#does anyone want to... send me... something...

TY LASER LOL YAY I think they both value having someone that truly understands and appreciates their abilities.. they're both isolated from their peers for being seen as weird and different, but they both have qualities that only the other can truly appreciate.

With Miu specifically I think she struggles finding connections with humans, since she doesn't have any friends outside of kiibo and the monos if you even consider that. I think Kiibo being different is what brings them together, but what keeps her around is his observing and kind nature. He doesn't bullshit anything and is very sincere, but is also the sweetest person she's ever met by being so understanding.. they actually can appreciate her abilities fully. Most people can't tolerate her berating but it's noted she just has more care with machines, technology has never rejected her, so that's probably why she felt safer with kiibo ughh

Kiibo probably also feels very similarly as he too also favors someone who is more sincere, even if Miu is very vulgar and loud about it. Besides how her insecurities encourage her personality to be over the top in order to delude and deflect there is a very raw and sweet person underneath. I am forever haunted by how Kiibo mentions she had an innocent side to her... and their shared vulnerability in such a judgmental cruel world makes me so crazy... so insane...

They're both attracted to each other for their differences but also things only they can find connection on. It warms my gay stupid idiot heart

How shall I count the ways.

I have a lot of issues with how jjk went after Shibuya. I will say that they did a lot of things well—Megumi getting possessed by Sukuna was set up brilliantly. I’ll be lonely without you Fushiguro??? Came for my entire life. But in many respects the story fell apart after Shibuya in a way that was profoundly disappointing.

My biggest disappointment was probably the characters.

After the Shibuya arc, Gege started introducing a series of new characters that just didn’t match up to what he had before. They were pretty universally disappointing, but the female characters in particular just fucking sucked.

Nobara’s “death” actually marks the point that JJK starts going downhill for me, because it was 1) completely unnecessary 2) shelved one of the best characters in the story for almost the entire remaining storyline and 3) led to her being replaced with characters who were not nearly as complex.

Nobara’s “death” comes immediately after nanami’s death. Yuuji is chasing Mahito from the scene of his murder and their path directly intersects with Nobara. Mahito kills her within minutes of Nanami’s. One blow almost immediately follows the other.

But Nanami’s death had serious narrative utility whereas Nobara’s did not.

Killing Nanami was narratively a good move. First off, Shibuya marks a turning point in the narrative. All safety nets are cut loose. Gojo is sealed and Nanami is dead. The students have to grow and come into their own as sorcerers because they have no reliable adult protection anymore. If Nanami remains an option, then that gives the students a crutch that Shibuya was designed to rip away. They don’t have the same desperation if they have an adult to protect and guide them.

But Nanami’s death is also a good move because the older generation’s story is inherently one of tragedy.

JJK just has an absolutely fabulous sense of tragedy. Gojo is the strongest person in the world, but he still can’t save the people he loves, etc. etc. It also has a great sense of the cyclical path of fate.

It’s canon, in a way. The Six Eyes and the Star Plasma Vessel are chained by fate. Only Toji, who exists outside of fate, was able to sever that. But we also see the cycle of fate in the parallels between the characters.

Megumi and Gojo are both blessed with the most powerful techniques of their respective clans, but they can’t save who they love the most (Geto and Tsumiki, respectively). Gojo believes that you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, and Yuuji’s main struggle in saving Megumi is making him want to be saved. The younger generation’s struggle is escaping the same tragedy that the older generation succumbs to.

It results in a narrative about breaking the cycle of fate. The younger generation escapes the fate of their predecessors. Megumi lets Yuuji save him where Geto didn’t let Gojo do the same. And, in that way, Gojo achieves his dream there being a better world for the younger generation, even if he isn’t there to see it.

Nanami’s death is baked into the tragedy of the older generation. He doesn’t escape it. He is defined by his desire to survive the jujutsu world and live a peaceful life, and instead dies in battle.

His death also pushes Yuuji over the edge and brings him to the point where he chases down Mahito to kill him. That’s a huge turning point in Yuuji’s character arc. And Nanami’s death alone would have generated the mental impact on Yuuji to manage that. Nobara didn’t need to “die” too for Yuuji to be brought to that point.

Nobara’s death just doesn’t do anything. It’s not needed to push Yuuji over the edge; it doesn’t serve narrative and thematic purpose the way Nanami’s does. Mechanically speaking, my best guess is that Gege either 1) was trying to shelve Nobara’s character until the right moment or 2) thought her climactic comeback moment would be cool.

“Shelving” a character isn’t bad in itself. I talked about it in another post, but I do the same thing—sometimes you need a character to be out of the way to make the rest of the plot work and give the other characters a chance to breathe. But there are limits to how far you can go with this. Nobara’s shelved for way too long.

Nobara’s character ends up in stasis from the moment of her “death” until her return right before the end. She gets no character arc or development. She doesn’t participate in anything from Shibuya until the end of the final fight. She’s the same person she was at the end of the story as she was a hundred chapters ago because she’s just not there to have any kind of arc.

That kind of decision sacrifices one the leads of your story. It sacrifices the utility of a character you’ve spent 100+ chapters into developing already. And in JJK, the sacrifice just doesn’t pay off. Especially in light of how lackluster her narrative replacements were. To be clear—I’m not talking about actual replacements. The characters that followed her were not the new Kugisaki. I’m purely talking about it in a sense of who is getting the screen time she isn’t.

Every single female character Gege writes after Nobara’s death absolutely fucking sucks.

If I had some kind of fucking manga-specific genie wish, I would make every single mangaka ask me specifically for permission before writing 1) some variation on the words “they’re so strong, I need to catch up” 2) a character who’s entire motivation is that they’re strong and looking for a strong fight and 3) a female character who’s entire motivation is baseless obsession with a male character.

It makes characters so fucking boring.

Sure, there’s exceptions—Misa from death note, for example—but exceptions are fucking rare and 99% of narratives cannot pull the exception off. They end up with recycled tripe that poisons the fucking well of every fucking shonen anime/manga out there.

Gege really succumbs to #2 and #3 after Shibuya.

Let’s focus on #3 to start. In the first half of jujutsu kaisen, Gege’s actually pretty great at writing female characters. Nobara was a feral lunatic who got her own moments to shine in fights, who was confident and self-assured to the point of arrogance, who had a backstory grounding her approach to life to the environment she was raised in. She was such a fun character and so little of her focus and worth was centered on the men in her life. She had great relationships with men, don’t get me wrong, but her narrative significance wasn’t grounded to men.

Maki was the same way. Most of her interpersonal relationships were with her male cohorts, but she existed independently from them. Her backstory was about her abusive family. She was strong and driven and a little bit rude. She had dreams about what she wanted to be. She and Yuuta had one of my favorite buddy cops ever, but she wasn’t going through the story with her plot lines being framed around Yuuta.

It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean by this because it’s more of a totality of the circumstances test than anything. But a good example of this is Uraraka in bnha. She ends up with a crush on Izuku and initially decides to shelve it to focus on becoming a hero. And then suddenly they forget about that and a lot of her screen time is intertwined with her crush on Izuku. She’s in her last big battle with Toga and saying “and then I fell in love with Midoriya Izuku.” But Izuku wasn’t in his final battle talking about taking for Uraraka. Uraraka isn’t nearly as bad as a lot of anime women, but way too much of her narrative worth was still defined by her proximity to Izuku.

Jjk just didn’t have this problem originally. Even side characters like Mai were distinctive, well-defined, and complex independent of their relationship with men. They were fucked up and complicated and interesting to watch.

And then Gege just. Decided to shelve that in favor of the Crazed Women Motivated By Their Love Of Men And Also Maki Is Still Here Carrying This Fucking Plot On Her Back Show.

Disappointment of my fucking life, honestly. Like, what the fuck was even the point of Hana? Her entire personality is defined by her obsession with Megumi, who could not be less interested if he tried. And she was weird about it too. Shes coming out the gate with calling him her “destined one” literally the first time they speak and it does not get better from there. Girl have you ever spoken to another human being before this is not how relationships work.

It’s a waste of narrative space. Characters whose entire thing is being obsessed with another character just generally aren’t interesting. They’re one dimensional and as shallow as their interest in the crush, because usually their obsessions are superficial projections too.

Hana doesn’t know Megumi as a person. She saw him one time in childhood when he saved her from a curse. She’s never spoken to him. She doesn’t know what he’s like as a person. She doesn’t know about his interests or his values or how he takes his coffee. She’s interested in her own idea of him instead of in who he actually is. She can’t be interested in who he actually is. She’s doesn’t know shit about him.

And Megumi doesn’t know shit about her either. Why would he be interested in her? She’s a complete stranger. And her entire personality is just some extension of her obsession with him.

But JJK borderline treats this like a good thing. She wants to help people because Megumi inspired her when he saved her. She wants to become someone worthy of standing by Megumi’s side. Fucksake what are your hobbies? Do we know literally anything about you other than your obsession with Megumi? No! Shes so one dimensional and agonizingly boring that it kills me.

And then they put baby in a corner.

Okay admittedly my own conception of Tsumiki is me just trying to bang two sticks together to make fire. But I maintain that she could have been a fascinating character. And frankly? She should have been. Why the fuck would you write a character with major narrative significance with your goal being “I’m gonna write the most boring fucking person.”

Tsumiki’s relationship to Megumi is a cornerstone of his character. He picks Gojo over the Zenin because it’s better for her. One of his biggest agonies is not having a better relationship with her before her coma. She has major narrative influence yet has almost no narrative presence. Because she isn’t fucking there.

Having Tsumiki be possessed isn’t in and of itself bad. It could have been a really interesting conflict. But it’s not interesting when neither she nor the person possessing her have any kind of depth.

We ended up getting just. Absolutely nothing about Tsumiki. All we know about her is that Megumi loved her and that once she nailed him in the back of the head with a cartoon of milk. Oh, and once she jumped off a fucking bridge as a peer pressure thing.

She doesn’t exist in the first half of the narrative because she’s in a coma. Then, she herself is wholly absent from the latter half because she’s possessed the entire time. As it stands, Tsumiki just isn’t much of a character. She’s more of a fridged wife than anything else, frankly.

They could have had her possessed and still had her be a character. Show her trapped in her own body. Show her fighting for control. Have her in flashbacks. Have her do anything, but make her a character. Her loss doesn’t hit if we never had her to begin with.

And Yorozu was just. Exhausting. Another waste of narrative space. She had so many of the same problems as Hana.

She was a Sukuna obsessed freak who spent most of her scenes dissolving into shrieking about love and sukuna and how she wants to kill a village for their wedding. Sukuna, who was currently possessing the body of her vessel’s brother. Tsumiki, Megumi, I am so so sorry they made you into a weird siblings love fetish freak show you were the tragic siblings of my heart

I just can’t emphasize enough what a waste of fucking time most of the characters became. When you’re writing, you have a limited amount of narrative space. You have a limited number of characters you can showcase. So if you’ve got a character, ideally they’re doing something unique and interesting.

Yorozu was just a more violent version of Hana. She was obsessed with the man inside of Megumi’s body and fervently believed they belonged together despite having no actual basis for that. Even Sukuna was exhausted by her. Like I am so sorry Megumi you are besieged by freaks on all sides and one of them is in your sister’s body.

These tropes just make for flat, one dimensional characters that don’t do much. Their entire existence is fixating on the other character. They’ve got no real depth to them.

Gege suddenly forgetting how to write complex characters was not unique to women. So many of his new characters were profoundly fucking boring. Like ah yes here is Ryu whose entire thing is that he is Strong and Loves Strong Fights yeah that’s really breaking some ground in fuckin’ manga. That’s totally never been done five hundred thousand times before. Oh, thank god, there’s the character who walks around completely fucking naked for some reason, I was wondering where she was. So glad you killed off all those interesting characters to showcase these gems.

I’m not even saying that Gege made bad decisions in the characters he killed off. Like mechamaru? Legitimately such a cool way to do the traitor plot. A double cross gamble that just didn’t pay off. Fucking great. Mai? A phenomenal tragic siblings story line. You loved each other but not enough to save each other. Your salvations were mutually exclusive all along. Your power is mutually exclusive. Somehow the most generous thing you can do for the other is die. And what the fuck do you when you’re the one left standing?

Tear it all down.

But Gege simply did not have the characters to fill the space they left behind. His interesting characters were dead, and his new characters were bland shonen cliches. JJK was originally defined by the strength of its characters and by the end so many of them were more shallow than a parking lot puddle.

Frankly, not even the old characters were immune from this. Gojo’s fight with Sukuna turned into another endless shonen battle where the characters Marvel At How Someone Finally Matches Their Strength And Are So Thrilled And Share A Mutual Respect For One Another. Let’s just not really talk about how Sukunas in Gojo’s little boy’s body??

Because Gojo’s fine with that. Oh it’s easy to beat the shit out of Megumi since he looks so much like dear old dad. Gojo you are dear old dad you raised him

And yeah, you can say Gojo was putting on a show to hide how desperate to save Megumi he was. Fuck, I’ll say that. I’m desperate and deluded enough to read that in between the lines.

The story should have said that.

Gojo just overall makes very little internal acknowledgment of Megumi during the fight. And it doesn’t make sense within the context of his character. This is the man whose enemies banked his entire defeat on dressing up like his high school boyfriend and just saying his fucking name. And it fucking worked. And sure, he’s not going to fall for that trick twice, but he should have had an internal struggle we just didn’t see. Gojo had more of a reaction to Geto’s possession than Megumi’s. I don’t recall tsumiki’s death even blipping on his radar.

He dies without regrets, having had fun going all out in his last battle, only wishing Sukuna could have gone all out too. Like. Are you sure you had fun. Are you sure there’s no regrets. Are you forgetting maybe the boy you raised currently in hopeless agony trapped endlessly in the prison of his own body turned against him. Do you want to try regretting that.

He spent his entire storyline trying to save the next generation and then died like “WHOOOO FIGHT CLUB” like Gojo could you get a sense of fucking priorities over here your son is possessed by an old man cannibal who cannot keep his fucking shirt on and he just killed your daughter who was possessed by a violent whore. It just. It was so unfulfilling.

Even apart from the characters, the plot left so much on the table to the point where the ending felt rushed. Like, the Gojo clan? One of the three major clans of jujutsu sorcery? We shan’t see them. Any of them. They are not showing up, even when their most special boy is in a box and taking him out of the box gets you sentenced to death. Fuck, let’s get barely anything about any clan, who needs them. The Zenin? Well we almost immediately killed all of them off so who gives a fuck. Yeah megumi’s now been drop kicked into being the clan head despite spending his entire life having nothing to do with them but don’t worry that will only last for five and a half minutes and he won’t really talk to any of them in that time. This will be little to no impact on him or his life actually. Let’s not even see all the shadows. What does mourning tiger do? Fuck if we know because no one will ever see it. That part with Geto suddenly seized control of his body again to defend Gojo? A fluke and one that has no significance ever again.

Nobara’s arc was nonexistent because she was on ice after Shibuya. Megumi spent most of the last third in a puddle. Yuuji literally sat on the bench for most of the last act (though I do think his final fight with Sukuna was well executed).

So much of jjk’s writing decisions would have had more of an impact if they’d developed the world and the plot a bit more. Megumi being named the heir to the Zenin clan the second that Gojo dies and its subsequent destruction would have mattered more if we got to see literally anything about his relationship with the Zenin. Geto overtaking Kenjaku’s control would have been more significant if it hadn’t been the jujutsu sorcery equivalent of a fucking sneeze. Tsumiki’s death would have mattered more if they had given us a single reason to give a fuck about her being alive to begin with.