As Yuji continues his post-Shibuya-arc, the parallels between him and Geto, get even stronger each week. His speech about being a cog whose function is a direct parallel to Geto's speech, about exercising and consuming curses over and over again, and here's why that's bad, ACTUALLY.
The strongest parallel between Geto and Yuji is that they are both deconstructions of the "hero" archetype. They both start out with the stated motivation of exercising curses in order to save others. They view themselves as good people, acting altruistically. However, the complexity of both of their characters arises from how they act when they fail to be heroes.
Yuji and Geto are both strong people who want to use their strength to protect people who are weaker than them. When they say this, they actually mean it. In a Jungian Sense, there is always a darker shadow that we are unconscious of, lurking behind our conscious motivators, IE what we are aware of, but that doesn't mean that their stated motivations are outright lies. Geto really did want to protect weak people, Yuji really did want to save people, however there was more to it than that. We see that other side of them when they both explicitly fail to save people. When they are not allowed to be the heroes they see themselves as, they begin to break down.
This, is a parallel to this. In the sense that they both experience the same arcs. Yuji becomes a Jujutsu Sorcerer with the simple goal of saving people, he finds a victim named Junpei but just when it looks like he is about to save him, Mahito kills him in front of his eyes. Yuji thought he was strong enough to save him is suddenly made to feel weak and helpless. Geto is part of the strongest duo with Gojo, they decide on their own that they are strong enough to save Riko, and then right in front of his eyes, Riko dies, and he's helpless. Geto and Yuji both break down slowly, and a more violent side of their personality is revealed.
They both state that it feels like their pervious motivations were all lies, Geto's stated motivation of "Follow through with your duty as a jujutsu sorcerer to protect the weak" and Yuji's stated motivation of "Exercise curses in order to help people." Their is an unacknowledged shadow to both of their actions.
When this happens their original motivations change. Geto and Yuji at first both wanted to simply save and protect as many people as they could using their strength to do so. However, when they fail to do that over and over again they begin to focus on their comrades instead. Yuji wants to become a cog in the system because he believes his actions will help the Jujutsu Sorcerers who have given him a sense of community, and came to help him in a time of need. Geto begins to prioritize the suffering of his comrades over the suffering of his strangers.
At first it seems like Yuji is taking the opposite path of Geto, because he's not obsessing over the reason behind all of the sorcerer's deaths the way Geto did. He's not empathizing too hard and taking it all on his shoulders until he festers and begins to resent the whole system the way Geto did. However, Yuji's way of dealing with things which is to just not think about what's wrong with the system is somehow even worse. The Sorcerer system being corrupt and in need of reform is a direct theme of the manga, it's stated by Gojo in the first ten chapters, that the fact that it exploits children and treats people like cogs is a bad thing actually.
One important thing to note is that Geto didn't turn bad, because what he said about wanting to help others was a lie, or that his empathy was too strong to survive in a cold world. Geto snapped, because he was being exploited, and the others were being exploited around him, and he noticed these things and was expected to just keep swallowing them to continue functioning. Yuji's conclusion that yes, it's fine that I'm a gear actually because maybe, when I die like a dog, my actions will indirectly help someone else is bad for the same reasons Geto realized.
Yuji's not contributing his life to a system that will help build a better world, he's sacrificing himself in an exploitative system that will not only sacrifice him, but several more young people, all in favor of maintaining an unfair status quo. We have seen other characters try Yuji's approach. Maki tried to follow the Zenin family's rules and just get stronger on her own to overcome it, and they killed both Mai, and tried to kill Maki as well.
Maki was, just like Geto, a good person who sought to become stronger in order to use her strength to reform the clan, and help her sister. She was following the rules when she went to claim the Zenin clan inventory, the clan however, was only interested in exploiting her to maintain the previous power structure that favored not only men but the elders. Maki snapping and massacring the Zenin clan is a direct parallel to Geto finally snapping and massacring the village. It's not brought about by malicious intent, Maki only snaps because she sees the way Mai was exploited right up until she died, Geto sees children being forced into a cage and that's what pushes him off the edge.
Geto's good intentions were just as honest, as Yuji's, as Maki's, however, you can't exist as a cog in the world. You can't become a cog. Yuji wants to become a cog, because it's simpler than dealing with his motiations as a person. He's so overwhelmed he doesn't want to sit down and think about his motivations, because being a thoughtless cog who kills curses is somehow easier than facing all of that. He wants to convince himself he can keep fighting and that's being strong, because it's easier than facing his weaknesses.
And that too, is a parallel to Geto's downfall. Yuji and Geto despite being on the surface, friendly, social people, never show their sadness in front of others. Their tendency is always to isolate themselves. When Junpei died, Yuji didn't tell Megumi nor Nobara. When he learned that Sukuna's fingers were resonating and letting out more curses, Yuji doesn't tell Megumi. After Shibuya, hsi first response was to run away from the Sorcerer School and isolate himself further. It's the same as Geto slowly seperating from Gojo over the year after RIko's death, not allowing himself to rely on Gojo emotoinally in any sense of the world.
Neither of them never let their negative emotions show on the surface at all, and because of it they both have clear dark streaks because they don't even try to handle those emotions in healthy ways.
Yuji snaps, he flips. This is well documented in canon. He snaps against Mahito when Junpei dies. The second time against Mahito again, when the power difference between them shifts Yuji is portrayed as the predator hunting him down. This is actually a dangerous side of his personality, because it's not actually just protecting people, it's also violent. Geto and Yuji both have definite violent streaks, and Geto's spirals out of control.
Of course their is a good side to Yuji's intentions, he really does just want his actions to help his comrades, but there's also a bad side that goes completely unacknowledged. Yuji still wants to keep massacring curses, even after he knows that not every curse is bad. His literal older brother Choso is a curse/human hybrid. If Yuji blindly exorcised all curses, that would mean killing Choso as well. In fact, that is literally almost what happened, Yuji not only killed two of his own brothers unwittingly, he almost killed Choso as well.
Yuji's black and white view of the world is a flaw. He wants to help his friends, but he doesn't realize the true cause of the suffering all around them. Hakari was kicked out of Jujutsu Society by the elders, just for having a slightly different and more modern jujutsu technique. Maki's sister is literally dead, and she's become a mass murderer in self defense. Yaga was executed unfairly to become a political scapegoat. Panda's father is dead. This is the system that Yuji wants to become a cog for, to die to maintain.
This is also, Geto's failure. Geto doesn't realize the true culprit behind the deaths of so many sorcerers. THe ignorant masses do play a role by forcing a small minority of people into sacrificing their lives over and over to maintain peace. Geto's not wrong in noticing the unfairness of that. However, Geto simply wants a scapegoat to blame. Geto wants to blame the faceless masses, Yuji wants to kill curses without thinking about it. Both of them fail to realize that there are literal architects of an abusive system in sorcerer society. There are elders who hold power, continue to abuse children, and sacrifice themselves to maintain their power.
Yuji wants to be a part of the big machine because it gives him a sense of purpose, community, and belonging, gives him friends, makes him believe that he might be serving a purpose when he's only being used. Geto is too much of a product of that system to seperate himself from it. It's simply easier to blame the ignorant masses then to confront the system as a whole, and think hm, maybe it is fucked that the elders send so many children to their deaths and easier change can come from within.
Geto and Yuji both buy the myth that if they are strong enough, than they would be able to overcome all on their own. It's a myth sold to them that values individual strength above all else, in order to keep a few people in power. However, they buy into that because they want to feel strong, they want to feel like they are in control, when they fail to save others like Riko and Junpei, they feel weak and helpless and blame themselves and rather than face it attempt to get stronger in order to escape it.
This is also why the utlimate contrast to Yuji and Geto who are both set up as deconstructions of the hero, are Megumi and Gojo respectively who are both set up as "The Chosen One."
Gojo has all the strength that Geto wants to change the world with a snap of his fingers, but he doesn't use it because he's smart enough to realize that it's more complicated than that. Megumi is basically the chosen one of this generation, he has the cursed technique that can rival Gojo's, but he's not particularly interested in becoming a sorcerer or playing the system's game, because the Zenin Clan, everyone around him has only ever wished to exploit him.
Both Gojo and Megumi have the selfishness that Geto and Yuji needed to access, in order to realize that they are people, not cogs. However, we have already seen once that even the strongest partnership can fall apart due not to lack of strength but communication issues.
Which is why it's positive development that not only did Megumi come after Yuji and try to share the blame with him for their failures in Shibuya, but also Yuji is probably going to need Megumi again to help recognize how unhealthy this way of thinking is. That he's more than just a cog to be exploited, he's a person, surrounded by friends.
