In the past few chapters, there has been an eye motif. Chapter 159 details Higuruma's struggles to keep his eyes open, in a system that presumes most criminals are guilty and punishes them unfairly. Rather than simply going along with this system and doing what's easier, which is going along with the guilty verdict because the system is designed to put criminals in jail, with money, and people's expectations on the side of the prosecutors and not the defenders.
Higuruma doesn't blindly go along with the unfair system but rather he struggles to keep his eyes open in that same system because he finds it's wrong to simply go along with a broken system without trying to fix it from within. He struggles with it the whole chapter until he breaks at the end.
The reason we're seeing this backstory now is that we're meant to compare Higuruma's actions to the actions of Yuji, and Megumi, both characters who have resigned themselves to being cogs in the unfair system of Jujutsu Sorcerery.
This is a policy both Yuji has come to believe in, and Megumi has believed in from the very beginning, that if they work as cogs in the machine of Jujutsu Sorcery, that it's alright for them to just be a cog in the machine because they are the both of them, just one jujutsu sorcerer among many.
Neither Yuji nor Megumi are people who care about jujutsu society as a whole, they simply go along as a cog in the machine, believing they are doing the right thing. Megumi even makes a direct mention of criminals being punished under the law as another mechanism in society that is supposed to "Make society more fair." Not only that but there's a deliberate parallel between Higuruma and Megumi.
In the sixth hapter, Megumi says hewouldn't have saved a criminal in a juvenile detention center, because his crime made him unworthy of saving. He didn't know anything about the circumstances of what made him drive without a license and hit the kid, the criminal could be sorry for it, they could have even regretted it, and he didn't even consider the fact that they were also a minor, (it's a juvenile detention center), in Megumi's mind they were already written off as guilty and not worth saving because the system dubbed them as so.
In 159, it's mentioned Higuruma tried to handle a case where a nineteen year old was forced to engage in reckless driving at his workplace. Higuruma is someone who unlike Megumi tried to understand the circumstances behind someone's reckless driving and saw thta they were innocent, but still couldn't get him off.
Megumi's logic of following the system only works if the system itself is fair. Megumi himself even sometimes question his logic, for example, he wants to save someone like Yuji who the system decided to execute. For the most part though, he closes his eyes to the system around him and simply keeps his head down and does his work as a JUjutsu Sorcerer, the opposite of Higuruma's approach.
Megumi is the more thoughtful of him and Yuji, and yet he's somehow, even more, childish and black and white. He divides people into good and bad people and wants to selfishly pick and save only the good ones. Of course, Megumi should think for himself and decide for himself, that's literally what this entire post is about, but Megumi's concept of good and evil is... completely black and white, ook at the panelling. He labels people as good or bad and sees those things as absolutes without trying to understand why they are good or bad. We see the problem with this in Higuruma's chapter.
Presumed guilt gets a completely innocent man, caught up and punished for charges of a murder he didn't commit. When he loses the case, his eyes are drawn up close, this is the result, of labeling people as good or bad, without trying to understand their circumstances. This is the result of not seeing. Higuruma is so fantastically similiar to Megumi, they even have a similiar quote. They both claim they're not trying to be heroes and not trying to save people, but just do the right thing.
Whereas Megumi has come to conclude he doesn't care about what the right or wrong thing is anymore. However, Yuji and Megumi's positions don't come from malice necessarily, but from their own feelings of powerlessness. Megumi feels like he's only able to save a few people, because he was powerless to stop his sister from being cursed, because so much of his life he's been powerless and had so little control ever since both of his parents abandoned him.
They both come to the conclusion that they don't need to think about what they're doing, they just need to be Jujutsu Sorcerers as a part of the greater system, because that's all they feel like they cano do. When Nanami died right in front of Yuji, and told him that he was next, when Megumi's sister disappeared out of his life, they felt all that they could do afterwards was keep pushing forward and keep fighting, even if all they were doing was following orders and fighting as a cog. They've chosen to close their eyes to the corruption of the Jujutsu World around them and not think about the bigger picture because it's painful, and to protect themselves.
They also do this believing that they can save others this way, but once again Jujutsu Sorcerers aren't heroes. They kill curses. In the metaphor that compares Jujutsu Society to the legal system, the sorcerers wouldn't be the defense attorneys protecting the accused, they'd be the prosecutors whose job it is to punsih the guilty. This chapter finally brings up the conflict that has been biulding with Megumi and Yuji's combined blindness to the bigger picture.
How do they save others, just by following orders and killing curses?
How can they save others by being Jujutsu Sorcerers inside the system, when not only is the system working aganst them right now and trying to hunt them down, but every time Megumi has chosen to save someone, such as Yuji, he did it by going against the system, acting as a person and not a Jujutsu Sorcerer?
I hope these are the questions that the boys will grapple with and find answers for, as they face characters like Higuruma. Because not only do they need to break out of the Sorcerer System, they also deserve to see themselves as people, and more than just cogs.
All of Shibuya could've been avoided if the first years and Gojo had just gone trick or treating as Kakashi and Team 7 at Nanami's house against his will like the universe meant for them to do
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