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Yoshihiro Togashi On Finishing Hunter X Hunter

Believe it or not, hiatus king Yoshihiro Togashi does want to finish Hunter x Hunter before he dies. In an interview with Jump Magazine, the troubled author shared some of his thoughts on the current state of his manga, its future, and protagonist Gon.

Thanks to redditor VeraciousCake for the translation.

“From an outsider’s perspective, the series I’m writing right now might look like it’s a serious chore, but personally I am enjoying it very much. When I was younger, I used to be barred from doing things I’d really have liked to. Now I finally get to do stuff that I enjoy.”

On completing the manga

“Still, that aside, I need to finish writing Hunter X Hunter. It has come to a point where either the story concludes first, or I die before that happens (lol). But I do intend to finish it. Although you can say that at one point in the story — where Gon meets Ging — I have completed the story once. I believe that some readers must have thought ‘Wasn’t that supposed to be the endgame?’ and I did write it to seem that way. Still, I did not intend to cut off the flow of the story there, and I hope my readers could see that there was still room for continuation.”

On protagonist Gon

“If I had made my protagonist a ‘right proper lad’ and drawn a battle manga with it, it would have raised complications when he had to duke it out. That per se would have made for a fun story to write, but I thought that wasn’t where I wanted to go with this story. I did not want to alienate my readers who would read for the fights. Thanks to making a ‘crazy kid’ like Gon the protagonist, I was able to write battles without having to depict moral conflicts within the character.”

Hunter x Hunter has been serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine and journal since March 3, 1998. The manga is known for taking frequent and lengthy breaks due to the author’s illness.

Sources: Reddit, ResetEra