#Megumi Fushiguro Critical

[frost-felon]

[ID: A Venn diagram of Jujutsu Kaisen's Tsukumo Yuki, Yorozu, and Uro Takako. Between Yuki and Yorozu, the shared space reads, "Researched curse energy and is an expert in the field". Between Yuki and Takako, the shared space reads, "Was refused autonomy in order to please higher powers". Between Yorozu and Takako, the shared space reads, "Heian sorcerers that had to climb to the top in order to survive". In between all of them, the shared space reads, "Written out of the plot in order to propel some guy with black hair".]

The fact that Gege fumbled so bad like look at this man

[uriekukistan]

i think it's interesting how so many people when they write no curse school aus have yuuji as this popular jock and megumi as this upstanding student, when yuuji was actually in the occult club and didn't have a cell phone until he went to jujutsu tech and megumi probably had detention every day for life from beating up so many people

[the-mother-of-lions]

team tokyo x cinnamon roll - murder scale

[skrunklystraycat]

Gojo: everyone, go around and state a surprising fact about yourself!

Nobara: I dye my hair

Megumi: I used to bite Gojo

Yuuji: I don't think anyone is suprised about that. I used to eat paint

Megumi: used to? I saw you eat paint three days ago, and nobody is surprised.

Yuuji: Yeah, USED TO! Not anymore!

[ravenpureforever]

So guess who finally watched JJK

[skade32]

Inspired by ABBA’s “Slipping through my fingers” lyrics:

I read a fic on AO3 with these lyrics and I WISH I REMEMBERED THE NAME SO I COULD RECOMEND IT

I was inspired to like encapsulate some ‘childhood memories’ of the Fushiguro siblings that I like to imagine Gojo has reminders of in the form of drawings and objects and letters and photos in his office.

In my found family fantasies, Gojo would relate to these lyrics regarding Tsumiki (don’t come after me I know this is mostly copium idc) and her sudden disappearance from his life. Also a little bit for Megumi who is not so suddenly, but nonetheless moving farther away from him as he both becomes an adult and no longer needs Gojo as much as he once did.

This was not really planned to be a whole thing. I initially just drew the bottom panel for fun bc I’m extremely not normal about teenage-single-parent-gojo (again I’m aware of the copium please don’t burn me at the stake) and idk I just couldn’t tear myself away from working on it and the next thing I knew it built itself up to the whole page and I hope other people can enjoy it as much as I have.

Description:

A graph paper notebook page covered entirely with a graphite sketch of a quickly thrown together comic scene. Two panels are featured atop the background which appears to be a cluttered desk in the foreground with numerous kinds of papers strewn about from mission reports to a letter addressed to Tsumiki. Amongst the papers in the top right corner, just adjacent to the first featured panel, a traditional jar of ink supports a dark pen, gently resting at an angle against the ink well. The pen seems to have been carelessly put aside as ink still drips down into the well below. The small portion of the scene not taken up by the desk has the walls, covered entirely by nondescript talismans, loosely sketched so not to drive too much attention from the subjects of the piece.

Wax drips from long-neglected candles, leaving almost no remnants of the once smooth and unblemished form it must have held just hours earlier that day. The residues of the wax leave bulbous trails, stopping just before the edge of the candle-holder sitting just to the left of the first feature panel.

Within the first panel is a scene of a little girl, squatting down so her shorts sit just above the heels of her little rubber rain boots. She seems distracted, lost in thought, as the rain pelts her and the sidewalk beside her becomes more reminiscent of a canal rather than a pedestrian pathway. The overgrown garden of the small cottage she loiters by fades into the misty sky, dark leafy bushels obscured by the soft glow of a lamplight to her left shoulder which complains achingly to the deafened thoughts of Tsumiki’s mind, still lost pondering the butterfly that rests gently upon her outstretched fingers, lovingly sheltered from the oppression of each raindrop which could rip its fragile scales in an instant. Such danger seems to not affect Tsumiki as she endures the assault from the heavens to endure the butterfly gets not a drop on his fragile wings. Her left hand holds the umbrella at such an angle that tree butterfly’s safety is assured, her own soggy hair a small price to pay for preserving such a beautiful creature.

Connecting the edge of this panel’s bottom edge to the background, a small square with a slanted cursive script writes “Slipping through my fingers all the time…”

The second panel, shifted slightly to the right of the former, occupying the focus of the bottom half of the page, displays a simpler image. The bright smile of a certain white haired idiot grows brighter as black spikes hair brushes against his chin. His dimple’s grow deeper when he notices the camera flashing at him and his disgruntled child relenting finally to sleep against his collarbone— leaving no doubt to any onlooker that the smile reached his eyes, true glee racking the young man’s expression as he jokingly flaps a limp hand about in a greeting gesture towards the camera. Whether or not Megumi’s participation in this memory was unwitting or not, that was up for debate. Regardless, the boy was clearly exhausted. Likely from some kind of jujutsu training after a mission that day if his athletic shorts and Gojo’s uniform were any indication.

A text box yet again connects to the bottom left corner of this panel reading: “…I try to capture every minute…”

[dootledorp]

Shout out Robbie Daymond for playing such gay characters like Jesus Christ

[amberlin1]

I mean yes, everything that happened in ep 95 from the shopping ep to the burlesque show to art therapy to Laudna and Orym's pvp.

But honestly Robbie Daymond wearing a Fushiguro top was all i was focused on

[bibibbon]

Yo! I see you rant about JJK on occasion which is cool I'm a fan of that series.

Just not the recent leaks.

Are you caught up on spoilers? Because Bibi... I have things to say about JJK's creative choices, especially what Gege has done recently.

I'm not happy.

Hi anon 👋

Sadly, Iam caught up with canon and the horrendous rollercoaster that is gege akutami's creative writing choices. I know I don't rant much about jjk but I honestly plan to start doing that, I am just busy at the moment and I am making character analysis and all before ranting about leaks like I do with MHA.

In all honesty I have always had problems with gege's writing here and there but they have never been big enough until we reached the culling games and the nonsense that happens after it.

The 261 leaks are disastrous and a huge disappointment. Look I really don't mind if Gojo came back or died but I truly despise the way he chose to make yuta hella overpowered. I did like the fact that we got an acknowledgement of how society has dehumanised Gojo by making him the strongest but you would think that a story about the younger generation breaking cycles they wouldnt choose another hierarchy type system but in the end they do? Yuta coming back in gojos body was what I hated most really like I liked yuta acknowledging gojos feelings and all but Dam I don't know what gege was thinking here.

Iam afraid that gege has forgotten about megumi and nobara. Like Iam pretty sure megumi has taken a lot of damage so him coming out miraculously unscathed would just be bs plot armour and all. On the other hand, the way you're telling me after like 100+ chapters of no mention of Todo he comes back? And then we just forget completely about nobara?!?!?! It's infuriating.

Also my final mention is what gege truly plans with yuji itadori. Look I get that geges writing of his MC doesn't follow the traditional shonen MC formula which is something I really like but I genuinely expected for yuji to be the one to fight from right on here and we get more of megumi (heck even insert nobara) instead we get yuji sidelined and we get yuta in gojos body. At least if it was nobara coming into the battle of would at least work because she is close to yuji and it's basically the trio reuniting with eachother in a cruel way.

I have more to say but I will keep it short as this is getting too long

[k-martins]

Can I vent????

Defending Megumi from Twitter's accusations of being useless and a "potentialman" is taking five years off my life.

I avoid arguing with people on twt because I want peace in my life, but I get so angry when they spout unrealistic facts about Megumi, saying that he is uninteresting and useless and has no personality.

And I just feel like crying in frustration.

Because Megumi is constantly being played for shit and having his victories diminished. As if people are saying he's better off staying dead, but not in the sense of "because it would be worse for him to live with the guilt" but rather in the sense of "he's boring and a horrible character".

I hate when they say that about my child who just wanted to save the people he loves. And I hate that they all need to diminish Megs' importance just to praise their favorites. Like, I know Yuta is amazing and Choso had a great development, but why do you have to state in any post I make about Megumi about how "horrible her character is"???? I don't need to hear Mahoraga's joke for the fiftieth time or be bombarded by Megumi's panel into the abyss when I just want to comment on how much I like your sea urchin hair. T-T

I accept these things harmlessly because most of my moots don't like Megumi, and I can even joke with them a little about it, but it's getting unbearable.

I'm not one to break friends because of ships or fictional characters, but it's annoying that I can't comment/reblog anything about my favorite ship without some moot coming up to comment on how I'm "sick for shipping this" or "I have bad taste in characters".

One of my moots just started telling everyone that I ship sanegiyuu after I started following a girl who talks about them.

This made me uncomfortable.

These people are my friends, I want to talk about the things I like with them. Why can't I follow and comment on the things I like on my profile??? It would be like stopping writing about itafushi here on tumblr just because some idiots told me it's horrible!

I've never forced ships on anyone or used them to judge my knowledge about jjk, I've always tried to be polite when I try to correct someone about something (some people argued with me about stsg just because I defended a girl's thread about them), so I would like to have the same respect.

Am I going to be such an asshole to block this moot???

I don't want them to think I'm arrogant.

Or maybe I should just create a new account focused on just my ships and forget about it for a while????

I think this would be the best solution.

[lavenderjewels]

i never talk about him but i actually like toji a lot as a side character/antagonist. it’s endlessly funny to me that megumi is his son, his blessing, but they barely get anything outside their moment in shibuya and hidden inventory. then he’s just there for maki’s character development (truly the favored relative narratively) or thrown into a chapter randomly to look hot

[cherryys]

i rewatched that one scene between todo and megumi during their fight to see if maybe the anime made an exaggeration and made the fists or something and that's why everyone thought he was going to use it, but nope. It never shows his hands. He never says its name. So i'm confused on this insistence that he was going to use it against todo if there's no proof of it at all. Do people really think Megumi is petty enough to use it against Todo??? I'm so confused

[mythtaker]

I just clocked the megumi shirt robbie is wearing. Love him

[princeofpaths]

Robbie’s wearing a megumi sweater 😭🥺

[edwardsissyhandsthtdanceslikeabb]

I Don't Like how I Feel abt JJK S2

aka making sense of my very confused watch and thusly, my very confusing feelings

what i feel is JJK 2's biggest fault is a lack of a concrete voice, particularly in terms of tonal fluidity and character dynamics + characterization, which is what made JJK 1 so amazing to begin with. this really dampens the stakes, especially when, apart from mahito, the fight mechanics and raw physicality that JJK 1 & 0 so effortlessly captured seem to be absent. like yk you're fcking up when u have a shounen bro asking for less fight scenes.

i just feel as if, other than sotosugu, which geto is carrying on his hunching, scoliosis riddled back, i don't GET the dynamics. none of the characters made me care, they didn't connect with me beyond a superficial level, which is maybe a skill issue but ik its entirely possible when the show became #great-again and made me give 100% of a fawk about geto in TWO episodes. the tonal mastery on display there, the pacing, his sense of isolation, his deteriorating sense of self, its all conveyed so eloquently, like we are IN his head.

it also makes amanai's loss tangible, it gives us consequences and stakes and demonstrates the weight of that raw, human friendship. it nuances geto in a way i felt was absent in the other characters and thusly made them feel flat and insignificant. — having written more now, i think what stands out to me is how filed down the characters feel, like i just realized yuuji doesn’t feel RIGHT anymore, like i’m missing a sort of energy he used to bring to the table which made his softer moments feel more authentic yet pronounced, and i think that’s what’s plagued the new characters as well, a lack of concrete ENERGY.

long post!!

and jjk doesn't really do that sort of thing, its strength USED to lie in the compelling nature of its dynamics and character relations, but now that that's suffered under the transition of authorial voice, i think they've struck GOLD with the introspective storytelling method.

part of what made JJK 1 & 0 so great is it felt as if its light beats were ALSO in service of either narrative, plot or progression of the dynamics and we got to invest in and learn more abt the respective characters through every tonal beat we were taken through, what they got serious abt, what triggered them, how they relate to others. but with the first 3 or so episodes of JJK 2, which are very little in retrospect, but GLARING in an episode by episode watch approach, especially when contrasted again JJK 0, or JJK 1 (which, while cringe at first cause i watched downloaded eps and i used to have a shameful penchant for dub so obviously the cringe was threatening to disengage me, plus a few odd shots which had me like damn, amateur hour — which btw i STILL feel/felt that way abt s2. despite the animation being so amazing that upon teasers first dropping I was pretty much assured that it would be a sensory delight no matter what, but gorgeous moving pictures does not a good show make it seems. like you are NOT sam levinson my dudes, you don’t convey the sheer SPECTACLE that makes that approach work —, but that feeling was dispelled within an episode and I was just as hyped as i’ve always felt upon JJK rewatches), it has a timeless quality to it, its very sure in its direction and its characters and how they interlink. plus the fights are great and often used to convey smth abt the characters or their relationships.

while s2 has me like… ok so what happened in the first 3 episodes? everything felt like filler, everything felt inconsequential, everything felt shallow.

and that’s in NO part bc of the new (sort of) cast of characters, i gaf abt JJK 0, like yuta wasn’t bbg but i loved watching him form relationships with the other characters (especially inumaki, yuta x inumaki otp you heard it here first. like at first i didn’t GET inumaki but upon a rewatch i started to catch onto his linguistic patterns and how soft of a character he REALLY is, like inumaki is so baby 🥺, and the two connecting over being edgy soft boys had me SEATED.

especially when yuta got over his preconceptions abt inumaki borne of the fact that he doesn’t communicate conventionally, and he had thusly fashioned a personality FOR inumaki that stemmed from him being different. but it didn’t feel so extreme that i felt undercurrents of discrimination, poor boy is just traumatized and views ppl who are cold to him as antagonistic, so i get it, especially bc his reactions were more on the softer comedic side. but he then realizes that dude is just the nicest guy ever and not being able to speak doesn’t mean you’re a scary or odd person), and while his whole thing with rika was kind of saccharine and had fbi ON speed dial, i came to really appreciate HOW he cursed rika and how her love for him was so pure, like it felt universal and unrestrained by any label and that’s smth beautiful to me cause things could’ve gone ban from seven deadly sins REAL fast and they subverted that.

but i also don’t feel that its coincidence that i felt more engaged by preestablished characters and their dynamics (the main trio and their reintroduction into the story). they have a shorthand, a familiarity that gojosquad lacked, and i’ve come to realize as i write that that’s intrinsic to always being the highest in the room (wink wink), but if that’s the case then that needs to be tangibly demonstrated, give small tells that despite wanting or trying to, gojo lacks the capacity for intimate human bonds outside of one guy, he’s a product of jujutsu society, which will always distance him from conventionality and attachments. give it significance and intention within the story bc without it being written in, it makes the show feel tonally disjointed and unrefined.

give us personal moments between sugusoto, shorthands or glances or shifts in tone or whatever that capture the duration and depth of their bond, show us them caring abt each other in a way only two untouchable people can, how their eyes always find each other first, how even when with others gojo is always watching geto, like i need moments™ (it doesn’t have to be showboating and glamorized depictions of interactions ALL the time, the quiet moments matter too). like don’t get me wrong i FAWKED with the aquarium scene but i think its telling how long it took me to recall it bc it was ONE moment, yk. like i want to FEEL how despite the loss or uncertainty of those around them they always have each other. THAT’S what’s missing. meggy and yu to the uji had that with their sukuna fight and megumi pledging to protect those he cares abt, in fact meggy came in swinging bc you had a strong sense of who he was and that he cared from day 1. i need their priorities and drives established, i need to know WHO they are. like yes the: who are you and what do you want scene from JJK 0 was ham-fisted and made retrieving my eyeballs from where they’d lodged into the back of my skull quite difficult, but stuff like that is needed and CAN be done tactfully. like i feel this season is all abt subtlety and undercurrents so that when the sheer shitshow that is obviously going to burst forth comes about we’re #shook but its called balance, and its initially what made JJK so great.

and with 1/3rd of the characters i still feel have a strong presence (mahito, gojo, todo – u will ALWAYS be famous… and mei mei) allegedly, supposedly, apparently being taken out of the narrative which is TOTALLY something i am having a well-adjusted and normal reaction to, i am FINE! shut up shut up shut up HGRLSOPFHUJWVOBEFBUQUUI!!!?!? ARGGHHH! NBHQYIJHVQJH!!!!?!!! BANGS TABLE BITES WALLS SEETHES IN A VERY UNAFFECTED MANNER ROLLS AROUND THRASHING AND SWEATING fine i am, fine yes yes. FINE!

well, its made me very apprehensive abt how JJK could progress. bc while i think the reintroduction into modern day was done well, i also acknowledge the slippery slope of its shortcomings, and how eliminating such MAJOR players and flavors in the JJKverse can leave a void too wide to be filled. if they can’t keep up the character dynamics and characterizations they have now the show, to me, is doomed, plain and simple.

bc on one hand you have the great mechamaru mahito fight, which actually works MORE bc it wasn’t afraid to be a little camp and tropey and FUN, but then you have yuuji fighting that bug and its like ???? or the toji gojo fight where istg, no limbs touched, not one, no kicks, no weight, no fight mechanics, just hella blur and faith in the lord. like i should not have to wait until the end of the fight to see some IMPACT, some goɾe, some injury, some STAKES.

with the absolute feral levels i get at the intro song (their best one and one of the best i’ve seen in anime tbh, in terms of visuals, aesthetics, music, it just- it makes me SO VIOL3NT, I LOVE IT HBWEVFHWJEFWKF) i want to see these obvious pools of potential realized, i don’t want or even like JJK when its good, i like JJK bc at its core its GREAT, and if they play their cards right we could be looking at one of the best animes of, dare i say all time.

like the villains feel foreboding, they feel ALIVE, they carry weight and i want that for the mains too. so far i’m happy with their handling of the main trio, with the episode dedicated to yuuji’s old crush being genuinely emotional, paced proficiently and ACTUALLY funny, like i’m not saying that the first 3 eps weren’t funny in their own way, but it wasn’t GIVING jujutsu kaisen, at its inception it wasn’t giving JJK with the way the season felt more like a thriller at first, but it was done so well that i wasn’t mad at it, then the levity and relationships came in and were just so underwhelming man. it was literally like being hit by a train tbh.

anyway, i’ve belaboured the point, all i have to say before talking abt the fɑscist in the room is that i was PHYSICALLLY and PERSONALLY pained by the diminishment of the fight scenes. ooooo going from todo yuuji, yuta geto, sukuna megumi, even gojo v that black dude (sorry idk his name and also justice for him that sht was a hate crime fr fr) honestly all the fights in the tournament between the jujutsu schools, to what we got in s2, that hurt me and me specifically and it is only grace from some celestial force that has kept me from doing smth drastic and unethical in retaliation.

anyways, what i feel could’ve capitalized on JJK 2’s strengths from the get go is centring get o (wink wink) and creating more tonal contrast or whiplash / a sense of bubbling foreboding which erupts at the climax of the season half’s finale, it would make everything sm more pronounced and eerie and meaningful, just generally imbuing more nuance into their portrayal could’ve made it LEAGUES better but then geto would have lost all mobile functionality of his spine bc he would’ve crashed under the weight of the show long before he crashed under the weight of his own mind. bro CARRIED.

to the point where he’s such a caricature of a fashie character now and i STILL have immense love for him, he’s like lightside eren jeager — if voldy and eren had a baby it would be geto (and part of the reason why geto works where eren doesn’t is bc they make a point to villainize him and verbalize how fashie his rhetoric is, which HURTS bc i am black and hearing him call humans monkeys has me like i can’t keep defending my maga bf like this, why is my taste in men so flagellatory???!! STAND 👏🏿UP 👏🏿! — only those of a certain hue are allowed to laugh @ that joke i am in ur walls) and while i wished they nuanced him more and factored in how he cared abt amanai into his descent, i also appreciate that that intimacy i was talking abt prior popped up. geto became who he thought he was supposed to be to carry out smth so incongruous to his former ideology and identity, he feels like a caricature bc he IS a caricature, but once the mask slips the softness and purity of his core personality is revealed and its ONLY for gojo, like JEQFBJHBFJQEJ

i don’t even ship sugusoto (like that). they’re both just so great that by brute force i intellectually recognize the excellence of their dynamic, like it just doesn’t make SENSE to not give sugusoto their tens bc of how intertwined within each other they are. like sorry, did not give a singular FAWK abt them before (when i had no familiarity with their material/dynamic) and now they have me crying out of sheer respect no one’s doing it like them.

and what makes empathizing with a character like geto so natural, and produces such a well crafted character in general is his NUANCE, i feel like, similar to eren jeager, you can’t find him endearing or sympathetic in any capacity without first giving significance to, not only the nature of his moral decline, but the inherent complexities of his character. liking geto without acknowledging that he touts rɑce science and plans to genocıde ppl he sees as biologically inferior is a YIKES, you can’t ignore that shite without seeming like a member of a third subsect yourself idk, like its not insignificant, and woobifying an active fɑscıst is existential horror if i’ve ever seen it.

its why aot falls flat for many but JJK excels in that department, bc geto is condemned and for good reason, HOWEVER, i think there was a way we could’ve muddled even the lens through which he’s condemned / the immensity of empathy we feel for him, and that’s bringing amanai into his ideological realignment.

amanai was the source of his moral turn and it feels like a missed opportunity to not have her be more core to its after effects, like HER dyıng is what gets geto so why wouldn’t the weight of her legacy and the purity of her character weigh on him more. the star platinum followers were human yes, but so was amanai, and having geto hyperfocus on one part of the equation when the other is arguably just as significant is a HUGE missed opportunity to say the least. like given his new outlook how does geto FEEL abt someone like amanai now, has he condemned her, and if so, why didn’t we see that more explicitly? like i feel its pretty inevitable that he has, since he sights human weakness and the sacrifice of jujutsu sorcerers for humans as his point of contention, which stems from him being unable to exercise justice against the religious group, but ALSO parallels gojo seemingly dyıng for amanai, someone who put them all in harms way through her ineptitude and the [to geto in retrospect, ultimately] false debt they felt towards her. like at first he idolizes THAT aspect of human innocence but as he sees its consequences does it not make sense that his turn would come from explicitly writing off its source?

OR even more powerfully, being plagued by knowing that good humans exist but valuing people like gojo, who he sees as the real unprotected and collateral of society, more than he values amanai. like in canon he’s so tired of fighting for ppl who underappreciate and can manifest such heinous forms of evil but it would’ve been an elevation to add him being tired of fighting for a shred of goodness that ever since he’s only seen its dark side, he comes to realize is gone anyway, so WHY is he still fighting? the mental fracture that brings and his conveyance of guilt and buried pain could be SO good cause deep down geto could ultimately agree with gojo that human life is precious, but that he can’t stop himself from HATING that, resenting that he can’t see himself or anyone else around him as precious too.

like oooooh would’ve made him best character of all time i fear. like caricature geto serves a purpose, but ANGSTY geto, the ppl were NOT ready! but regardless, i am MORE than happy with the geto we got. More than. i cant even fully articulate the depths i feel geto has and what we could’ve gotten out of him, like bro is the gift that KEEPS ON giving!

anyways, that’s it from me i think. overall i think JJK needs to realize that what made s1 so iconic isn’t bombastic shots or glamorous aesthetics, its all these masterfully conveyed moving parts coming together to create smth better than the sum of its parts. it’s the nitty gritty of character dynamics and characterization and meaningful fights and the mundanities of friendship, it’s the quiet moments which make the big moments so loud! it’s the dialectical nature of the show.

i WANT to trust JJK S2 to stick the landing, the gold is THERE, they just need to dig. and if a hyperfixation of mine goes to shite, well we can all pretend it was a fever dream and continue reading metas on the manga or smth, idk 🤷🏿‍♂️ will continue biting my nails till the very end.

[lil-gingerbread-queen]

~

Megumi as Link from Twilight Princess, aka the last Hallowen before everything.