FINALLY updated for the new chapters. A lot of updated totals. 21+ means we haven't seen their exact level, but we know they have an ability and ?? means we don't know their level or if they have an ability.

One of the central themes of hunterxhunter is the value of experience.

In chapter 405, dogman reveals his ability is to detect the strength and type of nearby nen users. This is a fucking stupid ability.

But.

It's deeply evocative of his design and name. He's a loyal guardog to an insane murderous fascist, with no understanding or interest in understanding the abject cruelty and stupidity of his and his faction's actions.

For anyone who cares, (no one) I will be updating the infographic soon with all of the levels.

ANYWAY his abilty reflects his, like most of his compatriots, lack of understanding of nen. He doesn't understand that you can, through experience, clever thinking, and team work, identify and isolate nen users (we've seen Furykov and THE SPIDERS do it before). It does however solve the problem immidiately in front of Dogman. They need to be certain that the kidnap ability will work. In orded fo ensure this, the target must not be a nen user. This target will presumibly be one of the princes, or one of their inner circle.

I immediately think of an earlier chapter where, after Morena's group fails to kill Hinrigh, they yelled out for "Someone who can beat conjured birds" or something similar. This indicates their complete lack of understanding. They don't understand hinrigh's ability, they don't understand nen, and they don't understand the goals of nen combat.

The kidnappers ability only working on someone unaware of nen is also deeply evocative and very character revealing; his ability only works on the defenseless.

Cool chapter, fuck I love this arc so much. It has everything I love about hxh other than it's main characters.

Prince Halkenburg possessing Balsamilco is the kind of plot event whose implications are so staggering and far beyond my understanding that I struggle to predict what happens next.

First, prince halkenburg is, in name only, out of the race. The specifics of his ability may mean that his plan is to use it again to possess Prince Benjamin, but his body, and Balsamilco's mind, are dead.

If that is his plan, and his goal is to achieve kinghood, his next steps would probably look exactly like Benjamin's, and the other princes may be unaware of the change.

Part of his (ben's) plan, longer term, is to declare martial law. This might be the tell if Halkenburg succeeds in possession. The lower princes catagorize Halkenburg as the best option for survival, meaning he has a reputation of fairness and mercy.

And when Nasubi is trying to bait him into the war, he uses the trolley problem, appealing to Halkenburg's desire for lesser suffering (I doubt that argument would have swayed Camilla or Tsrrie).

These taken together mean to me that Halkenburg's goal is to end the succession war with as few deaths as possible. This is very dissimilar to Benjamin, and will likely reveal him. This means the plan is probably to remove the top four or five princes with as few casualties as possible, ideally 1 per prince, then use his influence (as 1st prince) to leverage the lower princes into submission.

If I'm trying to call my shots, Zhang Lei goes to Kurapika for nen advice, uncovers the secret of his ability, then later discovers the nature of Halkenburg's ability through understanding his own.

Halkenburg's ability leaves him vulnerable in some ways, and exploiting this zhang lei kills him. Then the underworld storyline comes back and I have no idea where thats going. Probably ends with Zhang Lei being killed and woble, along with a few others, peacing out of the succession war.

Whose your daddy? chapter 401

One of the major themes of the Kakin Succession is family.

What first began this arc was the death of Isaac Netero who, at the behest of the very wealthy, killed himself to stop the Chimera Ants. The events of the arc proceed a long a plan Isaac had set up for his son, Beyond Netero.

Beyond is the leader of a small paramilitary group currently headed by Ging. Pariston and Ging both assessed the situation immidiately, deciding that Netero's small group would be more qualified to reach their goals than aligning with the Zodiacs, hunter association and Kakin government.

In the recent chapter, we have discovered that the Netero dynasty reaches far deeper into the Kakin empire than we thought. A bodyguard of 5th prince tubeppa reveals that she is the child of beyond, cursed from birth with the explicit goal of being used in the succession war. Further, she revealed the theory that one of the princes is a half sibling of hers.

This makes sense.

The first thing to note is that Nasubi thinks of children as political tokens of value. He sorts them by number, treats them according to this rank and dehumanizes all of them, ignoring their preferences and desires. He insults Camilla based on her rank and he manipulates Halkenburg into doing his will as two examples.

The second thing to note is that he's done this before. Zhang-lei refers to Onior Longbao as his father (who is Nasubi's half brother.) If I had to guess, I would say that Nasubi offered Onior a "re-try" in the next kakin war of succession in exchange for surrendering the one they fought in, and possible offered the same deal to Brocco-li (whose son would be Luzurus).

The third thing to not is that this is somewhat similar to Camilla's plan. Camilla's plan involves "untouchables" or their equivalent, committing suicide in front of their targets to unleash a curse upon them. This similarity of methodology is interesting. Along this same line, Tsrriednich is a nen savant while his father and mother showed no notable aptitude for it. Beyond however...

Taken together, I would assert the following:

1. Tserriednich and/or Camilla is Beyond's child/children.

2. Beyond and Nasubi worked out an agreement whereby one or more of his children will be inserted into the succession contest. This is possibly in exchange for Beyond's ability to reach the Dark Continent

3. Tubeppa might be the only prince aware of Beyond's children and her first move was to ally with Tsrriednich, then Kurapika.

Below is a list of the 14 princes with who I think their real dads are. People who are dead will have no listed dad and are assumed to be Nasubi's.

It has not been asked before! I also don't hate retreading stuff.

I think the theory that Hisoka is not who he says he is very likely, where I think the Illumi disguise theory is only arguable.

Chrollo being disguised as Hisoka would be a novel use of his powers we have not seen. It would explain his reaction to finding out hinrigh favors the spiders to win. However, I would be more excited to believe it's bonolonov disguised as Hisoka. Given that Hisoka is a good bit taller than Chrollo (and some diguise abilities may not cover that), chrollo seems very reticent to reveal his stolen abilities, and bonolonov was last seen talking with chrollo about going in disguise and asking for his advice.

from chrollo's perspective, it would be benificial to gauge the feelings of the mafia and stop them from trying to find and hide Hisoka by giving them a fake Hisoka to find and hide. That would further explain why hisoka was standing around doing nothing, and told the mafia where to find him before giving them the slip. He wanted to be found, specifically to end either on an upper floor, in custody of the mafia, or both.

I think after the Kakin Succession War arc, Black Whale arc, and the Dark continent arc, we will retun to the island in lake mobius with a greater understand of Ai and the rules of the dark continent (my hc is that ging has predicted everything so far and he's going to the dark continent to get Gon his magic back but Ging's motivations are the central mystery of the series SO)

This is all to say: I think we will return to the Chimera Ants and Alluka (whose an Aye or Ai) once we learn more about their home. This is where we will likely revisit Ikalgo and Welfin and the rest. Ikaligo is one of the few characters with a horse in both races, as he's friends with Killua (and Alluka by extension) and a Chimera Ant. It would make thematic sense and story eloquence to have him as the central characters for future chapters.

Thanks!

I hope Abengane, after exorcising chrollo, went on to exorcise Neon and that's why she's no longer in Bandit's Secret. Now he's on the Whale, seeking the same cure that Gon had/curing his his monsters from Chrollo and Kurapika. You can have fucking awesome symbolism by the monsters that their respective punishments would take the form of. Fuck. Please. One Time.

Anway he's staggered by Kurapika's force of will, and he pivots goal to kill Chrollo (lifting kurapika's curse) and steal neon's page back (theoretically that would lift chrollo's theft) by teaming up with Kurapika. He dies to Tsrreidniech. Can anyone hear me. Hello. Hello. He has two monsters embodying the fate of Kurapika's and Chrollo's victims. Hello. It could be angel demon symbolism shit. Can you hear me. Hello. Is this shit on?

if you HAVE to make gon straight, marry him off to alluka. Objectively hilarious and forces bigoted hxh fans to be crushed between their homophobia and transphobia.

Chrollo 100% watched snuff films as a kid. In meteor city you collect the trash of the world, and I doubt most tapes are clearly labelled. He was looking around for kids shows a lot. Also he intimately knows the culture and practice enough to predict they would post that shit online. not saying he was into it (inheirently) but I bet he saw a lot of it.

Cheetu

No one talks about this stupid annoying speedster.

Cheetu's ability and personality make a really really interesting point about nen types that I haven't seen anyone really bring up.

First, lets establish a few things.

When Gon is training with Bisky, and surpises her with his emission ability, she comments that he must be an enhancer closer to an emitter than transmuter. This indicates that nen type is not a single solid type with no bleed over, and people have different kinds of predisposition even within their own type. I would assume that this also means Gon is better at conjuration than manipulation.

While testing for traps and figuring out the Hei-Ly family, the spiders mention that teleportation is generally an emissive ability.

Hisoka mentions as part of his type guide that emitters tend towards ranged abilities.

Furykov has some guidelines for identifying nen users and their types, and he explains that conjurors tend to leave their dominent hand free because their abilities will use it.

Okay. Establishing out of the way. Lets talk about Cheetu's abilities.

Cheetu's primary ability we're going to call Tag. When he touches a target, they teleport with him to a mini-savannah. Cheetu then explains that the target must touch him before time is up, and start the 8-hour timer. We do not know what happens if they don't catch Cheetu, but we know that if they do, he loses use of the ability.

Cheetu's second ability, we're going to call Emergency Crossbow, is him conjuring a claw+crossbow on his hand.

Okay, established nen stuff and Cheetu's ability. Where the fuck is this going?

My hypothesis is that Cheetu is a mix of a conjuror and an emitter.

Bisky's comment proves that even with a primary type, nen users can be caught between two type: but my theory goes further, that these types do not have to be next to each other (like emission and enhancement are)

Hisoka's personality test says that conjurors tend to plan and emitters tend to be impatient. This is a perfect description of Cheetu. He has a plan- trap you and make you play tag, but its hastily made, he clearly didn't think his own ability through.

Finally, Emergency Crossbow includes key elements from common conujuror and emissive abilities; its a ranged ability [emitter] involving his dominent hand [conjuror]. Additionally, like Tag, this ability is an impatient plan, Morel makes a great point asking why he has an ability that's slower than him, and closing the distance to use its claws also ends up being a mistake.

Now, to earn that spoiler tag.

The value of scientific theories is determined by their predictive power.

So lets run an experiment.

This is Matvere.

He is one of Morena's "players" and is focused, at present, on killing Hinrigh. He is, like many of Morena's crew, kind of an insane person. He is level 21 with morena's ability and has gained nen.

When two members return from fighting hinrigh and ask for an emitter, he immidiately volunteers even though he is a conjuror. He explains he was hoping to be an emitter.

My hypothesis is thus: Matvere, like cheetu, is a Conjuror/Emitter and his ability will feature several of the follow:

- use of Dominent Hand

- Ranged

- Mostly a conjuror ability with small emitter elements

- Solve the problem directly in front of him

I believe that mixed nen types are a thing evem across the nen chart

Keeping up with the scores:

Current Kill count: at least 425

“Hisoka” is Illumi

Food is gay

-

The basics of the theory is that Hisoka is currently disguised as Illumi and Illuimi is currently disguised as Hisoka.

Here a few supporting pieces of evidence:

First, Illumi’s talk with Mizaistrom on the viewing deck.

What he says and who he says it to is important.

duded what I was just getting used to morena’s crew PLEASE my braibn is too small for this many characters

Keep up with the scores

This is a cute lil infographic I made to show what we know about morena’s crew.

In total, these levels mean they have killed at least 183 people. The mafia reports losses of more than 300 people. This means it’s unlikely that in the remaining 13 members of the group we do not know the levels of, more than 6 are capable of producing nen.

If I missed anything, please let me know