Hi! I Really Liked Your Thoughts On Your Last Post, And If You're Willing To Answer, What Are Your Thoughts

Hi! I really liked your thoughts on your last post, and if you're willing to answer, what are your thoughts on Gon's feelings towards Killua? I do think it is requited (somewhat) and Killua's feelings are pretty clear at this point. Anyway, it probably could be Gon not realizing what he's feeling towards Killua, or the more popular interpretation of him being oblivious, or even the idea of him being on the aromantic spectrum. I think it's subtly gets lost in everything else that is happening in canon, which disappoints me sometimes because Gon is such a well written character.

Hi anon, thank you so much for asking! I love thinking about the nature of Gon's feelings for Killua, so it's nice to have a chance to talk about it from my own perspective.

The short version of where I keep ending up after thinking about it a bunch for several years now is that I think Gon does have romantic feelings for Killua, but I don't think at this point he recognizes them as such for a few different reasons.

The first is just that they're young, and I don't think he has enough context to see his feelings that way. For one, Killua is his first real friend so I think it might be hard for him to see where the line gets blurry/goes beyond friendship, and with his direct and straightforward personality he's less prone to picking apart all of his feelings than Killua. In Chimera Ant Arc, his innocence is repeatedly emphasized--he thinks going out with Mito counts as a "date," he is good at handling Palm on their date but he seems oblivious about the larger context of dating/having a relationship with someone, he doesn't get what's going on with Killua insinuating that Meruem might have a lover in his chambers, and so on. There's examples of this before CAA as well. I'm just not sure he's reached a point yet where he can distinguish what his feelings towards Killua mean exactly and how they might differ from those of a normal friendship.

I feel like because Killua's feelings become so apparent in CAA and Gon's attention gets directed away from Killua at that point due to all his trauma and pain, people are quick to discount all of Gon's affection towards Killua before that--"キルアじゃなきゃダメなんだ/It has to be Killua," from the dodgeball match in particular is a line with a lot of romantic subtext in Japanese, how hard he fights to get Killua back in the Zoldyck family arc, all the verbal affection he gives him, the fact that he's proud to have him as his friend and that he wants to show him off to Ging, it just goes on and on. Gon clearly thinks the world of Killua and trusts him above anyone else.

And sure, with Gon it's possible to read his feelings as just platonic. I personally think it goes beyond that, both from what I see in canon and my own interpretation. But I do think it's not debatable that Gon loves Killua (in whatever way you choose to see that love), and even in CAA when he's lost in the darkness, we repeatedly see that Killua is the only one who can bring him back from that. He's Gon's last lifeline and the one who means most to him. Killua sees Gon as his light, but I truly believe Killua is Gon's light, too. Even if Gon hasn't said as such like Killua has, this is conveyed metaphorically by Killua saving Gon's life while literally glowing from his electricity.

It's also worth noting that Gon doesn't see so much of what Killua has done for him and how strongly Killua feels about him. This is something we as the audience see multiple times and in multiple ways, but Killua puts up defenses constantly around Gon, deflects his affections, and hides his emotions and what he does on Gon's behalf. I think don't think Gon is completely clueless because they're so attuned to each other, but he definitely doesn't have the full context either, so it's not as though he's had a chance to react to Killua's true depth of feelings for him.

Now that he's apart from Killua, this might be a point where Gon starts reflecting on and maybe piecing together how he feels about Killua. It's hard to say what will happen in canon (though I do anticipate an eventual reunion between them for reasons I'll get into in another post), but Ging's words emphasize the importance of the people who are with you on your journey, and with Killua bringing him back from the brink and then the two of them separating, this is a point where I think Gon might start pondering what kind of connection he wants to have with Killua in the future.

I could go on and on about this topic (and there's a good chance I will talk about it more), but I'll stop there for now. Thanks again for asking!