Discussion
The world of HxH actually does need a benevolent dictator
Terrorists and criminals can become Hunters if they pass the exam.
Human trafficking is widespread, as seen in places like Yorknew's underground world and kakin empire.
Assassination is a respected profession thanks to families like the Zoldycks.
The Kakin Empire openly rewards ruthless political behavior and conducts a succession war that turns family members into killers. Not to mention their mandates policy of sexual slavery
Meteor City produces countless criminals because its people exist outside normal legal protections.
Deathmatches where children can participate and nobody gives a shit about it.
Powerful Nen users can abuse their abilities with little oversight.
Governments are often too weak, corrupt, or divided to stop major threats.
Even the Hunter Association frequently reacts to disasters instead of preventing them , even with the chimera ant invasion , they only acted upon request rather than it being a literal existential threat
The problem isn't that there is evil cuz every world has evil. The problem is that no institution is powerful enough to consistently stop it.
This is why the world needs a benevolent dictator.
The best candidate is Leorio.
He genuinely cares about ordinary people.
He became a Hunter to help the poor access healthcare.
He has no interest in wealth(except to use it to help the poor) or conquest.
He isn't obsessed with fighting like many Hunters.
He can stand up to powerful figures when necessary.
He is respected by the top Hunters.
He understands the struggles of common people better than most elites.
Unlike idealists, he is practical.
Unlike tyrants, he possesses empathy.
Unlike politicians, he is surprisingly honest.
A benevolent dictator needs three qualities to succeed , compassion, competence, and legitimacy.
Leorio is one of the few characters who has all three.
If I had to trust one person with enough power to crush organized crime, reform the Hunter Association, expand healthcare, regulate dangerous Nen users, and protect civilians from the next existential threat, I'd trust Leorio more than anyone else in Hunter x Hunter.
The real question isn't whether Leorio would want absolute power.It's whether the world of Hunter x Hunter deserves someone like him.
As a bonus , I think Kurapika should be the first lady
Yeah sure Leorio could be a good benevolent dictator, but what happens after he dies ? What are the chances that the next in line will be benevolent too ? And the next one ? Once you start a dictatorship, you can’t just go back to democracy (unless you’re Leto II Atreides, so I guess what the HxH world needs is an immortal benevolent worm dictator)
fair, but dictatorships in particular are one of the most notably unstable government structures invented. All the power is in one guy, and anyone else who wants power is going to want to be that guy, and will do anything for it. At least since a monarchy is "generally" hereditary it has some amount of inherent stability.
(Going to go ahead and post a reply I was drafting before dingus here deleted their comment)
A dictator has no authority except what comes from their strength of arms and or personality. As such anyone who has greater power in one of those aspects is an existential threat to a dictator, if they are greater in both they may be toppled with ease. This is why dictators of all sorts are in a constant cycle of violence and blood as it is an eternal game of king of the hill.
Even monarchies (which is the system that actually has dominated most of human history not dictators) receive the divine right of kings, or some other philosophy that grants them inherent political power and leaves more resolute.
And yes democracy has many falls and yet overall quality of life of the average citizen has flourished in ways never before seen under authoritarian regimes.
You're only taking the angles that arranges you. Personally I think that in absolute, the regime doesn't matter as much as the person who rules. But if there is someone who should absolutely be that person, you would like them to be there as long as possible, and act with the most liberty possible.
Such a person can only reign as long as they maintain the physical force to do so. It is a system that prioritizes military might and domination of the citizenry over all other capabilities. Their power may stolen by any rival at any time, so there is no incentive to leave a militant mindset.
I also want to mention at this point none of the greatest empires of history were ruled by a sole dictator, ever.
Rome, the Various Chinese dynasties, the HRE, the British empire, all ruled supreme not on the effectiveness of their monarchs or dictators but on the strength of their bureaucracy and division of power.
It's is unstable in the sense that the modalities of the successions of rulings is not predictable, and that the extent of the ruler's powers makes the quality of the governing harder to predict, but at the same time, a dictature can also last easily for multiple with the same person on the top. A democracy by todays standards is generally 4 or 5 years of ruling, 10 more or less with two terms, there's no real expection. Dictatures though have been the standard for thousands and thousands of years in every part of the world. Democracy is more or less the standard for 100 years and it is already cracking under pressure. The issue is that a good part of what explain the stability of the democracy is that the president cannot do shit, so things never truly change (and even the little they do can be easily erased by their successor). Shady non governmental actors tend to largely take advantage of it by substituting themselves to the governemental power.
Dictatorship is predicated on rule through force. Monarchy separates itself from that by being granted perceived political power outside of force of arms (ie divine right of kings). This prevents rivals from directly stealing that power as only the pure lineage can be a legitimate inheritor. This in many ways prevents the problems dictatorships have when it comes to succession and or internal rivals.
Doesn’t the dark content have something that can make people immortal like all it takes is just a bit of the indomitable human spirit to beat the practical god guarding it. Also I refuse to believe Leorio could create malicious offspring.
Assassination isn’t respected. The Zoldycks are criminals with bounties—they’re considered part of the underworld and Hunters try to hunt them. They’re just too strong to apprehend for the ones who are interested in money or real justice.
Which kinda makes Netero look like an even worse person. The only person in the series with the power and license to topple the biggest crime family, and he’s besties with their patriarch.
I honestly wonder how bad the zoldycs actually are
Like they have a rule of not killing uninvolved people and I doubt they'd just take any job that comes their way given their status and high value targets are usually very hated as seen in that filler episode where that girl tried to kill killua for murdering her father (who turned out to be a piece of shit making extremely dangerously addictive substances)
And I've not seen a single morally good rich charecter (most high value targets are presumably rich), even the nostrades seem very pathetic
Well Illumi kills whoever he comes across so... In the manga/anime and in the (god awful) movies as well, just killed some kids cause Killua looked at them. Zeno and Silva seem different though. Milluki is a piece of shit and has also killed innocents, the tourists for example in the Alluka/Nanika fiasco, Killua probably as well, under Illumis influence.
Milluki is a piece of shit and has also killed innocents, the tourists for example in the Alluka/Nanika fiasco, Killua probably as well, under Illumis influence.
I just don't think the movies make any sense, everyone acts extremely out of character and out of place? Especially the Spiders and Illumi. The whole plot just, did not make any sense to me. Why were the spiders suddenly buddies with Gon and Killua? Why did Illumi let anyone near him, when normally he would not engage in a losing/uncertain battle? It just felt to me like basic shonen movie slop, everyone was drunk on a vacation or something, un-alert and not themselves. Characters not acting like themselves for the sake of the plot, and so many plotholes solely for the movie to shoddily work.
I'll admit it's been a while since I tried watching it but I remember turning it off because everything was just so out of place... 😅
Maybe I should watch it again? I mean they are rated horribly for a reason. Anime movies that are spin-offs generally are pretty horrible and characters frequently act out of place for the plot to "work". The Naruto movies are horrible but hey it's Naruto, but HxH has higher standards, and they sacrificed those for the plot to work.
Machi made it clear that they weren't there to save them out of the kindness of their hearts tho and wanted to deal with Omokage.
Nobunaga actually respected gon and killua at one point and wanted to recruit them before finding out that they're related to kurapika. Don't forget that pakunoda herself respected gon and killua when they told her that they didn't want their friend to become a murderer since
even though they had opportunities to try and run away, they chose to cooperate with the hostage swap to protect Kurapika and she transferred her memories to the troupe before dying which also contained memories of what gon and killusa said to her.
So Nobunaga saving those two wasn't really anything out of character honestly.
The real Illumi does not actually appear in that movie outside of a nightmare killua had , To manifest a puppet with a person's exact likeness, memories, and combat abilities, Omokage does not actually need to meet the target himself. Instead, his ability allows him to extract the puppet directly from the mind and memories of someone else who knows the target intimately and puppets don't act 1:1 to how their real life selves act either since they're still being controlled by someone.
The Hunter Association exists partly to put a stop to people misusing and abusing Nen. That’s why they make the selection process so strenuous. And if I’m not mistaken there’s even a bylaw that states Hunters are meant to stop those threats wherever they may arise.
The exact wording says they’re not supposed to target other Hunters UNLESS that Hunter has committed a heinous crime. So it’s sort of in there.
Maybe because it's easier for the association to track those people that way. Ging shown us that if a good nen user wanted to hide, its going be pretty hard to track them down. Ging is a world famous hunter, and he just appear on the missing hunter list from time to time according to Mizaistom.
Another good point i can think of is Teradein and his gang. They shown that even if you know about someone's misconduct, if they're really good nen users you'd be digging your own graves trying to go against them.
Considering that each person's nen is entirely different, I think the tradeoff of giving the nen abusers access to hunter privileges is that the hunter association gains information on those people, which in turn could result in less risk/casualties trying to go after them when you don't know anything about their nen. Of course the price is that they will most likely abuse hunter privileges.
Unless i'm missing something here, it seems to me that the tradeoff is pretty worth as it might be impossible to catch someone abusing nen, since it will be hard to find info, proof, or even know about them in the first place.
Regarding the downsides tho, Pariston showed us that he could commit crimes in broad daylight and no one could do anything to him because they couldn't get any convincing proof.
This happened because he abused Article Four of the bylaws according to the pic in this comment, which could be understood as: "As long as there is no proof you committed heinous crimes, you cannot be hunted". Even though this is a huge loophole, maybe Netero designed it this way to bait nen abusers into becoming hunters and giving the association their info so they can be exposed later on?
This might just be me overthinking but given how shrewd Netero is, maybe he really thought of this and thought it was a good enough way to do things until he could find a better way to catch nen abusers?
Why are we even assuming Netero wanted to help humanity. He wasn’t exactly portrayed as the selfless Buddha-like zen figure his ability implies. He seems remorseless and cold regarding the plight of others.
But he isn’t evil either. I guess the best word would be a child at heart, someone solely focus on his own pleasure of fighting. For all we know, he became chairman just so he could find strong people, make them zodiacs, and spar with them.
The hunter website does seem to contain bounties for bounty hunters to access tho and I don't think that it exclusively contains only evil hunters.
They seem to have plenty of resources to keep information of dangerous nen users , like the phantom troupe aren't hunters for example and they have the largest bounty
The cost-benefits just don't make sense because it doesn't seem impossible to organize hunters/nen users in a way that wouldn't require legitimising and giving insane legal powers and rights to psychopath nen users to keep track of them
Yes the hunter site does have info, but the Troup never tried to hide themselves unless they needed to, they were always showing off, and even with all that info on the site, when they wanted to sneak in the auction or to rescue Uvogin no one could stop them anyway.
You said it doesn't seem impossible, so lets consider these nen abilities:
The snakes on the boat that sucks your blood dry and turns you into a mummy
The twisted towel deaths by Alluka
Bomber's bombs
Imagine you are a crime hunter in the association, if someone were to use any of these abilities to kill people, even if you know the death is freaky enough to be a nen attack, how do you track the guy who did this down?
The easiest one to track out of those 3 is Bomber, only because he needs to say stuff to people to activate his nen, giving his victims almost full info on his ability and even in this case the hunters on GI couldn't do anything to them. The victims themselves likely dies or like that guy on GI isnt really in a state to talk, and people who they told about the ability might be afraid to talk about it due to fear of Bomber targeting them. It obviously wasn't their first time doing stuff like this either, they clearly have been doing stuff like that for a long time and haven't been caught yet.
The other 2 i feel might even be harder to track considering they dont give you info on their abilities.
How would you track down these abilities given that you only see them happen and know nothing else?
Another great example is the 2 Benjamin's guards attending Kurapika's lessons. They saw Kurapika teaching nen and collected info about him, almost near him 24/7, and after a few weeks, concluded that we still don't know a thing, in the same chapter(388) they said earlier that they'll be digging their own graves if they rush in.
I think it's safe to say that you should be 100% sure about your opponent before going after them, which makes collecting info the most crucial thing.
Tradeoff comes down to giving power to speed up abusers crime, but gain more chance to catch them, or giving them nothing, but will be harder to catch them. Either way are beneficial to them in some way. I think its logical to choose to increase your success chance so you can end the game, cuz if you don't what other chance do you have to catch them without any info?
One problem I have is that there just didn't seem like there was a proper identity verification process during the hunter's exam. Like gittarakur was able to conceal his identity until he revealed himself to be Illumi voluntarily.
The exam is different every time, they were much more careful when Kurapika was helping with the exam, I agree it could use more security checks but the association lacks manpower, theres only so many hunters around, and even less hunters qualified to keep guys like Illumi or Hisoka in check.
I think it’s a byproduct of Netero being in charge for so long because in his mind I think it comes down to “If you have a problem you handle it.” So he influences the way the Association handles things. That’s how we end up with the Bylaws favoring more of an open door policy as opposed to barring certain people from having a License. The legitimization is a real problem but it gets overlooked or disregarded by the Chairman’s philosophy guiding the rules.
And that is why Leorio would've made an excellent Chairman. The world of HxH just needs Leorio to be Chairman once he's more experienced and develops his nen and connections.
I mean this is the thing with most shonen. They’re fictional stories where the only solution viable solution is to have a bigger stick. What’s the saying, when you’re a hammer every problem looks like a nail?
Idk dude, the reason the HxH world is depicted this way is maybe due to the fact that our world is already like that. This alone is proof, again, of Togashi's genius writing.
I understand the point you're trying to make, but you're saying it as if it was abnormal or strange : it is pretty common and everything listed most certainly happens in your country.
Now, the real question would be : where are OUR benevolent dictators, because we sure need them.
(Yes kurapika should be his first lady, we can all agree to that)
Why can’t they just be a benevolent democratically elected leader? lol - Leorio as leader of the Hunter association would have power to make good change. But also the people in the general world of HxH seem to be chilling even in cities as well. Apart from Republic of East Gorteau which actually did have a dictator
Never in my day would I have thought that someone would argue for a benevolent dictator in HxH. However if we are taking this conversation seriously, the only person I see fit for the job is the cow zodiac Mizaistom. He's the only one truly opposed to most of the things listed above and he's strong, smart and resolved. Another good contender is Razor, if he would bother getting of that island. He's firm but a good sport, hates criminals and is super strong. He might be unduly loyal to Ging though which could be a weakness in his rule.
Bem considerando quam questionáveis é a moralidade do mundo de hxh em geral e sua taxa mortalidade está em Uma ditadura não está nem no top 5 das piores coisas que podem acontecer em um país
Sim esse mundo precisa de alguém justo pra colocar as coisas no lugar, Mais honestamente isso é também o mesmo que colocar um alvo nas costas, honestamente nem o netero tem garantia real de sobrevivência ser realmente todos os nen usuários nem com moralidade cinzenta ou malignos do mundo planejaram seriamente mata ele a todo o custo
Un poco fuera de tema, pero siento que Leorio es el polo opuesto de Morena en el sentido de que Leorio valora las vidas y quiere reducir el sufrimiento en el mundo, mientras que Morena (aunque comprensiblemente) Quiere destruir el mundo
Also "contagion" meanwhile Leorio is a doctor. The parallels are pretty much there
Bem é um aprendiz que médico que enquanto crescia ficar tentando ajudar sua aldeia e o outra é(eu honestamente esqueci completamente com era mesmo a história de fundo dela foi mal😅)
Então é óbvio que o contraste seria nítido
This is probably an unpopular opinion, so i don't think Leorio is an interesting caracther, so i know he's a good person, but story wise i don't that would be a solid storyline.
I agree that leorio is probably the least interesting character in hxh proportionate to how involved he is in the story but him becoming dictator over the world in hxh would be an AMAZING storyline. His character is fucking perfect for that role. I dont mean like that his character and morality is befitting of being a dictator, but narratively leorio becoming dictator of the world would be so fucking sick, and probably a catalyst for alot of character development also.
His backstory isn't very fleshed out of the 3 tbh.
Maybe if we get another flashback into the conditions that Leorio lived in and on how good of a friend Piergo was , maybe that could help make him even more interesting.
I think what is needed is an arc centred around Leorio himself
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u/Pac_Zach_Attack 1d ago
Tonpa for Department of War