Hisoka Quotes

Hisoka has both arms in pieces after the Kastro match, and the easy reading of this aside is that it is bluster, a man pretending the injury was a choice. The pages argue the reverse. On p. 9 the woman sewing him back together asks whether the match was performance art, says he didn't have to do all this, and calls him an idiot. He sits still while she works her nen stitches into the stumps on pp. 10 and 11, says "Brilliant." beside a reattached hand flexing on p. 13, and only then offers this. The "maybe" is coy, but nothing on the previewed pages contradicts it; the volume's own cast page calls him a murderous magician who is waiting for Gon to ripen. Pain is not the cost of his hobbies, it is one of them. The line is a confession dressed up as a joke, and she answers it with a bill: 20 million for the left, the same for the right, and "Fork it over."

Taken as a throwaway, this is a vanity beat before the chapter shows his two abilities, and the page does lean that way. The idea is not even his: the balloons in the black panel before it, addressed to him, say the edges are a bit ragged and that his Bungee Gum and Texture Surprise can cover them, and his "Oh yeah" concedes he had not thought of it. Granted. But the next two pages say what the trick is for, and it is not vanity. He introduces it with stage patter ("Take this ordinary handkerchief..."), slaps the cloth on as skin on p. 15, and the narration notes that to most people the arm would seem to have healed itself. Then p. 16 adds the detail that matters: a mere touch would reveal the wrong texture, but Hisoka thinks that makes the deception more exciting. The disguise is built to fail on contact, and he prefers it that way. "Restored by magic" is exactly the right phrase. A magic trick is a lie the magician enjoys nearly being caught in.

In Vol. 7 the cast page described a man waiting for Gon to ripen. Here the dream has a different name, the one the announcer stretches across p. 8, and the chapter is careful about who wanted what. In the panel below this, Hisoka says he has waited this long and does not want a friendly sparring match. Chrollo's answer is "I know. Being pursued has become annoying." A small inset on p. 13 draws the history the same way: a cartoon Hisoka chasing a cartoon Chrollo who shouts "No!", under the caption "He left me hanging after the exorcism..." So the meeting Hisoka calls a dream is, from the other side, an errand to stop being followed. That asymmetry is what the line commits him to. On p. 10 Chrollo names the terms, a battle to the death, and Hisoka answers with one word, "Okay." A man who has finally got what he wanted accepts the price without reading it. The heart on the balloon is the honest part: he is not bracing for the fight, he is delighted.