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rubbishben · 4 years ago

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My thoughts on Getou’s ideology

Spoiler alert

So I just finished rereading jjk and thought it would be cool to share my thoughts on the motives behind Getou’s actions which really intrigued me because it gave so much more insight into his actions—like in the cursed child arc when he called Maki a monkey, mentioned he wanted to kill all non-shamans etc. and it showed his history with Gojou, plus how that subsequently affected the Gojou we know in the present.

Ok. Can I begin with where it all (in my opinion) began to really go wrong? Not really a surprise here, but I would say it’s the mission from Tengen-sama with Amanai. Before this shitshow, we see Gojou being his usual self, bantering with his soon-to-be-genocidal BFF—and we also are introduced to what Getou’s motivations are for becoming a Jujutsu Sorcerer/shaman. To protect the weak. He has the power to do so, and therefore a responsibility to do it. An obligation, so to speak. This is all before the Amanai mission, mind you; that’s why I say the real problem sprouted after that, and although arguably the problems were already present in the first place, Getou only really became aware of them afterwards—and therein lies the issue.

So this is Getou’s ideology while he was, to put it a bit harshly, still ‘ignorant’—aware of the nastiness in the world, but not really experiencing them first-hand... yet. His original ideology, one that ended up with Gojou calling him out for being ‘righteous’. Society should protect the weak, and keep the strong in check. That’s his set of values, principles, what he thinks should be done. But the next mission? The next mission challenges that.

We see Getou watch Amanai die right in front of him. Amanai, who if you remember, he and Gojou were willing to go against Tengen-sama and hence the other Jujutsu Sorcerers in order to protect the life of—or at least before she dieded from Papa Fushigoro’s attack lmao *cries*.

Getou is kind. He cares. He cares, and that’s why it’s just so much worse.

And the real underlying cause for her death, the religious cult group. Who, might I add, are pretty much brainwashed, unreasonable, irratiONAL-

They freakin clapped and cheered and everything, guys. Like, ‘yay she’s dead we did it’. In front of the very two people that she was important (somewhat important for Gojou, maybe) to, mocking them for their failures. It disgusted and annoyed me to an extent, their blindness, and if it did for me (maybe you, too?) you can only imagine the impact it must’ve had on the strongest duo. The impact it had on Getou, seeing the non-shamans he was protecting do such a despicable (in his eyes) thing.

Yet, at that point of time, he tells Gojou there’s no meaning in killing them. An important distinction that, over time and after a slow build-up, erodes away into nothing thanks to a certain someone *hissssss*.

And so time passes. Gojou becomes stronger as he grows; naturally, the two begin to drift. Getou is left alone more and more—alone with his thoughts, his musings, his ever-growing unsureness. This unsureness stems from, as he mentions later on, the worth of the non-shamans that has become shaky to him. The sacrifices he makes, the effort he puts in—of exorcising and ingesting relentlessly, something so repulsive that he clearly doesn’t enjoy doing but does so for the sake of these non-shamans—and the sacrifices of the shamans that he sees as his friends, comrades, family. Who does he do it for? Who do they do it for? Do they do it for the same group of people that were overjoyed to see someone he cared about dead, who were the cause for that death?

These panels gave me chills. It’s so well done; you can really feel all the gradual hopelessness, loneliness, desperation, introspection, doubt... Also, a point I brought up near the beginning, Getou says he already knew about that ugliness—but perhaps this is the first time it’s really been so personal to him, and that’s why it hit all that harder, as though everything he knew was coming into question. And he told himself, don’t falter. But as you can see from the next page...

He was definitely, to put it lightly, already ‘faltering’.

“F*cking Monkeys...” Ha, what an iconic quote. Maybe I’ll use that the next time someone cuts in front of me in the queue. Jokingly, of course.

So there he was teetering between the two edges. If Gojou, Shouko, his sensei or whoever, really, had been aware, maybe he could have helped him back to the ‘right’ track. But NOOOOOOOOOOOOO here comes this (unfairly attractive) shady ass woman instead to give him that nudge. Wait, no, not nudge. She gave a freakin shove.

Thus it begins. The base for Getou’s new ideology. The words, her reasoning, the fact that she supported Getou’s half-throwaway comment about killing all non-shamans. God, she’s so manipulative. GETOU DON’T FALL FOR IT, I was screaming mentally the whole time. More specifically, a certain phrase was playing on repeat in my brain.

Begone, thot.

But I guess, in the end, it’s not about whether he fell for it or not. Once she put it out there, it could never have gone back.

She plants that idea in his head and it wiggles its way into his consciousness. It blooms into a black flower with every passing day, every passing mission, Haibara’s death, every other shaman’s death, every single thought and question about the worth of non-shamans—which, BTW, according to Tsukumo, would be all solved if he just killed them. Thing is, she’s not exactly wrong, and Getou knows that.

So remember how I talked about how Getou shut down Gojou’s question of whether to kill on the basis of there being no meaning in killing the religious group/non-shamans earlier on? Yeah. This bish has just given him one on a damn silver platter. She has given him a meaning.

And if I can add one thing, it would be that I think that Getou feels things very deeply; his experiences and thoughts affect him like ripples in the sea, slowly slowly slowly building up into a tsunami.

He acts based on a moral compass, and that moral compass is almost absolute to him. For example, his earlier ideology of the strong protecting the weak—he was willing to go through so much because of that ideology, was willing to fight and ingest something that tasted like ‘cloth used to wipe vomit’ and even risk his life without hesitation because of that set of values. And later on when that comes into question, he begins to question his ‘true’ feelings, and thinks things through very deeply. Because it’s important to him. It defines his actions. And once his ideology shifts?

He kills non-shamans without, as far as I know, even an ounce of remorse. Because, like Gojou said, Getou is ‘righteous’.

And at this point, it may seem like he’s still on the fence, but effectively what Tsukumo has done is tell Getou more about his other option and even encouraged him. Tsk. Keep in mind he has been more or less alone up till now, left without any guidance on this topic whatsoever from the people he’s close to; the only guidance has been this shady ass, special-grade Jujutsu Sorcerer, and THIS IS WHAT SHE TELLS HIM. ARGH.

AAAAAANNNNNDDDDD BOOM. We have reached the final, breaking point, where all the tiny cracks and fractures expand to explode in an epically bloody massacre.

Ngl, this whole thing made me pissed to the point where the empty soda can in my hand got crushed to a pulp. I must admit, it was really satisfying when he killed them.

But then I realised he killed the whole village, and his parents, which further cements the idea that his new moral compass—is genocide. No joke. DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN.

Anyway, when Getou saw the two poor kids, scared and bloody and might I add shamans, so called ‘one of his kind’, locked up in a cage because of the non-shamans’ illogical, stubborn, and unreasonable assumptions? He made his decision at last.

...this whole chapter, these last few chapters even, were so well-done I reread it like a dozen times.

Alright, now that that’s over and done with, can I discuss his ideology itself? From what I’ve seen/heard/read from around, people generally call out two glaring issues—unrealistic-ness (is that a word? sorry lmao) and the generalisation of the non-shamans. Much to my surprise (and happiness, even) they addressed the former, and it seems like Getou has given it some thought. Yay.

Again, these panels are pure gold.

“That’s pretty arrogant.”

“What?”

“It’s possible for you, right? Satoru.

If it’s possible for you... can you really go around telling people that ‘it’s impossible’?”

Chills, literal chills *insert B99 meme here*. Because I was like—oh snap. I didn’t even consider that. Didn’t consider... what if it were Gojou Satoru? Because DAMN the whole thing just became a whole lot more realistic, especially after you consider Gojou and his skills later on in the future. And then from that line of logic, you remember Getou Suguru is strong as hell himself. He is the other half of the strongest duo. He is a special-grade Jujutsu Sorcerer. Someone Gojou acknowledges as powerful. He is Getou Suguru, and he makes a freakin good point.

It’s like Neil Armstrong telling someone it’s impossible for them to go to the moon or something. Maybe not the best analogy, but you get what I mean lol.

‘kays, on to the other point—he generalisation of the non-shamans/non-Jujutsu Sorcerers. This is the part where I—and probably many others?—find kinda iffy. After all, not all non-shamans are like those Getou have met. I mean, I for one do not see myself joining a rich cult any time soon, nor do I see myself locking injured kids in cages without any evidence of wrongdoing; but but but you see, Getou doesn’t really know that. Okay, maybe logically (since it's basically an hasty generalisation fallacy) he has to realise somewhere that there’s a flaw, but since these are people and people aren’t always logical (unfortunately), I try to think about it this way. Why would he understand that his logic is flawed as well as we do, when he has only really seen the ugly side of non-shamans?

Okay, I’ll try to explain what I mean. The religious group is pretty self-explanatory, but the situation with the shaman girls he saved can be expanded on. Getou went on missions to exorcises curses. He was practically bound to meet people like the villagers, who unjustly accused the kids in place of the curses and tossed them into a cage and maybe even beat them until they were bleeding, wherever he turned—in fact, it was probably enough to feed his growing cynicism. After all, it makes sense that the majority of the side of humanity who dealt with this stuff (again, with exceptions of course) was likely to have been forced into some pretty messed up states, or shown other, darker sides of themselves, that kind of thing. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I hope you get what I mean. In any case what I’m tryna say is that for Getou, he has already drawn an imaginary line between the shamans and non-shamans from the beginning. To him, they are wholly different things (’monkeys’, as he eventually put it, learning from Toji. lol)—and for those different things, he has only really experienced/seen/witnessed the underbelly or society or that unpleasant side of them. His mindset is already unlike ours; for example, it’s like if one sees a mosquito, people automatically treat it as a pest because from what we know it sucks our blood and is an annoyance.

But what if not all mosquitoes sucked blood? Yes, we know (or we think we do lololol) that yes, they all do. It’s their nature. But what if we were just in contact with all the mosquitoes that sucked blood and we didn’t really know about the mosquitoes that didn’t? And now we just exterminated them on sight because of our preconceived notions?

Maybe that’s how Getou sees the non-shamans too...?¿

On the other hand, it could also be that Getou is fully aware of what he’s doing, that he’s going to soil his hands from blood of ‘good’ non-shams (e.g. his parents). He probably also doesn’t consider himself a good person, as seen from when he talked to Haibara. But he still does it anyway. He sacrifices himself in a sense, to do the dirty work ‘for the greater good’, because that’s who he is. Furthermore, even if the ‘good’ non-shamans didn’t go around creating curses, there would be no guarantee they wouldn’t in the future, so it’s like nipping a problem from the roots before it can even happen. After all, his parents were still non-shamans, meaning that they might still create curses, and he ‘couldn’t go around making exceptions’ which I think shows how much Getou really is willing to sacrifice.

So my opinion is that that, coupled with Tsukumo’s whole reasoning on how mass genocide would benefit them (lol), is ultimately the difference in how resistant we as readers are to his current ideology of killing all non-shamans and how Getou ultimately made the decision to ‘define his true feelings’ to become akin to a genocidal maniac (still love his character tho). Like, damn, if the religious group were the only non-shamans, heck I say go for it GETou, go GET them (ba dum tss).

On a side note, a moment of silence for Gojou as he mourned his best friend that I suspect he blamed himself somewhat for not being able to ‘save’. They really were a really great duo; their dynamic was so sweet. Shouko too, acting as a middleman for them without being asked to, to give the both of them closure perhaps :’)

Woah, look at that cold gaze in the last panel.

All in all, while I may disagree with some of the stuff he does? I think I can understand it—and that’s why I love him as an antagonist character so much. And I hope you guys do too, and I managed to help you with that :D Anyway, I’m signing out now, and I can’t freakin wait to see this animated in the beautiful anime aesthetics too. Getou Suguru (Gojou and Shouko too) is a really awesome freakin character and I just had to vent all these thoughts out somewhere. thanks for reading guys !! feel free to give your opinions too and have a great day/night (^w^)

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