Women in hunter x hunter

[shionoro]

Hey, this thread is about the roles of women in hunter x hunter.
Personally, the roles which are given to female characters are an important thing to me in fiction.
There are series which i generally enjoyed and have put down or stopped watching because i just got annoyed by the treatment of female characters.

And this isn't so much because it'd bother me that there is a lack of worthwhile female characters (in fact, i have no problem with works which have absolutely no or very few prominent women in it, like hajime no ippo), but because the manga focusses on halfhearted romance or gives female characters screentime which is of no relevance at all.
For example, it annoyed me a lot that in naruto, sakura was shown arround pretty often and even implied to be very talented, even LONG before she learned healing jutsu, but most of her agency, if anything, was doomed to fail.
Her agency was, at least for very long, just to get sasuke back. But she was not the one to succeed in that, thus almost everything she did was useless filler plot which coulda been taken away without losing any relevant plot.

I feel like togashi is pretty good at writing roles for women and evades the pits other writers fall into when trying to write serious female roles.
Togashi does not delve into fanservice or just writing love interests, and his female characters are rather diverse, too.

We have our usual nurturing housewives like mito, but we have adventuring and cunning characters like biscuit.
We have no instance of women just being plotdevices who just have to be saved.
And most importantly, when togashi writes a female characters, then she has some kind of relevance and is usually somewhat competent in what she does (and not just implied to be competent).
It is somewhat realistic that much fewer women than men are hunters due to hard physical exams, but the ones who made it have earned their place.

For example, i think in other works, melody would have been a busty and beautiful woman who served as love interest for kurapika. And she would not have stopped kurapika with her ability when his anger overtook him, but by crying and hugging or something like that, to give us a cute scene of kurapika caring for her (yes this is a guess, but i have read enough manga in which EXACTLY THAT happened).
Instead, she calmed him, because she is competent as her ability, and she worked as his emotional grounding with that ability and her character instead by just being a love interest.

It becomes exspecially clear in the case of palm that togashi is able to write complex female characters.
Palm started as joke character initially, kind of a more scary take on the tsundere-yandere girl chasing the main character's love.
But palm showed a great mental fortitude and capability.
She was able to go along the plan, and when she got found out, she instantly comitted suicide.
After her revival as an ant, she was able to break free from pufus control with killuah's help, even if they messed with her brain before.
After that, even tho it is clear that Palm has a mad crush on gon and behaved rather childishly in a peaceful environment, when push comes to shove, she acts mature, tells killuah that he is the most important person to gon and takes up her duty again of gathering intel
Palm is able to differ crush from business and also does not become a joke character afterwards who tags along with gon or stalks him to mito's house.
There is also no 'saving palm' scene in which the group decides to save the poor girl. They decide to save her if possible and otherwise trust that she can handle herself.
Once again, i think in other works, a character like palm would have been handled very, very differently.


All in all, there is no scene in HxH i could remember in which I was annoyed due to 'useless women' or 'women being used to show how great a male character is' or 'sideline cheering characters'.
And i get those in almost any modern manga.

 

[duerlin]

I think the intention was to describe hunters as people who are used to a ruthless world full of tough or near death situations. The difference between genders should be meaningless when talking about those people because there is no place for frailness in their world and even seduction can't be used to them. Also, there is a huge gap between hunters and normal people making normal people being treated as lamb. I think this part of Hunter x Hunter is very compatible with the scenario proposed.

 

[shionoro]

i agree with that, however, I know manga and series where the setting would imply the same but it just doesnt.

Let's take a fun example because I will probably get hate for that, let's take one piece. it's easy to bash bleach and naruto, but not the darling of all darlings.
First of all: I like one piece, at least up until a certain point. It is a great manga, this is not intended to bash it.
One piece does have great female characters, most importantly, nami and nico. However, even for the pirate crews, which should all be pretty hardboiled people, nami and robin are delegated into support roles, and if they are allowed to fight, their big fights are pretty often against other women.
It is not like they are not competent at what they do, navigating and archeologics, but for example, robin was definitely one of the strongest strawhat fighters for quite some time after she joined, but still didn't get much to show off except against smaller enemies.
Plus, exspecially after the timeskip, the manga got kinda fanservicy with both of them.
Worst thing was that they both had to be saved out of a completely helpless situation by their crew, with arlong arx and cp arc.
They didnt get any chance to at least help to free themselves from their shackles. just the usual damsel in distress treatment.
Nami's fights exspecially get sexualized often, for example against absalom and against kalifa.
The thing is: They get to show off sometimes like the rest of the strawhats, but they can almost always only show off in a stylish way and against the smaller mooks or in nonfightrelated situations. They are basically hindered by the writing to archieve real greatness.
And this is not so much due to the fact that they are not competent at their own fields, but that they are most often shown at fields they are significantly less competent at than other characters or are presented in fanservice ways or even as having to be saved.
And those are the best treated women in one piece. The rest is either rather stereotypical (alvida), general damsel in distress plot device or is implied or shown to be competent but gets screwed over (bonny and monet come to mind).
I mean, sure, we got big mom and boa, but it is not exactly a diverse cast of competent female characters. It is better than in other manga, but i think the situations of women being powerless or screwing up are more numerous than the situation in which they shine.
Even for people like tashigi, a no bullshit marine women, we have her underlings respect her but still , even while being a rather strong marine, her authority is constantly somewhat questioned or downplaye. The manga constantly makes it a point that she will never catch up with zorro.

Comparing that to HxH here. It is not just the fact that hunters are often battlehardened.
We got almost no female characters who are into fighting. They can fight, like almost all nenusers, but they are usually not frontline material.
We saw no notable female fighter in heaven's arena. We saw no notable human female fighter in the whole series except biscuit and palm, and palm could only do that because she became a chimera ant (i don't count shizuku and machi here, i don't think they can be considered top level fighters, unlike palm and biscuit).
And that is fine. I even like it. It is realistic that women would usually not concentrate on brawling, since muscle mass plays a role in HxH.
I like it a lot more than showing me 80 pound moe girls pwning giant muscle men with some kicks. But the women we do see are competent at what they do and often have unquestioned authority in those fields. And most importantly, they concentrate on those fields. They are not constantly shown fighting and being worse at that than the relevant bad guys with an occasional 'oh well but she is a good nenexorcist' or some shit like that. They are shown at doing what they are good at.
Pakunoda for example has a very clear mind and a very strong resolution about what to do, even if she is definitely no frontline fighter, and without that the spiders woulda been screwed. There is no 'saving pak' arc or anything like that, she just does her job competently without going into situations she cannot handle. And when a char who is no frontline fighter like shizuku actually fights, there is no screaming for help or stuff like that, but only win or death, because the spiders role that way.
Or take the zodiac: The female ones don't seem like frontline fighters, but they have unquestioned authority in their fields, with noone even disputing that cheadle would not be the optimal choice as their leader.
Comparing that to tsuru (the one piece character), who is a great tactician but still gets shit from her own allies at some point.
Simply put: There are a lot of very different (from fighter to calm, introverted personas) but competent women in HxH who are not used for fanservice or as simple plot devices, or worst of all to show off the strength of a villain by stomping the woman
And there is no impliedly super strong female who then loses anyway.
For example, biscuit is still leagues ahead of gon and killuah, and if she wanted, she coulda handled genthru without any plan by just stomping him.
She let gon and killuah take on the bombers because they were her pupils and she helped them grow.
I saw that shit too often, that there is an uber powerful female character who just after 1 or 2 training arcs has to be saved by the protagonist because it apparently was not that hard to get on her level after all.

 

[uberfayt]

I agree with what you've said (especially your example of one piece...). I think in hxh there is no gender discrimination and everybody is treated the same way. Characters (regardless of gender) in general feel very real and natural (kinda like how real life people would have been in a world with magical beasts and aura ^^). They are protected and kept away from the cliché of manga and that's one of the appealing sides of hxh.

Togashi wants to convey a strong message about this matter. Before I get to it I need to point out the occurance of genderly ambiguous characters : Lets take Kurapika as an example. In the beginning his sex was not specified and many fans considered him a girl. IMO he could've been one of the most badass leading female character to be ever created, but leaving his sex ambiguous was even better. This was the case of many others (Alluka, Kalluto, Pitou). There is even the case of Kaito turning into a girl, and apparently had no negative response neither from him nor his surrounding, everybody accepted it.

This brings us to Togashi's message. It's something like : Whether boy or girl, young or old, human or not, let me show you how to write great and memorable characters !

That's how I see it in hxh.

 

[shionoro]

I absolutely agree.
I even remember that I myself was confused about kurapika being male or female, but he was my favourite character anyway.
It is kind of a shame, because female characters like that are only few. But i think that is also an indication for a good thing about togashi's writing:
I think Togashi does not necessarily set out to, for example, create a badass female character.
He creates a character whether male or female, tries to make the characters interesting and then thinks about wht this kind of character would do in which situation.
That leads to better results most of the time. There are countless of series which are marketed with 'strong women' in which the creators clearly wanted to force this image, but mostly, it is just a boring formula which has a woman strapped onto it and some scenes about her 'being better than men' or 'not letting herself be defined by exspectation'. And while there is nothing wrong with those things happening in general, it does oftentimes not make for an interesting series or a good female character, but a mary sue which is the writer's pet that is supposed to attract certain audiences.
Kurapika as a woman would not be bothered by all of that because he/she would be busy 'chaining evil to hell'.

The same goes for biscuit. In many works, we have the strong female teacher have two short fighting encounters or so.
One time being shown to be more competent than the mainchar, the other time maybe beating up some fodder enemies by a far margin.
And after that point, she becomes a function. Teach some technique, give some exposition, but as a character, she is nothing. Either way she is just sticking arround and waits until the mainchar inevitably gets stronger than her, sometimes she gets abducted and has to be saved, in any case, most writers don't really know what to do with her at that point and give her more fodder matches if anything.
The thing about biscuit is that she was more of a character than just a function. She taught gon and killuah, but she also has her own goals and left them after GI. While being still stronger by a far margin and doing the things which made her a double hunter.
She still finds time to train gon and killuah, but it is clear at any point in time that she is living her own life.
She is not babysitting gon and killuah nonstop and giving exposition.

That is something about togashi's writing on a whole: Characters are usually more than plot devices, and if they are not, they have the decency to go after they fullfilled their function.
Just imagine how kurapika and neon's relationship woulda panned out in other manga.
I would bet that we'd have seen useless filler chapters about kurapika finding eyes while having to put up with neon's antics, which are so kawaii that in the end he vows to protect her and they become kind of a couple.
But that did not happen. neon had no relevance in the story anymore, and aside from glimpses on her that meant she stopped appearing in the manga.
And she still went out of it with more complexity than just a plot device. When squala died, Neon tried to cheer up and care for her attendant eliza who was in love with squala. She instantly left the auction even tho she didnt get the items she wanted (and for which she had pestered all her bodyguards for ages) to not put more stress on Eliza. Even the plot device which was just there to give chrollo the ghostwriter power and who aside from that was supposed to just be a spoiled rich girl was allowed to go out in an act of compassion and maturity. That is something i don't often see.

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HxH is actually pretty positive about gender and even body types, too.
I do not remember any other manga with an ugly female character like melody who treated the character that well.

If I remember correctly, it was Uriel back then who pointed out that Togashi is trying to make a point when he lets all his family consider Alluka as a boy and only Killuah treating her as a girl. That might be true, it is not probable that togashi's more ambigous characters are mere coincidence by now.

 

[uberfayt]

@shionoro well said. In contrast of hxh you have the naruto case, where women are handled very badly, where you clearly see that their character is just forced and gives them a feel of shallowness...and even when the author tries desperately to portray them as strong and talented, their actions just contradict this claim and make them look even more riddiculous and disappointing...(Sakura )

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Now the current arc in hxh has some very promising female characters ^^ just look at Oito, she clearly is pretty smart and cunning. And surprisingly Kachou, better watch out for her...Not to mention Cheadle and Pyion, especially the latter, she is one of my favourite, and her anime adaptation was really perfect, the way she acts and talks ^^

 

[shionoro]

@shionoro well said. In contrast of hxh you have the naruto case, where women are handled very badly, where you clearly see that their character is just forced and gives them a feel of shallowness...and even when the author tries desperately to portray them as strong and talented, their actions just contradict this claim and make them look even more riddiculous and disappointing...(Sakura )

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Now the current arc in hxh has some very promising female characters ^^ just look at Oito, she clearly is pretty smart and cunning. And surprisingly Kachou, better watch out for her...Not to mention Cheadle and Pyion, especially the latter, she is one of my favourite, and her anime adaptation was really perfect, the way she acts and talks ^^

Cheadle is one of my favourite characters too. And cheadle is one of the rare cases in HxH who got completely outsmarted in the election arc.
There was really made a point about ging and pariston being on another level than her. BUt unlike in other manga, i think that is a build up to cheadle taking up a challenge. She was very determined to stop pariston and i believe it might be her taking him down in the end (or at least throwing a wretch into his plans).

And ya, oito is an interesting example too. Because she clearly, for now, is more in the 'distress' role with relying on kurapika to save her, and realistic in that she is afraid out of her mind for her child. But once again, she is more than just that. She had the cunning to tinker an agreement with harkenburg and get kurapika on her side. And we do not know what else she has in store, whether she is more than she seems.
It is also not that there shouldn't be 'weak' female characters. It is realistic, we had male characters screwing up, too.
But they are not by default a clichee.
And the interesting thing is that togashi usually does not simply create a woman who is phsyically stronger or the strongest fighter in her enviroment.
Some mangas tend to create a clichee strong fighter woman and then say 'oh well here you got your female'.
Almost no woman in the hunterverse is a frontline fighter, but they are still interesting and respected characters on and offscreen.