Personality Bleed: Hunter X Hunter

As with our last major series, we’re going to close out the Hunter X Hunter marathon with a Personality Bleed article. (Although, can it really be called a marathon if the articles have been so delayed? Meh.) I don’t always feel compelled to write Personality Bleed articles, but Hunter X Hunter stood out to me. For me to want to write one of these articles, I have to detect an overarching (or perhaps, underlying) pattern to the series, from a cognitive function standpoint. Hunter X Hunter definitely qualifies.

Before I launch into this, I’m going to give a brief review of what “Personality Bleed” actually means, since it is a term that is specific to Practical Typing. Feel free to skip that section if you’re a long time reader. However, don’t forget that what you’re about to read is just an amusing theory. I’ve done no legitimate research into the author, Yoshihiro Togashi, so I could easily be wrong. With that said, let’s get this show on the road.

What is Personality Bleed?

Every time an individual creates something, they embed pieces of their personality into it. Of course, there are so many aspects of one’s personality that it can be tricky to identify a personality type in every creation. The work of art has to be extensive enough for overarching patterns to emerge. Stories are especially conducive to this.

Within story-telling, there are multiple aspects that can leave clues at the personality type of the author. The theme can be telling, since certain types tend to be drawn to certain themes. They may also focus on propagating certain values. The characters are another major indicator. Obviously, authors can’t create a story solely made up of their own personality type. Variety is needed. Thus, we see multiple personality types in every story. However, certain characters tend to be deeper than others, while some are merely tropes or stereotypes. Certain personality groups may be more prevalent, while certain personality types are strangely missing. You can only write what you know… right? These are all potential clues to what the author is.

Naturally, all of these considerations are only applicable if the work of art has a single author. In addition, some extremely well-rounded creations do not always contain clear clues about the author.

If you wish to read more about this subject, check out this older article: Personality Bleed: Typing Fictional Characters. Previous articles that I’ve written on this subject are Personality Bleed: Typing the Creator of Naruto, Personality Bleed in Attack on Titan, and Personality Bleed: One Piece. (Although, I occasionally reconsider ENFP for One Piece instead of what I postulated in that article, and may consider rewriting it in the future.)

Personality Bleed: Hunter X Hunter

Remember, this is a game. I’m going to make some observations about Hunter X Hunter, and what they might mean for the author, but I’m not taking an absolute stance or anything like that. I also haven’t done a bunch of research on the author. The content in Hunter X Hunter is the sole source for the personality bleed speculations that you’re about to read. So, without further ado…

1. Hunter X Hunter has extremely detailed narration all throughout the series

This is the first thing that stood out to me when watching the series. In fact, it made me lose interest initially, because I’m not big on tracking a bunch of details, especially when I have to absorb them in auditory form. (Personal problem.) Anyhow, the narration in this series is constant. When it’s not coming directly from the narrator, one of the characters step up and share all the detailed information or context needed to explain a scene or situation. It’s like there’s not enough time in the show to explain all the information slowly or subtly, so it has to be dumped on the viewer in large chunks all at once. This suggests to me that the author has Si somewhere in his function stack.

2. Hunter X Hunter focuses on power system more than the characters

In my personal opinion or observation, Hunter X Hunter focuses far more on defining a super complex power system than actually developing the characters. Now, I’m not saying that the characters don’t get developed. They do. But, the focus overall seems like it’s more on the power system. That’s what the narrator or narration spends the most time on. This suggests to me that the author is a thinker. A developed feeling function would likely pull the characters and their emotional struggles into focus more.

3. Hunter X Hunter focuses heavily on defining and explaining power systems

The author clearly gave his power system a lot of thought. It is extremely detailed and complex, with constant new layers of information being added as the show progresses. This strikes me as a combination of Ti and Si. Ti users often like to build systems from scratch or define the world around them via logic systems. The author of this series clearly took great care in building and developing this hyper-complex power system. Because the system has such a prominent focus, I tend to think that Ti is the author’s dominant function. I also think this because his Si seems too prominent and consistent throughout the series to be inferior. As a result, the tertiary slot seems most likely, given the prior conclusion that he also has Ti and must be a thinker. (To make him a thinker with high Si, would mean STJ, and I don’t really see good evidence for high Te.)

4. All of the characters share detailed analysis and strategize in a Ne/Si way

I briefly mentioned this earlier, but I want to call it out, because it actually made some characters difficult to type. Most of the characters in this series frequently share detailed analysis. This was a trait that the author essentially gave to nearly every single character that he created. However, Se/Ni users don’t tend to be like this. It seemed especially prominent later during the Chimera Ant Arc when the characters constantly needed to discuss strategy and plan their next move. In my opinion, all the characters participating suddenly felt like the same person, just with a multitude of voices. (Gon is probably the exception to this because the author wrote him as the simple idiot who leaked smoke out of his ears whenever thinking was required.) We had to filter this tendency out somewhat when analyzing the characters, because it was so prominent. Killua is actually a really good example of this problem, so I’ll take a moment to focus directly on him.

For most of the series, based on Killua’s actions and the things he said, ISTP seemed like a really solid fit for him, in spite of the aforementioned tendency. He said things that seemed to run contrary to the way Ne/Si users typically think. However, when it came time to strategize in the Chimera Ant Arc, suddenly he was making statements like “We need to plan for every scenario and decide what we would do.” That seemed like a contradiction for someone who had previously made statements like “Dunno. I guess I’ll just think about it when the time comes,” and “Look, I don’t really do these hypotheticals.” In my opinion, he starts out as an ISTP, and gets pulled toward INTP. I can potentially rationalize it as a learned tendency based on the cautious nature of his family (due to their profession), but someone else may argue that he was an INTP all along that finally got fully developed.

5. Gon is not the typical ESFP protagonist

In fact, in our opinion, Gon is not an ESFP at all. I think the author tried to create the standard protagonist, modelled after other Shonen. However, Gon actually displays Si/Ne and Fe/Ti, which coincidentally are all the same functions that an INTP has. Gon just happens to have those function in the reverse order, making him an ESFJ. If you want to read our full argument for that, check out this article: Hunter X Hunter: Gon Freecss (ESFJ). In short, Gon is conflict avoidant, diplomatic, and group-oriented. He mostly gets triggered when his friends are threatened or when the enemy has seemingly inconsistent values, which is ironic considering the fact that he is inconsistent as well. He’s not often bothered by people’s lack of values, and willingly teams up with some rather shady individuals. This all seems like high Fe and low Ti. I’m not going to rehash the full analysis of his type here, though, so you’ll have to check out the article if you’re interested.

6. Many characters possess strange and random abilities

I’m not about to make creativity the sole domain of high Ne users (or NPs), so go ahead and take this point with a grain of salt. However, the wide variety of strange and unique abilities that the characters possess seems more like Ne to me. While there are categories of power, every character seems to have their own unique ability within their category. I don’t remember seeing any repeats, once you get past the initial basic techniques that everyone has to learn. Some of the abilities the show introduces are just straight up weird, to me anyway. The one that really stands out is the man who is essentially a human whistle. I don’t remember his name, where in the show he is, or really anything, beyond the fact that he has holes all over his body.

Conclusion

Based on everything I explained above, if it isn’t already obvious, I speculate that INTP is a likely type for this author. To be honest, I don’t really have any potential alternates. The clues seem to all be pointing to INTP.

However, once again, don’t take this too seriously. I view personality bleed articles more like a game, or a fun way to speculate about the influence of personality type on works of art, such as Hunter X Hunter. I hope you at least found this to be an interesting read. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!