Theory Analysis of Pitou versus Gon

[Phantron]

I'm actually not a fan of the recent arcs in HXH, but I see a lot of discussion (not necessarily here, just in general) that seems to go along the line of how the Ant arc is going downhill in terms of fighting and then got worse recently, and I don't really agree that. Pitou versus Gon is probably the only real fight in the Ant arc in the sense that it's the only match that didn't have one side hopelessly outmatched, and to me HXH is all about the (near) even matches because Togashi is quite meticulous with his rules and scenarios.

First we'll go over Gon, which somehow still creates a lot of controversy. He is constantly foreshadowed as a great, unimaginable power by various characters. It'd not be a stretch to say that if his potential is realized, he ought to be the strongest human character in the world. Therefore, clearly his transformation is just borrowing power that he always could have had. Now, in HXH we got stuff that makes you younger and restore your vitality as if you're younger (GI reward), and you'd think it's got to be harder to go backwards (get younger) than forward.

Now Pitou is the more interesting choice. There are a lot of legitmate questions that really does seem to look like lapses in consistency.

First, if Gon can power up by mortgaging his future, why didn't Pitou do the same thing? After all, his resolve to protect Meryem is second to none. If he's going to die for Meryem, why not just use a power that will definitely neutralize Gon?

Here the problem is that aura abilities are fixed for developed characters. Yes Pitou was only born like 3 months ago, but you can safely assume that his aura abilities are completely developed in terms of variety so he has no room to learn something new. Otherwise, for someone who literally can develop a new ability by just thinking 'this ability seems useful', he should have an absolutely crazy number of abilities to use at his disposal.

Therefore, while Gon can develop a new ability that essentially borrowed future time, Pitou cannot. This is also the same reason why Netero can't just develop a new ability at the cost of his life to specifically deal with Meryem. I mean, he was prepared to blow himself out to take him out, so surely if he could've developed any new ability (Zero is obviously an ability he always had) he should've tried that first.

Now if you look at the story very carefully, you'll realize that the cocoon ability Pufu has allows you to reset what you've learned, so to speak. This is why Cheetu can learn an ability that can only be used once, and then just learn something else after that ability has been broken. So the next question is: why didn't Pitou reset his abilities? We know he needed his puppet abilities for maintaining the army, but Doctor Blythe is your classic case of 'learned the wrong thing'. That is, it's a Reinforcement ability that is the furthest possible position from Pitou's natural type, and he is well aware that this ability is horribly inefficient.

But the problem here is somebody has to be able to be the 'healer', so to speak. For whatever reason, Yupi, who ought to be most qualified to use healing techniques, chose to not learn them, and Pufu didn't either. In fact, if you look at all of his abilities, none of them are really geared for combat. The most he can do is materialize something to manipulate himself, but we know there's no way that can be anywhere as effective as just reinforcing yourself (manipulate/materialize are both two away from Reinforcement).

Here's a point I think most miss. Despite his appearance as your generic overwhelmingly powerful villian, Pitou's abilities are practically useless in combat. It's not unlike Biscuit chose to develop an ability that likewise has no benefit in combat, though in Pitou's case he developed those abilities because he figured those are what abilities that will aid Meryem's rule and his own safety was never something he worried about.

Indeed, in the actual fight, we can see clearly that Pitou never utilized any ability that'd play to his natural type (Specialize). In fact, he fights almost identical to a Reinforcement user. But this isn't because he's inexperienced or stupid. It's because he has already exhausted his available capacity to learn abilities that'd help Meryem that he didn't have any left to use in combat. So, when you're matched up against a Reinforcement type (Gon) who has all his abilities geared to combat, it is actually a very bad mismatch for him.

Don't forget that aura is highly dependent on your emotional state of being, and Pitou, for whatever reason, was in extreme duress. I think this part is somewhat poorly developed and a missed opportunity. Gon, even if Pitou can sense his true potential, should not be giving Pitou so much pressure. I think Pitou ought to be more concerned about Pufu, and I was really surprised the two never fought each other since their differences in ideology over Komugi is pretty much irreconciliable. Yes the story mentioned some of that too but I think it really should be that Pufu is the one responsible for killing Pitou, not Gon, while the story clearly attribute most of the credit to Gon.

Now there's still no doubt that the Royal Guards ought to possess raw numbers far greater than any human can (AP total/physical attack/physical defense), but subtract Pitou's emotional state (extreme duress), aura type penalty (Specialize versus Reinforcement), and the fact that Pitou has almost no useful abilities in combat, it's still consistent with general worldview of HXH. At any rate, if the fight was truly 1on1, Gon would win but he'd also die too, and I don't think you can blame inexperience here since it's hard to imagine even an expert to expect something you just smashed its head into a pulp jump up to attack again. Even zombies are supposed to stay dead if you smashed the head.

 

[heron bpv]

You say that Pitou has no combat-geared abilities? What about Terpsichora (or whatever it's called; quite the difficult name <_<)?

 

[futurefrog]

I'm actually not a fan of the recent arcs in HXH, but I see a lot of discussion (not necessarily here, just in general) that seems to go along the line of how the Ant arc is going downhill in terms of fighting and then got worse recently, and I don't really agree that. Pitou versus Gon is probably the only real fight in the Ant arc in the sense that it's the only match that didn't have one side hopelessly outmatched, and to me HXH is all about the (near) even matches because Togashi is quite meticulous with his rules and scenarios.

First we'll go over Gon, which somehow still creates a lot of controversy. He is constantly foreshadowed as a great, unimaginable power by various characters. It'd not be a stretch to say that if his potential is realized, he ought to be the strongest human character in the world. Therefore, clearly his transformation is just borrowing power that he always could have had. Now, in HXH we got stuff that makes you younger and restore your vitality as if you're younger (GI reward), and you'd think it's got to be harder to go backwards (get younger) than forward.

Now Pitou is the more interesting choice. There are a lot of legitmate questions that really does seem to look like lapses in consistency.

First, if Gon can power up by mortgaging his future, why didn't Pitou do the same thing? After all, his resolve to protect Meryem is second to none. If he's going to die for Meryem, why not just use a power that will definitely neutralize Gon?

Pitou does not know about Nen restrictions you can place upon yourself. Gon learnt of Nen restrictions from Kurapika (whos restriction makes him more powerful at the cost of being unable to use said abilities on anyone but the Spiders otherwise he will die). Pitou nor any of the ants have knowledge of this.

Here the problem is that aura abilities are fixed for developed characters. Yes Pitou was only born like 3 months ago, but you can safely assume that his aura abilities are completely developed in terms of variety so he has no room to learn something new. Otherwise, for someone who literally can develop a new ability by just thinking 'this ability seems useful', he should have an absolutely crazy number of abilities to use at his disposal.

This is wrong actually, the Ants learnt Nen 'the wrong way', none of them were taught of Nen, nor understand it very well. They develop it instinctively after force awakening one anothers latent nen abilities. They are never taught how to properly use these abiltiies, the extent of there knowledge is the mere basics as told by the controlled corpse of Pokkle. They only know as much as Pokkle does, and even then that is not many of them that know that.

Therefore, while Gon can develop a new ability that essentially borrowed future time, Pitou cannot. This is also the same reason why Netero can't just develop a new ability at the cost of his life to specifically deal with Meryem. I mean, he was prepared to blow himself out to take him out, so surely if he could've developed any new ability (Zero is obviously an ability he always had) he should've tried that first.

It is insinuated that Gon perhaps had planned this in advance, you can't instantly gain a new ability, Gon's 'powerup' was premeditated, it was very intentional and the limits and restrictions of it were rather specific it seems, Gon planned this, but only if things went sour with Pitou.

Now if you look at the story very carefully, you'll realize that the cocoon ability Pufu has allows you to reset what you've learned, so to speak. This is why Cheetu can learn an ability that can only be used once, and then just learn something else after that ability has been broken. So the next question is: why didn't Pitou reset his abilities? We know he needed his puppet abilities for maintaining the army, but Doctor Blythe is your classic case of 'learned the wrong thing'. That is, it's a Reinforcement ability that is the furthest possible position from Pitou's natural type, and he is well aware that this ability is horribly inefficient.

Resetting abilities is not that simple and Pitou had no need to reset his abilities, it's not like they knew that the palace would be invaded. Pitou chose to maintain this ability as it continues to help the King reach his goals. Also we do not know how much Pitou understands in regards to Nen. It can't be presumed that Pitou knows everything from Pokkle, because Pokkle most likely doesn't even know half of what Gon and friends do.

But the problem here is somebody has to be able to be the 'healer', so to speak. For whatever reason, Yupi, who ought to be most qualified to use healing techniques, chose to not learn them, and Pufu didn't either. In fact, if you look at all of his abilities, none of them are really geared for combat. The most he can do is materialize something to manipulate himself, but we know there's no way that can be anywhere as effective as just reinforcing yourself (manipulate/materialize are both two away from Reinforcement).

Here's a point I think most miss. Despite his appearance as your generic overwhelmingly powerful villian, Pitou's abilities are practically useless in combat. It's not unlike Biscuit chose to develop an ability that likewise has no benefit in combat, though in Pitou's case he developed those abilities because he figured those are what abilities that will aid Meryem's rule and his own safety was never something he worried about.

Indeed, in the actual fight, we can see clearly that Pitou never utilized any ability that'd play to his natural type (Specialize). In fact, he fights almost identical to a Reinforcement user. But this isn't because he's inexperienced or stupid. It's because he has already exhausted his available capacity to learn abilities that'd help Meryem that he didn't have any left to use in combat. So, when you're matched up against a Reinforcement type (Gon) who has all his abilities geared to combat, it is actually a very bad mismatch for him.

As I said, Pitou did not need to develop combat Nen as he is strong enough as it is. Instead he chose to develop a nen type better suited to helping the King's cause. Pitou does not know that the palace was going to be invaded nor that there would be opponents stronger or strong enough to challenge him, there was no reason for him to think of developing a diferent ability.

Don't forget that aura is highly dependent on your emotional state of being, and Pitou, for whatever reason, was in extreme duress. I think this part is somewhat poorly developed and a missed opportunity. Gon, even if Pitou can sense his true potential, should not be giving Pitou so much pressure. I think Pitou ought to be more concerned about Pufu, and I was really surprised the two never fought each other since their differences in ideology over Komugi is pretty much irreconciliable. Yes the story mentioned some of that too but I think it really should be that Pufu is the one responsible for killing Pitou, not Gon, while the story clearly attribute most of the credit to Gon.

Now there's still no doubt that the Royal Guards ought to possess raw numbers far greater than any human can (AP total/physical attack/physical defense), but subtract Pitou's emotional state (extreme duress), aura type penalty (Specialize versus Reinforcement), and the fact that Pitou has almost no useful abilities in combat, it's still consistent with general worldview of HXH. At any rate, if the fight was truly 1on1, Gon would win but he'd also die too, and I don't think you can blame inexperience here since it's hard to imagine even an expert to expect something you just smashed its head into a pulp jump up to attack again. Even zombies are supposed to stay dead if you smashed the head.

One thing you assume is that people learn Nen only for combat, this is completely incorrect, in fact the majority of nen users have no combat nen abilities, from all the nen users we have seen it's actually a pretty even split. Even the spiders have members with non combat abilities. There are people who develop nen abilities for reasons other than to fight, Pitou is one of them

 

[Phantron]

You say that Pitou has no combat-geared abilities? What about Terpsichora (or whatever it's called; quite the difficult name <_<)?

Terpsichora basically manipulates his own body to exceed its normal limitation, but since that's based on manipulation it has to be weaker than just pure reinforcement. Now the fact that he can manipulate himself after he's dead is a very strong combat ability, but it comes at a rather high cost too.

It's pretty clear that controlling a ton of weak guys would have almost no effect against comparable strength characters. His ability is designed to control an army, but the army he controls is in no way something he can depend on when he's fighting someone of comparable strength compared to him.

 

[mrsticky005]

Terpsichora basically manipulates his own body to exceed its normal limitation, but since that's based on manipulation it has to be weaker than just pure reinforcement. Now the fact that he can manipulate himself after he's dead is a very strong combat ability, but it comes at a rather high cost too.

It's pretty clear that controlling a ton of weak guys would have almost no effect against comparable strength characters. His ability is designed to control an army, but the army he controls is in no way something he can depend on when he's fighting someone of comparable strength compared to him.

When that army of weak guys is innocent people...it makes things a bit difficult.

That is presuming the opponent cares.

 

[Phantron]

When that army of weak guys is innocent people...it makes things a bit difficult.

That is presuming the opponent cares.

Yupi, Pitou, and Meryem all seem to have your generic super powerful being pride, i.e. they don't necessarily care about the lives of other people but they definitely won't attempt to use hostages against beings they perceive as vastly inferior. Pitou thought about withdrawing his puppets after realizing they're of no use against the Hunters, so he certainly doesn't need them to fight. I can see him sending his puppets just because he can, but he sure isn't counting on them.

The other long reply mostly seems to be about training/learning and how the Ants don't get it. There's no way that can be right. The notion is that to the top Ants, the concept of learning aura is as ridiculous as learning how to breath. Meryem punished Pitou when Pitou tried to teach him Gyo, because to him using Gyo is the same thing as 'look at something harder'. All the Royals are born with the ability to use aura without any need to discover it. Pitou even remarked "Life sure is tough for normal people" when he saw that other Ants need someone bash them in the face with aura-infused attack to learn it.

Morel said that if they didn't attack earlier which interrupted Pufu teaching aura abilities to the lesser ants, they would have no chance of fighting the Ants because by then even fodder characters like Cheetu might have learned powerful abilities. There's no reason Pufu wouldn't have taught Pitou if he felt there was a need. With the exception of Yupi, who seems to have no real interest at learning aura at the beginning, you have to assume that all the top Ants can master whatever aura ability they want, and with Pufu's cocoon ability they don't even have to worry about learning the wrong/incompatible abilities.

You can only develop new ability if there was still capacity to grow. For example, Cheetu, clearly a novice in aura, suddenly learned how to materialize a crossbow while fighting Morel. It specifically stated that he was able to do that because he is still at the development stage. Gon, likewise, is also at the developing stage, so he can learn a new ability that hastens his growth, but no developed character can do this because they do not have capacity to learn anything new. Otherwise every time you've a fight to the death, the guy losing should just immediately learn a new ability at the cost of his life, since he was going to die anyway, to take out whoever he was fighting. Something like that is inherently impossible because learning capacity is limited, even for the impossibly powerful Ants.

---------- Post added at 02:25 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:54 AM ----------

Some more thoughts about Terpsichora. We obviously never saw it used while Pitou is alive, but assuming that it would've been used the same way had he been alive compared to dead, then all that ability could possibly do is have the puppet master behind him pull him so that he can make movement that's normally physically impossible (i.e. run full speed one way and then have the puppet master yank him the other way). That is certainly a useful ability, but think about what's involved here. It's basically like saying if a car ran into you, you can suddenly move very fast in one direction too. For any significant movement to happen he's basically hurting his own body to make it possible.

The closest ability I can think of to this ability would be Shalunark's autopilot, and while we never saw that ability in the context of other equivalent users, it really wouldn't make sense if you can somehow manipulate yourself (as a Manipulation user) to get better physical results than a Reinforcement user doing the same thing by reinforcing his body, otherwise what's the point to being a Reinforcement user? At any rate Shalunark's ability also does significant damage to his own body. Sure, it beats having no ability, but it's not exactly a good one for combat. This might be why he was never able to use it against either Gon or Netero while alive. Netero commented that Pitou's move puts himself at a 'disadvantageous position' when they briefly encountered each other. Now, the other two Royal Guards have special abilities that are easily as good as Netero's special ability for combat (nearly infinite clones + read mind + immunity to physical damage, flight/aura blast/body metamorphsis) so why would Pitou's special abilities have such a significant dropoff compared to the other two? Pitou seems to be the implied leader of the Royal Guards (he was the first born) and was entrusted with Komugi by Meryem. There's no reason for his overall ability to be weaker than either of the two royals. I see the only way this is possible is because Pitou already exhausted all his possible learning capacity by learning abilities that'd be useful to serve Meryem, and neglected his learn anything to protect himself in combat.

 

[IamJacky]

First we'll go over Gon, which somehow still creates a lot of controversy. He is constantly foreshadowed as a great, unimaginable power by various characters. It'd not be a stretch to say that if his potential is realized, he ought to be the strongest human character in the world.

I don't see how Gon's victory over Pitou at the cost of all of his potentials to be controversial at all, in fact, I thought that was the ONLY plausible way Gon could have beaten Pitou one on one.

I remember thinking that the only way Gon could have beaten Pitou back then was if Killua made it on time and they both fight Pitou together, and even that would be a bit far fetched, though I believe would have been very exciting and entertaining. Gon alone stood zero chance against Pitou without the transformation.

First, if Gon can power up by mortgaging his future, why didn't Pitou do the same thing? After all, his resolve to protect Meryem is second to none. If he's going to die for Meryem, why not just use a power that will definitely neutralize Gon?


Here the problem is that aura abilities are fixed for developed characters. Yes Pitou was only born like 3 months ago, but you can safely assume that his aura abilities are completely developed in terms of variety so he has no room to learn something new. Otherwise, for someone who literally can develop a new ability by just thinking 'this ability seems useful', he should have an absolutely crazy number of abilities to use at his disposal.

Therefore, while Gon can develop a new ability that essentially borrowed future time, Pitou cannot. This is also the same reason why Netero can't just develop a new ability at the cost of his life to specifically deal with Meryem. I mean, he was prepared to blow himself out to take him out, so surely if he could've developed any new ability (Zero is obviously an ability he always had) he should've tried that first.

I think you answer your own question here. Pitou cannot achieve the transformation that Gon does because:
1) Pitou has already reached his potentials and 2) Loyal as he is, he does not have the degree of desperation/hopelessness/resolution/devotion or whatever it is that Gon was experiencing. Pitou is extremely loyal because he is after all, an ant - he does not possess the complexity of human emotions like Gon has (who is also just a kid). And 3)Pitou doesn't necessarily know about the sacrificial condition for Nen, and even if he does, he may very possibly be limited because of 1).

why didn't Pitou reset his abilities? We know he needed his puppet abilities for maintaining the army, but Doctor Blythe is your classic case of 'learned the wrong thing'. That is, it's a Reinforcement ability that is the furthest possible position from Pitou's natural type, and he is well aware that this ability is horribly inefficient.

I think your opinion here is by large after-the-fact based assumptions. Naturally Pitou developed his Nen abilities based on his personality and are somewhat suited to aid Meryem. There was no need nor time to reset his abilities; and when was Pitou well aware of his ability to be "horribly inefficient" ? All 3 Royal Guards were already extremely powerful by default in terms of physical strength and aura output, plus, not all Nen abilities are combat oriented (or needs to be), especially when the 3 Royal Guards are already overwhelmingly powerful even considering without any Nen abilities.

At any rate, I think even if Pitou did develop some kind of abilities where you see fit, he'd still get killed by Gon because Gon is still gonna snap either way.

But the problem here is somebody has to be able to be the 'healer', so to speak. For whatever reason, Yupi, who ought to be most qualified to use healing techniques, chose to not learn them, and Pufu didn't either. In fact, if you look at all of his abilities, none of them are really geared for combat. The most he can do is materialize something to manipulate himself, but we know there's no way that can be anywhere as effective as just reinforcing yourself (manipulate/materialize are both two away from Reinforcement).

Why does there have to be a healer among the 3 and why do you think Yupi ought to be the most qualified to be the healer? Based on what we see Yupi possesses a wealth of aura, is apt at physical transformation and when he loses it he explodes. He may be reinforcement type or transformation or even specialization, but what does it matter? For all we know those 3 when introduced were so strong that it probably didn't require the need for a pro-healer, but whatever, Pitou wanted to bring Kaito back and he developed the ability first and that was that.

Here's a point I think most miss. Despite his appearance as your generic overwhelmingly powerful villian, Pitou's abilities are practically useless in combat. It's not unlike Biscuit chose to develop an ability that likewise has no benefit in combat, though in Pitou's case he developed those abilities because he figured those are what abilities that will aid Meryem's rule and his own safety was never something he worried about.

Again it doesn't always have to be combat based Nen ability especially when you are already super strong, special types of Nen abilities can be complimentary and most importantly - entertaining for the readers. Further more, his self-control puppet ability seems to be combat oriented, though we never got to see exactly what it does. It's probably similar to that Autopilot ability but we don't know the whole story. Although Netero did berate Pitou for using that ability (which was developed within fragments of seconds when Pitou first spotted Netero from the sky), that still does not warrant us the readers to think that ability to be useless.

Indeed, in the actual fight, we can see clearly that Pitou never utilized any ability that'd play to his natural type (Specialize). In fact, he fights almost identical to a Reinforcement user. But this isn't because he's inexperienced or stupid. It's because he has already exhausted his available capacity to learn abilities that'd help Meryem that he didn't have any left to use in combat. So, when you're matched up against a Reinforcement type (Gon) who has all his abilities geared to combat, it is actually a very bad mismatch for him.

I still think Gon wouldn't stand a chance against Pitou even when Gon was all combat and all reinforcement type, it didn't matter. The only reason why Gon won was because he sacrificed everything. Uvogin or Phinks from Spiders most likely can't win against Pitou either. I think a fair match for Pitou would be Netero or someone near his level.

Gon, even if Pitou can sense his true potential, should not be giving Pitou so much pressure. I think Pitou ought to be more concerned about Pufu, and I was really surprised the two never fought each other since their differences in ideology over Komugi is pretty much irreconciliable. Yes the story mentioned some of that too but I think it really should be that Pufu is the one responsible for killing Pitou, not Gon, while the story clearly attribute most of the credit to Gon.

Pitou was stressed because his main task was to save Komugi and Gon was serious threat to Komugi's wellbeing and later deemed a threat to Meryem. Even though Pufu and Pitou do not necessarily share the same view towards Komugi, I think "irreconcilable" is too strong of a word. Pitou doesn't have the obsessive attachment and ideology over Meryem and bias over Komugi as Pufu did; Pitou simply doesn't care as much whether Komugi was dead or alive, he was only determined to treat and protect Komugi because he understood how much Komugi meant to Meryem.

Pufu may have wondered why within such a short time Pitou has changed so much, but I would seriously doubt if he ever thought about killing Pitou based on what he saw of Pitou healing Komugi. They are after all 3 Royal Guards ants, loyal to Meryem, killing each other would be far fetched.