Kite’s Resurrection In Hunter x Hunter is Super Weird | Here’s Why

Hunter X Hunter is peak shonen. It has everything - intelligent and exciting fights, original storyline and a plethora of great, memorable characters. The writing of Hunter x Hunter is pretty solid throughout the show.

However, there are a few “wait a minute” moments in the story. Most of these, or I’d argue all of these are hiccups that can be easily glossed over. However, as a professional overthinker, I wanna dive a bit deeper into Kite. Kite is the Boba Fett of the Hunter x Hunter franchise. They were uber-cool before they got to speak any real dialog in the story. While Hunter x Hunter has a ton of popular secondary characters, Kite is in a league of their own.

Who Is Kite

Kite is unsure of where he was born. He believes that becoming Ging Freecss' pupil prevented him from passing away in a dangerous alley. Ging taught Kite the fundamentals of becoming a Hunter and basic Nen.

Kite eventually managed to pass the Hunters’ exam. However, Ging was not content and set up one final obstacle: he wanted Kite to catch him.

When Kite first appears on Hunter x Hunter, he is on this very quest of finding Ging. A slender man in his late twenties or early thirties, Kite is an extremely blunt individual. Kite doesn’t like taking any lives, but would do so in a split second with extreme proficiency if the need arises.

How Did Kite “Die”

Neferpitou with Kite's head

In the Chimera Ant Arc, Kite, Gon and Killua are in the search of the ants’ nest. As the three get closer to the nest, Kite senses Neferpitou’s sinister En. Sensing them in return, Neferpitou appears before them and cuts Kite’s arm in an instant. Kite shouts at the boys to run away as he prepares for a fight.

In a later scene, Neferpitou is shown holding Kite’s decapitated head in their lap, marking his death. However, since Neferpitou had fun fighting Kite,  instead of feeding him to the queen, they reanimate Kite’s body using it to train new chimera soldier ants.

Kite’s Resurrection

During Meruem’s birth in the Chimera arc, unbeknownst to everyone, another infant is born to the queen. Upon finding the baby, an extremely loyal guard, Colt vows to protect it all costs. Colt names the child Reina after his late sister. However, as the child grows, they start calling themself Kite.

At the end of the Chimera arc, Kite has grown up into an adult chimera ant. They have regained all of the their memories as Kite.

Kite’s Rebirth Does Not Make Any Sense

To immediately get into the nitty-gritty of it, let’s first understand how resurrection works in Hunter x Hunter in the context of chimera ants. The queen ant consumes as many humans as she can as food. The chimera ants she gives birth to sometimes regain partial to full memories of their human lives.

Now this system has a problem from the get go. It assumes that to give birth to one whole chimera ant, the queen needs to consume one exact human. Or that the birthing mechanism somehow separates one completely digested human being to be turned into a chimera ant’s consciousness. But let’s go with this for a second. Let’s say one human soul somehow dominates a chimera ant’s personality leading them to regain memories and/or personalities of their previous lives.

However, Kite was never consumed by the queen in the first place and neither was the girl he was reborn as! At the end of the chimera arc, Koala, who has been living with the reborn Kite, makes a confession. The new humanoid chimera ant body that Kite has, is eerily similar to a human Koala killed. Koala believes Kite was born with this face to remind him of his sins.

However, we can chalk this physical similarities to a completely different character to being a happy coincidence. The real question here is how was Kite reborn in any body at all? Kite was killed and then reanimated by Neferpitou. He never got to be eaten by the queen, let alone be reborn from her womb.

How Was Kite Reborn

The one possible explanation, which is vaguely hinted at, is Kite's Nen ability. Ging claims that a certain number only appears in the Crazy Slots ability when Kite is desperately trying to avoid dying. Because of its Nen magic powers, Kite was able to reincarnate as Meruem's identical twin after he passed away.

Not gonna lie, this is one of the flimsiest ways of un-deading a popular shonen character who has outlived their narrative importance. Kite’s presence in the story and his death serve a very specific purpose. They are meant to aid and motivate Gon’s character growth in the Chimera Arc.

The moment that Gon swears to  save a reanimated but very dead Kite, his narrative purpose is all but fulfilled. Perhaps this is why the new, reborn Kite is born in a completely different set up with new motivations. As a fan of the show and the character, I’ve simply accepted his rebirth as a matter of fact. Where the show goes with this incredibly cool character will be interesting to see.

Thanks for reading!