Three things I learned from Hunter X Hunter · 11:05am Dec 18th, 2016

I get into odd conversations with my friend Scott over stories in videogames and cartoons. We started bouncing ideas around that famous trope in shonen manga (and by extension, anime too), the FIGHTING TOURNAMENT ARC. Why is it used so much? Why does it keep falling flat? (Why do we collectively groan when we see it coming? )

Bouncing ideas back and forth, I figured out my own little theory. The authors use it as a delaying tactic!

Much like the ancient greeks used the Deus Ex Machina to untangle complications in the plot, the Fighting Tournament brings the story to a halt so that it can be simplified down. Let's say there's a whole bunch of new characters introduced, each with a cool visual style, yet still hiding their true natures. Having a series of 1 on 1 fights is an excellent chance to draw flashy special abilities, reveal hidden backstory, introduce worldbuilding, and spill exposition on how magic powers work. The characters watching on the sidelines have plenty of time to talk about these things between themselves, in between gasping in awe.

I'm not saying those elements are bad. They can get monotonous if done too much in a row, but that's not quite it either....

This also solves the problem of having too many characters to handle. Naturally they will be eliminated from the action, either by KO, or injury, or death, or simply disqualified. As the tournament bracket narrows down, we can whittle the cast down to the strongest characters, who were probably the actual important ones anyway. We still learned about all the characters, so we don't feel like they wasted our time. Crash the figurines together, roll some dice, then toss the losers back in the box. Repeat until the final round determines a winner.

Real-life tournaments also go on for ages, doing all those brackets one at a time, and not every match is exciting. But it's not the length-padding either.....

What happens is that the story becomes a sequence, without any structure or flow. Fight 1, Fight 2, Fight 3, etc.... Very rarely does any fight have impact on the next, besides choosing who advances. Each individual fight stands on its own, and the audience will compare them based on entertainment. There story doesn't progress until we find out who wins the prize in the end..... except for all the dramatic life stories being told, so you better not skip the boring matchups!

When the author doesn't know where to go next, they can use the tournament arc to stall for time. These are the kinds of things they've practiced all their life! They're confident they can draw intricate action scenes and cool poses. They love an easy chance to reveal juicy details from the character sheets they lovingly designed. But the story isn't really moving anywhere, just spinning its wheels for several months.

Akira Toriyama might have popularized this with Dragon Ball, though his genius is that he was a minimalist. He improvised everything by the seat of his pants, every week. He actually wasn't interested in traditional fight scenes because they took too long to draw, because he had no assistants and avoided screentone or rich detail. So instead of close-up poses and special moves (think JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) he forced himself to focus on action expressed through motion and speed. His fight scenes weren't show-off centerpieces, connected together with story cables. Like in a Buster Keaton silent film, the action itself became the story. Hosting a tournament doesn't interrupt anything, it's just another setting for what he was going to do anyway.

The same thing doesn't quite work with other shonen manga that go for an embellished story. For example, I found Naruto incredibly odd when it did TWO fighting tournaments in a row. The 2nd doesn't even matter because it gets interrupted by another plotline about ninja politics and war. Why simplify the story right before it's supposed to get more complex? It bought some time to think up a better plot to involve the characters, which is why they were disconnected from each other. All the interesting conflicts and decisions vanish from the chunin exam when these kids are told to blindly fight each other.

For the polar opposite of DB's minimalism, look at Bleach. It piled up more and more characters and subplots without resolving anything. The editors had to pull the plug and let it die.

So, practically everything in the shonen genre will follow these rules with the tournament arc, whether it really suits their purposes or not.

EXCEPT HUNTER X HUNTER.

by which I mean, it had a tournament. but it didn't follow any of those rules.

Yoshihiro Togashi's manga Hunter X Hunter (the x is silent) was inspired by his hobby of collecting things, and that thrilling moment when you obtain what you seek. Treasure hunters, monster hunters, bounty hunters - whatever you're searching for, there's enough mysterious, unknown space in this modern fantasy world for everyone. Though the restrictions of the world only open up for those skilled enough to qualify as a «Hunter». The plot itself is about a boy named Gon who simply wants to find his father, himself a top-level pro Hunter (and very good at not being found). Yet this is only a tiny part of this huge world, full of hundreds of characters crossing paths as they seek their individual desires.

I first started reading HXH about 12 or 13 years ago, along with many other manga series. The more I read it over all those years, the more I appreciate its quality, rather than just for nostalgic feelings. At first I thought it was cleverly subverting common tropes and cliches. Then I realized how it was transcending the tropes entirely, using them in new ways. And in the past year, after learning about story writing on FimFic and figuring how to think critically about it, I read it all once again. I was blown away by how perfectly it matched up with everything I'd learned. And I learned something more...

Much like Toriyama, Togashi became a minimalist. He's not interested in traditional fight scenes, because they take too much work-time and he'd rather be telling his story. The main difference, however, is that he doesn't improvise. Toriyama fakes his foreshadowing by linking back to past events, while Togashi plans his story out far in advance.

To the point where he's foreshadowing themes in the early chapters. Or maybe it's his wisdom on human nature. Though lately I've been interpreting them as the rules he uses to construct his stories. He's minimalist in his story in a way that skips over the fluff and padding, and only focuses on what he finds absolutely important.

There's so much I could talk about with this manga. I've seen others write entire essays about how surprisingly deep it gets for a children's adventure serial. I came up with my own theory on how it has the most elegant and consistent «magic powers» system I've seen in ANY kind of fiction. Maybe I'll save that for another time, because it's a huge topic by itself. Instead, I just wanted to share these writing lessons I picked up from it. Lessons that I never noticed were there, before a few months ago.

Minor-level spoilers ahead, just in case you're worried about that.

(1) NOW MIGHT BE A GOOD TIME TO GET ANGRY

This is from chapter #2, where our main character is introduced to two more main protagonists. The two immediately hate each other and end up in a duel. Gon is more curious than concerned.

Gon: "If you want to know a person, find out what makes him angry." One of Aunt Mito's favorite sayings.

I hadn't thought of it that way before. How well DO you know someone, if you don't know what makes him angry? What's important enough to that person to get genuinely offended over? (and if you're friends, you should have the restraint not to press that button) A character who's always cool, never getting angry.... you don't really know them as well as you think you do.

It's a simple lesson, and perhaps a variant of other writing advice I'd heard before, like "make your characters suffer". It's good drama, of course. But this is just a single-chapter mini-conflict meant to introduce two new characters. I had to wonder: why do this here? Why have them fight to the death already? Normally you slowly build up a rivalry, and save the duel for an epic climax. But the author isn't following that trope.

In a way, it's saying that actions matter more than words. These characters just introduced themselves in-story, explaining their motives for getting a Hunter license, but why should the reader believe anything they say? A recurring theme in HXH is that the world is full of tricks and tricksters. In one short chapter, you learn far more about their personalities by how they offend each other, rather than what they say. Even more personality is silently revealed by the way they drop their anger and stop fighting.

I'd always thought this was a throwaway introduction chapter. Only now do I understand how, in just a few pages, the story is showing how these characters become friends despite their differences. Their own actions in the heat of the moment proved to each other, and the reader, that they can genuinely trust each other as good people. They're not forced to team up out of plot convenience, nor do they suddenly decide to stick together out of some vague fondness of each other's fighting spirit.

(2) BACK AND FORTH

In an early story arc, there's a part where Gon must snatch something from an opponent. He has to avoid a fight, and he'll only have one chance. He practices aiming at long range with his fishing rod, over and over.

First, he practices aiming at a dummy. Of course, the real enemy will move, so he tries a swinging pendulum. But that's also too easy, the repetitive motion isn't much different from a still target. The closest challenge would be targeting free-flying birds in the area. This proves impossible, because they have fast enough reflexes to notice the line and dodge in mid-air. How can you possibly predict ahead of time how your target will react?

The epiphany comes when Gon notices how these same birds catch fish from the river. The birds watch when a fish is preparing to leap mid-air to eat a flying insect, and aim to intercept them at that moment. This is it, Gon uses this to consistently catch the birds himself. At the exact moment your target goes for its own prey, it become 100% focused and you can always predict how it'll move. Now he just needs to do this to a human opponent.

What does your enemy want? If you know the answer, you can figure out how someone will act and move. This becomes a common theme in HXH, where many characters keep their true motives close to their chests. It's not enough to simply have characters fight it out just because they meet, and not everyone wants the same thing. Some of the most intense moments are when a character has to stop and think for a little while. Why is so-and-so doing this? It doesn't add up. There must be a reason. Understanding what someone wants becomes the key to many story conflicts, large and small. One might use this knowledge against a target, or cooperate with them.

It's role-reversal, like in Chess and many boardgames. You can't only focus on what you want, but must yourselves in an opponent's position. What's their strategy, and how will they react to your strategy? I notice so many stories that neglect this, having the antagonist always marching the same way on auto-pilot, like a predictable AI player in a videogame. It's always the protagonist's job to outsmart them, not the other way around. When they've discovered the boss's attack pattern, the battle is won.

This isn't about making an antagonist that's even more mysterious and challenging and cryptic. It's about the understanding that your enemy is human too, not a mindless videogame boss. In the Yorknew story arc of HXH, Togashi introduces 12 new villain characters all at once. In most other stories, this would be far too many to manage (maybe we can whittle them down with a fighting tournament?!??). Instead, he is able to make every single one of them just as interesting and sympathetic as the heroes (despite still being evil). They become a memorable threat because they can adapt and change strategies, by understanding what their enemies want. Meanwhile, one of the heroes makes a catastrophic blunder because he misunderstood what THEY wanted, and THEIR way of thinking.

It's all about understanding. You might have heard the saying, "everyone thinks they're the hero of their own story", but characters need to act like they've heard that saying too. There may be good and evil in this world, but even the most evil characters can be interesting and sympathetic, they can be talked to and reasoned with, because they're not inhuman monsters. That understanding is what leads to success in this story, not being able to judge someone's moral alignment.

(3) CHOICES, CHOICES

In chapter #3, the main characters are stopped at a roadblock while trying to reach the Hunter exam. They have to correctly answer one quiz question to move on. However, the questions are rather uncomfortable...

Hag: Your son and daughter have been kidnapped. You can only get one back. Which will you get back? Your daughter or son?

Leorio protests that "there is no correct answer!" and angrily assumes that he has to guess what the guard wants to hear. Kurapika figures out the simple trick: the rules didn't require saying anything. Silence is the correct answer, and they're allowed to pass, but Gon says he still can't figure it out. Not the tricky rules, but the actual question itself.

Gon: What if, one day, you really have to make a choice like that? What then? It won't be about which is "correct" but about what's truly in your heart when the chips are down.
Hag: (Yes... The lad has perceived the the essential point of the test. What's abstract now can become cruel reality later.)

I think the author is saying this is what stories are really about. Not about getting a treasure, or who beats who in a fight. Stories are about questions without correct answers, but a time may come where you WILL have to make a choice, ready or not.

This may be an obvious comparison, and a bit of an interlude, but it made me think of Star Wars. The original movie is very enjoyable, much like a shonen adventure manga itself. Luke is whiny and impotent, but wants to be strong and capable without relying on others (notice how whenever he tries anything, he screws up and has to be rescued by another character... up until Death Star escape scene). It all builds up to the famous moment with the targeting computer, where he shows he's starting to believe in himself (and The Force too, I guess). But the other half of the climax was about Han Solo, the selfish mercenary who shows hints that maybe - just maybe - he'd like to play the role of the brave selfless hero (notice how he avoids fair fights and danger.... until he leads a crazy charge so they can escape from the Death Star). And he does change his mind at the end, rescuing Luke not for money or safety, but to be a hero. It's a powerful one-two punch, where the audience gets a double dose of what they wanted. The characters know instinctively what the right path is, they just have to believe in themselves enough to make it happen!

Empire Strikes Back is the movie that's often considered more than just a fun enjoyable time, but perhaps a truly excellent film. It's not just because of the Darth Vader reveal, or "dark tone" in the directing, or even Frank Oz's performance as Yoda, but I think it's again about the big character moment. Luke has to choose between his training and saving his friends. Yoda tells him he's not ready, and it could all be for nothing. Besides, the real enemy is not Darth Vader, but the Emperor.

Unlike in the first movie, there is no obvious correct answer here. Luke has to choose anyway, and hope for the best. It doesn't turn out right in the end, but it's not entirely a failure either... perhaps the future can be salvaged. All the while doubting that maybe this was a mistake and the other path would've been better. This is where that cathartic feeling comes from. You're not being fed the answer you want to hear, but questioned. Put yourself in Luke's shoes, do you think you'd choose the same? Maybe, maybe not.

Han has a similar conflict, but I'll keep that one a secret. Lando gets his own moment of choosing to be a hero, like Han did in the first movie. And in Return of the Jedi, they go back to the original movie's conflicts. Duh, Darth Vader, of course you want to be a good guy and save your son. Throw that evil old man into the pit! It's obvious!

OK, that's enough about the franchise inspired by a Japanese samurai movie. Back to the Japanese comic book.

I don't know if this is the secret to all artistic stories, but it's how Togashi does it. He uses this technique of "questions without right answers" to create meaningful conflicts in the middle of all this adventuring and martial arts fighting. Every character will sooner or later end up having to make such a choice. Not every story arc, but sometimes it'll pop up by surprise. It's not like these choices happen when you're prepared for them.

But what I found amazing is how he combines this with the previous lesson, writing enemies as human beings too. His villains also end up having to make these uncomfortable choices. They can develop as characters too. And then he does this at the same time, with both a hero and villain having to make a horrible choice. Each impacting the characters around them, and each other. It's no longer about knowing what someone wants, but a terrible tension of each trying to figure out what the other will CHOOSE. The doubt of "what if I went the other way?" becomes squared into 4 possible results.

And later, the Chimera Ant story arc. This started off so strange. To many fans, it seemed like the story was resorting to an endless series of fights for drama, instead of character development. Good vs evil, fighting to save the world, such a departure from what the story had been up to this point. Even worse, the villain here looks like a lazy ripoff of Cell from Dragon Ball! I seriously thought Togashi had given up and started to pander for more popularity.

It did not turn out at all what I expected. Two opposing characters being developed at the same time wasn't enough. When the story dominos start falling, nearly every character in this arc, hero and villain, gets a challenging decision, one after another, each one influencing the situation of the next. Moments where I assume they've chosen wrong and all hope is lost, only to gradually realize it's never that simple. No time for regrets, we can ponder "what ifs?" after this is all over.

I broke down crying while reading this arc. Multiple times.

I can't even think about "what would I have done?" because I cared about every single character. It's too much to process. I suppose everything happened the way it had to.

I feel like this is what art's made of. Empire Strikes Back barely scratched the surface compared to Hunter X Hunter.

So, who's actually familiar with the manga, or the new-ish anime adaptation? You can make your obligatory "hiatus" jokes now.

But seriously, don't call him lazy. Not unless you've made a comic yourself at some point.

The best-selling American comic books, almost all by Marvel and DC, typically sell 5 figures and above on the top 200. The real successes, the top 10 or so, squeeze past 6 figures. Very few amazing hits will peak out at about 200k or 300k copies on a good month.

Japan's Shonen Jump has a circulation of 2.2 million. Per week, not month. By itself, it is ridiculously more successful than EVERYTHING produced by Marvel and DC put together. (and its sales were 3x back in the 90s, when Dragon Ball and Slam Dunk were at their peak)

Little ol' Marvel or DC would fire Togashi in a heartbeat for his track record of missing issues and sketchy artwork. Shonen Jump keeps him on despite all that. Why? Either it's corruption and nepotism, or they think he's so damn good that it's worth making all these special allowances just for him.