There Was No In-between With Him. He Was Either All Or Nothing. [insp]

There was no in-between with him. He was either all or nothing. [insp]

HxH Translation Tidbit

In the following post I will attempt to explain how Hisoka nearly got himself killed asking Illumi for permission to fuck Killua.

This is the scene in question:

As you may remember, Illumi asks Hisoka to help him in capturing Killua to prevent him from using Allukas powers to help Gon. Hisoka then turns to Illumi and asks him the following:

ところで、僕はキルアをやるのは、ありかい？

Both the manga and anime translate this as

By the way, am I allowed to kill Killua?

Which is fair enough, except that Hisoka never mentions killing him at all. The verb he uses is やる which literally means “to do”. It’s used as a euphemism for killing, but, you guessed it, it is also a euphemism for, well, sex. But how can we tell which one Hisoka is referring to?

Here, his gesture comes into play. Of course, the anime is faithful to the original. This is Hisoka in the manga:

The gesture is even more prominent here.

For everyone who isn’t savvy in Japanese nonverbal communication:

His hand gesture appears to be セックス (sekkusu), lit. Sex. It’s used so you don’t have to actually bring sex up in a conversation, but still make it clear that you’re talking about dirty stuff. Usually, this gesture requires the thumb to stick out between your middle and index finger, but this version is sometimes used as well. Since HxH appears in Jump, they might have had him change it as a form of censoring, but that’s just me taking guesses.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_sign)

On the Japanese wikipedia site for this sign it says that the thumb represents the penis, and the index and middle finger represent the vagina, it is possible that for this reason Hisoka chose the middle and ring finger instead, since Killua is a male.

In any case, it is clear that Hisoka is using this gesture to communicate to Illumi that he is talking about dirty stuff here. The fact that his words could mean both things work in his favor. He probably just said that to provoke Illumi, anyhow.

And that’s how Hisoka nearly died because of a stupid joke.