I hope this is in the right section.
As Slan said, best to keep the discussion of earlier volumes here (I should probably give the thread a makeover to make it more clearly for general series discussion, like Manga Mausoleum), and you'll want to be careful looking in the Current Episodes thread anyway, thar be spoilers!
I progressed a bit farther in the series, I'm on vol. 12 at the moment. I'm surprised how muchthe death of uncle gon gets to me 
Glad to hear you've made progress, that's one of my favorite volumes, and not surprising you feel that way, though it's certainly unexpected while you're reading. It's so worthless.
Yeah I felt really bad for uncle Gon as well, he was a nice man and he died trying to protect that idiot Matahachi.
Yeah, moral of the story, don't help Matahatchi!
Yeah, I also found it touching. But I think it's partly because we know that he was the only one, aside from Granny Hon'iden, that truly had faith in Matahachi becoming a better man. For him to die while Matahachi runs away... it's like Inoue's telling us he's really, really hopeless.
Yeah, and it was all the more touching because Gon saw right through Matahachi and knew him for what he was yet still loved him and thought he was good enough to be somebody, maybe not a big somebody, but a somebody. Matahachi would have been better off spending more time with Gon, he encouraged him when he needed it, but called him out too. Gon had realistic expectations and knew before Matahachi did what a good life he had setup for him.
On one hand, yeah, that's probably one of Matahachi's lowest points. But at the same time, the incident really humanizes him. As much as you want to hate him for being a coward, I think that Gon's death helped Matahachi realize that if he just keeps running away in various ways, he'll end up losing everything that really matters. Of course, being Matahachi, I don't think it properly sinks in for some time... 
Yeah, that's a good point, and a theme about Matahachi in general; he's sort of good at hitting rock bottom and finding the light down there for the rest of us.
