The Next Gojo Satoru
As you've probably guessed I have a lot to say about this chapter. However, right away I want to start out by pointing out once again that the fandom is taking a mostly gojo-centric view of this chapter. Which I understand it's Gojo's body that's being puppeteered around and dehumanized in the exact same way that Kenjaku one of the sickest and most inhuman characters used Geto's body.
However I think it shouldn't be understated how shocking it is to see Yuta betray all of his values like this. The most human character who represents love in the cast has given up on the cast and betrayed someone he loves. So let's talk about what this all means for Yuta under the cut.
GOJO GETS AN F IN TEACHING.
I understand why most of the focus is on Gojo, because yes Gojo's body is the one being violated here. He's not even allowed to rest in death after fighting on the front lines against Sukuna to the point where his brain was hemmoraging in the middle of battle and he was brutally cut in half.
Considering how much horror Gojo experienced when he saw Geto's body taken from him and made into Kenjaku's pupet. Cosidering the horrible pain that Nanako and Mimiko endured just seeing Geto's body still moving around denied a good death (Nanako and Mimiko were tellingly willing to let go and not try to take revenge against Gojo for killing Geto because of their friendship even though Geto was their whole world, but they'd never forgive Kenjaku for taking his body). Considering that Gojo even went out of his way to say he wanted to kill Kenjaku / Geto on Christmas Eve again in order to give him a proper burial it's understandable how horrifying this update is.
This is also a series where the two main antagonists are parasites who take the bodies, and steal away all bodily autonomy from characters like Yuji and Megumi and then force them to do horrible things they would never do and bear witness to it, such as the slaughter at Shibuya, or the murder of Tsumiki at Megkuna's hands.
It's understandable how people had such a visceral reaction to this chapter. However, I think the fandom has a tendency to paint Gojo like he's the central victim of all of Jujutsu Society when he's both victim and perpetrator.
Gojo is someone who has only been regarded as the strongest his entire life, and been used as a tool to keep Jujutsu Society stable his entire life. Gojo is also someone who never tried to be anything other than the strongest, never tried to empathize with anyone other than those who were just as strong as he is, and who raised all of his students to be tools too.
To illustrate my point here's an incredibly similiar character from Tokyo Ghoul: Arima Kishou. They are so similiar that they're both white haired mentor characters to the protagonist, they're both the strogest in their respective worlds, and Gege straight up copied this section of panels from the Tokyo Ghoul Manga.
Arima is a breeding project, who was bred by the Washuu Family who mxies blood between humans and ghouls through a series of controlled marriages for the purpose of creating hybrid ghoul human children. Arima isn't the ideal hybrid they were looking for, but he was so ungodly talented he quickly rose to being the most powerful and well-respected investigator in the CCG.
However, this is how Arima reacts to the fact that his entire purpose in life was just to be a weapon to kill ghouls.
Arima loathes violence, he loathes being an investigator, he loathes himself most of all and designs his entire political revolution around him finally being killed by Kaneki - to punish himself and also to relieve himself of the burden of living a life where he was only meat to kill others.
Gojo on the other hand loves being the strongest, he lives for Jujutsu. Arima's death is tragic and nihilistic believing his life had no real worth because all he ever was was a weapon to hurt others, whereas Gojo died satisfied.
Arima's last battle against Kaneki is grim, silent, and tragic, he does everything he can to make Kaneki despise him, to force Kaneki to kill him by being the worst version of himself and when Kaneki still wants him to live he just slits his own throat because even if Kaneki forgives him he can't forgive himself. Gojo laughs his head off and has the time of his life fighting against Sukuna, and going out in a blaze of glory.
Gojo dies smiling, Arima dies finally breaking into tears after a life of pretedig to be cold and emotionless. Gojo's dying regret is 1) that Geto wasn't there to say goodbye to him, and 2) that he wasn't able to draw out all of Sukuna's strength. Arima's dying regret was all the pain and suffering he caused throughout his life and how he was never able to rise above his circumstances and be anything other than what he was born to be.
These two characters are incredibly similiar, they are both the strongest, and they were both made into tools by a dehumanizing system they were born into. However, their attitudes are entirely different. Gojo enjoys being strong, and yes part of it is that Gojo himself doesn't realize he's a victim or what society has groomed him into becoming, but the other part is just because it's an ego trip for him. Gojo doesn't see himself as the tragic victim his fandom makes him out to be.
If you were to transplant him into Tokyo Ghoul Gojo would be happily killing ghouls, and he would think killing ghouls is fun because he's the strongest and best at killing ghouls. This is the complexity that is Satoru Gojo, he has been dehumanized and put on a pedestal his ow life, but Gojo also enjoys being on that pedestal and won't ever step down from it willingly.
I'm not saying that Arima is a better person than Gojo. I think the fact that Gojo doesn't think of himself as a victim is tragic in its own right, because he lacks the self-awareness to actually grow and change as a person. In the end both Arima and Gojo believe they couldn't be anything better than what they were, and their only release is death which is just insanely sad to me because as long as the future exists people always have a chance to get better no matter who they are. To give up on the future, to see an early death as a good thing simply because you can't endure life any longer is one of the most hopeless things imaginable.
Gojo's not sad because he was born to be a tool exploited for society's benefit, he's sad because he was lonely. He doesn't even realize it's his own darn fault he's lonely, because not only has Shoko said that he's not alone she's always been right there, but this chapter we get a repeat of Gojo's students begging him to let them in and Gojo himself decided to draw that line between himself and others and thinking an enlightened, godlike being like himself can't possibly be understood.
All of this to say I think Gojo is the sole victim here, but he's the middle of a chain of of victimhood. I think ultimately the biggest victim here is Yuta, and yes I will not only play trauma olympics here I'm going to win.
If this chapter goes to show anything it's that Gojo has completely failed in his ideals of protecting the youth from the dehumanizing system of sorcerers that takes children and reduces them to cogs in a machine.
A lot of people criticize Jujutsu Kaisen for dropping basically all of its political elements and themes of reform in the second half after Shibuya, and while I understand the criticism I think Gege intentionally shifted away from politics because Gojo's political revolution was never going to succeed.
From the beginning Gojo's solution to reforming Jujutsu Society and it's habit of taking away the youth of children and raising them up instead as child soldiers is... to make stronger child soldiers.
This is Gojo's blindspot and it has always been Gojo's blindspot.
It's why Gojo is completely okay with someone like Mei Mei who at the best uses her brother as a human shield to get out of curse domains and has stolen his entire childhood away to make him own pet little shoulder, and at worst actively molests him.
It's why Gojo is stated in the databooks to have only taken an interest in Megumi and Yuta because they were strong.
Gojo understands that he's being exploited by Jujutsu Society, but doesn't understand you need to deconstruct unfair systems of power and exploitation in order to build something better. Gojo from the beginning only had one plan, and that was to replace the people at the top with his own allies who'd support his agenda. He just thought waiting for them to die out and the children to grow up was the more peaceful way of doing it.
Gojo's political revolution was doomed from the beginning and that's why we see him go back on his word this chapter and just slaughter everyone at the top. His choice of a new leader for Jujutsu Society is hardly better than the elders, the person who executed Gojo's teacher and tried to get all the children to kill Itadori early on. Good choice.
This is what Gojo said would happen though, if he just wiped everyone out at the top no real systemic change would occur because they'd just be replaced with someone who wasn't that differet. Gojo's just given up on the notion of lasting change out of pragmatism.
Which is why Gojo himself is not that different from the elders in the first place, not because he's a bad person but because he was shaped by that same society and he's the pinnacle of that society.
I think the thing is and this point often gets ignored - a lot of the choices the elders make are because of outdated traditions like choosing to oppress Maki and Toji just because they challenge the traditional notions of cursed energy.
However, some of the decisions they make are out of cold hard pragmatism. Gakuganji actually turned out to be right in his assassiation attempt against Yuji Itadori. If they had succesfully killed Yuji, then the massacre in Shibuya would have been prevented and likely Kenjaku's plans would have been pushed back. The elders didn't sentence Yuta to execution just to be cruel, or just because they're superstitious but because he's already had several incidents of nearly killing people because he can't control Rika.
It's easy to dismiss the Elders as evil because they're just faceless entities, but then we witness in this very same chapter the main characters making the same heartless decisions out of the same sense of pragmatism.
Gojo understands Jujutsu Society is flawed, but doesn't understand exactly why it's wrong. He doesn't raise his students to be independent free thinkers because then they might question him, he raises them to be very powerful because that's more pragmatic.
Here are the next generation of sorcerers who are going to bring about the change to Jujutsu Society that Gojo so desperately seeks.
Nobara Kugisaki: Dead
Hakari Kinji: His greatest ambition is to start a fight club
Yuji: Actively calls himself a mindless cog and just wants to kill whatever society points him at and tells him to kill.
Maki: Mass murderer.
Yuta: Just stole Gojo's body and said he had to become a monster i Gojo's place.
Megumi: Begging to be killed.
Inumaki: Tuna Mayo
Panda: Is a Panda
(Joke lovingly ripped off from @kaibutsushidousha)
I understand that fighting Sukuna takes precedence now, but do you think once the dust settles any of these characters are going to do anything to make lasting change?
Are we going to see anything for them at the end of the road other than a mountain of their fellow sorcerers corpses?
Gojo didn't nurture his students to grow into healthy adults, he raised them into stronger child soldiers and yes that's the pragmatic thing to do to help them survive in the Jujutsu World, but the elders make those decisions out of cold pragmatism as well.
MHA is also showing a story where the children are failing to learn from the previous generatio's mistakes, but it's far less frustrating to watch in JJK because it almost seems like that's the point?
Maki sacrificed Mai for the sake of becoming someone strong enough to reform the Zen'in Clan, only for her sister to die and Maki to slaughter the rest of her family failing in both her goals to reform her clan and protect Mai.
Yuji became the host of Sukuna in order to help others, because the total deaths of people in the world would go down if he ate all the fingers. Not only did that decision lead to the death of thousands in Shibuya, but he's even lost his role of being Sukuna's host to Megumi.
Yuta wanted to find a reason to live and a purpose in protecting his friends, and also wanted to pay back the man who saved him, not only is Yuta choosing to die in a way that breaks his friends heart he's also violating his beloved teacher's bodies.
There's a lot of arcs like this where characters fail in what they set out to accomplish, because like in most tragedies they don't try to grow as people they only care about getting stronger. It's the same choice over ad over again, a decision made of cold pragmatism that brings about their tragic ending.
I think it speaks to why systems like this perpetuate themselves, because it becomes so hard to hold onto your humanity that even trying gets you actively punished all the while people like Mei Mei crawl to the top. However, even if you throw your humanity away purely as an act of survival you're still helping perpetuate that system instead of fighting against it.
Anyway, that's enough hating on Gojo, onto the main event.
THE NEXT GOJO SATORU.
It's almost masterful how perfect the foreshadowing for this chapter's twist was. Yuta sharing a common ancestor in Sugawara with Gojo.
The irony that Kenjaku said out loud that someone like Yuta could never become Gojo, on top of the fact that Yuta's true power comes from detaining his loved ones soul. He's turning Gojo's body into a weapon the same way that he once used Rika's vengeful cursed spirit as one (he even channels her strength into a sword, the same way Maki uses the sword that Mai gave her life to create in battle).
The way that Yuji's first impression of Yuta from his powerful presence and cursed energy alone was calling him someone even creepier than Gojo.
The idea that Kenjaku has been trying to get his hands on the six-eyes for years, which is what led most of the fandom to theorize a possible Kenjaku return by stealing Gojo's corpse. The fact Tengen said the six eyes, himself and the star plasma vessel are all connected and one time Kenjaku killed the six-eyes from a child only for another one to appear right away.
Yuta being told he could never reach Sukuna's heights because he lacks the selfishness of a calamity.
Even Yuta trying to tell a nameless assassin Uro to be less selfish, only to be chastised by her for not understanding because it's impossible for someone as blessed as he is to know what it's like to not have a name, to not have a face, to not be someone important.
Now here Yuta is, not only is he making the selfish decision to use his teacher's body as a tool, he's also most likely in five minutes going to die in someone else's body, having sacrificed not only his name, and face, but also his personal values in order to become a monster.
This arc makes it seem like Yuta's gone against everything he's stood for, making his arc a complete circle from Jujutsu Kaisen Zero and that's kind of the point. Heck, even something as small as Yuta's decision to show mercy to Ishigori was rendered pointless because Sukuna immediately killed him soon after taking Megumi's body.
If Yuta's regressed in his character it's because Gojo's purpose was not to raise these children into healthy adults, but strong soldiers.
What happened to Yuta is a direct consequence of the way Gojo recruits these children, and the underhanded motivations he has behind those recruitments.
Yuta's decision to take Gojo's body is more tragic on Yuta's part then it is on Gojo's, because Yuta is a child, and Gojo is an adult.
It is sad that Gojo is all alone, that he's forced to become a tool to society, but Yuta shouldn't be the one who feels responsible for that. Gojo is supposed to protect Yuta, he's the adult, the teacher, the one with power and Yuta is the child. Yuta is not the one who should be making this speech because it is not Yuta's responsibility to do any of this - but Yuta thinks it is because he owes Gojo.
However, when Gojo recruits people it's with the unspoken implication that they now owe him. He wants them to feel indebted, because then they'll be easier to use as pieces in his intended political revolution. We see this blatantly with the way he recruited Megumi.
I'll make sure you and your sister don't starve but you owe me in the form of labor later on in your life.
Gojo saved Yuta because he thought Rika was powerful and the elders were foolish for executing a potentially powerful sorcerer for THE GREATER GOOD instead of teaching him to control his power out of fear. Gojo recruited Yuji, because someone with Sukuna's power and who could eat his fingers as a vessel had the makings to be an incredibly powerful sorcerer. Gojo didn't even think of Megumi until after Geto defected, and Gojo decided he needed to start making changes to Jujutsu Society.
While Gojo's pragmatism is understandable to a point it also poisons his more nobler intentions. Since Gojo expects payment in return when he sticks his neck out for people, because these children are assets first and children secod.
I think Gojo likes Yuta. I think he gets along with him well. Yuta clearly respects him as a mentor. He did in fact go to great lengths to save Yuta from execution. He was right that it was more ethical to teach Yuta to control his powers rather than execute him for the danger he might represet. He even gives Yuta emotional advice a couple of times.
However, if Yuta was just like a grade 4 sorcerer with no special talent I doubt Gojo would have blinked at his execution. He sees Yuta for his talent first, and his potential to become someone like him. If anythig there are clear comparisons to both Megumi and Yuta. They're both prodigies born with incredible techniques, but Yuta is a lot more receptive to Gojo's grooming than Megumi is who's too traumatized to function. Gojo's not just grooming Yuta into being a powerful sorcerer, but another version of himself.
So it's almost karmic that not only does Yuta basically turn his back on everything that makes Yuta himself (his love for people, his desire to live and be surrounded by others), he also does so by literally becoming Satoru Gojo and transplanting his brain into Gojo's body.
Because Yuta is despite possessing a similiar level of talent as far from Gojo as possible. Gojo is not well liked by his comrades, he's there because he's needed due to his power. Yuta on the other hand has everyone vehemently disagreeing with his backup plan in the event of Gojo's death because they don't want to lose him.
People need Gojo, they want Yuta because of the connections that Yuta has made with them and because they care about Yuta as a person. Gojo is someone who deliberately draws a line between himself and others because he believes the strongest can't be comprehended, Yuta only fights for the sake of being accepted by others because he needs their approval in order to live.
Yuta's now turned his back on those two things, his tendency to put his loved ones first, and his desire to live, both because he feels he owes Gojo.
This comes about because of two factors, number one Gojo helping him with the implication that this help means that Yuta owes him something which makes Yuta desperate to pay him back and therfore easy to mold, and number two Gojo's intentions to begin with to take Yuta and make another Gojo out of him. To make a successor who would carry on the same burdens that Gojo did.
Gojo succeeded one hundred percent in making his successor as opposed to Megumi who turned out to be too different from Gojo i the end. He took what make Yuta unique and ironed out all those wrinkles until he was left with someone willing to make the same inhumane, pragmatic decisions that Gojo was.
I think it's tragic that as much as Gojo wanted to make things better for the next generation, he basically led Yuta down the same road he did, to make the same choice to throw his humanity away along with all of his loved ones. Especially since Yuta started out in such a different place.
Yuta has learned to become selfish like Gojo, because selfishness is apparently now the only way to get by in this world. A cycle that has been started with the elders, and continued on with Gojo, remains unbroken as Yuta becomes just another link in the chain. Yuta's likely going to die in a stranger's body, leaving all of his friends behind to mourn him, but even if he lives what life will that be exactly?
It speaks to the arcs in Jujutsu Kaisen that they're all kind of circles at this point. We have this heartwarming goodbye of Rika telling Yuta to live, and Yuta's whole arc was to learn to try to live without Rika and make new friends, but it's now likely goig to end with Yuta dying a year after Rika finally moved on.
Choso was told to try living on as a human and Yuki even sacrificed her life to give him the opportuity to escape the fight, and he only lived a month longer to die right in front of Yuji's eyes.
Gojo put all of his hope in the next generation, but now not only did he put all the power in Gakuganji's hands but he ended up dying a year after Geto did just like Yuta will likely die a year after Rika.
I think these character arcs are turning out to be circles because the characters aren't actually doing anything to try to break the cycles that they're trapped inside of - they're only trying to get stronger. Which is why they end up resembling the actions of the villains, Yuji becoming more curselike, Yuta stealing Gojo's body the way Kenjaku did with Geto's.
It reminds me of a quote from Critical Role that I absolutely adore.
“I have just taken an audience with the Raven Queen who has snuffed any hope of my redemption, for which I am truly grateful. With new clarity, I can finally see my life as a series of compounding, poor choices.” Vax winces. “There was nothing I could’ve done to save my family, yet I still sold my soul in search of vengeance. Later I allowed Ripley to leave, knowing full well she was a greater threat to the world than the Briarwoods would ever be. I traded the world’s safety for the belief that I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back. And once this lie was shattered I scrambled to find asolution, to make a deal, to undo my mistakes and balance the scales. I nowunderstand that there are no scales, there is no redemption, and no ledger that judges me good or evil. I am free to simply be myself and live with the terrible mistakes I’ve made."
Especially this sentence: I believed I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back.
Maki is a character that I have not found all that interesting in a while because she committed such a huge mass murder, only for it to have no consequences in the narrative and never be mentioned again, but this chapter she suddenly became an interesting character again.
Maki who lost everything but gained strength, doesn't seem all that bothered by the loss. People compare Megumi's reaction to losing Tsumiki to Maki's reaction to losing Mai, but Megumi's reaction is much more interesting because it's always better to see a character be weak and fall apart then to be strong and power through things.
However, maybe the reason Maki hasn't experienced any grief at all towards Mai and has instead delighted in her newfound strength and independence is because of this, because she still had Yuta.
Maki is a character who's not really said anything other than exposition the past like twenty chapters, but now she's the most vocally against Yuta sacrificing himself for the greater good. Yet this is against Maki's own ideology of doing everything you can to be stronger, to win. Maki was always about individualism, not about friendship or the bonds between others, she severed her own bonds to be free. Yet, she can't stand to see Yuta do the same thing as her, to become more like her.
This might be the consequence of Maki's continued choice to value freedom and the power to achieve that freedom over all else. Now, the one time Yuta is trying to throw away the same things that she threw away she can't say anything meaningful or convince him to stop him.
Which reminds painfully of this chapter as well.
Mai killing herself in order to free Maki from cursed energy is an obvious parallel to Sukuna devouring his own twin in the womb, but the difference is in this situation Maki didn't want Mai to go, she begged her not to. However, just like with Yuta there was nothing Maki could ahve said or done by that point to convince Mai to stay. Maki has always chosen power over her sister, she's always abandoned Mai, so what exactly can she say to convince her that she cares more about Mai more? That her dream of defeating the Zen'in and having revenge against them isn't worth the price if it comes at the sacrifice of Mai?
Maki didn't want to abandon Mai, or for Mai to sacrifice herself, but tragically her every action indicated otherwise. It all comes down to this: I believed I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back.
Maki seems to have achieved peace by murdering the Zen'in, but we see the same kind of circular arc that we have for Yuta.
Maki gave up on everything for strength, but Maki's not strong enough to finish Sukuna then and there, forcing Yuta to sacrifice himself the same way Mai did.
Maki can't talk Yuta out of making that sacrifice, or come up with any convincing argument with why he shouldn't because of all the choices she's made before this.
Maki chose to murder her way to peace, but it came at the cost of her humanity and growth and thus she's faced again with the exact same situation with Mai and she's forced to watch her heart be taken from her again.
It goes to show that we think these characters are getting stronger but they're actually sacrificing something vitally important.
These characters are just going to keep going around in circles and you have to wonder just when is it going to stop?
