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This is meta! About Mukuro and Hibari. I wrote it. Aggy found the pictures and laughed at me while I wrote it. Thank you Aggy. Please click the cut. There are pictures!
Once upon a time, I told Aggy (
nonartisan) I would write Mukuro & Hibari meta. So here it is. This is just my opinion, of course, but I'm supporting it with canon evidence. It's not exactly that I think that everyone writes them wrong, but everyone seems to take it as a given that Mukuro is the one chasing after Hibari, and that Mukuro is the one who's interested in him, while Hibari couldn't care less (except to be annoyed, maybe.)
Canon pretty much says the opposite when it comes to these two. From the beginning, Mukuro does show that Hibari at least registers on his radar – he knows Hibari is the strongest in Namimori, and he goes out of his way to take him out when it comes to that. Obviously he did his research in order to find out how strong Hibari is and what his weaknesses are, but even then, Hibari was never his final goal – just a step on the road.
Mukuro is impressed by Hibari, though, because Hibari is stronger and more stubborn than expected – attacking Mukuro even after his body is too injured to continue.

Mukuro is surprised!
We can see that he IS interested in Hibari, since he shows up before the Mist Ring battle just to comment on Hibari's growth.

Look, Hibari's checking out Mukuro's ass!
So I'm not saying that Mukuro is completely uninterested.
What I am saying is that Hibari is much MORE interested. He's got Mukuro on his mind basically from the moment he gets beaten, and that doesn't disappear throughout the course of the manga. Fighting Mukuro again (and beating him into a bloody pulp) is one of Hibari's prime motivations that we see.
For example, after Gokudera's ring battle, Reborn is able to stop Hibari from attacking the Varia only by telling him that if he doesn't, he'll get to fight Mukuro again.

You can't win, Hibari! His head is too big, it will crush you.
We rarely do get to see any signs of Hibari's motivation for the things he does (and I really don't think he needs it, most of the time), but when we do – it's usually Mukuro.
Later, in the TYL arc, Hibari fights Genkishi.


Hmm, I wonder who he could be talking about.
He says that he is the best choice to fight Mist users, because he hates them so much (and he's spent so much time training to be able to beat them). Obviously there's no one he could mean except Mukuro. So ten years later, Hibari is still chasing after Mukuro, which is definitely not something he'd do if he just considered Mukuro an annoying pest.

Kusakabe's fishing! Maybe he ships 6918.
He also states clearly that he's not interested in Chrome if Mukuro's not inside her.
Mukuro still holds some interest in Hibari, as well, since it's stated that he was observing Hibari when inhabiting the owl, but it doesn't quite seem equal.

Hibari was acting on intuition that the owl was Mukuro... that's cute.
We get as little of Mukuro's true motivations as we do of Hibari's, but Mukuro's don't seem to involve Hibari in any way, or if they do, he never mentions them. He's interested, but not as creepy-stalkery-obsessed as he's often written. If anyone's the stalker here, it's probably Hibari.
Mukuro does keep an eye on Hibari over the years and over the course of the manga (visiting him before the Mist ring fight, Muku-owl observing him, Mukuro sending the files to Hibari's server instead of the Vongola's), but HIBARI is the one who's obsessed with chasing after him. He recognizes Mukuro's strength through Chrome ('if you die, we'll all be in trouble'), and has made a point of training to be able to fight Mist users (otherwise he wouldn't have done so well against Genkishi - Genkishi is startled that Hibari can see through his illusions), and he talks about Mukuro like ALL THE TIME (he even asked about Mukuro in the drama CD). In fact, it seems like besides the obvious things (dominating Namimori, biting herbivores to death), Mukuro is one of the few things that will motivate Hibari, whereas Hibari doesn't seem to hold that much interest for Mukuro. He's more interested in Tsuna (but this meta is not about Tsuna).
This seemed obvious to me just from reading the manga, but fandom seems to have such a different view of their relationship that I occasionally wonder if we're reading the same manga. Thus, the meta. Anyone is free to disagree, but now the world knows why I think it's strange that people always write Mukuro chasing after Hibari, rather than the other way around – since to me, that seems a lot more canon.
And I know that the world cares very much about my interpretation of the text of a silly shounen manga.
THE END >:O

I mean, look at him. Why would HE need to run after anyone?
Once upon a time, I told Aggy (
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Canon pretty much says the opposite when it comes to these two. From the beginning, Mukuro does show that Hibari at least registers on his radar – he knows Hibari is the strongest in Namimori, and he goes out of his way to take him out when it comes to that. Obviously he did his research in order to find out how strong Hibari is and what his weaknesses are, but even then, Hibari was never his final goal – just a step on the road.
Mukuro is impressed by Hibari, though, because Hibari is stronger and more stubborn than expected – attacking Mukuro even after his body is too injured to continue.

Mukuro is surprised!
We can see that he IS interested in Hibari, since he shows up before the Mist Ring battle just to comment on Hibari's growth.

Look, Hibari's checking out Mukuro's ass!
So I'm not saying that Mukuro is completely uninterested.
What I am saying is that Hibari is much MORE interested. He's got Mukuro on his mind basically from the moment he gets beaten, and that doesn't disappear throughout the course of the manga. Fighting Mukuro again (and beating him into a bloody pulp) is one of Hibari's prime motivations that we see.
For example, after Gokudera's ring battle, Reborn is able to stop Hibari from attacking the Varia only by telling him that if he doesn't, he'll get to fight Mukuro again.

You can't win, Hibari! His head is too big, it will crush you.
We rarely do get to see any signs of Hibari's motivation for the things he does (and I really don't think he needs it, most of the time), but when we do – it's usually Mukuro.
Later, in the TYL arc, Hibari fights Genkishi.


Hmm, I wonder who he could be talking about.
He says that he is the best choice to fight Mist users, because he hates them so much (and he's spent so much time training to be able to beat them). Obviously there's no one he could mean except Mukuro. So ten years later, Hibari is still chasing after Mukuro, which is definitely not something he'd do if he just considered Mukuro an annoying pest.

Kusakabe's fishing! Maybe he ships 6918.
He also states clearly that he's not interested in Chrome if Mukuro's not inside her.
Mukuro still holds some interest in Hibari, as well, since it's stated that he was observing Hibari when inhabiting the owl, but it doesn't quite seem equal.

Hibari was acting on intuition that the owl was Mukuro... that's cute.
We get as little of Mukuro's true motivations as we do of Hibari's, but Mukuro's don't seem to involve Hibari in any way, or if they do, he never mentions them. He's interested, but not as creepy-stalkery-obsessed as he's often written. If anyone's the stalker here, it's probably Hibari.
Mukuro does keep an eye on Hibari over the years and over the course of the manga (visiting him before the Mist ring fight, Muku-owl observing him, Mukuro sending the files to Hibari's server instead of the Vongola's), but HIBARI is the one who's obsessed with chasing after him. He recognizes Mukuro's strength through Chrome ('if you die, we'll all be in trouble'), and has made a point of training to be able to fight Mist users (otherwise he wouldn't have done so well against Genkishi - Genkishi is startled that Hibari can see through his illusions), and he talks about Mukuro like ALL THE TIME (he even asked about Mukuro in the drama CD). In fact, it seems like besides the obvious things (dominating Namimori, biting herbivores to death), Mukuro is one of the few things that will motivate Hibari, whereas Hibari doesn't seem to hold that much interest for Mukuro. He's more interested in Tsuna (but this meta is not about Tsuna).
This seemed obvious to me just from reading the manga, but fandom seems to have such a different view of their relationship that I occasionally wonder if we're reading the same manga. Thus, the meta. Anyone is free to disagree, but now the world knows why I think it's strange that people always write Mukuro chasing after Hibari, rather than the other way around – since to me, that seems a lot more canon.
And I know that the world cares very much about my interpretation of the text of a silly shounen manga.
THE END >:O

I mean, look at him. Why would HE need to run after anyone?
no subject
Date: 2008-12-29 01:55 am (UTC)But that's just purely 'interest', when it comes to more non-canon types of interest (like lust), I think Hibari wins out. He's already strong, and Mukuro seems to like tough guys. XD In a way, Hibari would be a more personal type of interest while Tsuna would be a more professional type. And since it's Mukuro, his goals will always be more important than his personal interests.