howlites on AO3, obsessed with Geto Suguru, fan of the SatoSugu vers and switch agenda, can't stop writing emotional smut... did I mention my feelings on Suguru?
Getou Suguru Was Never Gojou Satoru's Moral Compass: A Hidden Inventory Arc Character Analysis
Let me be clear from the outset: this is a formal, loud disagreement with a pervasive misreading of Getou Suguru's character during the Hidden Inventory Arc. There's a subset of the Jujutsu Kaisen Fandom that insists Getou was always "better" than Gojou during their teenage years—morally superior, more responsible, Gojou's guiding light and ethical anchor. This interpretation fundamentally misunderstands both characters and, more importantly, contradicts what Gege Akutami himself has stated: it was only in that singular moment, when retrieving Amanai Riko's body, that Gojou trusted Getou's "unshakable" judgement because Gojou himself was too compromised to make a clear decision with his newfound power.
Not before, not consistently throughout the arc. That specific moment.
As a fanfic writer, it's always fun—and necessary—to take a deep dive into characters' heads to try and understand them better. Not just their surface-level actions, but the underlying motivations, the quiet insecurities, and the small moments that reveal who they really are beneath the roles they perform.
Rewatching Jujutsu Kaisen from the very beginning—allowing three years for the series to marinate in my mind since Season 2's release and the manga's official conclusion—proved to be an entirely different experience.
Having the full context of subsequent events, understanding the causality chains and their devastating conseqences, transforms that rewatch into something far more gruesome and painful to digest. You see the cracks before they shatter, you see the warning signs that were always there. You understand, with painful clarity, exactly where things went wrong.
However, one element struck me with particular force during the recontextualized viewing of the Hidden Inventory Arc. How drastically my perception of both Gojou Satoru and Getou Suguru had evolved from my first watch to this recent binge.
I'd always carried that firm, almost unquestioned impression that Getou was "the responsible one"—the kind of person who takes a principled stance, believes in it with apparent conviction, and does everything in their power to make sure it happens.
That assessment can still hold a kernel of truth, but knowing the depths of his eventual fall after Riko's death, and then seeing him before that tragedy, illuminated aspects of his character I'd completely missed the first time around. Aspects that weren't limited to the narrow role the fandom had collectively painted him into.
The fandom's construction of Getou as Gojou's moral compass, his ethical superior, his stabilizing force, is a comfortable narrative. It's clean. It makes intuitive sense when you're watching two teenagers where one is a cocky prodigy and the other seems more measured and thoughtful.
But comfort and truth are not synonyms, and this narrative crumbles under scrutiny when you actually track their actions and decision-making patterns throughout the arc.
Throughout the Hidden Inventory Arc, Getou is consistently the one who conforms to jujutsu society's traditionalist convictions. Protect the weak. Suppress the strong. Sacrifice for the greater good. These aren't just beliefs he holds—they're the framework he's built his entire identity around. And that's important, because it suggests that Getou's philosophy isn't born from deep personal conviction, but from a desperate need to justify his place in a world that has always felt isolating and alienating to him.
Gojou challenges that philosophy openly, even mockingly. He doesn't just question Getou's beliefs—he dismisses them, almost getting into a physical fight over their fundamental disagreement about what it means to be strong and what obligations the strong have to the weak. Gojou's position is more anarchic, more questioning of the status quo. He doesn't accept the jujutsu society's rules as inherently righteous just because they exist. And that friction between them is critical to understanding their dynamic.
Both their positions are affirmed later during their briefing with Principal Yaga. Getou demonstrates a far deeper understanding of jujutsu society's inner workings than Gojou, despite the fact that Gojou was born into one of the Three Great Families and should, theoretically, know this world better than anyone.
Getou explains Master Tengen's situation, the mechanics of the Star Plasma Vessel merger, the political and spiritual stakes—all with the ease of someone who has studied this world meticulously. Meanwhile, Gojou seems almost disinterested, flippant, as though he's hearing some of this for the first time.
Was Gojou faking his ignorance? I don't think so.
Gojou has a well-documented tendency to show off anything he has confidence in understanding. We see this later when he faces off against the hired mercenary from Q, mocking him for not understanding the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise—a clear display of intellectual superiority. Gojou enjoys demonstrating his knowledge. He doesn't hide it. So if he's acting like he doesn't know or doesn't care about jujutsu society's internal politics and history, it's because he genuinely doesn't prioritize that knowledge. It doesn't interest him. It doesn't serve his goals.
So how did Getou acquire this information advantage over someone who should have been raised on these very traditions? The answer reveals something crucial about Getou's psychology: he studied. He immersed himself deliberately and thoroughly in jujutsu society's history, protocols, and belief systems. He made himself an expert on the very tradition he was born outside of.
Why? Because knowledge was the one area where he could potentially equal or surpass Gojou Satoru. Because understanding the system inside and out was how he could prove his belonging, his worth, his right to stand beside the strongest. This wasn't casual learning—this was compensatory, driven by a need to validate his place in a world that could have easily dismissed him as an outsider.
On their way to meet the Star Plasma Vessel, Riko Amanai, Getou urges Satoru to correct his laid-back attitude because it might disrespect Master Tengen when they meet her. On the surface, this seems like simple courtesy, the kind of reminder a more socially aware friend might give to someone less concerned with propriety. But look deeper: Getou was already considering the hierarchical implications, instinctively appealing to higher authority, positioning himself in alignment with the mission's stated objective—to assimilate Amanai Riko with Master Tengen.
This deference to authority and mission parameters becomes a defining pattern. Getou believes in the system. Or at least, he convinces himself he does.
When Kuroi, Riko's caretaker, is kidnapped, Getou immediately attempts to take responsibility for the oversight—he was the one with her, so he failed to protect her. It's a noble impulse, but it's also telling. Getou is quick to shoulder blame, to internalize failure, to see himself as the one who should have done better. Meanwhile, Gojou's response is more pragmatic: he focuses on the mission as a whole, on what they need to do next, rather than dwelling on who's at fault. It's not that Gojou doesn't care—he absolutely does—but his approach is solution-oriented rather than guilt-driven.
This is the first moment both Getou and Gojou seriously consider bringing Amanai back to Jujutsu Tech immediately, regardless of Master Tengen's orders to grant any of Amanai's wishes, because the situation is escalating and becoming genuinely dangerous. The risks are mounting. And for a brief moment, both of them are united in the pragmatic understanding that Riko's safety might require cutting her last days of freedom short.
But then Amanai insists she wants to come with them to rescue Kuroi. And Gojou puts a firm foot down: she can't. He's blunt about it. He explains the risks, the dangers, the likelihood that the kidnappers are setting a trap specifically to lure her out. He's not being cruel—he's being honest. He's prioritizing Amanai's safety, but he's not disregarding Kuroi's either. He's weighing the tactical reality of the situation and making the call he thinks is best.
Riko eventually convinces him to let her come. And we see the exact moment Gojou weighs his options, considers the variables, and makes his decision. He speaks bluntly, making sure Amanai understands the stakes. He tells her plainly that if she falls behind, if she slows them down, it's not his responsibility to pick her back up. The line delivery is cold. It's intimidating. And it's a stark departure from the careless, loudmouthed teenager we've seen up until now. This is Gojou Satoru making a calculated risk and ensuring that everyone involved knows the terms.
It's a moment that reveals something crucial about Gojou's character: he does care about the people around him. Deeply. But he refuses to lie to them or coddle them about the reality of their situation. He gives them the truth, and then he lets them choose.
Later on, in Okinawa, Getou noticed that Gojou was overdoing his cursed technique, keeping Limitless active continuously—an exhausting feat even for someone of Gojou's caliber—and asked Gojou if it was really alright not to retreat to Jujutsu Tech immediately for everyone's safety. Again, the instinct toward established safety, toward the known fortress, toward risk avoidance.
Gojou took only a moment to answer, affirming that they're both the strongest and they can handle whatever comes at them, pushing himself to physical extremes just to grant Amanai those last moments of youth and normalcy before her assimilation—before her effective death as an individual. He was making a sacrifice, consciously and deliberately, to give this girl something precious: time, freedom, the experience of being a teenager instead of a sacred vessel.
Getou followed his lead and they spent the rest of their remaining time in Okinawa having fun, sightseeing, touring around—but note the dynamic. Getou needed reassurance before committing. Gojou decided, and Getou followed. And critically, following that decision meant Gojou had to bear even more of the protective burden, maintaining Limitless for even longer, exhausting himself even further.
When they finally arrive back at Jujutsu Tech—Gojou letting down Infinity for the first time since they began guarding Amanai—he predictably complains. He's exhausted. He's been running on fumes. And he grumbles about not wanting to babysit any more brats.
It's a throwaway line, but it's also revealing. Because for all his complaints, Gojou chose this. He chose to protect Riko. He chose to give her those last few days. He chose to shoulder that burden, even when it cost him.
And then, of course, everything goes wrong.
We all know what happens next. Fushiguro Toji infiltrates Jujutsu Tech, stabs Gojou through the chest, and Getou is sent away to escort Amanai and Kuroi to Master Tengen's Tomb of the Star Corridor while Gojou stays behind to face the Sorcerer Killer.
The pattern throughout this arc is consistent and it's important:
Gojou makes decisions that directly contradict traditional jujutsu principles specifically to help the weak he superficially "mocks." He exercises his power not to dominate but to protect, creating space for others to have choices, to have agency, to have their humanity honored even when the system has already written them off as expendable.
Getou, conversely, prefers following the rules and structures provided for them to avoid trouble—even when that trouble, that deviation from protocol, would directly benefit the weak he philosophically preaches to "protect."
Because protection isn't merely physical. Real protection is watching over those incapable of defending themselves while simultaneously giving them options—the freedom to choose and decide their own path for their own sake, shielding them from immediate consequences while still respecting their autonomy. It's holding the umbrella while they walk their own road, not carrying them down a path you've decided is best.
Getou, by contrast, operates within a framework where the weak need his guidance. They need his protection. They need him to make decisions for them, because they can't be trusted to navigate danger on their own. It's paternalistic. And while it's well-intentioned, it's also fundamentally about control—about Getou affirming his own purpose by positioning himself as the protector of those who cannot protect themselves.
Getou's philosophy centered on protecting the weak, but his actions consistently prioritized systemic stability, mission parameters, and avoiding conflict with authority. When those two values came into tension—protecting an individual versus following the mission—we see which one actually governed his choices.
Does recognizing this pattern invalidate Getou's good side? Absolutely not. He is demonstrably a good person capable of taking significant risks for other people's benefit. His concern for Kuroi was genuine. His desire to protect Riko was real. But to insist that he consistently took moral initiative, that he was the driving ethical force guiding their partnership—that's simply not supported by their actual decision-making patterns. It's a disservice to how beautifully human and flawed his character actually is.
The first time I watched this arc, I admired Getou's composure and felt irritated by how seemingly carefree Gojou appeared. The second time I watched these episodes, armed with context and paying closer attention to actions rather than aesthetics, I observed nuances I'd completely missed during my initial viewing.
Getou's philosophy, I realized, is fundamentally unstable. His entire belief system depends on finding his purpose through viewing those different from him—non-sorcerers, "monkeys" as he'll later call them—as a separate group that needs his guidance and his shield. I have reasonable evidence, as detailed above, to believe this stems from internal insecurities he either hadn't yet recognized or was actively suppressing.
I think Getou knew he was weaker than Gojou, even before Gojou's enlightenment and awakening against Toji.
This knowledge wasn't necessarily conscious—it might have lived in that uncomfortable space of things we know but refuse to articulate even to ourselves. But I believe it shaped his every action, his every choice, his entire approach to being a jujutsu sorcerer.
Throughout this mission, Gojou was consistently the one to step forward and decide—for himself and for others—to exercise his overwhelming power for protection. He faces imminent threats head-on, with Getou's support (which is undeniable and valuable), but you cannot claim their contributions were perfectly equal or that their decision-making authority was genuinely shared 50/50.
They both eventually face Fushiguro Toji separately, but Gojou tackles him first to buy Getou time to escape with Riko and Kuroi. Here's an uncomfortable question: Would it have been such a terrible strategy if Getou had stayed back to face Toji instead of Gojou?
Think about it. Gojou was exhausted, completely drained from maintaining Limitless continuously for days, too depleted to reliably face someone like Toji—an unknown variable who'd already managed to stab him through the chest, piercing what should have been impenetrable defense.
Could he have taken Toji? Maybe not in a straight fight, Toji is a monster after all. But could he have delayed him?
I genuinely believe he could have. With his vast inventory of curses, his demonstrated physical capabilities, and how much more rest and energy he possessed compared to Gojou at that moment. Getou could have done something to disrupt Toji's plans if he'd simply stayed back and let Gojou take Amanai and Kuroi to safety.
For plot purposes, we understand why this wasn't the choice made—Gojou needed his near-death awakening, the narrative required that specific crucible. But my statement remains true nonetheless, as demonstrated by canon: Gojou was accustomed to making sacrifices while Getou fell behind.
Not because Getou was weak—he wasn't. But because when it came to that moment of decision, that instant where someone had to stay and someone had to go, the calculus ran through established patterns. Gojou fights, Getou retreats with the mission objective.
Getou overcompensated through study, through immersing himself completely in jujutsu society's traditions and knowledge, precisely because he was born to a non-sorcerer family. He needed to prove he deserved to stand on even ground with someone as inherently revered as Gojou Satoru, whose very birth shifted the balance of the world.
Imagine the isolation. Imagine being Getou Suguru—having the ability to not only see the monsters that haunt people around you, monsters that your own family can't perceive, but also having to absorb them yourself, to take their vileness into your body, to taste their corruption, just to make them disappear.
The whiplash he must have felt upon realizing that you can make cursed spirits vanish by exorcizing them—simply destroying them—rather than consuming them must have been devastating. Meeting Gojou in his first year, witnessing how effortlessly Gojou could solve the rot all around them, and then experiencing that sinking feeling in his gut the moment he understood that with his specific technique and his specific power, that kind of clean elimination was simply not possible for someone like him.
His technique demanded something more visceral, more intimate, more violating. Every curse he swallowed was proof of the fundamental difference between him and Gojou. Gojou could obliterate curses with overwhelming force, keeping them at arm's length even as he destroyed them. Getou had to take them inside himself, had to know them in the most invasive way possible.
Still, I imagine the comfort of being in an environment that understood what he was experiencing—where others could see what he saw, where his abilities had value and purpose—was enough to make leaving his non-sorcerer family feel justified, even necessary.
And then Gojou, his overly powerful and enthusiastic classmate, recognizes Getou's potential and proclaims them both "the strongest" together. A duo. Partners. Equals.
Except the pedestal was always unbalanced.
Getou is undoubtedly strong—his cursed technique is remarkably versatile, his physical capabilities are exceptional, and his general temperament makes him a prodigy genuinely worthy of standing beside Gojou Satoru in terms of skill and talent.
But "beside" isn't the same as "equal to," and I think Getou understood this even if he couldn't admit it.
He could have been like Gojou—could have disregarded the value the weak held for him, could have adopted that same irreverent attitude toward non-sorcerers. But that would mean denying his family, his community, the people he still held dearly to his heart despite having left them behind to join this strange, dangerous world of jujutsu sorcery.
I imagine leaving his family was an agonizing decision. Gege himself has confirmed that Getou clearly treasured his family deeply. So to leave them behind, Getou needed to latch onto a reason powerful enough to justify that abandonment, and that reason became his philosophy: he was leaving to protect them. He was placing himself in a position of responsibility that he couldn't deny, that he needed to fulfill. His absence became purposeful rather than selfish.
That fragile mentality, combined with the undeniable psychological side effects of constantly absorbing cursed spirits and their accumulated negativity—the hatred, fear, malice, and despair that comprise curses—is precisely why I believe Getou never truly felt confident in being "the strongest" alongside Gojou Satoru.
He claims the title because Gojou gave it to him, because it defines their partnership, because accepting it means accepting that he belongs here, that he matters, that his suffering has meaning.
But he doesn't feel it. Not in the bone-deep, unshakable way Gojou seems to inhabit his own power.
Getou has toconstantly remind himself of his philosophy or else everything falls apart—the justification for leaving his family, the meaning of his suffering, the purpose of his existence within jujutsu society. He has to prove himself to this community because he doesn't fit anywhere else, and no one alive would understand the specific burden he carries as someone intimately familiar with the taste of curses, with the texture of vileness sliding down his throat, with the knowledge that this is what he must do, over and over, forever.
Getou reads to me as a character of extreme decisions and binary thinking. There is no gray area in his worldview. It's black or white, and you must take a side. There must be reason, clear purpose, or else nothing matters and the suffering becomes unbearable.
This is precisely why he was the worst possible person for Gojou Satoru to ask that question to.
Picture the scene: retrieving Amanai Riko's body from the Star Vessel Association, both of them facing Gojou who was clearly, obviously different—who had dragged himself back from the dead through sheer force of will and spite, who had fought and won against impossible odds, who was visibly high from his enlightenment and newly awakened power.
For once in their entire dynamic, Gojou is deferring to Getou's judgement.
"Should we kill them all?"
This request represented something that likely never happened before in their partnership: Gojou, uncertain of his own judgment, turning to Getou to be his ethical anchor in a moment of emotional compromise. Something Getou had followed in Gojou countless times—looking to him for decisive action, for direction, for the confidence to move forward—was suddenly, finally reversed.
Though I doubt Gojou was fully aware of the weight of this dynamic shift, of how much Getou had quietly relied on Gojou's decisiveness as a framework for his own choices.
Gojou holds deep, genuine respect for Getou as both a friend and a sorcerer. The facade Getou constructed to cover his doubts and insecurities worked so effectively that he'd built an image of himself as reliable, steady, unshakably good—someone whose moral compass could be trusted even when your own was spinning wildly.
But Getou was going through perhaps the worst moment of his entire life at that exact instant. He'd spent hours believing his best friend was dead. Their most important mission had failed catastrophically. Two innocent lives had been wasted—Riko dead, Kuroi's purpose destroyed—because he wasn't strong enough, wasn't fast enough, wasn't good enough.
And suddenly, his best friend, a titan of jujutsu sorcery who'd just transcended his previous limitations entirely, comes to him asking if they should massacre everyone in the building. If they should use this godlike power for revenge, for justice, for something that would at least make the suffering feel purposeful.
Getou says no, of course. The "good" answer, the "right" answer, the answer that aligns with his philosophy of protecting the weak.
But it's crystal clear in both manga and anime depictions that his conviction was wavering in that moment—a visible affirmation of the insecurity I've been tracking throughout this analysis. He was desperately, frantically holding onto his good ideals for his best friend's sake, but you can see the cracks forming in real-time. You can see him struggling to be the moral authority Gojou suddenly needed him to be, when his own foundation was already crumbling.
The weight of that moment—being asked to be someone's moral compass when you're barely holding your own course—must have been crushing.
And as we've seen later in the timeline, it all does come crashing down on him. He develops profound disdain for those weaker than him, for the non-sorcerers, for the "monkeys" whose curses he swallowed, whose negativity he absorbed, whose existence demanded his suffering. The very people he'd constructed his entire identity around protecting became the enemy, the source of curses, the root problem that needed to be eliminated.
I think this represents a fascinating, tragic exploration of Getou Suguru's character. I've never been able to fully believe in his "perfect goodness" because I've always been skeptical of people who preach their beliefs as though they need to prove them to themselves rather than simply living them naturally. There's something performative about it, something unstable.
When someone constantly articulates their principles, when they need to regularly remind themselves and others of what they stand for, it often suggests those principles are aspirational rather than intrinsic—a framework they're trying to inhabit rather than a natural expression of who they fundamentally are.
It's frankly unbelievable that an environment as corrupt, as morally compromised, as demonstrably broken as jujutsu society would produce such a "perfectly good person" within their ranks. Systems don't generate their opposites—they replicate themselves. The fact that Getou seemed like such an idealistic outlier should have been the first warning sign.
There are countless factors to consider when analyzing why Getou became what he eventually became, and that multiplicity is precisely what makes his character so rich, so human, so devastatingly tragic. Claiming he was fully good while denying the flaws, insecurities, and fundamental instability in his character is not only inaccurate—it's profoundly less interesting than the truth.
Characters are most compelling when we can trace the logic of their deterioration, when we can see how someone with genuine good intentions and real care for others can be twisted by circumstances, by psychological vulnerabilities, by the accumulated weight of their specific suffering into something monstrous.
Getou's fall isn't a betrayal of his character—it's the inevitable conclusion of trajectories that were always present. The seeds were always there; we just weren't looking closely enough to see them taking root.
This is my personal take and formal disagreement against everyone who infantilizes Getou during the Hidden Inventory Arc while simultaneously finding ways to make Gojou look more negative, more careless, more morally compromised—just to make Getou look better by contrast.
They were both kids. Both teenagers thrust into an impossible situation with insufficient support and contradictory guidance. Both traumatized by what happened, though they processed that trauma in dramatically different ways.
Trying to flatten their dynamic into "good one" and "bad one," trying to make Getou into Gojou's consistent moral superior, trying to rewrite the actual pattern of their decisions to fit a more comfortable narrative—all of this does a disservice to both characters.
Beautiful! As I've said before, I think Suguru's relationship with "meaning" stems a lot from his CT. It's unpleasant, so he ascribes meaning to it in order to endure it. He must do it because he's the protector. He suffers for the greater good.
And Suguru, to me, is a character that shows both sides of 和. The positive and negative aspects of it. Social harmony through conformity. He follows the rules. Even when the rules harm him and those he cares about. Because he believes it is "right" to do so. What we see and attribute to Suguru as maturity and respect and politeness is true and all there. It's the positive aspects of 和.
But as this analysis perfectly points out, Suguru's rigidity and conformity to it showed the negative aspects.
He’d always believed in a future where he and Suguru spent Christmases together. If he could go back, he’d believe in a future where he and Suguru spent their lives together. He wished for too little, and now he’s paying the price.
Like every year on Christmas Eve, Satoru leaves campus in the dead of night, walking in the bitter cold of winter. He needs to teleport himself there part of the way since there aren’t any trains that run this late, but he prefers to walk where he can. For some reason, it seems to mean something to him that he shows up shivering, chilled to the bone, and thaws in the embrace of stolen warmth. He doesn’t look too closely at what, exactly, it means. If you look too closely at something, you have to name it.
His knock on the door is quiet, barely more than a muted thud. He knows he doesn’t need to announce his presence. How can you miss what you’re waiting for?
And each year when the door drifts open, pulled inward as gently as a whisper, Satoru’s heart aches. It feels like his very heart could eat itself alive as Suguru gazes out at him, slender fingers reaching out past the threshold to grip Satoru’s chill bitten ones. Satoru slips in, and their feet ghost across the sleepy floorboards together. Suguru takes Satoru to his room and lets Satoru enter his body.
As they fuck, Satoru attempts to entomb himself in Suguru. He thrusts himself inside, he presses his tongue in deep, he begs Suguru to clutch at him, to dig his fingers into the muscle, he wraps Suguru’s hair around his neck, coils it around his throat like an ebony necklace. He attempts to twine them together, to dig into the soil of Suguru and find the root of him. If he can abrade it enough, can they become one? Like two trees in a dense forest.
Suguru always lets him stay inside after he’s come. He rests inside Suguru while Suguru holds him. Suguru’s arms are around his shoulders and his legs around his waist, heels digging into his low spine, while he crushes Suguru down into the mattress beneath him and mouths at his lips, wet and sloppy, slow and sedate. It’s warm in Suguru, and he smells like soap and tea leaves.
“This is the last year, Satoru.”
Satoru pauses, the words barely more than breath across his lips. He opens his eyes and looks down into Suguru. Suguru’s face is sweetly flushed, and his sweat has dampened the fine hairs along his hairline. He gazes back up at Satoru with insurmountable conviction.
He should probably find it shameful that his first thought is to ask, why can’t I be enough for you?
“Why?” he asks instead, voice raspy with resigned anger.
“It’s been long enough. It’s time for me to fight.”
Satoru isn’t able to yell the way he did when they were children. Not that it did him any good back then. All he can do now is frown and plead, pressing himself further into Suguru.
“What about Christmas?” His hands hold Suguru’s skull, fingers sliding through the tresses of his hair, cradling his head in his palms.
Suguru breathes out softly, the violet of his gaze falling on Satoru like a shadow.
“Then…” he murmurs, “Let’s fight on Christmas Eve.”
When Satoru kills Suguru, he lays his body down in the alley and holds him. They lie together, and Satoru wraps Suguru’s hair around them both, he pulls Suguru into his arms and looks at the delicate black of his lashes. The smell of blood is too strong to smell Suguru’s soap and the always present scent of tea on his skin.
Satoru’s voice is like dust, like ashes, that drift away from him.
“If…If I keep you here…with me…can’t we meet next Christmas too?”
They'll never know how I'd stared at the dark in that room
“I wanted to enjoy this sight for a bit longer, but…”
Perhaps the euphoria of capturing the Six-Eyes was getting to him. Perhaps it was the pleasure of a plan working out just as he foresaw it. Or maybe it was just an emotional residue from his current body leeching into him and making him decide to tease. It did just choke him, after all. He was still holding the wrist of the twitching right hand. He's noticed that he can act like them without realizing it. And Geto Suguru is a wonderfully unique body. Whatever the reason, Kenjaku takes one step closer to Gojo Satoru.
There was a memory that came to him shortly after he first inhabited this body. The memories always flood his mind as soon as he takes over a new body, but parsing through them all takes time. It was a memory that was fuzzy with pain, but the emotional clarity of it was overwhelming. And Kenjaku draws upon that memory now as he stands over the one person who has foiled his plans countless times, over countless lifetimes. Sure, not this Six-Eyes user, not this iteration of him, but they're all the same, aren't they?
Kenjaku squats, lowering himself to be level with Gojo Satoru, resting on his heels in a perfect imitation. He watches those hideous blue eyes track him, watch him, stare at him, quivering with intensity, glowing as sharp as a blade. He's sure they would stab him through the neck if they could.
Kenjaku keeps his smile just as soft, just as sweet as before. There was a tender elegance to the way Geto smiled.
“I love you,” he says, repeating the last words Geto ever heard.
The eyes staring into his widen, the white around the blue a vast sea of despair. A sea of oblivion. Gojo Satoru’s screams reverberate in the stillness of the train station. He howls like a wild dog and thrashes against the blood red binds that hold him.
Kenjaku slowly stands. “Gate, close.”
As the Prison Realm draws inward, swallowing the screams, Kenjaku laughs. His right hand begins to shake, to tremble uncontrollably. He glances down at it and grins.
He's always hated the smell of the smoke. The lingering scent in the air, on clothes, in the room. So many people smoke in Japan, but Satoru avoids it as much as he can. Even when he was a child, he'd whine and pout if anyone in his family ever tried to smoke around him. Luckily, he's the Gojo pride and joy, their little Satoru, so he always got his way.
He remembers when he first saw Shoko smoking. He and Suguru stumbled upon her outside of the school buildings shortly after first year started. They'd crouched in the grass together around the corner and whispered to each other, wondering how she even purchased them since they were all only 15. Suguru told him how kids back in his hometown would get older brothers or uncles to buy them packs, but he thought it'd be harder for kids to get them in the city. Satoru stuck out his tongue.
Satoru hates cigarettes.
When he learned that Suguru smoked occasionally, he threw a fit. At the time, he thought he was just expressing his disappointment in having to endure the smell when Suguru chose to light up, but now, as an adult, he can look back and see that it was a temper tantrum. Suguru was flabbergasted as to why it bothered Satoru so much. He kept saying, I'm not going to force you to smoke with me, Satoru. You don't even have to stay near me when I smoke, and I use a deodorizer on my clothes after. And all Satoru could say in his state of emotional despair was,
I hate cigarettes.
In a good year, Satoru will only buy one pack. It will last him the entire year because he can only manage to smoke one at a time, and he only ever does it when he really needs it. There have been a few years when he's bought over 5 packs in one year. He tries not to think about those years.
It's always Peace. Long Peace. 20 filtered cigarettes come in the creamy yellow pack, and each one has the logo embossed on them in gold. Satoru stares at the golden dove carrying the olive branch in its beak for several minutes every time before he lights the cigarette. But seeing the thin stick between his own fingers irritates him. It almost doesn't look right, even though he knows it was only ever this brand and this variant. He can never seem to hold it right. To hold it as elegantly.
The faint vanilla scent is obvious as soon as he breaks the seal on the pack. Vanilla and tobacco. It immediately relaxes him, and he sags under a weight that is only ever in his head.
When he smokes one, he always coughs. It's a strong cigarette with a solid throat hit. The faint sweetness of the vanilla helps and it's decently smooth, but Satoru isn't a smoker. He smokes the entire thing anyway. He closes his eyes and inhales slowly, rolling the taste of the smoke over his tongue. It only takes a few puffs for him to feel the buzz. His head begins to float, and his lungs begin to settle. It's plum, it's anise, it's vanilla, it's milk tea.
He sits and smokes and listens to the crackling burn of the paper, breathes the heavy smoke, tastes the creamy and sweet bitterness.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really like the fact that the Tokyo Students are stronger than the Kyoto students.
I understand what Gege is trying to do. That the Kyoto students are weak because they represent the traditional jujutsu society under the higher-ups who hold back their potential, while the Tokyo students are more impressive because they learnt from rebellious figures like Gojo.
I’m against this because Gojo’s role as a teacher. Gojo openly criticizes the jujustu system and society, but as a teacher he still sees exposure and participation of violence and danger as an imperative. One of, if not the most dangerous and disgusting parts of Jujustu society. He may ‘rebel’ against the higher-ups, yet he still puts them into the same life-threatening situations the system demands.
Because of this, Tokyo’s strength doesn’t feel earned through rejecting the system. He relies on danger and violence to force progress. Regardless of his justifications or not, he’s doing the same thing as the higher ups. Kyoto students also face curses and missions, so there’s no clear reason they should be weaker just because they follow the rules.
By letting Gojo’s students come out stronger, the writing unintentionally rewards his teaching style, even though it mirrors the same broken system he claims to oppose.
would you consider yourself an intelligent and sensitive pervert?
i've been saving this in my inbox for months because i don't feel like i have the words to match this. it's a shameful breach of my humility to answer yes, yes i do consider myself an intelligent and sensitive pervert. i love how you worded that. this is like a therapist's screening question.
i wish people didn't try to filter geto's decision through a western lens because they're forgetting a huge part of the puzzle and it's the fact that sorcerers are oppressed by non-sorceres in the world of jujutsu kaisen. geto’s whole thing is "there's so few of us and yet we work ourselves to death for your peace of mind, while you remain ungrateful".
it's all more equivalent to health care workers trying to treat a virus. which also aligns thematically with the subject of labour across the series (jujutsu sorcerers being spread thin to the detriment of inexperienced workers, a job you value vs a job that compensates but drains you of your spirit, the myth of meritocracy) .
which is why controlling the output of cursed energy should be seen as the equivalent of being born with or developing an immunity to a disease. this is why a "culling" sounds possible to geto to begin with— people being pushed to adapt or die in their lifetime to prevent future outbreaks, like one would with a virus. strongly differing to kenjaku, because they essentially yearn for this disease to spread out of morbid curiosity (while geto wants the work to end):
geto is a character you are meant to see yourself in. as, in all likelihood, a laborer yourself or someone that will become one. his story is that of exploitation at the hands of a system that only cares for results. leading to isolation in hopes of achieving high productivity.
tangentially, i think a subject that is often ignored in these discussions is the financial incentive to take on more and more work onto your plate too. mei mei is perhaps the clearest example of this, no explanation needed. nobara, a second, when she explictly tells us sorcerery work is the only way a small town girl like her can make it in the big city. megumi, a third, when we learn the money the school gave him helped keep him and his sister tsumiki afloat.
while gege does not delve into geto's past, we can safely speculate part of the reason geto keeps working day after day, after day— despite his wavering convictions is because there is something that encourages him to do so. financial stability would not be an odd motivater. after all, why do we push ourselves everyday to work jobs that no longer add anything meaningful to our lives? geto is the type of character that forces us to examine such things.
as an aside, when he first dons the robes of a cult leader, money is at the forefront of his concerns. if it wasn't obvious before, gege tells you again— choosing not to be a sorcerer, implies a serious loss of income.
i think, all in all, geto's spiral does not hinge on the fact that he was secretly evil the entire time. it lies in disillusionment of a system that only seeks to preserve itself. note that this is why yuki works outside of it. no doubt her experiences as a former star plasma vessel informed her reasoning. it's also why gojo decides to become a teacher and change the institution from within, wielding his privilege as a shield over others.
Love this! I think another aspect that is culturally significant that shows what is said here about Suguru is how GG had his uniform as a student. He wore nikka pants and jikatabi. Which are what construction workers/manual labor workers wear on the job. So even his clothes associate him with the working class.
Liking mlm content not in a “my god these men are so hot” way but in a lesbian “these men are so silly and funny I wish I could squish them and roll them around in my hands like a dough ball” way
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