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Gojo Satoru: or, how the eyes are the windows into the soul.
everyone and their mothers have talked about the kfc breakup scene to hell and back, we've gotten a dozen and more think pieces about the episode on twitter and tumblr and wherever else, but I really needed to add my two cents because it's been on my mind ever since I watched the episode.
something fun I've noticed about mappa's adaption of jjk is the way they animate gojo's technique—specifically in relation to his eyes.
in season one, gojo's eyes were always animated very... otherworldly.
they're always glowing and sparkling in this weird, uncanny way, which is kind of the point: gojo is the six eyes, after all, and considering the anime's animated and colored medium compared to the original manga's black and white, paneled format, it's a good way to adapt and demonstrate gojo's powers in the way the manga cannot. it also serves to visually separate gojo from the rest of the characters; as the strongest, he is different from the rest.
however, when season two's teasers were first released, there's a particularly interesting detail...
... his actually normal looking eyes.
and, yeah! that makes sense. as much as gojo and geto's high school selves love to tout around the title of "the strongest", it's undeniable that compared to his twenty-eight year old self, this gojo is much weaker, incapable of holding up his technique indefinitely, and incapable of using red, hollow purple, his domain expansion, and reverse curse technique: all of which his adult self are using passively.
so, i had personally figured that these were the eyes of an unawakened gojo. that once he mastered reverse curse technique, his eyes would start to glow like his adult self. however... that was not the case! as we can see...
... they still glow! but only when he was using his technique. once he puts it down...
... the glowing fades as well.
especially in these last few screenshots, mappa establishes the difference between "invulnerable" ( untouchable, literally, with his infinity technique up ) gojo and "vulnerable" ( infinity down, so things can now touch him ) gojo, both literally and mentally. ( let's put a pin in that. ) after geto's reassurance gojo physically lets down his defences of his technique, and thinks that that they're safe... leading to toji taking advantage of that naïveté, and the rest is history.
it's important to note both, as it puts his adult self into a new context: we know that after coming back from the dead, gojo's mastery of reverse curse technique allows him to use his infinity indefinitely without frying his brain.
it's funny, because this parallels his way of coping, as we see here:
curse technique reversal: red. the opposite to blue's attract, it instead repels.
after going through the traumatic events of hidden inventory, gojo... feels nothing. he pushes away these feelings, numbing himself to them instead.
he activates his infinity...
... and becomes untouchable. or, in other words...
... invulnerable. ( physically and emotionally. )
at the beginning of episode five, we don't get very many close shots of gojo's eyes, but he is in the middle of demonstrating his new grasp of infinity; in contrast to geto's spiral, the main focus of the episode and premature death as a whole, we get shots of gojo's back, his gaze obstructed by his spectacles, his face obscured entirely...
... or simply just far away.
to be fair, this all is in geto's point of view, and is used specifically to higlight the canyon that's opened up between the two, but the visual language is the same. gojo is untouchable.
well. up until...
though it's hard to see the state of his eyes with his spectacles in the way. but this is very quickly remedied just a few minutes later.
... his eyes are not glowing.
infinity is not activiated. his technique is down. gojo satoru is vulnerable. literally, in the sense that his technique is not in use, because he is dealing with a friend and not an enemy user, and mentally, because he is angry and upset and horrified and in shock in a way he was not with amanai's death.
as we know, gojo is not one to react emotionally. when kuroi was kidnapped, he did not worry: simply thought of another solution. when toji ambushed them, he did not panic: simply asked geto to complete the mission as he stayed behind to fight him off.
however, with geto's defection...
he yells, makes himself bleed.
when amanai died, he'd said he felt nothing. he'd floated in the air, weightless, marveling at the beauty of the world above and around him.
with geto's defection...
while nakamura's voice acting and the incredible animated character acting was more than enough to get his anguish across, using the tells of gojo's technique as well was the icing on the cake.
the eyes are the windows to the soul, after all, and in this moment, intentionally or not, his were blown wide open as his world crumpled apart.
Exorcise, absorb. Over and over. Exorcise. Absorb. No one else understands what cursed spirits taste like. It's like swallowing a dirty rag that's been used to clean up shit and vomit. Who am I doing this for?
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