In Jujutsu Kaisen main characters are set up not as rivals, but as complementary pairs. Satoru and Suguru are not rivals, they are a pair who complements the strength and weaknesses of each other because they are different and are therefore stronger together than apart. The same for their parallels in Yuji and Megumi. Yuji’s desire to save everyone is only enhanced by Megumi’s belief that it’s more prudent to choose who you save. This meta will set up Maki and Yuta as the third set of complementary pairs, where each character represents an opposite value. Maki represents independence, and Yuta represents depending on your friends around you or codependence. Each character as well demonstrates the strength and weaknesses of each value.
1. Yuta, codependence.
Yuta’s greatest weakness is his codependence on others. This is even called out by Maki the first time she met him. Yuta always uses others as an excuse for his own actions and his reason for fighting. Yuta tends to act passive and blame others, while not taking an active role in things himself.
The reason for this is because Yuta lacks the self-confidence to stand up and act on his own. He’s too afraid of the consequences of his actions to make his own decision. What Maki points out here is that when Rika hurts other people, she’s only doing so to protect him. However, because Yuta can’t bear to feel the guilt for hurting others, he blames Rika for all of it and demonizes her when Rika is only trying to protect him. This happened later on as well when Yuta believed Rika was the one who cursed him when it’s revealed all along he was the one who cursed her. Another thing that Yuta avoided because he didn’t want to deal with the guilt of binding Rika to him for years.
We also learn why Yuta is so dependent on others in his interaction with Maki. Yuta’s behavior of running away from other people has resulted in his current self which is alone and completely isolated from others, all except Rika. Not only is he alone, he’s left with a crippling fear that he’ll be alone permanently. That’s why he clings to others so much, because he’s seeking validation from them.
Yuta isn’t confident enough to believe it’s okay for him to exist on his own. He doesn’t believe he’s enough, so to speak. He needs other people to validate him and tell him it’s okay just for him to go on living. Yuta can’t exist without other people, he needs that reassurance. He makes other people his reason for living, because he can’t find reason enough to live on his own. What Yuta is seeking is the ability to live on his own, but he seeks it the opposite way by depending on others entirely.
In other words his wants and needs are in conflict with one another. What Yuta needs is the strength to stand on his own without dragging other people down by relying on them too much. What Yuta wants is to never be alone. He depends so much on his relationships with others, that cutting them off, being alone is what he fears the most, because he doesn’t think he can live otherwise.
This is why he says he wants to believe that it’s okay to keep on living, because deep down he doesn’t believe that it’s okay for someone like him who has hurt a lot of people on accident to live.
However, Yuta can’t find the answer for himself why he should live so he relies on other people to provide that for him. He can’t live, without the constant reassurance of others. It’s the motivation behind all of his actions and it blinds him as well. He doesn’t care about the greater world of Jujutsu Society, just maintaining the relationships with the people.
I want to point out these parallels because they’ll be important later when I return to Maki.
Yuta has a conflicting want and need, what would be truly healthy for Yuta would be learning to be more independent. He even suggests that towards the end of his arc that the best thing for him to do would be like Maki someone who achieves things by working hard and standing on their own two feet.
However, his want is to stay with everyone forever. His basic desire is to stay codependent and be surrounded by the same people forever, because they’re the ones who tell him it’s okay to live. Therefore, even though he admires someone like Maki his tendency is to cling to others rather than trying to work harder to be alone.
Yuta even expresses reluctance to be alone in his current incarnation. It’s something he’s still struggling with.
Yuta’s greatest strength is actually his ability to fight for others, as it’s his friends who motivate him to get stronger. It was his connection with Maki who made him realize what he wanted with life. It was accepting Rika’s love for him that allowed him to have the power to defeat Geto. However, with that strength, there’s a complementary weakness, of Yuta always relying on others. Something which while allowing him to closely watch his friends makes him blind to the greater conflict of the world as a whole.
2. Maki, Independence
So, Maki both have a conflicting want and need and they both have something they draw their strength from and weakness they are blind to. While Yuta’s character revolves around the idea of codependence and fighting for others, Maki’s is built from the ground up on independence and fighting for herself.
Mai and Maki’s relationship is parallel to Yuta and Rika’s relationship. Both children were each other’s only friends and comforts in their childhood. While Yuta clings to Rika so hard he curses her to be with him after death, Maki pushes Mai away at all available opportunities.
Maki states her reason for falling into conflict with the Zenin, first to Yuta, then to Nobara, and finally confirms it to Mai herself. The reason she wanted to become stronger than the clan was always to prove them wrong for looking down on her. She wanted to assert that she herself was stronger than them, therefore they were wrong for hating her, and she could live without hating herself. Notice how deep down Yuta and Maki have the same to desire, they want to find a way to live in this world without hating themselves, because they’ve both been taught by circumstances that it’s wrong in some way for them to live.
Maki’s always prioritized herself and her own well-being over her sister, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about Mai. It’s just a reaction to abusive circumstances, people have always stepped on and belittled Maki and made her feel like nothing so in response she puts herself above everyone else. For Maki, the most important thing is her independence. The second most important thing is Mai. It’s the complete opposite of Yuta, who always puts others over himself to the point of relying on them entirely.
Maki’s desire isn’t wrong. She wants to grow up to be a self-reliant person, and an individual. However, her coping mechanism is wrong, because her way of coping has always been to push everyone including Mai, and Yuta himself away in order to prove that she’s strong enough to do everything on her own. (Which she’s not, no one is). She pushes people away even when she didn’t need to because Maki wants to be an individual in all circumstances, and wants to prove she’s better than the people who looked down on her.
This coping mechanism is maladaptive because it’s the same as Toji’s. Maki and Toji aren’t parallels because they’re both strong, they’re actually parallels because of the way in which they avoid their own vulnerability. They both have the same want, to prove that they are stronger than those who look down on them.
What Toji wanted was to prove he was better than the jujutsu world, by showing he was stronger than Gojo even when he reached the pinnacle of his strength. What he needed was to be there as a father for his son and learn to do that. Toji’s best, most positive feature was his love for Megumi. When he was with Megumi’s mother, he almost healed as a person and set aside his grudge against the Zen’in for his family. When Megumi’s mother died, he chose to be callous to the world, to the point of not killing much about killing a sixteen year old girl like Rika. He stopped trying to heal, and even gave up on Megumi who was the best part of himself.
Toji was not being strong when he decided to become an outlaw to the Jujutsu world, because he abandoned Megumi in order to do it. He was not being healthy either. It’s a maladaptive coping mechanism.
Toji genuinely does love his son, I believe that’s been established. However, his desire to be a father to Megumi, his love towards having a family, they all represent a vulnerability to him. Toji pushes Megumi away to avoid his own vulnerability. When he pushed Megumi away from him and refused to be a part of his life, he stopped caring about himself or others.
Toji’s independence is destructive. He doesn’t express it in a healthy way. He can only be dependent by pushing others away. His way of being an individual was to abandon Megumi, and not only did that make Toji stop valuing his own life in the end to the point where he didn’t care much about what happened to him, but it also made Megumi feel abandoned as a result.
In fact, the result of Megumi’s abandonment issues is so severe that he often becomes suicidal in crisis situations and doesn’t know how to value his own life, because he thinks he wasn’t worth enough for either of his parents to stick around.
While Maki doesn’t have the same responsibility to Mai like they’re the exact same age she’s not obligated to take care of her sister, however, she does treat Mai in the same way.
If Megumi is Toji’s heart that Toji decided to separate from himself as a way of avoiding vulnerability because depending on someone else and being there for someone else would get in the way of his independence.
Then Maki made the decision towards Mai. Maki considers Mai to be her heart, the person she loves unconditionally and wishes the best for the same way Toji loves Megumi unconditionally. However, Maki cuts off Mai entirely and denies having any kind of relationshipw ith her sister, the same way Toji denied his relationship to Megumi.
Both of them are so afraid of becoming dependent on others, they’ll cut others off. They’re afraid of the vulnerability of being deendent on others. Maki wanting to be strong on her own isn’t a bad ideal, in a lot of ways it makes her someone even Yuta admires, but at the same time her cutting herself off entirely from her loved ones is unhealthy behavior.
There is canon evidence that Maki has practically no relationship with her sister, except for the memories they had when they were younger. Maki denies her connection to Mai, Mai says that she and Maki practically never talk. They’re living entirely separate households right now, Maki didn’t think to take Mai with when she left the clan. Maki doesn’t even understand her sister well enough to know why Mai is angry at her.
Maki considered Mai her heart, however at the same time she seperated herself from her heart in order to deny that vulnerability. However, Maki never took care of her heart or communicated how important Mai was too her. The same way that Megumi was left feeling abandoned by Toji, Mai feels continually that she is not good enough in comparison for Maki and always drags her down. That she is the reason that Maki abandoned her.
This results in the worst ending possible. Mai exhibits the same behavior as Megumi, the tendency to value her own life less, and try to throw it all away in some big sacrifice. However, Mai actually succeeds.
Mai put her heart in one person and kept that person far away from her, and as a result, her heart was lost. Maki’s refusal to rely on others doesn’t always make her stronger in every situation, sometimes it makes her weaker, sometimes it makes her unable to protect the ones she holds close.
Maki’s strength is her independence, but it’s also her weakness. It makes her blind to the feelings of the people who are around her. Maki’s insistence on always going alone resulted in the most tragic end result possible.
Maki’s decision to massacre the Zenin clan, isn’t a good thing. It’s the beginning of a self destructive spiral. The clear parallel to this is Geto’s decision to massacre an entire village.
There are sympathetic reasons behind both actions, Maki wanted revenge for her sister, Geto was angry at a whole village for abusing two little girls. However, that doesn’t make their massacre, right. It’s also, an act of giving up for both of them. Maki gave up on any positive development for herself the moment Mai died. Maki herself died. The same way that Geto broke the moment Rika died, and he only continued to spiral, and spiral.
Maki’s spiral isn’t a good thing, she’s self destructive. She’s simply reached a point where she doesn’t care about the future now. She’s no longer trying to become a stronger or healthier version of herself, like her idependence once pushed her to do, she’s lashing out against the world in an empty way, the same way that Toji and Geto once did when they were pushed to the edge as well.
However, there is still hope for Maki. The same way that Yuta once wanted to be like Maki, Maki expresses a desire to be more like Mai, and Yuta as a regret.
“Why didn’t you lfall down the hole with me?”
At the end she expresses a regret because it might have been better to stay with her sister and try to work together, rather than try to only ever be strong on her own as an individual.
The same way that Yuta’s want is to be surrounded by the same people forever, but his need is to learn to be more indpendent.
Maki’s want is to be entirely alone and invulnerable never dpeendeing on others, while her need is to learn to work with others better.
RIght now, Maki is in the worst mental place possible. She doesn’t know hot to live without Mai. She doesn’t know what she wants in a world without Mai. She’s lost sight of everything except strength and revenge the same way Toji did. However, Yuta presents a way to save the current Maki from her death spiral, and teach her a way to live the same way Mak once showed Yuta there was a way for him to keep living. There is still hope for them as a complementary pair, Yuta could teach Maki about depending on others, while Maki teaches him about learning to stand on his own. If she finds a way to live past this point, it will likely be her opposite that teachers her this way of living.
After all Maki was never supposed to fight against the Zeni’n clan on her own. She always had people who were willing to fight the Zeni’in with her. Maki just wasn’t able to accept that fact until it was too late.
