Get me some ice because I can't chill

Let’s start with Satoru.

He thought he had everything under control (after all, he’s been treated since birth as a prodigy and already believes himself to be one of the strongest around), especially because he stretched his limit (and exhausted himself) for two days by keeping his technique active non-stop, to then get ambushed in the exact moment he finally lowered his guard. Even after this, he was still confident he could manage Toji and whatever he could throw at him.

But his opponent had read him very well, understanding precisely what his weakness was and used a super amazing and useful weapon that neutralised Infinity, allowing him to kill Satoru (almost).

Only the latter's resilience in focusing deeply on finally mastering RCT managed to pull him back from death’s door. When Suguru started to take the blame for what happened, he said “No, *I* messed up.”, taking full responsibility for the tragic outcome the mission had.

His automatic response, which was very pragmatical imo, was becoming stronger, because this way he could do it all by himself: attacking, protecting, and, most importantly, no one could ever take him again by surprise.

He got ultra defensive, with him deciding to keep Infinity on almost all the time, a thing that would be deleterious for anyone, so much so that he learned to keep his reversed cursed technique on as well, healing the damage this practice could do to his brain. A response to that event often overlooked but in my opinion very extreme.

We also know that he sleeps 3-4 hours a day presently, so here’s the thing: if he didn’t have a very good control of his cursed energy and hadn’t learned RCT he would have not been able to keep this up at all. He has been wearing himself out constantly since he was 17, patching himself up just to get consumed all over again in an endless cycle, and covering this up with his upbeat a silly attitude (which I think is not really him playing dumb, he really is like that).

Now let’s talk about Suguru.

He saw Riko, an innocent that was placed under his protection, get killed in front of him, in the exact moment she had decided that she wanted to keep living with the people she loved no less.

He couldn’t do anything to stop this from happening, then got defeated pretty easily and spared because his opponent didn’t want to take a chance with his peculiar technique that made him (maybe) a “safety hazard” (the idea that he was given a different treatment just because he’s deemed “unsafe” makes my head spin gotta be honest), and, according to Gege, he “absorbed” the notion of non-sorcerer=monkey from what Toji said after defeating him. So maybe he also linked his condition (his cursed technique) that put him in a position he doesn’t like (his main cause of stress is absorbing curses) being given to him by his parents (Toji says to him “Be sure to thank your parents [for giving you your blessings].” while having just stated that he’s too afraid of killing him because he might be dangerous… Not really what I imagine a blessing doing).

But the key thing in all of this mess is one though: the fact that he witnessed a 13-years-old getting shot in the head by a (technically) non-sorcerer, and then also seeing an entire crowd of normal people clapping and rejoicing about it…

That alone was what put him in an uncomfortable position where he constantly questioned his role as a protector of the weak, since said weak proved to be unworthy of compassion and help.

Then came Yuki, casually telling him that sorcerers don’t produce curses and instead of shutting off his suggestion to kill them all to avoid spreading more curses, she said "Yeah, that could work."

Then seeing a bright-eyed and kind kid getting killed, and ultimately witnessing another group of non-sorcerers mistreating two innocent girls finally made him take a stance. Since the twins could see curses, it made them part of the sorcerers faction in his mind, and solidified an “us and them” idea of society that consumed him 'till his last moments (and was the reason he got killed by his friend).

With him it was like a jenga tower of awful things adding on top of each other plus not having an outlet to lay his doubts out properly because he was too ashamed of his growing hatred towards non-sorcerers and possibly feeling an insuperable gap between him and Gojo. (Maybe he knew that he would not agree with him and would give him hell after he preached the whole “sorcerers are supposed to look out for the weak and stop the strong” thing to him.)

What started as a fun side post on the ways different countries adapted the titles of volumes 8 and 9 became a gargantuan research that took way more time and effort than I imagined.

I kinda wanted to get this off my chest and lay it somewhere out of my enclosure. My not-so-veiled disdain for the choice they made in the english version was already mentioned here, so now it's time to explain why I don't vibe with it.

Let's start from the original manga titles:

Volume 8 is titled 壊玉, while Volume 9 is titled 玉折.

As you may have noticed, these titles have a kanji in common, 玉 to be precise. This kanji in these two cases means jade.

✧ 懐玉 (kaigyoku) on it's own indicates a gifted individual. It most likely originates from 被褐懐玉 (hikatsu kaigyoku), a quote contained in Laozi’s Tao Te Ching. The literal translation of this expression is "Wearing Rags, Bearing/Harbouring Jades", and indicates an inconspicuous individual with a great but hidden talent or potential.

I've seen 懐玉有罪 (kaigyoku yuzai) also listed as a possible source for 懐玉. The literal translation is "Owning Jade Is A Crime/Makes You Guilty" and it’s a saying that appears in a passage contained in The Commentary of Zuo. It probably originally meant that common people could not own something as precious as a jade stone because it was implicit that the only way they could have gotten in possession of such valuable object was through thievery, thus unquestionably making them guilty of a crime. It later became a synonym for "Reaching beyond your status/limits invites misfortune". One source listed it's meaning as "Having something precious or a great talent will attract people's envy, thus getting troubles". The latter is a less "popular" interpretation than the other, but I thought it was an interesting take in this context.

(I tend to believe the former is the idiom from which the title for Vol. 8 originates.)

✧ 玉折 (gyokusetsu) comes from the yojijukugo (four-character idioms) 蘭摧玉折 (ransai gyokusetsu).

The literal translation is something akin to "Plucked Orchid, Shattered Jade", and is an idiom that indicates the premature death of a bright and promising person. It can also mean the death of someone that died without giving up their moral integrity, or just simply the death of a good person. The original quote is contained in A New Account of the Tales of the World, in which the person speaking declares: "I would prefer to be a plucked orchid or a shattered jade, that’s better than becoming a weed and flourishing like one", meaning "It's more desirable to die with dignity than living without a purpose and good qualities".

Gege only used the "jade parts" of these two (possibly three) idioms, so we have "Harbouring Jade" and "Shattered Jade", jade indicating something precious, in these two cases a the talent a person has.

Let's talk some international stuff now, shall we?

Let’s start speculating a little more wildly and let’s try to guess Toji’s date of birth.

For reference, here are the known dates of birth of the character mentioned here:

Toji: December 31 ???? Megumi: December 22 2002 Satoru: December 7 1989

I’ve seen that most people seem to think he’s in his 30’s, a few say early 40’s. He always gave me the impression of being a 30-something in HI/PD. He couldn’t imo have been younger than 20 nor older than 29 in the brief flashback featured in chapter 71 when he meets kid Gojo.

When does this meeting take place? Gojo looks older than six-years-old Megumi in chapter 78 to me, but he’s still a kid, so I’d say he’s between 7 and 10 years old. Being born in 1989, this means it’s a moment between 1996 to 1999. So, let’s take the earliest year we just obtained and pair it with the youngest Toji could have been, a.k.a. 20 years old.

1996 -> 20 years old = born in 1976

Now let’s take the second year we’ve got and let’s pair that with the youngest Toji could have been:

1999 -> 20 years old = born in 1979

Now let’s do the pairings but with the oldest he could have been, 29 years old.

1996 -> 29 years old = born in 1967

1999 -> 29 years old = born in 1970

We have a very wide but hopefully sturdy enough base to determine Toji’s age.

Going by the earliest to the latest, we have:

If he was born in 1967: 29 + 1996 (the oldest he could have possibly been according to these calculations)

He would have a 22-year age gap with Gojo (meaning he could have totally been his father😶‍🌫️), he would have been almost 35 in 2002 when his son was born and he would have been 38 going on 39 in 2006 when he died.

If he was born in 1970: 29 + 1999

He would have a 19-year age gap with Gojo, he would have been almost 32 in 2002 when his son was born and he would have been 35 going on 36 in 2006 when he died.

If he was born in 1976: 20 + 1996

He would have a 13-year age gap with Gojo (the same the latter has with Megumi!), he would have been almost 26 in 2002 when his son was born and he would have been 29 going on 30 in 2006 when he died.

If he was born in 1979: 20 + 1999 (the youngest he could have been according to these calculations)

He would have a 10-year age gap with Gojo, he would have been almost 23 in 2002 when his son was born and he would have been 26 going on 27 in 2006 when he died.

🎉🎉🎉 Let's hear it for old man Toji!!! 🎉🎉🎉

I’ll leave here my headcanon too since we’re at it:

Year M&G's ages*☆

2002 0 13 Megumi is born (December 22) 2003 1 14 2004 2 15 2005 3 16 Gojo, Geto and Shoko enroll at Jujutsu Tech (April) 2006 4 17 Beginning of SaShiSu's the second year (April), Nanami and Haibara enroll at Jujutsu Tech (April), Escort mission starts - trip to Okinawa - Toji's death (April 11-13/May 11-13/June 9-11) 2007 5 18 Beginning of SaShiSu's third year (April), Geto meets Yuki, Haibara's death, Geto's rampage (September), Geto's last meeting with Shoko and Gojo (September-October) 2008 6 19 *According to the wrong line in chapter 257, Gojo and Shoko graduate from Jujutsu High (March), Beginning of SaShi's fourth year (April) 2009 7 20 Gojo and Shoko graduate from Jujutsu Tech (March) <- According to the correction made to chapter 257 , Megumi starts elementary school (April), *According to Megumi's recollection in chapter 59, Toji marries Tsumiki's mother and they disappear shortly after, Meeting between Megumi and Gojo (May-September) 2010 8 21 *According to an old interview often quoted that I could not find, Gojo and Shoko graduate from Jujutsu Tech (March) 2011 9 22 2012 10 23 2013 11 24 2014 12 25 2015 13 26 2016 14 27 Megumi begins his second year at East Urami Junior High (April) 2017 15 28 Tsumiki gets cursed (April-July) 2018 16 29 Megumi enrolls at Jujutsu Tech (April), Beginning of the main story in June

I was absolutely convinced that Fushiguro was Megumimama's surname, but, as someone made me notice, it would make way more sense that it actually belonged to Tsumiki's mother, since in chapter 66 Shiu, who is said to have known Toji for over ten years in the fanbook,

Q: For how long has he known Toji? A: For a long time. Over 10 years?

calls him Zenin and gets corrected by his partner in crime like so:

So, the change in surname is a very recent thing, more recent than Megumi's birth, because Gege said, again in the fanbook, that Shiu knew Megumi because he had visited Toji at his place when he had to take care of his infant son. If Toji had married by then and changed his last name, I guess he would have told him so at the time.

Q: He seems to know who Megumi is, but does Megumi remember him? A: He doesn’t remember. He only met him when he was very little. It was after Megumi’s mother died, when Toji had to take care of baby Megumi and Shiu visited them.

To date this meeting, we'll use the confirmation that Megumi is attending the first year of elementary school in chapter 79,

and start from that.

Children in Japan start to attend elementary school when they are six years old. Since Megumi is born on December 22, and since school years start in April, he would have turned six in December 2008, and started first grade in April 2009 till the end of March 2010. We can narrow down the timing for this meeting quite a bit because he is wearing summer clothes, so a large estimate would be end of May 2009 and September 2009.

As we're about to see, things match pretty well (except for Gojo's glasses shape which was defenitely oval in ch. 59 and in ch. 79 it's depicted both as round and oval depending on the panel :p).

Ch. 59 ⬆️⬇️ Ch. 79

Ch. 59 ⬆️⬇️ Ch. 79

Ch. 59 ⬆️⬇️ Ch. 79

The only thing that doesn’t add up and kinda breaks everything is this panel right here from chapter 59:

when confronted with what we were shown in the prequel arc and specifically what he says in chapter 79:

As we've seen, Toji died three years before Megumi started elementary school, and also the timing in which the parents vanished gets changed a bit with the mom seemingly sticking with the kids a bit longer that Toji did.

Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College is introduced to us as a four-year school (unlike real life japanese technical colleges that usually have a five-year program) in chapter 17.

During the present timeline we are never shown the four-year students, and afaik they are also never directly mentioned.

I saw some claims online that in an old interview Gege has stated that during Gojo’s time, Jujutsu Tech actually lasted five years, and after he graduated, it was reduced to four. I have not found the source of this, not in the fanbook, nor in other interviews available online, nothing concrete.

In any case, I guess that, even if this was proven to be legit, it would add to the pile of retcons Gege did (consciously or not) because, as you are wading through the last part of the manga, you stumble upon this exchange:

And then this author comment that was featured alongside chapter 259:

This was written in response to the aforementioned exchange that happened two chapters prior (ch 257). In fact as you can see the "three" was later corrected in the japanese volume release (and other languages as well).

To try and figure out this part of the timeline I started by looking for all the instances where it was specified a year/month/day or anything related to an event that could be linked back to an exact date that were showed in the manga itself.

The school year in Japan starts the 1st of April and ends in March of the subsequent year.

Since Gojo is presented as a second-year, HI starts after the 1st of April, 2006.

It's mentioned by Geto that it's spring time, and since we already narrowed it down to the beginning of April, we rule out the end of March and extend the possible timeframe to the 21st of June, since the solstice was on that day in 2006.

Yaga says the merger will take place in two days, when there's going to be a full moon. I kinda doubt that Gege went to check the lunar phases of 2006, but I did because why not. April 2006 full moon was on the 13th, May 2006 full moon was on the 13th as well, June 2006 full moon was on the 11th. If we subtract two days, we can pinpoint three possible dates in which the prequel arc might begin: April 11, May 11 or June 9.

Given that Okinawa is located in the south, temperatures there are higher than the rest of the country, so it's not far fetched for the character to have enjoyed a nice summery trip there in spring. Possible dates for this short vacation are the 12th of April, the 12th of May or the 10th of June.

Toji's death takes place in the late afternoon/evening of one the dates of the full moons previously mentioned, so either April 13, May 13 or June 11.

This has to be taken a bit loosely, meaning it indicates it's been a year and a few months rather than an exact year. Right after that, a month is finally specified.

This comment to me means we are in the second half of August, since he's talking about it like summer is coming to an end.

We are now in September. (In the anime they showed the partially redacted report of the mission in full and out there there’s a kind soul that translated it and there are dates and even specific hours mentioned, but I’m looking only at the manga, so I’ll ignore those. But if you are curious, here’s the link to the post!)

This comment from Gege featured with chapter 78 dates the meeting between SaShiSu in 2007, and given the clothes the main and background characters are wearing, it seems to be still fall, so between September (probably the second half) and (early) October.

This started as a simple post about how timelines did not match between Megumi’s recollection of his meeting with Gojo featured in chapter 59 and the events showed in Hidden Inventory/Premature Death.

As per usual, I fell down a rabbit hole and this became… Well, something that required four sections to make sense plus an additional one just for fun (and completeness).

Since I didn’t want to make a super long entry, I decided to cut it in four separate posts and publish them in order with links to eachother, so if by chance you are interested in just one part in particular, you don’t have to get all the rest with it. I hope you find this interesting! (I’m aware there is a page on the fandom wiki with a timeline, but it didn’t satisfy me fully, because it takes in consideration both manga and anime, while I wanted to have one with only the hints that we are given in the manga.)

DISCLAIMER AS BIG AS TODO'S MUSCLES: the timeframes I give here are quite abundant on purpouse, as it is my personal preference leaving a little wiggle room instead of risking narrowing down too much (for example, I listed June as a possible month for the Star Plasma Vessel mission to take place in even though I find it odd to call mid-June "spring", but since the full moon happened before the 21st, it's still technically spring so I didn't want to rule it out completely). So yes, these are still large estimates, but within reason. By not being precise, I hope I'm being more correct. So, with this out of the way, let's start! And of course if you have some insight to share (especially the infamous interview where Gege said it was a five year system when Gojo was attending Jujutsu Tech!!) please do. 😌

TL;DR: What was claimed in chapter 59 by Megumi was retconned in Gojo's Past arc. Also it's unclear how many years Jujutsu Tech has/had because of a few oversights and discordant comments of the author.

Rock Hard Facts

The School Years Conundrum

Comparison Between Chapter 59 and 79 + The Fushiguro Surname

The Timeline in Years

We reached the end of the prequel arc and volume 9!!!

Now, a couple of things:

I have a few loose posts to finish and publish before I can move on with the story. They are already in the works so it should not take too long. 😊

But more importantly, I wanted to announce that the time has come for me to finally tackle Volume 0!!! 🎉🎉🎉 That's right baby, I'm going full Machete Order with this, so I can dive into the bloody mess that is going to be the Shibuya arc with all the past events covered! Consider this an interlude before the chaos swallows us me.

And this time I only have one question apparently, that I hope it gets answered in the future as it seems pretty important:

I wonder... How did Megumi found out about his technique that requires a specific hand sign to summon the divine dogs? Please, can I imagine him playing with Tsumiki with shadow puppets and doing the dog one and BAM! two dogs appear out of thin air! 😂 Thank God they are fluffy and cute, imagine if the starter of the 10ST was the Great Serpent or Max Elephant 😅

Parallels between this and Megumi's recollection of this meeting featured in chapter 59 post incoming btw

. . . Can we please take a moment to ponder on how 6-years-old Megumi, when faced with an important choice that would define his life, says "What will happen to Tsumiki? If we go there, will she be happy? My answer depends on that."? No because I'm...

Satoru Gojo

Suguru Geto

Toji Fushiguro