In Hunter x Hunter (HxH), Meruem is pretty clearly based on Dragon Ball Z villains, with his design being entirely reminiscent of Freiza and Cell - the tail for instance, not to mention similarly being made into his "perfect form" through a combination of weaker beings a la Cell. The "point" that Togashi is driving with this is actually pretty funny I think, he's saying that the state that DBZ villains are in - being prideful and knowing nothing but violence and control - are essentially so infantile and lacking in life experience that they would be the beliefs held by a literal baby born 1 minute ago. When born Meruem appears extremely cruel and violent, a quintessential Shounen villain, but I don't think that his behavior being so generic is unintentional - he was literally just born, and as King of the Ants, he knows nothing but control and violence. That's why he instantly kills Peggy and the turtle for not following his demands 1:1, and why he orders Colt to clean off his tail - he's not just being a smug dick for the sake of being smug, he literally knows nothing but control and violence, so he's just acting according to those instincts.
His arc that follows, then, is not so simple as "A bad person turning good". It's "A child (metaphorically representing shounen villains) getting life experience", and in turn, we can understand that the position of "King" is not actually such a noble and regal position; the most evil of the ants are those trying to be Kings and Queens themselves, and then the next most evil ants are those who are single-mindedly devoted to the King (Pouf). We can see that Youpi gains individuality and goodness while fighting Knuckle/Shoot/etc, but then loses it all once he meets the king again and decides to murder all humans in honor of his king etc etc. Being a King is not good, and loyally serving a king with no mind of your own is not good either. The core conflict here is hivemind/clinging to symbols vs individuality/personal beliefs.
The role that Komugi plays is helping Meruem mature. His noble pride demands that he be the best at everything, and in normal circumstances (one might even say "normal shounen" lol, but I don't want to seem like I'm implying "normal shounen bad, HxH seinen and good") being uber strong and invincible in fighting would make him the best at everything, but Gungi is different. All Meruem knows is violence and control, but in Gungi his violence accomplishes nothing, and he can't use control (ordering Komugi to lose or something) without hurting his pride. In other words, the standard traits of an evil king (violence and control) do not assist him in winning at Gungi, so the only thing he can do is improve as a person instead. Winning at Gungi requires careful analysis of the opponent and thinking far ahead, etc etc, and in through developing these skills I think he develops to some degree empathy and foresight, which I think is safe to say he had neither of before. When he meets Netero these traits are essential to winning the fight; empathizing with Netero's strategy, using foresight to see what he does, etc etc.
Anyway, by the end of the arc, we see that Meruem has abandoned being a king entirely - abandoned violence, control, etc. With empathy and foresight he realizes these things bring him nothing. He is no longer just playing the mindless role of a king. He's matured and realizes that what matters in life isn't world domination, but just caring about the things that matter to you - in his case, Komugi and Gungi. The "real" Diego having been retired this whole time is a reflection of this (as is the poem he states). Being a king is something for despots with nothing but violence in their life. If Meruem had kept up on his initial path, he'd be as shallow as Freiza or the fake Diego. But instead, he develops more mature traits, and at the end is even ready to kneel to someone else in hopes of seeing Komugi. He goes from Shounen Antagonist to Person in 40 days.
Some notes that didn't fit into the main 2 posts due to character limits:
1) Meruem starting to seek his name midway through the arc is one reflection of "Hivemind" -> "Individuality". At the very beginning of the arc we see that ants getting names encouraged them to be more individualistic and started breaking down the ant hierarchy. Naturally, Meruem learning and embracing his name does this on a fundamental level.
2) Gyro is a pretty clear antithesis to Meruem, an example of a "bad king" like Diego whose explicit goal is to spread negativity through the world. Togashi is basically saying, you like kings? Well, an "actual king" in the human world is someone who suffered so much child abuse and despair that he had a mental breakdown and expressed gathered human resources to fuck up the world as much as possible through drugs and violence.
3) The most morally good ants were those who abandoned Ant hierarchy entirely and either joined the hunters or just ran away. These are the survivors (Ikalgo, Welfin, Meleoron, etc) and they're connected by remembering their past lives as humans. As an aside, example of the most morally bad ants who tried to be Kings/Queens themselves were Leol and Zazan.
3.5) However, this isn't to say "ant bad human good". This is how Netero interpreted it (describing Meruem as wavering between ant and human), but Togashi himself called this into question, and of course there's the "human malice". I think the point isn't that the human parts of Chimera Ants were their "good parts", but rather that the human memories formed life experience that provided empathy. Chimera Ants made from bad people who inherited bad memories would likely continue being bad people. The problem with ants weren't their ant parts so much as their (biological?) urge to serve the King/Queen. Meruem became good not by embracing his humanity or anything, but by abandoning the hierarchy and embracing peaceful individuality, which humans should do too.
Actually a pretty excellent analysis, user. I was expecting a retarded wall-of-text fake-analysis falseflagger but I actually 100% agree with you. And fuck these other retards who didn't read and just post buzzwords thinking it's a shitpost.
Austin Hernandez
>Unironically reading an essay by some fag on a shounen baddie.
Brandon Miller
>no new IP >still shitposting & baiting Stop embarrassing yourself.
James Turner
Is there supposed to be something wrong with that?
>The "point" that Togashi is driving Haahaha very funny, but there is no point. He also ripped: >Gon/Gohan turning Super Saiyan after the loss of their friend A16/Kite whom they've only met the same arc >Good guys who used/tried to use a bomb that was within their body to destroy the main villain >Obviously Cell and Mereum are compilations of the good guys powers and abilities which gave them powerlevels bigger than anyone had ever seen before >Games (Gungi and Cell games) >Betrayal, the Androids betrayed dr Gero and the Ants betrayed their king and queen >He even stole names: dr Gero (human who became an Android) and Gyro (human who became an Chimera ant)
It's a complete rip-off of the Cell arc, but I'll admit that it's the only HxH arc I would watch again.
Kevin Howard
Thanks, I spent some time thinking about Meruem after finishing the arc since he felt like a pretty interesting character. His first impression makes you think he'll be a generic bad guy but the whole arc is actually deconstructing that impression - it doesn't take long before Meruem become fairly intelligent and quite a likable guy. It's pretty great how both Netero and Zeno basically freeze with surprise (and perhaps moral guilt) after seeing him, neither of them having expected in the least that the Chimera Ant King would be capable of so tenderly caring for a human girl.
I feel like the Chimera Ant arc has a lot of depth beyond just the fighting which has plenty of room for exploration. Feels kind of like Togashi really going all-out to express his views on humanity, morality, etc etc. I didn't even mention Gon or Killua's role in the arc for instance, which is funny since they're presumably the protagonists, but neither of them saw Meruem for more than a second. That's just one of many ways in which the arc / HxH bucks conventions and plays on expectations.
I'm actually am not a fan of the "soft seinen" memes for HxH. It's a pretty well-written series that bucks a lot of shounen archetypes but at the end of the day what demographic something is written for doesn't actually mean much. It's not hard to find genre-defying works all over the place. The soft seinen shitposting is done in kinda bad faith I think, it fuels negative shitposting in both directions without actually contributing much of value. I put "point" in quotes for a reason! You could say intention or whatever. It's obvious he was thinking about other shounen antagonists when designing Meruem. Also, about half of your comparisons are pretty vacuous. It's easy to see patterns where there are none (human minds are built for this), but it's not good to draw meaningless connections. Betrayal for instance is so generic the comparison means nothing.
Josiah Davis
I think the most fitting comparison for Merwuem is Edward Cullen from Twilight.
Kevin Peterson
>half of your comparisons are pretty vacuous Hahahaha, yeah, probably the ones you don't agree with. But that makes it a point of preference and not fact. So let's look at your claims.
>Betrayal for instance is so generic the comparison means nothing. That is retarded. The fact that something is generic does not mean that it can't ripped of. If you want to narrow it down to gai ncertainty you can look at the circumstances of the betrayal and the circumstances in these cases were that both wanted freedom, not power. so that's a far less generic motivation.
Well, that was one and one is hardly half of my post. Are you going to back your claim up or hold your peace?
>It's obvious he was thinking about other shounen antagonists when designing Meruem It's obvious that he ripped a lot from the Cell arc (FTFY) Humor me and name me those other shonen antogonists.
Camden Sanders
user you seem to be confusing building on pre-established ideas for simply stealing them wholesale. The point of including all those things were the differences between them and the things they're "ripped" from.
Easton Campbell
>The soft seinen shitposting is done in kinda bad faith I think, it fuels negative shitposting in both directions without actually contributing much of value. user that's the point of it. It's people pretending to be fans of the series spamming retarded shit to ruin discussion of the series on Zig Forums. There never was anyone who seriously believed the "soft seinen" retardation.
Grayson Ross
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Ian Brown
I would obviously disagree with vacuous examples. By vacuous I mean carrying no weight or thought. For example, what does the names Gero and Gyro being similar names indicate? Nothing. It's a superficial comparison that has no significance or weight. Go ahead, try listing one reason this is significant. I don't think you'll be able to - it's a point of comparison for the point of comparison. Not to mention, the names are pretty different in Japanese ( ゲロ vs ジャイロ), and Gyro is based on the baseball pitch the Gyroball. Many names in the Chimera Arc are based on baseball pitches (Knuckle, Palm, etc etc) so it's safe to say that was his primary inspiration. So all with this in mind, not only does two names being similar mean nothing, but it's also very likely there is actually no intentional connection between them at all. This is basically as meaningless as you can get.
Since you seem to agree that betrayal is generic, I will then point out games. In my initial post I described the role that Gungi plays in the HxH arc. As a "game" it plays a significant role in being an avenue of skill/strength that doesn't rely on physical violence like fighting. It forces Meruem to grow in ways that wouldn't have happened if all he did was fight people physically. What of the "Cell Games" then? Well user, that is literally a fighting tournament. Where all people do is fight physically. Literally the only connection between Gungi and the Cell Games is the word "game". There's no more significance to it than that. It's possible that Togashi had the idea to include a game in the Chimera Ant arc due to the name of the Cell Games, but this wouldn't actually be a meaningful connection even if it did exist as a connection. There's no thematic inspiration, it's definitely not ripping them off, etc etc. It's the most tenuous and surface-level connection possible.
And that's half. I literally meant half by the way. I disagree with 3 out of 6.
Asher Taylor
>building on pre-established ideas He ripped off a lot from the Cell arc, but I never said that he didn't gave it his own spin.
>The point of including all those things were the differences between them and the things they're "ripped" from. That is an opinion unless it comes from the author himself.
>but I never said that he didn't gave it his own spin. Then what the hell are you complaining about? That he took inspiration from one of the most popular manga of all time? Do you have any IDEA how influential DB was?
