So there I was, obsessed with Kujo Josefumi and Kira Yoshikage. Why? Idk you tell me, I just liked how they were Josuke’s backstory. This shit literally made me pause and go “nah that’s gay”.
And then, I found myself tripping over the lack of them anywhere🤬🤬🤬. Karmic retribution for thinking like a fuck I guess.
Anyways, thanks to the person who requested Kira. Thanks to the lack of people who didn’t request Josefumi, cuz it led to me rockin the twin walls as seen above.
it’s pretty well established that geto and gojo are the suns of each other’s worlds. we know, and are reminded regularly, that the sun is a consistent motif in their relationship. despite this, the metaphor actually runs much deeper than what we see on the surface.
geto associates gojo with the rising sun. in the opening sequence, all of his moments with gojo are dappled with streaks of sunlight. when they’re on the bike, when they’re walking through jujutsu tech, when they’re poking each other’s faces or getting stuff from the vending machine— it’s all so bright.
for geto, gojo is the rising sun that parts his clouds, literally exemplified in the ending sequence when geto is impatiently waiting for gojo in the rain. not only does gojo bring an umbrella, (which he himself doesn’t need) after he picks up geto, they walk together into the sunlight. like a cloudy night, geto waits for the sun to return every morning.
contrarily, gojo associates geto with the setting sun. when they break up in front of the KFC, the sun is setting around them. gojo’s eyes, which usually shine so brightly in the sunlight, are dampened by the waning rays of the sun. in gojo’s memory of the breakup, there’s no sun at all— it’s completely grey.
for gojo, geto is like the setting sun in that no matter how far he extends his hand, he’ll never reach him (as mentioned in the light novel). gojo can only watch as geto slips into the horizon, bidding him farewell at every dusk as he takes all the light with him, leaving gojo alone in the night.
when gojo meets geto at the end of his life, the sun has almost completely set. as he’s dying, geto is illuminating the vestiges of the last sunny day gojo will ever have. the sun sets for the last time, and geto slips through his hands even as gojo uses them to kill him.
what’s interesting here is that both of them associate each other with the same thing. geto is the center of gojo’s universe, and vice versa. the setting sun becomes the rising sun— they're an ouroboros, cycling through day and night as one.
suns are also solitary creatures, doomed to be alone whilst being the most powerful thing in the universe. we need the sun to survive, but we can’t get too close or we’ll die. we can only admire the sun from afar, basking in its rays on the condition that we can never openly embrace its warmth.
i'm reminded of a tolstoy quote that speaks to the nature of the sun as a literary motif:
"he stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking."
the sun is always around us, even if we can’t see it directly. geto and gojo may be apart, hidden by clouds or the horizon, but like the sun, they remain at the center of each other’s worlds— steadfast, ever-present and never waning.
(credit to @serenan2d on tiktok for providing the initial analysis that inspired this post. check her out, she’s amazing)
Maybe you already know: how SatoSugu gain a whole new word for their relationship
- brought to you by JJK's production team (including Gege Akutami)
The tweet above is a QRT from one of the video producers for Gojo's 11-hour long tribute video, streamed on 3rd April till midnight to celebrate the release of JJK volume 26, "Heading South", on 4th April 2024. The video title is 孤高、廻想、融独 (Solitary, remagine, [fusion/melting]), revising Gojo's nice moments in his life with his friends and students.
The tweet says:
"We were involved in the planning stage. A "best friend" (「親友」/shinyuu) is a "toxic" (「有毒」/yuudoku [1]) and "melting" (「融独」/yuudoku [2]) existence. This is just our interpretation, but with everyone's thoughts, we have the final answer. We hope to able to encourage you to get Volume 26 even just a bit." (this is rough translation)
What is really the center of attention is this word 「融独」/yuudoku [2]. This is the 3rd word of the video title, but surprisingly, this word doesn't exist in the Japanese dictionary.
It is a completely new word created by the production team to describe part of Gojo's life. At the beginning, even Japanese fans had a hard time understanding what this word means. However, after Vigneravan's (the video producer) tweet, it is confirmed that 「融独」 is related to 「親友」/shinyuu/bestfriend. Gojo only has one and only one bestfriend, so this new term points to Geto.
The producer says "a bestfriend is a 'toxic' and 'melting' existence" when talking about Gojo's bestfriend, Geto. There is a wordplay here: both "toxic" 「有毒」[1] and "melting" 「融独」 spell the same way, "yuudoku". This fact is actually realized by fans in the way they assume how these characters are spelled when parts of them are used within other more common terms (especially when the referred term doesn't exist). 「融独」 is a combination of 融 (fusion/melting) and 独 (loneliness) - in literal sense, it means "melting the loneliness". In other words, the video producer's interpretation is "Geto, Gojo's best friend, is like toxin to him, but at the same time he melts away Gojo's loneliness".
Let's go back to Gojo's tribute video. This video starts with Gojo's birth, his youth, then his days as a teacher, and ends with him joining the battle with Sukuna, and finally going to the airport in the afterlife. Out of 11 hours, Geto appears in nearly 5 of them. The common vibe of the video is Gojo's happy moments with his friends, colleagues, and students. If you notice, there are NO scenes where he is fighting or in danger. The only distressing moments in the video are: when Geto becomes depressed, when Geto leaves Gojo, and when Gojo is left mulling in his own thoughts afterwards, sitting right where his bestfriend used to:
This means that the saddest and most depressing thing that ever happened to Gojo's life is when Geto left. And we all know how Gojo never forgets about him, and in fact, delays the time to execute Geto by order, only going down on him when Geto declares war 10 years later. This can be interpreted as part of the video producer's view, "toxic".
Yet, Gojo doesn't let Geto out of his mind. At the start of the video, after the images of him as a baby, Geto is the first person to appear in Gojo's life:
The above image gradually adds Yaga and Shoko afterwards. You can say that Gojo had no significant memories as a child, because he was born with powers and expectation, and thus, as a lonely kid. Meeting Geto, he has the first ever friend, an equal, someone who can understand him. So the memories when he first had Geto in his life, also indicating the start of his 3-year treasured bluespring, is when he finally turns from a lonely child to no longer lonely.
Yet when he loses Geto, he's become lonely again. Note that, Gojo has never been "alone", but he has been "lonely" (there has been many analysis for this, from Shoko's thoughts about him right before he gets released from Prison Realm, and in c236 when he confesses). Which turns out, Geto's existence is too big for him. Isn't it unhealthy to give so much leeway to an enemy, "the worst curse user of the jujutsu society", when he's supposed to execute Geto as soon as possible before he becomes a big threat? Yet, whatever Gojo has for Geto is too much and enough for him to give Geto freedom until he can't anymore; and after that, Gojo still wishes Geto had been there to pat him on the back before the fight with Sukuna, in order to fully feel satisfied. To wish for something impossible as an existence of the dead, who was supposed to be an enemy but wasn't.
It is "toxic", but Geto is exactly the only thing that can "melt his loneliness". That is why Gojo, who's been lonely all his life being the strongest, cannot let go of Geto in his mind. Geto has been the first one to make him change for the better, to stand by his side despite his status and origin, and even though he left, he's still Gojo's main source of inspiration to build his dream of changing the jujutsu system for the better, and to not let children fall for the same fate as his best friend once did, preserving their youth. Despite all the unfortunate events, Geto still stays as the special "toxin" to Gojo, the only one that can melt away his loneliness, the only person whose existence brings him satisfaction. (there's a whole topic on how the word "satisfaction" Gojo uses to describe his feelings when fighting Toji or Sukuna and the one used when describing Geto below are 2 similar terms with different connotations, but I'll leave that for another time)
For our own assumption, it is also likely that Gege Akutami is the one to come up with this word 「融独」. As the author who created Gojo and Geto as a contrasting pair, he is the one who understands their relationship the most. But mostly because he's one of the few people (involved in the series) who has deep understanding of Japanese language and often plays around with words. JJK very often includes highly complicated Japanese words and terms (even for Japanese readers), so for him to come up with a completely new word to pay tribute to Gojo is not out of possibilities.
And it leaves you in awe again how important Geto is to Gojo.
Watch the 11-hour tribute video:
P/s. by coincidence (or not), Tatsuya Kitani, the singer/songwriter for JJK Hi/pd arc's OP "Ao no Sumika", includes "Love Song" in the album Ao no Sumika. And this song is... well. A bit familiar.
Would the song somehow reminds you of how the video producer perceives Gojo & Geto's relationship? It's up to you.
Funfact: in "Love Song", there is an interesting term: 眩しい常闇 (mabushii tokoyami) - "eternal dazzling darkness". This term is also the title of JJK volume 0 chapter 4.
gay people can never say "i love you", instead they have to be all melodramatic about how #that one person in their life was bigger than the goal they worked for during their whole life; was bigger than everything else.
bonus: viktor and griffith in their matching evil eggs!
blakekathryn
jbbartram-illu
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
ellievsbear
snowghoul
