Gege is so good at writing relationships that I will forever be mad that we never learn what the fuck was up with Haruta and Juzo. They had a very clearly established something going on but I cannot tell you what other than it has a powerful vibe. Like, it's almost familial and you get the sense that they probably gave a shit about each other but, like, we barely get to experience it. But that just makes me think about Gege as a writer in a more broad sense.
There's a lot of depth to, say, Megumi when viewed in isolation but then there are characters like Gojo who really isn't much of anything without viewing him in conjunction to Geto. There's definitely something to be said about his choice to depict the relationship between Gojo and Geto the way that he did. Broken up but still caring for each other rather than just showing them as being close. It feels more real and the volatility of their relationship feels more palpable and you can definitely feel that they have history and what that history entails. Little things in the way that characters talk about each other and how they interact with one another. Or like Naoya constantly bringing up Toji and what that says about what their relationship might have been like as cousins. And to bring up Megumi again, I don't think I would have found him as interesting as I do without seeing how he thinks about his older sister and how he might think about gojo, other than what he's said out loud, and how that likely shaped him as a person.
I think fundamentally, jjk is a story about family in the least positive way possible. How much we're fucked up by our parents and the world that we were born into and structures the older generations put in place to keep them in power. A lot isn't said out loud, and a lot is, and yet so much story is communicated just from the interactions of these traumatized child soldiers with magic powers. It's a delicate web and akutami is a spider ready to eat us all.
And goddammit, I'm mad and intrigued! What the fuck was up with Juzo and Haruta!
