Foil Characters in Hunter x Hunter

    

    It's been a while since I've posted anything here. That's entirely by design, as I never intended this blog to be a regular thing. I just wanted a place to put analyses and other miscellaneous stuff I'm writing in between the big projects like novels and screenplays that I'm still slogging away on. I'm making a tiny bit of progress on those. At this rate, Hunter x Hunter might come back from hiatus before I do.

Yeah, this is the third post I’ve done about Hunter. That might be a lot. But there’s something in Hunter that I want to talk about, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Source: medium.com

    That thing is its use of foil characters.

    “Foil character” is one of those terms that I learned back in seventh grade literature class or something, but didn’t really understand because they just had us memorize it and didn’t really discuss it with us or give us meaningful examples. It wasn’t until more recently that I began to appreciate the nuances and thematic depth that you can get by having two characters that parallel each other.

    Hunter’s main cast of four is really two sets of parallel characters: Gon and Killua, and Leorio and Kurapika. I want to spend more time talking about Leorio and Kurapika, since their connections are more subtle and less talked-about.

    Still, let’s start with Gon and Killua. The main similarity between them is that they’re both twelve, and it’s what draws them to each other at the beginning of the Hunter Exam. The characters also have a number of opposite characteristics:

• Gon becomes a Hunter to find his dad. Killua is leaving his family behind.
• Gon is driven by his goal. Killua is aimless. He takes the Hunter Exam because nothing really challenges him, and he heard the exam was difficult.
• Gon is innocent and naive. Killua knows more about the world than someone his age typically does.
• As the series progresses, Gon’s heart and determination drive him into some really dark places. He blows his hands off to win a dodgeball match (as part of his quest to find his father, but still), and later becomes consumed by vengeful rage after his mentor, Kite, is killed. Killua starts out in a really dark place, as the child of a prominent family of assassins, but he heals over the course of his adventures with Gon.
• In general, Gon is cheerful, while Killua is angsty.

    Leorio and Kurapika parallel each other in less obvious ways. It doesn’t help that we spend a lot less time with them. They don’t appear at all in the Greed Island and Chimera Ant arcs, which really focus on Gon and Killua’s friendship. Still, Hunter frequently pairs Leorio and Kurapika together during the Exam. They stick together in the running segment, on the blimp while Gon and Killua hang out with Netero, and on the island where the applicants have to steal each others’ badges.

Source: unknowconcreteflower-art-blog-me.tumblr.com

    

    Leorio and Kurapika have opposite personalities. Kurapika is wise, calculated, and reserved, while Leorio is rash, impulsive, and outgoing.

    Kurapika’s motivations stem from his tragic backstory. He comes from a race of people whose eyes turn red when they experience intense emotion. He’s the sole survivor of that race, since the Phantom Troupe slaughtered the rest of them to steal their valuable eyes. Kurapika now wants to become a Hunter so he can exact vengeance on the Troupe, and take back the eyes of his people.

    Leorio’s motivation also stems from a tragic backstory, though the series puts a lot less focus on it. When Leorio was a child, his best friend died from a curable illness. Leorio now wants to become a doctor so he can help as many people as possible.

    There’s a parallel there, and also a crucial difference. Kurapika and Leorio both lost someone close to them, but where Kurapika dwells in the past and seeks revenge, Leorio wants to create a better future.

    Sure, they don’t have exactly the same backstory. Losing your entire family and race to genocide is obviously a lot worse than losing one person. It makes sense that Kurapika has a much worse mental state than Leorio does. But they still parallel each other enough that we can recognize their similar pains. That similarity makes their differences stand out even more.

    Another contrast between Kurapika and Leorio is that Kurapika constantly pushes people away, while Leorio gravitates towards them. We see one example of this in the Yorknew City arc.

    At the end of the Hunter Exam arc, our heroes vowed to meet up again in Yorknew on September 1st. They had learned that the Phantom Troupe would be in the city for an auction held on that date. They all agreed to reunite and help Kurapika toward his goal.

    In September, Gon, Killua, and Leorio show up at the city, but they can’t find Kurapika. He already took a job as a bodyguard for a crime family in order to get closer to the Phantom Troupe and the scarlet eyes that were being sold at the auction. He bailed on his friends, and took it upon himself to complete his mission on his own.

    After this arc, Kurapika parts ways with the gang. He basically only appears in the anime for one more shot. It’s him, in a chapel-like room, sitting in front of the eyes he’s collected so far. (This is the manga version of that scene):

Source: https://echo-from-the-void.tumblr.com/post/180562162009/i-find-it-interesting-how-differently-kurapika-and. Check this post out if you want to read another really cool analysis of Kurapika.

    Once he finishes collecting the eyes, he believes he’ll have nothing. This scene made me want to scream at the screen, because he does have people. Gon, Killua, and Leorio will be there for him no matter what, but he can’t see it.

    The scene feels like even more of a gut-punch because it takes place in the middle of the election arc. This arc brings back a bunch of old characters. A lot of hunters from the previous arcs show up to vote for the new Hunter Association chairman. Gon is in the hospital, so some of his friends also come back to support him. The whole time, you’re waiting for Kurapika to show up, but he doesn’t. Leorio calls him, and he doesn’t pick up. He sits there facing the eyes, holding his phone but not answering. 

    Kurapika is supposed to be a main cast member. He appears in the closing animation of every episode of this arc, just like Gon, Killua, and Leorio do. It feels like the anime wants to draw our attention to Kurapika’s absence. It heavily contrasts Leorio in this arc, who makes it a point to be present when his friends need him.

Source: buzzfeed.com

    

    The end of the arc’s intro lingers on this photo of the four. We later find out that it belongs to Leorio, and he keeps it on his desk as he studies for med school. It reminds him of the good friends he made, whereas Kurapika’s collection of lifeless eyes remind him of the people he has lost.

    Leorio’s most iconic moment in this arc is his election speech. He tells people not to vote for him, and expresses regret for how bad of a friend he’s been, partying and slacking off at med school while Gon and Killua were saving the world in the events of the last arc. Leorio was studying to become a doctor and help people, and he showed up as soon as he knew Gon was hurt, and yet he still feels like he wasn’t there enough.

    Kurapika generally lives a very stoic lifestyle. He imposes restrictions on his abilities, harming himself at the expense of making his aura more powerful and helping him achieve his goal. It contrasts Leorio’s hedonism. He spends a lot of time drinking, gambling, and messing around with the ladies.

    All these parallels make Hunter’s themes all that much deeper. Kurapika’s story alone says a lot about revenge and self-isolation, but when it can bounce off characters like Leorio who’ve experienced similar things, it says so much more. The stark differences between the characters also help the audience tell their personalities apart and get to know them as people (a tad more on that later).

    Hunter has a few more foil-pairs outside of its main cast. Knuckle and Shoot, for example, make up a classic outgoing/reserved character pair. The series probably has the most success with the characters Meruem and Komugi. I won’t spend too much time on them here, because other people have already done excellent analyses of them that go into more detail than I can right now.

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    Meruem is a monster ant bred to be the most powerful being of his species, the culmination of all the people and animals his mother consumed, with his own royal guards and soldier ants created for the sole purpose of serving him. Komugi is a blind child, mostly ignored by those around her, but a savant when it comes to the fictional board game Gungi. Meruem is incredibly strong, and Komugi is incredibly weak, but Komugi beats him at Gungi every time they play.

    The fact that she is better than him at this one thing complicates Meruem’s philosophy. He’s supposed to be the pinnacle of evolution, but this little girl is better at him than something. It forces the audience to think about the idea of power prevalent in this arc: What does strength really mean? Can one person be considered “better” than another? Meruem and Komugi’s dynamic makes Chimera Ant perhaps the most thematically-rich arc in all of Hunter.

    I would hope that Leorio could change Kurapika just like Komugi changed Meruem. Leorio can help Kurapika process his pain in a healthier way. He can show Kurapika how to find a more meaningful purpose than living in servitude to a family he will never get back.

    Maybe someday they’ll reunite. Even if they don’t, the way the series puts them together says a lot for its audience, making something greater than the two characters would be alone.

Want to create smart foils like Hunter x Hunter?

    You can start by taking two of your characters and listing ways they’re the same, and ways they’re opposites. You might find this easier if you specifically made the characters to be foils, but you can do it with any two existing characters. I’ll follow along with two characters of my own, named Misha and Victoria. Let’s start with the opposites:

• Misha tends to come across as rude. She curses and has poor manners. Victoria is a nice, modest girl, the kind of person parents and teachers are proud of.

• On the inside, Misha cares about doing the right thing. Victoria cares more about doing what she’s told than doing what’s actually right.

• Misha uses fire magic. Victoria is able to use water magic.

• Misha uses her magic freely. Victoria represses her magic (In this world, magic comes from another dimension. Any use of magic loosens the distinction between our world and the magic world, even if it’s just a little bit. Victoria’s choice to not use magic stems from her moral beliefs).

    Now for the similarities:

• Misha and Victoria are the same age.


• They’re both home from college on summer break.


• They’re part of the same friend group.


• They both live in southeast Maine, and went to the same high school.


• The above two things give them a lot of shared history. They both know the teachers at their high school and what they’re like. They have inside jokes with the rest of their friends. They’ve gone on some adventures together.

• More generally, they live in the same world. They know the rules of magic and the sociopolitical environment they live in, even if they respond to those things differently.

Source: hunterxhunter.fandom.com

    Try writing a short summary of your characters’ arcs:

• Victoria grows more repressed, and eventually shuts her friends away completely.

• Misha learns how to strengthen her magic, under the instruction of a stoic wizard.

    In this case, the characters’ arcs sort of move in the same direction. Both of them increase their level of self-control as the story goes on. Their arcs differ in one important way. Misha has a positive arc, while Victoria has a negative one. Misha improves herself over her journey, while Victoria grows worse. 

    The ratio of similarity/contrast in your character arcs will depend on what you want to do with your story. In George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, for example, Jon and Daenerys’ stories have a lot of parallels (finding themselves in leadership positions where they have to reconcile the interests of two intrinsically-opposed groups), and not many contrasts, though the characters don’t ever physically meet. Those similarities tie the characters and the story as a whole closer together, despite the huge geographical distance between them.

    Overall, you want to find connections that your audience can recognize. Those connections help flesh out your story’s theme. After all, theme essentially comes from connections between different parts of a story that combine to create meaning.

    Even if you don’t intentionally write two characters as foils of one another, it can still help to compare and contrast them. You should make your characters distinct enough that each one responds to a situation in their own way. Play around with your characters and ask yourself what one of them would do in another one’s place. Having different characters react differently to the same situation can make them all more three-dimensional.

Source: Wordpress.com

    Look at each character in this shot from Hunter's first ending. They're all falling in different ways: Leorio is scared, Kurapika has a fighting stance, Killua looks bored, and Gon dives headfirst.

    If you keep exploring the ways your characters act differently, you’ll get a distinct cast that your audience can get to know and love just like Hunter’s main four.