How thin is the veneer of civilization? When faced with something as existential as a plague, monster, or a dominant force. We often rally under the curtain of humanity, fighting for our own domination and survival, as it is a part of our human nature. But look past that thin curtain, and you might find that you possess the same brutality you are trying so hard to fight against.
Yashiro Togashi’s “HUNTERxHUNTER” puts humanity under a microscope, where mankind faces genocide and so chooses domination by a higher being instead. Though what is more disturbing is how quickly humans can prove themselves capable of the same brutality as the predators they fear so greatly. This blurred line becomes a powerful lens to examine modern violence, corruption, and moral ambiguity.
“HUNTERxHUNTER” follows 12-year-old Gon Freecss, motivated to find his father, Ging, after meeting Ging’s student, Kite. Kite explains that Ging is one of the world’s most famous Hunters. A Hunter is a licensed professional (explorers, treasure seekers, etc.) known for mastering Nen, a technique that controls life energy for enhanced abilities and unique powers through aura flow.
Inspired by his father, Gon takes the Hunter Exam years later. There, he meets a boy named Killua, who becomes a close companion throughout his journey. Throughout their journey, Gon and Killua train and hone their skills of nen to get closer to their goal of finding Ging.
As they continue to travel and go through obstacles Gon’s father set up for him, Gon and Killua are teleported to an unfamiliar area. Gon expects to finally meet his father, but is surprised to find Kite, the man who first motivated him to become a hunter and find his father in the first place.
Kite explains he is working on a new project: finding the creature that a giant claw belongs to, known as a Chimera Ant, which could be a danger to humans due to its massive size.
Gon and Killua decide to help Kite and his own students investigate the Chimera Ants. They follow the trail of the giant claw to the NGL (Neo-Green Life) Autonomous Region, a self-sufficient nation that rejects modern technology. The Chimera Ant Queen establishes her nest there, laying eggs with specialised Chimera Ants who carry human DNA, traits, and high intelligence (such as speech, and later, mastering Nen themselves), some of whom retain memories of their human lives.
As the Ants become stronger, a conflict breaks out, resulting in the death of many Hunters. Kite ends up dying and is captured to protect Gon and Killua during a confrontation with one of the three Royal Guards born to protect the Ant King. Gon is devastated and becomes consumed by the need for revenge.
The Hunter Association, led by its chairman, Issac Netero, mobilises an Extermination Team to eliminate the Chimera Ants before the King is born and poses a global threat to all of humanity.
It is then that the Ant King is born prematurely. He shows extraordinary power the minute he is born. His royal guard will take him to the Palace of East Gorteau, where they will infiltrate and exterminate the duplicate of the supreme leader of the region, Ming Jol-ik. Neferpitou, one of the royal guards, will then control the leader’s corpse through their nen ability to manipulate the region so they can rally to the palace in ten days for something they will call “The Selection”. Which is the concept of killing off the weak humans and keeping those strong enough as chimera ant soldiers?
Within the palace, the king becomes interested in the human game of Gungi (a chess-like board game) and begins spending time with Komugi, a blind professional Gungi player. Through his interactions with Komugi, the king begins to develop a sense of humanity, purpose, and care that challenges his initial brutal nature.
Here, Komugi requests the King’s name, although he cannot provide her with one because he was not given one, unlike the rest of his royal guard. This becomes a small motivation for himself, and he requests his royal guard to tell him his name, which they cannot provide him.
The Extermination Team launches a coordinated assault on the Ant King’s palace. While the Chairman of the hunter association engages the King in a climactic battle, Gon manages to corner Pitou, demanding that Kite be healed, as he’s oblivious to his death. Pitou, who is healing Komugi after she was severely injured at the beginning of the infiltration, promises that they will heal Kite if he just lets them finish healing Komugi. Gon agrees, but states Pitou only has an hour to heal the girl, which, according to Pitou, is only enough time to heal the biggest injuries.
During the battle with the ant king and Netero, the King tells Netero that he desires to know his name since he [Netero] has it. Netero agrees, only if the king fights him and can make him surrender. The fight ends up being fatal for Netero as he kills himself to set off the bomb called “The Poor Man’s Rose”, which was set in his heart. Because of his sacrifice, Netero tells the Ant King that his name is Meruem before they both end up dying in the explosion.
Meruem will soon be resurrected by two of his royal guards, Pouf and Youpi. Meruem lacks the memory he once had as King, telling Pouf he does not remember the day his guard started serving him, but instead, remembers their names.
After healing Komugi, Pitou is taken to the capital, where Gon again demands that they heal Kite. Discovering that Pitou cannot restore Kite to life, Gon unleashes a catastrophic Nen transformation, sacrificing his own body and future potential to gain the power needed to defeat and kill Pitou.
The arc concludes with the aftermath: Pouf and Youpi are left to die due to poison from the Poor Man’s Rose. Meruem chooses to die peacefully alongside Komugi, also due to the poison, as he fully embraces his humanity. The remaining Chimera Ants, those who failed to participate in the extermination of Meruem and his royal guard, are sent back to the wild to experience a proper life.
To truly appreciate the profound art of this story, one must first understand where and why the peak of the series was written, what part of our history it connects to, and why. This context serves as the entry point for seeing “HUNTERxHUNTER” as much more than a tale of a boy seeking to find his father.
The Chimera Ant Arc (CAA), with its constant action and keen character development, serves more than just a shonen storyline for a manga series. It showcases a brilliant allegorical mirror that reflects the most volatile issues happening in our current civilisation today.
Togashi uses the fictional conflict in the Region of East Gorteau to stage a stabbing critique of modern socio-political dynamics, giving us the Chimera Ants, who are able to represent our worst societal instincts.
As humans, we are naturally characterised by what motivates us, the desire for belonging, curiosity, love, emotion, and the ability to learn. Our social behaviour drives us to pursue what we want most. But what happens when our worst societal instincts win?
Aside from what creates us as humans, we are capable of far worse. Today, millions of people are losing their lives to mass genocides. We live in a world where a person who believes they hold a sense of authority allows millions to suffer for their own selfish desires, alongside the political propaganda they present to the world. Rather than a single organised phenomenon, it grows to a point where it outstretches more than we can withstand.
The series is reminiscent of this factor through the idea of “The Selection”, the idea in which those weak are killed by the King’s royal guard, as they cannot perform as proper Chimera Ant Soldiers after they are killed.
When we look at North Korea, we understand that they use a propaganda method we know as “Cult of Personality.” Yashiro Togashi uses this as a crucial narrative tool and a potent socio-political commentary on the authoritarianism that is used so heavily in the Chimeran arc.
The Republic of East Gorteau is perfectly staged for this idea. When Meruem takes over, replacing their supreme leader, the region is already under the existing system that is already heavily built on an extreme cult of personality, which the infiltration of Meruem and his royal guard seems to amplify.
The country was ruled by Ming Jol-ik, or rather, Diego. He serves as a figure who commands absolute devotion, using elaborate propaganda to maintain that grip on his power and his motivation to isolate the populace, which ties immediately to how North Korea is presented today.
With the murder of the Supreme Leader, Neferpitou can easily manipulate the region due to the people being already conditioned to obey government orders without asking questions.
The Chimera Ants simply replace one tyrannical figure with another, issuing these false announcements over the state-controlled media to facilitate the selection, illustrating how vulnerable a populace becomes when critical thought is suppressed by years of state-mandated narratives.
Author B.R Myers addresses his opinion on this matter through his book “The Cleanest Race,” as he claims that “A personality cult comes into being when a one-man dictatorship presents itself as a democracy. The goal is to convey the impression that due to the ruler’s unique qualifications and the unanimity of the people’s love for him, his rule constitutes the perfect fulfillment of democratic ideals.”
The chimera ants take advantage of this already broken democracy, and manufacture the illusion of consensus, furthermore chipping away at it, exploiting the vulnerability of the citizens of the East Gorteau.
Although another representative of this factor, being one of Meruem’s royal guards himself, Shaiapouf serves as a key idea for this, with a soft parallel to the fanatical devotion of high-ranking officials in a cult of personality.
Pouf’s desperate attempts to “purify” Meruem from Komugi’s human-like influence are the political act of a true believer trying to preserve the perfect ideological image of their own ruler, even as it serves to destroy Meruem’s evolving self. The ideal is more important than the individual.
This internal conflict between Meruem’s emerging humanity and Pouf’s own fanatical ideology is a microcosm of real-world political struggles, where the preservation of a system (in this case, the Ant hierarchy) is deemed worth more than the life of moral development of the individual leaders and the millions they rule.
By understanding pre-existing totalitarian regimes of East Gorteau and magnifying them with the Ants’ devastating efficiency, Togashi provides the allegory: Cults of personality strip away an individual’s critical faculties, turning them into compliant tools. Whether it is the citizens of the republic marching to their doom for the selection or a powerful royal guard (Pouf) willing to destroy Meruem’s own happiness for the sake of his own ideological fantasy.
HUNTERxHUNTER again uses fanatical horrors with a real-world political commentary, once more with Ming Jol-ik (Diego), serving as a direct reflection of the Kim family dynasty in North Korea. This crucial narrative tool is used by Yoshihiro Togashi to ground the arcs.
The most explicit link is found in the leader’s own title and his name. The Japanese pronunciation of the supreme leader’s name is an established anagram for Kim Jong-il, the North Korean dictator who governed during the original publication run. The arc would end, coincidentally, two months before the death of Kim Jong-il, who died December 17th, 2011.
This is a deliberate signal to the audience that the political dynamics are meant to be a critique of that specific regime.
Diego’s public appearance and his status are crafted in a way that is meant to be an infallible quasi-divine ruler.
Like the Kim leaders, Diego’s word is the law. His power is not derived from a democratic mandate but from a systematic, inherited, and brutal control structure. This absolute power is a cornerstone of the personality cult, where the leader’s genius and wisdom are presented as the truth for the nation’s own survival and its prosperity.
Togashi’s narrative brilliance, however, is to reveal the fragility inherent in the absolute power of a region. The Kim regime’s power is tied to the image of the leader rather than their actual competence or physical presence.
By demonstrating how easily Diego’s image could be manipulated and repurposed for mass murder, the arc delivers a warning: a system built on the worship of an individual, rather than on democratic principles and critical freedom, is utterly vulnerable in itself and ultimately destructive to its own citizens.
This warning, in our real life, is also issued by Thomas Jefferson when he states the following: “When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory.”
Where fear is not just a byproduct of tyranny, but the essential mechanism that allows the Chimera Ant genocide to occur so efficiently in the first place.
While the citizens of East Gorteau suffer from the profound dictatorship of their own country, the hunter association itself was governed by a different motive, the thorough desire to dominate. This desire is what led to the justification of the Poor Man’s Rose, which was deployed into Netero’s heart and would only be set off if his heart stopped beating.
This decision strips any moral high ground they once held. The poor man’s rise is a deliberate parallel to the nuclear weapons we have in our society now, wielding the power to destroy any life the Earth once kept.
The use of this weapon of mass destruction transforms the conflict from a heroic defense of humanity into a calculated act to defeat “The Ultimate Evil”, as stated in the manga. It is a calculated playthrough of environmental and demographic destruction, reflecting the catastrophic moral compromise made during the Cold War that took place after World War II.
In modern society, the presence of nuclear weapons creates a state of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), where the ultimate guarantee against nuclear war is the fact that BOTH sides possess the capacity for total annihilation against mankind.
The hunter’s association’s decision to deploy the rose, a weapon guaranteed to poison the land and people up until death and kill within hours of exposure, as a last minute attempt of victory shows the extent to which powerful intuition, even those who claim to be protecting freedom, will soon to embrace apocalyptical violence simply due to the fear of death amongst a society.
Just as the real-world nations justify the maintenance of nuclear arsenals as a “necessary evil” for deterrence, the Hunter association justifies the Poor Man’s Rose as the only guaranteed means to prevent an Ant-led global shift. This ideology confirms that the dominance of one group is valued above the idea of life and humanity itself.
As the Chimera Ant arc progresses, the Chimera Ant hierarchy is fractured through the introduction of human emotions, where Meruem is struck by his own humanity. A transformation that was sparked by Komugi, whose presence forced Meruem to embrace life from a new perspective, rather than conquest, it now shifts to empathy. An idea that leaks into his own royal guard, dividing them so greatly.
We see a great shift in Neferpitou’s character once they are tasked with healing injured Komugi. It is with this that we see Pitou express a vulnerable human nature outside of being the monstrous villain we have been so used to seeing from them.
However, as the antagonists are expressing a shift towards enlightenment, Togashi can utilize Gon to illustrate the darker, more corrupt side of human conditions. Starting the series as a carefree child driven by the simple motives to find his father and help his friends, Gon’s own trajectory takes a harrowing turn following the loss of Kite.
This is a descent that follows within all humans. It is through Gon we understand that grief and love, when left unchecked, can mutate into a dangerous, simple-minded need for vengeance.
It is by the time Gon confronts highly anxious Pitou, the moral roles have effectively reversed: Where the “monsters” find soul, whilst the “human” has sacrificed his own for the sake of destruction, driven by the sole purpose of destroying what hurt him the most.
This is a mirror that serves as the arc’s ultimate commentary on the fluidity of morality, proving that we, as humans, are not a fixed state, but a choice between compassion and the same primal darkness that fuels tyranny in the first place.
Ultimately, the chimera Ant Arc serves as a sobering reflection on the cyclical nature of human conflict and the fragility of our own social structures. By weaving together the terrifying efficiency of a cult of personality, the existential threat of weapons of mass destruction, and the personal erosion of a young boy’s soul, Togashi reminds us that the “monstrous” is often just a reflection of our own unchecked shadows.
The tragedy of the arc is found within its end: While Meruem found his humanity in the simple game of Gungi, humanity chose to maintain its dominance through the cold, industrial poison of the Poor Man’s Rose.
This paradox is best captured through the arc’s own closing sentiment: “Come. Let us drink to this creature called man! Good and evil repeat in an endless cycle… on the spiral of time, where a lifetime is far too long for peace yet far too short for war. That is why they yearn. That is why they foster. If only they knew… that all one needs in life is the sun, the soil, and poetry.”
Through this lens, the struggle against the Chimera Ants was never truly about a clash of species, but a clash of values. It leaves us with the haunting realization that while we are capable of the poetry of connection, we are just as likely to remain trapped in the spiral of our own making, valuing the power of the “Rose” over the simplicity of the “sun and soil.”
