Parallel world Manga Artist-Chapter 226: Duel - II
With a sprawling, long-running arc like the Chimera Ant saga, the most critical storyline was undoubtedly centered on the Ant King.
But surrounding it were multiple parallel threads that demanded attention. Knuckle and the others from the protagonist group were locked in battle against Menthuthuyoupi. Gon was in a tense standoff with Neferpitou. And the third Royal Guard, Shaiapouf, had split himself into countless clones, providing support on every front while weaving his own schemes behind the scenes.
Covering every single storyline meant that after a full month of serialization, the main plot had barely inched forward.
But fortunately, the fans were patient.
Although the Chimera Ant arc had been running for an entire year, and although readers found themselves wanting to curse at the protagonists more with each passing Chapter, very few actually dropped the manga because of it.
On the contrary, the heated arguments erupting across online forums only served to spread the popularity of Hoshimori Comic further and further. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦
On November 4th, as sales data was released by all the major manga publishing companies in Japan...
Hoshimori Comic, with sales of 26.2 million copies, achieved something historic.
For the first time in its twenty-five-year existence, the journal had claimed the top spot, becoming the highest-selling manga journal in all of Japan.
On the day the figures were announced, Hoshimori Group’s stock price surged. Media outlets across Japan’s anime and manga industry reported on the milestone in unison, running headlines about "the coronation of a new king" and declaring that the era of Monogatari Comic’s dominance over the manga industry was over for good.
Of course, behind the praise, every media commentator and industry insider was quietly thinking the same thing:
What would Hoshimori Comic do once Hunter x Hunter went on hiatus?
Could they stabilize the journal’s sales by relying solely on Shirogane’s other serialization, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba?
Everything remained uncertain.
But for now, every person in Japan’s manga industry had to acknowledge one undeniable truth: Hunter x Hunter’s current popularity was the highest of any manga on the market. In terms of readership, ratings, critical reputation, and narrative depth, the Chimera Ant arc had reached the absolute pinnacle of Japan’s manga industry.
Two days later, a new Chapter of Hunter x Hunter was serialized.
Starting from this Chapter, the duel between the Ant King and Netero, the confrontation that fans had been aching for, finally began to take shape.
But in this Chapter, the fight itself was not the focus.
The focus was the conversation between the King and Netero.
[Are you fighting me for the sake of the human species? I cannot understand. If that is the case, then my actions are actually beneficial to humanity. In your society, children with potential starve to death, while those who contribute nothing sit in positions of power and possess everything.] the Ant King said.
[This... is madness. I will crush it all and give you a world of true equality, one without vast wealth gaps. I do not deny that I will resort to violent means at first, but only for the purpose of reorganizing the existing order. I... have learned how to wield power. To protect the weak, the humans who deserve to live, it must never be used for the strong to exploit the weak.]
For example... someone like Komugi.
And Netero’s response to the Ant King was simple.
Before his heart could waver any further, he could no longer afford to entertain the Ant King’s words.
[We both have no choice!]
A conversation spanning only a few storyboard pages, yet it encapsulated the identities and convictions of both sides.
If a being as powerful as the Ant King had appeared within human society to reform it, then Netero, who had long harbored disdain for the corrupt upper echelons of the human world, would have almost certainly agreed with the proposition.
But the problem remained... how could humans and ants ever coexist?
Finally, in this Chapter, the Ant King, who had originally hoped to win Netero over and have a talented human like him serve at his side, was provoked by a single line from the old Chairman:
[If you defeat me, I will tell you the name the Queen gave you before she died.]
With those words, the curtain was pulled back on their battle.
But after this Chapter was serialized, it left Hunter x Hunter’s fanbase in stunned silence.
That day, the most discussed topic across Japan’s anime forums was a single question:
Who exactly is the villain?
Is it the human leaders who stood by and let a small country like NGL, with its millions of people, fall into famine?
Or is it the alien species, born violent and atrocious, yet within only forty days of life, learned through human knowledge the absurdity of human tyranny? A King who, after meeting a frail, blind human like Komugi and recognizing that her existence held meaning, resolved to overthrow the human order entirely?
"I’m completely lost after this Chapter."
"If I were Netero, I’d probably have sided with the Ant King. Think about it, Netero is a Chairman of the Hunter Association who has worked himself to the bone for over a hundred years, and he’s still being given orders by the human elite to eliminate the Ant King at all costs."
"They even implied that if millions of people in NGL had to die, so be it, as long as the Chimera Ants never left NGL territory. Meanwhile, the Ant King is over here talking about killing incompetent human rulers and promoting the idea that capable humans should lead... I honestly don’t know what to say."
"Man is born evil, it seems Shirogane-sensei agrees with that philosophy. Kindness and reason are shaped through learning; people are born selfish by nature. Just look at the Ant King: he killed the Queen at the moment of his birth. But the more knowledge he acquires, the more he ponders the meaning of existence, and now he wants to know the name his mother gave him.
At first, he treated humans as nothing more than food and killed them indiscriminately. But ever since meeting Komugi... he hasn’t killed a single human."
"What hits me the hardest is that the Ant King is actually trying to reason with Netero. Remember the Chapter where the Ant King was born? The entire internet was tearing him apart for being too cruel. Now? Even after Netero attacks him three times, the Ant King hasn’t struck back once. He just wants Netero to recognize the gap in their power and submit.
Meanwhile, Netero is acting like a berserker who refuses to talk, starting from zero negotiation, wanting only to solve the problem through battle."
"Compared to that, Gon’s storyline genuinely makes me uncomfortable. All he can think about is avenging Kite. He knows full well that Neferpitou is in the middle of saving someone, and that the person being saved is critically important to the Ant King, someone with real negotiation value once healed. Yet he’s still prepared to kill Neferpitou on the spot, completely blinded by hatred.
I understand that losing Kite devastated him, but this is a war between species, casualties are inevitable. There’s an unwritten rule as old as war itself: you don’t kill field medics in combat. The previous Chapter really left a bad taste in my mouth."
"He’s only a twelve-year-old kid. That kind of emotional reaction isn’t unreasonable. It’s just that reading Hunter x Hunter up to this point... it genuinely hurts no matter which side loses."
"I have a bad feeling that tragedy is coming. Can Komugi actually be saved? What if, in the later Chapters, Gon and the others really do mess things up and cause Komugi’s death, sending the Ant King into a complete rampage and erasing every shred of kindness he’d just begun to cultivate?"
"It’s possible."
"I feel like this manga’s story has moved far beyond what children can grasp. It’s already delving into themes of war, peace, and political power."
"Manga shouldn’t be stuck at the level of kids throwing punches and hot-blooded power-ups forever. I think this kind of storytelling is brilliant."
"No argument there. The sales numbers speak for themselves. It’s just a shame it’ll be over once the Chimera Ant arc wraps up."
"It’s a hiatus, not the end. Don’t jinx it."
By mid-November, with the story having reached this point, most Hunter x Hunter fans could already sense that the arc was approaching its final stretch.
After the Ant King’s decisive battle with Netero and the resolution of the Royal Guards’ fights, the Chimera Ant arc would finally come to a close.
