The Chimera Ant Arc in Hunter x Hunter had a resounding impact on the popularity of Yoshihiro Togashi’s series. Renowned for its complex storytelling, fearsome antagonists, and the development of the main characters, the arc also contained several notable moments. The best of them was the ending scene which featured Meruem dying in front of Komugi.
In the HxH manga, the final conversation between Meruem and Komugi is depicted in pitch-black panels with white speech bubbles such that the two characters are not visible. Fans came up with multiple theories about the peculiar change in the panels. Only recently did Togashi sensei reveal the actual meaning behind the panels and the work that inspired him to make such a decision.
Yoshihiro Togashi Reveals The Reason For Meruem & Komugi’s Last Conversation To Be In Pitch-Black Panels
Hunter x Hunter emphasized the dynamic between Meruem and Komugi over several games of Nen-based Gungi. Both characters struggle to attach meaning to their existence. Komugi is a multi-time world champion who could do nothing but play Gungi because of her disability, while Meruem wanted to conquer the Earth with his Chimera Ant army but wanted to understand ‘humanity’ at the same time.
The monstrous Chimera Ant King was able to understand the meaning of life and love after his conversations with Komugi. Although he was never able to defeat the multi-time champion and subsequently take her life, Meruem had the privilege of dying with his friend. Komugi purposely allowed herself to be exposed to the highly contagious poison that Netero had inflicted on Meruem.
Introduced as a loathsome character, Meruem’s death had a heart-wrenching impact on fans. When interviewed about the moment by former Sakurazaka46 member Yumiko Seki, Yoshihiro Togashi revealed that he chose to use black panels to emphasize the tension. The transcription of the interview can be found on the Hunter x Hunter Fandom page.
“Almost all the panel layouts are decided right before or during the storyboarding process, when then tension is as high as possible, and this was the case for the idea of ‘having several pages of speech bubbles on black backgrounds divided vertically.'”
Togashi also revealed that he wanted to challenge the shading techniques used in Tetsuya Chiba’s Ashita No Joe and Buronson’s Fist of the North Star. The two mangas used a shading technique named ‘kakeami’, which can involve cross-hatching to portray an emotional moment. According to the mangaka, he was successful in challenging the two popular works with his use of black panels in a “double-page spread as the culmination of everything.”
Also Read: Yoshihiro Togashi Has More than 3 Possible Endings Prepared for Hunter x Hunter
The Inspiration Behind The Storboards For Chapter 138 Of Hunter x Hunter
In the same interview, Yoshihiro Togashi disclosed the work that inspired him for Meruem and Komugi’s scene. Apparently, he noted a certain scene in one manga that used a sequence of monologues on white backgrounds divided vertically. The mangaka assumed it to be from Fumiyo Kōno’s one-volume manga, Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, but that wasn’t the case when he re-read it later.
“While drawing the chapter’s storyboards, I thought of a part from Fumiyo Kōno’s Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, remembering the scene as a sequence of monologue-only panels on white backgrounds divided vertically (when I reread it later, I realized it was my imagination and that I had mistakenly confused it with panels from another scene…) It was then that I decided to continue the exchange between Komugi and Meruem in simple, pitch-black panels.”
Yoshihiro Togashi’s use of pitch-black panels with white speech bubbles was certainly a creation of his own imagination rather than a recreation of a scene from any other manga. Though, many other works have now implemented the same technique.
