#I'm also choosing to read the Shinjuku fight as an evil adoption arc.

[thepersonperson]

Little Details in JJK

I've decided to put a couple of minor details I noticed and thought were neat in one place to keep track of them. They're all basically like this:

They never patched that hole up but they removed all the talismans lmao. Planning how to kill Sukuna in the room Yuji was almost executed with the finger that made that hole goes hard though.

Notes before we start.

1) This features Miguel Oduol, Yorozu, and Sukuna.

2) I will be mainly using the TCB scans for the manga because of their accessibility. 

3) Raws are from mangareader(.)to.

(Click images for captions/citations.)

Miguel Oduol

We all know Miguel Oduol is from Kenya, however what you might not know is that he appears to be from the Maasai tribe specifically! I'm going to link a lot of resources about this, so keep in mind that sometimes they can be incidentally racist. (Aka a minority is tribe is discussed like an alien species.)

Cursed Technique Origins

I know a lot of people criticized Miguel's Cursed Technique (CT) for being a dance, however, it is directly related to him being Maasai. Adumu is the Maasai jumping dance practiced by warriors to show off their strength and agility. This is the dance Miguel appears to be doing when he first activates his CT against Sukuna.

(Read more on the Maasai Jumping Dance here!)

If you noticed, Miguel's baldness also appears to be based it being a common hairstyle for the Maasai regardless of gender. It should also be noted that his CT, Hakuna Laana, is Swahili for No Curses. Swahili is an official language of Kenya and is spoken by the Maasai even though they have their own language (also called Maasai or Maa).

Other Details

Since the Maasai are nomadic and move around based on the weather, their dwellings reflect that lifestyle. This appears to be why Miguel is drawn outside of a hut in that one flashback—it's just how Maasai homes look.

Another thing done right was the local flora. It's super easy for creators to mistakenly apply foreign flora to the wrong region. (Take for instance, the iconic Saguaro cactus being included in settings based on Chihuahuan Desert in Texas, when this cactus exclusively grows in the Sonoran Desert, which is basically just Arizona and Baja California.)

The trees in the background are called Baobab trees and they do in fact grow in Kenya.

Why Maasai?

I think Gege picked the Maasai tribe in particular for Miguel because of their belief in curses. See from the following sources:

"While generational curses are normal within the Maasai worldview..."

"For the Maasai people, death does not traditionally hold any secrets of the afterlife. Once an individual has passed, their journey has ended. All of their possessions and any of their sins are transferred to the loved ones who survive them."

"Social control among the Maasai rests ultimately on the general belief in the power of elders to bless and to curse..."

(Please note that the word they use for curse (engooki) appears to be sometimes translated as sin.)

So when Miguel threatens to curse Geto in JJK0 if he dies?

He really fudging means it. (Could also explain why he's so particular about not dying. He doesn't believe he'll be reincarnated later, that's just it for him!)

The only thing about Miguel that didn't seem to fit with Maasai practices is the black rope. This is a stretch, but it might be based on their well-known bead work:

"Black– Symbolizes unity and solidarity. It also denotes the struggles the Maasai endure, which bring them together as a people."

Miguel certainly struggled when using that on Gojo.

Yorozu

This is mostly me complaining about what got lost in translation. Yorozu is basically a bug and I cannot wait for her weird insect shtick to get animated.

Best Bug

The first instance of her speech being bug-coded I noticed is when Yorozu yells 斬って (Kitte) 7 times total (7.5 if you count the modified 斬 (ki) at the end.

The Japanese is objectively funnier because Yorozu is screaming "CUT ME!!" over and over like cicada. The English translation gave her a poetic flair she doesn't have.

This also happens with her Domain Expansion 三重疾苦 (Shikkushikku Shikku) where 三重 (Shikkushikku) means triple and 疾苦 (Shikku) means suffering.

Additional context shamelessly stolen from the JJK wiki:

"The kanji shikku (疾苦 (しっく) ) refers to the suffering brought on by illness, affliction, or simply hardship in life. Akutami uses the pronunciation shikku as a pun of the borrowed English word "sick" (シック shikku).

Given Yorozu's excessive love for Sukuna, it is likely that the domain's name references "lovesickness", and specifically a song by Japanese VOCALOID producer PinocchioP (sung by Hatsune Miku) called "Sick Sick Sick" (シックシックシック), which is about how love can be a sickness."

(Btw シックis read as Shikku.)

My best attempt to carry forward the puns and repetition for this domain would be Triply Tristful Tribulations. (Someone please come up with something better.)

Yorozu's death is also bug-coded. Mahoraga literally swats her like a roach.

There's also something to be said about Sukuna refusing to touch her in battle and using anything but his actual body to kill her. That's kind of how most people are when it comes to killing bugs.

Not Bug Related

The thing Yorozu is lounging on in the Heian flashback is a "pillow" called a takamakura. It's a special headrest that was slept on to keep fancy hairstyles intact since they would take hours to prepare.

Since Yorozu's hair is down and she just kind of runs around pussy out while ignoring all the social rules, it speaks to her non-noble heritage. (Remember she was recruited by the Fujiwaras and is from Aizu.) She also has a bad habit of biting her fingernails when she's concentrating.

Another fun detail is that when she declares that she's going to be the one at Sukuna's side. Yorozu directly points at Uraume who is already standing there. This of course, is called back to in the epilogue where Uraume remains at Sukuna's side.

What I really like about this is that Yorozu seems to believe that only a romantic relationship will ease Sukuna's loneliness, and she's proven wrong. The platonic/familial bond with Uraume winds up being the one Sukuna chooses and it's good enough for him. I may be biased, but I appreciate when non-romantic relationships are considered just as satisfying as romantic ones.

I also have to shout out Yorozu for not seeing Uraume as competition. She still wants them around even if she marries Sukuna. It's so easy to have an obsessive character like her be irrationally jealous, but she's basically willing to adopt Uraume which is adorable. (This also goes for Hana, who in a worse manga, would see Tsumiki as competition for Megumi.)

Sukuna

This is just a compilation of my favorite Sukuna girlfailure moments.

Self-Depreciation

"The bough that bear most hang lowest." comes from a proverb that means "those who have the most to offer are often the least boastful, much like tree branches that bend under the weight of their fruit."

When Sukuna tells Jogo that his "head doesn't bear much" he's warning him about his lack of humility (aka not bowing enough) and calling him worthless at the same time. Pretty clever, right?

What makes this a girlfailure moment is that by this logic, Sukuna is inadvertently declaring that he's worth less than the ones he's looking down on and that his arrogance is a sign of posturing. If you pointed this out to him, he'd probably kill you, but it's kind of funny he overlooked the implication.

Manji Kick

When Yuji tries to throw hands with Sukuna after being killed, he tries to kick his gruncle in the face and misses.

This doesn't stop Yuji! Eventually he pulls off a successful Manji Kick against Mahito.

This means that even though Sukuna has dodged this move before, even though he has witnessed Yuji landing this move...

...he somehow managed to get with it in his "strongest" original form.

He Might Be Autistic

I promise I'll elaborate more on Sukuna's autism in a different post, but he's on par with Yuji in taking things at face value sometimes. Here is my favorite example.

He really took his nephew at his word and got punched in the face for it...

The Knives

When Sukuna's technique is first properly introduced, 2 knives represent it. The one on the left is a sujihiki (associated with Dismantle) while the one on the right is a burja (associated with Cleave). Uraume winds up using a burja when cutting the curses for a bath.

The thing about the sujihiki is that it's primarily used for scaling and filleting fish. You know, like for Gojo Satoru, the fish he scaled then bisected with Dismantle. The burja is used for percision cutting which is probably why Uraume uses it for the special preparation of curses. (Burjas also aren't that big, so I'd like to believe that's Sukuna's knife they're using.)

Anyways, I leave you with a panel comparison of Gojo punching Uraume like he did Hakari and Yuta. (Sukuna dodging their flying body will never not be funny.)

Gojo and Sukuna have really questionable ideas about guardianship.