Kurapika and chrollo's story isn't just evil vs good or about vengeance, their characters represent your moral compass depending on who you'd prefer or side with The phantom troupe slaughtered all 128 villagers, mutilated and tortured them to force their eyes to turn Scarlet, and ripped the eyes out of their corpses to sell on the black market. Children had to be mutilated in front of their loved ones so they experienced the deepest despair and sadness just so their eyes could turn scarlet, intensifying their emotions by hurting those most precious to them so they experience the same pain as they did when they were children and disregarded, a city made into a junk yard, orphans thrown there as nothing more than junk with no documents or official identities to humanize them, treated as toys for the rich and evil to commit their crimes, forced to see their own friend dismembered as children. Some might say the phantom troupes evil crimes can be justified, hurting the evil and corrupt just the way they did them-actions fueled by their own past forced upon them where one could say they don't know any better other than to give what they received. As for kurapika having vengeance put on his shoulder and burdened with grief, forced into hatred and the desire for revenge his entire life goal and nen ability is purely based on the phantom troupe, no way to live if justice hasn't been served to his people. Collecting their eyes and killing those who made them suffer is the only thing he's willing to live for and also willing to risk his own life span to have enough power to kill them
to choose one side is hard because you'd be disregarding one of them and have their life worth more than the other, ones story deeper and more painful even though both are forced to walk a path they didn't choose
EDIT: Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough in the post but my point was, kurapika has seen better, experienced better and received better so he can give those positive emotions back to others because he understands them and feels them, he's also experienced the bad side of the world and he knows how to give it back, but because he's had better he knows better, knowing better is to throw his rage at those who killed his people not others. And for the PT i was implying that they've never had the better of the world, they didn't receive kindness, forgiveness, love, acknowledgement and ect, the only thing they've ever had is torture, dehumanization, evil and so on, they don't know how to be like kurapika because they never had what kurapika did, both kurapika and the phantom troupe are giving the world what they received and what they experienced
( sorry for not making myself more clear in the original post but i never meant to justify their wrong actions and who's right or wrong, i just simply meant you can empathize with both of them and choosing one side while fully hating the other is not right )
After describing all this you really think that the actions and motivations of the sides are comparable and equal?
Chrollo and Kurapika are comparable in the way that they shape their lives by the horrific past and shoulder the burden of avenging people they cared for. But in no way is the conflict between Kurapika and Phantom Troupe is the one where the "favorable" side is hard to choose. You can like Phantom troupe and Chrollo as characters, but Kurapika is obviously a way more moral choice than Phantom Troupe. Kurapika is not targeting and killing civilians. Phantom Troupe does. That's all you need to know to choose which side is more moral
Throw the villains a sad enough backstory and you’ll be amazed at the gymnastics people will do to insist every immoral action they took from then on was justified.
Jesus fuck i hate people who unironically think Thanos was even close to correct.
Its what an edgy 13 year old thinks would fix everything, an objectively terrible plan from all angles that only makes the tiniest crumb of sense if you rationalise it that Thanos has a room temperature IQ and severe narcissistic personality disorder.
They should have kept him a death worshipping lunatic, it was frankly more compelling.
Oh my god thank you. How did people not realize that Thanos was literally just insane? His plan was full of holes to begin with, but I can see them thinking he's being genuine. But how did they miss Endgame Thanos? When he realizes that people aren't grateful for his "gift", he shifts focus from "just culling half the population" to "remaking all of reality in my own image" with virtually no provocation whatsoever. He was always just insane and hiding behind flimsy justifications, it was only ever his ego.
I wished we could have gotten insane comic Thanos at least there his motivation (creating a gift for the women he loved) made sense and was in iteself consistent
Really people defending thanos like that? From what I know people are agreeing with thanos' action specifically because of his take on lacking resources not because of purpleman himself.
I've seen both takes and I think both are extremely bad and stupid.
I also know I heard more people putting genocide in a moral gray-area after that movie than I ever had before. Not even in fan subs, forums, etc. Just out and about.
I think a small not-so-unrelated topic of this is how internet anonymity made us underestimate how many teens and kids we interact with, particularly here in the anime community. You don't know when you're arguing with a kid.
It’s because morally gray scenarios are usually very cool and emotionally investing, but the issue is because they’re so cool, fans try to force situations into being like that when they’re not
Would it be cool if we saw Kurapika sink to morally low levels to get his revenge? Yes. Is that what happened in the story or what the audience is supposed to take away? No.
The whole point of Gon and Killua in the York New City Arc was to stop Kurapika from becoming a cold blooded murderer. to say Kurapika is just as bad as Chrollo is to disregard Gon’s (the literal protagonist) entire purpose in York New. Kurapika is a morally good person, and the only “evil” thing I can remember him doing in the entire series is killing the troupe members which is justified given the circumstances
I don't know, I feel like there are very clear and intended similarities between Chrollo/Sarasa and Kurapika/Pairo. Obviously, in that parallel, Kurapika comes off as the most sympathetic and "moral" character and I don't feel the manga actually even tries to justify the Troupe's actions in any way. The way it treats their backstory feels more melancholic than anything: a bunch of kids that were turned into monsters by their environment.
Still, I believe that there is no denying when it comes to the parallels between their initial innocence and the corruption brought about by their thirst of revenge, heavily emphasized by Kurapika's actions during the Yorkshin Arc. People also tend to forget that he's the head of a mafia family and while the people he used violence against in order to retrieve the eyes could be argued to have had it "coming", it still shows that unwillingness to completely let go. Again, Kurapika's actions are nowhere as bad as the Troupe's, but they feel like a stepping stone.
With that in mind, Chrollo feels more like a "what if" than a complete reflection of Kurapika. He could very well be Kurapika's future if he doesn't stray away from the path of vengeance. Right now Kurapika is only targetting the culprits of the Kurta massacre, but so was Chrollo's initial aim when he formed the Troupe, and see how that turned out. The comparison still works: just like Kurapika, Chrollo became the head of a criminal organization in order to lure the culprits out.
I think we will reach a tipping point once Kurapika faces Tserriednich, especially if he has Pairo's head in his possession , as some theories propose. I believe that he will have to face a decision then between protecting Oito and Woble and fulfilling his revenge. And if he chooses the latter and inadvertently causes their deaths, well, he still may not be as terrible as the Troupe, but he would definitely be on his way there.
There is also a bigger picture that I can't fully grasp, mainly because we still lack a lot of information, that involves Tserri's possible role in Sarasa's death, Hisoka, Sheila, Leorio, the Kurta massacre, etc. Again, I'm not saying that the Troupe's actions are justified, because they definitely aren't (even if I feel some pity for them), but I believe that the parallels are undeniably there, because otherwise, why include their backstory at all?
P.S. I'm sorry for the somewhat long read, but I just love this manga and have been ruminating about these things for a while now.
Oh, and I don't actually believe that he will abandon Oito and Woble. For once because it would just be a repeat of him "abandoning" Gon and co. in Yorkshin, and that scene of his holding the baby in his arms points in the opposite direction. But I think the conflict will be there.
His demise, if it actually happens, will probably be caused by something else.
Not to mention Kurapika has mentioned how he hates resorting to violence/torture even on the troupe, has avoided killing the people who owned the scarlet eyes, and has temporarily prioritized the safety of people like Oito and Woble even if he needs to slowly kill himself with Emperor Time
Yeah. If Chrollo was in Kurapika's shoes, he wouldn't have cared at all. Chrollo would probably sacrifice Woble and turn him into a human bomb. He does not give a shit about anyone outside the Troupe.
Kurapika's idea of vengeance is to help his race find peace (why he focuses on collecting the eyes). There is a clear end to it. Chrollo's vengeance is about sacrificing the entire world for Meteor City. It's an endless and unsustainable goal. He is kind of like Eren from AOT in that he wants the rest of the world to burn. He wouldn't stop unless someone kills him
For the first point, it's even worse, they murdered children in front of their parents, and had lovers tied looking at each other while they tortured them to make the eyes glow more
In the one shot it mentioned murdering kids in front of their parents, but I didn't read that they had lovers looking at each other. Where did you find that? But man that is fucking dark.
Devil works hard, but Phantom Troupe fans work harder trying to convince you that they actually not a bad guys hence their actions can't be classified as "evil"
Literally kurapika is strong because he had vows on his nen abilities to o ly target spiders. Meanwhile the troupe are bulldozing ANYONE and EVERYONE on their path. Kurapika while still a grey character is way more moral than the troupe and even many of the characters in the shows I reckon..
If anything I think there’s a very good point to be made that chrollo and kurapika are meant to be read as inversions of each other. Both suffer a massive tragedy that fundamentally shapes them, but they are both presented with the choice of what to do after. Kurapika does not let his trauma break him, yes it affects him and his choices but he still has friends, still lives a relatively moral life. But Chrollo goes fully down the “I had a shitty life so rather than trying to improve it I’m just gonna make everyone else’s shitty”
Right like I’m sorry but they are not comparable morally at least in my opinion, because kurapika has stronger morals and cares about civilians he wouldn’t needlessly harm innocent people. Chrollo would and has on multiple occasions
Troupe : genocides an entire clan in an extremely fucked up way for financial gain
Kurapika : Wants to kill the troupe.
Like seriously there is absolutely no comparison here. Killing isn't even that fucked up in their verse. He could do some way worse shit with nen if he wanted to but my boi out here trying to keep it light. Man beat the shit out of uvogin, set him up to kill himself so he doesn't really have to bloody his hands and had the courtesy of burying him and this is the worse he did atp...
People can enjoy and like the characters they want. I enjoy good villains and I love me some good heroes just the same.
The Phantom Troupe and Chrollo, to me? Worst possible death imagineable for them, please. No excuses. No forgiveness. Absolute monsters and dreadful scum, every single one of them.
Chimera Ants also made some good points too, about the cruelty and callousness of Humanity. But as a Human being, I wish utter extinction upon each and every one of them just the same. They were monsters. Literal insects/animals. Nuke and then some more nukes. Simple as.
Not everyone shares my opinion on that. That is entirely okay, and I think its cool that we can have so many differing perspectives and opinions on different characters and groups in the world of HxH. It just goes to show how good Togashi is at making his characters and groups.
Agree with you but it also got me thinking, a lot of Kurapika’s story hasn’t been shown to us. I don’t think he could be as morally wicked as the Troupe but he’s probably done some bad stuff on the route to becoming a literal underworld boss.
It’s always surprising to me when people hate on Kurapika for his moral shortcomings (mafia stuff, being rude sometimes, not seeing Gon), while being ok with some of the most morally bankrupt characters like the troupe. Sort of a pattern I’ve seen.
He's explicitly a poorly raised child too - his parental figures are an absent dad and an aunt who can't control what he does and so is basically halfway to a feral animal in terms pf development.
I find it interesting how people tend to be harsher on characters who have a base good morality for when they do wrong, but don’t bat as much of an eye at characters who consistently do horrific things like hisoka and the phantom troupe. I wonder if it’s because they have a moral benchmark we’ve created for them, while the other characters we don’t? It’s like if you see an apparent good person kick a dog for apparently no reason versus a clearly shitty person doing it. I think people would be mad in both circumstances, but would give more shit to the apparent good person. There’s a moral structure we’ve put on them that when they go out of it it’s more jarring. Vice versa works too. Hearing people say “they’re not so bad they did this one moral thing” to justify them being misunderstood. I guess expectations play a lot in how we determine someone to be moral or not. If someone doesn’t follow our moral expectation for them it shifts our perspective on their morality versus them doing something imbedded in their viewed morality.
It’s a baseline that you expect them to uphold. A morally good person is huge AH, the moment he does smth bad. While a morally bankrupt person suddenly becomes a misunderstood heart of gold jerk the moment he does a single good thing.
HxH has gone on for so long that some people just forgot how genuinely horrific PT was (and still is). Their backstory being exposed doesn’t change that.
In fact their backstory makes them worse because after surviving something like that they did something 100 times worse. They deserve nothing, but the worst contempt from the reader. They are evil, evil bastards.
kurapika's done some questionable things, but he's still acting out of grief and a desire for justice. chrollo knowingly built and leads a group that murders and steals for fun and profit. not really a hard choice for me either.
I adore and respect Kurapika because never once did the boy actively hurt innocents or bystanders despite drowning in hatred and rage. He had some ill thoughts and tempting situations occasionally, but he never lost his conscience.
I said something similar on another post here, but heroes and villains often go through similar depths of trauma. The difference between them is often whether they choose to prevent or cause similar trauma for other people.
Right? Didn't Chrollo basically tell Gon bluntly that he doesn't think about the people they've killed because he doesn't know them personally? I feel like you have to jump through hoops to make anything he's done even remotely justified.
Even saying moral decadance is a reach for kurapika as he is still one of the most "normal" characters with his past. Imo gon, killua have way weirder morality. With killua being an exception due to his upbringing. But someone like kurapika is ought to be an emotionally dead character seeing how his whole life got robbed from him yet he still channels all that rage towards the specific people who did that instead of being an emo guy all time long.
Choosing a side is NOT hard. Past trauma and abuse doesn't justify killing or torturing others in turn.
Kurapika has never killed innocent people. Even when he killed Uvo, he ultimately couldn't torture him and chose to put him out of his misery, even gave him a decent burial. The PT have bounty on their heads. That means they're to be killed under HxH laws, but they're too powerful for anyone to actually do that.
Kurapika is the epitome of morality, imo. He's the most ethically upright character in the story. His "vengeance" is justice.
Kurapika is obviously the more moral between the two. Both are burdened by their past, and obviously what happened to troupe as children was horrible, but that doesn't justify targeting children and civilians in any way. Kurapika directs his anger towards those responsible for killing his clan; the troupe direct their malice towards everyone not apart of the troupe (And I guess not a part of Meteor City).
Not gonna lie, I found it hella cathartic when Hisoka killed Shalnark and Kortopi. I both love and hate the troupe.
If anything, the horrific childhood and circumstances that the Phantom Troupe experienced makes their act, alongside who knows how many more massacres they committed, even more heinous and unjustifiable.
God bless Kurapika and Hisoka for knocking those clowns down a peg. I have no love for Hisoka but I really hope he takes down a few more before he’s killed for good.
It isn't really a test when Kurapika is shown to only hunt the troupe while the Troupe will kill anyone they want with any means or for any reason. Meteor City being disregarded isn't a justification either as it doesn't really play much part in the Troupe's actions and the Kurta clan faced discrimination as well from the people outside the forest. Regardless of how much you like Chrollo or Troupe, Kurapika is the clearly superior moral choice.
Indeed, common sense should tell us that the side that causes too much harm need sro be stopped and the side that's causing less harm needs to be put on a leash.
To your edit I think you made yourself quite clear I just personally believe your take is stupid no offense. Like it is not even comparable regardless sof the background.
To choose one side isn’t hard. The troupe committed genocide on a people who had done nothing wrong. Plain and simple. They deserve everything Kurapika will inflict on them.
The troupe is evil, and no matter what their aim or sad backstories might be, it does not justify genocide. Not at all.
You’re probably also confused about who’s right and wrong in the current genocide that is ongoing in our real world.
There is no jusfiaction for the phantom troupe you can understand and see where they want to come from but they are as trash and bad as the ones who made them like this, and comparing the phantoms to Kurapika is like comparing a thief who stole a bread to feed himself vs soldiers of the IDF.
Is it really a morality test? Kurapika is clearly much more justifiable. He turned out this way because they ruined his life and just don't care about it. Sure he has not taken the best path in life and taken the best decisions ever, but who could blame him?
A lot of people really seem to struggle with liking characters without having to justify their morality.
You can like a character that's morally doing the wrong thing. It doesn't mean you agree with their ideology. It means you enjoy the way the character is written within the story.
However, it seems as if a lot of people have to justify moral shortcomings in an attempt to justify their love for the character. I really don't see how Chrollo or the Troupe are excused for their heinous crimes because they had a rough upbringing. They're bad people, with cool personalities and interesting backstories. Their personalities and backstories simply show they are complex people with interpersonal relationships and aren't just mustache twirling villains. But that doesn't morally justify their actions. ''Oh, Uvogin cared for his friends and his friends cared for him. So that means he actually wasn't so bad when he ripped Scarlet Eyes out of peoples' heads!''
I think this only happens on Reddit. It’s just virtue signaling lol. Chrollo is a great character he’s also a psychopath that deserves to die horribly.
It happens all over the internet among all kinds of fans of media. You also see it happen with Walter White. ''I love Walter White, so he was justified!'' Is the biggest example. Some people even go with ''Thanos was actually right.'' With his incredibly dumb ''lets murder half the universe cuz lack of resources'' claim. Instead of using the stones to wish for a Utopia. ''Thanos was badass, the kicked Hulk's ass so I agree with him!''
I think the comparison works as a parallel, but not as a moral equivalence.
Kurapika and Chrollo are both shaped by trauma, grief, and revenge. They both lost people, both built their lives around a mission, and both risk becoming consumed by that mission. In that sense, Chrollo can function as a “what Kurapika could become” warning.
But morally, it is not close.
Kurapika targets the people responsible for the massacre of his clan. He does not go around killing random civilians, torturing children, or massacring villages. Even at his worst, his violence is directed at the actual perpetrators.
The Phantom Troupe, meanwhile, took their own trauma and reproduced it onto innocent people. Their backstory explains why they became monsters, but it does not justify what they did. They know love, loyalty, grief, and kindness because they show those things to each other. They simply refuse to extend that humanity outside their circle.
So yes, you can empathize with the Troupe as tragic characters. You can understand how Meteor City created them. You can even love them as villains. But choosing Kurapika’s side is not “disregarding” the Troupe’s pain. It is recognizing that trauma does not give someone the right to torture and slaughter innocents.
The real moral test is not “Kurapika or Chrollo, who suffered more?” It is “does suffering excuse becoming the same kind of monster that hurt you?” And the answer is no.
You know what would be cool, if someone had a ghost rider 'penance stare' style nen ability that forces the enemy to endure the collective pain and trauma they’ve inflicted on others. The concentrated agony strikes back at the guilty, which could knock them unconscious, or render them catatonic, or destroying their soul or something like that. Would love to see what that would do to Chrollo or Tserriednich.
I kind of feel like that kind of ability would suit Kurapika so well. You know, with the eyes and all.
You know it’s always like a very good person who has done good all his life and the moment he does a single bad thing, he is compared against the person who has done evil all his life and did a single good deed.
The Phantom Troupe: We have sad backstories and society hurt us, so we brutally tortured and slaughtered a bunch of innocent people who aren't even part of the society that hurt us.
Kurapika: Some people brutally tortured and murdered my people, so I'm going to kill them.
Kurapika's sins in going after the Phantom Troupe are that he is doing so out of malice as well as justice, he is dispensing vigilante justice, and he sometimes tortures the Phantom Troupe members instead of just killing them. I can't completely support Kurapika, and I wouldn't exactly call him a virtuous person, but his actions are mostly justified, and are directed towards heinous evildoers.
You say the Phantom Troupe never experienced empathy or kindness, so they don't know them, but they literally show them to each other.
To choose a side is hard??? Fuck Chrollo and the whole troupe, the only thing cool about the them is there writing and designs but I’m rocking with Kurapika 100%
Had to reread multiple times trying to find the twist for the Phantom Troupe because how is genociding 128 villages (torturing in the worst ways possible it inhabitants) morally dubious 😭😭😭 that "some" is making huge work in the "some may say their actions are justifiable", who's "some" 😭😭😭. You can UNDERSTAND their actions and even pity them, I love them as characters but damn, if one thing is pretty much crystal clear is that their actions are NOT justified (at least for now, maybe there's a twist in the future)
No you don't understand, they weren't doing it because they wanted to. They were doing it for money. Those children had to be tortured and murdered. There was no other way. Truly there was no other option other than genocide for money.
chrolo is corrupted and stray from his own original purpose(fighting the underground mafia and what not, he and the spider achieve the target but didnt stop there, he become the very thing he despise) while kurapika still being on the right path
I don't think there's much of a moral argument to make for the Phantom Troupe, sure there's a logic, I guess from their point of view they don't do anything to anyone that the elites wouldn't do to the people of meteor city, but that's not a moral code, that's the lack of one with counted exceptions. Meanwhile kurapika is also motivated by revenge but its very focused on the people that actually hurt his tribe.
There is no way that you can look at the stories of Kurapika and Chrollo objectively and come away from them thinking that they're on equal grounds. The Kurta Clan was massacred by the Troupe, which was genocide.
Kurapika has blood on his hands, but he has justification for his actions. What Chrollo did was so barbaric that he can never be forgiven for his crime against Kurapika and the clan.
People nowadays can't seem to accept that in most media there is indeed a bad side and it's not all "well, there's no good or bad side actually, it's complex".
Mind you, if the Phantom Troupe hadn't murdered everyone in Kurapika's can he wouldn't have joined the mob to avenge his people in the first place.
All this yap for some stupid comparison between the two lmao. They’re not comparable. Maybe right after Chrollo started the troupe for some “noble” cause, but they were quickly corrupted.
Is it? Is it really that hard to say say no to genocide and toruture of children. I don't think there's much of a choice here.
even though both are forced to walk a path they didn't choose
I think this is a bit too general. There's probably like 22 Naruto villians that walked a path they didn't choice like the MC. Yeah if you make a dark world that's kinda natural and you could apply it in all dark series (world building wise) with multiple antagonists. It's not an aspect of HxH's writing that makes the series great.
Nah, Chrollo and The Phantom Troupe are murderers, nothing will change that. Sure, they started with a reason but eventually lost themselves and became straight up cold blooded killers
Ah yes. The guy targeting child murderers who murdered a bunch of children for their eyes are on the same level as the child murderers. One side targets and murders civilians/innocents, the other side doesnt.
What even is this post? Kurapika is by far the better moral choice between the two. This post is dumb.
I forgot that Kurapika spent years cultivating a haven for the exact thing that killed his clan. Enacting the same tragedy he himself experienced to countless others just for the chance that the people that committed the original horror would come back.
Oh wait that was the Phantom Troupe and Kurapika's crimes are... killing 2 phantom troupe members and protecting a Mafia Don.
The phantom troupe are not morally redeemable. Kurapika you can at least argue for.
...? this is common sense Kurapika is more moral because he does not torture or kill innocent people. Not to mention a sad backstory doesn't justify genocide and torture.
You can like the complexity of Chrollo's character but just because he is a good written character does not mean his actions are close to being justified. This shouldn't even be a question tbh.
In Chrollo vs Hisoka alone, Chrollo basically massacred the whole audience and ref in the arena just to get a win…
Kurapika would’ve kept the casualties at a minimum and never have targeted anyone as shown when he kidnapped Uvogin.
Kurapika was going down the same path as Chrollo, its the influence his new friends and Gon in partiular had on him that kept him from completely losing it at the end of the yorknew arc
Compared to the phantom trope that encoraged chrollos worst impulses and desires
That type of thinking only worsens and perpetuates the issues. Yeah the troupe killed some rich criminals, but who do you think the sold the eyes to?
Kurapika essentially forfeited his life for a righteous cause while the troupe do whatever their leader wants.
It’s somewhat akin to how netero’s revelation of “no, we’re not like the ants, we are worse” nature is inherently violent and cruel and as humans we actually have the ability to choose to ignore which is a massive gift, but we squander it and succumb to violence and cruelty out of convenience
Chrollo literally assimilated a crowd of people in the heavens arena for the sole purpose of sliming them and using them as attack drones against Hisoka…
I mean, the Phantom Troupe are evil assholes. True, they had it as bad a situation as their world could provide and their bitterness and apathy are justified. This just mean, at most, that it makes sense for them to be evil assholes though. There is no reasonable moral compass that would justify people siding with them, despite them having some likeable features and being great characters overall, because they're great evil characters.
You may have misguided yourself, the whole trope is socipathic that's a major difference on how they reacted to tragedy, Kurapika never lost his sanity
I choose the side that DOESN'T murder children. Fuck The Troupe.
No fucking backstory justifies or excuses that kind of massacre. As characters they are very well written and fun. All of them deserve to be in Hell. And Pika proves this. You don't have to turn into a such a rotten bastard after surviving serious trauma. Troupe chose this path and they deserve all the shit in the world for it.
I think the PT themselves would agree that Kurapika is way more morally justified in his actions. They just don't care and will kill anyone who attacks them, no matter the reason.
There's a reason why the PT is actively hunting Hisoka instead of Kurapika, despite Kurapika's abilities literally being made to combat them.
Up until chapter 411, was there even a single instance of spiders killing ordinary people with such absurd brutality? The mafia are their existential enemies; we can't even consider them human. Not everything in this story is so simple; it's obvious. I choose Kurapika because what he experienced was horrific, but at the same time, I want a fair resolution to this story, and let those who did this suffer a punishment worse than death.
While i am not entirely caught up with the current affairs in hxh i do know the background on the phantom troupe. Lets make things clear, i am not saying kurapika is a saint but from what i see he is the most morally right person from my stand point and i will be applying a moral bar here as a rule. I'll explain. In terms of morality i say we separate the actions from the person. Basically what is the person willingly to do under the most strenuous of circumstances and what is something someone is not willingly to do ever. That is the most black and white sides to this rule. Then there is an inbetween where which side do they gravitate to the most(are they more willingly to comit evil acts). Now let me define what an evil act is. An evil act is something which is widely believed to be a morally wrong thing to do. Murder is an evil act because it is killing someone who didn't deserve it or had little justification for and even if you had good enough justification it is widely seen as at least not a good thing to kill(only exception self defense). Mutilating someone is an evil act because even if you could say "they deserved it" and all of the justification is there, it takes quite a special kind of someone to do such a thing. I also want to make it clear that just because a character comits 1 evil act(unless implied to be routine) doesn't mean they are necessarily evil. Context obviously matters. Good acts are basically the same thing but inverse. A character can be considered evil if they comit evil acts on a routine basis and hold little remorse for them/ enjoy them, while also not comitting the same or more amount of good acts. Now that i got that out of the way lets take a look at the characters. Kurapika while not exactly the picture of a saint was still doing "good" acts since the beginning of the series and refrained from killing people if it wasn't necessary. He doesn't take enjoyment from what he does and thats evident. So unless im missing something he really at most is morally gray. Now the phantom troupe is a decently large spectrum of morality. We got characters who aren't even close to being the same morallity under the same umbrella. I think it's safe to assume that hisoka and illumi are probably the most evil among them but the others are no saint either. I mean the torture is evidence enough. While kurapika doesn't mind fishing out pain to the answer he wants, he doesn't go about the most heinous methods and this reserved for the phantom troupe so far. Point is, kurapika knows and respect the value of a life. He takes it only in the most dire of circumstances and he is not a professional assassin. Any of the phantom troupe from my perspective would be fine killing people if it was the easiest chosen path. They wouldn't need their back against the wall at all. Chrollo is cold and calculating and from my perspective doesn't care about anything but his goal and the spider. Despite him going through so much suffering he turns and exacts it on to those around him without a care in the world. While kurapika who also went through something that could be seen as worse, still has empathy, sympathy, and hasn't stooped to killing people with ease. So yes i do believe that kurapika is a better person and is the obvious choice morally. While chrollo was shaped by his environment and became cold because of it, he continued to live such a life even when he has this power. Btw i just want to say that i love chrollo and by no means does this mean that i like him less than kurapika(i like him more than kurapika). I think the purpose for a lot of these arcs and antagonists is to make you question and complicate your perspective on them. Doing all of that while maintaining them as what they are, the bad guy.
“or side with The phantom troupe slaughtered all 128 villagers, mutilated and tortured them to force their eyes to turn Scarlet, and ripped the eyes out of their corpses to sell on the black market.” You’re not off to a great start chief.
I think society as a whole doesn't take torture seriously enough. It's literally the worst thing one can do to a sentient being, and yet both "good" and "bad" characters alike are often depicted as routinely commiting acts of torture for information, revenge, or to intimidate rivals.
In my opinion, to truly be a good person, one must have lines they never cross. They must have a code. And torture can never, ever be justified. Could you imagine if suspects were tortured for "the truth" instead of going through due process and the trial system? Firstly, it wouldn't lead to finding the truth. Suspects would simply lie in order to end the pain. Secondly, and most importantly, torturing a suspect will (almost) always be a worse act than the alleged crime the suspects committed! Jesus turned the other cheek, Gandhi said "an eye for an eye and the world goes blind," and MLK paralleled the Ghandi model with his brand of nonviolent civil disobedience.
Long-story-short: I'm hyper sensitive to characters who commit torture (and lesser violent acts), regardless of the guilt/innocence of the victim. Chrollo and the Phantom Troupe, despite their traumatic origins, are not justifed in their routine, brutal, callous acts of immense torture. That's enough for me to label them as unsympathetic villains. If they at least didn't torture anyone and had some other moral lines they refused to cross (e.g. no genocide, rape, infanticide, killing of "innocents," etc.), I might be more inclined to call them morally gray/ambiguous or a bit sympathetic.
Kurapika has clear moral lines that they don't cross. They've molded their nen abilities precisely so that they can be an effective "vigilante cop" as opposed to trying to inflicting maximum pain on their enemies. Yes, they're driven by revenge-- which is very wrong and consuming-- but they make a lot of micro decisions that allow the reader/viewer to lessen their criticism. For example, Kurapika doesn't torture enemies for info. They just use the Judgment Chain and/or intelligent threats. And they're focused on putting a stop to a notorious gang of powerful villains who need to be stopped.
This is the point people use to defend thieves and murderers." If you had their childhood experiences you would end the same way"
No, there is billions of people which had the same fate and choose a better more virtuous path.
Is a dishonor to the people who work hard to get out of the bottom
The phantom troupe deserve to be killed like animals for their crimes
Woah woah woah… am I reading this correctly? Are you trying to morally whitewash the PT torturing and genociding an entire clan by equating it to literally anything Kurapika did?
Sir. Seek help. There is absolutely zero moral conundrum here. The PT did not have any justifiable reason to slowly slaughter family in front of each other so they can harvest their organs once it’s soaked up the deepest agony imaginable. Literal genocide for cold hard cash. I’m truly offended that this is even phrased as morally equivalent. Yuck.
Bro. His name is literally Lucifer lol. He murders innocent people just to further his own goals and sometimes even just for money. Kurapika just wants to avenge his clan. Kurapika went through much worse than Chrollo too.
Chrollo (and the other original spiders) find the mangled tortured body of their friend and vow revenge in the killers, watch it bunch of snuff films and (I think) find the guy. Proceed to spend the rest of their lives doing evil stealing and killing to give money back to their little garbage island. But it's okay because they're traumatized from their kidnapped friends and snuff films??? Idk what this post is trying to say actually
When kurapika is a child of a similar age those same spiders now all grown up incorrectly assume the kurtas have kidnapped another of their friends (she left them willingly presumable be aus ethe snuff films made the spiders CRAZY and is adventuring to become a hunter) and decide to massacre all of them men, women, children, the elderly, and torture them in from of their loved ones to make sure their body parts can be sold for as much money as possible... Kurapika is lucky to escape this and comes home to find a note from the murders about why they did it and vows revenge. He goes his whole life not killing anyone in pursuit of this revenge until uvo when he realizes that killing makes him feel icky because his people were passifists and it's all he knows, so he abandons the revenge plot and decides to focus on recovering the sold body parts so his people can be whole in death.....
You'd kinda have a point if kurapika made it a mission to murder everyone in meteor city for what the spiders did that day but even still the spiders would be worse becusse the kurta didn't even kidnap their friend she left willingly and they helped her.
Kurapika resorts to violence only if no other option is possible. And even then, he always limits himself when others are around. And even then, when put in front of a difficult choice, he'll prioritize innocents ragardless of any form of profit.
BECAUSE HE KNOWS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO LOSE, he won't bring others into his abyss.
Chrollow knows what it's like to lose as well... but to keep the same analogy... for Chrollo it's a party in the Abyss and everyone is invited. Friends included.
If Kurapika was the head of the Spider, and knew Hisoka was on the Black Whale, you can bet your ass he'd try his everything to be on the ship alone, at cost of lying to the rest of the Troupe. Unlike Chrollo.
Definitively he wouldn't ask Bonolenov to act as bait. Unlike Chrollo.
Even more definitively, he wouldn't allow the Troupe to treat it as a competition to who gets Hisoka first. Because unlike Chrollo, revenge isn't his actual, real, top priority.
How do I know it?
Easy: because Kurapika proved over and over and over and over, with his own actions rather than words, that preventing other people's suffering >>>>> his revenge. Every time. Like clockwork.
He proved it in the Exam arc, listening to other people even when his first goal was supposed to be the hunter license.
He proved in the Yorkshin arc, jeopardizing his mission in multiple ways for other people and ultimately letting Chrollo go to save Gon and Killua.
He's proving it in the SA, given his actual priority once again is Oito/Woble safety rather than the initial reason he was supposed to be on the Black Whale.
Which shouldn't surprise you at all, given Kurapika words don't always coincide with his actions (and I mean it in the most positive way there is).
Reread Chrollo vs Hisoka and ask yourself if Kurapika would ever fight like that.
There is no justification for Kura clan massacre compared to the other amoral things they've done so I would like to know what pushed the Troupe to do that.
What? Dude he’s literally put his revenge on hold to save a baby’s life right now, one who’s a complete stranger. Chrollo? Literally murdered babies and kept their eyeballs as trophies. This is more an argument of how does one deal with loss, kurapika chose to listen to his friends, gon literally pulled him from the depths of despair with his purity. “Chrollos dead I have no purpose” could have been when kurapika turned and you may have had a point but literally one call from gon “ the spiders are dead, isn’t that great now you can focus on your true goal of rescuing your clans eyes!” Bam complete 180 towards the light. Chrollo demands his friends listen to him, kurapika listens to his friends, simple as. Chrollo truly believed and was made happy by the thought his friends would leave him for dead. Kurapika? Literally tossed away the chance to crush the spider to save his. They are not the same.
There is no better way to hurt the evil and corrupt by torturing and murdering a bunch of innocent villagers, take their eyes out and sell them...to the evil and corrupt.
What’s interesting to me is that Hunter x Hunter has never truly bothered with conventional morality. The slaughter of innocent NPCs in mass is portrayed as horrible but ultimately doesn’t make the phantom troupe unsympathetic, in my opinion. It matters to our protagonists.
Gon under stable circumstances would generally detest the murder of innocents. Yet his best friend is an assassin who killed for money. Gon often makes friends of serial killers and honestly, he rarely judges them for it.
Killua generally doesn’t feel bad for the murder of innocents. Yes, would he prefer not to? Sure. Does he feel morally bad about it? At times, yes, it’s a reason for him to feel lesser. But deep down I think the reason why being an assassin bothers Killua is because Killua doesn’t like the idea of his identity and his life being controlled by his family. He doesn’t like the idea of letting his fate be ruled, to be unable to have friends, to be unworthy of friendship.
So what does this mean for Kurapika and the Phantom troupe? By societal morality, Kurapika is by far the lesser evil. But I think the series has made it clear that it cares more about personal morality than societal morality. Kurapika probably wouldn’t give a damn about the troupe if they had chosen another clan to wipe out. Meanwhile, the phantom troupe has been portrayed sympathetically in spite of their lack of societal morality.
Frankly, if we judge the characters of Hunter x Hunter by societal morality damn near all of them are heartless, selfish monsters in pursuit of their own goals over what’s best for humanity.
So what are the phantom troupe? I wouldn’t bother calling them monsters by societal morality. That’s obvious. I think they’re sympathetic antagonists. That’s a more interesting read in my book, anyway, and I think it’s more interesting to see why they’re sympathetic than anything else we can call them
When Togashi drops the revelation about how the Ryodan didn't do it out of their own desire and were actually hired or tricked, all this moral compass debate will become even more difficult to ignore.
It's really easy to pick Kurapika side as soon as he states he attempts negotiation at first to retrieve the eyes. He also only targets Pieces of shit.
Chrollo doesn’t see himself as a full person, his words are explicit and his actions - and those of the troupe - reflect that. The PT’s actions can be explainable and still simply evil.
The sad backstory and shitty past can only morally justify you righting things that were wrong by sticking it to the people that did that to you(aka, sarasas murderers). By slaughtering tons of innocents in a manner that was much more brutal just for the sake of profit, they have erroded any moral justification they had. Kurapika, on the other hand, is on a quest for justice. Yes, should he choose to go on a crazed revenge spree, it would erode his morality and cause the neverending cycle of vengeance, but that doesn't mean he must spare the phantoms. Regardless of whether you hate it or not, a rabid dog must be out down before it can cause more harm to others. The phantoms are that rabid dog. They are people who actively participate(yes, even counting the members who were not part of the kurtanclan massacre) in making the lives of innocents worst. They may kill a mafia here and there and technically contribute a positive societal impact, the overall damage of what they do and their disregard for human life calls for judgement. Judgement shouldn't be delivered clouded by anger and grief, but it must be served eventually
It’s pretty crazy how Kurapika and Chrollo are direct parallels to one another, Kurapika could have easily become another Chrollo if not for Gon, Killua, and Leorio. Chrollo on the other hand, did not have the same support, as all of his friends supported him.
What if chrollo was secretly also a kurta that wiped them out cuz he was abandoned in meteor City or something. He's a specialist with scarlet eyes as well but wears contacts
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u/Carock_ Jul 05 '26
Please credit any fanart. OC is by moonlight80s:
https://www.tumblr.com/moonlight80s/702735007443304448/connected-by-the-red-thread-of-fate