Warning: The article contains Jujutsu Kaisen anime spoilers until season 2, episode 10, and vague spoilers for manga chapter 236 at the end
Jujutsu Kaisen mangaka Gege Akutami has an odd relationship with what can be argued is the fans’ most favorite character in his series — the strongest Special-grade sorcerer, Satoru Gojo.
Based on things the author has said over the years, it’s widely accepted that Akutami hates his own character, but “hate” could not accurately describe the creator’s true feelings. If you look at it correctly, the ‘hating Gojo bandwagon’ is more of a stick he adheres to than his absolute stance. Sure, he might’ve told fans to vote for everyone’s beloved salaryman, Kento Nanami, over Satoru Gojo for the popularity pool after the white-haired Sensei had won a previous pool by a landslide, but hating the strongest modern jujutsu sorcerer seems to be more of a fun posture to adopt than an actual mark of resentment for the character.
One thing that cannot be avoided, however, is that Gojo’s overpowered nature is an obstacle to the story’s progression. Hence it made sense for Akutami, when the manga was releasing chapters of the Shibuya Arc and Gojo got sealed, to celebrate online that “Now that Gojo is gone, it’s looking like 2020’s gonna be a great year.” At one point, we all just expected Akutami’s classic ‘Gojo hater’ commentary every once in a while. It almost seems like he gets a kick out of shocking his fans with his unpopular opinions on the beloved character.
My main point of contention to the claim that Akutami actually hates the character he created, is how he managed to make him undeniably likable, being that “likable” is a clear understatement. The complexities of his personality are well-delineated and his relationship with his best friend Suguru Geto is soulful and manages to touch most of us.
So, when Akutami called Gojo “a man of resignation,” it wasn’t said in a condescending manner or intended to be an insult. It was a description of a posture the bearer of the Six Eyes adopts in life, particularly in the face of adversity or unfavorable outcomes. It might be difficult to understand, and it may even seem paradoxical at first, how someone who has the power to take down a country by himself could also have a tendency for resignation — accepting that one cannot change what’s outside of their control. But both these aspects are at play in the character of Satoru Gojo.
What does the “resignation” mean for Gojo?
The quote of Gege Akutami calling Satoru Gojo “a man of resignation” was recently revived by a Twitter user, who often posts Japanese to English translations pertaining to the series. So, what does the word mean in the context of this particular character?
First of all, we can understand resignation as falling almost into a sense of Buddhist acceptance or a somewhat stoic posture to adversity. It certainly doesn’t mean the resignation of one’s ego — Gojo’s too big for that.
Going chronologically — in the series’ temporality not by release date — Gojo’s first moment of resignation is when he fails to kill his best friend, Geto, at the end of Hidden Inventory. This resignation stands out from the others because the emotional heaviness lingers rather than being almost fully and immediately dispelled, giving rise to a moment of self-reflection. The shot of Satoru sitting on the steps when being approached by Masamichi Yaga is a picture of resignation while not meaning that he isn’t still feeling burdened. This moment marks a shift because thereafter, Gojo’s resignation is freer from the bounds of guilt.
From then on, Gojo’s posture is more of a “Whatever I can do, I’ll do” — finally killing Geto when it comes to that — “and what I can’t do, I won’t sweat it.”
In the Shibuya Arc, when he gets captured by the prison realm, he admits to checkmate without too much resistance. The unusual rage he momentarily shows doesn’t come from the inability to fight back and free himself, but from knowing that the man who entrapped him and is now standing in front of him is callously wearing his deceased best friend’s body. There’s no better example of Gojo’s carefree resignation in the anime than when he’s already sealed, chilling inside the prison realm, laying back amongst the sea of skeletons, casually playing with his headband, and going: “Man, I screwed up. This is all kinds of bad. Well, it’ll work out somehow!”
In what we may call the dream sequence of manga chapter 236, Gojo isn’t combative of the fate he got. Sure, he shows some annoyance, but that’s more of an immediate reaction rather than his perspective on his loss. In fact, he goes as far as to imply to Yaga that the former Principal was wrong in saying that “No Jujutsu sorcerer dies without regrets,” as he, Satoru Gojo, the strongest sorcerer of the modern age, is proof to the contrary.