On Death Ground

I have a fictional character that I really like. It's from a manga by the name of "Hunter x Hunter." It's by Yoshihiro Togashi. Unfortunately, it's currently on hiatus, which is a shame - it's easily one of the best pieces of literature I've read. It's very intelligently plotted and deconstructs many tropes of the shounen genre.

My favorite character there is Aizak Netero. He's the leader of the eponymous Hunter organization, formerly the strongest in the world and all-around figure of reverence. He's a monster of a warrior and is the pinnacle of that world's martial art. He got that way because of initially doing ten thousand punches a day, everyday, for four years. That kind of determination alone is something I would love to have, but where Netero gets awesome is that he started this when he was forty-six years old. It's like he started this because of a mid-life crisis; obviously for him his life was just starting at that age.

He's the kind of guy I wish to become when I reach old age. The characters in the manga say he's a twisted personality, and I do have to agree he's strange. He's not averse to obstacles and challenges; in fact, sometimes he deliberately sets it up so that the going goes more difficult for him. I can understand that he wanted to find someone he can feel desperate fighting against, someone who was stronger than him; but he also enabled Pariston Hill to be his traitorous right hand. Was he a death seeker? It's alien to me, how he relishes and encourages situations that are against him. Any ordinary person would endeavor to make a comfortable life for himself, or at the least avoid getting into trouble. Is it a learning experience for him? With his stats, something tells me no. What is it then?

After his death a character implied that he doesn't think about winning or losing. He's playing around. Playing around. He was playing around, while fighting against the King of Ants - who wanted to put humanity in ghettoes. I suppose he was addicted to the struggle, of being on death ground. Like Ging Freecs, he enjoys the journey/the struggle. I still need work to reach that level, of being grateful for everything, including the setbacks.

UPDATE: Just a new insight to the character. He didn't actually need to sacrifice himself fighting the King; he could have just led the latter to a trap where the bomb was. Netero could have arranged to have the King distracted when he detonated the explosive. There were other combination of tactics that would have resulted in him surviving. But he didn't choose them; he chose to kill the King with a suicide, and only after fighting - when he could have just done it from the outset. I think he did not want to underestimate his opponent, and he was willing to sacrifice his life for a definitive end to the problem. Yet, since he was going to die anyway, he wanted to play around a bit more. The things we do for no reason at all save that we want to, which do not net us any benefit or reward, could be said to be our entertainment. And trying to understand what is entertaining to someone would involve understanding the length and breadth of his very self - something beyond my powers. So I suppose I'll just settle with knowing that Netero is devoted to what he considers fun, and leave it at that.