Choso: Human or Curse?
One more meta for chapter 208, Choso's discussionYuki in the chapter bring up a question asked to us again and again by the plot of Jujutsu Kaisen? What exactly is a curse? What is a human? If curses have human intelligence does that make them more or less human? Fascinating questions all of these but for Choso it's a question of his existence itself, him being a human curse hybrid. Let's discuss this idea of humans and curses underneath the cut.
1. An Allegory Within the Dark
If you're looking for how much of Choso is human and how much is a curse, you could go the biological route. After all, Choso's true form is an aborted fetus. He wouldn't even have a body if Mahito had not stuck him in another person's body.
Choso is paradoxically, the oldest of nine brothers but he was never truly born. He is once again an aborted fetus. Presumably, Kenjaku made him either by ripping him out of his mother's womb before he was done, or he was a miscarriage at nine months, either way everything about his birth is unnatural and wrong, he even lives with the knowledge that he was only created because his mother was violated and experimented on. You could go so far as to say that the nine brothers are sort of a manifestation of their mother's "curse" towards the man who violated her.
Choso is human in the fact that unlike other cursed spirits, Choso has a physical body, and can interact with the world around him. Mahito for instance, despite being perhaps the most humanlike curse does not have a physical body and cannot be seen by non-sorcerers, whereas Choso can manifest in a physical body (even if it's not his own body), he can be seen by people, if you cut him he will bleed.
Mahito in fact provides a contrast to Choso, they are so different they may as well be opposites, Mahito is someone who strives to be a true curse whereas for Choso it is ambiguous and unknown to himself whether he is a curse or a human. Mahito if anything shares that ambiguity between his true nature of being a curse or being a human with Choso, because Mahito was created specifically not from the fears of natural forces, but the fears human beings have of each other.
Mahito is also the curse most curious about human emotions and human life, again unlike Jogo, Hanami and Dagon who are pure natural forces, Mahito watches human movies and reads human books as shown in his short story in he light novel.
For Mahito, who analyzed human souls through books and movies, this old man’s knowledge and conversation helped in its own way. When do humans get angry? Why do they grieve? How do they trust and in what ways are they betrayed? Mahito lived with a different sense of ethics compared to humans, so there were many things he struggled to interpret.
Mahito is literally created by human emotions, but he doesn't understand them and just like Choso he is effectively an outsider looking in, an alien in a society of human beings who understands nothing about them, to the point where they may as well be speaking an incomprehensible foreign language. They both make opposite choices however, Choso imitates humans and their relationships to one another by treating him and his brothers esentially like a normal human family, whereas Mahito destroys Junpei the one human he ever got close to, and then goes even further and tries to become something entirely inhuman.
In Mahito's mind the fights between humans and curses isn't a battle between good and evil, but rather a war where two different species are essentially fighting for what side will dominate the other.
If you go by Mahito's logic not only is being a curse not human, but it's at war with being human, Mahito defines himself as being not-human but can't leave it alone at that he also has to be the antithesis of humanity by making himself the polar opposite of Yuji, someone who slaughters humans without a thought the same way Yuji saves.
Mahito is made of human emotoins yet his desire is to be "a true curse" going so far as to want to essentially purify human emotions from himself, believing the only way he can be reborn as something more like a curse is to kill Yuji first someone who reminds him so much of himself. Why does Mahito want to go so far? I think he's driven to such extremes by fear. Remember, Mahito is made up of human emotions, he's created by fear, specifically the fear humans have for each other. When he loses to Yuji, that is what he's revealed to be. Afraid. A fleeing rabbit when he thought himself a wolf.
Mahito also reacts strangely when a human he thought it was safe to be around, a blind homeless man who gave up on life and therefore, did not really express any sort of emotions or attachment to the world, started to express a single emotion near his death.
Being able to make sure of that with his own two eyes, Mahito felt considerably relieved. In the same way he would watch a flower wither and fall, he observed the old man’s death.
Nevertheless…
“Jii-san?”
He had a feeling.
It’s like seeing a plot twist you don’t want to see if you keep turning the pages of a book.
Or like knowing the contents of a present before you open it.
That kind of buzz spread through Mahito’s chest.
While he puzzled over the instinctive alarm bells screaming at him to stop watching, everything was heading toward its end.
“…I thought I would die alone.”
The old man’s soul dimly flickered.
A smile was on his swollen face.
“…To have someone… here to witness this old fool’s last moments…”
The flicker might have been insignificant, like a single drop breaking the water’s surface. Even so, for an instant near death, at the end of it all…
The old man’s soul ‘metabolized’.
“…Tha…nk… y…”
The old man died smiling.
“…”
Mahito’s eyes opened wide, and for a moment, he was frozen.
He thought the old man was different when compared to other humans. To Mahito, he seemed unfettered.
Mahito thought the unique philosophical views stemming from such an extraordinary state of mind had freed him from all the shackles of this world.
But despite all of that, the old man was still captured right in his last moments.
On the brink of death, he clung to someone else so he could avoid a lonely end.
The old man was only human.
For a human, it was likely satisfying enough. Perhaps it was even the proper way for one to die.
“…”
Mahito said nothing.
Mahito's disappointed, almost downright disturbed by the human emotion the man shows in his final moments. This makes sense in regards to the way much stronger curses like Sukuna view human emotions, Sukuna calls the desires Jogo, Hanami and Mahito had to work together as a weakness.
Ishigori later on says that true strength is overhwelming aggression that disregards all else like a calamity. Therefore Mahito's, and also Sukuna's philosophy seems to be by ridding themselves of any human emotoins, they also rid themselves of any weak points and vulnerability in order to grow stronger. Which once again we return now to Choso, who says something incredibly similiar when he gives the reason why he chose to live as a curse at first.
He was too afraid to see his two younger brothers suffer as human beings, instead of dominating and killing everything in their path like a curse would. Yet, when he met Yuji he realized that Yuji was someone who was a hybrid much like him, but could choose to suffer and keep trying to live as a human. At that point Choso makes his mistake he tried to live as Mahito did, as Sukuna did. He tried to be like a curse, a calamity, someone who hurts others without thinking in order to prove how strong they were, yet in doing so he left Yuji all alone.
The super curse brothers clearly are meant to use their abilities together as a team, Choso can draw strength from his younger brothers and imitate them, and Yuji someone who insists on fighting alone could have had all three of them fighting alone as implacable allies.
Choso is a much more sympathetic character than Mahito, and yet he made the same choices earlier on in his arc, during Shibuya he essentially slaughtered people en masse both because the world of curses that Fake-Geto promised them was a place it would be easier to live than trying to survive among human beings. Mahito is frightened of human beings and human emotions themselves, wheras Choso is frightened of their rejection.
Choso is also not the perfect big brother he strives to be, he is weak moreoften then he is strong, Yuki points out right away that if he believed living as a curse was taking the easy way out and living as a human is the right choice then by choosing to die now he's taking the easy way out once more. Once again his wish to die is away of protecting himself, number one he will no longer have to feel the crushing force of his guilt, nor the sting of being alone, number two he won't have to do the hard work of living to atone for what he has done.
In that way Yuji and Choso are truly brothers, because Choso is now reflecting Yuji's worst tendency, despite the fact Choso believes Yuji is trying to live as a human he's really not, since the start of his arc Yuji has more or less been looking for the quickest exit out of this life.
How can Choso expect Yuji to do the work of continuing to live, if he's not even willing to do that? Which is utlimately I think, the difference between living as a curse and living as a human. As I said at the beginning of this post, unlike curses that are invisible tot he human eye, Choso has a physical body, he can be seen by people, he can reach out and touch people, if you cut him he bleeds. If living and dying as a curse is taking the easy way out, then the most difficult thing of all would be for Choso to just try to live in this world. Which is ultimately what he must do, for Yuji's sake, and for his own.
