#Gege actually planned those out

[the-millennium-curse]

See, the flashbacks to Nobara, a character who Gege really obviously didn't decide the status of, leaving her, for real life years, in a functionally dead state but without the chance for the story to ever deal with that death in any way because maybe she'll come back sometime... make me think that maybe he just isn't good at writing character deaths

Ok lets address the elephant in the room. Why is no one talking about Satoru? why is no one mentioning Satoru. why is no one grieving Satoru? why is everyone acting like Satoru does not exist?

its so jarring that no one and especially his students not acknowledging him at all.

so its either 1- Gege does not give a fuck and want to quickly end his manga 2- Satoru is alive and being healed by Shoko and will have his major comeback.

[chuluoyi]

the birthday boy

- fushiguro megumi x reader

your boyfriend is indifferent towards his own special day, but with you, he actually finds it worth celebrating

genre/warnings: fluff, fluff, fluff with a teeny weeny dash of angst

notes: loosely based on this fanart. pls just give my boi back gege you awful one-eyed cat how could you hold him hostage even on his birthday

listen to: sakura koi by mosawo don't mind me i just get all soft for this poor boy *sigh*

general masterlist

Megumi never really liked birthdays—his own birthdays, specifically.

"Come on, Megumi... just what is it that you want for your present?" you pleaded, pursing your lips together as you faced your boyfriend. "I don't want to give you a surprise only to find out it's not something you'd enjoy!"

However, ever since Gojo went and took him in, ever since he began attending Jujutsu High, and ever since he started dating you, to his chagrin, everyone started making a big fuss over it.

With the straightest face ever, he glanced at you and muttered, "I'm telling you, you can get me whatever."

"That's not an answer!"

"Seriously, you can pick anything. I'm good with anything."

You huffed in exasperation. "You're so unbelievably uncooperative, sheesh."

"On the contrary, I think I'm being quite amiable," he deadpanned. "You don't have to think about it that hard."

In a way, you should've expected this. Your boyfriend was never one who made a big deal over anything, and he probably meant it when he said that he was good with whatever. Your soft boy was just wired that way.

Meanwhile, to Megumi, his birthday was more of a remainder of good old days he spent with his kind sister and Gojo—when times were much more simpler. When Tsumiki was still alive and well. Call him an emo, but he was just feeling bittersweet.

Tsumiki would craft him this makeshift party hat, and Gojo would get him an overly sweet birthday cake with an even more over-the-top frostings. They'd join in singing him happy birthday, and Gojo's singing would be intentionally and especially awful while at it.

But now that he thought back to it, he kind of missed those times.

You threw him a narrowed-eyed look. "Forget it, I half-expected this anyway—" but then, suddenly struck by an idea, you exclaimed, "—oh! Wait, I know!"

Your enthusiastic exclamation caught his attention, and he silently observed as you furiously tapped away on your phone, scouring Google for standard gift ideas for boyfriends.

For the next half-hour, you continuously sought his feedback on each of suggestions. However, Megumi only nodded or agreed with evident disinterest, which didn't really answer your question at all.

“You’re seriously going to be like this, huh?” you sighed, frowning in total indignation, but in your boyfriend’s eyes, you were the height of absolute cuteness.

As you grumbled inwardly about how dull he was, Megumi wore a small smile. Truthfully, if asked, his ideal birthday would revolve around spending time with you. You didn't have to lose your head over this.

Needless to say, you were still trying to make it an event to remember. And Megumi knew, because you were so obvious it was giving him secondhand embarrassment.

"Itadori! I'm telling you—" you were rebuking a sheepish Yuji on broad daylight regarding which color for balloons to be placed in the class on the day of his birthday. Earlier, he saw you and Nobara huddled together, talking about cakes and pastries, then also animatedly discussing with Inumaki, Panda and Maki, pulling out all the stops for a celebration plan without missing a beat.

Megumi could only facepalm at your attempt to maintain secrecy—in which you were failing miserably, almost as if you hadn't really made an effort at all.

"Isn’t it nice, Megumi?" suddenly Gojo slid beside him, with a stupid grin on his face. "Someone who exclusively goes this far for you, hmm?"

"It's embarrassing..."

"Ha! Don't be shy," Gojo barked, leaving him with a friendly pat in the back before stalking away with a snicker, and Megumi wasn't the least bit amused. He was certain that at least, Yuji and Nobara would tease the heck out of him after all was said and done due to your antics.

Even so, he didn't have the heart to stop you, appreciating your well-meaning efforts. He felt somewhat soft too inside, as he didn't expect that there would be someone who cared about this way too much like you did. Just it felt strange—

—because last he remembered, the only person who was hellbent on making his birthday a nice memory was Tsumiki.

. . .

So you were organizing a surprise party for him alongside others. Megumi already knew that, he had anticipated it and frankly, he didn’t actually expect much, but when he actually stepped into the classroom and was greeted with a literal bang, confetti, colorful banners, balloons, and a crowd of well-wishers, he was floored.

“Fushiguro! Happy birthday!”

“Look happier a little, would you?!”

“Look! Look! We got you a cake!”

Yuji and Panda almost hugged him—but before he could, Megumi shoved them away, Nobara handed him a paper bag tied with a pretty bow with a cool smile—believing her gift to be the best, Inumaki gave his hand a shake, and Maki wished him only the best.

All of this was within his expectations. He knows, and yet…

"Hey, Megumi! Smile!" your voice stood out the most, along with your widest smile, beaming and gesturing towards the camera as you were about to take a group picture.

Megumi swore his heart skipped a beat. His pretty, sweet girlfriend. Your affections reached him, and it dampened the hardness that he always carried inside his heart. In that fleeting moment, he felt you were radiant, just like the sun.

Then he turned his gaze and found the person he knew he could never thank enough in this lifetime. Gojo, for the first time in a while, wasn't the clown he made himself to be for his sake. Standing with crossed arms, he quietly watched over him, nodding towards the camera as well with a meaningful smile.

Megumi felt warm, he felt loved, and he wouldn’t admit it, but this might be the best day of his life—surrounded by you and his friends like this. And he actually felt more than just that, but no words could do it justice, because nothing could have ever captured the overwhelming fullness inside his chest.

Tsumiki... You see... I'm doing well, you know?

Later, after all festivities are done, you managed to pull him into a secluded corner of the dorms to give him your one-of-a-kind gift, while fidgeting nervously.

"What is it?" he questioned, gaze squarely fixed on you. "At this point, there's no need for you to be this nervous. Nothing could've surprised me any more than Panda's giant panda earlier."

You laughed, recalling how he nearly got squashed by the life-sized stuffed panda earlier, but then you averted your gaze, feeling your face flush and turning into the cutest shade of pink.

"Well! To be fair, it was because you were so uncooperative when I asked what you wanted for your gift! And since I have gotten you the cake, I figured it'll be fun if you want to play this game..."

You huffed, and Megumi simply blinked in confusion when you handed him five pieces of papers—tickets? He turned them over to find the words "Free Pass" written on each one.

"Sooo you can use each ticket to ask me to do anything! Anything at all, be it me dancing to the worst song you can think of, or whatever!" your cheeks were burning so hard, but your resolute gaze kept him captivated as you continued, "So yeah, you get five free passes to make me do things I wouldn't normally do."

Lips pursed, eyes sparkling, cheeks ablaze. All in all, you were irresistibly adorable that Megumi had this overwhelming urge to scoop you up and put you inside his pocket if he could.

And really, free passes? Did you not consider the numerous exploitable loopholes he could subject you to?

"Okay, here, I want to use my first ticket."

"Huh! Already? What is it?"

He chuckled then, his lips tugging into the warmest of smiles, and you felt your heart soar, seeing that rare carefree expression on him.

"I want to kiss you."

[sillygoofyqueer]

AUGH AUGH AUGH AUGH [sounds of me dying the longer I go without writing about the mad scientist AU] Nie Huaisang has just received a message written in blood via a crow that does NOT look alive, likely from Wei Wuxian due to the reference of what his sect is like, similar to how he first approached Nie Huaisang with a message. He isn't quite sure what to do - he should go to his brother at least with this information, but he is very busy planning the war with Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang doesn't want to cause any more stress for them. So! He instead goes to Lan Wangji, who is, as always, helping out in the medical tents whenever he's not on the battlefield. Instead of saying anything that could draw attention to the situation, Nie Huaisang just waves him over and then shows off the yin filled - almost definitely dead - crow, before gesturing for them both to leave the medical tent. Lan Wangji goes without question.

Nie Huaisang shows him the message and is like "so uhh I'm pretty sure this is from Wei Wuxian." "Why is it written in blood?" "he's in the Burial Mounds, you can't expect him to have ink." Lan Wangji concedes this point, and wants to know why he is being told this, so Nie Huaisang explains that to have a batshit insane Wei Wuxian on their side would be very damn useful. Issue is, they need to find the Wen siblings and Xue Yang and get them to safety in order to get his support in the war, and Lan Wangji is great for field missions during this lull in the fighting. It's not like Nie Huaisang is going out!! He works best behind the scenes, after all.

Of course, Lan Wangji is more than desperate to make up for the mistakes he made by not attempting to help Wei Wuxian when he first had a chance to, so he goes out of his way to hunt for the Wen siblings and Xue Yang, chasing down information in a way that is basically like what he was doing during those three months in canon. He finally learns that they are in the supervisory office of Yiling, and goes on over there to collect them - and take back Yiling in the process. Yes, there is a thought of how close Wei Wuxian really was to his family all along, but it's overshadowed by the realisation that they need to explain to Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen what's been going on while they've been busy plotting and planning to save the Jianghu.

Lan Wangji makes the executive decision to bring it up during a meeting, and there is varying degrees of skepticism to the news. Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen are open to the chance of a changing tide in the war, plus they owe Wei Wuxian the protection of his family after they so carelessly overlooked him before he was thrown into the Burial Mounds. Jin Zixuan is like "I said right from the start that he was brainwashed, but nobody believed me!" so he's willing to take the risk of harbouring three wen associates if it means being proven right through the powerhouse that could be Wei Wuxian. (I should explain that they believe that he must be pretty powerful right now because one, he's actually survived in the Burial Mounds, and two, he's had previous work with resentful energy, he had to be getting up to some kind of work in the hellsite.)

Jiang Fengmian is like "I don't know all that much about him, but he did save Jiang Cheng's life, and he's the son of my bestie" but Yu Ziyuan (who is obviously there because why wouldn't she be) is NOT having it. Why would she? She's a hater. She's saying all sorts of insults n shit, but Lan Wangji basically left the moment he got assent from all of the actual sect leaders, so it's all for naught in the end. Lan Wangji is too busy showing up to the supervisory office in Yiling with a small group of soldiers, kicking ass and taking names like there's no tomorrow. Xue Yang, who is quite rabid at the moment, is watching the carnage and being like "I'm going to fucking kill anyone who touches Wei-gege's notes" while Wen Ning and Wen Qing are getting ready to escape. Lan Wangji catches them in the act but is like "we're here to help" and shows them the note that the crows sent.

The lads (Wen siblings + Xue Yang) realise that Wei Ying is alive and go through so many different emotions but they don't have time to unpack all of them - Xue Yang wants to go into the Burial Mounds himself to collect Wei Ying, but Wen Qing shuts that down. They don't know how Wei Ying survived, and they have no clue if Xue Yang would survive. It's best to just let Wei Ying come back to them, like a stray puppy. Xue Yang does not like this, so Wen Qing instead gets him with a needle and Wen Ning carries him along, used to this turn of events. (Yes I have decided that Wen Ning is the shy but sweet brawns to his older sister's brains. He's not not smart or anything, I just think it'd be neat.)

Meanwhile, the crows are watching all around because they're in Yiling, and they report back to an anxiously awaiting Wei Ying, who has been pre-emptively gathering an army of resentful spirits who could find closure in fighting and violence and death. He's helping them all be chill through a gentle melody session, and the Burial Mounds is dragging more spirits into Its grounds to help out Its precious son! Wei Ying learns that his family is not only alive but close to him, and is simultaneously kicking himself while also thanking the Gods that they are alive and they're going to be safe in the grasps of the Sunshot Campaign. With that knowledge handed to him, he feels a lot calmer as he squares his shoulders, pushing all the pain to the side and focusing on the army of resentful spirits he has created.

Oh, the Wen won't know what hit them.

[nevermeyers]

Yeah, I know I said I'd keep quiet about it because I plan on ignoring the ending. I've done it plenty of times, even with books I consider my favorites. "Oh this book is so good, it's one of my faves... How does it end? I don't remember." I'm going to do that with jjk because I've done it more times. Anyways.

Seriously, where's the character development? Why dedicate an entire chapter to showing how much criticism affects you and making excuses for your narrative instead of fixing it? Gege could have written about the characters and their problems, their worries, their evolution even while talking about how the politics of jujutsu world are changing rn.

What are Nobara's thoughts right now? There could have been an entire chapter dedicated to her character to fill in the gaps and finish defining her, what about her mother? How does she feel about her childhood friends? What are her plans now?

What about Megumi? Yeah, seeing him laugh was therapeutic, but honestly his character hasn't had the development/ending I expected. The timeskip was weird, his acting is literally the same as the beginning of the manga. It feels like I'm reading the same person who appeared in chapter one and not a traumatized boy who is learning to live. Where is Itadori teaching him that it's actually worth moving on? Where's the whole PTSD thing I'm sure he has? (fuck megumi haters btw fuck them, and fuck the way they victim blamed a kid). What are his thoughts about Gojo? About Sukuna?

Yuuji... Our mc. I was expecting to see him mourning Choso, mourning Gojo. But no, apparently it's more important to explain that there was a secret society (lmao) than to have him show respect and tears for those people he loved. His family, who he never got to spend time with, and his sensei, who decided not to execute him and who taught him almost everything he knows. I wanted to see him taking his friends to the movies to see some B-movie horror instead of going through the horror of watching characters insult him and tell him that it's better if he were dead.

And yes, I know there are two chapters left and some of the things I mention here might appear, but we've already wasted our time with one chapter, that's many pages. There won't be time to fix whatever is this. I feel bad :/

Now, one of the things that bothers me the most is that there are characters that were implied to be dead and now suddenly appear alive. I thought this was about letting the new generations create a fair world, but no. Do you know which character bothers me the most? Mei Mei. No, I'm not against someone writing sa/csa in fiction as long as it's not romanticized (I accept the unreliable narrator because that happens a lot irl and it's sad). The thing is that Mei Mei literally embodies the values ​​of the jujutsu world. In the jujutsu clans there was everything, sexism, abuse, neglect and most likely incest since (at least that's how I see it) they are like the monarchies of the Middle Ages. Mei Mei is the embodiment of all those rotten values ​​that Gojo hated, that the new generations are destined to eradicate. Seriously. What is she doing alive? Take her out rn. Gojo didn't die for this.

I read someone saying that maybe the point of this chapter isn't to break the cycle, but to repeat it. I have to say that I'm a big fan of that trope! It reminds me that humans repeat the same mistakes, but even if that were the point I think it wouldn't be well written.

There came a point in the story where both options: love is worthless and love is worth it were acceptable by the end of the manga. This is the ending where love is worth it, but why hasn't anything changed? The characters we saw in 269 are almost exactly the same we saw in chapter number one.

If this is a story about how love is worth it, accept the consequences and write characters who, thanks to love, move forward and build a new world instead of neutralizing any kind of development

[sidsinning]

Gojo is such a loveable character man he's handsome, cool, funny, and arrogant but that's balanced out by how much he cares about and sacrifices for those around him (and how he can literally back up all his claims...tbh most of the time he's not even in the scene and someone be glazing him by stating pure facts ("[Character] is best at [skill]...aside from Satoru Gojo of course"))

He perseveres in the face of countless horrible things that happen to him without blaming anyone or even thinking about giving up; every time he sees a problem he is already making a game plan to fix it,,,,

He's seemingly silly, but is actually very aware of his responsibilities as an adult for his students, which is why he never burdens them with his own hang ups no matter how much turmoil he's in (despite them wanting him to), always trying to be there for them above all else bc he knows what it's like for the adults in his life to all fail him,,,,

Me when I just killed my One And Only but I care about comforting my traumatized students more bc they're just kids and need me as their anchor:

Like Gege please stop telling me things like "he loves spoiling his students and always makes time for them even outside of class hours" I'm only human

UGGGHHHHH MY GOJO BRAIN ROT

[linkspooky]

The Death of Kenjaku

So I was planning to write this meta the week that Kenjaku died, but decided to delay until we got full confirmation of his death. Something I didn't believe in even after Kenjaku passed the merger onto Sukuna. However, watching this video about death in Jujutsu Kaisen inspired me to finish this post. Not because I disagree with anything the YouTuber is saying, but because they can speculate on the meaning of so many deaths in Jujutsu Kaisen but can't find the meaning in Kenjaku's sudden death. This has led me to speculate why Gege made the choice to kill Kenjaku in the way that he did. What meaning is there in Kenjaku's abrupt and unsatisfying death?

Who is Kenjaku?

The first step in understanding Kenjaku's death is of course understanding how he lived. We actually know incredibly little about Kenjaku's character by design. Despite the fact he's literally in Geto's body, he's not meant to have sympathetic or human motivations to his actions (though hold onto that "human motivation" in your head for a moment). No flashback sequence shows the audience why this guy is the way he is, no single event seems to have driven him to do what he did.

This is what we know about Kenjaku in brief. He is a sorcerer who is over a thousand years old who was around in Sukuna's day. He once had a friendship with Tengen, but found her original self boring and unambitious. He also contrasts heavily with Tengen, who lives outside of humanity, because he has lived among humanity for 1,000 years. One of those lifetimes was Noritoshi Kamo who violated a woman and conducted heinous experiments. He produced ten children in his one thousand years, the nine death painting siblings and Yuji Itadori. He considers the first children boring, because human and curse hybrids turned out too normal.

He also partially blames himself for how boring they are, because he can't create anything that will exceed his expectations, the only thing that can exceed his expectations is born in chaos. He spent a thousand years organizing the culling games, and wants to use the games to create a merger, because he thinks creating a merger between Tengen and Humanity will create something entirely new and interesting. He also believes the way towards the future lies in further optimizing cursed energy, not in breaking away from it the way Yuki Tsukumo tried to do and Maki has.

The only people whose word we have on Kenjaku's motivations are Kenjaku himself, and Tengen's word and Tengen themselves who claims to not know what goes on in the human heart.

From all of the above Kenjaku seems to be a shallow character who's motivations can be summed up as "because I can" and "I want to see what happens." This shallowness is intentional however, as Gege who once praised the minimalist storytelling of Nasu and Evangelion likes to pick and choose what crumbs of backstory he gives out for his characters. We've never gotten any exposition on the Gojo clan, but we have an entire chapter about Takaba's failed career as a stand-up comic. This isn't a judgement of good or bad writing, this is just how Gege writes as minimalist as possible. This is in line with how Gege writes the ancient sorcerers as well, they are all much more shallow driven by instinct or Freudian Id (I desire) rather than the higher reasoning of modern-day sorcerers. Takaba uses comedy as a means of communication and bridging the gaps between people, Higuruma's backstory is the critique of the modern day justice system. Ishigori apparently lived a satisfying life where he was succesful and had good women, but that wasn't enough so he wants to get into a fight with Yuta to satisfy his hunger and feel like he's eaten desert.

It sounds shallow when I summarize it in text, but in the context of the fight with Yuta, it's a challenge for Yuta who for the most part only cares about his loved ones and sees the world through his love goggles to be more selfish and fight for his own desires. It's also reflective of a more basic and instinctual kind of thinking, as opposed to the higher reasoning and logic that modern-day sorcerers apply.

I'm keeping most of this first part to text for this reason, like go back and read the fight with Ishigori and Yuta. If I summarize Ishigori's character reasoning out of context it sounds stupid, but read the fight and it works because it's ID (I Desire) vs. Yuta's superego in not only having to collect points to help rescue Tsumiki, find a way to protect all the innocent people in the Culling Games, and also collect enough points to take on Kenjaku himself so Gojo won't have to. Meanwhile Ishigori's just fighting to get some of that sweet desert, the shallow works in contrast to the more layered motivations of our heroes.

Kenjaku is a shallow archetype fighting to satisfy his baser impulses (in his case curiosity) in comparison to the main characters who are fighting for more complicated reasons and often people besides themselves.

The question then becomes what archetype is Kenjaku. In that case answering who Kenjaku is is quite simple.

Kenjaku is a clown.

It might be more accurate to say that Kenjaku embodies what's commonly known as the "trickster archetype" but I'mma go with clown.

The most obvious example of a clown villain is what most consider the joker to be, that is a silly little clown man who challenges the straight faced and grim batman and sews chaos where Batman attempts to establish law and order in Gotham and make the city into a better place.

From the book Batman and Psychology:

More than any other villains, the Joker and Two-face reflect Batman himself as funhouse distortions, converses of who and what he is. The laughing, jesting, brightly colored Joker contrasts with grim, dark Batman. The Joker is the Joker. No alter ego. The film's opening bank robbery shows him wearing a clown mask over clown makeup, Under the surface there's only more Joker. He gives no history except inconsistent lies. When he finally considers the impact of his demand Batman unmask, he retracts the threat and demands that Batman's identity remain undisclosed. He wants a batman who has no other self, a Dark Knight whose only deeper layer is further darkness.

Is there a better descriptor for Kenjaku then these words?

Kenjaku is Kenjaku. No alter ego. A clown mask over clown makeup., Under the surface there's only more Kenjaku.

In other words, what you see is what you get.

Kenjaku even mirrors Joker's opinion of Batman, he thinks people should be more like him, not the other way around. He's not the outlier, he's being true to humanity's basic impulses of curiousity and discovery.

A more apt comparison as a clown though would probably be Loki, one of the most classic examples of clowning in the shared mythology of humanity. The character who challenges the common wisdom of gods like Odin who suspended themselves from the world tree for eleven days in order to gain wisdom. Loki, who through his trickery manages to bring about the events of Ragnarok for no deeper reason than because he can. Everyone swore not to harm Balder and Loki goes to find something that can harm him because BET.

Mythological Loki doesn't need a deeper motivation because what he represents in the mythology is someone who challenges authority and brings about a change, because in Norse Mythology nothing lasts forever and no era is permanent. Jujutsu Kaisen is also a story about how things should not in fact stay the same and tradition is bad sometimes.

When Kenjaku finds Tengen's true body he's curled up in a tree root in the fetal position, and he killed what is basically the all-knowing, all-seeing supposedly immortal sorcerer that maintains the status quo of japan, it's not exactly subtle.

Kenjaku is a clown, and clown's gotta clown. We don't need any more explanation that, it's more about what he does for the story. However, what he represents, the deep intellectual curiosity, and also a drive to disrupt the status quo in an attempt to see something more interesting can also be analyzed more deeply because they are human emotions that motivate us as well. The same way that Mahito is an inhuman monster, but he's created and motivated by the fear of other humans, something all of us have. '

Before moving onto his death though, I wanna hammer in how Kenjaku really is just motivated by these two things, a desire to see something interesting, and intellectual curiosity by comparing him to other characters.

The Clown in Fiction

I've already compared Kenjaku to Loki and the Joker, but when it comes to someone who wants to disrupt the entire order of the world simply because they're bored we've got to go to the original girlboss.

So there are plenty of villains who go "I'm evil because I'm bored" but they usually tend to be pretty shallow, either shallowly written for the lulz evil characters who just exist for shock value or just kinda dull. No one has ever done it as good as Junko Enoshima and no one ever will again.

For those who need context DanganRonpa is a death game series where the main villain basically has caused the apocalypse, wiped out most of humanity, and then induces survivors in a bunker to kill each other in a death game, where if someone commits a succesful murder they can escape the bunker, but if they're caught in a trial they're executed. Also, if they're not convicted in the trial everyone else is killed, motivating the jury to find and execute the guilty murderer.

Junko Enoshima the main villain and orchestrator of this death game ended the world because despair. She wants to inflict despair on everyone because despair. Because hope sucks and despair is where it's at.

It sounds shallow and it is and Kodaka has said in interview he wrote Junko to be a villain character with zero redeeming character traits, and no sympathetic backstory to describe why she is the way she is, but there is still something motivating her.

If you go a bit deeper into the lore and read Dangan Ronpa Zero, there is an entire book which explains the lengths which Junko goes to feel normal human emotions. The thing is much like Kenjaku Junko is too smart for her own good, everything is predictable and therefore everything bores her. Once in an attempt to live normally, she literally lobotomizes herself, makes it so that she can't remember anything and has continual amnesia constantly forgetting what just happened to her, because that's the only way she can live without knowing everything that's going to happen and constantly predicting everyone's actions.

Junko has whatever her universe's version of the six-eyes is, but instead of lording it over other people like Gojo and basking in her superiority she wants to feel normal, and connected to the world. If she can't have that she tries to make the world as unpredictable place as possible so she can experience it the same way that everyone else does.

Hope is harmony. A just heart, moving toward the light. That is all. Despair is hope's polar opposite. It is messy and confusing. It swallows up love, hatred, and everything else. Because not knowing where you will end up is despair. Despair is even what you cannot predict. Only despair's unpredictability can save you from a boring future.

I'm still not describing it properly because I don't want to go into a Danganronpa essay in this post about Jujutsu Kaisen, but one example I always use is two characters from American Dragon Jake Long. They're a pair of twins who see the future, one always sees happy things, and one always sees sad things. The one who has happy visions is a goth who's very depressed and the one who sees disaster is an incredibly peppy girl.

Jake is so confused as to why the twin who always sees good visions is so depressed, and she basically tells him to imagine having every good thing, every small little surprise, every pleasure taken out of life.

Kara: When you only see good things, nothing's special anymore. All the pleasant surprises are taken out of life. Sara: But, when you only see bad stuff, even the smallest bit of good news makes you happy!

All of this to say what Junko feels isn't just boredom, or a desire to commit evil for evil's sake, but also a full on existential crisis where she's simply too smart so she doesn't feel any connection to other people or the world around her. In order to feel that connection, that connection that everyone else has, to feel like she is actually a participant in her life not an observer she's willing to go to extremes to make the world a more interesting place, to therefore make her own life feel satisfying.

Kenjaku vs. The World (Kenjaku Pilgrim's sad little life)

To connect all this back to Kenjaku imagine the profound existential despair of a person who's lived for a thousand years, and felt bored all that time. Sukuna is at least a hedonist, he gets his fun by getting into fights, humans might be bugs to him but they're tasty bugs.

Kenjaku goes to similiar motivations and has similiar extremes, he's uninvested in the world around him, he's lived a thousand years but has no attachment to the world, to life, to the people around him. I said that Junko wants to be a participant in life not an all seeing observer and that was purposeful language because to bring back an old post. I rambled on this post about Gojo that part of Gojo's problem is that he only experiences observer-to-object relationships or I to it.

Ich and Du, translated as I and Thou is a book by philosopher Martin Buber. His two main porositions is that we may address existence in two ways:

The attitude of the “I” towards “it” towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.

The attitude of “I” towards “Thou” in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.

In Buber's terms, those who only experience the first type of relationships are only observing the world around them not relating to them. Kenjaku doesn't relate to other human beings because they are objects, he only experiences subject -> object relationships and never subject -> subject.

Buber also goes on to theorize that meaning in our lives comes from subject -> subject relationships we form with other people.

Kenjaku jokingly says that to be his friend you have to never bore him and be his equal, but there's no one considers his equal because he's the subject and everyone else are just objects.

He regrets he can't sit down and talk theories with Tsukumo Yuki because she's one of the few people who think like him.

Kenjaku is a paradox of an incredibly brilliant man who is also shallow as a puddle that you can stand in and not get your socks wet. However, he tragically can't really form a more complex identity because our identities are formed by our relationships to other people and Kenjaku doesn't relate to anybody.

That's basically the theme of the whole Choso and Kenjaku fight, Choso is a weird aborted fetus of a curse who still has a strong identity and is able to feel unconditional love for Yuji because of the connection of family and the ideas of brotherhood that binds the two. Kenjaku is a bad father who abandoned Choso because they were "boring" but also never really gave them a chance to grow up or be interesting, he just dismissed them offhand and moved on to the next weird science project.

However, his reason for dismissing Choso isn't Choso's fault but rather a case of Psychological projection. It's not Choso who is boring, but rather Kenjaku himself, he said so earlier.

"What I can create, does not exceed the bounds of my own potential. The answer is always flickering darkly in chaos."

Kenjaku cannot look within to find anything satisfying abput his life because there's nothing inside of him. He doesn't have a fully formed identiy he's just ID, and because he tramples all over other people to form his desires he also cannot ever form a full ego. Just like Sukuna and most of the ancient sorcerers he's a paradox of being all ego, and yet having an underdeveloped ego with shallow motivators.

Kenjaku cannot look within because he's a boring person, and he cannot look for other people to find worth in his life because they're just objects, so instead he looks into the void, he tries to change the world around him by spreading more chaos hoping that it will make something unpredictable happen in front of his eyes - and that will give him the meaning and investment in his life he's deprived himself of because he refuses to form relationships with other people.

It's the Gojo problem. It's the Kashimo problem. It's not the Sukuna problem, because Sukuna admits he doesn't care about and rejects things like love and meaning.

If Kenjaku makes the world around him a more interesting place, he will be able to live in it. It's the same as Gojo trying to raise people up to his level by creating stronger students.

So after going to great length to demonstrate how powerful and all-consuming Kenjaku's boredom is, and how cut off he is from his own humanity, here's the part where I sort of defend his death.

Wouldn't it be funny if the joke character killed the main villain?

Let's be honest it was Takaba's kill here, Yuta just camped and killstole. I think part of the problem with people not understanding the meaning behind Kenjaku's sudden and unexpected death is attributing the death to Yuta cutting his head off out of nowhere, and not Takaba's thematic victory over Kenjaku.

Takaba represents a blindspot for Kenjaku which is why the main characters use him as a weapon against him, and he also calls out in a fashion Kenjaku's hypocrisy. First and foremost, Kenjaku presents himself as an agent of change, but he actually has no interest in many of the modern sorcerers and holds a bias towards the heian era as the peak of sorcery. He even says that he's going to bring back the Heian Golden Age to Sukuna at the end of Shibuya arc.

Because that's what Chaos is Kenjaku, things being the same as they were 1,000 years ago. Kenjaku is an agent of change and chaos and somehow his definition of change is... resetting things back to the past because the sorcerers of the past were so much better than today.

Kenjaku goes out of his way to awaken hundreds of modern day sorcerers, and then dismisses literally off of them except for Hiromi because they don't have enough potential for him compared to ancient sorcerers. He essentially did the same with the Death Painting Bros, he went through all of the trouble to create them, then dismissed them as not having enough potential BEFORE THEY EVEN GOT THE CHANCE TO GROW UP.

Kenjaku has a habit of just going BORED NOW and leaving before he even gives things the time to impress him. He does the same with the Culling Game, he set up the death game to push sorcerers to fight each other and bring out their powers, but he never actually intended to watch the sorcerers evolve. He just wanted to slaughter everyone inside to start the merger.

He goes through a lot of potential to set up these situations and then abandons them before they have the chance to even evolve, because they do not have enough "potential" in his opinion, but like his opinion is often shown to be wrong. Takaba represents that blindspot because he was one of the modern sorcerers that Kenjaku underestimated and dismissed offhand as boring without giving him a chance to shine.

That is the joke that Takaba introduces himself with "Wouldn't it be funny if a random comic relief side character suddenly defeated the big bad?"

He's immediately pointing out a blindspot, because Kenjaku automatically believes himself to be an important character, he underestimates Takaba because he's a side character, one of the people Kenjaku has dismissed as boring and uninteresting (before they even had a chance to evolve into something else). Like that's the other thing Kenjaku wants things to evolve but he doesn't... let them. He abandoned Choso and the rest before they even grew up, they were literally fetuses and he threw them away. Kenjaku is the protagonist of reality, and Takaba is a side character, and therefore Takaba couldn't possibly harm him because Kenjaku and his boundless curiosity are the center of the world.

It's not just about subverting the audience's expectations to have the main villain die in such an anti-climactic way before the final act even starts, but it's pointing out how narrow Kenjaku's viewpoints really were all along. He wants everything to be surprised but he never lets anything surprise him, because either he gets bored right away, or he looks down on others before giving them the chance to evolve, or the third thing he just straight up has to control everything. He can't let the culling game evolve naturally he's going to slaughter all the players by hand so he can move onto the next part.

It's the contradiction between a schemer who needs to control everything and everyone to bring about his intended result and everything needs to be a part of his big plans, to someone who wants to be surprised by others and have things go off the rails. You can't have both of these things at once, Kenjaku cannot have things surprise him if he rigs everything to go his way with his overly elaborate schemes and his tight-fisted control of everyone in the story.

Like, in comparison to Kenjaku the joker just blows things up and sprays people with laughing gas. They're both playing the same game but the joker is having fun and Kenjaku isn't.

Kenjaku wants an unexpected future, but he doesn't care about any of the modern sorcerers and has a bias towards the heiean era that he considers the height and wants to reset things to bring back the heian era. He wants to be surprised but won't give up control.

Kenjaku's boast is that unlike Tengen he's spent a thousand years living on the ground instead of lording up on them from above like some deity, but is that true? Has Kenjaku lived? Has he engaged with the world? Formed relationships with people? Or does he just sit in the corner rubbing his hands together menacingly and scheming his schemes.

Takaba unironically gives Kenjaku what he wants, something he's never seen before in a thousand years, and it's from a place Kenjaku never expected. Some random guy, who he dismissed as one of the boring modern sorcerers with no potential like Higuruma.

Takaba not only exists in Kenjaku's blindspot, he almost immediately points out Kenjaku's second hypocrisy. If he's willing to resort to mass murder just to feel entertained, then if he found something else to entertain him there'd be no reason to get violent and scheme his schemes.

In other words Kenjaku hasn't really gone looking for other places to try to find what makes life worth living, or at least enertaining, he hasn't really tried any alternatives to finding joy in life because Jujutsu is all he cares about. Takaba says that if he found something else even more entertaining than the merger there'd be no need to go through with the merger, and he turns out to be right. Kenjaku could have found meaning and entertainment with the world someplace else, he was just too narrow minded and never looked anywhere else.

As I said from the beginning Kenjaku's existential crisis comes from his inability to relate to other people and viewing them all as objects, but in Kenjaku's mind of course he can't relate to others they're too boring, so therefore it's the world's fault, and the fault of others and not himself.

However, right away one of those boring people starts relating to Kenjaku.

I joked about how we know nothing about the Gojo clan but Takaba gets an entire backstory chapter about his failed comedy career, but this chapter is plot important because jokes are the way that Takaba relates to and forms relationships with other people. Takaba makes jokes to relate to others but has a fallout with a comedy partner and has never been able to form a lasting relationship with a comedic partner because comedy doesn't mean the same to them as it does to him - because to Takaba comedy is about forming relationships with people. Which is why he thinks he's failed if he's failed to make everyone in the audience laugh because he wants to make comedy that will make other people relate to him and understand him.

However, he almost gives up on comedy because he's afraid that he might fail on that endeavor. He gives up on striving to make everybody in the audience laugh, because of self-affirmation and a desire to protect himself. He didn't want to fail so he started distancing himself from the audience under the excuse "Well, I can't make everyone laugh so it's okay if not everyone understands me."

Takaba at some point gave up on trying to use comedy as a means of understanding and relating to others, because of his fear of failure and at that point he nearly lost - but he rallies himself by saying that he won't give up on making someone like Kenjaku laugh. If his comedy is about connecting to others, about understanding others and having others understand him then he can't just give up on Kenjaku and say it's Kenjaku's fault that Kenjaku can't relate to his sense of humor. He's got to try even harder to make Kenjaku laugh.

This is also pretty much the opposite of Kenjaku's point of view. For Kenjaku it's everyone else's fault for being so boring that's why he can't relate to them. Wheras, Takaba takes personal responsibility, he wasn't funny enough, he has to try harder, he's the one who's going to make Kenjaku laugh by improving himself. Takaba looks inward, and Kenjaku looks outwards because there's nothing inside Kenjaku.

This is a parallel to this.

The difference however, is that Sukuna did not betray his ideology. Sukuna lives for the kicks that battle provides him and wants to face strong opponents so he can eventually devoured them and be momentarily entertained.

Like Sukuna is not bored the way Kenjaku is. The world is his playground. He may refer to living as just killing time until you die, but he also says that there's an infinite variety of humans to entertain yourself with. The world is Sukuna's toybox and he's satisfied with just that. In fact he doesn't even care about the merger, until his frustration with Yuji makes him think a little deeper about himself.

Kenjaku is not the Sukuna in this scene, he's the Gojo. He believed he was above others, only to be reminded suddenly that he was just the same as everyone else and brought back down to humanity. I mean, they even die off panel the same anticlimactic way. Gojo's infinity meant nothing in the face of one surprise attack a world-cleaving slash Gojo didn't see coming. All of Kenjaku's backup plans meant nothing in the face of Yuta camping and kill-stealing.

Kenjaku didn't lose because Yuta's plan of camping and killstealing was simply too brilliant for him to prepare for however, we're given the exact reason kenjaku lost - because he was having too much fun with Takaba.

Which meant what Takaba said earlier was true, if Kenjaku found something funnier, something other than the merger that could make him laugh there'd be no need to go through with the merger to begin with.

Kenjaku loses because all along he could have related to people, formed meaningful relationships with others, looked for meaning in life outside of Jujutsu but just chose not to. Which is also a parallel to this.

Sukuna says that Kashimo and Gojo both lost because they were greedy. They already received love in a way, they had the love of everyone who regarded them as the strongest, they had people who earnestly wanted to challenge them and respected them - which Sukuna sees as a form of love, and yet they still wanted more.

They were the ones who put themselves up on that pedestal and decided to stand above all of humanity, they don't get to whine about being lonely on top of that.

To add my interpretation to Sukuna's speech, what he's outlining is a general conflict in Jujutsu Kaisen, you can choose to be all ego to put personal development above everything else but it comes at the cost of not being able to form relationships. Maki's as powerful as Toji now, but the sister she always wanted to protect is dead and basically committed suicide. Meanwhile Noritoshi Kamo didn't participate in the final battle, but he reconnected with his mother and half-brother.

There are plenty of characters who die and suffer in jujutsu kaisen because they chose to value other people above themselves, because Jujutsu Kaisen rewards selfishness and punishes selflessness / having an underdeveloped sense of self.

I'll pick Mechamaru as my biggest example, he lived to protect Miwa, and not only does he die an unsatisfying death, he also breaks her heart.

However, at least Mechamaru experienced love. His desire to protect Miwa is granted, because Miwa is also out of the final conflict. Mechamaru is one of the most miserable characters in the manga, and yet he experienced love in his life for someone else that made his brief life meaningful. The characters who choose love, and other people over strength tend to get stepped on, but they at least had that love in their life to begin with.

It's a having your cake and eating it too situation. Kashimo chose strength over love, and he got to be so strong he was unbeatable and lived to old age, but not only is he unfulfilled but he whines about being unable to relate to the people around him - you're the one who chose to step on everyone like bugs.

Characters in Jujutsu Kaisen don't just experience death when they try to be selfless however, like yeah there's a disproportionate amont of selfless minor characters who die, but like Yuji is the most selfless character in the manga and he's continually punished for it and yet he's the one referred to as a person with an unbreakable will.

Rather instead of Jujutsu Kiasen preferring the selfish side on the scale of selfishness / selflessness, the kind of messy, deaths that get handed out to people like Mechamaru happen when you betray the ideals you were living for. Whether they were selfish or selfless.

It goes back to Toji's internal monologue. You lose when you lose sight of yourself - like there's some deaths that don't fit the mould but for the most part, Gojo, Kashimo, Toji's and then Kenjaku's deaths all follow this pattern. By coincidence they also all take place offscreen for the most part (I suppose we see Yuta cut off Kenjaku's head but it's quick and unsatisfying compared to all the rest).

Kenjaku died because he betrayed what he was living for and he temporarily lost sight of himself. As I said Kenjaku's airtight principles were that everyone was boring and people weren't worth relating too so the only way to find enertainment in life is to cause chaos - but he found himself relating to some nobody he wrote off as a minor character Takaba and having fun with him. Which meant the belief he was false, he could have tried relating to other people all along he just didn't.

He warped his sense of self to reaffirm his identity. Takaba almost did that too, he tried to blame other people for not finding him funny to protect himself, but he moved past that and redoubled his efforts to make Kenjaku laugh.

There's also the added layer of irony that Kenjaku's sudden death brings about, the person who spent a thousand years trying to make the merger happen doesn't get to see it.

However, here's my assertion on why Kenjaku's death before the merger always had to happen.

Because, even if Kenjaku had seen the merger he still would have been bored.

Literally everything about Kenjaku's character and previous actions shows that even if he made his big scheme come true, he would have gone "meh" and moved onto the next scheme because that's how he always reacts.

He got bored of the death painting siblings, he presumably got bored of Yuji, he got bored of all the ancient sorcerers and new sorcerers he made for the culling game, he worked with the disaster curses and got bored of them and dismissed them as inferior primitive curses, he goes out of the way to engineer these chaotic situations and then never feels any satisfaction from them so why would the Merger be any different?

Not only did Kenjaku die before he saw the merger, he was basically doomed to never see the merger, because it would not have fixed whatever is wrong inside of him.

Because it's not the world that's boring, it's Kenjaku himself.

He gets a brief glimpse of what he could have done in life, that he could have tried to forge connections with the people around him and related to them on a personal level - and then he dies the way he lived, in a kind of boring and unsatisfying way.

It's the narrative punishing him in a way, the same way it punished Gojo, and Kashimo, by not letting him see the big explosion after he went to all the trouble rigging the bombs. It's punishing him for the same reason too - by deviating from his true self and showing what he thought were his reasons were shallow all along. Gojo could have always related to people he just chose to stand on his pedestal alone, and Kenjaku could have always found the world to be more enertaining he was the one dismissing other people as boring without giving them a chance to grow.

Takaba confronted his beliefs and then stayed true to his ideology of making everyone, 100% of the people in the crowd laugh. Kenjaku didn't confront his beliefs, he strayed from them because he didn't have the strength of character to evaluate himself the way Takaba did.

Hence, he's finished off by one of those boring people who used their power in a way he never expected. The main villain is defeated by the comic relief character and it's hilarious.

[mania-sama]

A Look into Mental Health: Jujutsu Kaisen Analysis

"Being a child is not a sin." (Nanami Kento, Jujutsu Kaisen)

With the release of Chapter 251, I've seen many horrible takes from dudebros saying that Megumi has "sold" the team. This makes me unreasonably angry because of course it does, so obviously my next plan of action is to take all of my hour-long rants about the mental health of JJK characters and put it here, where said dudebros will never see my (correct) analysis in their entire life. Oh well.

One thing Gege is really, really good at is creating believable, undeniably human, and complex characters. Every character has a different set of motivations, beliefs, ideals, and especially mental states. The constant theme of Jujutsu Kiasen has been "Strength vs Weakness". While the clearest interpretation can be seen through the physical attributes of the characters (Gojo being the strongest sorcerer of his time due to his abilities, and Miwa being one of the weakest, again, due to her abilities), it is also directly applied to the mental strength of characters. No two characters are able to withstand the same trauma and come out the exact same, just as no two real people can process the same trauma. Not only is it a result of nature, as people are genetically different and therefore process information differently, but a product of nurture - in other words, character motivation and environment.

This is where we come to the current state of the manga, Chapter 251. The fated Yuuji vs Megumi debate. I keep seeing people wildly misunderstanding these two, and why it's so important that Megumi isn't standing up to fight, why he isn't able to handle his trauma, when Yuuji can.

Gege writes phenomenal characters. And I want to express just how well done they are, making Jujutsu Kaisen actually kind of deserve its popularity, because some people only care about power scaling. I'm going to touch on Megumi last, because understanding all of the other characters' makes his visible struggle that much more impactful.

1. Geto Suguru

I want to start this mental health analysis with Geto. He is the best representation of depression I've ever seen in Shonen. It doesn't take a hundred chapters to showcase a character's downfall. It doesn't take a hundred significant events to cause a character to break down. Gege shows the best, realistic mental breakdown using only a handful of chapters, and still makes it slow and painful.

Depression can start because of a big event, but it doesn't take more for it to worsen. Untreated, depression runs a vicious course that eats a person through slowly but effectively. It isn't one screaming session, hands clutched over the head and cursing God and the world. It's everything piled onto each other. It's coming to the end of that pile and realizing that nothing will ever change.

This is Geto Suguru's story. He has a big event: the fight with Toji and the failure to save Riko. But his mental health journey was fated to decline, even without the fight and failure. The root issue of his depression came from his ability: Cursed Spirit Manipulation. As long as he kept devouring the embodiment of every vile, human emotion, the more he would lose himself to that vileness. He wasn't changing anything; he couldn't help but continue to swim in negativity because that's all he could do.

Gege wasn't making a commentary on Geto's ability. He was talking about people, as they are, and how staying in a bad situation will not always make you stronger. It can, and most likely will, make you worse. A direct comparison to the sixteen-year-old Geto would be a sixteen-year-old at school, surrounded by people who bully and pick on them with harsh words. The kid will eventually consume all of that bullying, all of that negativity, into their being, because there is simply nowhere else to go. School is mandatory; they can't just leave. They eventually feel isolated, with all that vileness piled on. Even if they have friends, those people could never understand what it's like to put up with humiliation and cruelty day after day.

It's not rational to push away a support system, but who said human beings are always rational? People make mistakes. They don't make the right decisions. Geto didn't. He saw someone offer him a chance at change, a possible light at the top of his pile and twisted it to match his overwhelming negativity. He left and swore to destroy the world that made him the way he is, just as that bullied child may turn away from school and society in whatever form that may take.

I want to touch on the physical aspects of Geto's depression, too. I noted this in a previous analysis I did on him (his character is just that amazing, what can I say?), but Gege knew that the mind can't be affected alone. Geto was drawn with deep eyebags, a nod to an inability to sleep or needing to sleep all the time. Depression makes you tired all the time. Everything becomes difficult. He sits with his back hunched, resting his weight on his knees, like sitting upright is too hard. When someone speaks to him, he blinks and takes a second too long to look over or respond, like speaking takes too much energy. To me, it even looked like he was becoming thinner. It's extremely difficult to maintain a schedule of exercise and mealtimes when your mind is fighting an active war against itself.

Again, a beautiful representation of depression. Geto means a lot to me in this aspect.

2. Gojo Satoru

In comparison to Geto, Gojo's horrible mental health is a lot subtler. Depression isn't the correct term, but you don't have to be depressed to be sad. Sadness is his stagnant state; he has moments of bliss, goals to work towards, a reason to keep going, to continue living, to continue chasing the sun over the horizon, but he does return to the same place he is always at when the lights turn off and he's painfully reminded of this one fact: he is isolated.

All of Gojo's problems start and end with isolation. From the moment he was born, everyone knew he was different. He knew he was different. Through glimpses of his childhood and honestly reading between the lines, it's obvious he never played with kids his age. People don't just develop a superiority complex with their only drive to be better than literally everyone else for no other reason than to get better. It comes from somewhere, and in Gojo's case, it's from his young childhood. It seriously messed him up; even now, he can't shake the lesson that "Strength is the only way to success and happiness".

This is what made Geto so important. Geto was somebody who could share the burden of being the strongest. Geto was someone his age who understood him in a way Shoko could not, though they both were able to see Gojo beyond his capabilities as a Jujutsu sorcerer. Gojo then had somebody to base his moral principles on. Because he couldn't connect with anybody else, he had no basis other than strength. Geto taught him why it was important for the strong to protect the weak.

Then everything went wrong. Gojo became isolated again in his strength and lost the only person who could plausibly stand with him. "Are you the strongest because you're Gojo Satoru, or are you Gojo Satoru because you're the strongest?" Gojo was young, then, and fresh-faced into his newfound godhood. He didn't kill Geto in that moment because he wanted to deny the claim that he is nothing without his strength, that he isn't as shallow as he was raised to be.

But he knew better. He grew older, he killed his best friend, and he realized that he was nothing without his strength. He never got over Geto. In order to cope with the guilt of being unable to save him when he left, he adopted a whole kid, thinking that if he wasn't strong enough to save Geto, maybe he could save Megumi. But there it is all over again - he never broke from the cycle of strength defining his worth. Saving Megumi would define his strength, right? It would prove Geto wrong, right? He raised Megumi under the same logic (that the only way to save his sister is to be strong), only ridding the boy of the crushing isolation.

In this way, Gojo isn't mentally weak. He didn't abandon society and everyone who loved him, instead choosing to hone the trauma of his isolated childhood into a weapon and teach the next generation to be better than himself. He isn't depressed, but he isn't happy. You can't be happy if you're alone all of the time. He hoped Megumi could be someone to stand by him, but in the end, he failed to save Megumi. His strength couldn't save him, just as it couldn't save Geto.

He isn't mentally strong. He isn't weak, either. He is horribly, painfully average. He's not weak enough to be saved, but not strong enough to save others. His childhood plagues him, but not to the point where it prevents him from living. He killed Geto but was unable to bury the body. Gojo is everything he never wanted to be.

As it turns out, strength can't buy you happiness. Gojo may have understood that, but he couldn't abandon it, even to the bitter end. Just as a human struggles to shed their conditioning. Not everyone can break the cycle, but we are always trying our best to work with what we've been dealt.

3. Okkotsu Yuuta

I'm putting Yuuta in between Gojo & Geto and Itadori & Megumi because he is, in a way, a bridge between the two. Geto and Gojo have lived their lives; their stories are complete and ended in tragedy. Itadori and Megumi's are not. They are still actively struggling and fighting their physical and mental battles; their stories have yet to be completed.

Yuuta's story isn't technically completed (ignoring everything that happened in the recent chapter with him for the sake of MY mental health), he is still a success story. He is the average protagonist who started from the bottom and ended up at the top. Only he, as Gege has done time and time again, has a slightly stronger focus on mental health than most other Shonen. He is success where Gojo & Geto failed, and the success that Itadori & Megumi are narratively striving for.

At the beginning, Yuuta was depressed and suicidal. He was bullied at school and involuntarily hurting others. Instead of becoming resentful of the world, he pushed all of the vileness inward. His guilt caused him to try to take his life, presumably multiple times, but Rika stopped him before he could succeed. His life was effectively out of his hands; he felt powerless with all of the bodies stacking around him, and he couldn't atone for "his" actions.

His mental health, as it was, was in shambles. Gojo then offered him a way forward. Yuuta's mental health did not improve overnight. It was when he made friends at Jujutsu High, and developed a support system, that he was able to relieve his anxiety and realize that life is not so bad after all. That all of this pain and suffering and loss - it will pass.

The most important thing to acknowledge when it comes to Yuuta is the sheer fact that he was not alone, nor did he allow himself to be alone. Unlike Gojo, who still had Shoko and Nanami after Geto left but refused to connect with them, Yuuta allowed himself to get close to those around him. They didn't know the suffering he'd undergone for so many years. They didn't know what it was like to be him, but that was okay. He knew that they had empathy, that even though they could never experience his life, they could still be there for him now when he falls.

When given the opportunity to surrender, Yuuta stands in the face of one Geto Suguru and swears to protect his friends and fight with Rika. He's so far removed from the boy who tried to kill himself at the beginning of the manga, and that's because he let himself be changed. He did not succumb. He had friends, he knew. People that would miss him if he left, and people whom he would regret leaving.

This stays consistent with his character. He doesn't let himself become isolated in his strength or his experiences. He's much stronger than everyone else in the room, he's a special grade and he knows that, but he still treats everyone like they are equals. Like they are his friends, like they are people who could share this burden of existence with him. This is something that Gojo couldn't accomplish, which lends to the fact that Gojo had a very off-hand teaching method when it came to mentoring Yuuta. Instead of influencing him under this idea of strength conquers all, he let Yuuta develop far away from the ideals of the Japanese Jujutsu Society.

And, in the end, the fact of him being physically strong - a special-grade sorcerer from the get-go - never helped him in his mental health. In fact, it made him miserable until he learned to get a handle on Rika. His winning or losing that fight with Geto wasn't the point of his character, it was reckoning with the fact that he is okay now. That he can embrace the ugly part of him with dignity instead of guilt.

4. Itadori Yuuji

Itadori's entire character is that he has an unbreakable spirit. As the only one who can bear the soul of Sukuna, he started off like Yuuta, only on the opposite end of the mental health spectrum. When we first see him, he's happy, spending his afternoons with the Occult Club and watching movies.

... What happened?

Like Geto, everything piled on very slowly. So slow that I'm not even sure he felt the true effects of everything he experienced up until the fall of Shibuya. It starts with the death of grandfather, whose parting words "Just save as many people as you can" haunt him even now during the final fight with Sukuna. He was never given time to properly grieve his grandfather, just as he never had time to grieve the brother curses, Junpei, Nanami, Nobara, Gojo, Higurama. At the end of it all, when the fighting is over, I have to wonder what will become of the boy that realizes he's lost most of the people he loved.

The one time he did try to process it, when he realized that he couldn't control Sukuna, was when he broke down in Shibuya. Sukuna leveled an entire city. For the boy who never wanted to kill another human being for fear of devaluing life, the weight of his weakness killing thousands was crushing. Then Nanami died. Nobara died (still hanging onto that unknown status but I digress). Both are right in front of him, and powerless to prevent Mahito from disintegrating their bodies. So, obviously, Itadori broke down. The boy with the unshakeable spirit, the only person who could contain the King of Curses, has his psyche completely shattered.

He laid on the ground, and he wouldn't have gotten back up if there wasn't somebody to help him, to be there with him. Todo pulled him back together, stitched back up the broken into somebody who has allies and people to fight for. Itadori has the success that Yuuta had, only Itadori did not come out of it with better mental health.

After the breakdown, his unshakeable spirit was nothing more than the will to keep fighting. He cares little for himself, and he tries to distance himself from people to prevent them from dying from his cursed hands. He is jumping, quickly, down the same rabbit hole that Geto fell down. One big event, and they realize just how tall the pile already is, and that it will never stop growing. Unlike Geto, however, he continues to get overbearing support from those around him. Against his will. He can't push them away, for they refuse to leave his side. Yuuta, Choso, Megumi, even Higurama. They won't let him fall. This makes him better off than someone alone, in a sense. He can withstand his trauma when others may not.

Even so, even so, there is only so much support, the lack of self-isolation, can do when the traumas keep actively repeating. When he says that he will gladly die to defeat Sukuna, it is not said with the same tone that another Shonen protagonist would say it. Take Naruto for example. If he were to go into a battle to protect, say, Sasuke, he would scream, "I'll die to protect him." We understand that his willpower is stronger than his self-preservation, but we don't get the idea that he actively wants to die. He'll die if he has to. Now, Itadori says the same thing, but about saving Megumi. He says, "I'll gladly die." There is something different. His willpower is leaps and bounds stronger than his self-preservation, but that's not only it. There is an undercurrent of severe suicidal ideation prevalent in Itadori's tone. It's not that he will die to win, it's that a part of him wants for this to be his final fight. For it all to be over. To save Megumi, then atone for the sin of being too weak to save Shibuya, or being unable to stop the Culling Games, or letting Megumi get hurt when all he wanted was to keep him safe.

I'd call it more along the lines of passive suicidal ideation. He doesn't plan to kill himself, but what would it mean for him to go into dangerous situations without protection? What would it mean for him to succumb to his wounds after he wakes Megumi's soul and kills Sukuna? To not even try to seek medical attention? He's guilty. He believes everything that happened in Shibuya and after is his fault. When faced with the executioner's sword, he was ready to die for his sins, if not for the goal of ending the Games. There is a fine line between willing to die for those you love versus wanting to die for those you love.

Right now, Itadori is fighting to save one person, like his grandfather said. He is not fighting to survive. And that's what people fail to understand about Itadori when they compare him to the other members of the cast. These power-scaling dudebros don't understand that their favorite OP main character has fallen apart at the seams, that his unshakeable spirit to save people doesn't include himself.

5. Fushiguro Megumi

Here we finally come to the question: Why can Itadori take it when Megumi can't? There is a very similar quote that you probably think of whenever you hear this question asked. It's from The Outsiders: "Dally is tougher than I am. Why can I take it when Dally can't?" The answer to this question that Ponyboy gives is the same we can attribute to Megumi. "And then I knew. Johnny was the only thing Dally loved. And now Johnny was gone."

The entire reason Megumi became a Jujutsu sorcerer was to protect his sister. When he was five years old and probably too young to understand most of the words Gojo said, he accepted the offer of training to become a sorcerer in exchange for Tsumiki's happiness. Every day, he fought to protect her. He only had one goal in entering the Culling Games: to prevent Tsumiki from having to participate.

It's easy to attribute Megumi's constant attempts at summoning Mahoraga to a lack of will to live - suicidal ideation, the same that Itadori now experiences. On one hand, I do understand that he has a fundamental lack of care for his own life, but on the other, I don't think that he intends to throw it all away every single time. He just didn't know any better. Ignorance can lead to death as easily as intentionally seeking it out. That's why he changes his habit after Gojo gives him a lesson in risking death versus dying to win; Megumi still has someone to live for, after all.

Megumi's mental health was already rocky from the start. Not that it was in shambles like Yuuta, but he wasn't fully stable. Like a lot of teenagers, he's moody, somewhat reclusive, and only really likes one or two people maximum. Teenagers aren't known for their sunshine mental health anyway.

Megumi was given time to grieve Itadori after he first died. This trauma of losing him in front of his eyes stuck with him, but he was allowed a grace period of two months to grieve with Nobara. He experienced Shibuya, too, but he still had that one important person to protect. His mental health was alright at this point, all things considered. As long as his sister was alive, he would be fine.

Sukuna knew this. So Sukuna killed Tsumiki using only the Ten Shadows Teqchnique. The one person Megumi spent his whole life dedicated to, was killed by his own cursed technique, his own failure to suppress Sukuna.

In the void of his soul, Megumi was alone. Truly, utterly alone. The only person nearby was Sukuna, the murderer of his sister, the murderer of thousands upon thousands of people. He drowned in the ceremonial bath of crushed curses to hold his soul down in the depths of despair, literally drenched in all of the vileness the world has to offer. Sukuna killed Gojo using Mahoraga's adaption ability, and before that, Megumi was forced to take several of Gojo's mind-altering domain expansions.

Already, he had given up. He gave up when his sister died, but the rest ground a pointed spur into his neck. When Itadori shakes his soul, Megumi is repeating, "That's enough." He was at the end of his rope a long time ago. What more is there to keep living for? He doesn't want to live with the blood of his sister, the blood of the man who practically raised him, and the blood of countless others drenching his hands.

Sukuna killed all of these people, not Megumi. But then, Sukuna killed of those people in Shibuya, not Itadori. Why can Itadori take it? Why can he keep fighting when Megumi lays broken on the ground? Itadori wasn't alone. And Megumi has never been known for his unshakeable spirit. That is the one thing that Itadori can hold over everybody else, the one trait that everyone admires. He was born to shoulder the burden of the world. Megumi wasn't. Megumi wants to die. He is not passively suicidal, for he has no goals left to complete, a plan to die within the body no longer inhabited alone. He is suicidal. He would drive a stake through his heart if it meant relieving his pain. He doesn't want to do it anymore. He's had enough.

And Itadori was in this position once, too? Perhaps not as directly, but he was there. Here is the moment that the protagonist gives the motivating speech to will someone to keep fighting, that life is worth living. I realized today that this is not something Itadori has done yet. He hasn't had a grand speech that's not been about his own willpower. He's never encouraged someone else to keep living in the way that you would expect from the main character. This is his moment, I suppose. He needs to be the person for Megumi that Todo was for him. He has to show Megumi that he isn't alone.

He needs to save Megumi when, all those years ago, Gojo couldn't save Geto.

I don't think some of this fanbase understands how horrible Gege has to be at writing if he just. Let Megumi get up to fight in Chapter 251. All this time, he has shown how Megumi has been defeated. He showed him crumbled on the ground, unmoving. It shouldn't be a surprise that all of the measures Sukuna took to ensnare Megumi's soul worked. Megumi is suicidal after the people he loves have all died because of his technique. God forbid a sixteen-year-old is unable to cope with his trauma alone.

Honorable Mentions:

There are a lot more characters in this story that represent/show mental illness that I didn't go into depth on but are worth mentioning. It was easier to only talk about the major characters since we spend so much time with them and I can fully flesh out everything that should/can be said about them. Anyway, here are a few more that are notably well-written in their mental struggles:

Yoshino Junpei. His story arc follows very similarly to Geto, except he is the bullied student I was making a reference to. Depressed, alone with a mother whose habits he can't stand, he turned to someone he thought could provide him a better life. Interestingly, he is a good representation of the type of children that tend to be groomed. That's surely what happened to him. Mahito used him, then discarded him for his own gains.

Ieiri Shoko. Her main struggle can be seen through her smoking habits. She's been through a lot, lost so many people, and has to keep healing sorcerers only for them to die. Eventually, she was able to come to terms with this. She kicked her smoking habit at the same time she kicked the vicious mental cycle of caring too much about the patient on her table. It's no wonder she picked up a cigarette, for the first time in a while, when Geto led the phantom parade.

Zenin Maki. She works as a very good contrast to Megumi. They both lost their sisters, the people they loved the most, but she turned all of her grief to killing the Zenin clan and gaining Heavenly Restriction. But this, this is because she could do so. There is simply nothing Megumi can do as a soul trapped in his own body. Her grief made her stronger, while for most, it made them weaker.

Inumaki Toge. He isn't seen a lot, but his story is ultimately quite compelling. A boy who hurt many when he was young. He turned his guilt into kindness, a will to protect. He tends a garden to raise plants healthily, for God's sake. He's one of the examples that shows Yuuta that your past actions don't define you, but instead, what you choose to do going forward.

I am not proofreading any of this before I post it. Sorry if it is borderline unreadable with spelling / grammatical errors.

[lxmelle]

Geto was loved even in death.

Wouldn’t it be nice if he were judged by his intentions in the afterlife - wherever that was? He had suffered living with the love he had. We see through the eyes of those left behind, that the ill deeds didn’t define him, as strange as that may be to us as readers in the real human world we live in. Geto’s influence and loving nature were far reaching; Gege certainly made him so treasured by many even after his death. If Gojo was touched by his caring influence, this was also Geto’s will he passed onto his students.

NOT spoiler-free as I’ll be referring to the recent chapter, 255.

I wrote this the other day:

And honestly it’s long enough; here’s part 2.

Is it obvious I’m suffering from brainrot? All my drafts from jjk brainrot are rivalling my thesis/dissertation from way back (lol)

Here is more under the cut:

I’m really moved by the reasons for why Miguel and Larue have decided to join in the risky fight against Sukuna.

It’s very obvious that Miguel is reluctant at first. He says he he’d rather terrible curses arrive at his shores than to fight with Sukuna, adding that he doesn’t see himself having any ties with Japan any longer.

We can deduce that this was part of Gojo’s plan for the possibility that he dies/loses, and I had a post about this saved in my drafts - but I guess I never got around to finishing it. Basically, in sum, he will achieve giving Geto a cremation (avenging him) and gets to show off to his students (which he does enjoy) by going all out (soo satisfying), and in the worst case scenario, he loses but gets to go all out, weakens Sukuna (for the rest to handle), and idk if he really is that romantic (so it’s really stsg headcanon fantasising) he will die on the same day as Geto.

The Opening theme is rather beautiful in that it interprets Gojo having the words, “we’ll meet again” stuck in his throat, which he doesn’t say. But I’m a bit weird and tend to separate anime from manga. But it’s worth noting that here.

I digress. Back to Miguel and Larue who have moved to speak privately without Yuta.

In a previous post I wondered aloud about what Yuta knew about Geto from others aside from being villainous and I guess this implies he doesn’t know much, since he wasn’t close to Miguel enough to sit around to chat with them. It makes sense.

Miguel and Larue both agree they followed Geto in jjk 0 because they wanted to see him become King. What does this even mean, really? Gege, you’re missing stuff out again!

Nevertheless, we understand how reluctant Miguel was. He enquires that Larue intends to do, clarifying: is it for revenge or to take Geto’s body back?

And it seems like their main motivation for putting their lives on the line... is to honour Geto’s memory. Like a traditional ritual one makes for the dead (customary in Japan on death anniversaries - not limited to the year, but also number of days).

It’s incredibly moving how much they love him. This is actually what led Miguel to reconsider. We see him go silent as he thinks “...” before he reaches a moment of clarity/a decision.

Tbh I have issues with interpreting his statement in between the two panels (re: hell) in Japanese - it doesn’t directly indicate if he is referring to the former part of the conversation (whether he thinks Geto is in hell), or the latter (he thinks the battle will be hell). The phrasing goes like this: “no matter how I think about it: it’s hell.” - I’m not a native speaker so it’s difficult for me to be certain which is right. But the consensus is as translated above. Larue thinks Geto is in heaven, Miguel thinks it’s hell, and we see the airport scene where presumably Haibara and Riko with Kuroi have been there for over a decade. lol. Who knows!

So the bottom line is… regardless of where they think Geto ends up in the afterlife, Miguel is willing to give Geto a send off that’ll even reach hell. Or, despite it going to be hellish, he will do it. It also seems so heartwarming how they still emphasise family and friendship in wanting to fight together - perhaps things we can surmise had meant something to Geto.

They will fight Sukuna because it is for Geto. Geto was so loved that they would risk themselves - not for a title, not for revenge, but out of … love. Again. That’s pretty damn loving. Can we imagine what Geto did and was to them, for them to experience such loyalty and reverence?

Sadly, it goes without saying that Geto’s body being used as a vessel and puppet by Kenjaku has possibly evoked an emotional response by those who cared for him - namely Mimiko and Nanako, and also Gojo. Arguably, even if it were a death without his body being hijacked, Gojo did refuse to cremate his body or have it processed “by the book” of jjk high through Shoko. If that’s not out of a form of love (or “consideration” as Kenjaku put it), I don’t know what is.

The twins went against what Geto wanted for them (to carry out his will) to fight against immensely power beings in hopes they could bring him home. Those were their reasons to fight. Gojo scheduled 24th December - this was after he teleported to Kenjaku immediately upon unsealing so he could bury Geto. We saw Larue and Miguel’s. Toshihisa is alleged to be quite weak, and despite potentially being considered a son to Geto (if his life situation did mimic that of the twins’ - source: jjk character book), he opts to follow the inherited will as prescribed by Geto.

It’s all love. Geto was loved, I’m telling you. I want to shout if off the rooftops because that man just looked so darned sad and deranged after he lost it.

So. Continuing where I left off: Everyone thus far has had a reason to go into battle with Sukuna. I wonder what / who will actually reach him? I hope it’s Yuji ... and that Megumi will react again at some point. They have their own themes relating to love and purpose. I’ll leave them to someone else more familiar with their characters to write about!

And now I’m going offside quite a bit, but it’s still of relevance to Geto and the theme of love that seems to surround him. Way back to jjk 0 and Hidden inventory.

I wanted to just bring this into the picture as well now that I’m already writing a post on that topic, but please feel free to stop if you’re bored now.

So. Jjk 0!

There were direct parallels with Yuta & Rika and Gojo & Geto. This was also confirmed by the director when discussing their vision for the movie. The light novel also drew a link between Geto and Yuta where they were described as being too sincere for this world.

There is a direct theme of love - the type, is open to interpretation.

Kenjaku also makes reference to this in the Shibuya arc. So to me, it remains relevant. Love in its many forms is somewhere in what Gege wishes to convey thematically.

Within jjk 0, Geto seemed to pursue power but this was also a symbolism where power = love. It is twisted. In light of recent events, we know that the pursuit of power leads to the dilution and even absence of love. Love that gives birth to power becomes cursed. So it seems.

As we know, Yuta bound his lover to himself to gain power.

If only he had Rika (metaphor for love: Gojo) he probably wouldn’t have had to skulk around the shadows consuming curses which he hated doing. Geto was lamenting on the past in the above panels. He probably was determined to carry on, as he vouched to give it all he got (Haibara’s last words to him echoing here).

A flashback to the past:

Geto doesn’t do things in half-measures. To avoid hypocrisy, and I headcanon that it was a merciful killing to protect them from him, he kills his parents. To die by his hands than to be used as a pawn to get to him. For them to see the horrors their son could be capable of. It is so very wrong, and we can see the twisted nature of his love in this interpretation.

And Gojo delivers the ultimate blow that leads to Geto reflecting - depicted by the mysterious ellipses “…..” (gege really likes the reader to work hard huh) - insinuating it is impossible for Geto, so don’t even bother trying. The blossoming possibility of discourse was nipped, as the strength differential was implied - you’re the strongest now, whereas it used to be “we”. There was no more place for Geto; it was probably a misunderstanding. Gojo was protecting everyone in his own way, and the only way he knew how.

For power, Gojo was a source - but Geto couldn’t do that in Shinjuku, nor earlier in the arc, when Gojo himself was on the brink of insanity and deferred to Geto about annihilating humans as he held Riko’s dead body. Geto in the scene above acknowledges their different paths they needed to take - Gojo had a place as part of the elite at the school - Geto was already facing an execution order.

And after hearing Gojo’s condescending tone in an emotionally-fuelled attempt to reach out to him. He turns away to protect his friend from himself, and himself from his friend. Anyway, I touched on this in my previous post. Geto feels they had fought and didn’t deserve a place next to Gojo. But deep inside, even his body remembers the sound of Gojo’s voice, reacting to it when called despite his soul no longer being there.

sigh. Moving on... back to jjk 0:

After witnessing the bonds through willingness to sacrifice and the love between these students, Geto was really moved. Gojo trusted Geto retained his sense of humanity / love / idealism - even if it would lead to him sacrificing himself.

He was finding it difficult anyway:

He could always empathise with love. I suspect he tried his best, but the binding vow for Yuta’s life was also just the cherry on top to make Rika super saiyan.

Kenjaku knew Geto probably could’ve won though, had he been more selfish.

Geto conceded without a fight with Gojo. Maybe it was a matter of trust in that they both knew his living on borrowed time. As the light novel insinuated, this was the only way it could ever end. And Gojo would have to carry the curse that was Geto. This seems... so cruel.

He did his best. He perhaps always wanted the love but set it free.

He did so many things for others in spite of himself, in sacrificing himself, in staining himself with blood drenched hands.

Avenging Riko by killing Sonoda. Note how manipulative “humans” are by using Jujutsu rules against them.

He embraces a life of smoke and daggers. Living in lies and half truths in order to live, survive, and find justice in a wicked world.

Watch me closely, I’ll protect you, I’ll avenge you, this is how you protect yourself.

This is the path I’ve chosen.

I’m not saying he was right or justifiable. His character is just tragic. The system had set him and others to fail.

The worm foreshadows Geto’s maternal nature. Calling him “okaasan”. I mean, this very worm had a binding vow with Toji. And now it calls for a new owner? I’m not sure if Gege had anything else in mind with this... is the womb protrusion domain Geto’s? But that’s tied to a sorcerer’s soul…. Anyway, I digress again. (Sorry). Geto did have a martyr complex and was written captivatingly well by Gege. The extra touches where how he has been perceived by others and the effect he has (and continues to have) on those we see.

And I just want to leave this heartbreaking thing here:

Source from twitter/now X:

Wouldn’t it be so sweet for Geto to get one (love declaration) at the end of his life, regardless of the way you perceive Gojo and Geto’s relationship?

Wouldn’t it be nice for him if he could know that his family who he instructed to flee had all loved him, adored him, and would honour his sacrifice in differing ways...

Instead, a form of love meant his body was desecrated and used by Kenjaku. His girls were killed, and his full potential was not quite realised at all.

If only things were different.

Gojo should have kept him in his basement!

But at least, I think, Gege is giving Geto some love even after his death.

For that I’m thankful.

And thanks for reading if you made it this far with my rambling!

If you want something more light hearted I have a fluffy fic up on AO3 (it isn’t great but i enjoyed writing it to fantasise about what happens at the airport) and if you want more angst and pain, please browse my tags (lol).

[cruyuu]

I'm thinking about the dance art (as always tbh) and I wonder whether they actually danced or not.

I think there's a good chance that it didn't happen and it's just a representation of their relationship (which 👀 Gege deciding to represent their relationship through a very romantically charged dance with Yuuji joyfully laughing in Sukuna's arms and Sukuna looking upset but still holding Yuuji close is very suspicious 👀👀👀 what're you trying to say Gege 👀👀👀👀👀👀)

But I've seen people say they danced sometime during chapter 265, which I think is possible since there's a few time skips as they walk around and I think if they did dance in Yuuji's domain it would be between when they did archery together and Yuuji talking about snow sculptures since it started to snow sometime between those moments. I've also seen people say that they think Yuuji and Sukuna did dance together but it was during chapter 268 as Sukuna faded away and their souls connected again briefly and they danced together as a final goodbye.

I like all of these possibilities (there's just no losing situation here) but I'd love to know your thoughts on their dance ❤️

Hi anon!

I planned to answer this a while back but totally forgot in the end. Really sorry for making you wait <3

As for your question- I think that they didn't actually dance during 265. It still seems plausible, funnily, because I think Yuuji would do that and yes, Sukuna would react like that. It's very plausible because these two went fishing for crayfish and did archery, so I'm pretty sure they also could've gone for a movie, an ice cream or something else too. After all, they hung out for a long while.

As for why I think they didn't- well, when Yuuji and Sukuna were in the Domain, we were shown hydrangeas, even tho the fight against Sukuna was taking place somewhere late December, early January (taking into the account of Gojo vs Sukuna taking place on the 24th of December). These flowers bloom mid to late spring and continue early into the summer. From here, a couple of panels later, we're shown snow and Yuuji talking about winter.

But then- when Sukuna cuts him off- there's no snow and there are dragonflies near Yuuji.

Dragonflies can often be found during summer, but some species do come out in late April. In the Domain, either time flies by too fast or the weather changes according to what Yuuji is reminiscing on, considering that yes, these two were walking through snow, up there in the first image but then magically, it's summer again!

If the dance really did happen, it would've been slotted somewhere between the winter talk- while the snow was falling- and Sukuna interrupting Yuuji which I find unlikely. Still, there's either a big jump in the conversation and the dance is the missing piece or, like I said, weather magically changes and the dance didn't happen.

I think we all would've collectively exploded if we saw that live in 4k in canon when 265 dropped. Like that would've been straight up insane if Gege drew them dancing in the Domain after Sukuna knocked out both Todo and Hana and Yuuji ended up practically beating the shit out of him (not to mention that leg grab holy hell) just a chapter before lol

I think there's a good chance that it didn't happen and it's just a representation of their relationship (which 👀 Gege deciding to represent their relationship through a very romantically charged dance with Yuuji joyfully laughing in Sukuna's arms and Sukuna looking upset but still holding Yuuji close is very suspicious 👀👀👀 what're you trying to say Gege 👀👀👀👀👀👀)

Yes anon, louder! That's what's been keeping me from moving on from jjk. These mfs won't leave my head. I kept asking why did they have to dance? There's no heterosexual explanation for dancing in the falling snow with your enemy. Anyone who says there is is lying and coping.

I've also seen people say that they think Yuuji and Sukuna did dance together but it was during chapter 268 as Sukuna faded away and their souls connected again briefly and they danced together as a final goodbye.

This is a plausible explanation too. All this aside tho, my headcanon is that because the epilogue takes place in winter and Yuuji comes back to Sendai, that he was recalling that moment and wanted to be in his hometown, where it happened. Poor man must've been lovesick.

It's still hilarious to me how he casually ran into Yuko, nothing happened there, then Yuuji said how he finds snow specialz and then bam. A bomb drop in the form of sukuita doing the waltz. What can I assume except: Oh hey he finds snow special because he danced in the fucking snow with Sukuna. Oh wow these bitches gay. It's about damn time.

And those are my thoughts. Hope you have a beautiful day/night anon! <3

[bloopitynoot]

Reading TGCF: Chapter Eight

For those who don't know, I am reading TGCF for the first time and sharing my thoughts!

If you have not read it, there will be spoilers! Consider this a warning.

Also- if you want to follow along, I am aiming to post updates daily. You can find all the posts in the tag Bloopitynoot reads TGCF. You can also check out the intro post for context on my read BUT if you followed along with my SVSSS read, the rules and vibe are the same.

It's been snowing over here for three days and it felt about right to have a fully loaded hot chocolate today.

Charles update: we have contacted the specialist and hopefully within the week we will have an appointment for him. In the meantime, in case his health takes a turn we have plans for emergency vets and our vet. <fingers crossed> that everything is okay!

let's go chapter eight!!

These two are already killing me. Every time San Lang calls Xie Lian "gege" I sigh and roll my eyes a little bit. Xie Lian is completely oblivious af isn't he? p224

This is even worse. Xie Lian to San Lan, "stay close to me, don't get lost". San Lan: absolutely :] Say less. Nan Feng and Fu Yao: jfc. p224

Why do I feel like there is extra significance in Xie Lian offering San Lang things. Is there an issue if San Lang accepts things or something?? (don't tell me if spoilers). Or is San Lang just so shaken by Xie Lian's kindness?? pp225-226

I love how the babies trying to trick San Lang into drinking the water is just devolving into a battle of manners. pp226-227

Holy shit. Did San lang just break an incredibly powerful once-in-a-lifetime type weapon??? p229

Oh, that's kind of sad. My heart at Xie Lian's connection to Hongjing pp230-232

LOL Fu Yao to Xie Lian: What are you scared this wind is going to blow you away? Xie Lian: actually ye- p234

Ruoye once again saving the day! p237

How did these immortal men not realize they were in a shelter with a bunch of random people? p243

I'm also with them all. This desert seems fucky. Like either it's cursed af or someone is completely profiting off of people attempting to pass through p245

Biggest troll San Lang. Making the merchants prostrate themselves because they laughed at the "general's" death. p250

Also following that point; San Lang and Xie Lian being little cuties have a moment where they giggled together. p250

So many snakes!! This is an absolute nightmare!! I would have died immediately in this situation. Not even form the snakes, just from fear. No thanks. p253

Oh gosh those two. 1. Xie Lian "saves" San lang from the scorpion snake but gets stung in the process. So, naturally, 2. San Lang must try to suck the poison out of his hand. p260

Oop! The force in which San Lang eviscerated that snake. How DARE it touch his man. p262

This woman dressed as a Daoist priest is giving BAMF energy. Strong villain vibes for sure! p266

Why is everyone (not the main characters- talking normal people in this novel) so suspicious in this story!? I would be questioning them so much if the random merchants I left in safety then suddenly showed up in the secret city I was traveling to. How did they even get here??? p271

"Xie Lian couldn't help but think that the air between the two of them now was really strange, but he didn't know how to ask about it without sounding odd". mhmmm. odd. p273

What the heck! This guy is just buried in the garden- and he's been there for decades! p275

OH. And ofc there is a murderer among them! p278

This is turning into a game of clue and I love it

Who is the murderer?? Is it the guide? One of the merchants? San Lang? We will find out tomorrow!

[yuujiheart]

Those anons plus your analysis are really good. Have you seen Jujutsu no Kaisen (this one uses AI and stolen fanarts lol), Jujutsu two Kaisen and another alternate ending (this one doesn't have a name yet)? All these fan endings are just constant gojo glaze, it's okay to do what you want but they are claiming to "correct" Geges story LOL

Absolutely none of them cares about Yuji's being inspired by Nanami, Choso, Todo, Wasuke, save Megumi....no. The third fic is basically gojo and Yuji fighting together against Sukuna (God forbids yuji vs Sukuna)

I'm happy the animation director seems to love heian Sukuna and Sukuita , as well as people rejecting those fan endings and seeing how those fanboys are actually worse and didn't understand the story. I also dislike how they try to make Sukuna a One note dumb guy and completely ignore how much he suffered too

I bet they won't even add too many Sukuna and Yuji interactions because it would humiliate their Gojo/Sukuna headcanons ones

I knew about jujutsu no kaisen although I blocked them the moment they announced their plans and forgot about them completely ... I was forced to remember them when moots put that on my timeline... Didn't want to waste time reading whose sole purpose was to glaze gojo and insult gege.... So unfortunately, yeah I did see those posts about using AI and stolen fanarts..i don't know if that's possible but looking at the "content " they have produced I don't think they are very serious about this. Coz I have read aot no requiem and it was a good read honestly although I wasn't really familiar with fandom's reaction....

It feels like they are trying to make money through it somehow using gojo and jjk popularity.. Since you know there will be no new jjk content before anime comes out......

But I haven't heard about the other two fics at all. This is my first time hearing that there are other attempts to change the ending along with jujutsu no kaisen. ... Well lucky me I guess... But my feelings are the same. I can't see this as anything but a money making tool... Plus they can never write interactions and dynamics like gege... Gege has this talent to express the exact emotion in a few words. Yuji sukuna art is the best example... Sukuna saying " Abominable righteousness, refuge of the soul" perfectly expresses what he actually felt about yuji without going on a rant/ monologue about how yuji is different or something else.

And I am pretty sure that those who are solely focussed to gojo glaze can never do something like that.. And don't worry if they don't focus enough on yuji. It would be fine coz no matter how much they try to do their gojo sukuna thing,remember its yuji who's on those giant billboards and in newspaper on Christmas Day not gojo...

Yeah, that yuji sukuna art was so good.. It's pretty obvious they are dying to animate heian sukuna ... But you know what's the best part...

He's the one who was responsible for these two scenes... He made these ordinary scenes more sexy... Now imagine him being in charge of scenes where sukuna was being handsy with yuji.. Aaaaaaaa even thinkin about it fills my stomach with butterflies.. We gonna eat so fkking good anon 😋😋😋😋 ... Honestly I was thinking of deleting this acc as I feel it has achieved its purpose but now I am not sure... Lol

Thank you anon but it's just like you said the questions were good so answers automatically became good.. Otherwise I would just keep yapping about sukuita..

[exo-raskreia]

More on Utahime's potential in the Shinjuku Showdown Arc

WARNING: DELULU IDEAS + MANGA SPOILERS

So, GOJO HAS RISEN 🥳 (potentially). We'll see in the next chapter or so 😥. There are several ways this could've happened. In this post, however, I will mostly focus on Utahime.

(My reaction to chapter 260 at end of post)

Chapter 259 once again showcased flashbacks of the other characters strategizing against Sukuna, except for Gojo, Utahime, Gakuganji & Ijichi. At this point, one's inclined to believe that team was up to something during the time-skip. It's getting too obvious now.

In this post, I talked about Utahime's potential role in Gojo's revival and/or maybe have another equally important role in this arc.

While some ideas still stand, I thought of some others.

• One of my delulu theories was that Utahime & team could summon Sukuna with his 20th finger to a new vessel (maybe back to Yuuji) or maybe do something else with it, & I just got the idea that what if it's with Nobara's help? With Todo's return & the strange imagery in that recent MV for the opening of the Phantom Parade mobile game, "Avant" by Eve, which potentially foreshadows Gojo's return, & even shows Nobara's Straw Doll CT, Sukuna's new domain, etc., could it be Nobara will return as well? Could she use her Resonance on Sukuna's 20th finger, as it was revealed in 259 that Yuuji's & Sukuna's souls are still connected? (As of right now, it's possible Yuuta may be storing the finger inside Rika, so I wonder about the retrieval of it...)

Another possibility is what if they were doing something with the Prism Realm? That MV showed a bunch of those boxes with creepy eyes, like Sukuna's... What if Gojo's "special training" that he mentioned in 223 had to do with that? Like, maybe his team found a way to train in the box, as time flies differently? Or they were figuring out a way to seal Sukuna? In that same MV, we see paper seals on the boxes, so what if Utahime, as a shrine maiden, made them? Is it possible the team found or created more than one Prism, or something similar?

One thing that worries me is that the only ones who know about Yaga's secret CT are Gakuganji & Gojo. It hasn't been brought up again so... Were they planning something with that? Related to Gojo or maybe Nobara? I don't like the implications, though...

Because of that lingering connection between Sukuna & Yuuji, it seems like Sukuna was able to be a step ahead of everyone due to seeing/sensing all the sorcerers' plans that Yuuji had been a part of during the time-skip. Now, we know that Todo had kept his comeback secret from Yuuji so as not to alert Sukuna. Which could mean...that Utahime's CT was also kept a secret from Yuuji.

Sukuna still doesn't know about it. We know that Yuuji never knew about it while harboring Sukuna, & it seems that this was kept from him even during the time-skip? So, it means that he had no idea what Gojo was planning for his initial attack nor what else he was potentially doing during the time-skip.

Was this Gojo's idea? Did he just want to show off their 200% Hollow Purple? Is it because Utahime is a trump card? And/or is it to protect Utahime? (oof, Gojo, if that's so, we see u~ 👀)

To add to this, we got some recent content that makes me wonder if something regarding Utahime's character may actually happen. This is all mere wishful thinking speculation, of course.

• In the upcoming JJK exhibition (summer 2024), Gege is releasing some rough drafts from the manga & will apparently elaborate on his creative process when making them. One of them is the "You cryin'?" scene from chapter 65.

Out of all his rough drafts, he chose this one as one of the main ones for promo... 👀

In the original text here, Gojo said, "You're weak, so don't go on business trips too often." /OR "You're weak, so don't push yourself too hard."

(translation varies. Here, here, & here for further context)

The text seems to imply that Gojo didn't want Utahime to go so far away for missions (she was 3 hours away by train from Tokyo), or that she shouldn't take on such dangerous missions. Is it because he wouldn't be able to get to her sooner if she needed help, since at the time, he couldn't teleport yet? 👀

Gege changed it to "I came to save you" in the official release. Why, though? We could still tell Gojo was worried for Utahime due to him leaving the supervisor & his teammates behind to go save her from the mansion, forgetting to put up the curtain, & using Blue (which at the time, was exhausting to use) while managing to leave her unscathed. Did Gege think Gojo's concern for Utahime would be too obvious with the original text, though? 😏

• The characters got some updates on their profiles for the upcoming 4th character popularity poll. However, while most of the others got some slight changes, Utahime's only reiterates that she's a very good singer.

(Used Google Translate)

(We wish Gege would just give us more info on her but oh well 😮‍💨...)

Even this article finds the brief description strange.

Why did Gege bring this up again? Why not simply say she's a very good dancer instead, as we now know? He had said in the 2021 fanbook that her singing is a huge part of her CT, but we have yet to see it in action (unless the chanting for her 120% counted?). Some people had already lost hope that we'd get it, so is he implying that it's still something to look forward to? That her VA, Yoko Hikasa's singing talent, won't actually go to waste in the future? That Utahime still has a role to play? 👀

• On April 2, in order to commemorate Vol. 26 of the manga (containing infamous chapter 236), Shounen Jump uploaded a lofi video to their official YouTube channel in which we see edited versions of Gojo's memories. These mysterious edits have made people theorize that Gojo's memories have become a distorted mess in his brain, which is implied to be damaged in his (potentially) current state between life & death.

Utahime & Shoko appear with Gojo in one of the images.

Both girls have been theorized to help bring back Gojo. Utahime seems to be the focal point here, however, while Shoko is more in the background. Her appearance is that of her & Gojo's phone call scene, which had lasted 3min 41s in the anime (341, guys). Why is Utahime more prominent to him here, instead of his former teammate & closest friend?

(Full delulu) Could this be foreshadowing that Utahime will be the one to call Gojo back from the airport? That she will use her singing to reach him? Lure him like a siren or something? Or, like I said before in my aforementioned delulu post, does her singing have healing abilities?

Got the idea from this post that in the edit, it's like Gojo's heading (north) towards the girls, & since Utahime is at the center (of Gojo's distorted memory, mind u 😌), could it be implying she really will be the key to help guide him back? While Shoko is busy healing him?

AND SO...onto chapter 260:

GOJO HAS RISEN?! 🤩

(Gege, u better not be playing... Sukuna better not be hallucinating or smth...😑)

Right now, the Binding Vow theory seems the most popular, & while I don't like it, it's still possible. However, would this discredit the theory that Shoko healed him? And/or that Utahime buffed her? Maybe not. Shoko did say in 258 that the efficacy of her RCT can depend on the person's body/CE being healed. So, would Gojo have had to give up something, like his right eye, in order for Shoko's RCT to work, in case his CE was rejecting hers? 🤔😓

Gege will explain what's going on in the next chapters. As Gojo's return does seem rather sudden & random, it's possible it may not be official YET, but it doesn't mean it won't happen. So if this is a fluke, I do believe Gojo will return at a crucial moment.

Whether it was/will be thru a BV or with outside help, we will see. Either way, this also means that Utahime is coming back!! We'll finally see her again!! Where there is Gojo, there is Utahime. WE'RE GETTING THAT FLASHBACK, TRUST. Incredible how Gege timed this so closely with last year's chapter 222 in May, in which Gojo gets unsealed, & then in 223, Utahime reappears after a long absence WITH him. WILL GEGE DO THIS AGAIN? OH, MAN-

Ok, I know I'm fully delulu & Gege may go against all our expectations in the next chapter or so, so I'll try to keep them low. We'll see... He's not off the hook yet... 😕😫

[satorugojowidow]

I won’t argue the decision to kill Satoru because that was a creative decision and we could expect it to happen. But the zero reaction to his death is a plot problem. Because his sealing had a major impact in the characters perception of what was happening in Shibuya and helped to create the atmosphere of crisis. The death of the character that everyone perceived as the one that could fix everything should have a major impact on the rest of the characters, there should be an atmosphere of despair. No matter if there was plan b, everyone was counting on him to win the battle. Also, this all-along-plan that popped up in the recent chapters after the actual action seemed like just bad writing. All those techniques keep coming out and those plot twists in the battle were poorly built. And the fact that the action needed to keep stopping to give space to an explanation from the characters of what they were doing is proof of it.

Satoru being considered not a human is something that was there all the manga, so the use of his body like a tool is a good creative decision to me, but executed like shit. In the raid to keep “surprising” the audience with plot twists this happened from nowhere and went to nowhere. Satoru being sealed was amazing and surprising not because Kenjaku never talked about it, but because nobody was expecting it to actually happen and how Kenjaku managed to happen was why it was so great. Like Nobara, Gege seemed like it took all this time to decide whether to bring her back or not. In my opinion Nobara was dead, that is the correct way to read Megumi and Yuuji’s conversation, yet Gege decided to make use of the neverending delulu of fans to bring her back from the absolute nowhere. I’m not complaining about the decision to make her survive, just that it was done horrible badly. 

Finally, going back to Satoru, even if many consider him no human, there were characters that didn’t. Why Yuuta,who was actually fond of his sensei and for whom he felt gratitude, didn’t have a reaction in panels? Why Megumi seems like give absolute zero fucks that Satoru was killed by his hands? Megumi who was at least grateful of Satoru and never disrespected him calling him an idiot like Maki, even thought that he could have done it. Yuuji, who is emphatic with everyone? Yuuji actually liked Satoru and seemed like didn’t have a problem with his personality.

Gege said that he forgot to write a chapter, was the chapter of the reactions? I don’t know what killed jjk. I assume that was the working conditions of Gege, pressure, etc. But this jjk is a joke of what it used to be. More sad than Satoru being dead and forgotten, is that jjk has been dead all this time. Jjk is the only manga that fans wish it to end quickly and save at least one drop of dignity.

[sillygoofyqueer]

Today I thought I was doing some form of chemical warfare instead of making a cake like I had initially planned in my kitchen when the mixture actually turned the texture of Angel's Delight. It turned out fine in the end though (probably I haven't looked at it since taking it out of the oven because I'm like God in that sense)!! This doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but I just thought I'd share. ANYWAY, MAD SCIENTIST AU. Despite the Lads' best attempts to get Wei Ying to just relax at least a little bit (outside of Cleansing sessions) so they can keep working on getting him back to some form of good health, he is a wriggly bastard. Even trying to entice him with conversation topics that he could talk about for hours back before the Burial Mounds doesn't do much, because he just flits away the moment they turn their backs on him. He is still sort of chatty but he never talks as much as he used to, seemingly used to the silence now - after all, when there were enough voices in one's head, it didn't seem necessary to say anything aloud. No, Wei Ying is not the same. He jokes, he teases, he dances around concern, but there is something haunted about those eyes as he looks at people. He spends more time by himself than he ever used to before the Burial Mounds.

While the resentful energy is slowly, slowly but surely clearing up, nothing else seems to change about him in that sense. Deathly pale, no appetite, not blinking - it's hard to keep a firm grasp on him. Honestly, as much as Wei Ying loves and adores his family, completely understands why the Wens didn't say anything about all of the lies, there is still that element of betrayal. It's something that he feels guilty of, but it's still there. A flicker. They knew, everyone knew, that the Wens had killed his parents, but they never breathed a single word of it. Never even hinted at it. It was a thought that he tries not to think about, but it makes everything feel the slightest bit strained. Just a tiny bit. Looking at them and having the unbidden, bitter thought of 'why?' shoot through his mind. He doesn't want to feel like that, so he becomes determined to fix himself in order to be able to spend time with his family again.

Xue Yang didn't know either. He carries all of the bitterness that Wei Ying feels but amplified by the actual thought that he was dead. He thought that his gege was dead and treated the Wen accordingly, but now he acts like nothing had ever changed now that his gege is back. Wei Ying wishes that he could be like that, wishes he could stop feeling this way now that his family is back together. The spirits understand his inner conflict, they listen and accept him and they don't judge, so he buries his hands deeper into the resentful energy so there is someone else to talk to about it. But, spirits can only help so much, and the ones around this war camp are too violent, too focused on blood and revenge to be of any assistance when he's trying to move past that bitterness and betrayal.

The Cleansing sessions with Lan Wangji are his only escape from it all. The gentle melody, paired with the soothing, steady presence of the other boy in the room, relaxes him in a way he can't explain. The bitterness disappears, the stress and desperation that still clings to him from the Burial Mounds melts down into a warm feeling of peace that he so rarely feels anymore. At first, they remain silent throughout the sessions, and Wei Ying falls asleep before the song is even finished. Then, after the exhaustion stops simmering in his blood, he finds himself just talking after the melody is over. He talks more about his cultivation method, about the experiments he wants to try out when the resentful energy is clearing up at least a little bit.

He doesn't know what it is about Lan Wangji, but he soon finds himself spilling more about himself, feeling like he can trust the boy with anything. He talks about the guilt that permeates his every breath, one borne from the things he has done for his parents' killers, from the blood seeping between his fingers with every person he killed in order to experiment. It doesn't matter if he thought they were willing participants, he still had to pick their blood out from beneath his fingernails when it built up too much. In more whispered tones, he talks about this deep betrayal and bitterness he feels towards Wen Ning and Wen Qing, even though he can't blame them for the choices they made because he doesn't know if he would do any different.

Lan Wangji doesn't say anything at first, just continuing to be that steady presence who sits there and listens, that same tranquil expression on his face every time that Wei Ying risks a look. No judgement, no disgust or horror at his words, just calm peace. The first time that he does anything during one of these sessions, it's to gently shift his hand out and press it lightly against Wei Ying's own outstretched hand when he sprawls out in a fit of emotion. He doesn't say anything more, but Wei Ying understands. He curls around the hand and clings to it for the comfort it provides, a drop of water for a parched man in the desert. It gets easier since that first time to sprawl around upon Lan Wangji without a care in the world as he talks.

"Wei Wuxian. You are not a bad person for feeling upset," is the next leap that comes along with these sessions. Lan Wangji stares at him with those breathtaking golden eyes, looking over his shoulder where he is back to back with Wei Ying. Wei Ying cannot speak for a moment, too busy staring at the glorious, perfect boy who just seems to be his only solace in these uncertain, terrifying times. He eventually laughs off the words, wanting to brush it off, but Lan Wangji's golden eyes do not let him. Eventually, he says "ah, Lan Wangji. how are you a real person? You should call me Wei Ying, I've basically bared my whole soul to you at this point." Lan Wangji looks at him with no change in his serene expression, and goes "Lan Zhan." instead of any real response.

[sadistic-kiss]

🐺House of Alphas🐺

(Jujutsu Kaisen Omegaverse )

Summary: Waking up in a world that was not your own was problematic enough. Being the villainess was another. However, the possessive alphas might take the cake.

Disclaimer: Angsty but I ain’t Gege

Omega!Reader x Alpha!Sukuna x Alpha!Gojo x Alpha!Toji x Alpha!Nanami x Alpha!Getou

Chapter 71: Lu Marcie

~

...

There was just something about you…

You tried your best to hide your expressions and your intentions but you failed miserably. He could see right through you. He had observed you for long enough to know what kind of person you were. You were extremely complex. Your level of emotions was on a different scale entirely. Something he hadn’t the luxury of dealing with, but found amusing.

It must be whatever species of humanoid you come from.

With his time of being with you, he couldn’t pinpoint a hint of manipulation in your eyes, unless you were good at lying… and you most certainly weren’t good at that.

His thoughts drifted off as he felt a prickly sense that something was staring at him. He peeked one eye open to see you were the one to blame.

You took in his expression wordlessly as if to paint a perfect picture in your imagination. It reminded him of the adoration you bestowed upon him when he was getting ready for your punishment. The way you looked at him made his heart feel tight and his body catch flame as if he were angry, but he wasn't angry. That same feeling came over him before, and instead of exploding and killing whatever was in his path, he uttered that word out to you...The word that came somewhere within.

Lu Marcie.

It felt right to call you that.

He wondered if your novel also explained who those dragons were. He could pass it off as a simple nickname he came up with.

Sukuna raised a brow, “What?”

Your lips twitched into a light smile before you spoke calmly, “Is this the first time you have called me Lu Marcie?”

Sukuna snorted while readjusting his position, well there goes that plan, “Is that the rock you are currently sitting on?”

You gave him a playful shrug, “Are you gonna help me off it?”

Sukuna shook his head at your quick sass- you've been spending too much time with Gojo. But he indulged you: “No, it is not.”

You shifted within his lap so that you could face him better. “When… was the first time?”

He played with claws, picking nonexistent dirt out of them while speaking nonchalantly, “The Nest.”

You let out a little shy laugh, “I didn’t think you did…I heard you but I didn’t think you actually said it…why…?” Your tone had dropped a bit near the end as if you couldn’t believe that he would choose to call you such a name.

“Why? Easy…You seemed to like it better than when I would call you the other name.”

“Raven?”

“You freaked out for it when you were drunk on cock and the assholes blamed me for making you almost drop. Therefore, I chose a name I thought to be more fitting for you. Do you not like it?”

You fought another smile. Drunk off cock was kind of a wild statement but you could ignore it for now, knowing that Sukuna was trying to make this seem like such a simple word like princess. As if he weren’t acting all shy now.

“Yeah…yeah I do…I’m just… surprised is all.”

“Surprised?” Sukuna dragged a claw up your spine, sending shivers throughout your body. “Did the Sukuna in your book not use such a name for his omega?”

Slowly you shook your head, “No…never…but I guess that’s because in the story there wasn’t an issue with the main character's name.“

“Dove.” He stated with a simple tone. You could tell by the look in his eyes he was wondering why it was so hard for you to say her name.

“Mh…sorry it just feels weird talking about the story in this way… it’s like you guys are different people but the same…it almost makes me feel uneasy considering you all were once fictional characters to me.”

“And how was I in your story?”

You opened your mouth and then hissed, “Uh…. well… you were… um…interesting…”

Sukuna scoffed, “Interesting? Or Mean? Is that the word you were looking for?”

...

~

~Read More~

[sidsinning]

Did Geto just expect Gojo to let him get away with killing the world if he got his hands on Rika

No matter how powerful Rika would make Geto, Gojo is turning her into roadkill in 1 minute if he wants- which, since Geto knows Gojo is against his ideal world, he should know that would've happened even if he succeeded in taking her

Did Geto expect all sorcerers to rebuild civilization with no one to run modern tech like the internet, or farm their own produce for food??

Did he think every sorcerer would want that kind of caveman life?? Bc his daughters sure don't; they want monkey made cellphones, with monkey made crepes, dressed in cute monkey made clothes- no matter what Geto preaches (at least he indulges them despite his views lol)

You can say "he would keep some monkeys alive for those things", but that is hypocritical of him who preaches something as extreme as monkey genocide bc they are "useless" to the world

Hell, he was already living hypocritically bc his daily needs were all dependent on the so-called "useless monkeys" already, even if he says he tries to not use their resources as much as possible

Sounds like they aren't just walking curses to me!!

Very apparent it is a solution more born from his unreasonable hatred towards non-sorcerers than an actual plan

One person gave him a mild suggestion when he was mega depressed at 17 years old and he ran with it for 10 years 🥀🥀🥀

Idk maybe it's just me who already sees JJK 0 as a flawed piece of work in general; I just couldn't wrap my head around how he thought this would work even if he succeeded- like he is so sure of himself right up to his last moments

I still love the complexities of his character; the way Gege already let us know he was the more charismatic and approachable one out of him and Gojo, only to have him use that seemingly positive trait to grow a fucking CULT when pushed to the wrong direction is WILD

Even the way he approaches Yuta shows him being a perfect salesman at your doorstep lol