Utahime Iori: A Character Study
Utahime Iori is one of my personal favorite characters, a severely underrated one, AND a very mysterious one.
⚠️slight spoilers for Manga!! ⚠️
At the beginning of Gojo’s past arc, her and Mei Mei are on a mission that supposedly lasted three days. Utahime demonstrates a calm demeanor that allow her to come up with a plan that ends up not being put into action due to some interference. After that, Gojo comes and he and her have their now familiar banter of ‘respecting your elders’. All of the calm she had before is completely gone as she almost gets eaten by a curse and saved by Geto. Moments later, she hugs Shoko tightly, establishing their friendship that lasts years.
She is capable, tactical, and calm when she needs to be, but can easily get triggered by Gojo. He teasingly calls her ‘weak’, which is something I feel like is more than just a joke for her because…
“A scar on the face is a badge of honor for a man. Though it’s only a flaw on a woman.”
Utahime has a noticeable scar on her face, one that wasn’t there in her cameo in Gojo’s past arc. During the fight between Nobara and Momo, something Momo brings up after brusing Nobara’s face is how scars on women are viewed in the Jujutsu world. It’s a flaw because in their world, women need to be pretty faced and strong enough to fight and handle themselves.
(Update: in an interview, Gege mentioned that there is no big story surrounding how she got her scar, but I do believe that the implications around her having a facial scar will come into play considering … ya know Shibuya- )
Utahime is a semi grade 1 female sorcerer who has a scar across her face. She, despite all this, is the teacher at the Kyoto school, the school that is more conservative. Unfortunately, Utahime’s technique is unknown at the moment, but what we do know, is the requirement to gain the semi grade 1 title;
After receiving recommendation, the nominee will join a sorcerer of that rank on multiple missions. If they succeed, they get the promotion of the semi grade 1 title. After that, they need to go on a solo mission and exorcise a grade 1 alone to decide if the sorcerer becomes a grade 1 (jjk wiki).
She’s stronger than the average sorcerer and had enough status and respect to be able to become the teacher at Kyoto. I think it’s important to note that she’s the teacher at the Kyoto school, the school that’s at the heart of the jujutsu world, where all the big names go and the school with a much more conservative principal.
It’s also important to note that in the initial plan, the students were supposed to distract Fake!Geto and Utahime would work on unsealing Gojo.
Most of the times, she is very calm and collected. She is able to keep cool headed and has a decent amount of control over her students, although the Principal has more. The Kyoto kids seem to respect her a lot, and she seems to care for them a lot too
She isn’t exactly the most comforting or ‘motherly’ type. She isn’t good at working in the moment and giving encouragement on the spot, but when Miwa fell asleep during the exchange event, her first instinct was to go and get her. When tasked with finding out which of her students is a traitor, she seemed virtually unbothered by it initially. Ofc Mechamaru was trying to play a double agent role and failed. However, she kept everything on the downlow for the other students. When Mai asks her about it, she simply says “it doesn’t matter, he’s dead now.” She also clearly cares for her friends and coworkers, but will express it in a rather agressive manner.
As I said before, not a lot is known about her and she doesn’t get as much showing time as other characters, but I really want to know more about her. I really, really, want to know her cursed technique. A lot of people believe that with Nobara’s reccent scarring, that Utahime will play a much bigger role, and I honestly can’t wait for the Utahime/Shoko mentor take over.
So yea, just a little summary fo what we know about Utahime Iori!
This has been sitting in my drafts for a while so I decided oh well, I’m posting it, lol
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