why he wished to embark on the Dark Continent Voyage. Because think about this: the succession contest is designed to pick the next king, meaning that by the time they reach the theoretical Dark Continent, Nasabi himself will have either stepped down or will be dead. And I dare say his plan is for the latter.

When the contest initially commenced, Nasabi had an internal monologue where he declared that the 200,000 lives aboard the Black Whale One were sacrifices for the winner to use as they see fit to carve out their own future. And as of right now, the only one who seems to have caught on to this is the crime hunter Misone, who suspects that the rapidly escalating tension on every tier of the Black Whale is all part of a grand plan to sink and destroy the vessel, along with its 200,000 passengers, as a sacrifice to complete an ancient Nen ritual. However, knowing about it and being able to stop it, those are two different things. And Misom is desperately trying to turn back the doomsday clock as we speak. However, he's currently being hampered heavily by bureaucracy and Kian politics, almost as if a lot of it was designed intentionally to block any sudden action against the ritual. With Misom now commenting that "the fuse to destruction is even shorter than we can imagine."

And within the Black Whale One, we've also seen a secret burial chamber housing 14 coffins. Each of which are connected by a colossal use of what appears to be Nen inscription, which are patterns designed to boost and channel aura, which you may recognize from the starting room of Greed Island, which was also littered with inscription in order to facilitate the game. And in this room, King Nasab has been observed saying that "his fallen children will become the foundation for the tree of Ken and shine even brighter in death than in life."

But the real curious part of this is the existence of 14 coffins because that's one for each prince. But if there's supposed to be a sole survivor, then surely we only need 13 coffins. Which has led to speculation that King Nasabe himself will be the one filling that final coffin, or that all of this is a clever ruse and Nasab plans on killing all of his children to perform a ritual of untold proportions and catapulting his own personal power into the realm of the gods. It's all a bit up in the air right now, and a lot of the answer to this lies in the mystery of the Guardian Spirit Beasts themselves.

The Guardian Spirit Beasts are an essential element of the Kian succession contest, a death match between 14 princes of the Empire, with the sole survivor being crowned as its new king. However, there are a couple of problematic rules, though, mainly being the princes still have to obey the law, but they can't just up and slay one another. I mean, they can, but it's going to result in Royal prison, which is nicer than regular prison, but still not as nice as becoming the King. Which is why the main method of combat during the succession contest is via the Guardian Spirit Beast assigned to each prince, each with a unique Nen ability designed to quietly kill, murder a grand total of 13 of their siblings.

And it should be noted that not all Guardian Spirit Beasts are made equally. Some of them are absurdly powerful, some of them are not that. And this is because of reasons. Firstly, in order to receive a Guardian Spirit Beast, a prince needs to consent to the succession contest by offering a drop of blood into the Seedar, a conjured object brought into existence by the ancient first Ken King. It's a very cool object because it stores generational aura. The Guardian Spirit Beasts conjured for each prince are made up of aura from previous sacrifices. And this is the key difference between a regular Nen beast and a Koken Guardian Spirit Beast. More accurately, a Guardian Spirit Beast is a niche and specialized Nen beast. And because they're not made from the aura of the princes, they serve the princes in question can neither see nor control them. They are parasitic type Nen abilities that feed off their host but are not at their command.

So, each Guardian Spirit Beast is powered by the aura of their assigned prince, which obviously favors princes who already know Nen, or princes who are well, not literal babies like 14th Prince Woble. However, regular Nen users can see them. But even if a prince were to use Go, they would remain invisible, with one weird exception that we're going to address later.

But there are two more very important rules, which is great, I love rules. One of which is that the Guardian Spirit Beasts cannot kill each other. And the second rule that makes this infinitely more awkward is that a Guardian Spirit Beast cannot directly attack other people who also have Guardian Spirit Beasts. So, naturally, this brings their usefulness into question because you can't use them to kill an opposing prince, nor can you use them to kill their Guardian Spirit Beast. And this is all designed to align with the general rules of the succession contest. Again, open hostilities are not a good option. So, each beast comes equipped with an ability designed to influence grander events rather than personally enact them.

So, let's have an example. Second Prince Camila's Guardian Spirit Beast, best described as a tit tree with a lovely flowing skirt, has a manipulation ability that takes control of people once they fulfill certain conditions. And if a person is being manipulated, then bad things can happen to other princes that are not linked to you yourself. It's a very basic manipulation power, there really isn't much more to it than that, at least that we know of. And part of this is because second Prince Camila herself sees very little need for her Guardian Spirit Beast. She came into the contest as a Nen user already and has chosen to place more faith in her cat's name ability, which is important because the Guardian Spirit Beast may act independently, but like all Nen, they respond to need and desire. So, in my opinion, Camila is really limiting her options by disregarding and not desiring hers.

And 12th Prince M has a similar Guardian Spirit Beast that takes the form of a cute little mousy thing that relentlessly asks people whether or not they're free. You can say no, but it's going to keep asking. And as soon as you cave and say, "Mate, sure, I'm free," then it takes control of your body and forces you to go on a killing spree to rid the world of anyone in your immediate vicinity. A very simple ability to reflect the simple mind and simple needs of a child. M was somewhere between 12 to 14 years old, so old enough to understand the horrors of the contest and what needed to be done to survive, but young enough to not have the experience or maturity to seek victory through more subtle and effective methods. All of which contributed to M being the very first prince to be killed during the contest.

But Guardian Spirit Beasts also tend to resemble the inner nature of their prince in question. With M, it was a cute little mouse with respect for people's time. However, with first prince Benjamin, it is an incredibly aggressive-looking creature of doom, and we have no idea what its specific ability is. Nen has become very mysterious, but also fun thing. Its head is very clearly shaped like a penis. And no, that's not me reading into it too much, I don't think. Because the surprising amount of Guardian Spirit Beasts feature outright genital theming. And there's no better example than that of King Nas's Guardian Spirit Beast, who is a big pile of breasts with slender feminine fingers, and of course, the gapy, toothy vagina mouth, which perfectly reflects King Nas's interests. This dude had 14 children with eight different women, and those are just the official children. So, of course, he's going to conjure a creature with like 16 boobs as a point of intrigue.

King Nasabe himself is not participating in the succession contest. However, his Guardian Spirit Beast remained with him after his victory in the previous contest during his generation, which is very important. Your Guardian Spirit Beast does not disappear if you win, which also means that not all Guardian Spirit Beasts have abilities suited to dealing with the contest itself. Some have abilities that focus on what actually happens after you become king.

Enter third Prince Zangl and his big coin buddy, a Guardian Spirit Beast shaped like a Dharma chakra, the symbol used in Buddhism to represent universal moral order, which reflects Zangl quite well, as he is the most tolerant and diplomatic prince by far, which is one of the many reasons why he and Kopa have quite an amicable relationship in this contest thus far. But he has a particularly cryptic Guardian Spirit Beast, which is said to have multiple abilities activated by multiple conditions. What fun! But the one we know of is that once a day, it conjures a coin, which Zangl has decided to distribute to those who are loyal to him. And Zangl's ultimate ambition is to distribute these coins to everyone in the Empire, and only then does he expect to see real results of the ability. And Zangl very insightfully states that this ability could reflect more about how he worries about what's going to happen after the contest. And so, Zangl may or may not have written off his Guardian Spirit Beast for use in the actual contest, and he may be correct to do so. Although it may also not be the wisest idea, because it's been shown that the numbers on the coins are capable of increasing. Although we still have yet to understand the true effect.

In terms of coin symbolism, though, it should be noted that coins have two sides, and these two sides are how Zangl views the Ken Empire: the light and the dark. Which is why Zangl also has deep ties to his own personal mafia faction. His ambition is to wield these two faces of the Ken Empire, and hence why a coin makes a crazy amount of sense for him.

And then there's this guy, fourth Prince Snick, someone with some, shall we say, woman problems. Snick believes that all women are by nature lying swine, duplicitous, treacherous vixens out to get him. And look to be as fair as I can be, that is true of his family at the very least, with almost every female sibling and queen out there to brutally kill, murder him. And so, Snick's Guardian Spirit Beast is a manifestation of this belief, a twisted beast with the head of a woman and also some high heels. Not a lot of people notice the high heels, but it comes equipped with a Nen ability specifically designed to punish lying women. If an untruth is told to Snick, then the Guardian Spirit Beast will issue a warning, and then if a second bout of deceit is attempted, then the Guardian Spirit Beast will issue a stronger, more permanent scar, a kind of second warning. And then if the unimaginable were to happen and a woman were to lie to Snick the third time, then, in the words of the Guardian Spirit Beast itself, "that woman would no longer be human."

Which, uh, doesn't sound great. And it's currently hypothesized by characters in-world that the woman in question would then turn into a pawn for Snick to use. As in, these are the conditions for basic manipulation. But I think it's significantly more sinister and less useful than that, because Snick is an artist who paints with emotion, specifically the emotion of the women he's murdering, which provides him with the inspiration to dismantle and reassemble their bodies as he sees fit for the sake of art. Snick is also a specialist, so absolutely nothing is off the table for this. But I think that if a woman, in this case Thea, were to lie to him a third time, then she's going to become his greatest work of art to date, not necessarily something useful in the succession contest, but something that reflects Sadik's desires, and she would probably suffer one of, if not the worst fate in all of Hunter Hunter.

But Snick also happens to have formed an alliance with a woman, being fifth Prince Toba, who has zero interest in art and is more of the mind of science. And so her Guardian Spirit Beast very much resembles a sort of frog thing that you would dissect in high school science class. At least, I'm told people did that. I never did a frog. We did other things. But Toba's Guardian Spirit Beast is also of questionable use in the contest itself, as its ability is all about transmuting aura into a variety of drugs and chemicals for Toba to put to use elsewhere. It's also one of the more cautious Guardian Spirit Beasts. It rarely appears unless Toba is alone, and even then, Toba can't see it. So, frankly, we're lucky to have seen this much of it. And there is one more condition, which is that to create anything, it requires a "research partner." So, it's one of the weaker Guardian Spirit Beasts on paper, although it has a lot of potential depending on how Toba herself makes use of the produced chemicals. But sort of like how Zangl is too focused on what happens after he becomes king, I think that Toba is similarly blinded with her focus on science.

All of the princes have their blind spots, though, with a very deceptively scary one being sixth Prince Tyson. A genuinely caring individual who strictly opposes any violent action. She's an actual pacifist, unlike pacifist Posa. Ninth Prince Hulkenberg, who gets two in a bit. But you can see how much Tyson cares because her Guardian Spirit Beast is a big love heart, determined to spread hope and peace, and whatever these little things are, to the world. What's that? These sneaky little things are called Eyewalls, and they attach themselves to anyone who comes across the teachings of Tyson. Because for an added layer of spook, Tyson isn't just a nice person. She is, in fact, a very nice religious cult leader who has authored her very own Bible, known as the Book of Tyson, or the Tyson Canon. And these Eyewalls grant people happiness, indirect direct correlation to how thoroughly they understand and have read the Tyson Canon. However, in exchange, the Eyewalls siphon energy from Tyson's very happy followers, in essence slowly depleting them of their life force, but making them feel pretty damn good about the whole situation. Kind of like the ability of the Dark Continent Calamity Pap.

And as of right now, we don't know the exact purpose of all of the energy gathering. However, Iyun Nai has speculated that its ultimate effect will be something like a Spirit Bomb from Dragon Ball. Those are his exact words, not my comparison. But this showcases one of the common Guardian Spirit Beast strategies. Several of the princes have Nen Beasts focused on winning more and more people to come around to their cause. Tyson is doing so via the path of religion.

But to skip ahead a bit, eighth Prince Salis Salah's Guardian Spirit Beast had a similar function by releasing smoke from its many mouths to infect anyone who inhales it with increasingly favorable thoughts about Sal. And it's pretty funny because there's a part where you see a bodyguard start to come around to him, and he says, "You know what? I've been thinking. They say that great men are great lovers, right? So Salali must be the greatest because dude never stops [ __ ]!" But just like Salis Salah himself, this ability is pretty lazy and poorly thought out because it is directly tied to Salis Salah's libido. So the Guardian Spirit Beast will continue to pump as long as Salis Sal can, which is quite a while, as in all day. It's literally everything he does. Salis Sal is bedridden by choice. So he has this extremely effective mechanism of producing smoke, but a wildly ineffective method of actually spreading it because he never actually goes anywhere. Not that it matters, though, because he's dead now due to his complete and utter lack of preparation for the contest.

Now, to take a step back, we need to check in with seventh Prince Lerus, the dark horse of the succession contest, with an even darker horer secret. His Guardian Spirit Beast is a conjurer that sets traps by creating whatever its target most desires. Which I think tells us a fair bit about Lerus himself. At the moment, he's easily one of the most chill and likable princes, and all of his siblings have written him off as a serious contender for the crown. But I think he's just showing both his siblings and us as readers what we want to see. If his Guardian Spirit Beast is any indication, then Lerus is hiding a much darker nature, which we can see a hint of because he is the benefactor of one of the three major Ken mafia families. At the moment, though, further details about this Guardian Spirit Beast are being kept in the dark.

Meanwhile, ninth Prince Hulkenberg is probably most out in the open about his desires, which is to completely reform the Coan Empire into a much more democratic system. And so his Guardian Spirit Beast is focused on identifying those loyal to Hulkenberg and then providing them with the power to overthrow the system. The beast marks people with an opinion on their hand that disappears after 10 minutes if the person in question is not truly loyal to Hackenberg. But if they are, then the opinion remains, and the bearer is awakened to Nen, further receiving a frankly disgusting boost of aura, which compounds in close proximity to other opinion bearers. To put this in a more tangible way, it's been hypothesized that 10 of Hulkenberg's newly awakened bodyguards, that didn't even know Nen a couple of days ago, together hold more power than Prince Benjamin's entire Nen-trained private army. So, this is a small group of people capable and willing to seize power. And after this awakening, many princes have switched their prime focus to killing Hulkenberg before this faction completely crushes them.

But next up are 10th and 11th princes Kacho and Fugetsu, who have linked Guardian Spirit Beasts due to their bond of being fraternal twins. Neither one of them can actually use their abilities without the other. For example, Fugetsu's Guardian Spirit Beast is a door called "Secret Door," which is based on a game that the twins used to play as children, which they they both still are, I guess. In any case, it grants a form of teleportation with the caveat being that the outgoing door can only be opened by Fugetsu, and the return door can only be opened by Kacho. So, Fugetsu gets to decide that they go on an adventure, but she needs Kacho to get back home from the adventure. Which would be pretty problematic if one of them died, unless Kacho's Guardian Spirit Beast is a truly tragic manifestation of Nen called "Without You," and it only appears in the event that either Kacho or Fugetsu dies, after which point it takes on the role of the deceased twin and impersonates them, presumably till death.

At the moment, "Without You" was impersonating Kacho, who was killed when the twins tried to escape the succession contest arena. But this combination is also a very risky ability because Fugetsu, again, she's a child, she doesn't have that much aura available to her, so even one use leaves her drained and very easy to kill in a compromised spot.

Then we have 13th Prince Mariam, who has a purely defensive-focused Guardian Spirit Beast resembling a young boy's vision of a big old scary dragon that grows and shrinks in size depending on how Mariam is feeling at any given moment. It's also likely the entity responsible for the barrier being erected around Mariam's room, which currently exists in its own effective pocket dimension. And anyone who tries to enter the room is transported to another room, meaning that Mariam is probably the safest possible prince at the moment, because the only threats to his life are from people already within that pocket dimension. Two of which are Biscuit Krueger and Hanzo (no last name provided), but I'd feel pretty damn safe with the two of them around.

And as for our final candidate, 14th Prince Woble, she's the only one whose Guardian Spirit Beast still has yet to show itself to us. However, just before the Black Whale One departed, there was a curious panel where Kopa felt a sinister jolt of aura emanating from Woble's crib, which is almost certainly the manifestation of Woble's Guardian Spirit Beast. But whatever it is, its powers are probably quite limited. As a baby, you can only produce so much aura. However, to make up for that, she has Kopa, the finest strategic mind aboard the Black Whale One, who I would argue is infinitely more of a threat than any actual Guardian Spirit Beast. However, Kopa is in a very tricky situation right now, having inadvertently become the nexus of the entire succession contest, an event which now threatens to claim his life. Kopa has become the eye of the storm that is the succession contest, a role that he never planned on taking, but has reluctantly fallen into as potentially our only hope of ending this arc with a good outcome.

But let's step back a bit. While Scott and Killer were playing Nen video games and Noah doing something with ants, Kopa had been a very busy boy collecting the Scarlet Eyes of the Kur Clan from a wide variety of individuals, including a teacher, lawyer, musician, investor, priest, doctor, swindler, board member, tycoon, religious founder, politician, and an artist. Filthy, filthy artist. But this is very much Togashi's nihilism on full display here, selecting people across the widest possible range of society in order to say, "Yeah, most humans, they just kind of suck. They want your eyes, your pretty sparkly eyes."

However, Kura at this moment is on the verge of completing his quest. There's just one large batch of Kurta eyes missing that he's been unable to track down. And one day, he was approached by a man dressed as a cow offering him this information. All of which is due to the actions of a dog woman. Because in order to sell the idea of the Hunter Association going to the Dark Continent, Chairman Cheeto Yorkshire invited old mate Leorio to join the Zodiacs. As following the chairman election, both Jing and Pariston resigned from their positions as Boar and Rat respectively. And because Leorio had admittedly accidentally made quite the name for himself during that election, he was and is still currently the most popular and respected hunter within the entire association. So for the sake of unity, Cheeto needed Leorio on board with this idea, and quite literally on board the Black Whale One.

But while Leorio's name is a big deal, he was offered a more minor role as part of Cheeto's medical team in order to give Leorio some serious doctoring experience. So Leorio accepted the position, and he then went on to say a thing that has changed the course of this entire story, which is that he made a recommendation for Kopa to fill Pariston's former job as the Rat Zodiac. He also informed Cheeto of Kopa's quest to find the Scarlet Eyes of the Kur Clan. And cow enthusiast Misana was sent to meet Kopa with a proposition. The trade offer is as such: Kopa joins the Hunter Association on their Dark Continent voyage, and in exchange, they tell Kopa who the owner of the last batch of Scarlet Eyes is. Which happens to be fourth Prince Ridik of the Coan Empire, who will conveniently be aboard the vessel. So, look, if something would have happened to him or the eyes along the way, then that certainly would be quite the tragedy, now wouldn't it?

So Kopa accepted the position. Although it should be said that after brutally killing Uvogin, Kopa has very much avoided taking any more lives. He acquired all of the other eyes through buying, scamming, or threatening, but not by killing. And in regards to the fourth prince, Kopa says the following: "There were people who told me they would rather die than hand them over, but they changed their minds without dying. It will be the same with the prince." However, look, I'm not so sure about that. Because we do actually catch a glimpse of Ridik's collection at one point, with him sitting on a throne of bones, with the Scarlet Eyes prominently positioned behind him. But rather curiously, there's also the head of a young child, which looks disturbingly like Kura's childhood friend Pyro. And if Kura ever sees that head, then he is going to completely lose it.

However, there was an ulterior motive for selecting Kopa to fill the Rat position. The Zodiacs didn't just bend over after Leorio's throbbing recommendation. And one of the motives is immediately explored by Kopa, as his first question was, "How many allies beyond Beyond Netro had within the Hunter Association?" Something which both Misom and Cheel had been considering for quite some time. And so it was revealed that Kopa was chosen to become a Zodiac because of how disconnected he was to the association and how unlikely it would have been for him to be one of Beyond's spies. Because there aren't any number of supremely qualified Hunter Association members that could have filled this role. The issue being that there's no way to know who's a filthy spy. Kopa, Misom, and Cheel then deduced that there was a spy within the Zodiacs, partially because of how easily Pariston left the organization, indicating that his spy was already in place.

Ropa was then able to use a combination of Emperor Time and Dowsing Chain to enhance his perception to the point where he can become a human lie detector, which was used to shockingly easily discover that Saou is the spy within the Zodiacs. And the current plan is to arrest Saou right before reaching the New Continent, aka the fake Dark Continent. However, Kopa won't be a part of that team because he's caught up elsewhere. Kopa was actually praised by Pariston Hill after he stopped Beyond's assassins passing the Hunter Exam, which he did through the same lie detector ability that he used to find You. But Paris stated, "It seems the one who joined the Zodiacs in my place is quite competent." Which I love, because that's Pariston assuming that none of the existing Zodiacs could have possibly thwarted his Rat plans because he considers the rest of them to be complete and utter dumbasses.

Although this actually led to a pretty big problem that we're still dealing with, because Kopa was so effective in weeding out Beyond's agents in the Hunter Exam, they all applied for jobs as bodyguards of the Ken princes. So, in addition to not knowing which bodyguards are loyal to which prince or queen, we have an extra layer of issues with bodyguards who are loyal to Beyond Netro and who may actively be adding to the chaos of the succession contest in order to mask their actions. So, for us to keep them in check, members of the Hunter Association would then also need to apply for bodyguard positions. Which was quite a convenient turn of events for our Kopa, because his primary goal during this voyage is to retrieve the Scarlet Eyes from fourth Prince Arnik. So naturally, he offered to lead this effort, and he subsequently put together a personal team of hunters to infiltrate the princes.

This elite team consists of Kopa's closest ally, Melody, the Music Hunter, who's on a quest to find the Sonata of Darkness, a piece of music said to be composed by Satan himself, and is one of those many things that may or may not have a connection to the Dark Continent. Meanwhile, the second member of Kopa's hit squad is Eunnai, who is actually Kopa's Nen mentor, sort of. Which is literally what it says in Eunnai's reintroduction box, "sort of." But he is an incredibly knowledgeable aura veteran and a highly skilled martial artist, but probably not as skilled as our third member, Han, a ninja from the Hidden Cloud Village seeking an elusive item known as The Hermit Scroll. Hanzo gave his ninja business card to Kopa at the end of the Hunter Exam, so it's very nice to see that little throwaway thread coming back. And it's also nice to see fourth squad member Ball, a troubled poet who aims to end smoking by developing a substance known as Clean Leaf, which when smoked actually makes people healthier than they were before. And while aboard the Black Whale One, I'd also like it noted that Ball participated in a rap battle.

Meanwhile, the final member of Kopa's personal team is a very familiar biscuit-shaped face, who was recommended to Kopa by Killua, as Kopa had not previously met Bisky. Each of these five individuals were then tasked with applying for a bodyguard job, and their main mission, as given by Kopa, is to find as much information as possible about the fourth prince. And Kopa himself is not exempt from this, as he also applied with the intention of being hired by ninth prince Hulkenberg, who has the most amicable relationship to Sadik of all of the siblings.

However, then something happened that took Kopa and us by surprise. On the day of his job interview, he was greeted by Queen Ooo and her baby, 14th Prince Woble, who had very cleverly made Kopa think that he was applying for a job with Hackenberg. The queen, that is, not the baby. And the whole application process, it's a bit of a political mess. Each prince who wanted to post them had to post anonymous applications, so there are all sorts of mind games at play here, with certain princes trying to represent themselves as other princes in order to get the best protection they could and avoid as many assassins targeting them personally as possible.

And this is where Kopa was informed of the true nature of the Dark Continent Voyage. Queen Ooo divulged that the succession contest would take place during the journey. Although, as the lowest ranking of all of the Queens, Ooo is not privy to many of the key details. However, in a mixture of sympathy and ambition, Kopa accepted the job and he vowed to protect Prince Woble. Ooo then asked if Kopa would like to hold baby Woble, and Kopa's expression softened for the first time during the show.

And one of Kopa's ongoing struggles is now being torn between seeking peace for his sled clan members and protecting the innocent life of the future for the whole series. Kopa, he's been a man stuck in the past, consumed by enacting retribution for his clan, his already dead clan. And regardless of whether or not Kopa succeeds with that, the clan, they're still gone. We're not doing much about that. However, here for the first time, Kopa has actually been forced to think about preserving life rather than avenging death.

And with that in mind, we fairly abruptly cut to the commencement of the succession contest. And immediately after the Black Whale One departs, Kopa discovered a dead bodyguard in the bathroom of Prince Woble's quarters, and then four more dead bodyguards in the storage area, and then everyone else died as well. Which also led to the very disturbing realization that the majority of his fellow bodyguards had no idea the succession contest was being conducted, and they were on the verge of being eliminated before even a single evening had passed.

Part of the problem here is self-inflicted by Kopa, because three of the bodyguards hired by Woble were part of Beyond Netro's team, who were only here because Kopa blocked their ability to pass the Hunter Exam. And because these agents were all placed here by Pariston, they had no information about the contest. And to be fair, it's unlikely that Pariston knew about it either, hence all of the desperate ignorance, which has now resulted in every one of Woble's bodyguards being killed except for Kopa and Bill, the latter of which is a member of Beyond Netro's team. And we should never forget that there is one positive aspect to this, because at the very least, Kopa and Bill now know that there aren't any spies left, at least not spies that are loyal to other princes anyway. So they're free to strategize fairly openly, which most princes are not.

And on the verge of elimination, Kopa has come up with some very risky plans. Kopa has thus far conducted two deadly gambits during the succession contest. The first of which was publicly announcing the presence of Nen beasts and Nen itself. Remember, Nen is it's a very secretive topic in the Hunter Hunter world. You can't just reveal its existence to anyone. The Hunter Association has very few taboos, but that is a pretty big one. That's why they have a whole exam to determine who is and who is not allowed to learn about Nen, because if that power falls into some very undesirable hands, then there is no telling what kind of evil could be unleashed onto the world. Case in point, after hearing Kopa's announcement, fourth Prince Rynek became obsessed with learning more about Nen to the point where he has now become one of the most single gifted and talented Nen users we've ever seen. Which is very not good, as noted by Theta, who has identified that Seric is a man who should never ever acquire Nen. And it's it's a bit too late for that now.

But Kopa's plan is to essentially reveal as much information about Nen to every prince who doesn't already know about it, with the idea of stalling for time as all of the princes are working on their assorted Nen puzzles, and also to build the power of the princes, ideally to force a stalemate. Which has worked to some degree, with first prince Benjamin's Nen-trained private army admitting that they had lost most of their key advantage. And what's happening right now is very much a Nen arms race, with Kopa aiming to position himself as the vendor. And so what he's done is offer a two-week Nen training course to any prince who wished to take him up on that offer. Many of which did, and so they sent representatives to Kopa's daily Nen school to begin their tuition.

Now, look, we all know that Nen cannot be learned in two weeks, at least not via the appropriate methods. Generally, even the most gifted needs six months to master the basic principles, whereas your average person could take like six years. Which is why right now, every hunter associated with the princes are lying through their teeth to keep Kopa's story intact. They're providing cover to buy as much time as they can to reach the New Continent.

But Kopa has also conducted a second gambit. Through a series of circumstances frankly beyond his control, Kura has been given an opportunity to form alliances with both third Prince Zangl and fifth Prince Toba. He's also arranged a ceasefire with ninth Prince Hulkenberg and made a similar proposal to 13th Prince Mariam's team, with the ultimate goal of building a coalition of princes. However, it's a dangerous proposition because he's sharing a lot of information with four factions who theoretically are best served by the death of Prince Woble and Kopa himself. And the more princes he adds to this coalition, the more points of potential failure there are in his plan.

So, our boy is on a bit of a knife's edge, and every new thing we learn about his situation puts Kopa's survival in doubt. For example, one vital thing we've learned about Kopa during this arc is a very drastic condition for him to activate Emperor Time, which is that it shortens his life by one hour for every second the ability remains active. And Kopa has admitted that he was naive when creating these conditions for Emperor Time, and that it's a far more dangerous ability than he ever could have imagined. Which at one stage cost him bigly, as after several hours of needing to keep Emperor Time active, Kopa was struck with a piercing pain and fainted. Kopa was then unconscious for nine hours with Emperor Time still active, meaning that he had it activated for a total of 12 hours. So, doing math, this one event cost him nearly five years of his life. And he can't stop using this ability anytime soon. It is the only thing giving him the power to remain in this contest.

And what's worse is that Kopa, by setting up his Nen school, has invited a series of brand new threats into Prince Woble's quarters, because many of Kopa's "students" are already Nen users, and thus likely there to serve as assassins. One of which we've already seen, which is the Nen ability "Silent Majority," wielded by an as of yet unknown person. However, it is slowly killing off Kopa's students and has commenced a death game within a death game, as the races now want to find and halt the user of Silent Majority before it kills everyone. So, Kopa's quest to forge a stalemate could very well be speeding up his own demise, especially because people are starting to suspect that.

He might be the one behind it and using this opportunity to slowly deplete the other princes of gods. So, TLDR, he's in a very bad situation. And the idea of Kopa even surviving to reach the Dark Continent may very well be too much to ask.

Kolo versus Hoka is no doubt the most exciting event to have happened following the conclusion of the 2011 hunt. Hunter anime. It is a fast-paced, yet incredibly content-rich encounter that I personally believe is one of the top five greatest fights in all of the manga. And I just mean this manga. I mean all of the mangas. But it's also surprisingly integral to the current events of the Dark Continent and the succession contest.

Ever since the conclusion of York New City, Hisoka's character arc has been, well, let's be more of a straight line, not really an arc at all. From Hisoka's perspective, he's been a man trapped in chastity who really needs to bust a battle nut. And the man holding the key is Kler. Unfortunately, Kler was rendered unable to use Nen by Chrollo's Judgment Chain. And so, to release himself, Hisoka first needs to release Kler.

And we see this moment on the cover of chapter 2011, where Chrollo can be seen reading a copy of Weekly Shonen Jump. And in the background, Hisoka is delivering Abengane, who is the Nen Exorcist we met on Greed Island. Abengane then used his ability to get rid of Chrollo's Nen curse. Although we have no idea what happened to him after that point, if I'm honest. It's entirely possible that he's a bit dead, because Judgment Chain was a particularly nasty curse. And Abengane's exorcism doesn't dispel the curse, it simply displaces it on Tsubone himself. The very best outcome is either he's being crushed by a big slug monster whatever he summons, or that he's now subject to the Nen curse and can no longer use Nen.

Either way, Chrollo and Hisoka then proceeded to not fight for a very long time. Chrollo actually spent over a year running away from Hisoka, during which time he was gathering, stealing a series of Nen abilities that, when combined, would give him a 100% sure chance of defeating Hisoka. Then and only then did Chrollo accept Hisoka's challenge. And as an apology to Hisoka, Chrollo chose the most romantic possible venue for their rendezvous. As the two of them agreed to fight in a public Heaven's Arena match, which to Hisoka is the equivalent of booking a five-star hotel room to get down to clown. And not only that, but Chrollo proposed a battle to the death.

And this was a massive event in the Hunter Hunter world because this wasn't just another "two dudes hitting each other" sort of match. As here, it was revealed that not only had Hisoka successfully become a floor master of Heaven's Arena, but Chrollo also held the status of floor master. And so, tickets sold out instantly. This match was tighter than a young man's luggage going on holiday through Jetstar because they have frustratingly strict luggage rules.

And all of this was an integral part of Chrollo's plan. And look, I'm not going to leave you in suspense about this. From the moment that Hisoka stepped into the arena, he was dead. But what you won't believe is just how far Chrollo went in order to ensure this. For this match, Chrollo sourced a total of six new Nen abilities to use against Hisoka.

The first of which is Black Voice. Mobile Fate Director, which isn't a new ability, but it's new to Chrollo. He borrowed this one from Shalnark. And it's a basic manipulation Hatsu, allowing Chrollo to take control of anyone he manages to penetrate with one of two antennae. And this was very purposely used first against Hisoka in order to mentally wear Hisoka down with the knowledge that at any time, this match could be over in a single shot.

But Chrollo ultimately had a much more brutal fate for Hisoka planned out, which began with Chrollo displaying his second new Nen ability, The Sun and Moon. Pair Destruction. An ability that marks Chrollo's left hand with a sun symbol and his right hand with a moon symbol. And Chrollo is then able to imprint on objects or people a sun or a moon symbol respectively upon touching them with the designated hand. And if at any time a sun and a moon come into contact with each other, then it goes bang. Big explosion. So it's very dangerous and quite frankly irresponsible to just leave all of these symbols haphazardly all around the arena. Very dangerous.

But what you may or may not realize is that we've actually heard of this ability before, way back in York New City, even. Because it was formerly possessed by the Meteor City Elder. And it's believed that this is the mechanism by which Meteor City's defense system was implemented, which is suicide bombers. Because the only results that Meteor City has in large quantities is people, roughly 80 million residents, almost all of whom are willing to be marked with a sun here, a moon here, and then go boom to die and protect what little this city has.

Now, one curious thing to note about the Meteor City Elder is that he has passed away by the time that Chrollo showcases his ability. Meaning that, in theory, it should have been removed from Chrollo's Skill Hunter book. However, it remains because the Elder's desire to protect the city was so strong that this is now an invocation of postmortem Nen. And that's going to be extremely relevant in a bit.

But for now, Chrollo's third new ability is a Chrollo original called Double Face Bookmark Theme. Which is fairly simple. Chrollo conjures a Nen bookmark to mark a page of Skill Hunter, allowing Chrollo to use the ability on that page even if the book is closed. Which has removed the main restriction of Skill Hunter, being that Chrollo has always needed to fight very awkwardly, always holding his book open. And not only that, but by using this bookmark, Chrollo can now fight using two stolen abilities at once, marking one page whilst turning to another. So, counting the bookmark, he can use three abilities at once. Although, if he wanted to be particularly pedantic, and we do, then we need to include the book itself, which means that Chrollo can now use four abilities at once.

Although this didn't come free. Chrollo states that he needed to set himself a series of annoying restrictions in order to balance out the power of the bookmark. None of which we are currently privy to. Although it's my personal theory that when using the bookmark, Chrollo can either only tell the truth when asked a question, or it's a requirement to explain every ability that he uses. Double Face to Mark, including Double Face itself. Because he was very, very open and truthful to Hisoka during this match. Chrollo wouldn't shut up about his and his new powers.

But with that, we are only halfway through Chrollo's master plan to kill Hisoka. Our fourth new power is Order Stamp Proof of Humanity. A very niche ability that allows Chrollo to manipulate any puppet after having been stamped. And it's not, you know, immediately apparent why this is so useful. Because there are no puppets to be found anywhere in Heaven's Arena, at least not yet. Because how fifth ability takes care of that.

And it's another familiar one named Gallery Fake Divine Left Hand, Demonic Right Hand. Which Chrollo borrowed from Kopi. And it conjures an exact copy of any object, which will vanish after 24 hours. So, it's a very curious combination and a pretty fantastic example of finding a Nen loophole. Because early on in the match, Chrollo killed the Heaven's Arena referee and copied his corpse using Gallery Fake. And while the original corpse cannot be controlled with Order Stamp because it's not a puppet, the loophole here is that the copy of the corpse is considered a puppet and can therefore be controlled. We don't really know why this is. Chrollo says it's because the original user of Order Stamp thought of things that way. Weird guy. But in essence, it's temporarily manipulated resurrection with a ton of extra steps. Essentially, Chrollo can control anyone he kills so long as he makes a copy of them with Gallery Fake first.

This is going to be relevant. All of this, I promise, is going to be very relevant shortly. But to finish things off here, Chrollo's final new ability is called Convert Hands Transfer Student. Which imprints two arrows on Chrollo's palms, indicating that if he touches someone with his right hand, then that person would take on Chrollo's appearance. So, let's say Chrollo touches Hisoka. Hisoka, in addition to being very aroused, now looks like Chrollo. And if he touches a target with his left hand, then Chrollo takes on the appearance of said target. So, again, let's say he touches Hisoka, which Hisoka enjoys. And this time, it's with the left hand. Variety is the spice of life. But now Chrollo looks like Hisoka.

And this is one of the many reasons why this fight can be very confusing to read. Firstly, because half of Chrollo's new abilities are all based in the foundation of "right hand does one thing, and the left hand does another thing." The Sun and Moon, Gallery Fake, Convert Hands, they're all right hand one effect, left hand other effect. And he switches between them so rapidly that it becomes a bit difficult to keep up with which hand Hatsu he's using at any given time, even with the markings. And secondly, thanks to Convert Hands, there comes a point in this fight where you just stop knowing where Chrollo is, ever. Because Chrollo can keep changing his appearance to take on the appearance of others. In fact, if you do see Chrollo, it's almost a hard guarantee that it's not him, because he's just gotten someone else to take his appearance.

But look, mate, how is he getting all of these people to swap bodies with and copy bodies with and control bodies with? Well, that's why he chose Heaven's Arena. Chrollo's plan was to use the audience initially by having Hisoka fight them via controlling two members of the crowd with Black Voice. Then, after Hisoka kills them, Chrollo copies their bodies with Gallery Fake, activates the copies with Order Stamp, and thus has two puppets ready and waiting to fight Hisoka. In the meantime, Chrollo can Black Voice two more people. Hisoka can kill those people. Chrollo and Gallery Fake then Order Stamp those people, and now it's four puppets. And you can see how this snowballs rather rapidly. The more people Hisoka kills, the more puppets are available to Chrollo, and the more threats that Hisoka has to face at once. And that's before we even consider the idea that Chrollo was killing people himself in order to Gallery Fake them and then Order Stamp them.

And in the meantime, it's impossible for Hisoka to even target Chrollo because he's using Convert Hands to hide amongst the now literally hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of corpse puppets that were eventually assembled to overrun Hisoka. And it even goes a layer deeper than that, because Chrollo has some decoy decoys running around, people that he gave his appearance with Convert Hands, and that he's using Black Voice to manipulate to efficiently pretend to be Chrollo.

But even with all of that accomplished, Chrollo still needed one more thing to win here. Because the plan could have been to exhaust Hisoka with thousands of puppets, but every second Hisoka was alive put Chrollo at risk. So we turn to the one ability that we haven't integrated here yet, being The Sun and Moon. Because what Chrollo was also doing between making and controlling corpse puppets was marking each and every one of them with a sun and moon symbol.

And here's the real kicker. Because The Sun and Moon is an invocation of postmortem Nen, even if Chrollo switches out of it with Skill Hunter, the marks remain. Once a person or an object is marked with a sun and moon, they can never get rid of it. And during all of the chaos, Chrollo managed to get multiple hits in on Hisoka, marking him with an opposing symbol. And from here, the plan was to rush Hisoka with every marked puppet at once, then make contact with Hisoka and cause an explosion big enough to destroy him. And it worked rather flawlessly. Hisoka's hand was blown off, then a leg was blown off, and then he got rushed by hundreds of corpse puppets. A big boom happened, and he died.

However, Hisoka's cause of death was actually suffocation. Because many of the corpse puppets insulated him from most of the big bangs. However, the sheer quantity of puppets on top of him cut off Hisoka's oxygen supply. And with Hisoka dead, once and for all, Chrollo made his way to the Black Whale One to perform a great heist on the Kakin Empire. Or at least, that's how Chrollo would have liked this to end.

And you know, we've talked about him a lot in this video, and not a lot about Hisoka. From his perspective, Hisoka was quite flattered that Chrollo had prepared such a suite of abilities for the little old him. And he was practically [ __ ] in his magic pants throughout the fight. Although, when it became clear that he was going to die, Hisoka decided to try something that he'd always wanted to do, which was to make a Nen vow as a dying plea. He commanded Bungie Gum to revive him by restarting his heart and lungs. Which was a desire so strong that it became an act of postmortem Nen. And Bungie Gum did as Bungie Gum was told by bringing Hisoka's body back to life. But with one major twist. Having invoked postmortem Nen, Hisoka's Bungie Gum and Texture Surprise are now in order of magnitude more powerful than they once were. As Hisoka proceeded to use the gum in combination with Texture Surprise to regenerate his missing limbs, effectively instantly healing himself from fatal wounds.

And you know, for most people after this sort of experience, death, they'd probably not be so willing to jump straight back into combat. But Hisoka, well, he's always been just a little bit different. Having edged himself to the brink of death and really, well beyond, Hisoka's battle lust became insatiable. With Hisoka declaring that he wasn't going to stop until he'd killed each and every member of the Phantom Troupe. Which started immediately by finding and ripping off Shalnark's head, followed by brutally murdering Kopi. The two troop members who were left defenseless as Chrollo had been borrowing their Nen abilities. Which is pretty big, as now that Shalnark and Kopi are dead, it means that Chrollo won't be able to use Black Voice and Gallery Fake anymore. So Chrollo won't be able to use the same strategy against Hisoka next time. The one that he spent over a year preparing. Meaning that our next fight won't be anywhere near as one-sided. Or if it is, it'll be one-sided in Hisoka's favor. Without Bungie Gum's final sinister declaration to the spite as being two down, 10 to go.

Immediately following Chrollo's victory over Hisoka at Heaven's Arena, the Phantom Troupe were ordered to fully assemble for the first time in the series since the events of York New City. The location for assembly was the Black Whale One. And the reason as to why there was chosen was to carry out the Phantom Troupe's biggest heist to date by robbing the infamously wealthy Kakin Empire. On route to the Dark Continent, the only issue is that two of the troop members, Shalnark and Kopi, would not be joining them after both suffered a death-related incident at the hands of Hisoka, who is now on the hunt to kill the remaining 10 members of the Troupe. And to set the stage for one of the most insanely chaotic battles in Hunter Hunter.

So, the very first member to be spotted aboard the vessel was Chrollo himself, who had recently learned that Hisoka had killed both Shalnark and Kopi. So he caught up with him in something of a precarious mental state. And a fellow passenger commented that Chrollo looks like he was about to kill someone. But now that he's [ __ ] the Black Whale One and heading to the Dark Continent, made it's time to forget all about those ties to the world back there. To which Chrollo replied, "That would be hard. Ties are to be severed, not forgotten."

And shortly after this incredibly deep quote, Chrollo reunited with Machi. Although this was far from pleasant as well, with both of them vehemently stating their intention to kill Hisoka because of the thing he did. And with this, it was announced that on this occasion, typical Troupe rules were not going to apply. Because generally, any dispute within the Phantom Troupe is solved with a coin flip. However, in this case, each and every Troupe member wanted to kill Hisoka, and there is no coin to flip with enough sides to solve this problem. And so it was declared by Chrollo that Hisoka's life is to be taken on a first come, first serve basis.

But there was very little serving, or in fact, coming to be had in these first few initial days. And only after 4 days of trying and failing to find Hisoka did the Phantom Troupe meet up in the dining hall of Tier 5, aka the lowest tier of the ship. Roll of the poor lottery winners were stored. I say stored, not housed, because I find it to be a much more accurate descriptor, remembering the King Nasubi's finest use all of these people as sacrifices. So comfort is not a huge issue to him. And comfort has never been an issue for the Phantom Troupe either. Who currently consist of 10 members: Chrollo, Lucifer, Bonolenov, Shizuku, Phinks, Nobunaga, Franklin, Machi, Feitan, Kastro, Zalam, and introducing our brand new temporary 10th Troupe member, Illumi. Zalam, Illumi has joined the Phantom Troupe at the request of Hisoka. In fact, Hisoka has quite literally commissioned Illumi to kill him. From Hisoka's perspective, I suppose the logic is to make sure that he can take as many toys as possible on such a long journey. Although there has been some credible speculation that the Illumi we see is in fact Hisoka in disguise, using his newfound postmortem Nen Texture Surprise to assume Illumi's form and to use this as an opportunity to pick off the Troupe one by one.

I'm not going to go into this idea too deeply. I have a whole video detailing it elsewhere on the channel if it's a thing you're interested in. And it should be. But I want you to keep it in the back of your mind because a lot of weird things are about to happen on the ship. Other than Illumi's introduction, though, this was a very brief meeting, which was dismissed with the following words from Chrollo: "We want to have a party, but there's no cake. We need a special order to place on the center of the table. When we get it, we'll get back together and dine on that table. Bring me Hisoka's head."

And with that, the Phantom Troupe split up, potentially for the final time, because each and every one of their lives are now in serious jeopardy. And not just from Hisoka. And during the arc, we also received a long-awaited flashback of the Phantom Troupe as a whole, one that makes this revenge hunt hit that much harder. We got to experience their childhoods growing up in Meteor City's much simpler days, when the only conflict they got involved in was fighting over who got to watch videotapes that we found in the dump. I guess the dump being Meteor City itself, and the whole city is one big dump.

But a bright, young, and surprisingly optimistic child named Chrollo started using these videotapes to study and even learn new languages from the more boring tutorial tapes that no one else wanted. And it got to the point where he put his skills to use translating and making fan dubs of the more exciting videos in foreign languages that were screamed to great reception in the Meteor City Gathering Hall. This is actually the event that would first bring the Phantom Troupe together, because each young Troupe member wanted to take part in Chrollo's fan dubs, including two previously unknown members of the early Phantom Troupe, two girls by the name of Sheila and Sarasa.

Sheila being a particularly interesting one, because she is not a new character. We've actually seen her before in the Kopa's memory chapters, where she met with Kopa and Pyro in the forest surrounding the Chimera tribe. And Sheila was also the one who was implied to have reported the genocide of the Chimera Clan later. And with her prior connection to the Troupe members now known, it has led to great suspicion that Sheila played a key role in this Chimera genocide. Meanwhile, Sarasa is a much more innocent existence altogether, a splendid bowl of goodness who was ever so excited to perform in more fan dubs. That one day she decided to search for more videotapes on her own. That was a bad idea. Because while Sarasa did this, she was captured and then killed on camera by, how shall we say, a production team that focused on producing, you know, these sorts of films for very wealthy clients.

And then our young Troupe members proceeded to find Sarasa's dismembered body left in the forest. And this event changed them forever, with Chrollo vowing to find the ones responsible and coming up with a sickening plan to turn Meteor City into a safe haven for these sorts of murderers to reside and even provide the infrastructure to publicly screen their works. The idea was that they would one day hopefully find Sarasa's murder tape, screened to everyone willing to watch. But as a result, they would also find the person responsible. Chrollo further vowed to live the rest of his life as a villain for this purpose. And the founding child members of the Phantom Troupe unanimously elected him as their leader in this endeavor.

So, over the years, the Troupe have likely watched hundreds, if not thousands, of snuff films, the effect of which has made them the dark and disconnected beings they are today, able to conduct a profit-driven genocide with no moral questions and completely desensitized to the concept of killing. Except for when it comes to their own members, of which Shalnark was an original Troupe member who they all knew was a child, so his loss hit Chrollo and everyone else particularly hard. Which isn't to say that Kopi wasn't a huge loss, but he also wasn't Chrollo's childhood friend, so it's not the same. And that's why this situation on board the Black Whale One is being taken extra seriously. It's much like York New City with Uvogin's death all over again, which resulted in a very big Troupe-related vengeance mess. That's what we're going to do here as well.

As the gang split up now, the first of what I like to refer to as the Troupe groups consists of Chrollo, Shizuku, and Bonolenov. The latter two wanting to form a team because neither possessed abilities that are suited to dealing with Hisoka's Bungie Gum. And Chrollo agreed, but on the condition that he was the one who gets to take Hisoka's life, which wasn't argued at all. However, Bonolenov did reveal something of note. He stated that he had an as of yet undisclosed Nen ability known as Metamorphosis, which allows him to take, quote, "many forms." That's all the information we currently have. So it could allow him to turn into people, animals, objects, all of the above, or none of the above, maybe something else. The point is that Bonolenov said that, ah, he's not smart enough to come up with a decent plan to use this power. And so Chrollo came up with a plan for Bonolenov. He said, "Bonolenov, mate, there's a thing I want you to do." So it's a plan that involves him taking a certain form, and we'll get back to that a bit later.

But for one final reveal, Shizuku then asked Chrollo to read their fortunes again, like he did during York New City. However, Chrollo could not, as the ability had been removed from his Skill Hunter book, indicating that Neon Nostrade has almost certainly mysteriously died off-screen. And the last we saw of this Troupe group is that they were transitioning from Tier 5 up to Tier 4 via the central passageway.

But our second Troupe group comprises Nobunaga, Phinks, and Feitan. As before, they could start properly doing anything, both Nobunaga and Feitan needed to retrieve their weapons from the onboard warehouse that they were forced to check them in with. And Phinks came with them in order to "babysit" them. And while Nobunaga wasn't thrilled with this, he's a bit of a loner, a greater point was made clear by Feitan, who insisted that they respect Hisoka's abilities and to not give him even the slightest hope of victory. Because yes, from their perspective, the three of them seems like extraordinary overkill, but at this point, overkill is exactly what Hisoka deserves. Chrollo already tried to underkill him, and just look where that got them. Not, not good places.

But on the way to acquire their weapons, this Trio was framed for the murder of several Cha-R family members by Luien, a member of an opposing Mafia faction known as the Heil-Ly family. However, after a shockingly reasonable discussion with the Cha-R underboss, Kenny Wang, they formed an alliance with the promise of passage to high tiers to search for Hisoka. And as part of this Alliance, Nobunaga declared that they would crush the Heil-Ly family themselves due to their actions of trying to manipulate and frame the Phantom Troupe being considered an act of war. Nobunaga then found his way into the Heil-Ly base by a funky Nen teleportation ability, wasn't his, although he was promptly ejected by another ability, again, not his, but not before a transmitter was placed. And the location of the base is now being determined as being on Tier 2, which is where this Trio are currently headed.

But currently on their level, Tier 3, we also have the Zalam siblings, Illumi and Kalluto, who have formed another Troupe group. And shockingly, they made their way up to Tier 3 of the Black Whale One in no time at all. The rest of the Phantom Troupe were really struggling with getting to these high levels, but with these two, it was like they just disappeared and teleported with those Zalam assassin skills. However, due to their infamous Zalam assassins and their uncharacteristically blatant conspicuousness, they were spotted immediately and intercepted by the Hunter Association, specifically the Zodiac members, Botobai and Mison. With Mison probably quite literally crapping his cow pants at the sight of the two of them, as well as the knowledge that the entire Phantom Troupe were on board at this stage. Mison was dealing with enough as it is. This is not a good day for him. Because just prior to this happening, he'd used his detective skills to deduce that the goal of this ship was to sink it. And adding the complication of the Phantom Troupe was almost like sealing the deal to this fate.

But not only that, Mison is now struggling with whether or not to tell Kopa about their presence. Because he fears that the Troupe are on board to take revenge on him for York New City. And at the same time, Mison fears the reaction that Kopa is going to have to this news. So he's holding on to what he perceives to be another live bomb that could go off at any moment. However, instead of being arrested, Illumi and Kalluto were given a room on Tier 3, with Illumi requesting a shower. A request which was denied. And in my opinion, it's a very Hisoka-like request to make. Dude loves showering. Meanwhile, Illumi has always been very happy to sleep in dirt holes. I also find it odd that Illumi so willingly revealed all the information he had to Mison. It's almost as if he wanted the Hunter Association to know that the entire Phantom Troupe were on board. But all of this is the speculation of a dude in a room.

Meanwhile, Franklin has the simplest plan of all to find Hisoka. Essentially, what he's going to do is he's going to sit in the Tier 5 dining hall and continuously eat hamburgers until Hisoka decides to attack him. Which isn't a terrible plan. Hisoka was the one who declared war on the Troupe, so to kill all 10 of them, Hisoka needs to find them. Whereas everyone else is a bit blinded by emotion and taking the initiative. Franklin is being much more level-headed. However, it has left him in arguably the most vulnerable position, all by himself and ready to be picked off. Although, after finding the location of the Heil-Ly base, Nobunaga now wants to bring Franklin along for extra safety and extra finger guns.

There is one other individual Troupe group on the hunt as well, and that would be Machi. Who is in a very unique position at the moment, because she had the closest relationship to Hisoka of anyone in the Phantom Troupe. If you remember, Hisoka used to quite relentlessly flirt with Machi. And while she never overtly reciprocated, she has shown Hisoka special favor, even after he betrayed and left the Troupe at the end of York New City. Hisoka also purposely left her alive after reviving in Heaven's Arena, although he then also declared that he'd kill her. And so, I think there's an extra layer of betrayal here for Machi, kind of like your brother being killed by your flamboyant clown boyfriend. And now she's determined to take Hisoka's life for herself.

And you know, up until recently, the biggest question of all has been, where is this Hisoka you're talking about him so much? We don't see him. Why up till this point, no one had actually seen him aboard the ship? However, in chapter 392, Hisoka was first spotted on Tier 3 of the Black Whale One by members of the Xi-U Mafia Family, who had been instructed to find him. It's a bit of a long story, but the mafia are also hunting Hisoka for reasons that we'll go into when we talk about that. But it has been speculated that this isn't Hisoka, and it's actually either Chrollo or Bonolenov in disguise, using the Metamorphosis ability that we talked about earlier in the video. Which Chrollo can do because he still has the Convert Hands Nen ability that allows him to swap bodies. So, in theory, if Bonolenov took on Hisoka's appearance with Metamorphosis, then Chrollo could use Convert Hands to also become Hisoka.

And the reason why any of this would be happening in the first place is to fool the mafia factions. Because Chrollo is the reason why they're looking for Hisoka. Chrollo identified him as their prime target. So the mafia wants to reach him first to prevent, you know, big bang chaos. But this Hisoka is also highly suspicious and has made some very Chrollo-esque statements. And recently has been offered a room on Tier 1 of the Black Whale, which just so happens to be where all of the Troupe are planning on pulling off their heist. Again, these are the ramblings of a madman. Hisoka and he's always suspicious, so I could just be reading too much into this. Because the simple answer is that this is Hisoka, and he's currently being bribed with luxury so that the Kakin mafia factions can manipulate the Phantom Troupe into fighting their war against the Heil-Ly family.

The struggle which now threatens all 200,000 lives aboard the Black Whale, and it may very well have escalated to a scale that engulfs even the Phantom Troupe. The balance of the Kakin Empire is maintained by all facets of society. One half of this is the public, light side of the Kakin royal family. However, the other is the extensive underground society of the warring mafia factions. And both groups are currently involved in a struggle for supremacy. The succession contest for the light side, and something far more terrifying on our dark side. Because a war has broken out between the three primary mafia families that rule the Kakin underworld. Each of them directly financed by one of the current royal princes. These families are the Cha-R, the Xi-U, and the Heil-Ly. And as important functional members of King Society, these mafia families are also being carted to the Dark Continent.

And on route to the Dark Continent, these three mafia families control all traffic between Tiers 3 to 5. Because there simply are not enough Kakin royal soldiers or members of the Hunter Association to maintain the order of 200,000 people. So much of that has been, unofficially of course, entrusted to the mafia factions. At the very bottom, on Tier 5, we have the Cha-R family, who are helmed by Boss Broccoli. A man who has very much embraced his name with his broccoli hairstyle. And he is seemingly obsessed with taxidermy for reasons. However, you might notice that he has two particularly nasty scars running across his face. And this is because Broccoli is actually the illegitimate half-brother of King Nasubi. And all illegitimate royal children are permanently scarred in this way at birth in order to signify that they have no claim to the throne. With the disfigurement also being the aesthetic encouragement for remaining in the shadows for their entire lives. As should they ever become a little bit too public, then they will be eliminated. This scarring system is considered an act of great charity, a kindness done to children who should otherwise be killed on the spot because of the threat they represent to the monarchy.

Back to mafia families. Each of them also possess their own second-in-command, underboss. In the case of the Cha-R, this would be Kenny Wang. A man with a serial killer's cold enthusiasm for violence. And so, a big fan of Heaven's Arena matches. He's even quite familiar with Hisoka's fights and his status as a floor master. And Kenny also comes equipped with a bizarre phenomenon named Frosty Grin Smile Zero. And it's not confirmed if this is a Nen ability or not yet, but it does have the classic naming scheme of one. And it's said that anyone Kenny Wang smiles at ends up dead. The family overall have a very strong connection to laborers and their trade as commodities, which range from legal, like food and I guess other things, but also to illegal, like a wide assortment of drugs. Which may very well be why their benefactor is Seventh Prince Lyorus, because he's quite interested in all of the drugs. In total, the Cha-R family consist of 250 members, one of which is my personal favorite mafia member, Sudon, a Cha-R supervisor and a huge Phantom Troupe fanboy who plans on asking for their autographs. But at a more convenient time, as he has to set a strong example for those working under him. That's the Cha-R family. They're the first major family we came across.

However, the one we've spent the most time with are now the Xi-U family, led by a man named Ono Longb, whose head is somehow shaped like an onion. And he is a glutton, always seen eating or about to eat or thinking about eating. His doctor is apparently very worried about his diet. And that's not me making a joke, this is a plot point in the manga. And as you may have noticed, Anya also possesses the signature double scar, because he is also an illegitimate brother of King Nasubi. The Xi-U family is funded by Third Prince Zangle, which may very well be why they're considered the most powerful mafia faction in terms of both numbers and finances. The latter of which, I suppose, are also numbers. But Zangle is an incredibly high-ranking prince, and so he has more resources to devote to them. With the Xi-U repaying that investment through their business, which is mostly human trafficking. The Xi-U boss is a man named Henry Banduo, a conjurer who has a Nen ability named Biohazard. A very cool power where Henry can turn any object into a living creature. Which was initially displayed to us when he transformed guns into snakes, and then the gun snakes shot the soldiers who were holding them. It's, it's pretty wild stuff. But my favorite use of the ability so far was Henry turning handcuffs into pigeons. Then, after dealing with one guy with his pigeon cuffs, Henry delivered one of my favorite lines in Hunter Hunter to the remaining forces, which was, "Come at me, I have plenty more pigeons."

This is one of those abilities that would be absolutely awful in the hands of someone who did not wield it to perfection. Because what's going on here, it's not really impressive by any means. Henry doesn't have this colossal quantity of Aura to draw from. And ultimately, his Hatsu is only capable of using subtle, arguably mundane, everyday objects and creatures. So it takes a true Nen expert to turn this into a frightening yet engaging power. And directly under Henry's command are two specialist agents named Zakuro Koste and Lynch F Booker. Zakuro is a manipulator with an ability named Bloody Mary, which allows him to manipulate his own blood. And he can even change the properties of it to construct tight blood restraints. Although he can't use too much, because bodies, they quite famously require blood to survive. So he's very limited in how much he can use at any given time. But what's really cool/creepy, I guess, depending on your perspective, is that Zakuro can use his blood as teeny tiny scalps, with each droplet even being given a pair of eyes. However, this effect runs out somewhere between 30 to 40 minutes as the Aura depletes, because the blood has been separated from Zakuro's body for too long. Then, alongside him, we have Lynch Foko, an emitter who uses a Hatsu called Body and Soul. The basic effect of which is a truth punch. Lynch emits Aura to a target via a punch, then asks them a question, which the target has to give an honest answer to. And to ensure that an answer is in fact given, it is delivered to Lynch telepathically and involuntarily by said target.

And we've also seen another really cool ability from a former Xi-U member. This one is called Zombie. And it's a remaining postmortem Nen ability of a former Xi-U member named Misha. After the Xi-U family kills someone, Misha's murdered body manifests to dispose of the target with Zombie, go possessing that person and manipulating their corpse so they can go and just be quietly gotten rid of. So, all in all, the Xi-U function as a horrifyingly competent and efficient family unit. The Cha-R, they've got more of that angry thug vibe going for them. Whereas the Xi-U are much more subtle and suave. And the Xi-U family are currently in command of Tier 4 of the Black Whale. And have recently formed an alliance with the Cha-R for balance-related reasons.

So, balance. That's something very important we should talk about. The key role of the three mafia factions is to preserve balance. Because while each family does serve as mortal enemies to the other two, there is an unspoken understanding and cooperation between them for the sake of maintaining peace and power, mainly the latter. On Long Balan said, "If a resource is limited, the more it needs to be divided, the less of a share you get for the halves to keep having the majority need to get the short end of the stick. That is balance." And even all-out war is conducted with this idea of balance. There's a proper etiquette for war, which was cartoonishly depicted by Togashi, with a member needing to ask permission from their boss to murder a member of another opposing mafia family. Afterward, at which point the boss then negotiates the life of the desired target with the head of the targeted family, and they come to some sort of arrangement for money, other commodities, or even a life-for-life exchange.

And for the sake of balance, both the Cha-R and Xi-U families have prioritized finding Hisoka. Because they view the Phantom Troupe as a huge threat to balance, and so they want to control the situation as best they can. Under Boss Kenny Wang, described the Phantom Troupe as "divorced from balance, unresolved, with no allegiances. They move how they want, and they have the power to execute on it." As I feel they are a risk factor that must be eliminated. To reiterate, though, these factions are only allowed to exist and funded in secret on the strict condition that they remained loyal to the monarchy. Which recently, one family has not been doing. Bad family, bad.

As shortly before the event of this arc, the Heil-Ly family was subject to an internal coup. This was staged by a junior member named Morena Prudo, who convinced 23 other members to join her in slaughtering the rest of the Heil-Ly family, including its unnamed boss, who is now named because the new boss is Morena herself. Why did she do this? Well, for reasons. Morena has stated that she doesn't care about anything in this world, including herself. So Morena's goal is simple, yet grand. She wishes to destroy the world. A world which Morena sees as inherently unfair, contradictory, and completely irredeemable to the point where it simply needs to be erased from existence. And Morena doesn't just feel this way in relation to the actions of humans, she genuinely despises everything on the planet: the animal food chain, natural disasters, etc. If you can name a thing, then Morena hates it.

And this philosophy was born from her very own existence. You'll definitely notice that Morena also carries the double razor blade scars, because she is an illegitimate child of King Nasubi. And pondering her own existence, Morena came to question everything, literally everything. Starting with the idea that kings selfishly stick their bits in anything that moves, and then fear the progeny that they produce. Then they scar the children and forgive the child for existing, which was their fault in the first place. So while the other factions strive to maintain balance, Morena sees the world as inherently unbalanced. There's nothing to protect, and everything to destroy.

And Morena plans on achieving this grand ambition through her Nen ability, Contagion. The effect of which is by transferring her saliva, Morena can infect up to 23 people with the infected now becoming players in the Contagion game. And to make progress in this game, the players need to level up. And the way they do that is by killing. The life of a regular civilian is worth one level. The life of a Nen user is worth 10 levels. And killing a prince of the Kakin Empire grants a whopping 50 levels. With each level boosting the Aura output of the player and also granting them ready-to-use Nen abilities at certain milestones. And ultimately, after reaching level 100, the infected becomes a member zero and is now able to infect 23 more people.

And with this motivation, by one week into the Dark Continent voyage, the 23 Heil-Ly players had killed over 300 people. Murders which were all performed without any direct evidence leading back to them. In this regard, the Heil-Ly have actually set up a disturbingly efficient murder farm, where one member lures victims into a room, then uses another member's ability to teleport brought them into another room, a room which was constructed entirely by Nen from a third member. And here they're slaughtered swiftly by any Heil-Ly members waiting for easy levels. And in the case of any undesirables managing to get in there, there's even one member who has an unbeatable ability to summon giant toy gods to eject people without violence. The main strength of the Heil-Ly family is their rapidly snowballing and extremely wide set of abilities, abilities that can be used in effective combination with one another. However, their main weakness is their inexperience with Nen or Aura individually. Every ability we've seen in action so far is pretty rubbish, but as a collective, they have the potential to overwhelm anyone much like a swarm.

And historically, the Heil-Ly family's benefactor was Fourth Prince Arnik. Which makes sense because this family used to specialize in the trade of extremely rare black market goods for the hyper wealthy. However, Arnik became very wary of Morena after the sudden coup. And he's only become even more short on patience with her. Because Morena, she has this problem, right? The problem is that she's a woman. And Arnik's complex with women makes him jump to violent thoughts whenever the topic of Morena comes up. Technically, Morena is also Arnik's sister, and he doesn't have an amazing relationship with his siblings either. But Morena doesn't care. Again, she doesn't care about anything. And her vision for the future no longer requires the backing of a Kakin prince. In fact, her ideal world very much excludes him.

And currently, the Heil-Ly are sort of in command of Tier 3. I say that because they're causing more chaos than providing order, with the goal of turning everyone into a player in their game or to be murder farmed for levels. And also, their Tier 3 presence is very much of a show, because their true base is is located on Tier 2.

Before we move on, I should also say that minor mafia factions do also exist. It's not just the big three. In fact, the very first mafia group we encountered were the Bucha family, a handful of dude bros who made their base in a passageway to the Tier 5 dining hall, demanding a toll from anyone who wanted to pass. And they were running quite a successful business for all the 5 minutes before the Phantom Troupe got hungry. The reason why these smaller factions are allowed to exist is because they essentially serve as micro money farms for the large families, who take 90% of their income in exchange for not brutally kill murdering them on the spot.

But that aside, here's how the situation between the families is currently playing out. After 7 days of killing, the order was officially given by the Cha-R and Xi-U families that they were going to war with the Heil-Ly and to kill Morena and Prudo as swiftly as possible. So the current plan is to use the Phantom Troupe as best they can to kill as many Heil-Ly members, and ideally even Morena herself. And if the Phantom Troupe fail, then that's also fine, because the Cha-R and the Xi-U ultimately plan.

On killing them as well again for the sake of balance. So they want the Haley and the troop to destroy each other and to ensure that Hoka was found and offered a pass to tier one by Henry in order to keep him from acting as a wild card until that balance issues were solved. The idea being that after the Hale were dealt with, then Hoka could be unleashed to finish off any surviving troop members.

But with the help of Noaga, Henry was able to plant a transmitter in the hidden Haley base, determining that it was on tier 2. Which is actually a big deal because it means that their base is within the designated grounds of the succession contest and that everything is about to converge on the upper levels. The princes, the mafia families, Kopa, the Phantom Troop, and Hoka are all about to come together, and yes, I do mean that in exactly the way that Hoka would like it to mean.

Following the conclusion of the 13th Hunter Chairman Election, both Jin Freaks and Pariston Hill separately submitted requests to resign from The Zodiacs. And given that nobody liked Pariston and almost nobody liked Jin, Jam and Cheel accepted both of them. And there's two reasons as to why they resigned. The first was the death of Isaac Netro, who originally formed The Zodiacs. And the lack of Netro gave Pariston and Jin very little reason to hang around.

But the second is that an opportunity arose to make both of their desires come true. In Pariston's case, he'd been secretly working for Beyond Netro this entire time. His tenure at the Hunter Association was all in preparation for this Dark Continent Expedition. And as for Jin, well, he wanted in on the action because going to the Dark Continent is what he'd been working towards as well. This was Jin's ultimate desire: to travel and discover the world with maximum freedom. Which sounds very familiar, very familiar, almost like the exact same desire Beyond has.

And so Beyond's words to his expedition team were, "I won't turn down anyone who joins." And so in chapter 342, Jin simply appeared in the secret base of Beyond Netro's expedition team and simply said, "Hey guys, let me in on this." But this immediately raises the question of why Jin left The Zodiacs, because the Hunter Association were also mounting an effort to go to the Dark Continent at this point as well.

And the reason why is because Jin actually identifies quite strongly with Beyond Netro's desires and is very willing to give him that freedom of exploration. However, at the same time, Jin is extremely wary of Pariston, citing his goal as destruction disguised by perverted love. So Jin's purpose here is twofold: he wants to help Beyond and hinder Pariston. Because Beyond might be reckless, but Jin appreciates that. So is he. However, Pariston can be given no benefit of the doubt. His goal is undoubtedly sinister.

And one thing we need to keep in mind is that even though he resigns, Pariston was the one who recovered the 5,000 Chimera Ant hybrid cocoons from East Gau. And as a result, he currently has a standing army of 5,000 nursing Chimera and soldiers at his direct disposal. And it's implied that if the Hunter Association didn't respond to Beyond in the correct way, then the plan was to send in those 5,000 ants and take over the Hunter Association by force. Remembering that there's only about 600 licensed hunters in the entire world, so they would be obliterated by a 5,000 Chimera Ant force.

And in order to prevent all of that from happening, Jin has given Pariston a much more interesting game to play, one which Pariston has been craving for quite some time, as he even says, "So you're finally going to pay attention to me?" But Jin and Pariston are very difficult opponents for one another. They're so similar, yet so opposite, and so they tend to cancel each other out.

And one of the key differences can be seen in the reason why Jin is a Ruins Hunter in the first place. It's because he remembers the elation and the friendship he felt when discovering his first ruin with his team. What he remembered most wasn't the ruins themselves; he remembered the team's smiles and the team's joy and the overall vibe. And Jin wants to continue to experience that feeling.

Meanwhile, here's how Pariston feels about people in general: "People normally feel happiness when they love and are loved in return. I feel happiness when people hate me, and I feel compelled to hurt the things that are dear to me." And Pariston isn't someone who can be beaten by sheer punchy force, as noted by Jin: "If you were only brute force, I'd pummel you and that would be it. That's not the case, which is the trouble. You'd be laughing inside even as I made you cough up blood and stepped on your head. I'd have to break your spirit instead."

And so, in his first effort to chip away at Pariston's spirit, Jin immediately usurped his role as second in command of the Expedition. And he did this by offering to pay all of Beyond's team members double what Beyond was offering them, including Pariston, by the way. But as it turns out, Pariston wasn't getting paid; he was conducting this Expedition for personal reasons. And double zero usually still ends up being zero. It should stipulate that Jin was offering to pay double on top of Beyond's fee, so effectively tripling everyone's income.

And now, what followed here can be quite confusing because Jin's terms were that he would become the second in command, but without, you know, the command aspect. He even says that everyone can keep following Pariston's command, which can make this whole endeavor feel quite pointless. It comes off as quite childish, like Jin was going to so much effort just to snipe Pariston's title. And that might be part of it, but this act accomplished something very important, which was earning the trust of Beyond's team.

Because Jin was ready to honor this deal even if they decided not to listen to him and carry on working under Pariston. So this very rapidly established that Jin was a trustworthy person. Anything he says should be taken seriously, and any promise he makes will be fulfilled. And as a result of this, that one unnamed Expedition team member, who I refer to as the Sanji we have at home, was then able to spend that money to pay off the debt of a hospital taking care of his sister, which was the sole reason for accepting this job in the first place.

So not only did Jin build trust, but he also generated gratitude. His gambit paid off with a legitimate emotional bond being formed, which you can see when Not-Sanji declares, "You're my number two. I'll go wherever you go." So Jin didn't just make an ally here; what he has now is a lifetime vassal, someone who will follow Jin to the ends of the Earth, which is literally where we're going. So that's good.

And that's something that seriously undermines Pariston's authority because he's not a man capable of forming those connections. In fact, as we've explored, it gives him personal pleasure to do the exact reverse and deliberately cultivate hatred towards him. So while what Jin did here does seem absolutely ridiculous, it was the first step in winning over the hearts of the Expedition team.

And just a quick note on that, the second in command position isn't just a title; it's a very important idea to Yoshihiro Togashi. There's even a discussion in his previous manga, Yu Yu Hakusho, where Yusuke is speaking to Kurama and stating, "The second in command is the key to any organization. That's what you always said." So here, Togashi is positioning this as a struggle to become that key one, which Jin has very aggressively progressed towards.

But Jin's generosity didn't end there. He then shared something even more valuable than money to anyone who wanted to listen. Jin then drew a map of the Dark Continent and gave the team members all of the knowledge he'd gathered over the years, including the five calamities, the miracle substances, notable landmarks, details on how the V5 had been covering all of this up, as well as stories about Isaac Netro's previous voyages. And most importantly, the identity of the author of "Journey to the New World," Don Freaks, who is Jin Freaks' assumed ancestor.

And the key thing about this is that Jin actually gave the team knowledge that Beyond Netro had sort of strategically withheld. Because Beyond, he's a very optimistic man, he's a true explorer, he doesn't linger on all the deathly dangers. So Jin taking the time to thoroughly explain each and every detail made him out to be a significantly more honest leader than Beyond and Pariston.

And from that point, over the course of the next month, Jin progressively chipped more and more into the team. One example being bonding with Curly over their shared interest in archaeology, and they even started having these adorable ancient language contests together. Or Jin demonstrating his world-class pit play to Masha and gaining his utmost respect as a Nen user. All of which started to make Pariston crack just a little bit. But it's the first time that we've seen Pariston even mildly bothered by anything. "This is annoying. We do think alike. Is that why I don't like him? So annoying. I might grow to hate someone for the first time in my life. I'm looking forward to this. I want to see what I want to do to someone I hate."

Which adds another layer to this battle because it looks like Jin is winning overwhelmingly. I might say at this stage, he has equal, if not more, loyalty from Beyond's team than Pariston does. But this is still playing into Pariston's desires. He's annoyed, he's very annoyed, but excited, very excited, because Pariston is a hate virgin who is extremely keen to explore his emotionality for the very first time.

But it's not all mind games, because we also have some pretty amazing Nen from Jin as well. Upon his intrusion, one of Beyond's Expedition team members named Usam Men made a hostile move towards Jin, and Jin apparently responded very brutally by beating the ever-loving crap out of him. However, this did not actually happen because we then cut back to Jin not having punched Usam at all. There is definitely some sort of Nen-jutsu happening here. It's almost like a more tangible projection of Ren. Ren being the basic principle of projecting hostile aura, which results in an unprepared opponent feeling an intense sense of dread and danger. But in this case, it's as if Jin is able to project that aura so precisely that he's able to express exactly how he plans on destroying this man if he doesn't back off.

Another explanation could be that he has an emissive ability to put a vision of the future into people's minds. Or he actually did it; he actually beat the crap out of this guy and then reversed time back to the point of not having done it. Or it might not be Jin's ability at all. The future sight could belong to Usam, but I don't know. I doubt it, just because Jin's actions here seem so intentional.

Furthermore, Jin also made a very interesting call when he was assessing Beyond Netro's team. And he made the immediate assumption that Marion was second in command because she was the one who he was sensing the most powerful or emanating from. And you know, it's not entirely clear what Marion or Marion is. Obviously, her name is an allusion to a marionette puppet, and everything about her personality, or lack thereof, indicates that she is a puppet being manipulated. But the fact that she's capable of demonstrating independent use of Nen would indicate that she might just be a girl who chooses to act and dress like a puppet. A very powerful puppet. Whatever it may be, she has the Jin tick of approval, so she's probably insanely powerful.

But later on, after failing the Hunter Exam, several more of Beyond's team returned to the hideout, led by the mercenary Muha, who did not take kindly to Jin's presence. Not kindly at all, and moved to eliminate him. Which gave Jin the opportunity to perform another ability, which was a more extreme version of Loria's remote punch, which was used on him during the Chairman Election. And after seeing this, Pariston asks, "Mate, is your ability to copy the ability of others? Because if so, cool." But in Jin's words, he can generally imitate any punching ability that he's been hit with. He is just that much of a Nen genius. And Jin says, "Bro, it's just talent. You can't do that. Skill issue."

And I do believe him because this event turned out to be a clever ruse on the part of Pariston, who gave Muha the order to put Jin in the situation where he was forced to reveal an ability. So instead, Jin served Pariston a plate of leftovers from the previous arc and said that if Pariston wants to see his power so badly, then he'll need to attack him himself next time. To add to this flawless victory, Jin then proceeds to win all of the mercenaries over to his side. Although it's actually a bit awkward because they are actively put off by the idea of being offered money. As the most valuable currency in their line of work is trust, so even the notion of switching sides for money is a massive red flag.

So instead, Jin offered to make a deposit in the Norwell Fund, a foundation that provides relief and support to former soldiers through a three-generational account system: a parent, child, and grandchild account. And look, Togashi goes into some pretty insane detail regarding all three of these accounts. It's one of those situations where he gets hyper-fixated, like when he was briefly obsessed with the intricacies of how auctions work during the Yorknew City arc. But the important thing to know is that Jin had to open a child account to make his charitable deposit. However, owning a child account makes you subject to orders of a parent account, meaning that on the battlefield, Jin is now strictly under the command of Muha and has effectively now become a professional mercenary in addition to a pro hunter.

And again, this shows just how far Jin is willing to go to win the trust of the team and take that second in command position away from Pariston. Because the only way that Muha's trust could be won was by Jin submitting to him. "Yes, sir, soldier man." And now, after winning over practically the entire team, Pariston has also relinquished control to Jin, now refusing to lead, even though everyone's still following his orders. But Pariston's desire is to quote, "see what Jin can do."

And so, a month and a half and the GDP of a small nation later, Jin is now more or less in charge of his own Dark Continent Expedition team, at least until Beyond Netro escapes Hunter Association custody and meets up with them. But that won't be for a while. And currently, our biggest mystery is where the Expedition team actually are, because we haven't seen any of them aboard the Black Whale, not these guys anyway. However, we have met Bill, who was hired by Beyond and has said to Kopa that there are several ways to get off the Black Whale, one of which requires the help of Pariston, implying that Pariston could be aboard the vessel. However, it's also very possible that the Expedition team have their own method of stealthy transport in order to avoid the chaos and destruction of the succession contest.

But far away from all of this, the biggest question of this arc, and indeed the series, remains unanswered, which is what's going on with Gon? Where has Gon gone? That's probably one of the most common questions I get asked about Hunter x Hunter: Where is Gon and why isn't he with us hunting ex-hunters and such? And the answer is it's oddly complicated. Because Gon isn't involved in this current arc. However, author Yoshihiro Togashi has set up a conflict between Gon and the most evil character to have ever existed in the series. And on top of that, Togashi has also revealed a potential ending for Hunter x Hunter where we discover Gon's fate once and for all. And we'll get into all of that.

But as for right now, after making a Nen vow to give up use of Nen in order to attain the strength to kill Neito, and having been brought back from the brink of a fate worse than death by Killua and Nanika, Gon simply went home. Dude packed up and went back to Whale Island. But that is not the end of Gon in Hunter x Hunter.

In chapter 344, we see Gon trying to use Nen and he comes to the realization that he can't make any aura. Which then prompts Gon to call Daddy Jin to figure this whole situation out. And Jin clarifies that Gon still has aura, and that he saw it when the two of them met up at the top of the World Tree. It's just that Gon can no longer see his or anyone else's aura. Jin says it just means that Gon went back to normal. And he then asks his son, "Bruh, isn't that enough for you after what Gon did?" Jin said that he would be ungrateful to ask for anything more. And then Jin also adds, "This will be a good opportunity for you to figure out what you can do as you are now."

So Gon's lying on a bit of a break. He needs a palate cleanser after his experiences and after completing his goal. The whole point of the series was for Gon to find Jin. And Gon's thoughts on this matter are, "I don't know how to put it. I guess it wasn't that I wanted to see him. I realized that after I saw him, my goal had been to find him. It was fun talking to him, I was glad to meet him, and it made me happy. But he's more like an awesome uncle I'd always heard about, not a dad."

And Gon is then bombarded with all of the school work he's missed while he was a hunter. And for all intents and purposes, we could cut to credits right here and say that he lived happily ever after. That is the end of Hunter x Hunter. And Togashi did genuinely consider ending the series here. And he felt an intense passion that, "No, I, Togashi, have more story to tell."

And so Kopa has all but inherited the mantle of series protagonist, as everything has become centered on him in the latest talk. But that doesn't mean that Gon is gone. Togashi still has more planned for Gon, stuff that he's already planted within the story. And as I said, recently Togashi has revealed an ending, one of the four planned endings for Hunter x Hunter, and it centers very gonly. That doesn't make sense. But am I going to re-record it? Am I going to go to that much effort? No.

But within the existing story, Gon has unfinished business with a character named Gyro, who was introduced in chapter 203. And he is, without question, the single most evil character in the entire Hunter x Hunter universe. Although, funnily enough, in the chapter that Gyro was introduced, Togashi opens it with a spread of Leorio and Kopa asking, "When is it going to be their turn?" Because at that point, they'd been on hiatus for, I don't know how long, lots of years. And now, ever so many years later, this situation has been flipped, as shown in the color page for chapter 381, with Gon saying, "Oh no, I can't use Nen," alongside Killua, who wanted to know where he was right now. How times change.

But anime watchers, I wouldn't blame you if you're feeling a little bit confused at this point. Internet man, who is this Gyro of whom you speak? And why do you insist that he has some sort of connection to Gon? And this confusion stems because Gyro's connection to Gon was cut from the 2011 anime. In his human life, Gyro was the leader of NGL. He is actually mentioned in the anime, and we do see him. And in fact, we see the flashback of his incredibly tragic childhood, filled with nothing but pain, misery, and suffering. All of which culminated in Gyro coming to the conclusion that he wasn't a person, he wasn't anybody. He disconnected from humanity because his father and everyone else around him never treated him like a person.

And this belief would only be further enhanced by the Chimera Ants, because Gyro was among the initial wave of victims. However, after being reborn as a Chimera Ant, Gyro felt no allegiance to the Ant Queen, and he still retained all of his previous memories. It took most ants a long time to really crack into those memories and form a sense of humanity, but in Gyro's case, not considering himself human allowed him to bypass all of that. Because Gyro didn't consider himself human or an ant either; he was something else entirely that trumped that identity, or lack thereof.

And Gyro's goal is stated to be disseminating evil throughout the world. And while in his human form, he was doing so through the development of the D-Square drug, a next-level addictive substance designed to be phase one of Gyro's plan to spread and plunge humanity into anarchy and destruction. Those plans got halted when he became an ant. But Gyro is a patient man. Patient man, ant thing, whatever he considers himself, he's very patient, and he's content with starting over from zero.

But look, the reason why any of this is important in the slightest is because Gyro is directly linked to Gon's future. Because Togashi gave Gyro two chapters focused on him, and at that point, he happened to be passing through Dol City, which is where Gon and Killua were training with Knuckle at the time. And in Gyro's final panel, the narrator states, "Gyro left town and disappeared without encountering Gon. Whether this proved to be fortunate for either party will not be known until they ultimately meet." Meaning that Togashi was using this opportunity to set up a future plotline where Gon encounters Gyro.

And before we go any further, there's always someone out there who needs to hear this: Gyro is not Meleron. A lot of people seem to think that he is because they kind of wear the same sort of clothing, but also not really. Whenever I bring up Gyro, I always get someone commenting, "Um, it looks like you've forgotten about Meleron." But Meleron even tells us his human name; he was a man named Jay and he was adopted by the human who became Peggy the Penguin.

And while we're here, there's also a lot of confusion from anime watchers who do remember Gyro, believing that Gyro was actually reborn as the Ant King, Meryem, because Gyro was the king of NGL, so kind of makes sense. But it only makes sense again because the 2011 anime cut Gyro's present-day appearance out entirely, which happened before Meryem was born, thus confirming that they are not the same existence. And as a result, the 2011 anime again cut Gyro's connection to Gon.

So while Gon may have achieved his series goal to find Dad, his story is still incomplete. There is a very sinister destination still waiting for Gon further down the line. And while the Hunter Association, the Phantom Troop, a bunch of Zelics, and everyone else folk on the Dark Continent, they are leaving the human realm completely vulnerable to this native calamity whose goal is to destroy everything. And who's left to stop him? Well, it pretty much boils down to Gon and maybe Killua, because everyone else is off to the Dark Continent and realistically may not return.

This does get a bit meta, though, because we do need to keep in mind that Togashi set up the Gyro plotline in 2003, which is 21 years ago at the time of this recording. And a lot can change in that amount of time, especially with Togashi, who writes according to whatever he's most passionate about at any given time. So it's entirely possible that Togashi has dropped the Gyro idea, and that might be why the 2011 anime didn't include him. Although I'd argue it's because by the time they got to Gyro, they knew they weren't going past the Election Arc, and so it as unnecessary effort.

And you know, even if it is still the plan, I honestly have very little hope that we'll ever get there. Because to tackle Gyro, we first need to conclude the succession contest, and then not only start but finish the Dark Continent. Gyro comes after all of that. But what it shows is that Togashi was planning to use Gon beyond the Chimera Ant arc. And it's not the only piece of evidence we have for this either.

Earlier this year, Togashi dropped a very unexpected bombshell out of nowhere, which was that he has four separate endings planned for Hunter x Hunter. They are categorized as ending A, B, C, and D, very nice and orderly. And these endings have each been prepared in accordance with how Togashi believes that the audience will take them. For example, the ending Togashi most wants to implement is ending C. However, he predicts that this ending will be heavily disliked at a ratio of 90 to 10%. Meanwhile, he views ending A as the most satisfactory to the readers, with an 80% approval and 20% disapproval. Whilst ending B would be roughly 50/50. So ending A, which is considered the safe ending, is still on the table. Ending C is the one where Togashi probably kills everyone and leaves the audience in a very bleak state, which he has previously stated that he may do with both Kopa and the Phantom Troop, at the very least. And so I think that ending B is the one that we'll most likely end up with if we get there, the 50/50 split between what Togashi actually wants to do and what the audience would feel satisfied with.

But what I haven't mentioned so far is ending D, which has been taken out of contention. But Togashi shared this ending with us alongside the message to consider this to be the true ending of Hunter x Hunter should he unfortunately pass away before the series is completed. So what I'm about to tell you may very well end up being the canon ending of Hunter x Hunter, and it is very generic.

This ending begins the same way the manga began: with a child holding a fishing rod and attempting to capture the Lord of the Lake. This child's name is Gin, and she is Gon's granddaughter, with her grandmother being Mito, the little girl who lived on Whale Island and was ever so sad to see Gon commence his journey to become a hunter. However, in stark contrast to Gon, after capturing the Lord of the Lake, Gin exclaims, "I caught the Lord as promised, so now you'll never tell me to become a hunter ever again, right?"

So we have a complete reversal of Gon, where his granddaughter is being actively encouraged to become a hunter, but what she really wants to do is stay on Whale Island and live out a fairly peaceful life. And so she caught the Lord of the Lake for the right to make that decision. And one reason for this is because Gin says that whenever Grandpa Gon talks fondly about his adventures as a hunter, it makes Grandma Mito feel bad, and she always excuses herself from the conversation. Gin believes that Grandma Mito is suffering from loneliness, and that is all Grandpa Gon's fault. And you know what? She's probably correct, because Gon isn't even on Whale Island during this ending, implying that at some stage he does regain the use of Nen and has continued being a hunter, having endless adventures, becoming God only knows how powerful, but very much following in the footsteps of Jin's great-grandfather, Jin.

And then another important reason for Gin's decision is revealed as an unnamed boy just wanders into the kitchen, and the two cook up the Lord of the Lake. Gin thinks to herself that she refuses to wait for someone's return, and that she will never make anyone wait for her. And that anyone in question is her boyfriend, who is the dude that just wandered in. And the final shot of ending D is a bird flying through the sky and seeing the view of a mysterious yet familiar figure off on another adventure somewhere in the world, that is heavily implied to be Grandpa Gon. And there's also talk of seeing the children of quote, "this person and that person," probably referring to the kids of Leorio, Killua, and maybe Kura.

Togashi decided not to kill him off, but I think you can see why this ending has been taken out of contention because it is, it's a bit standard. And Hunter x Hunter has always been Togashi's fight against Shonen manga tropes and demands. And every time he finds himself about to fall into one, which he often does, he very quickly course-corrects into something unexpected and antithetical. But you can also see here with the subversion of Gon's granddaughter wanting nothing to do with the hunter lifestyle, whereas the typical Shonen thing to do would be to keep the cycle going, to really bolster this up and show us that Gin was now going to go off on a great adventure of her own.

Now, with all of that said, at the rate that Hunter x Hunter is being published, and with Togashi now being in his late 50s, I do think reality dictates that it's more than likely that this will become the canon ending of Hunter x Hunter. And my reasoning for this is very morbid statistics. Late 50s doesn't sound, you know, too old, perhaps, especially for a Japanese person with an average lifespan of 83 and a bit years. But the lifespan of an average manga author in Japan is only 62 and a half years. The manga industry is pretty brutal. And I can only hope that Togashi's health problems have weirdly insulated him from this by making him take forced breaks from manga. But that is the morbid reality of the situation.

And that's not the most hopeful way to end a video like this. But consider that if Togashi does get everything he wants, then Hunter x Hunter probably won't be ending in a particularly hopeful way either. However, what we will always have from this point on is the image of Grandpa Gon living exactly the life he wanted and adventuring endlessly all around the world.

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The Dark Continent & Succession War Complete Recap (HXH 2025)

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