Jujutsu Kaisen – 34 – The Taste of Regret

A word from Gojou and the remnant of the real Getou’s soul still within his body starts to choke the person currently controlling the rest of his body, Fake Getou is impressed, but is able to regain control. The Prison Domain closes around Gojou and shrinks to slightly larger than a Rubik’s Cube. Unless Gojou kills himself (fat chance) the Domain is unusable as it only holds one.

One of now-dead Muta Koukichi’s “Insurance” devices drops into Yuuji’s ear and reports that the device would only be activated if Gojou is sealed. Mei Mei is initially skeptical, but Koukichi manages to convince her. She sends Yuuji out to warn the other sorcerers, holding off two high-grade cursed spirits closing on their position. Meanwhile, the three standby teams start to head into the first veil.

A pair of special grade cursed spirits roam Shibuya with the goal of killing all the assistant supervisors, i.e. suits. Yuuji emerges from the Veil, sees a horde of transfigured humans, and makes quick work of them, saving a handful of non-sorcerers.

He then climbs to one of the highest points in the district and shouts out a warning to everyone at the top of his lungs: Gojou has been sealed. As soon as Nanami hears this, he switches up the plan: he, Ino and Megumi will rendezvous with Yuuji.

As the Prison Domain processes all of the information that comprises Gojou Satoru, the cube is rendered too heavy to hold or move, making it vulnerable. Thanks to another Mechamaru device in the station, Koukichi is able to tell Yuuji that Gojou is immobile…but that likely won’t remain so for long.

Getou has to stay with the cube, so Mahito, Jougo and Choso all head out with one goal: kill Yuuji. Of the three of them, only Jougo wants to awaken Sukuna; the others just want to kill him. There’s also the matter of Mimiko and Nanako asking the Fake Getou to release his body, something he tells them he’s not going to do; he made a promise to them, not a binding pact.

Team Nanami meets up with Yuuji, and Nanami leaves Yuuji and Magumi in Ino Takuma’s care. Ino lays out the stakes: if Gojou dies, not only will the Gojou clan die with him, creating a massive political free-for-all, but the balance of power between sorcerers and curses will be upset, meaning the age of humans in Japan will be over.

One would hope Japan wouldn’t have to rely on one goddamn person to maintain its existence, but here we are. It’s up to Yuuji, Megumi, Nobara, and all the other sorcerers stationed there to rescue Gojou from the Prison Realm, or die trying.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 33 – Thirteen Orphans

Not gonna lie, while it was fun to watch Gojou have a little squash match—literally squashing Hanami into a thin paste on the wall—it was also a little unnerving.

For much of the battle, Gojou is sporting a giddy smirk usually worn by villains when they’re doing villainous shit. He’s enjoying this a little too much. And he’s also operating under the assumption that his enemies are underestimating him.

But as was mentioned last week, the reason they’re even there fighting him is because Getou is properly estimating Gojou and his power. He discusses the length of time and the amount of space within which Jougo & Co. have to keep him confined. Jougo thinks it’s crazy to think they can do that.

But Getou has this all figured out. While Hanami is lost, Jougo and Choso are able to keep their distance until a train finally arrives, from which Mahito and roughly a thousand transfigured humans alight. The crowds of people are slaughtered wholesale; those who fought to get to the front of the door first are killed first.

Mahito then destroys Hanami’s confining roots to allow another mass of people to fall to the level below, and Mahito and Choso combine abilities to tear them to shreds. There’s a method to this massacre: to further back Gojou into a corner where he can no longer logically calculate “acceptable losses”.

Once Gojou reaches that state, he unleashes his Infinite Void, instinctively only using it for two tenths of a second. For those two tenths, each and every man and woman around him will be in the hospital for two months…but they won’t die. It only takes Gojou 299 seconds to eliminate all of the roughly 1,000 transfigured humans. It’s Gojou going full Neo.

When he’s done, he’s out of breath and looking pretty haggard, and that’s when Getou gets him, revealing the proverbial “Thirteen Orphans” (his hand in the Mahjong game): the Prison Doman. The conditions are met, and Getou is in deep doo-doo. There’s just one problem: while the man before Gojou certainly looks and sounds like Getou Suguru, Gojou can tell it’s not really him.

Sure enough, “Getou” removes the crown of his head to reveal a brain with teeth; Getou’s body is only a host for that brain, and the person it belongs to. So that’s something. Even so, the brain’s owner is able to use all of Getou’s abilities, which is why he was able to checkmate Gojou here.

While still with Mei Mei and Ui Ui, Yuuji hears from a little Mechamaru earpiece that Gojou has been sealed. And since Gojou is the strongest of the sorcerers, it likely falls to Yuuji and his impressive potential to defeat the strongest alliance of enemies he’s ever faced. We’ll see if he and all the others can really make up for the loss of Gojou.