Gon-san

Before & After

About

Gon-san (Japanese: ゴンさん) is a nickname given to an adult form of Gon Freecss^[1], the protagonist boy in a Japanese manga Hunter × Hunter^[2] written by Akihiro Togashi. This muscle monster with glazed look filled with deep despair has been a popular subject for parodies since its shocking arrival in 2010.

Origin

Gon’s adult form showed its silhouette during the battle with a Chimera Ant Neferpitou^[3] in the 305th chapter of this manga, and he fully appeared on the next 306th chapter which was published on Weekly Shōnen Jump released on April 26th, 2010.

The battle with pitou ended in the 307th chapter. However, the readers had to wait over a year to know whatever becomes of after the battle where Gon paid a great cost for win because this manga’s serialization suspended between the following month and August, 2011.

Spread

The sudden appearance of this baby-faced adult having too macho body and ridiculously long hair surprised many manga readers and its very surrealistic lulz immediately made a headline on the web. Then, 2channel or Futaba Channel (2chan) users who thought they can’t call this Gon without an honorific anymore started to call him as “Gon-san” in awe. And numerous photo collages, illustrations, and parody videos for Gon-san soon became to be created on those anonymous boards, pixiv^[4], Nico Nico Seiga^[5] and Nico Nico Douga (NND).^[6] The presence of Gon-san rapidly increased among Japanese internet users throughout sharing those parody creations via many affi-blogs, weblogs summarizing 2channel threads for revenues from EC sites affiliate programs.

Gon-san Shift-JIS arts by 2channel users

Many of videos are reprinted to YouTube as usual.^[7] Additionally, tens of fan art for Gon-san or Adult Gon are also posted to deviantART.^[8]

2014 Anime & Official Merchandise

4 years later, Gon-san finally appeared on the 131st episode in the anime series aired on May 27th, 2014. At this timing, BANDAI announced the release of a figure of Gon’s adult form on the web site^[9] and the official Twitter account (shown, below). People got surprised at this 430mm figure which more than 70% of the height is occupied by the hair, and soon noticed that the file name of a picture in the page was “GONSAN.jpg” even though the page didn’t mention to the online fame of Gon-san at all.

『HUNTER×HUNTER』から、自らを強制的に成長させたゴンの姿を全高約430mm(うち300mm以上毛髪)を超えるボリュームで立体化！ http://t.co/6yUegkrDLO pic.twitter.com/l2fip34Lto
— プレミアムバンダイ (@p_bandai) May 28, 2014

Shortly after, Twitter users began posting a vast amount of photo collages utilizing pictures of Gon-san figure under the hash tag “Gon-san Crappy Collage Festival” (ゴンさんクソコラ祭り).^[10] This online craze was covered by reddit^[11], and reported by Kotaku.^[12]

Various Examples

Videos

Niconico ボ　っ　切　れ　た Niconico ゴンさんがコーラを振るだけと思っていたのか？
Left: Fukkireta | Right: X Shakes Cola
Niconico ゴンさんがタンバリンを叩いてるだけ Niconico スマブラXにゴンさんが参戦！！
Left: X Plays the Tambourine | Right: Super Smash Brothers

Photos

Compilation

Niconico HUNTER×HUNTER　ムキムキゴンさんコラ画像集

Illustrations

English is one of the personalities of Gon-san for many people because the 306th chapter images that leaked first on the web were English fansub version. So, Gon-san speaks in English in some illustrations even though those are drawn by Japanese users.