only a few weeks ago the historic Battle of Shinjuku between the two strongest came to a close and in a fashion typical of gay akutami we were given no time to mourn the death of satoru Gojo arguably the most beloved character in jsuk kaisen instead we were immediately presented with yet another battle of historic proportions in Kashima versus sukuna with this battle between two very similar yet wildly different monsters concluding with Suk and mindsets and past being further contextualized today I want to take us back a few weeks to revisit the fight between gour and sukuna this is the fight in judu suisen that ticks all the boxes for me the nature of this exchange between the strongest of old and the strongest of today the way they push and redefine the boundaries of cursed energy as not just we but the characters in the story perceive it a battle planted in the back of our minds since the very first chapters of the story a b Battle of immeasurable scale with an equally immeasurable impact on the future of jjk For Better or Worse if you have been in this fandom for any length of time since the fight began you would know just how polarizing it was Gojo versus sukuna is my favorite fight in jjk but I also understand why it wouldn't be to everybody's tastes that said I present in this video a comprehensive breakdown of the fight through a different lens not in an attempt to change people's opinions what ever they may be but to maybe widen their window into how much has really gone into the fight and what the fight achieved on a thematic level to shine some light on just how much thought went into crafting the battle only 9% of my viewers are subscribed to the channel if you do enjoy my content I'd really appreciate if you could subscribe to show your support it really helps the channel to grow and incentivizes me to make even more and even better content with that out of the way though let's dive into the Monumental battle between satle rug Gojo and ren [Music] sukuna the very first consideration we must make before diving into the nitty-gritties of the fight is just how many circumstances have had to come together how many events have had to align in a particular way just in order to facilitate this fight sua is a legend quite literally he's not an existence that's naturally supposed to be in this era it was kaku's techniques that enabled sukna soul to be divided into 20 cursed objects most of which have since been ingested By Yuji that is until sukuna forcibly freed himself from the shackles of yuji's perfect body and took over megumi to serve as his vessel suk's winning strategy in his fight with gjo hinged on megumi's 10 Shadows technique fulfilling a blood Feud He had nothing to do with by all definitions sukun is an unnatural element in the world of jjk a parasite who mandatorily requires a host to function yet the story doesn't seem to address the negative connotation that suk's very existence carries in fact it doesn't seem to acknowledge that the connotations are negative in the first place if we look back at jiujitsu kaisen and gauge it holistically there's one thing that the story seems to be building itself around and catching up to in a sense it's none other than sukuna himself the story literally starts with sukuna the protagonist of the story Yuji is the protagonist solely because of his ability to host sukuna in fact for a solid stretch of the manga the majority of yuji's characterization was centered around him being a vessel for sukuna considering some of the next examples I'm about to dive into I would go so far as to assert that the Beats of the story themselves align with suk's ideals take for instance his ideals of strength he advocates for an overwhelming sense of self self that disregards all else in a selfish pursuit of higher and higher levels of power anybody in the story who is even partially aligned with these ideals have been rewarded massively megumi who had unconsciously shut off his own potential because of the existence of his trump card the Divine General mahaga fought the special grade curse in the origin of obedience selfishly he fought worrying about the well-being of others his role as a cog in judic society and hindered his own potential for growth out of a dependency on his ultimate shikigami in worst case scenarios a slight shift in his mindset was all it took from him to achieve incredible things and even then it's only slight the one who shows us the full extent of megumi's own prized ability is sukuna himself who has shown us just what the 10 Shadows technique is capable of when handled by one with unbridled creativity and Imagination a slight shift in megumi's mindset that happened to slightly overlap with suk's ideals and he ended up achieving the little Al Pinnacle of judas's sorcery orbe it incomplete this big of a leap in one's progress as a sorcerer is actually unheard of in the series another example would be Utah oku the protagonist of volume zero a kind-hearted person who would rather avoid violence if he could yet the first time that he fights for his own pleasure we get UT's best feat in the story thus far where he wins a 3ev one against special grade opponents this is also arguably the most substantial win for the protagonists in the culling game so far to top it off suk's Declaration of his ideals of strength comes immediately after uta's Victory what's interesting about this is that UTA as a character stands in opposition to suk's ideals where Suk disregards bonds and considers them as weaknesses uta's entire motivation and source of power is through forming bonds he derives his strength from his bond with Raa through this we see a peculiar Showcase of judu suuk kaisen enforcing the idea that suk's IDE deals are correct and anything that may contradict them is false the very nature of volume zero is an interesting one it takes place a year before the beginning of the main manga and UTA literally stops being the protagonist we don't see him in the story for over3 chapters the story itself begins a new with a new protagonist who is literally and metat textually constructed to be suk's host and since its reinvention the entire story slowly breaks away from muta's morality and centers itself around suenas this idea of forming bonds and finding strength in them has been pushed to the Wayside by the very existence of rien sukuna but it's still there lingering as a quiet backdrop waiting for its time to shine by now I think it's pretty obvious that the scale of Gojo Vis suuna is vast enough to Encompass the whole story the outcome aside the very fact that sukuna status as the strongest sorcerer throughout history history was challenged indicates that the characteristic makeup of the story itself was staked in the fight because of the idea that the story shapes itself after sukuna and this is perfectly symbolized by the appearance of tenen the relic of the archaic jiujitsu order that had been upheld until the culling games taking after suken his appearance whether unconscious or otherwise it is very telling that a symbol of such importance emulates sukuna think about this two of the times that our knowledge or impression as to the limits of sorcery were expanded sukuna was there he was the first to introduce us to domain expansions and they've become a staple of high level jiujitsu battles ever since then he once again reshaped our perceptions of jiujitsu when he expanded a barrierless domain in shuuya he provided us with a frame of reference by which to judge all other domains we see in the story this function of the symbol of the Pinnacle of strength in the story tangibly affecting the way we engage with it is probably something you see in other stories as well but why I appreciate jjk so much in this regard is how it actively addresses that function to kind of blur the lines between the readers and the characters jju suuk kaisen has a postmodernist metafictional kind of approach in its presentation which yes I know is a mouthful and yes sounds like technical jargon but I'll come back to elaborate on this shortly the inverse of the story rewarding people who align with suk's ideals is also true Yuki in her fight against kenju relied on a strategy that involved the input of both tenen and herself not to mention Chau she didn't fight by herself in the end Yuki lost both the fight and her life and the fact that she was depending on others was crucial to her defeat tenen is another example despite her physically taking after Suk the fact that she relied on others not just in this fight but also in a more General sense with other sorcerers being her agents the system of the star plasma vessel meaning she quite literally has to rely on other people to exist places her in opposition to sukuna and she ends up becoming kaku's tool another instance is Yuji who regards himself as nothing but a cog in the system he works in conjunction with other cogs in order to make the Machinery of jiujitsu society function smoothly this is also expressed in how Yuji fights by disregarding his own sense of self and relegates himself to the position of a mere porn on the board if I were to list how many times this Series has hit him with some kind of punishment or the other this video would be a few hours longer than it is though I must mention that this particular interpretation is not absolute like every good main character like you would expect from any good story yuji's representations also have some guided ambiguity to them it is through this Cog mentality the combined efforts of both Yuji and too that he survives the night of Shibuya it's not so cut and dry but his journey has definitely been stained by pain and suffering in large part due to sukuna himself yuji's Cog mentality warrants a video of its own so we'll be moving on nanami who wanted to retire and live a peaceful life in Malaysia ended up getting entangled in his sense of Duty right until the very end when he carefully chose his last words to Yuji so they wouldn't become a curse for him he was punished even after death with these last words becoming a curse despite the clear intentionality from nanami to avoid that exact outcome an exemplary Mentor a beloved Ally but an individual who stood in contravention of suk's morality all the same contrast that with mayay what she cares for begins and ends with herself perfectly aligned with suk's methodology right down to keeping around the lacky for their usefulness May's lacky just happens to be her little brother and to drive the point home she gets rewarded for her mindset quite directly in this case because kenju the only person we see materially shape the narrative literally pays her to get out of Shibuya and where does she go straight to koala Loa in Malaysia she effortlessly stole nanami's Dream Most relevant to the subject of this video though is satoru Gojo himself Gojo is a character in jjk unlike anybody else and this statement doesn't come lightly considering everything I've said about sukuna so far gjo had everything given to him from birth to say he was born special would be an understatement his birth shifted the very balance of Society the six eyes that are inherent to him are a reference to the six Realms of samsara and its ability which is to see through all things related to Cursed energy is indicative of perceiving the inherent nature of the afores said Realms no two bearers of these six eyes can exist at the same time the user is bound to tenen the star plasma vessel and a generational conflict against kenju by Fate a Perpetual cycle of conflict which is very much in line with the concept of samsara an endless cycle of suffering as beings reincarnate between six Realms striving for freedom in Nirvana to be enlightened is to transcend the six RS of samsara which the six eyes are a clear reference of cursed energy is a force within jjk that acts as a connector between the Realms of life and death and being able to see through it being able to grasp at its core indicates Goro's Transcendence moreover his ability of manipulating space is refined to such an extent that he is capable of creating things that are considered impossible as per the rules of physics he forces the universe itself to compensate for his actions so in essence his inherent abilities allow him to forcefully do what suk's very function as a symbol is and we'll go deeper shortly Gojo's abilities aside even his name points at his status of an enlightened being satu is the base of the term sat which translates to Enlightenment in Zen Buddhism this is what I mean when I say he's handing did everything at Birth the resultant Destiny to be at the Pinnacle of society to such an extent that his position is almost akin to deification and the fact that this is something he was thrust into as a child you can't imagine what kind of Burden a young boy was forced to Bear we know very well what the higher-ups thought of Goro the strongest tool at their disposal their best asset to put on the front lines their most powerful weapon it's all about his strength and once that was gone they decided to use him as the guy a scapegoat to take all the blame the higher-ups could dish out instead of facing their own failures we know all this the only positive aspect they saw in him was his strength and they discarded of him the instant they couldn't extract value out of that strength while this is obviously important it's imperative that we acknowledge that it wasn't just the hups who were responsible for Gojo eventually coming to the conclusion that his only value comes from strength and lacking any kind of selfworth beyond that it was the reverence he was shown since he was a baby because of what his strength would become it was suguru ghetto the only person in Goro's life he could feel at he around partly because they were relatively similar in strength and he wouldn't feel out of place exactly because of that the pedestalize experienced all his life because of his abnormal strength somewhat came to a halt because of ghetto it was that same ghetto that essentially disregarded all the lived experience he'd had with goror and boiled him down to his position as the strongest is he satoru Gojo because he's the strongest or is he the strongest because he's sator Gojo what he was dismissively claiming was an impossible task for ghetto that is to make a world of only Sorcerers was definitely in the realm of possibility for the strongest Sorcerer of the current ERA it was the person who knew godo the best who was most reductive about Goro's very being it was every other member of the cost of characters in jjk I identifying Goro by his strength first and foremost the volume 10 extras address this very blatantly when asked what is goo sat to you eight different characters with significantly different outlooks arrive at the same answer needless to say anymore satoru Gojo is the strongest what's ironic is that in the same volume extras the characters also Define Gojo with qualities other than his strengths Yuji and Megami for instance Express their gratitude to him for having saved their lives however it's what godo took away that matters since that fateful day of gto's betrayal he externalized that singular aspect of him that he Associated all his worth with and he wore his strength as his identity this is simply and beautifully represented in his ability to never let anything touch him if he so wished the infinity around him was constantly active and so were the walls he'd built around himself that's why it's fitting that in the only times he experienced the loss in his life before this fight at toi's hand and when kenju sealed him in the prison realm gjo was forced to betray his external shell the external identity that always guarded his fragile Inner Essence that he felt was completely worthless toi was a subversion of everything Gojo considered strong in that stage of his life he explicitly Associated strength with curse techniques after all why shouldn't he his position as the strongest his identity came from being a limitless user with with the six eyes that's even how he's addressed by everybody other than ghetto shoko and their teacher Yaga and then Here Comes this guy who doesn't even have cursed energy much less a cursed technique who pushes Goro to his Brink relying on his cursed technique to save his life against a quote unquote monkey who can't use jiujitsu the strongest cannot be pushed to the defensive the strongest doesn't yield his ground especially when facing an opponent that fully stands against what he considers to be strength and yet for gjo that's exactly what happened the moment toi broke past his Infinity Gojo's identity fell apart to this Gojo simply responded by rebuilding it in the same fashion but much stronger much sturdier to the point that he actually became Untouchable literally and metaphorically now his shell would never be broken ever again but of course reconstructing the walls around him didn't fix his lack of selfworth internally it's akin to giving a damaged car a Fresh coat of paint without addressing the mechanical issues while it may look better on the surface the fundamental problems remain unresolved and this is precisely what kenju exploited in order to seal Gojo when faced with the void of the prison realm something that reflected the void within himself Gojo ran he yielded ground once again but not to a physically present enemy this time he ran from himself and the fact Gojo was physically transfixed seeing Kaku in getto 's body tells us all we need to know about Gojo's mental state he had not moved past his best friend's death he had not made peace with his inability at the time to save ghetto all three years of the Blue Spring of goo's life flowed into his head at that moment rooting him to the spot with his mental state in shambles even the strongest is no threat here we can see the depth of the irony in Gojo's construction gjo describes the effect of the Pinnacle of his first technique his domain unlimited void as an ironic thing given everything but being unable to do anything but doesn't that sound exactly like the situation gjo has been entrapped in for all his life he was given everything at Birth everything from his name to his abilities indicates his Enlightenment but in reality his internal State couldn't be further from being enlightened instead it's a dark unlimited void he was unable to do anything he couldn't save ghetto he was unable to process the loss of ghetto in a way where he internalizes it he was unable to come to terms with his own identity Beyond his strength his whole life is a testament to how much he's lacking despite being the strongest circling back we now know just to what extent goo stood in contravention to suk's morality and resultantly he lost twice sukuna is a hedonist someone that Revels in strength when you were the strongest things like bonds and moral conventions of society become meaningless things to be severed and discarded yet Gojo assigned those things a lot of value he inherently opposed sukuna thoroughly and completely in fact through this long-winded explanation you've probably noticed just how many ways Gojo contrasts sukuna there is of course the obvious one of sukuna being a representation of traditionalism and Gojo representing modernism within the ethos of jjk it's reinforced across multiple facets of their characters with sua disregarding any social structure apart from a simple and traditional strength-based hierarchy his techniques cleave and dismantle being simple and powerful weapons qualities that are coveted by the conservatives in the judisu political scene in the present day on the other hand Goro throughout the series enforces and protects a much more complex and inclusive social structure where his strength doesn't automatically guarantee the most Authority his powers also break the molds of what the conservative faction think is design ible it's a much more complex arguably the most complex ability in the series besides that the primary difference is how the story is tailored for sukuna he gets everything naturally almost like the story itself hands them to him I've already pointed out numerous examples of how the story goes out of its way to align with Suk rewarding people that align with him and punishing those that don't on the other hand Goro despite being the emblem of strength in the modern era doesn't have any such privilege Ren sukuna is the namesake of a Shinto deity woried in certain areas of Japan although the mythology seems to give equal weight to the idea that he was a demonic existence jjk adapts both ideas in tandem giving sukuna a demonic Aura whilst deifying him and literally calling him an enlightened being the meaning is lost in the official translations but in this panel the narrator is saying ten Yu throughout Heaven and Earth he alone is the honored one it's the same line that Gojo States before delivering the finishing blow against toi a quote originally said by the Buddha himself when he achieved Enlightenment having said this we can kind of see a similarity in how Gojo and suk's names themselves carry power and a sense of divinity yet it's only one of them that the story goes out of its way to accommodate in the same vein there is another key difference between them that I will talk about shortly anyways gjo has to sort of Brute Force his way into the same position that the story naturally grants to sukuna where the story itself declares sukuna to be enlightened godo seizes Enlightenment for himself after a near-death experience he is the one to declare his own Transcendence where the Beats of the story align with sukuna godo forces the laws of physics themselves to adapt to his being when he uses blue an impossible situation like negative one apples is created forcing the laws of the universe to compensate resulting in the power of attraction everything Goro does is framed as forceful almost coercive even take a look at the page depicting Goro's birth it says he bursts onto the scene and again his forceful presence even as a child affected causality itself and goo forced the cursed spirits to grow stronger it's made more evident when ghetto states that the summer following Gojo's Enlightenment was intense and busy cursed Spirits formed like maggots strong and numerous on the other hand Suk his existence even in the form of cursed objects is enough to attract cursed spirits and strengthen them to the point that a simple cursed spirit that didn't even have enough energy to activate its technique for years was amped up to the level of a special grade curse this is a natural feature of a strong cursed object like sua's fingers however a sorcerer's birth forcing cursed spirits to grow stronger is unheard of which is what makes godo so special to top it off godo also forced the higher-ups to work around his existence from what we see in the cases of both Utah and Yuji the hups operate by a set of laws that exist independently of Goo if the hups had their way both Utah and Yuji would have been executed before they ever set foot into jiujitsu High School goo's forcefulness well in this case it's quite clearly coercion thank God for that is what allowed UT and Yuji to survive and become Sorcerers the hups would rather be the ones in control they would rather have goror be the deur emblem of the modern jiujitsu order whilst being the de facto Authority themselves but goo pretty much forces his way into a position of authority anyway his strength in the fear AT commands is great enough that he can simply bulldo past any objections to his methods think about this he has a central position of authority despite the higher-ups disliking everything about him from the complexity of his techniques to his methods of teaching he had them shook in fact from the lens of authority a key contrast between gjo and sukuna that's also informed by everything I've said so far can be explored in the haon era sukuna used to be invited to harvest festivals offered fresh crops and other sacrifices pray to Simply to appease him and show that the people bore him no ill will of course all this was done because of fear the strongest Warriors of the fujiwara suwara and the ab clans were wiped out by sukuna how could farmers and other regular Villages stand a chance you also see something similar when sua temporarily took control of yuji's body in Shibuya the volcanic cured Spirit Joo had offered him 12 fingers and sukuna decided to hear his request on the other hand gto's young allies nanako and mimiko offered him one finger and requested him to kill Kaku displeased with the meager author sukuna ended up killing them instead the funny thing is he probably would have refused anyway because of his binding vow with kenju but the reason he takes offense is because they dar ask him to do something for a mere one finger these characters are essentially trial in what value they can offer sukuna on the other hand Gojo was branded a terrorist the instant he was sealed and his strength offered no value anymore it's the complete opposite of how sukuna is treated and it's quite interesting because whether by brute force or naturally obtaining it Gojo and sukuna occupy similar positions within the story this manifests in the fight in a very interesting manner similar to sukuna acting as a bar for Judit sorcery and giving us a frame of reference by which to judge other sorcerers godo constantly reshapes the bounds of what is possible with his jiujitsu in the fight how can he use reverse curse technique and control regular cursed energy to maintain a simple domain simultaneously how can he heal a burnt out curse technique with reverse curse technique how can he change the conditions of his domain's barrier on the fly like that how can he compress the domain to the size of a basketball and still maintain the shapes of things within the domain how can he adlib a hollow purple like there's so many more examples of this in fact you could even say the 0.2 second domain in shuya is another example of this Gojo just like sukuna reshapes our perceptions regarding the limitations of jiujitsu the way everything in the story contains clues that were sprinkled in seemingly an anticipation of being realized in this one fight where the whole plot comes to a head is some incredibly impressive long-term writing take for instance the very simple representation of sukuna naturally obtaining everything within the story versus Gojo having to force it the irony is that sukuna is the unnatural presence in the world of jjk whereas Gojo is a very naturally existing force to be contended with and this irony goes much deeper too remember what I said about sua as an emblem of JJ K's thematic framework tangibly shaping the way readers engage with said framework the way the line between fiction and reality is blurred this kind of writing is quintessentially post-modernist as I earlier mentioned let's explore this concept to understand postmodernism which is a cultural shift that happened in response to the pre-existent movement of modernism we of course have to first explore the key factors of modernism that in turn gave birth to this shift modernism emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it is a radical AR artistic and intellectual movement that transformed the way artists writers and thinkers in general approached creativity and expression modernists sought to break free from the constraints of traditional norms and embrace the spirit of innovation and progress at the core of modernism lays the idea that the world had to be fundamentally rethought the Carnage of the first world war and the Russian Revolution led to widespread utopian desire the belief that the Human Condition could be healed by new approaches to the Arts quiet immediately we can make the connection to Goro whose very goal was to bring about progress in the jitu society by rewriting the society he thought was broken due to traditional norms and unreasonable ceilings and constraints and he planned to do so by fostering strong and intelligent allies on the other hand postmodernism was a playful and self-reflective artistic movement that emerged in the latter half of the 20th Century as a response to the perceived limitations and grander narratives of modernism postmodernists were eager to question the notion of absolute truth and the idea of any singular universal meaning as a philosophy postmodernism rejects concepts of rationality objectivity and universal truth instead it emphasizes the diversity of human experience and multiplicity of perspectives sukina embodies this in a very interesting sense the reinvention of Judi UK kaisen as a story came after volume zero had already established a certain brand of morality however the reinvented story didn't follow that same established brand of morality instead a new brand was introduced something that challenged the previously established brand in a foundational sense and sukuna is the emblem of this new brand of morality sua's construction has postmodernist tendencies in another very interesting way so far the way I've addressed the idea of the story handing sukka everything has been very broad let's assess the idea with a more detail oriented approach every time we got some Suk characterization it was through the lens of some other character and I mean characterization very broadly almost everything we know about him and things related to him comes from other people the earliest instance is Goro saying that vessels with the phenomenal ability to control sua appear only once every thousand years or so with recent context where megumi is revealed to have the ability to host sukuna as well and sukut seriously entertains the possibility of megumi being able to control him like Yuji can we know that's a very exaggerated statement at best and outright false at worst the very existence of the bath a ritual to toughen up a vessel's body and sink the soul of the vessel into Despair and the fact that or is Tak technique is an integral aspect of preparing the bath both indicate that sukuna has been switching between vessels for a long time now sukuna was also waiting for the right moment to switch bodies further substantiating my point that Goro's idea about hosts for sukuna and how frequently they are born is questionable at best and downright false at worst the most on the- nose instance of a character's perception of sukuna vastly differing from what sukuna actually is is joro after his fight with sukuna he gets told to stand proud he gets acknowledged by sukuna for being strong the bitter thing is it's very unlikely that this scene Is Real at all joro was a character committed to the cause of bringing about a world of cursed Spirits only he considered his kind to be the real humans and as he said and been told by his allies the goal is intrinsically self-destructive they will not be the ones to Laugh In the End they're just the hard harbingers of change as much as joro tried to make peace with that he still desired affirmation of his own self despite his commitment to a cause that doesn't forgive individualism he still craved acknowledgement it's only fitting that he imagines getting it in his death there are two reasons I'm convinced that it's not a real scene one the difference in suk's Expressions where we objectively know he's looking at joo's Burning corpse versus the other where Suk is talking to Joo in some kind of Vision Two sukuna would never say something like to reach Goro's Heights he would never use somebody other than himself as a metric of comparison in terms of strength this is why I think it was joro's brain showing him what he wanted to see before his death Joo had actually experienced Gojo's strength firsthand he Associated Gojo with the raw idea of strength much like everybody else this is likely to be what prompted Goro's name to be dropped despite having FS and been killed by the king of curses himself joo's Brain still Associated sator rug Gojo with strength this scene isn't so much about a false perception of sukuna that we later see disproved as it is a proof of concept the most basic example of what I'm getting at but it goes deeper when sukuna almost cut mahito in half for touching his soul twice the tenjo T line was dropped indicating his Enlightenment but notably it was dropped by the narrator when Yuji was revealed to be not affected by ketu's Poison the reason we were given was that it was because of sukuna being known as the king of poisons and Yuji isn't affected by them by extension again this information was divulged by the narrator normally the narrator is a kind of omniscient presence within the story that provides information at various intervals that deepens our understanding of the story the narrator having such a function even treated as the author's Voice Within in the story because of it can never be wrong that is typically the case in conventional storytelling however for jjk there are instances that pointedly try to say that this is not the case one of the most explicit examples is when the narrator calls Yuji the man chosen by the black Sparks in origin of obedience with regard to his inhuman ability to perform a black flesh almost on command but then later goes on to assert in Shibuya that the black Sparks do not choose who to bless two contradictory statements simply in the fact that the first one seems to assign a degree of agency to the black Sparks in choosing who to bless this actually ties into the idea that cursed energy is almost an autonomous entity in jiujitsu kaisen and I'll make a video about that one soon but the contradiction that the second statement introduces by implying that black Sparks have no agency in choosing who to bless is all you need to know for this video secondly how do we really know it was sukuna that that gave Yuji his poison immunity and not whatever Kaku did to make yuji's body special after all Gojo said it would take some time for cleave and dismantle to be engraved in yuji's body considering that his six eyes is capable of seeing through curse techniques themselves his words hold weight why was the poison immunity given near instantaneously then it doesn't make sense unless the narrator is not omniscient I think that the narrator could even be biased in a sense to support this claim we need not look past gagay the author of jitu kaisen himself ordering the anime staff to not have a narrator for the anime all instances of narration in season 1 of jjk was voiced by characters existing in the story it was nanami who called sukuna enlightened in the anime and it was noara who gave us the tidbit of Yuji being immune to poison and that pain isn't enough to stop him in his tracks in a sense the narrator had been treated as just another character's voice as per Gay's own orders this essentially tells us to take what the narrator says with a grain of salt I am aware there is now a narrator for Shibuya but that doesn't disprove any of my prior claims especially since the sheer number of narration in Shibuya would make it n impossible to hand off to just another character without feeling very unnatural the assertion to derive from whatever I've said so far is that sukuna as a character adapted to whatever perception any character had of him at that point because he literally could not provide us any characterization on his own since he was trapped in yuji's body this assertion that he adapts to the perceptions of those viewing him is supported by his very characteristic Matrix one of his main abilities cleave literally adapts to his opponents moreover when he temporarily got control of yuji's body the primary threat was the Divine General mahaga who he has since obtained for himself after making megumi his vessel maha's special ability is to adapt to every and all phenomena at the risk of getting lost in a tangent this sequence where sua fights joogo and then mahaga back to back also concretely foreshadows his connection to angels in Christian belief the cherubim are called the many eyed and are depicted in Flames this is because of their close proximity to God his radiant fire is reflected in the depictions of the cherubim one of suk's most striking features are his multiple eyes and he also wields Flames much to joo's surprise in fact sukuna even reasons that a cursed Spirits wouldn't know about this implying that humans who are privy to Christian law would be able to make the connection furthermore in said law Angels appear to humans as and how it's necessary they can change their forms to adapt to whatever the need of the moment may be since they are ethereal beings sounds like there's a solid connection here all the more strengthened by maharaja's face literally just being two angelic wings not to mention the volume editions depicting angel or Hannah's Jacob's Ladder as summoning dozens of cherubs to attack sukuna the landscape shifts when Suk leaves the body of Yuji who is specifically constructed to house him and takes over megumi instead sukuna finally has complete agency he doesn't need to let the story speak for him anymore although my framing of that very function has been largely positive why would sukuna the embodiment of Hedonism and freedom be satisfied with letting the story speak for him even if the story actually pedestalize him in fact in multiple instances across the story Suk actually addresses us the readers to hint at this very fact take for instance when he told mahito to know his place fool the word he used for fool directly translates to one who does not know anything mahito is described to be the mirror of humanity the presentation of this scene in the manga makes it so that sukuna is staring straight at us as he says that line sukuna is basically telling us that we don't know anything couple that with his little eye staring at the reader once again after he takes over Megami again addressing Humanity as a whole in some form since he's talking about Humanity's weakness and how they should live with their heads down trying to stifle their misery this coming immediately after he is free of Yugi's body is quiet telling Suk is now essentially free of being defined by the perceptions of readers which are founded in the opinions and rumors shared between the characters his existence is independent of any flawed interpretation of how he's represented by somebody or something other than himself to stress on this point he makes sure to actively disprove almost every major Theory we have had about him so far we thought megumi would summon for him his original forearmed body he took over megami's body instead and then briefly there was a theory that he would somehow shift to his old body after we learned that Kaku had it mummified instead he ate it then there's the fact that sukuna explicitly States he's not going to change back to his forearmed form after taking over megumi's body which is also right after we learn he could always switch bodies because his current form is more suited to fight Sorcerers the way he actually transformed into his hyan era form in chapter 2 37 was also out of the bounds of our imagination couple this with the fact that he has largely used maharaja's wheel to either have his own body or megumi Soul adapt to the attacks of his opponents in the two fights he's been in since he obtained mahaga he's making it evidence that adapting or not is his privilege he decides when to adapt and when not to in a similar yet different sense Gojo has always been a presence beyond the direct influence of the one that shapes The Narrative for Kaku to seal gjo he had to rely on Gojo's own shortcomings and take a massive gamble that everything would go as he forsaw in the case of Kaku directly controlling gjo though he instantly gets embarrassed this whole fight begins with gjo getting unsealed and him casually shrugging off kaku's trap that was meant to instantly kill him in fact I believe this very fight is the backup plan that kenju was talking about when he said sukun is the contingency if the prison realm doesn't work out and anybody else and there is no chance that the backup plan would be forced to be activated even after plan a worked out that's the kind of guy Gojo is after all he's the strongest circling back postmodernist literature often plays with the boundaries of reality and fiction challenging traditional narrative structures and blurring the lines between the author the characters and the readers in this case Suk kuna's character being shaped by the reader's perceptions represents a self- referen and metafictional elements common in postmodernism Additionally the developments that end up with Suk in a state where his personality becomes immune to the reader's flawed perception implies a self-awareness and an acknowledgment of the artificiality of literary constructs post-modernist literature frequently explores the relationship between reality and representation questioning the idea of a singular objective Truth by positioning the character in a realm where their personal ity remains unaffected by readers interpretations The Narrative Embraces the postmodernist theme of Multiplicity acknowledging that characters can exist independently of readers projections and interpretations now here comes the irony when assessing their domains which in a sense are the most intimate expression of their s we arrive at a completely opposite answer suu's domain is quite literally described to be like a Divine technique of Art like painting a picture in the air without a canvas something that is thought to be as impossible as trying to hold and carry water without a vessel certainly as far as artistic technique goes suk's domain is revolutionary moreover it also aligns with the inherent limitations that postmodernists perceive in modernism despite the Innovative and revolutionary technique the domain still contains the shrine notably as merely a symbol to double as that of the establishment the ability of malevolent Shrine is to cut down anyone and anything in its radius which coupled with the fact that there is a built-in Escape Route integrated into the domain by way of a lack of a barrier as well as the symbolic Shrine is exemplary of how resisting The Establishment disqualifies you in its eyes you either adhere to the determined path or you die the conflict between modernists and establishmentarianism that characterized the movement as a whole is fully embodied by malevolent Shrine so along with the modernist inclinations of sukuna domain the perceived intrinsic limitations in the modernist movement are also represented in how despite the Transcendence of the medium of art the scope of the challenge it poses to traditional Norms is quite limited this is also supported by the fact that suk's curse techniques align with what the conservatives hold to be a desirable technique simple power ful and steeped in Tradition not to mention sukuna is referred to as the Fallen or the disgraced one whichever translation you want to adhere to this is pretty evidently with regard to some Christian institution considering the opposite end is represented by someone called Angel The Challenge posed by modernism to the Roman Catholic Church is one of the best examples of the impact of the movement so it makes sense that the embodiment of modernism would be referred to as the Fallen by the establishments upon being challenged and considering suk's influence even in the haon era I'd say his challenge succeeded on the other hand Goro's domain infinitely forces on the victim's brain all his knowledge choices and memories it's literally just Impressions a retroactive viewing of everything that happened in the past and that is happening in the present multiplicity in perspective this quiet literally directly defines postmodernism moreover the fact that that unlimited void is basically predicated on your own knowledge choices Etc and that it's all forced on you enough to overload you parallels the postmodernist approach to art and literature the movement is essentially a response to every movement that came prior to it a breakdown of them in a sense within the confines of unlimited voids barrier which is oxymoronic in and of itself and whose nature contributes to the postmodernist reading of Goro's character you cannot avert to your eyes you are forced to observe and to attempt to understand being made an observer of your subjective experiences also encapsulates the postmodernist theme of dissecting the idea of the objective truth gjo a six eyes user is born as the result of a fate to foil kaku's plans kenju being the instrument of the Resurgence of the ancient hyan era and being the sole reason suket even exists in the modern era Gojo being born as a kind of response to kenju completes the pattern of postmodernism as a movement being born as a response to pre-existing movements the point of this dualism in Gojo and suk's representations is to highlight the irony of sukuna a parasitic presence getting handed everything by the story to the point that the story itself seems tailored for him whereas Goro who is present in this era organically has to Brute Force his way into the same position in a broader sense the story itself seems off as if someone is behind the scenes driving it in a wholly unnatural Direction this isn't the way the world of jjk is supposed to be as for who is actually capable of shaping The Narrative and steering it in an unnatural Direction it can only be Kaku in fact he is said to be behind the assassination of the star plasma vessel Rico carried out by toi which is an event that the upper echelon of the Jew Society unanimously considers the event that started to quote unquote warp everything this is where it started to go wrong and incidentally it's the event that sets off kaku's plot it is too Eerie to be coincidental I don't want to spend too much time speaking about exactly how kaku's control over the narrative manifests and what it means for jjk because like this fight it's something that spans across the whole story and it is more than worthy of its own video The key thing thing to note for the subject of this particular video is how kaku's narrative control essentially guarantees that this fight between Gojo and sukuna is a manifestation of the theme of cality in jjk on various fronts It Is by kaku's hands that the hon era is making a comeback in a figurative sense in order to further his goals Kaku is trying to revive the Golden Age of curses which was characterized by a strength-based hierarchal society with sukuna at the top to firmly reestablish the era the desired outcome for the antagonists is suk's Victory wherein Gojo is essentially deposed as the Pinnacle of the ERA this is by far the most onth the- knows instance of jjk being cyclical in nature there are other perhaps more overlooked instances of History being repeated through this very fight for instance the Fuji Clan dominated the politics of feudal Japan in the hon era the resurrection of the hon era brings the fujiwara Clan back to prominence and we can see it in various ways throughout the story actually you can see it in the beginning of the story itself JJ K's main manga starts in Sendai the capital city of the Miyagi prefecture where Yuji lives interestingly Sendai was founded by dat masamune whose Clan descended from the fujiwara bloodline the instant that the story reinvents itself the fujiwara Clan's prominence is highlighted later in the culling games within the Sendai colony where Utah fight F the three special grades we see an interesting scene once again uro who used to be an assassin in the employee of the fujiwara clan fights UTA who is the descendant of the sugara clan for context the sugara were replaced by the fujiwara in the political scene in the fudal era Utah criticizes ur's selfish way of life to put it simply but circles around to disregarding the reason for his fighting in the same stretch of chapters and fights Ryu selfishly in other words UTA a descendant of the fuj Fuji's predecessors in a fight against a former employee of fujiwara that happens in a City established by the fujiwara adher to the ideology that characterized the era in which the fujiwara constituted the majority of the ruling class on a micro scale it's a repeat of history and speaks to the symbolic dominance of the fujiwara clan symbolic or deura authority is much like what they had in the haon era as well since the story presents Suk to be at the Pinnacle of that ERA this also perfectly aligns with why the story reinvents itself and the Thematic framework of volume zero is contradicted in the main series it takes UTA who is aawara out of the focus and substitutes him with Yuji who starts the story off in Sendai there's also something to be said about both the turning points of the story The Shibuya incident and goo versus Suk starting off in the vicinity of the Magi jingu a shrine dedicated to the deified spirit of empress Shen a descendant of the fujiwara clan who was born in kioto a City previously known as hean with goo Vis sukuna the battle for dominance between the two parties and their representations which I have outlined is more active goo aawara is the Pinnacle of this era and With suk's Victory the cycle of history is complete the Golden Age of jiujitsu with Suk at the top and the fujiwara having symbolic significance has been revived the prominence of the fujiwara is highlighted in a few other interesting ways onod or sorcery was at its peak in the hyan era Ashia dman one of the most prominent Sorcerers in the history of Japan was an employee of the fujiwara clan this specific fact is referenced in the form of new Shadow style simple domain which is an anti-d domain expansion defense developed by Ashia saduna simple domain and its variants are something that have been widely used in the series despite the propagation of the technique to people outside the Ashia family being strictly prohibited this fight is also characterized by another cyclical element namely the conflict between the Goro and the zanin and this is multi-layered firstly the ancestors of sator rug Gojo and megumi fushiguro both wielding the same abilities as these two do fault each other to a stal mate that fight is recreated in a sense albeit in a much larger scale and this time it was fought to completion secondly Gojo versus toi is also a Gojo Clan versus zening Clan conflict that this battle calls back to there's the obvious tie with Gojo's outfit resembling Tois but extends further to the way both fights are structured gjo and toi are supposed to be underdogs by all means but they appear to dominate at first in fact they do dominate for a while until the opponent simply transcends the bounds of their own jiujitsu and wins the fight there is also something noteworthy about gjo versus toy being Gay's retelling of the conflict between The Monkey King and the Buddha in the Epic tale of Journey to the West with Gojo and toi the connections are simple enough toi calls himself a monkey and Gojo literally quotes the Buddha with Gojo V sua the representations gets a little more complex but the basic idea is that in this page where Suk calls goo mediocre the Kani also translates to unenlightened he is directly putting Goro in the same position as The Monkey King moreover when you make the connection that the Buddha quote was dropped by the narrator for sukuna and the Buddha himself is a standard that sukuna himself never bothered to live up to it becomes even clearer gjo voluntarily compared himself to someone else even if that someone is the Pinnacle of spiritual enlightenment he is not his own metric whereas sukin his Transcendence is self-informed he doesn't make the Buddha comparison himself nor does he even care about it this tiny detail perfectly illustrates gjo and suk's respective approaches to being the Pinnacle of strength besides the connection to mythology there's also the fact that Gojo is fighting toi's Soul Bond right now the themes of jjk being as they are until the status quo changes potentially with Gojo's Victory it seems as though the cycle is bound to be completed toi beefs the only bond in his life that he eventually comes to view fondly to goo who decides to to protect that Bond a descendant of the suwara representing an idealistic stance only to later contradict that in the same fight sounds pretty familiar thirdly in a recent chapter sukeno was confirmed to have defeated the forces of the sugara clan considering the obsessive reiteration of cality godo being defeated in the modern era only makes perfect sense with this I think I have given you a very substantive framework through which to assess the fight and that that is perhaps the biggest goal of this video Gojo and sukina are both incredibly important characters to The Narrative of jjk it's no surprise that they both go into it representing many things with respect to the narrative and to me it's perfectly evident that the conclusion of the fight plays on all of what I've said gjo explicitly says that deep down he thought of himself as being in a separate plane of existence his effort spent towards raising a generation of strong students was an honest bid to never have them suffer like he suffered from being alone at the top but also a desperate attempt to not be alone himself however it wasn't until his death that he actually verbalized the fact that he would have never actually succeeded a flower may be raised and admired but to ask the flower to stand on an equal footing with you and understand you is a wasteful Endeavor this line exposes how Goro really viewed others relative to himself beautiful but fleeting existences admirable but fragile lives the space between goo and others that Gojo himself brought forth into reality thanks to his Limitless isolated him more than we could ever imagine the fact that gjo was locked in the prison realm where he was alone with nothing but his own thoughts for an immeasurable amount of time stuck in limbo and came out exactly the same as he was before speaks to this there is no kind of solitude that could be forced upon him that he didn't already feel this is why it's significant that sukuna didn't just breach the infinity he cut the SpaceTime goo occupied along with the infinity sukuna doesn't just challenge Gojo's position as the strongest like TGI did with the inverted Spear of heaven or Miguel with the black rope or even the simplest representation of this idea Joo and Hanami using domain amplification to nullify the infinity to which Gojo simply responded by strengthening the infinity to the point that they couldn't nullify it after all in all of these cases their target was just the infinity at the end of the day the curse technique that defined Goro's strength their challenge was to goo's invulnerability something that is inherent to his position as the strongest all their challenge did was reaffirm that very position sukuna was different with his Target being the SpaceTime that gjo occupied along with his infinity and cutting everything that existed in that SpaceTime sukuna essentially equates the plane of existence goo resides in with the world around him he shatters the walls Goro builds around himself almost as if they were illusory and brings Goro back into the folds of the world that everybody else resides in for a person that has forever felt burdened by the strength that separated him from the people around him to the extent that he felt like he wasn't even living in the same world as them this cannot be anything but liberating no wonder he died with no regrets as fitting as this conclusion is for Goro it does just as much for Suk too the final chapters of the fights and the subsequent chapters going into his fight with Kashima substantiate all the characterization I have laid out prior to this segment as I said before suket is a being that used to be entirely defined by the perceptions and preconceptions of those that view him now in a vessel of his own choosing while he is still subject to other people's vastly subjective perceptions he exists independently of them those flawed perceptions no longer Define him the primary example of this is yosu who presumed to teach sukuna of love because she thought he was lonely being the strongest this is by no means an illogical conclusion to draw after all what she assumed was suk's plight was definitely the plight of both Gojo and Kashima however sukuna exists Beyond these trains of thought he cannot be measured by these standards of logic that are applicable to regular people simply speaking Suk is beyond people's ability to comprehend and I'm painting in very broad Strokes when I say people not Goo not the audience not even the NY omniscient narrator could understand him goo naturally is the character that came the closest to understanding him but even goo could not fully comprehend what makes Suk a tick this is reflected in a mechanical sense with Goro's six eyes not being able to assess the threat posed by suk's final attack the slash that can cleave the world in the same vein we the audience who have never actually seen the form of a cleave or dismantle who have just been able to see the after effects of the attack we could have never comprehended the attack either to not comprehend something is the same as not seeing it but we can analyze the effects of that frightening attack The Meta function of this attack that Cleaves through space and time is reflected in the fact that the attack happened in between the serialization of two weekly Shonen Jump issues not just shown and jump issues but between two volumes they haven't been released yet but with how Giga includes nine chapters per volume volume 26 will end with chapter 235 and volume 27 will begin with chapter 236 literally cleaving through time as absurd as it sounds gig is just the type of mangaka to draw a connection between where a volume ends SL begins and suken is World cleaving attack that slashes through time and space after all the commentary doesn't end here the narrator who is all knowing to the degree that she is capable of narrating the internal thoughts and feelings of characters does not understand sukuna beyond what is immediately obvious upon looking at his face like sukuna being nervous for the first time in a millennium this is illustrated by this one page where Gojo is questioning why sukuna is not using 10 Shadows early on in the fight and there is a very intentionally placed narration box that coincides with Goro's own thought thoughts the narrator asks why meaning even she isn't privy to suk's internal thoughts this is why Suk himself explains his strategy motives and the move he made in taking over megami's body the move through which he reclaimed complete agency from the character that shapes The Narrative was beyond the understanding of the one that spells out the narrative in the same vein the final attack in his fight with Goro was explained by him too this attack is transcendent to the degree that the enlightened sattle roro couldn't comprehend it that the audience who are commonly privy to more information than the characters are because of dramatic irony couldn't comprehend it and the N omnicient narrator who has the logic defying ability to know both the past and the future simultaneously couldn't comprehend it to substantiate this the fight between Gojo and sukuna didn't feature internal monologue of sukuna regarding either of his two strategies to win the fight one being making goo burn out his domain by damaging his own brain which in keeping with the pattern sua himself explained and the other being using maharaja's manual to attain the world cleav internal monologue that acts as exposition of deeper strategies ends up having the effect of making sua more comprehensible to the audience the fact that there is minimal internal monologue adds to my point sukuna is a being quiet unlike anybody else in jjk with the real Japanese law calling him a calamitous deity it feels like gay just input sukuna as is into the story with minimal changes this is contrasted by gay directly stating that gjo was created for the specific purpose of being an Undisputed power ceiling of the series an entity that is entirely Gay's construction versus a deity that is input into the story with minimal changes to the characteristic Matrix another contrast between the two characters called the strongest furthermore a deity isn't meant to be comprehensible sukuna espoused his way of life to Kashima who obviously didn't get it no human is meant to understand the purest form of heathenism that sukina embodies we are built to find purpose in things we can never understand sukina much less live like him people's subjective perceptions shape their reality sukuna exists beyond all that the concept of objective reality is predicated on sukuna such as his Mastery over his own existence that he needs nothing but himself to validate it Suk is the Ultimate Reality only his pleasure and displeasure exist because he is the measure of morality the story conforming to what he deems right is proof of this he is so fully rooted in and consequently shapes objective reality to the point that he can expand his innate domain without a barrier and impos it on the real world painting on air so to speak gay also goes the extra mile and showcases suca slashes inside the radius of his domain acting as a Page's paneling and sound effects which is perfectly exemplary of the extent to which sukuna shapes reality this is contrasted by every other domain except Kaku that essentially needs to be contained within a barrier that separates the manifestation of the user's innate domain from The Real World and the measurements of distance and other dimensional structures within the domain are always different from how much real space the domain occupies to boost this may just feel like heavy and pointless praise so let me get to the point through the framework I have elaborated on in this video it's quite evident that the narrative aligns with sukuna in a very tongue-in cheek kind of way in how it almost seems to serve him and that this holds true even for beings like Goro the conclusion is once again exemplary of this characteristic feature of jjk but it breaks away from the common pattern in one significant regard the way Goro's conclusion is framed framed is pointedly similar to how joo's death at the hands of the same opponents is framed an attack whose power was so awesome and nature so elusive that even the audience couldn't see it followed by a vision experienced by the one who lost the fight the objectivity of which we still can't ascertain and then the aftermath in fact the cyclical elements in this fight with respect to Goro taking toi's place is completed with the fact that Goro's conclusion is almost a onetoone parallel with toi the hollow purple was by all means a transcendental attack that gjo could only pull off upon his Enlightenment it was outside the bounds of toi's knowledge and perception mirroring that we actually don't see the purple take half his torso like suk's domain it is showcased in the paneling and then we just jump into an inner monologue from toi and then the aftermath is visible to the audience the commonality between joro and toi is that they both died ordinary deaths without being capable of of reaching the heights that sukuna and Gojo occupied since they were both killed by beings far beyond their ability to reach and comprehend they are ordinary in comparison despite being monsters in their own Riot paralleling this manner of death Gojo's own death is shown to be that of an ordinary man despite goo occupying the same extraordinary position as sukuna in the narrative will be it by force the feature of the narrative aligning with Suk makes itself known again what with Suk having called godo Ordinary but the aforementioned deviation from the common pattern comes into play here because Suk himself completely deviates from what the narrative shows and waxes poetic about Gojo having cleared his Skies the narrative itself May portray Goro's death as ordinary in a bit to scorn him and pedestalize sukuna but sukuna has no reason to abide by this after all the truth is decided by the king of curses he is in independent of even the narrative that consistently serves him the fight that started off with sua calling goo a nameless fish ends with Suk saying he will remember Gojo's name for as long as he lives coupled with him integrating gjo into the folds of the world that is resided by everybody else such that at least in death he's not alone anymore Suk brings to Gojo an answer to his identity crisis sua doesn't tell Gojo he was strong it was Gojo's effort into putting his whole being into giv sukuna a stimulating fight that moved him in the first place calling him strong at this juncture would do the opposite of convey the weight of suk's appreciation of gjo it would do nothing but affirm the idea that the value sukuna derived from gjo came from solely His strength it would simply feed into the burden that Gojo has had to carry for so long a fight for sat Gojo's sake cannot end like that sukuna calling Gojo by name telling him he will be remembered forever symbolically absolves Goro of his burden through words and action Suk affirms Goro's identity Beyond his strength now you may ask was Suk actively thinking about all this or was he simply focused on improving his own jiujitsu you may even arrive at an answer that fully breaks away from what I've said perhaps sukuna does not care in the slightest for Goro's identity crisis in fact that may be closer to the truth considering that sukna still chastises Goro's been ality after their battle when fighting Kashima he thinks gor was too greedy he tried to have his cake and eat it too if you're the strongest why seek to form bonds with others to validate your own existence why are you not sufficient for yourself if you arrive at this answer that's valid I say it doesn't matter after all as per the vision gjo died Without Regrets I said this earlier in the video in a completely different context but it's what goo takes away that matters except this time what he takes away is something positive his subjective experiences shaped his reality and this reality is something that allowed him to make peace with himself the six eyes that pierce through the veil of subjectivity are forever closed and Goro dies an ordinary man with a smile on his face the purpose of this video was to deliver an all-encompassing thematic anal is of a fight I love a lot to paint the framework through which I viewed the fight and hopefully shed some light on the more subtle subtextual details that aren't in your face but definitely there if you're looking for them I hope I achiev that purpose and you enjoy this video I want to thank my good friend detective critics for his immense help in the writing of this script I've left a link to his channel in the description so please make sure to go and subscribe to him if you're interested in more content like this this was absolute hell for us to work on because of just how dense and all-encompassing the fight is so I truly hope you did enjoy the video as always thank you very much for watching