Get me some ice because I can't chill

Ok, I said last chapter that I loved seeing that Yuji has improved so much, but already categorising him as a grade 1 sorcerer still seems a bit rushed...

When I say Yuji is the only one that actively gives a damn about Gojo I mean these two moments ⬇️

Are featured in the span of just five chapters. (The other one that is showed being considerate of Satoru is Megumi, but he's way less overt than Yuji.)

Oh no. Gojo with this expression is super concerning. (I came across a post just the other day that noted that this moment was changed in the anime for the worse, because in that his expression is almost blank... 😒)

Now it's a horde of cursed people, Mahito, Jogo and Choso against Satoru. Super unfair. (Guess playing dirty it's the only way they have to win.)

Mini-analysis of the four pages thing at the end of this volume!

We got:

Two people openly saying that he saved them and others. (Yuji and Megumi)

Four people calling him an idiot and mentioning his flaws. (Maki, Panda, Toge and Nanami)

Two people that don't have much of a personal connection with him so they don't really have much to say except that... (Nobara and Todo)

Gojo Satoru is the strongest. Him featured alone, back facing the panels where the other character are and the baloon with "The Strongest" in it hurst… Damn it. 🥲

Just to make some statistics talk, out of 8 people, 25% have nothing else to mention except his status as a sorcerer, 50% mention his questionable personality focusing on the bad sides, and 25% actually shows gratitude towards him because they own him their lives.

Nobody says "he's my friend/senpai/collegue/a good guy" JC WHY IS HE ONLY RECOGNISED FOR WHAT HE DOES AND NOT AS A PERSON??????????

Footnotes:

Like teacher, like student.

I kid you not when I say I gasped out loud when I saw this panel. Such a low blow that I wasn't expecting, and it's kinda trying to make the audience believe that Suguru is talking about himself and his past experience with Satoru when we know it's not like that at all!! Also saying inferior non-sorcerers... Oh, I'm realising now that he never used the word monkey in the main story!!

I'm always trying to think what I would've thought his plan was if I didn't know he's not really Geto. His objective was so clear and pivotal to his entire characterisation that him acting in cahoots with curses, never using his own, not insulting humans left and right seems so... Weird. But I'm not sure I would've thought it's not him honestly, I probaly would've just imagined that he wanted revenge on Gojo and take him out to try to destroy the world with Sukuna and company, maybe because he finally realised he can't achieve his dream he just reasoned that he will destroy the world period...

Him calling them names before reverting to an offensive stance made me wheeze.

And ok, I said I really enjoyed grumpy Gojo during fights in vol.0? I'm getting plenty here too! 💞💞💞

I LOVE how Jogo was so cocky and then as soon as Gojo actually stepped up he was immediately brought back to reality.

"Gojo Satoru... Is there anything you don't have?"

I can think of so many things Jogo, you have no idea...

Meanwhile Choso keeps killing random people... He showed up just because he really had to and he's putting into his job the minimum effort required.

Gosh, Jogo trying to distract Satoru threathening to hurt the crowd but like in one second Hanami was pulverised. OwO

So is Hanami gone for good...? I hope so.

Kill Bill sirens moment for Yuji right at the end of the chapter. 🔔🔔🔔

In conclusion, this was me during the entire fight in chapter 85:

YEEEEEEEEEEESSSSS!! (With a killer quote too omg!!!) (Also hiiii Ino!! 😊)

...

Wait no, Nanami go home right now, you can't stay in Shibuya!!!!

*Sobs

Old man Zenin is here too??? What?

Trenchcoat guy!!! 🍭🍭🍭

All the timestamps showing the exact time are making me feel super apprehensive.

Gojo casually walking (or better, overing I guess) over people with his hands in his pockets, ffs can he make it look a bit less like this is just a walk in the park for him please??

Ui Ui!! (Wait a second, why is Mei Mei taking a kid into a potentially super dangerous fight???????) Also LOL at their interaction and at Yuji's expression 😂

Choso too right at the end!!!!!!

How many character did Gege introduced in this chapter alone?? (That I only know superficially...)

Proving to be good at reading people as displayed in these three instances:

1 - Knowing that Satoru would never risk his students safety (if he could avoid it, since he later accuses him of being mean for sending two of them to get beaten to awake Yuta's full potential, and we get told by Satoru that did it because he trusted him not to kill them);

2 - Guessing the exact words his former professor said relating to him;

3 - Anticipating that Satoru would notice immediately a lookalike thanks to his Six Eyes and acting in the next best way (by not being present there). On this note, Miguel knew about the Infinity technique and how Satoru's eyes worked, meaning he and probably all of the group members got briefed by Suguru, that had an intimate and first hand knowledge of them.

But at the same time not being good at predicting exactly how his actions might be recieved by people he doesn't know, and this, coupled with being unable to conceal his hate for monkey even when trying to manipulate a key player in his plan, didn't make him realise that such a comment would clearly and predictably be recieved negatively by almost anyone.

Then, the one where there's not actual proof but just a bunch of circumstantial evidences that can be interpreted in many ways: him being either suicidal or just understimating his opponents and/or putting too much faith in his superior abilities when deciding to put that elaborate plan we see to get Rika in motion. Personally, I think one doesn't exclude the other, meaning we have evidence that he was running on fumes and we already established his goal is ultimely unachievable (even with Rika, heck, even with Satoru's powers), so it's a given he was fighting for nothing since the start... Might as well go all out like this and try his luck, rather than keeping running in circles forever. (He was doomed no matter the outcome btw, this has to be clear and it's what makes him so compelling imo).

He is still a somewhat arrogant guy, like he was in his youth.

Him getting to the point of crying tears of joy/being deeply moved because he saw sorcerers fighting and putting their life on the line to protect a fellow student.

Him thinking that his friendship with Gojo ceased to exsist after all than happened and the time that they passed apart (I'll discuss that in a separate post, but it's still worth mentioning here). This goes alongside with his not imposing to his family his rescritive worldviews when interacting with non-sorcerers. Like he said to Shoko in 2007, he's not a baby and doesn't need everyone to agree with him to be at peace with his choices. (Your aquarius is showing so hard here babe)

Scattered final (?) thoughts:

Geto looked so much like a basic villain in 0 and then he recieved an amazing showstopping fantastic arc, endless kudos to Gege.

He didn't seem to be such a dramatic person in his youth, so the fact that he did such a teatrical announcement was really ooc to those who knew him well (namely, Satoru).

I do wonder if the actual cause of the massacre he did back in 2007 was ever found out by the school staff... I guess not, but at the same time it's so dissatisfying to imagine all of the people that knew him and trusted him not ever get at least an explanation as to why he reacted like that.

I also wonder what he thought about Satoru "No More Babysitting" Gojo becoming a teacher. I wonder if he had a snide remark or two to say about it. I wonder if he wondered what it would have been like if he hadstayed and became a teacher with him. I wonder. 😔

In the fanbook Gege stated that he went to look for curses like in an old japanese tv show, hence why I mentioned this in passing during 0: to gain really powerful curses like that special grade we see near the end of the fight with Yuta, he had to actively go look for them outside his temple, in particularly haunted places that, I guess, were already under the school radar either because of windows witnessing a curse presence or because I imagine the staff had a list of all the places that were more likely to house dangerous curses that they used to partol them regularly, like Megumi mentioned when talking about the bridge in chapter 55. All this to reiterate that it seems so unlikely to me that no one at the school knew what Geto was doing all this time. He also apparently killed people on a whim when they were no longer useful for him, but they only seem to refer to the people he killed back in 2007 and not to his new victims...

There is a HUGE disconnect between how he truly feels and the act he has going on, and I'm not talking exclusively about his monk-buddah-benefactor one, he himself confesses that he could not be truly happy, but do you think, say, Nanako and Mimiko ever imagined that that's how he truly felt? He probably kept it tucked away from everyone, like he did in 2006-2007, the idiot. He hasn't learned the lesson there. 💔💔💔

The baseline is, he cares deeply about his people: he accompanies the girls to a monkey store despite not liking the idea at all, sprays himself with antibacterial deodorant for the sake of others (even if nobody ever made a comment about "monkey-stench", I'm sure), the first thing he asks to Gojo is the status of his family, in his final moments he even makes sure to tell Satoru that despite everything that happened he didin't hate the sorcerers working at the school, he just hated non-sorcerers, who he deems the ultimate active agent of all the injustices sorcerers have to endure, and lastly, is motivation for doing what he is doing is to save and protect his people. Good intentions, bad, awful, absolutely terrible execution.

He had this clear distinction in his head of there being "The Weak" and "The Strong", and the events that transpierd in 2006 and 2007 made this already questionable compartmentalised vision of the world collapse and distort.

0!Geto is the result of being stuck in a loop like a broken record for a decade, by himself because he didn't open up in earnest with anyone, absorbing rotten curse after rotten curse chasing an impossible dream.

And to conclude this messy analysis, here:

Somebody show this ⬆️ to Sugu dear!!

⬆️ This meme that came to me in a daydream.

For Geto's POV, Gege Akutami just mentioned that when he was researching the garments for Geto he stumbled upon this particular one called "Gojo-Kesa" (or Gojo-Gesa) and thought it sounded just right, so we are left to speculate the in-story reasoning Suguru put into this: did he do it following his line of thought "If I could be you, wouldn't my impossible ideal become possible?", thus donning that as a statement of intent, wanting to get as close to Satoru's "status" of the strongest? Or he maybe did it out of sentimental value, carrying the friend, their relationships and the life he left behind with him? Maybe he thought he was not worthy of carrying anything else because he didn't deserve more after his abrupt defection.

So Satoru, even if he is still fond of Suguru, could be under the impression, given Geto's last words to him, that he lost Suguru as a friend also because he was jealous or resented his position as the strongest, so maybe he could think that him choosing to wear the Gojo-kesa is indeed a statement to him personally, a callback to his parting words to him (so, not a positive connotation).

For Gojo's POV, he could have actually started using "boku" as a way to carry a piece of his friend with him in his everyday life, in an attempt to fill the huge gap he left behind, to honour him and as an open admission that Suguru was indeed better at this sort of things than he ever was so his advice was sensible (after all, it's Gojo "social conventions mean nothing to me" Satoru we are talking about), and because it's the last thing he can do that's tied to his friend...

If Geto remembered that he suggested his friend to adopt a more formal way of talking all those years ago, there is no way he didn't notice this switch. And contrarily to his own case, it's pretty impossible to misinterpret this any other way than: Satoru took his advice to heart and actually listened to him because he valued it.