Hunter x Hunter: Carnival Orphans Explained

“Carnival” and “Blasphemy”.

Two words that define the darkest secrets of the Kakin Empire, currently hailed as a pioneer of progress and democratization.

Morena Prudo’s tragic exposition in Chapter 408: “Negotiation, Part 2”  revealed that Kakin has never changed in the slightest and the current escalation through Beyond Netero’s New Continent expedition and the Succession Contest in the Black Whale reveal all the more the wickedness of the Kakin Empire.

Blasphemy: Lese Majeste

Although democratized, Kakin remains a country with massive wealth inequality.

The poor and middle class are kept in line through Kakin’s customs and laws, particularly that of Lese Majeste (French for “injured majesty”), a law that forbids any disrespectful speech or act towards the Royal Family.

In the real world, there are still numerous countries such as Brunei, Malasyia, and Thailand that enforce Lese Majeste, with Saudi Arabia even handing out capital punishment for it.

This is the case for Hunter x Hunter’s Kakin Empire but their version of Lese Majeste goes beyond speech.

In Kakin, it is forbidden for anyone to even look directly at the Royal Family, treating them akin to gods like the Chinese Emperors who were confined in the Forbidden City or any palaces prior to that.

In spite of the democratization in Kakin, where the people seemingly gain more power and self-determination, acts such as contraception, abortion, or genetic testing related to the royal family are considered acts of rebellion and disrespect toward the royal lineage, resulting in immediate execution.

These extremes now make sense once we learn about the other word, “Carnival”.

Carne Levare: The Kakin Festival of Sodom

Morena explains that the Kakin Festival is a ritual and cultural system that enables the Kakin royals to engage in pleasures that are not meant to be public.

Instead, they would be hosted by villages particularly far out from the urban centers where the educated and less controllable people live.

Every few years, the Kakin Royal Family would spend resources to travel incognito, without alerting the media, to a randomly selected village.

These unprepared folk would be expected to follow the royals, especially as they would assign EVERY villager to be an “entertainer”, where they would be forced to do all sorts of tricks and pleasures for royalty, including copulation with no regard for their well-being.

In Morena’s tale, these “entertainers” would even spend more than a full day just to satisfy the royal’s desires.

Children conceived during the Carnival become “Carnival Orphans” and would end up either as “Flesh” to be used as packages for human trafficking operations or as “Second-Track Fakers”, who would be trained in the Mafia and be protected as secret royals, potentially to head said trafficking operations and protect Kakin’s interests from the shadows.

Anyone who attempted to test a child to confirm their royal parentage would be erased by the government to prevent scandal, although it is possible that the reason for doing this is to hide the human trafficking involving the Festival Orphans.

The Kakin Carnival is probably inspired by the film “120 Days of Sodom”, a disgusting tale of barbarity under a fictional Italian fascist regime where the four most powerful men in the country retreat into a palace where they purpose the ultimate pleasures that we will not get into.

This in turn is also based on the realities of opulence where orgies and other “pleasures of the flesh” are enjoyed to gross extremes by those in power, as evidenced by the original novel of the “120 Days of Sodom”, the father of sadism himself, Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade.

“Carnival Orphans” and the Three Mafia Families

The “Carnival Orphans” then were the “helots” (Sparta’s slave force) of the Kakin Empire that were kept in line through fear.

Through the Mafia, Kakin royalty would keep their dirty laundry hidden and at the same time perpetuate their disgusting crimes.

There is also a lot of intersect between the Carne Vare and Beyond Netero’s scheme revealed in Chapter 401: “Moonlight”

Considering the grizzly details of the Carne Vare, it is easy to assume that Beyond Netero took part in these festivities but did so with the female soldiers or wives of the military officers, all to form his army of Cursed Nen users in preparation for the Dark Continent Expedition decades later.

This could lead into an even deeper rabbit hole.

The Succession Contest Origins?

The preparations for the Succession Contest could very well begin here, as the Nen vow required for the Contest would compel royals to perform their duty to bear many sacrifices for the ritual and the Carne Vare was the perfect means for that.

In the 30 years since Nasubi’s reign, he has had 14 children, which might be the exact amount he is looking for.

It is likely that the Kakin Festival is where Nasubi and past kings find more legal wives through a process of pleasure-seeking, where the majority of women are discarded when they have failed to meet the expectations of the King and their bastards becoming part of the Mafia that can aid in the politics of the Succession War or even mobilize the illegal human trafficking businesses royalty has consented.

This is what happened to Nasubi’s brothers and Morena, who became the heads of the Three Mafia Families of Cha-R, Xi-Yu, and Heil-Ly.

This could very well be how Oito met Nasubi, considering that she was said to be poor and gained much wealth and luxury through marriage with Nasubi, which cannot be said for other women such as Morena’s mother.

Now Morena is on a mission to destroy the world, with Kakin’s Carnival of Sodom being a microcosm of Yoshihiro Togashi’s commentary during the Chimera Ant Arc, on how we perpetuate our own misery.

We are truly…far worse.

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