I don’t think it would be that crazy to say that a large aspect of what made Hunter
popular are the extremely dark tones that grow as the story progresses.
With how much happens throughout the journey, Hunter has developed its list of horrific
events that you can categorize with the known Horror chart.
I want to do exactly that because tis the season and mostly because I believe that Togashi
has to be a pretty strongly involved horror fan.
So, I’ll be going about this chart from left to right.
It all begins with torture…
I hope I don’t have to say that line in the future.
The use of this in horror usually comes with the character having one more of the following
reasons.
Torture commonly runs with interrogation, pleasure, and punishment.
Interrogation isn’t a common element for torture-horror movies though, it’s more
so something you’ll see meant to chill you in a non-horror focused movie.
Which makes sense for us here because it’s 2 of the 3 cases of torture, while I still
can’t distinguish the last.
See, the first instance I could think of was with Pakunoda and Squala.
To where she’s pushing Squala to get him to snap because she was actually able to get
all of the answers, she needed through her Psychometry ability.
Pushing Squala to snap would get Nobunaga to strike him down immediately right after,
which is exactly what happened.
The set-up for the scene itself was saddening and cruel with Squala already knowing he could
potentially die here and for the fact that Pakunoda truly played around with his fate.
So, this was a case of both pleasure and interrogation.
The second case is with Pitou and Pokkle.
While this was a lot more chilling, it’s more so the method of torture that was the
issue and the character it was done on, because Pokkle was truly not that threatening as a
Hunter, nor did it seem like he was cut out for this environment.
The scene before to where he was hiding in the pile of bones was also a strong contributor
to the torture scene because it was a highly intense situation that completely played with
the viewer on the potential positive outcome for Pokkle.
Though while being able to breakdown the situation itself and what led up to it was giving it
a lot more depth, the torture itself was nothing more than interrogation to Pitou.
They wanted information, and they got said information, there was nothing to it at all.
Also, adding on to the build-up to the scene itself.
The Chimera Ant arc does extremely well with this overwhelming theme of, “The Hunter
you knew originally is dead” or more so “Kill off what you knew before”, because
of how these Hunters from previous arcs are dealt with in the most gruesome ways possible.
Also playing around with the concept of perspective because it puts it into question on whether
not we would really care if these Hunters were anything less, but that’s just more
so me internalizing what Meruem had said when he was taking over.
But on the last case, there was Chollo and his Indoor Fish.
The thing is, I believe it more so fits into punishment than anything, and even then, I
don’t believe it fully fits the role there.
Chrollo had dealt with the man easily, and he’s more so focused on the Uvo’s requiem.
It looks like it was done to show how easily he dealt with the man, but in reality, it’s
probably the Indoor Fish.
I mean look at them, look at how cool it makes him look.
The next category goes to Splatter, which is more so a general term used for all gory
movies.
I don’t see the need to go in-depth with this category in specific because it’s easy
to understand why it’s used, people like it.
Obviously, there’s setting the tone, character, setting, and other elements, but this is basic
understanding of it is that people enjoy seeing this.
A case where this might not be the case is when Meruem runs rampant and kills those meant
to be closest to him.
That case more so focuses on the elements of character and setting more than anything.
On another example, I think a close connection could be Uvogin’s rampage.
After watching a good amount of times because of how cool it looked, I came to the realization
that I’m reasonably numb to what happens here, even though it’s legitimately brutal.
On paper, all that Uvo does would be easy to classify into Splatter though, that still
stands.
For viewers, all they’re seeing is one guy versus many guys, and it looks cool.
The next category is Hannibal.
That’s not what it is, but since Hannibal the most notable one, I’m giving it to him.
Most moments of this would be classified more so around stuff the Chimera Ants do, but it
doesn’t directly classify itself as that because they aren’t the same beings.
The one to one example is another thing pulled from Uvo’s rampage when he bit the face
of Leech and uses a piece of his bone to kill Rabid Dog right after.
This has some of the same points as Splatter, but a huge area of it is the cruelty that
comes with it.
Uvo’s example is meant to show how cruel and powerful he is, meanwhile, any example
of the Chimera Ants is more so a take on the hypocrisy of humanity when it comes to humans
and animals.
Bringing back what Meruem said, a lot of that is true.
It’s made business at this point, and morality is more so in the consumer area than the producers.
I don’t want to get to deep in to this because it’s really a topic on its own, but you
get what Meruem’s getting at.
It’s just that when looking it at our perspective, seeing the people get killed in the way that
they did and get experimented with the way that Pokkle did.
It’s cruel to us!
Or well, people will comment that they weren’t affected.
Cool, I guess?
But I digress.
Bars.
We move on into our next type of horror being Psychological Horror, with our first category
of madness and paranoia.
I believe that madness and paranoia are huge parts of what made the 4th phase of the Hunter
exams so tense.
Everyone being on the hunt against everyone was one thing, but Hisoka being involved is
what had made everything better…
I mean worse, because what he did is bad.
Totally.
Then there’s the Invasion and Survival of Pokkle and Knov.
The Pokkle point coming back from the interrogation area of torture, but also fits for the Survival
area for him.
Before being settled into the pile of bones, he was paralyzed and captured.
We had Rammot in his own head thinking about how he’s going to be able to use Pokkle
to become king but then the aura of Pitou completely shut that down and had also set
Pokkle’s fear in place.
He already knew that the hunters are going to have a lot of issues with these ants but
seeing Pitou he stuck with this feeling that Killua, Gon, and Knov learn after their interaction
with Pitou.
Which transfers over into our next topic being on Knov’s survival and invasion of the palace.
Invasion more so goes over the idea of people breaking into your home, so that would circulate
around the idea of the Chimera Ants invading the main world, but I wanted to approach Knov’s
case because it’s a different perspective on invasion.
With Knov’s case, he’s invading an area where the ones staying there are all stronger
than him, except Komugi obviously.
All the feelings he experiences are emotions usually felt when being the victim of the
invasion, he’s the one invading it’s completely flipped because he realizes who he’s getting
into it with.
Originally believing that Killua was just overrated the royal guards but then after
feeling Pitou’s aura, he completely dropped his cool demeanor.
Death is miniscule in comparison to what he believes he’d go through with how much information
he holds, the lengths Pitou could go completely chills him down to the core.
He’s exhibiting fear of being overpowered and tortured, two common fears that those
experiencing an invasion will feel.
Togashi’s layers to Knov’s experiences is great with how full-circle this character
comes.
And the last of Psychological horror, being Phobia.
Reason why is because I believe that there are many phobias that are intertwined with
the horror we mentioned previously, but I think one example connecting over that doesn’t
connect to the previous categories would be good here.
A fear of these ants and all that makes them up.
And that’s when we see this split appearance with Pouf.
Pouf after Meruem had been blown up my Netero was just… different, completely the same.
His face had shown the true nature the ant, a royal guard for his king, but then it’s
also still Pouf and his expression is filled with a concept stronger than hate.
This hate is all for humanity most likely since that’s a force that’s been changing
and harming the king.
But aside from the symbolism, jeez this face is hideous just because of the thought of
a human-size ant head separating out of a human face even though it’s the other way
around.
Now we’re in the Killer and Crime area but didn’t have too much going for Killer.
So instead I’ll be going after Crime and our indicator for that are both of the times
we’ve had the Phantom Troupe rampage.
I wanted to go about the horror of the crime that the troupe commits but combining the
fact that people (me included) love what the troupe did and that the troupe were forged
by the evils of the world, says a lot more.
Maybe it’s not the horrifying thing, maybe we’re the horrifying thing to be enjoying
it…
Probably not because Hunter is just that great.
Thank you all for watching, I wanted to do a video on How strong is Grim from the Grim
adventures of Billy and Mandy but I was wondering if it was that time to be obscure.
Who knows.
Hopefully I’ll see you all in the next one, until then, peace out and god speed.