Jujutsu Kaisen: Satoru Gojo Owns The Story

Love him or hate him, you need him.

Preface! MAJOR JUJUTSU KAISEN SPOILERS AHEAD.

For the longest time, a friend of mine kept telling me that Gojo is gonna end up being the bad guy. I kept defending Gojo, but my friend insisted. Now I wonder what could happen, what could have been, how Gojo could have been used to change what has become the most trendy manga in the United States.

On a personal level, I own more Gojo-shaped plastic figures than any other character, yet if you asked me to rank my favorite characters of all time, he wouldn’t crack the top five. Maybe not even the top ten. And as far as Jujutsu Kaisen goes, I like Yuji, Nanami, Okkotsu, Panda, Mahito and probably even a few others, more than Gojo.

But… but! In terms of storytelling, no character is more important to the narrative he inhabits than Satoru Gojo.

Preface over.

Okay so, normally I pick a storytelling element and hyper fixate on that, building out sweeping explorations around them. Can I use the word sweeping? Is that pretentious? Anyway, I’m not doing that this time. Normally I would do a side character spiral, but Gojo is no side character. Gojo is, as I will expand upon, the only reason why Jujutsu Kaisen exists, even if Akutami hates him.

I can’t think of another character who has been as divisive as Satoru Gojo. And in all likelihood, that will persist long after JJK is done.

It’s easy to see why. He’s drastically overpowered. But he’s a goober. He breaks the entire story universe with his presence. But the story wouldn’t exist without him. He is morally good, with radical notions; unhinged, yet strangely grounded.

He is a living bouquet of contradictions. Yet without Gojo, JJK does not exist. I chose my words carefully there, because after he died, JJK has had trouble existing. What’s happening now, this ongoing narrative built around Sukuna’s own over-powered-ness, is exhausting and, in ways, tedious. All the surviving characters are coming and going, some dying, some tapping out for a new fighter. It’s a lot of over-explaining how they’re trying to fight Sukuna, how they’re trying to outsmart him. All because, quite simply, no one is qualified to beat Sukuna.

Yuji might have been, had he been given the time to grow—presumably under the tutelage of Gojo, but thus we have the issue: without Gojo, Jujutsu Kaisen doesn’t work. Who else can train Yuji, and is it really his story? Who’s story is this?!

Maybe that’s a narrative flaw, maybe it’s just drastically undervaluing how important Gojo is/was to the story as a whole, but he is the catalyst by which the entire narrative spirals from. Yes, it’s Yuji’s story, but he doesn’t have a story without Gojo’s involvement. Same with Yuta Okkotsu in Jujutsu Kaisen 0. No Gojo, no story.

And let’s get personal, if we zoom in on Gojo’s personal arc, it is the strongest in the series, and one of the best in manga in general. He was born overpowered, with exceptional skills to defeat pretty much anybody single-handedly. That’s a big responsibility. He grew up, that power going to his head a bit, forms a meaningful friendship with Suguru Geto, also a deeply compelling character, who eventually goes bad for following principles that, while violent and genocidal, started with good intentions. He had seen too many friends die, and wanted to do something about it.

Gojo has to choose, follow these not-altogether-wrong ideals for a better world for sorcerers, or kill his best friend and start from scratch, completely isolated. He chooses the latter, aligning himself with the “good guys,” who don’t even really like Gojo, mind you, and thus begins the internal grappling he must be doing with himself at all times, trying, somehow, someway, to keep the world at peace while also dealing with his own internal baggage.

He is solely responsible for the peace in the world. He is the sole enforcer capable of handling things all on his own. And it’s twisting him up inside.

So he becomes a teacher, bonds with his students, handpicks this new generation of powerful individuals who can help him, but also becoming friends with them even though he knows the truth that drove Geto to the “bad side”—that these friends and students will die.

And they do die. And it twists Gojo up inside.

Okay so I just spent all that time summarizing why Gojo is a narrative goldmine, and that was just touching on the highlights. There are so many moments that define him, that show his change, that I could also get into, but I don’t want to spend all day here. Maybe I do, who knows.

In the most recent chapter (260), Gojo’s body comes back with Okkotsu inside of it, the same way Kenjaku inhabited the body of Geto. It’s not wholly unexpected, but the parameters of it are. Gojo, as the backstory told, accepted the role of monster to deal with Sukuna in the end. From here, presumably Gojo/Okkotsu will defeat Sukuna, or weaken him to such a state that Yuji will finish him off.

It’s fun to think about the kinds of characters who define the story world they live in. And not protagonists, because obviously Harry Potter (the story) doesn’t exist without Harry Potter (the character). Anakin Skywalker is one. There is no Star Wars without him. He has layers on layers, so much to read into, so much to love and hate, but altogether as complex as they come. Also George Lucas didn’t hate him.

The thing about these characters though, and many more, is that they’re central to the narrative. We’re never far from them, and even when they die (Vader), they still leave a lasting impression on the narrative.

Akutami went out of his way to get Gojo out of the story. To make this not about him. He was locked away for entire volumes, and then dead for volumes more, but in the end, the story couldn’t move forward without Gojo driving. No other characters could rise to the occasion, either because they were too flawed, or killed off too early, or because Gojo was too powerful, and shoved off too early.

I’m not here to judge Jujutsu Kaisen, or say what should or shouldn’t have happened. Although for the record, if Gojo was going to come back, the way it happened may be the most validating, because it does bandy with ideas of morality.

Anyway, enough of that, that’s not the point of MangaCraft. What I will say is that Gojo is a remarkable character who quite literally broke the entire Jujutsu Kaisen narrative, against Akutami’s wishes. It’s perhaps the most remarkable feat in character development I’ve seen in my reading life.

Hey, creative writers: Be aware of characters who control too much of the narrative. How do you determine which characters you spend the most time with? Do you have your own favorites? Do you ever find yourself missing characters?

Hey, JJK fans: Gojo—love him or hate him?