i’m so tired of the jjk fandom and its buzzwords
This will be an analysis of a post by @noname-nonartist. Unfortunately I forgot to grab the link to that particular post and I started writing this so long ago that it’d take me too long to search their blog for it now. Anyway I’m analysing most of it paragraph by paragraph so it doesn’t matter, if I find the link I’ll add it. Also i’m not trying to single them out here, even if I get annoyed at times.
I decided to do this because this post really hits a lot of the major cold takes on the subject of women and some other “problematic” things in JJK that are super popular in the tumblr JJK fandom. But at the same time it’s civil, it doesn’t assign a gender to Gege who has never officially gendered themself, it doesn’t use violent language towards Gege. With people who do those things I don’t even want to engage. But also this person is very mask off about how they managed to develop the opinions they have - they engaged with JJK for very specific reasons which led them to disregard the majority of the work. While I can’t say this is true for everyone who expresses similar or even more divorced from the text opinions, I will extend this kindness to everyone. Why do I call it kindness? Because it’s me taking the fandom in good faith. It’s me choosing to believe that they read JJK for the wrong reasons and that’s why they ignore most of the story. Otherwise I’d have to assume that they know the story well and are maliciously spinning these narratives.
This is extremely fucking long, because addressing a rapid fire of accusations takes a lot of effort but my adhd compelled me. Even when I was going through an actual mental breakdown due to my course, this post and its ilk had been at the back of my mind. I need to write it out to unclog my brain.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Spoilers, spoilers for all the manga up until the latest released chapter that is 225.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let’s start. Everything in bold italics is from the original post unless marked otherwise.
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Okay, so I already mentioned it a bit in this post, but the TLDR version is that the author does nothing with the subtext of CSA in both Mai and Ui Ui. They don’t really say much with it other than the general “oooo~ it exists and it’s bad~ oooo~”. And like, the author doesn’t even do a good job with that even. The Mei Mei being naked with Ui Ui scene is basically brushed off shortly afterwards, without anyone within the manga really acknowledging it being bad or even strange.
No one in the manga is a witness to Mei Mei doing this stuff to Ui Ui, why would anyone comment on this? The people who we see witnessing Mei Mei and Ui Ui being weird about each other are Yuuji who’s still a kid himself and he might not entirely get all the implications of that interaction and Kenjaku who wouldn’t care either way.
From the start Mei Mei is shown as amoral and indifferent to others. She’s an axe for hire and will do whatever craven shit to get paid. How she’s monetising the carnage presently happening in the manga is further proof of that.
Like it even seem like a contradiction too, since Gojo allied with Mei Mei, who is a freaking pedo, despite Gojo’s cause is for the younger generation.
Ah Gojou who cares about the younger generation but not enough to actually educate them much. Several times in the story it is directly said how irresponsible he is, how his students lack the information they need to stay safe. Gojou whose irresponsible actions can be partially blamed for the tragedies that are happening now.
Gojou who took in Megumi and Tsumiki as part of his power plays with the elders and other clans, and lied to Megumi about what happened to his father. And Megumi is “paying” for that care with his work as a sorcerer. Megumi has very valid reasons to dislike Gojou as much as he does and not want his help, it’s not just because he’s a moody teen.
And Gojou who makes a deal with Mei Mei to get her help to promote Yuuji right after she participated in an attempt on Yuuji’s life.
What would be interesting is that jujutsu society does know but doesn’t really care. But like, we don’t really get much from that. It’s just shortly mentioned and later forgotten just as quickly. We only know it’s bad because of us the readers know better.
This is the now very common expectation for stories to be didactic morality plays. Where the reader is led by their hand and told exactly what’s good and what’s bad. That’s a completely unreasonable expectation. Authors have to assume some level of comprehension on the readers’ part and their ability to draw conclusions from what the text says and how issues or events are presented and framed. And also societal norms exist and writers lean on them in their writing.
In society sexual assault and pedophilia are considered bad by default. Yes, there are people who argue for them, dismiss them and so on. There’s a real dissonance in real life between the fact that by the society wide standard sexual assault and pedophilia are considered bad and how people react to and talk about real instances of it.
But when an author includes either of those and doesn’t actively advocate for them, they expect the reader to know that this is bad based on the general consensus in real life. In Jujutsu Kaisen there are active discussions about murder because even though Yuuji has the typical societal reaction to it that it’s bad, in the jujutsu society it’s kinda normalised, of course with the in-group mentality that it’s only ok if we do it, when others do it it can be bad. So this issue is actively discussed and we, as readers, are constantly treated to Yuuji’s pov and his constant struggle to accept the fact that murder is normalised.
This is a similar problem I have with how the manga handle Mai’s subtext of being a CSA. Why mention it now? When she is dead? Yes there were subtle hints before that with the symptoms Mai has and how we were told how badly the Zenin clan treat women. But my question is. What are you trying to say with that subtext? With Mai’s story? What exactly are you trying to say with Ui UI’s story?
That it’s messed up and terrible they suffer from it? Okay? And? What else? That’s like me saying “War is bad” without really showing or explaining why it’s bad or how it even happens.
Ui Ui is being groomed and SA by her older sister. Again. What would be interesting to see is how the jujutsu society knows about this and they are actively choosing to ignore it for it benefit them since Mei Mei is such a strong Sorcerer. Since it would show how the system is willing to do immoral terrible things as long as it benefits them in the end. But like. The manga doesn’t even imply that. The author just shows it, and moves on.
It’s not “what would be interesting” but what actually is in the story. As I mentioned above the people who witness it kinda aren’t the right ones to comment on it. But while it’s not text, I wouldn’t be surprised if the adults knew what Mei Mei is up to and didn’t give a shit as long as she did her job. Sorcerers are few and far between, it’s a tight knit society that values strength and skill above all and is desperate to uphold the status quo.
So the story tells the reader exactly how such abuse happens. In real life such structures will be rife with all kinds of abuse and will tolerate and hide it (think of any such scandals among the rich and powerful, or in religious institutions). And from the start we know that the jujutsu society is rotten to its core and that it tolerates all kinds of abuse as long as it’s the powerful within it committing it. As long as the values of the in-group do not include the safety, will and dignity of its members, abuse will happen - and in the jujutsu society these matters are unimportant.
Why is Ui Ui’s situation bad? Maybe because he’s completely emotionally dependent on his sister to the point that she can ask him to die and he would. Idk about you but for me it’s pretty obvious “grooming and psychological abuse bad” messaging.
Why is what happened to Mai bad? Maybe because from quite early on we know that she’s unhappy and that she’s suffered. That the oppressive society she grew up in destroyed her mentally and then killed her.
Mai is a victim of CSA. But the manga butchered up her story so badly, that this additional subtext is just a salt in the wound. As I’ve mentioned in this post, Mai dies in the worst way possible. Mai in the text is basically blamed for the way she copes and her desire, and she then turned into a sword on top of that too. With the additional subtext that she suffers from CSA then it just look even worst. Like what exactly is the author saying at this point? That CSA victims are just doomed??? Like I know they aren’t, but like… it’s unfortunately reads that way.
Initially I couldn’t understand how you got to these conclusions honestly. Then I read the post you linked here and it clicked for me. You watched/read just looking at the Zenin twins and you missed most of the story. And concentrated only on the aspects that you didn’t like. I mean, enjoy media however you like, but maybe be more careful criticising a work when you, well, don’t really care for it enough to engage with it in its totality? You write about JJK as if Mai and Maki’s story existed in a vacuum and it wasn’t a long work with several running themes.
Mai is in no way blamed for the way she copes, though her becoming a bully is called out. As someone who was abused by a person who before I was even born suffered great abuse herself, I was extremely thankful to Gege for that last thing. Gege’s staunch and consistent stance on bullying is honestly a huge plus of their writing.
(Tangent. Even with Junpei who’s pushed by his abuse to the limits and also exploited and manipulated. Yuuji is sent his way to tell him that yes what happened to him is horrific and inexcusable but taking it out on everyone is not okay. Yuuji wins the fight with Junpei Sailor Moon style (because Yuuji truly is a shoujo manga heroine) with compassion and holding hands. That’s why it’s so devastating what happens next. )
But back to Mai. The girls from the Kyoto school love and protect her even though she bullies Miwa - though not as maliciously and viciously as when she bullies Nobara and Megumi. The boys are more ambivalent to her but in that school, unlike in Tokyo, the genders are quite rigidly separated so the guys are really ambivalent to all the girls, she’s not singled out in the least. It shows that even though Mai is coping by being a bully, there are people who understand her and embrace her, who will defend her even when she’s in the wrong. Even Nobara, who has real reason to dislike Mai and everyone from Kyoto to boot, teams up with Mai during the attack on the school. Yes, they aren’t on great terms but Nobara isn’t petty enough not to work with Mai at all.
It’s an extremely positive message that once you leave the abusive environment at least a little there will be people who will embrace you, love you and help you. Due to that I don’t see the messaging of this as Mai being doomed, or csa victims being doomed.
I won’t cite the whole other post linked above, just some bits because they are relevant.
(from the other post)
Twins’ souls are treated as one within the jjk world? That’s so stupid! One, it’s stupid because it’s encouraging the terrible twin stereotype that they are one person. Two, it’s a contradictory since Nanako and Mimiko are twins and have very different, yet strong techniques! Three, as stated before, it such a backtrack to what was set up for Mai and Maki in the beginning! Four, the explanation also make it seems like Mai’s coping was invalid and wrong! Since apparently, Mai’s dream and wants of a normal life is actively holding Maki’s goal back.
Twins are not treated as one in the JJK world but in the jujutsu world. That’s a difference. The jujutsu world is rotten through and high on the ideology of strength and power, but it’s also a small insular subsection of the greater society. Nanako and Mimiko have very different techniques but so do Mai and Maki, they literally aren’t one person and the same. Mai and Maki are completely different, their powers, their abilities, their desires, their whole personalities, that’s the whole point. That’s why they didn’t understand each other and hurt each other. Nothing, absolutely nothing in the manga says that Mai’s coping is invalid though yes, her being a vicious bully who has no problem making fun of people grieving is wrong and there’s no going around it and that is called out.
And them being so different is one of the ways Gege shows that the belief and values of the jujutsu society are horrible. That they stick to their beliefs like the one about twins, and just treat people like trash instead of thinking how to include them. And also several times in the manga things that are generally believed to be true are proven wrong. This is one of these cases.
Jujutsu society has no place for someone like Mai but they also don’t offer her a way out. No adult is concerned by Mai’s situation. Not Gakuganji, not Utahime. Certainly not Gojou because that’s how he cares for the youth. He wants child soldiers to enact the changes he sees fit. Mai is just too weak for him to give a shit.
(more from the other post)
Oh sorry, Mai. You don’t want to be a sorcerer, and just want to be a normal girl? Oh well, too bad! Because that’s a bad thing apparently! And we are going to punish you for it!
And Mai choosing to die is not a sign of “Mai walking ahead and taking action”, she is just basically committing suicide for she doesn’t see herself being better nor a bright future. It’s should be a tragic and sad thing that Mai does this. Nothing to celebrate.
Who is “we”? No one celebrates what Mai did in the text, fucking no one. Maki is devastated by it, she didn’t want Mai to do it. They finally started talking, started healing and Mai died. Maki was willing to die there with Mai just so they could be together and bond in their last minutes. Momo is devastated as well, we can assume Miwa is too. The 3 people who gave a shit about Mai are not fucking celebrating. Who are you arguing against? Some dimwits in the fandom? Maybe. But that has nothing to do with what the text says.
The “wanting to be a normal girl” I will expand on below in the section I will call “the system will fuck you over - aka one of the major JJK themes”. But I will just address one thing here. The way in which Mai wanted to be “a normal girl”. She wanted to fulfil the role of a woman that the Zenin clan offered to her, to live a miserable life at the bottom of the food chain, belittled and abused. That’s the kind of “normal” she wanted. And that’s very important as to why Maki rejected that “normalcy”.
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(more from the other post)
What make this worst is that, after the arc, I was expecting Maki turning to a dark path. Like clearly, Maki snapped just like Geto did. And like the Zenin Arc was the final nail to the coffin for Maki’s sanity, like with Geto since both just massacre a bunch of people. But the manga have yet to acknowledge the immoral actions Maki have done. And I swear to god, if I hear someone say “Oh but it’s not the sameeee, the village is innocent, the clan is evil- blah blah blah” I’ll say, what are you on about? Not everyone in the clan was responsible for the abuse Mai and Maki suffered from. And even if all the clan were one-dimensional villains, killing them all just continues the cycle of violence. It doesn’t make Maki “enlighten”
Your cold takes would be marginally better without strawmanning the “arguments” you’re disputing - it is kinda tedious, ngl. This paragraph is the definite proof that one can’t really form an opinion about the work if one reads it just for one character and ignores most of the text.
As I said before, it’s no accident that we’re introduced to the jujutsu world through Yuuji. Yuuji’s character is all about compassion and sympathy. He’s an orphan and had to fend for himself for quite a while when his grandfather was dying from a terminal disease. He barely had time to make friends, and these relationships aren\t deep. And his grandfather wasn’t what you’d call emotionally available. Thus Yuuji desperately craves connection with others and will go out of his way to please. He’s extremely observant of others too, as his choice of who’d he want to be his girlfriend shows. He values human life really highly. No one in the jujutsu society shares his views, few even respect it.
It’s a running theme in the manga where his views are challenged, where he is forced to compromise his values and is trying to reconcile them. The growing guilt he feels for his own choices as well for things out of his control. That’s why it was so extremely shocking what happened not so long ago in the manga between him and Angel. I was showing how he might be finally losing it. (this warrants an essay of its own because Yuuji is so fascinating and well written but not today)
Yuuji is the protagonist and a point of view character and his constant recoiling from murder is a very important marker to use to analyse everything else in the manga.
In the jujutsu society there’s “okay murder” committed by the in-group and “bad murder” that is not sanctioned by the in-group. That’s the morality of the jujutsu world. I’m not talking about the philosophical concept of morality and all the discussions of it in ethics and so on. I’m talking about morality as in the set of rules following which make someone a good person that are enforced by society on individuals. In the jujutsu world the act of murder in itself isn’t immoral per se. It can become immoral if the wrong people commit it. The biggest sins in the jujutsu society are disrupting the status quo and weakness.
Yuuta and Yuuji were supposed to be murdered from the start, Gojou prevents that in both cases. Yuuji gets murdered anyway. Megumi and Nobara were seen as acceptable collateral. Then Gakuganji sanctions another attempt on Yuuji’s life. Everyone, apart from Miwa, is okay with it.
For someone who read the manga for Mai it’s shocking you missed this bit. Mai is okay with murdering Yuuji. She is extremely ingrained into the mentality of the jujutsu world. So is everyone else in that room apart from Miwa.
Getou’s murder spree was not sanctioned by the elders, he disrupted the status quo. And at that point in time what the elders said was enforced in the jujutsu world. Gojou killing Getou, though, was sanctioned and was okay. Touji killing Riko was not okay because it wasn’t sanctioned. Again Gojou killing Touji was perfectly fine. Killing Yaga was fine. Sending Yuuta to kill Yuuji was fine. Do you think anyone would’ve batted an eye if Naoya managed to kill Megumi after Shibuya? I don’t, since Megumi’s life had already been marked as expandable early on in the manga.
Did Maki snap like Getou? Not exactly. Getou and Gojou both had serious superiority complexes as teens. They were barely civil enough not to think murdering regular people for fun is perfectly okay. They were both like these teens who flirt with the edgy far right. Getou crossed that line. He became a full blown fascist and his violence was as emotionally motivated as it was ideologically motivated. That’s why he went down a dark path. Because once he murdered the village and his own parents he decided that there were more people to murder. That’s also why Maki didn’t go dark. She snaps for emotional and survival reasons. Also her goal was to take over the Zenin clan, and in a way she does accomplish that.
We never learn what the elders think of her murdering the Zenin. I suspect they aren’t cool with that. But they aren’t in power anymore, not really. The Zenin are gone. The Kamo are taken over by Kenjaku who doesn’t give two shits about what Maki did. The Gojou are leaderless and probably pariahs with how Gojou Satoru was declared a criminal at that point. There was no one to call Maki’s actions out. No one among the people who like her who’d have a problem with it because of how normalised murder is in the jujutsu world. Maybe Yuuji would but we never see them have time to talk about it.
(edit. The wonderful @cursedvibes corrected me on this. From his comment in the notes:
“Just wanted to add, the Gojo aren’t pariah during Satoru’s absence. They, together with the Kamo, pushed for the Zenin’s loss of status after the massacre, which also shows that the higher-ups never cared about the Zenin as such, just about their power. If they lose it, they’re worthless.“
I completely forgot about this, thank you!)
There was no one “innocent” in the Zenin clan but that’s not why murder is bad and why what Maki did isn’t really okay. “Innocence” is a very subjective concept and I’m not going to go into it. But I will go into the:
“Not everyone in the clan was responsible for the abuse Mai and Maki suffered from.”
Because you’re completely wrong. One of the themes in JJK are oppressive systems based on tradition, patriarchy and the primitive idea of strength. These systems can exist because people uphold them. Everyone who stayed in the Zenin clan or joined it willingly worked to uphold that system and the abuse that this system perpetuated on its members. It’s like a cult. Of course there’s the aspect of coercion and manipulation, people can be victims and perpetrators at the same time. It’s of course very hard for an individual to dismantle a system like that, it’s hard even for a group. Or even a super strong individual like Gojou. Especially because he doesn’t murder the elders because he doesn’t want to completely dismantle the system. He thinks he can fix it. He’s the worthlessness of incrementalism incarnated.
It’s hard to leave it too, especially if the values of the system are ingrained into the person and also they don’t know enough of the outside world to seek help.
JJK is written for the Japanese audience, regardless of how popular it is worldwide. Traditional Japanese families, especially the middle and upper class ones, ran on oppressive Confucianism mixed with other not great stuff. They were often rife with abuse. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was even a type of fiction that told the stories of culturally approved hazing that the mother of the oldest son performed on his wife. The wife, a person from the outside, was mentally and physically tortured by the mother and she had to take it because of the morality at the time. Then she repeated that cycle of violence.
For a system like this to exist everyone had to participate in it. That’s also why in JJK we see women upholding the misogyny in the Kamo clan. That’s why Mai and Maki’s mother kills Naoya and apologises. She was indifferent to the suffering of her children. She bought into the rules of the Zenin clan and upheld them.
Also Japanese aristocracy, what the Three Clans seem to be tied to, was rife with incest. Like aristocracy was in many places worldwide. A reader who has this cultural context knows perfectly well how this system came about. The manga (or any other text) doesn’t need to explain everything, it can lean on the general knowledge of its readers.
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(back to the og post)
Okay. Now this will probably where some fans will roost me alive.
In the beginning, the manga did a great job on mentioning it, with the Momo vs Nobara fight. And we do see it within the Zenin Clan. However, that’s basically it. Sure the Zenin clan is part of the Big Three, but most depictions of misogyny was from the clan, and barely anything outside of it within the jujutsu society. Doesn’t really goes into it that much depth, or show other ways misogyny appears within the society. We can speculate and assume, like how we can assume there’s only two women who are grade one and above due to general misogyny that result in those women are becoming predatorial just to be on top. But the manga never mentions it nor even hints it. We just have to assume that via headcannon.
Lol, you really did overlook most of the story. Like Kenjaku, Uro, Yorozu or the whole Kamo clan… the manga repeatedly showcases the misogyny of the jujutsu world, it’s not subtext, it’s not subtle.
Yuki is predatory now? How? Ngl, I’m not even going to try with this one because it seems like such a reach in bad faith.
I’m not going to spend too much time on Uro or Yorozu because women in the Heian times is a topic many people wrote dissertations about. But like both their stories showcase a snapshot of how shitty it was for women back then, even for women that close to the circles of power. Anyway that’s some of the very clear hints the manga gives you, so clear actually that it’s almost rude to call them hints.
Kenjaku, my beloved villain. Kenny themself has a very strange relationship to womanhood. The fact that they gave birth is interesting. Their domain expansion hints at some obsession with reproductive capabilities and is heavily tied to female bodies in its imagery. But also the headless aspect of the bodies feeds a bit into the patriarchal view of women as incubators. I say women because patriarchy has no place for trans people. And while I think of Kenjaku as trans it doesn’t mean they are free of all these patriarchal views that were dominant in society for centuries.
Then there’s Kenny as Meiji Noritoshi Kamo. We don’t know if the og Kamo started the experiments that led to the Death Painting Wombs. Definitely Kenjaku finished them. But that just feeds into their pregnancy and reproduction interests.
The more interesting aspect for the discussion of misogyny in the jujutsu world is what we know of how the jujutsu society remembers this situation. They collected what Kenjaku created, the Death Paintings, but no one knows what happened to the mother. Why? Because to the jujutsu society she was irrelevant. Her abuse, her suffering, even her name was irrelevant. Noritoshi Kamo, someone perceived as a man, went down in history for his crimes. His victim, a woman, was completely forgotten.
Also a small side note for Tengen. Tengen now is a woman because it seems that women were sacrificed to uphold her humanity. I speak more on Tengen in my bodily autonomy in JJK post. But here I will just note that it’s interesting that the Star Plasma Vessels are female. Is it a uniquely female quality to be able to become such a vessel? Is it coincidence? Or are female lives just seen as less valuable? This isn’t a strong argument, it’s purely speculation and just food for thought.
(edit. Another correction by @cursedvibes, I should’ve consulted you in the first place. From his comment in the notes:
“Other thing is, I wouldn’t say Tengen is a woman because the SPVs are women. First of all, the vessels are based on her genetics not the other way around. Also, the first vessel was a man. While I personally hc him as a trans man due to point 1 (and cishets don’t exist in jjk Heian), he wears masculine clothing and has facial hair, which makes it likely he was read as male by people. Same as Tengen. Even Yuki picked her for a man, but Tengen rejects that. Her masculine appearance (besides her skills) is also I think, why she managed to accumulate power in such a patriarchal system. Quite similar to Kenjaku.
Again, thank you. I like your hc about the first vessel. Also a nice bit from Gege, that looks shouldn’t determin femininity - I forgot about this one too.)
We finally got to the section: the system will fuck you over - aka one of the major JJK themes
Respectability politics
Let’s start with Noritoshi the teen. His backstory is about how his clan and by implication all the 3 clans live outside the regular societal rules, and they function kinda as if they lived several hundred years in the past. The Zenin clan, as discussed above, works in a very similar way. Back to the Kamos. Women in the clan are either conservative older women who haze the younger or wives of different status or concubines! Noritoshi is a son of a concubine so he’s less than even though he has the hereditary technique. His mother was practically a thing to his clan, an incubator. And she was discarded like a piece of trash.
He wants to take over and change the system of his clan so he can get his mother back. But no matter how well he tries to live up to the expectations, it’s not enough. It doesn’t matter in the end. He’s lucky that Kenjaku doesn’t give a shit about him because the clan would’ve killed him very fast otherwise.
Playing respectability politics won’t guarantee the person their safety or the ability to protect their loved ones. It may give them the illusion of safety but it won’t grant them the loyalty of the system. The system only cares about upholding itself. So that safety is extremely fragile and can be taken away at any moment.
Pick-mes
Remi is a typical pick-me. She’s trying to play the patriarchal game and win. She tries to embody all the stereotypes the patriarchal system pushes her into as a woman and thus guarantee safety for herself. But the system isn’t built to protect her, even if patriarchy declares that if women subjugate themselves they will be protected. In the culling game it’s everyone for themself. Men will lead her on and exploit her but no one will protect her. Patriarchy and its ideals are a lie.
Abuse victims
Mai is extremely abused by the system (jujutsu society at large and her clan in particular) but she’s incapable of shedding its values. I don’t blame her for it but it is a fact. She finds solace in the abusive “normalcy”, she’s used to it and even when she’s let outside to the Kyoto school, she can’t shake it. Because it’s not easy to shake on one’s own after years of programming. It’s even probably reinforced by the Kyoto school which is far more conservative than the Tokyo one. I don’t find Gojou to be some beacon of progressivism but his fuck authority attitude is really good for the kids in Tokyo.
Without help and people who could show her another path, Mai is trapped. She feels abandoned by Maki. Miwa and Momo are part of the jujutsu society and they try to play by its rules even if they don’t like them. What Mai needed was someone to encourage her to leave the jujutsu society altogether, like Nanami and Touji did. But of course she was a child so that route was not available to her without outside help. Also without someone who’d help deprogram her.
The message with Mai isn’t that there isn’t a hope for csa victims. The message is that if the system is working against you, it’s very hard to overcome it, even if you have people who care for you. As long as you don’t have power on your own and everyone around you bought into the system, you’re trapped. Systems like these kill people like Mai every month or week even worldwide. This isn’t assigning blame to the individual, it’s an indictment of such systems and the fact that they are allowed to exist.
Look who managed to get out. Touji, a man feared by the system. They didn’t stop him and mostly left him be until he fucked with them. Nanami who was an adult and also a powerful sorcerer. Megumi wasn’t in the system in the beginning but he was forced back into the jujutsu society but because of how it happened he never fully bought into it. Especially not into the Three Clans shit. Though he did get indoctrinated into the strength bullshit. And the law and justice aspect of the jujutsu society. An ideology which later Gege dismantles in the Yuuji/Higuruma encounter.
“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”
Maki’s murder spree is extremely cathartic for the reader but visibly hollow for her. She lost everything because she too bought into the values of the system. She bought into the strength ideology. That if she’s strong enough she can destroy the system. But the strength ideology wasn’t there to allow the super strong individuals to call the shots. It was there to create this kind of barely attainable ideal, jujutsu idols that others would be distracted by and would strive to be like. We see it in how people talk about Gojou, how Ino fanboys over Nanami. This way the weak don’t question the system that much. Thus they also don’t question the power of the elders. Gakuganji says it: the 1st grades are and should be in power. Who are the first grades? Some of the strongest sorcerers in Japan. Who decided that? The system created and supervised by other 1st grades. The special grades, even though they are the strongest, aren’t in power. They are anomalies. Glitches in the system that the system assimilates and tames. And if they can’t be assimilated, like Getou, it kills them.
Maki thought that if she became the strongest Zenin she would become the leader automatically. But that’s not how the system works. The Zenin didn’t even accept Megumi taking over, his strength be damned, because he wasn’t part of the system. He wasn’t really in the in-group. The rules of the system were a lie. They were there to regulate the weak but when the wrong people tried to use them to gain power it turned out that the rules are void.
Maki and Mai realise this too late. The system will always be against them no matter how they try to navigate it. Whether they will try to hide within it and accept its normalcy or they will try to win playing by its fake rules to get to the top. As long as the system exists neither of them can be safe. Their father almost kills them both and leaves them to die because they embarrassed him in the eyes of the system, they weakened his position.
Maki is ready to die together, defeated by the system. Mai is also ready to die but she is ready to die alone. In this last moment she realises that the system needs to be destroyed and that maybe Maki can do it. Mai is too tired for that herself and she was never a fighter. So she commits suicide because the system crushed her in the end. But commands Maki to destroy everything.
Maki does so practically on autopilot. She doesn’t care for her mother’s apology. That apology is too little too late. The victory gives her no joy, it’s extremely painful and grim.
The theme and the message is that an oppressive system can’t be gamed, can’t be appeased, can’t be changed from within because it doesn’t respect its own rules. It needs to be dismantled but that process is horrific and some will not make it through no fault of their own.
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However, all of that can be forgiven but here’s the thing. Jjk is pretty hypocritical. Jjk is pretty misogynistic itself. Now, I’ll give it credit. It’s doesn’t have any prevy character, nor does it super sexualized the female cast in comparison to most Shonen. But like… come on. That is not a high bar to pass. The manga is still misogynistic.
I mean think about it. Most of the female cast dies too early, or their bodies are brutalizing in an exploitative way. Look at Nanako, Mimiko, Yuki, and etc.
I even double checked how Nanako, Mimiko and Yuki were killed to try to understand the unique exploitativeness of how their bodies were brutalised. Did you read the goddamn manga at all?! There’s nothing special in the depiction of their deaths. Some examples of deaths of men for comparison:
Gojou - the way Touji almost kills him is very brutal.
Touji - part of his body was ripped off.
People hanged by Mimiko - shown up close.
Getou - part of his body gets ripped off, now his body is worn as a skin suit by the villain. (Kenny I’m sorry for this, I love you, you know that. You’re the best villain of the manga, you live rent free in my brain. You’re wearing it far better than that dumb supremacist ever did.)
The three bodies in the juvenile detention centre.
Junpei - his body was turned into a grotesque monster and he died from the shock of it.
Coat Rack Man - didn’t die but was extremely brutalised.
Rando man - gets fed Kechizu and dies gruesomely.
Kechizu - gets exploded.
Eso - gets partially exploded then punched through the chest.
Hand Sword Perv - gets sliced like ham by Sukuna, he is lying there in the background in slices for several panels.
Nanami - burned to the point of losing a part of his body and having an empty eye socket and exposed bone, then exploded.
Jinichi Zenin - Maki carries around his severed head. (This one is a bit of a staple, Gojou also carries around the severed heads of his victims.)
Some Guy in the Sendai colony that Yuuta didn’t manage to save - eaten alive by roaches over the course of several panels.
Ishigori - sliced like ham by Sukuna.
I think these are the most graphic and gratuitous ones, at least I could remember these off the top of my head. Women die in as gruesome ways as men. Yay, a win for equality?!?!
Even the female characters themselves, expect for Maki, barely have an impact in the narrative compared to the male cast. Like the characters themselves are interesting, but they barely have actual arcs nor much do much in the narrative. The only female character with an actual proper arc is Kasumi Miwa.
It’s like if a horror movie was praised for such a good representation of mental illness, but the “representation” is that the illness is villainize and orchestrated. But oh wait! It gets brownie points because it’s not as bad as other representations! Bad rep is still bad rep!
Is anyone is praising freaking Disney for freaking adding a gay couple in the background for like a couple seconds? No! Everyone always hate that crap!
This is the only criticism that kinda holds water. Yes, the female cast isn’t as explored as the main male cast and they have a much lesser impact on the story. It’s especially sad with NobaraIt’d be nice if they had more. But that in itself isn’t actually misogyny. That’s poor writing. Gege is indeed rushing through the story.
Having said that, outside of furthering the main storyline and the main cast, many male characters are also rushed and then they die: Junpei, Kokichi, Haibara, the two Death Paintings, Yaga, even Nanami. Riko, Mai, Yuki, Yorozu, they don’t get less consideration or developemnt than those male characters, some of them actually get more. It’s a real shame Gege is speedrunning the manga and neglecting most of the characters.
But it’s not just that the women are not sexualised. They have nice varied designs. They have distinct personalities. Not only Maki has a goal in the story, other female characters have them too and they are working towards them. They do not exist to be love interests, sisters or mothers to the male cast, they also don’t exist solely to further the plot. They have strong bonds between each other that the men are not involved in. They also have bonds with men that are not only romance based.
Gege made a solid attempt at a better female cast than most shounen authors. It’s not a fully successful attempt but calling it no better than showing a gay couple for a couple of seconds is just plainly wrong and really in bad faith. It’s a huge step in the right direction in a genre that barely made any even small ones thus far. It’s a ridiculous expectation that a genre can change overnight. That a genre that has produced work after work where women were nothing but objects will suddenly produced a fully fledged work that will satisfy mean spirited Western fans who have very low reading comprehension but love to hate read and argue in bad faith and virtue signal. (I’m still not over how this “oh so concerned about women” fandom treated Hana and Yorozu, I saw you dipshits, you and your fake feminism and progressivism, I see you all out there pretending Kirara doesn’t exist too.)
Calling it misogyny is honestly kinda gross because there’s no special hatred towards women shown by the author. Nothing about Jujutsu Kaisen screams that the mistakes in handling the female characters come from some deep seated malicious and hateful convictions. It’s just a work by an author who probably isn’t that well versed in modern feminism, especially contemporary Western feminism, who’s writing for a magazine that is really stuck in its conservative ways. JJK isn’t even remotely as feminist or lefty as I am but I respect it for the things it actually tries to do.
Especially that JJK is a really decent attempt at feeding some feminism to teen boys. I wrote a whole post on it months ago and if I wrote it today I’d write it differently so I won’t link it. But the main points of that post still stand.
1. Yuuji is written more like a female character than a male one if we take the gender stereotypes into consideration, especially those that pervade the shounen genre. He’s built around compassion, cooperation and orienting himself towards others. These are stereotypically female coded traits.
He doesn’t have a self aggrandising goal like so many shounen protagonists. His goal is intimate, it’s about his emotional needs.
(edit.
I forgot to mention that Yuuji is quite passive compared to a typical shounen protag. He rarely takes action on his own and only when the situation really forces him to do it. He’s reactive not proactive. He has this goal of eating all fingers but he waits for instructions, follows them. He doesn’t go out in the world seeking out the fingers. Same goes for his missions to kill curses.
The reality had to hurt him real bad for him to become more active and still even now he falls in line, he’s not driven in the way shounen protags usually are.
Passivity is associated with the concpet yin, which is also associated with femininity. Why do I mention this concept? Because jujutsu sorceres are kinda the successors of onmyōji, or more literally the yin-and-yang masters
)
He doesn’t have much of an ego. He knows he’s good at fighting but he’s not arrogant about it like Gojou or Sukuna are.
He’s tactile, he has an open body language.
His best friend is Nobara. The way they are close is astounding. All their idiot to idiot moments. All their physical contact. The way they complement each other while fighting. The way Nobara can just text Yuuji to come and he does. Nobara being gone really affects Yuuji deeply, to the point where he uncharacteristically lashed out at Hana. And it’s completely not sexual or romantic. Compared to that his friendship with Megumi is pretty shit and not really close.
He’s been very clearly socialised as a boy in a pretty misogynist society on shit like shounen manga. He has “a type” when it comes to girls, that he can invoke instantly because that’s how young boys are socialised, it’s expected of them. And yet that type is just an aesthetic preference. It’s not really what he’d even want from a potential girlfriend. He treats women like people. Naturally, instinctively not in the fake “nice guy” way.
He’s such a well rounded role model of young masculinity. He is that because Gege doesn’t build him on the stereotypes of what masculinity should be according to the conservative patriarchal viewpoint. Yuuji is a human who’s entitled to emotions, who’s not a total victim of his socialisation, who doesn’t strive to live up to societal expectations. No status quo, the mantra of JJK.
2. The manga explicitly invokes the “think of women as people” three times. When Toudou asks Megumi his type and Megumi’s answer gets approval from both Nobara and Mai. When Nobara asks Yuuji about Maki and she corrects him when his brain goes the way of his past socialisation. When Yuuji talks about Ozawa. It basically is taking its male readership by the hand and guiding them.
(edit.
This is also reinforced by the fact how women are designed in the first place - their looks, their personalities, their existance within a highly patriachal system but in most cases not following its rules or being shown in the context of how these rules affect them negatively. There’s an interesting fragment in the interview Gege had with Kubo, the author of Bleach. Kubo generally comes off in that whole interview as a pretty awful guy but this part is just cringe:
Q: By the way, are there any other characters amongst the Jujutsu Kaisen cast that you are interested in? For instance, female characters.
Kubo: I apologize for saying this in front of the author, but amongst the women of Jujutsu I don’t have one that catches my interest.
Kubo: Aren’t their personalities overall rather tough*?(mix of harsh/demanding)
When characters of the opposite sex are more focused on one type, the author’s preferences are often reflected - so I assumed it must be Gege-sensei’s preference.
Gege: No, it’s a topic I avoid…. I am aware that I’m not good at drawing women. I sometimes halt myself before trying to create the so-called ladylike characters.
Kubo: Even though there are many different types of male characters, only the female ones seem to be leaning into one type. Could it be that you feel the need to avoid putting out female characters that follow gender roles?
Gege: It’s not really like that….
Kubo: Huh~ And it’s not like strong women are your preferred type either?
Gege: That’s right. I don’t really have that many types that I like. If you ask me about female characters I loved in the past I would freeze in place. Also, I wonder if the readers even would like to see ladylike or sensual female characters from me.
Kubo: Indeed, I think JujutsuKaisen’s readers are perfectly crazy about/fans of the female characters of the series.
Q: What would the two of you do if you were asked about your fetish by Todou?
Gege: No comment. I would probably get beaten up.
Kubo: I would say “big boobs”. Ah, but I’m not talking about real life preferences. This is about liking big breasts on fictional characters.
(The translation is from a fan translation of the official JJK fanbook. I will not link it here if you want a link dm me.)
This exchange is interesting for several reasons:
One: Gege gets criticised for their portrayals of women from both sides to the point where here in this interview, I think around the end of Shibuya, already they are very insecure about it.
Two: Gege, who grew up on shounen and also clearly a lot of american cinema, can’t think of female characters they like. Yet they produced such a varied female cast. They think of women as people and do their best to write them like that but this also shows why they probably didn’t know what to do with them in the end. They should’ve read/watched more female centric stories. That’s why their attempt isn’t really successful.
Three: Kubo intimidates Gege here and it’s a shame. We get more of what Kubo assumes and not enough of what Gege thinks. And Kubo pushes Gege to accept his framing. I really wish Kubo let Gege say what they meant by “It’s not really like that….”
But throughout Kubo heavily implies that all Gege’s women are not feminine enough, looks and personality wise. That Gege is trying to go against some stereotypes. (Miwa’s tits not big enough for Kubo to notice her, the tragedy)
This will be my interpretation but what Gege seems to be doing with their male and female characters is to write them as people and not cling to stereotypes, instead of actively going against stereotypes. But not following stereotypes is seen as an attack by conservatives.
I got @cursedvibes to confirm the translation of this one line and he came up with something more clear: “Indeed, I get the impression that JJK’s female characters are something jjk’s readers go absolutely crazy about/are really into.”
This shows to me that Kubo is aware that societal norms are changing, that women not being meek and in the background is more normalised even among young male readership, he just can’t get with that program. And he kinda judges the JJK fandom for being into it.
Four: The last comment by Kubo, there we have it, the societal expectation for a guy to like “big tits” in women. And treat women in fiction as just eye candy.
Gege dodges the answer, which is a shame but honestly, the way this interview goes, the shit Kubo says, the way he talks over Gege… I wouldn’t touch a question like that either. Especially that Toudou asks about fetishes, and everyone is entitled to those in private.
Generally this interview showcases how writing women as people is not an expectation from a shounen author. More than that, it’s kinda judged. Edit end)
3. There’s not a single line glorifying stereotypical masculinity. No “be a man”, “act like a man”, “because you’re a man” etc. It never questions anyone’s masculinity. Even Toudou doesn’t do that, he just calls people boring and says they have bad taste. The two people closest to embodying stereotypical masculinity are Toudou and Sukuna. Toudou is a bit of a joke and he’s really disliked for being like that. Sukuna is a god awful person and a villain.
4. Toudou gets rejected by Takada in his fanfic scenario about Yuuji being his bestie. He does not lash out, he takes the no from her. He seeks out emotional support. Even Toudou who’s juxtaposed with other characters when it comes to the way he talks about women. Japan has a serious stalker problem and a feminicide problem. Compared to how in other manga guys pester women and don’t accept rejection, this is a very important moment.
(edit.
5. I forgot to talk about the conversation between Momo and Nobara but I honestly dislike that conversation, so my tired brain probably decided it’s unimportant. For the “feeding feminism to teens” it is kinda important but it’s the weakest moment of that in JJK.
First off Momo uses talking about feminism as a deflection from: we’re trying to murder you friend here. Nobara doesn’t let her do that too much and that’s nice but still. It kinda feeds into the narrative that feminism is this fake issue used to distract from real issues.
Secondly, Momo talks about institutional issues, Nobara replies with girlboss feminism and wins the fight. Le sigh. This shows that Gege read up on feminism but not enough, and is kinda confused about it. So the conversation is really quite hollow in the end.
Generally Gege does better feminism by showing and by storyline than dialogue. JJK has very clear feminist and anti-patriarchal messaging but in dialogue it sometimes stumbles.)
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But I am an awful person so I will throw a bone to you all out there desperately seeking out misogyny in JJK. You just won’t like it.
There are some characters whose misogyny is out there in the open. Junpei’s bullies come to mind, the way they think about the girl bully is really sexist. There’s the Hand Sword Perv who really has very high creeper and incel vibes - and it’s very clearly stated. Toudou I’ve mentioned before. These guys’ stance on women gets called out. The way Gege talks about Toudou in the fanbook is very telling and judgemental. Gege knew exactly what they were doing here.
The one person whose misogyny isn’t openly called out is Megumi. But his misogyny is his undoing so he gets more than thoroughly punished for it.
It took me a while to figure myself out. Understand why I never really vibed with Megumi. Yes, it’s partially his fake deepness. Yuuji calls him smart but Yuuji isn’t as well read, he doesn’t know long words that well. It’s easy to get intimidated and impressed by word vomit. Megumi isn’t very smart at all, he’s well read and he studies a lot for school. His life philosophy is absolutely dogshit. Yuuji is a much smarter person than he is.
The fact that Megumi isn’t that smart is showcased early on in how he needs Sukuna’s, of all fucking people, encouragement to start to put some effort and imagination into his CT. Then he needs more reinforcement from Gojou. Both Sukuna and Gojou point out very simple flaws in his way of thinking. If he was really smart, he wouldn’t have run himself into those intellectual corners in the first place.
The other reason finally clicked for me after the Tsumiki/Yorozu situation. People were upset that Tsumiki wasn’t fleshed out. That she was just a prop not a character. And my mind told me, yes, that’s true but also… also there’s something wrong about this interpretation.
And I finally figured out why it didn’t sit quite right with me. And that’s because it’s by design. Tsumiki is a prop because Megumi himself turned her into it. He never tried to connect with her. He was never interested in who she was as a person, what she did. He didn’t know how she spent her time, where she went with her friends. Tsumiki was an idea he conjured up in his mind. One that he could disagree with and reject as a kid. One that he recontextualised a few years later when his philosophy started to change after he met Yuuji. And it doesn’t seem like an accident that Megumi started to see value in Tsumiki’s opinions after he got exposed to similar ones from a man.
Megumi isn’t really close with Nobara, he’s not close with Maki either. Yes, he’s not close with anyone. But he tries to build some connection with Yuuji while he never tries to do that with Nobara. Nobara’s death or grave injury (Gege clear this up for fucks sake!) barely seems to affect him at all. He’s surprised and appalled by Yuuji’s outburst.
While Remi is a shitty person and she deserves some choice words for her behaviour, the way Megumi talks to her is very telling. It’s also very telling that he uses the idealised version of Tsumiki as a crutch in that situation. This is actually a writing choice of Gege’s I’m kinda split on. Yes, it’s a mask off moment for Megumi. And yes, Remi deserves to get called out on her bs. But it coming from Megumi makes it fall flat.
When Megumi tells his type it seems like he respects women. But what he really respects is his image of an intellectual. Of course he’s not into tall girls with fat asses, he’s all about those high minded ideals not the baser instincts. That’s proven further when he judges Yuuji for his posters. Posters Nobara has no problem with. She even makes fun of Megumi for that comment. Megumi projects faux respectability and vapid intellectualism in that moment. And in the same scene we learn how clearly Yuuji saw Ozawa. While Megumi, who feels superior to Yuuji in that moment, has no fucking clue who even his own sister is as a person.
And it all comes together when Yorozu wakes up in Tsumiki’s body. Because he never cared about Tsumiki as a person he doesn’t recognise that something is wrong. His lack of interest in other people and treating women as ideas and not as people comes back to bite him in the ass so fucking hard.
The thing is that it’s not said out loud. The reader doesn’t get taken by the hand and led through this one, unlike the Toudou shit. Maybe Gege shouldn’t’ve trusted their readers that much.
So here, misogyny, you’re welcome.
Also @cursedvibes mentioned in our dms that it’d’ve been better if we’d seen the real Tsumiki to contrast her with the dumb image Megumi conjured in his brain. It’s a poor writing choice by Gege, it would’ve really driven home Megumi’s complete disregard for her as a person.
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