There are a few exceptions to this - she’s furious at Killua for upsetting Nanika, and at one point she asks him if he thinks the family would be better off without her. She also doesn’t seem to have much of an inner life, at least not that the audience is privy to. Alluka could absolutely be replaced by a magic lamp that grants wishes without almost any change to the plot. There’s something called the Sexy Lamp Test, intended to determine if a female character in a piece of media actually does anything - Alluka is (thankfully) not the least bit sexualized, so let’s call it the Magic Lamp Test.

There is one instance of her referring to herself with the feminine first-person pronoun “atashi” when talking to Killua, but other than that, she lets him do the talking for her. Most likely, the Zoldycks other than Killua consider Alluka to be a boy.Īs for how Alluka herself talks about her gender - well, that’s the thing. What we do see is that both Illumi and Milluki refer to Alluka as their brother (Illumi to Hisoka, Milluki to a tourist), and at least some of the Zoldyck butlers refer to Alluka as the masculine “young master.” Neither Silva nor Kikyo ever refer to Alluka with gendered language that we see, and some of the butlers address her with the gender-neutral “-sama.” It also seems likely that the skirt she wears was provided for her by the family - considering that the youngest Zoldyck, Kalluto, also presents feminine (more on them below), they might just not care about gender presentation. Killua never refers to Alluka as a girl around his family, and they never refer to her as a boy around him. The English translation has instances of Killua and his parents talking about Alluka with him using she/her pronouns and his parents using he/him - in the Japanese, this never happens. It’s worth mentioning that Japanese is a very context-based language, and it’s easier/more common not to use any kind of pronouns (gendered or otherwise) when talking about someone. In contrast to Killua, the rest of the family - who see her as a monster - refer to and treat her as a boy, at least as far as we can see. I have no idea why this line exists in the form it does, and all I can really recommend is to ignore it. He calls her his sister any number of times. This is the only time Killua ever misgenders her - he’s otherwise as supportive as he could possibly be. While on the run from Illumi, Killua explains the situation to Morel - while we don’t see what Killua said, Morel’s reaction is “Your older brother wants to kill your younger brother?” This is an accurate translation of the Japanese,¹ and it means Killua must have referred to Alluka as his younger brother rather than his younger sister. I say “almost always” because there’s one notable instance where he (presumably) doesn’t. Killua - who loves her deeply and respects her feelings and wishes - almost always refers to and treats her as a girl. While Alluka’s gender is never spelled out - in fact, it’s depicted in a very oblique and contradictory fashion, with different people gendering her differently - the most logical explanation is that she’s trans. Killua breaks her out to use Nanika’s power to heal Gon, who is in impossibly bad shape after their fight with the Chimaera Ants, and their eldest brother Illumi follows, hoping to kill Alluka before she can endanger the family. This entity is referred to by Killua as Nanika, simply meaning “something.” Because of this power, she is feared by the Zoldyck family and kept locked up deep beneath the mansion in a giant playroom. The younger sister of protagonist Killua, she possesses a separate something inside her that has the power to grant almost any wish, though the cost is usually great. If you’re talking about gender in HxH, you obviously have to start with Alluka, who is…complicated.

Kite hunter x hunter english manga