Why I Don't Like Nen (and the Problem with Closed Systems)

I absolutely adore Hunter x Hunter, and I consider it one of my favorite stories ever written, but there’s one thing about it that I don’t particularly like: Nen. 

Now, I’m aware that this is a cardinal sin within the Hunter x Hunter fandom, and even the online anime-watching community as a whole. Nen is upheld as one of the best power systems in anime, along with Alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist and Stands from JoJos. Many would argue it is the best power system in anime, particularly because it has both the hard rules of Alchemy and the diversity of Stands. 

Readers of my previous essay, “The Three Axes of Power Systems in Writing,” will know that I classify power systems on a three-axis system: nebulous vs rational dictates how logical it is, hard vs soft dictates how many rules it has, and open vs closed dictates uniqueness and the amount of possible abilities. Nen can be defined as a nebulous, hard and open system. (Technically it falls in the middle-ground between closed and open systems, which I called “categorical” systems, but it leans much more in the open side of things.)

Now, my issue isn’t with the open-ended nature of Nen. I love power systems where each person is almost like their own sub-system; it’s what drew me to anime in the first place, and it’s what I use in most of my own stories. And my issue isn’t with the nebulous nature of Nen either. Sure, all the powers don’t make sense as a whole, but that’s to be expected in open systems, so it’s also not a problem. 

My issue is with the fact that Nen is hard…or, rather, a dissonance between how hard it wants to be and how soft it actually is. (Huh, this sounds oddly sexual when I write it all out, doesn’t it?) Remember, power systems are classified entirely based on audience perception and presentation, so if a power system has lots of underlying rules but none of these rules are ever mentioned, it appears soft as a result. 

In Hunter x Hunter, there’s a clear dissonance between Togashi’s initial intent when he crafted Nen and the overall execution of Nen in the story, and I think this dissonance is the root of my problems with the system. 

I’ll explain what I mean, but as a disclaimer, this is an extremely subjective piece. My essay writing tends to be very objective and fact-driven, overall, but with this piece I really wanted to verbalize personal gripes with Nen and how I wish it could be different. But I’m not saying Nen is bad or that it has to be different, so if you enjoy the system but want to keep reading, just remember these are my own subjective opinions and you’re free to disagree if you want. 

Reason 1: Loose Nen Categories

My first critique has to do with the Nen categories. Early on, we are told that Nen-users are sorted into one of 6 affinities depending on their Hatsu:

1. Enhancers can enhance their bodies, environments, or weapons. 

2. Transmuters can alter their Nen and give it new properties, such as elasticity. 

3. Emitters can project their Nen out of their body. 

4. Conjurers can create objects with their Nen. 

5. Manipulators can control their environments. 

6. And Specialists have abilities that don’t fit into any of the above categories. 

My critique is that many of the powers Togashi created seemed like rather poor examples of the affinities they supposedly encompassed. There’s a clear logic to the affinities, but that same logic doesn’t apply to many of the Hatsus in those affinities. 

Characters like Hisoka and Killua make complete sense as Transmuters, because they’re merely altering the properties of their Nen: Killua converts his into electrical energy, whereas Hisoka makes his sticky and elastic. But then you have characters like Zeno, who turns his Nen into…a dragon. A fucking dragon. 

What property (or properties) of Nen is Zeno changing here? We could argue that Zeno is shaping his Nen into a dragon, but shaping Nen is different from altering its properties. At that point, we’d just be describing Conjuration! It seems like Togashi created a unique power for Zeno, and only afterwards realized that he’d established a trend of white-haired Zoldycks being Transmuters and tried to stick with that, rather than working backwards and giving Zeno the affinity that actually made sense. 

Leorio is another example of this. His Hatsu lets him create a line of aura, then by punching a solid surface a construct of his fist emerges from the end of that line. The notion of Leorio emitting a line of aura makes total sense—he’s an Emitter after all—but a construct emerging from that is more stereotypical of a Conjurer, yet Leorio’s Hatsu is classified as a pure Emission technique. Why? 

Enhancers were one of my favorite categories in the beginning of the series, and they slowly made me angrier as I watched more, because so many Enhancer “Hatsus” just seemed indistinguishable from techniques like Ko and Ken. It feels redundant to craft such a creative Nen category if so many of the people in that category have abilities that are just basic extensions of the techniques everyone can use. And sure, I’ve heard people say the point of characters like Uvogin is that they’re just maxing out their physical stats…but what’s the excuse with Gon? Remember, he created a Hatsu before Greed Island. The narrative treats techniques like Ko as if they’re new, but it’s really just what Gon’s already been using for a while. 

I also think that the Specialization category is rather underdeveloped. I know that’s the point, but in a whole system that was designed for its hard rules (and which fans praise it for), it seems rather odd to have a category of abilities that’s just “Random Bullshit ™”. Besides, a few Specialists have abilities that obviously fit into existing categories. Neferpitou’s many Nen constructs make me curious why Togashi didn’t just write them as a Conjurer. 

It feels like if you have to stretch the definition of your in-universe terminology to justify why characters have the powers they do, you either should’ve rewritten said terminology or altered said powers. 

But all this talk of Nen users using abilities that veer outside of their affinity brings me to my next point. 

Reason 2: Build-A-Hatsu

Again, this is purely subjective, but here it goes. I don’t like that characters in Hunter x Hunter can create their own Hatsus. 

In fiction—and especially fantasy—there’s a concept known as the “power ceiling”: the strongest feats an individual is capable of in this world. Power ceilings are already hard to handle in open-ended systems (everyone has their own abilities, after all), but it’s far from impossible. By creating a world where Hatsus can be easily created, it suddenly raises the power ceiling. Now, we can have characters who just make up Hatsus on the fly without a second thought. 

If that sounds hypothetical, it isn’t. That’s exactly what Ging does after seeing Leorio’s Hatsu. Ging’s affinity isn’t confirmed, but he’s able to recreate Leorio’s Hatsu in a matter of seconds just by seeing it once. Neferpitou was the same, more-or-less creating Hatsus out of boredom. 

And I can see why. Nen training is supposed to be an extremely difficult, challenging thing, where someone is pushed to the brink to create an ability that represents themselves in the purest way. And yet, when we see the Hatsu creation process on-screen with characters like Gon and Killua, it’s…surprisingly simple. While fitting for their characters, Gon and Killua created Hatsus that were shockingly simple in about a day. You might criticize this as a writing problem and not a power system problem, but I remind you: presentation is crucial to a power system, and a criticism of the presentation of a system can also serve as a valid criticism of the system itself when we have no further information to go off of. 

Off-screen, it’s even worse. Because we don’t actually see the training for lots of characters, Togashi feels no problem giving them all sorts of abilities. Off-screen, Hanzo develops four Hatsus and Kurapika has seven Hatsus. (Technically Emperor Time wasn’t a Hatsu he created, per say, but you get my drift.) Two of those Hatsus allow him to steal other Hatsus and even give them to other people. 

Which brings me to another thing. We’ve seen occasional Nen “geniuses” who have Hatsus without knowing (Neon being an example), so Kurapika having Emperor Time in of itself isn’t a problem, but his existence shows that some characters can exist in more than one Nen category (?). This wouldn’t actually feel egregious if we ever saw another character like that again. 

Compounding this, characters are allowed to make Hatsus in categories that don’t match their affinity. Togashi tried to emphasize this in the early stages of the manga with Kastro being an Enhancer who used too much Conjuration and Manipulation, but in the later stages of the manga, we have characters like Morel, a Manipulator whose techniques require Emission, which is on the opposite fucking end of the Nen wheel. 

Reason 3: Restrictions and Strength

Restrictions, as a concept, are absolutely phenomenal. In execution, restrictions are also phenomenal. 

As strange as this sounds, my critique isn’t actually with restrictions. If anything, it’s the best part of the system. No, my critique is that I wish Togashi used restrictions more. 

Considering how open-ended the system is up to this point, restrictions seemed like a great way to reel in the insanity of Nen. And, in a lot of cases, that’s exactly what happens! Certain Nen abilities require as low as one or two restrictions and as many as five or six to be effective, in some cases. 

My problem is that I think there’s a power imbalance, particularly in later arcs. Togashi has created a lot of minor villains with very weak, situational powers that only get boosted in strength by a restriction. However, he’s also created a lot of main and supporting characters whose powers are extremely strong with little-to-no restrictions whatsoever, such as Killua’s Godspeed and Zeno’s various Dragon-related Hatsus. It just doesn’t seem like pre-restriction Nen abilities exist at a “baseline” strength, which allows Togashi to write whatever power he wants at whatever strength he wants with whatever conditions he thinks are interesting. That’s great for him as a writer, but it’s less great when he’s trying to balance his system. 

Conclusion:

All in all, this brings forth a few questions:

1. Why aren’t Nen-users constantly creating new, situational abilities for every conflict they encounter?

2. Why aren’t Nen-users constantly veering outside of their affinities to create said powers? 

3. And why aren’t more Nen-users creating powerful abilities with minimal restrictions?

Of course, the answer to all of this is skill. You need to be skilled to create truly amazing Hatsu, or to create a large quantity of Hatsu, or to create a Hatsu outside of your affinity. But that’s an extremely unsatisfying answer. Writers often have trouble conveying skill, so they do so by showing someone is competent in the setting’s power system. At the same time, the only way to be competent in a power system is to be skilled. It’s circular reasoning, and many writers aren’t aware of it, so they just plop extremely strong characters into their story with the justification that, “they’re just really good.” And that’s exactly what characters like Ging and Tserriednich are, and that’s why they feel so unsatisfying to me. After watching Gon and Killua struggle for hundreds of chapters, it feels rather empty knowing that some people out there just…naturally excel in Nen to a much higher degree. It’s alright for some people to “get” the power system better than others, but after hearing how Gon and Killua were 1-in-10,000,000 prodigies, watching Tserriednich blow them out of the water in a single chapter stung a little. 

I would argue that gatekeeping Nen based on skill isn’t just unsatisfying, it’s antithetical to the diversity of Nen! Togashi obviously loves creating characters with lots of unique powers, as HXH and YuYu Hakusho prove, and that’s very reminiscent of the “open-ended” systems I’ve been describing. But when a system separates people based on arbitrary skill level instead, and everyone can theoretically do a lot of the same things, that’s more like a “closed” system. Closed systems are notoriously hard to write, and series with closed systems (like Star Wars and Harry Potter) often suffer from the problem of having certain characters be better than others just for arbitrary reasons and plot convenience, which is exactly the problem Hunter x Hunter ran into. 

You remember earlier that dissonance I mentioned? If I had to boil it down, I think Togashi created Nen as an extremely hard and open-ended system, and abilities are often separated by chance and heredity in open systems; but the discomfort I feel comes from the fact that he always executed Nen as a softer, closed system where abilities were separated by skill because you can create your own Hatsus. All those “rules” he established? Those are more like suggestions. The training he outlined in such detail? Those can be bypassed if you’re good enough. The hard work it takes to make a Hatsu? Not if you’re a natural prodigy like Ging. And what determines if someone is a natural prodigy? Nobody knows.

I do genuinely like Nen…at least, certain elements of it. But I just find it so much more satisfying to watch series like JuJutsu Kaisen, where Cursed Energy was obviously based on Nen but powers are much more based on heredity and chance than skill alone. It just feels so much more fitting considering how diverse the powers are, and it also feels easier to swallow. I don’t consider an ability like King Crimson or Epitaph in JoJos to be “cheap” because I know Diavolo only obtained that power through sheer chance. I can't say the same about Tserreidnich suddenly developing Parallel Vision even though its the exact same ability, because in a skill-based system that kind of power without work doesn't feel authentic or justified.

At the end of the day, those are just my opinions. Let me know what you guys think, I’d be interested in hearing more about this topic. But for now, I am signing off.