#jujutsu kaisen 205 spoilers | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

linkspooky · 2 years

Photo

Jujutsu Kaisen, Chapter 205 Thoughts.

AND IT’S YUKI TSUKUMO WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!

So this week we continue with more fighting, however rather than the powers and strategies used in the fight itself, let’s look at the two special grade sorcerers fighting Tsukumo Yuki and Kenjaku. The matchups in Jujutsu Kaisen are not just about power levels, often the characters fighting foil one another in some way, so let’s analyze Kenjaku and Yuki the old school and new school sorcerers.

1. Thinking outside the Box

Considering half of this chapter is Tsukumo and Kenjaku analyzing each other’s strategies and cursed techniques before either of them throw the first punch to the point where the above image has their faces exactly aligned like they’re the left and right lobes of the same brain.

This happens every time Kenjaku and Yuki interact, down to the first time we see them meet in canon. Despite the fact they are clearly on opposing sides, they discuss their plans and theories like they are a pair of colleagues aruging with each other rather than on opposite sides of the battlefield.

Besides the fact that they have completely different ideas on what they think (the next stage of humanity) should be, they still talk and pick apart the holes in each other’s plans. Yuki grasps immediately that if Kenjaku were to try to optimize cursed energy, the people around the world would start targeting sorcerers as sources of cursed energy because they are almost exclusive to Japan.

She in effect predicts a part of Kenjaku’s plan far ahead of time, his going overseas to get world superpowers interested in harnessing energy from cursed sorcerers in Japan. Whatever Kenjaku’s actual objective is with introducing armies from foreign nations into the culling games, Tsukumo was able to predict the inevitable next stage of his plan through sheer guesswork.

On top of that, Kenjaku himself comments that he and Tsukumo think similiarly and that makes him happy because and this is just supposition he believes that few sorcerers in history have ever truly looked at the world the way he did.

The most famous appearance we have of Kenjaku in history is when he took Noritoshi Kamo’s body, and was reviled by the world around him for his experimentation with cursed energy. Living a thousand years body hopping he has been a social pariah for a long time, for good reason.

Kenjaku himself does not make social connections, and does not usually care at all for the thoughts and feelings of other people. He sees everyone as tools for furthering whatever result of his experiment he wants to bring about, and seems to judge people on whether they catch his interest or not. The fact that Tsukumo Yuki intrigues him when he dismisses his own children as boring is definitely something.

What unites their thinking is most lilely that they are both outsiders to the current world around them, seeking to bring about a change, though they obviously have opposite ideas of what that change might be. Yuki is similar to Kenjaku in the fact that she is a big picture thinker who is less concerned about the individual lives of people involved in her plans.

Yuki warns the main characters themselves that she’s not on their side. She also says that as a special grade she could have intervened and acted sooner, but she chose not to at the consequence of everything else. Considering that Kenjaku reconfigures Tenge’s barrier into a movie theatre, both of them tend to act as watchers from the outside rather than direct players.

They are like scientists observing the result of an experiment and therefore they minimize their involvement until absolutely necessary. Though, I’m sure the people who died in Shibuya aren’t really appreciative of the fact that Tsukumo didn’t play her hand sooner because she wanted to watch what happened next. Not that I’m saying it’s her fault directly but she herself admits she could and should have done something earlier and holding back to just watch was a mistake on her part.

She also at one point casually considers researching Toji as a test subject. Part of me wonders what that experiment would have been, considering that her ambition to change the whole world is probably more important in her mind than the life of one person.

However, Yuki at least seems to have some morals whereas Kenjaku is literally amoral ( driven by no sense of right and wrong or moral standard everything he does is just based upon his own personal desires and objectives), Yuki takes a firm stance against the senseless sacrifice of life.

2. Eros and Thanatos

Yuki and Kenjaku also oppose each other thematically, Yuki is a character surrounded by symbolism associated with life and the proliferation and preservation of life, whereas death haunts Kenjaku’s character itself where he may be a force of death itself bringing tragedy and destruction to the lives surrounding the main characters.

In Freudian Psychoanalytic theory, we would call this Thanatos and Eros.

With the publication of the book “Beyond the Pleasure Principal” in 1920, Freud concluded that all instincts fall into one of two major classes: life drives and death drives - later dubbed Eros and Thanatos by other psychologists. Eros was the god of love, fertility and passion in ancient Greece. Thanatos was the human manifestation of Death. [X]

Yuki is painted many ways as the Eros of the story, it all starts with her question. “What kind of girls are you into?” Both her and her student Todo constantly interrogate others about this question, and this question itself is symbolic of Libido, while her cursed energy makes little hearts.

In psychoanalysis Libido is the energy of sexual drive as a component of the life instinct. Quite simply, in order for all human life to continue people have to reproduce so early, early psychology theorizes that sex drive is influenced by psychological factors. Aoi even goes onto explain this question in basically terms of the Freudian idea of libido, that a person’s attraction to others is influenced by personality. Regardless of if this is actually true in real life or not, Megumi himself shows that his own personality has an influence in the kind of person he’s seeking a relationship with, because he wants a compassionate person.

Aoi just like Yuki is surrounded by ‘Life” symbolism. Todo explains cursed energy to Yuji in cooking metaphors (you have to eat in order to survive) he loves passionate people and takes no interest in people who are boring / have no passion for life. Food, love, sex, passions are all things that make life worth living.

Todo is also the most cooperative of all the Jujutsu Sorcerers as shown in his teamwork with Yuji, because the social cooperation that humans are capable of is also considered to be part of the life drive. Humans are a social species, no man is an island as they say, they have to cooperate together in society in order to survive. Yuki herself unlike Kenjaku cooperates with allies including Larue a former member of Geto’s family that has hearts on their nipples (recurring heart symbolism again).

When Kenjaku tries to paint Yuji as the center of all that disaster and death brought upon the world, then Choso corrects him and says that Kenjaku is the one who brings death to everyone around him, a symbolic bringer of death himself like a Grim Reaper or a Shinigami.

Kenjaku is surrounded by death symbolism, he is literally inhabiting a dead body as we speak. His nine children are named after the Death Paintings, which are named after the Kusozu (Nine Phase Diagram) , a budhist serious of nine paintings that depict the stages of death and decomposition of a corpse.

Kenjaku may seem like a life giver, because he is a single mother of one Yuji Itadori, and father to the Death Paintings, but what he does is actually a perversion of life. Succesful procreation requires that your children after all, he abandons the Death Painting Sibs to death, and sets up Yuji as a sacrifice to die. Even the curse painting sibs themselves aren’t properly born, they all in their cursed womb forms look like aborted fetuses in the nine month stages of fetal growth, which probably gives you a hint of how they came out of the mother.

Kenjaku prolongs his own life at the cost of other lives, he kills people and steals their bodies, and does the same for the resurrection of old sorcerers they have completely overtaken a host body in order to continue living for the culling games.

The death drive being the opposite of the life drive, drives people towards risky behavior, death, destruction. Which fits Kenjaku as his whole goal itself is to create risks, trying to bring something unexpected into the world.

The ultimate irony in Kenjaku is that while his goal seems to be creating something new, a future he can’t see beyond the chaos, a cursed spirit with an unexpected face, he himself is incapable of creation his methods are just destruction. He creates children and then abanons them when they disappoint him, he creates Yuji just to die. He is a perversion of motherhood, and he is a perversion of a creator too. He doesn’t create so much as destroy what is already there, recklessly, hoping that will lead to something new.

Yet, death is one half of life.

Everything life positive (love, social cooperation, etc. etc) is done by human beings, and everything that creates death (murder, violence, self-destructive behavior, addiction, risk taking) is also done by humans as well they make up two aspects of human lives. All humans want to live, and yet all humans also are aware no matter what they do they may someday die.

Which is why despite having opposite goals, Yuki and Kenjaku exist as two sides of the same coin.

#jjk meta #jujutsu kaisen theory #jujutsu kaisen meta #jujutsu kaisen 205 #jjk 205 #jjk 205 spoilers #jujutsu kaisen 205 spoilers #jujutsu kaisen spoilers #kenjaku #tsukumo yukji #aoi todo #jujutsu kaisen

234 notes · View notes

hxhhasmysoul · 2 years

Text

Bodily Autonomy in Jujutsu Kaisen

spoilers for the whole manga up until chapter 205. content warnings for bodily autonomy issues, eugenics and similar stuff - i mean if you’ve read the manga up till chapter 205 you know what’s up.

I just want to say that this is my reading of juju and I don’t know if the things I’ll write about are included in the manga with the intention to be a theme. As much as it feels like that because of how much of it there is, I don’t have a direct line to Gege’s brain (alas, I’m in so much panic over what they plan for my beloved characters) so the fuck do I know what the author meant. There’s also the question of an incomplete work. I’m trying to string together a certain argument talking about a story that is in progress and the author may pull a “just kidding” a chapter from now and I’ll have to weep while washing the clown makeup off my face. The incompleteness comes with another caveat, a much less sinister one than Gege suddenly pulling a one eighty on the apparent politics of juju. When you write a story it kind of comes together on its own, you don’t always set out to write about something, it just kinda in hindsight turns out you did. In that case you may find out that you wanted to say something different than you did and you kinda try to retcon shit and do some weird moves storytelling wise and rhetorically … a multiyear serialised project like a manga series is just well a work in progress when the author grows and develops with it. Now I will confidently write about an unfinished work and its themes, I think as I’m fighting through my discomfort of doing just that. This paragraph was for me to brace myself.

Bodily autonomy is a human right of an individual to be able to fully self-determine what happens to their own body. A right that is consistently taken away from humans of all genders and ages in various ways, including through laws, traditions and family members. A lot of it is veiled in language of “the good of the individual” whose bodily autonomy is violated or the language of “greater societal or cultural good”. A lot of it is closely connected to tradition, patriarchy and eugenics, plus numerous other related or similar things. Considering how aggressively anti tradition and anti status quo Jujutsu Kaisen is, bodily autonomy as a theme fits in really well.

The “for your own good” arguments often have something to do with religion, or upholding some kind of purity, though they can be also shrouded in the language and concepts of intellectualism. In many cultures around the world the body is treated as something separate from what is considered to be the self, call it soul, essence, mind… whatever. This abstract idea of there being an extra thing to us is used to separate us from animals on a spiritual or intellectual or whatever level. Body exists as this shell to host the self, sometimes even a prison or something unclean. That’s why in many cultures there are practices of abstaining from things, putting the body through rigid purification rituals often based in deprivation. All these ascetics, hermits and intellectuals. All elevated through self-denial, self-control, rejection of the animalistic, lesser desires of the body. Because of the existence of a hierarchy like that the body is always in the losing position. It’s easy to talk people into supporting or excusing abuses of bodily autonomy.

In Jujutsu Kaisen the body/soul separation doesn’t really exist. Mahito explains that the body is just a shape that the soul takes, they are inextricably linked. That's why by being able to touch the soul Mahito can reshape the body. This already creates a world where interfering with the body is automatically interfering with the soul. Where, if you know this, it’s impossible to use the “for your own good” arguments when the body can’t be rhetorically separated from “you”, where it can’t be this separate thing that can be punished to make the soul better.

The Enlightened

Let’s start with Tengen, one because they aren’t a villain more like a creep and I personally don’t think they are meant to turn into a villain (watch me make a pikachu face a chapter or two from now, watch Gege force feed me this sentence back). But also because the issues they pose in the context of bodily autonomy are rooted in tradition and the status quo while with the villains their interference into other people’s bodies is very clear cut in its violating nature. This is why I think Tengen’s situation is text. First we have the whole story with Riko Amanai and then we get the conversation between Tengen and Yuki. Both Riko and Yuki are Star Plasma Vessels, humans with the special ability to merge with Tengen to uphold Tengen’s immortality but more importantly their humanity, preventing Tengen from turning into a cursed spirit and becoming no longer human. The merger takes away their individuality and while initially Riko seems fine with it, having grown up mentaly and emotionally prepared for this fate, after having that conviction questioned she realises that she doesn’t want to merge. Yuki chooses not to merge with Tengen either.

There is a whole system in place dedicated to cultivating vessels for Tengen. Tengen creates and upholds barriers that conceal the jujutsu world from the general society. They don’t even really protect the jujutsu sorcerers, as the sorcerers, unless they are in the leadership, are treated as expendable. Tengen’s case is the embodiment of the entitlement people in power feel towards the bodies of others, those they consider insignificant. It isn’t an accident that Tengen is referred to as an heremit, a recluse, someone not concerned with the matters of this world. That elevates them in Japanese society where traditionally rigid self-control and purity are held in high regard. (So the previous sentence is doing a lot of work. It’s technically true but it’s an awful oversimplification and may imply that in Japan the body is simply considered the part of the profane. For the sake of my sanity I will not go into it but I recommend finding some nice source - book, podcast, class - created by someone who knows their shit on the history of religion and philosophy in Japan and key philosophical and aesthetic concepts.) This semi enlightened status explains also why people worship Tengen. Or why they wanted to prevent Tengen from merging with a new body aka for Tengen to become even less human thus more divine.

Tengen’s case is an example of a societal norm that allows for or even elevates taking away someone’s bodily autonomy for some “greater good”. Tengen themself doesn’t feel malicious, maybe kind of selfish but in this horrifyingly passive way. Part of an indifferent system that has always been like that. A system that isn’t questioned unless people are personally faced with those who are victimised by it (Riko), or are victims of it like Yuki herself.

The Superior

Mahito is born of humans’ fear and hatred for one another. And humans know the truth, that despite some lofty ideals, some high minded concepts, the self is in a closed feedback loop with the body, that they aren’t truly separate. When the self starts to disassociate from the body it’s not normal actually, it usually is an effect of trauma or bad mental health. The mind can affect the condition of the body and vice versa the body influences the mind. That’s why when people hate one another, they inflict both kinds of violence, emotional and physical, usually at the same time by for instance beating and demeaning someone. But both of these actually feed into each other even if the abuser isn’t actively using one of them. Emotional violence causes physical reactions, physical violence leaves emotional scars.

In his power Mahito embodies this connection. Mahito forcefully modifies bodies of others and also controls their actions, the more powerful he gets the longer his victims remain conscious while trapped inside their bodies.

Mahito enjoys what he’s doing, it’s clear the power over others amuses him. In the beginning he is kind of a child in a sense, driven also by curiosity not only violence. A child because Mahito hasn’t existed for too long, hasn’t been conscious, lacks experience and isn’t fully aware of his powers. But from the very start he really lacks innocence. He isn’t curious about people or the world, he’s only curious about himself. He doesn’t treat Junpei as an individual who deserves respect, Junpei is a toy. Mahito uses Junpei’s loneliness and trauma to get close to him and like an abuser he is, he pulls out of Junpei all his vulnerabilities and uses them later to hurt Junpei. In his fight with Nanami in the sewer he shows that he knows that his victims suffer. He knows that Nanami is getting trauma from understanding the extent of Mahito’s powers. Same after the fight at the school when he says he wants Yuuji to die, how he plans to torment and traumatise Yuuji more.

The most upsetting thing about Mahito and the way of thinking he represents is that he could be helping others, using his powers to ease suffering. But Mahito despises others and doesn’t see them as individuals who deserve to have their rights respected. He’s like all of those who use medicine or psychology not to help others but to harm them, or control and manipulate them.

Mojito does it out of hatred, that’s what he’s born from and he’s open about it. But in real life the people who do those things try to hide their hate for others. Sometimes from themselves, even. Those who support forced medical procedures, forced body modification, refusal of care to certain types of people, they often reference lofty ideals or talk about the victimised people as deserving the abuse. Mahito also feels superior to his victims. He doesn’t express it as directly or as often as Jougou but it’s there: stupid kids, souls have no value, you’re just a human so don’t step out of line…

The Intellectual

Where do I even start with Kenny? There’s just so much.

Okay, so maybe Kenjaku’s body hopping. The mechanics of the body hopping haven’t been precisely explained but what we know is that it’s related to Kenny’s barrier abilities, that the forehead scar is a binding vow and that Kenny can use the abilities of the person that the body used to belong to. There’s even some subconscious transfer of the original personality onto Kenny though it’s miniscule most of the time. I presume the person needs to be dead before the transfer happens… but that’s based on Getou’s case only.

Death in the JJK world is an interesting thing because time and time again we see body parts that retain the soul and consciousness of the person after their death. So the question is how much of Kenny’s power is suppression of the original self? How much the original self is aware of what is being done to them? And I don’t trust Kenny’s opinion on that. One because Kenny isn’t trustworthy in general. Two, now we know that Tengen can’t hear the people they merged with so the same may be true with Kenny, that they just can’t hear the og self. Three Mahito seems completely fooled by fake Getou while at the same time Mahito knows that there are two souls in Yuuji - though he has never managed to touch Yuuji’s soul and that’s another several k of my maniacal ramblings waiting to happen. It kinda feels that like with Touji’s worm curse, as long as the brain is totally encased inside the body it becomes invisible. Of course this is pure speculation unless we learn more later. But either way, even if they are gone from their bodies it’s doubtful any of the people consented to their bodies being used in this way, nothing indicates any consent had been given. So the way in which Kenjaku sustains their longevity is a huge violation of other people’s autonomy. The way one’s body is treated after death is a huge deal, that’s why people need to consent to organ donations or having their bodies used for science. This also touches upon the fact that from Kenny’s pov the lives and bodies of “insignificants” are there just to serve the “betters” - like irl when people sell their body parts for money, or their body parts get stolen to be sold to the rich and powerful. Kenny doesn’t just grab a kidney because that’d be tedious to replace every part one by one, they go for the whole thing at once ;)

Let’s talk now about Kenny’s side hustle where they facilitate the body snatching for other entitled people. This refers to the sorcerers from the past, not the death painting wombs because those are a little different. So some of the reincarnated sorcerers may seem nice or cute or fun or even actually decent people but actually they are all fucking entitled pieces of shit when you think about the deal they’d made with Kenny. They decided it’s a good idea to reincarnate through the medium of a cursed object knowing full well that it meant taking over someone’s body and erasing or completely overwriting their soul (not sure how exactly that process works). They decided that their personal goals/desires/whatever are more important than the existence of some rando in the future. Honestly awful people, all of them, and yeah Uro’s story is sad but no one’s story is sad enough to excuse this kind of reincarnation. And Uro’s the only one with an actual sob story, the rest is just… And this also includes the Angel btw. Her not not erasing Hana part is like better than the others but it’s not like Hana’s life is unaffected by this. She loses control over her own life and her body is constantly reshaped by the parasitic entity within. Angel is entitled as the rest of them, deeming their goals to be of supreme importance.

Giving powers to people is leagues better than the body snatching but it also happens without consent, it’s forced onto those people. It also uproots their life. So like out of all awful behaviours of Kenny, this one is the least awful… still sux though.

Kenny acts as if they want to also sell people as energy sources to global superpowers… I’m not going to get into this one too much because it feels like a misdirection, an element of chaos they are trying to create to further their real goal. But honestly, even if they’re not really invested in it, the nature of this ploy is so on brand for them, especially considering how classist they are. Kenny: what can I do to make everything more confusing? I know, I can sell the people with cursed energy to be exploited, perfect! Then again maybe they will prove that they’re dedicated to this side project as well, I mean if their main experiment runs its course why not entertain themself with another one.

Now to the main event aka Kenjaku the eugenicist. So Kenny thinks it’s their right to experiment with human evolution on living unconsenting humans. That’s it… Like that’s their main stated goal rn in the manga, to force the evolution of millions through merging them with Tengen. I mean as mentioned above Tengen has their own issues but even they are very much against it. The merger itself would annihilate the autonomy of everyone involved, one consciousness within it could cause a domino effect on others causing an apocalyptic like event (if this sounds like Evangelion that’s because imo it’s 99% intentional, it’s Gege’s commentary on the ludicrousness of the human instrumentality project. And it’s not like it’s the first Eva reference, even. If you like to be creeped out by what you watch, Eva is for you plus the opening is a timeless classic). Kenny has dedicated hundreds of years to this, they’re nothing if not obsessive.

But before this or alongside this Kenny tried smaller scale evolution. They were very much into designer babies. So thinking that your babies are your possessions and are there to further your goals is a common occurrence in the Jujutsu world, it’s very normalised even in the present day of the story, the whole patriarchal mess that are the three major clans is all about that. This is also related to the instrumental treatment of women, the expectation for them to be wives and mothers, the use of concubines - all that patriarchal shit.

I’m really curious when Noritoshi Kamo (past one) became considered “the evilest jujutsu sorcerer in history and a stain on the Kamo Family”. When did his experimentation start? Was the original guy just a regular patriarchal prick like the rest of those clan dudes? Or was he doing the experiments too and then Kenny just took over and continued? But maybe it was all Kenny in the first place, maybe they wanted Noritoshi for his blood manipulation because it looked promising for their evolution plans. What Kenny does to the mother of the death paintings is just way too real and reminiscent of real life experimentation on pregnant women. It really speaks to the patriarchal notion of women being vessels for reproduction.

What they do to the babies is as bad. I’m not sure why they aborted them, why they didn’t let them be carried to term. Maybe because her first baby died and Kenny wanted them to survive and turning them into cursed objects was the only way? Or maybe it was just about control, about using them when Kenny deemed useful. Either way Kenny considers them failures, because they didn’t turn out evolved enough, they didn’t surpass the limitations of Kenny’s own imagination.

Their next baby, that we know of, that next one Kenny is kinda fond of. In a super creepy Kenny way. In a way that doesn’t prevent Kenny from abusing the child both physically and emotionally but hey, at least they said like one nice thing to Yuuji. And they always make a point to mention that Yuuji is actually a person, a separate individual from Sukuna. Considering how many people don’t grant that much to Yuuji, that must count for something right? And Kenny actually gave birth to Yuuji, like properly and all, probably even courted Yuuji’s dad and tricked him into thinking they are a proper fam. I mean both of these facts practically grant Kenny the mother of the year award.

I wonder whether their attitude towards Yuuji isn’t tainted by pregnancy hormones and the leftovers from the original soul that inhabited that body. Or maybe it’s because Yuuji is actually not as disappointing as the previous ones. So maybe it’s about Kenny’s ingenuity, about an experiment going right for once.

Like the other children Yuuji gets violated before birth. His body is shaped to suit Kenjaku’s plans and that plan is to violate Yuuji again after birth by putting a homicidal parasite inside him. Because Yuuji is created explicitly to have someone else cohabit in his body. A+ shounen parenting through and through.

The Prisoner

Sukuna is a funny one in all this. He, of course, doesn’t care about other people’s bodily autonomy. He didn’t care in his past life, he doesn’t care now. Murder is his thing but what’s more relevant he eats people. It’s not clear if whole or in parts, neither is it clear whether they are dead or alive for it. Regardless, it’s unlikely that the consumption is consensual either way.

Once reincarnated, he distorts Yuuji’s body as much as he can (I will probably write about this one day, about how he can only distort it so much). He commits acts of extreme violence while taking over the body. He torments Yuuji by speaking to him and Yuuji can’t do anything to prevent him from doing that.

It’s not clear whether Sukuna made a pact with Kenny like the other past sorcerers did. Sukuna never talks to Kenny, never addresses the issue. But if he did make a pact he got scammed. If he didn’t, he got scammed too.

Kenny tells Mahito that Sukuna is different because he can choose his vessel. All other reincarnated beings, be it the sorcerers or the death paintings, take over what is given to them. They have no choice in that matter. But Sukuna apparently does and that means that Yuuji was an attractive enough vessel to reincarnate into. The thing is that if we take into account that Kenny made Yuuji and how Kenny talks about Yuuji, the boy was never meant to be overwritten, Sukuna was never meant to take over once put inside.

So here comes a little curve ball. Sukuna is obviously someone who has no regard for the bodily autonomy of others but in his current state his right to bodily autonomy is being violated too. And isn’t this just a fun little tidbit.

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #my ramblings #i'm externalising more thoughts about juju #to clear my head #adhd is a bitch #juju really feels like leftist propaganda sometimes #i feel i could've gone deeper into it but i ran out of steam #and i got lazy and didn't check manga chapters for stuff #i will do it for my next one #this one is done from memory mostly #i'm so tired

52 notes · View notes