Gojo Satoru - The Solitude of Power (Jujutsu Kaisen Analysis)

[00:00:00]Gojo Satoru is the most iconic character from  Jujutsu Kaisen, and I’d go as far as to say one of the most iconic anime characters from the 2010s.  His place in the story of Jujutsu Kaisen has always been one of great significance, from his  introduction, all the way up to the end. Today, I just wanted to take a look at Gojo’s character  throughout his entire arc and analyze what makes him such a profound and loved character.  I’ve done a few of these videos already, but the main difference with this one is  that the ladder half of this video will contain manga spoilers. There’s nothing  I can really do to avoid this, but I’ll be sure to announce when manga talk starts for  any anime-onlies. Alright, let’s get into it.

[00:00:34]The earliest we see Gojo chronologically  is… well the earliest he existed. We see Gojo’s birth and are told by narration that it  completely changed the balance of the world. See, Gojo was the first in a long time to be born with  both the limitless technique and the six eyes, making him one of, if not the strongest sorcerer  alive. I don’t think it’s hard to understand the immense pressure this placed upon him. From  the moment he was born, Gojo was known around the world for his strength. As he grew up there  were hundred-million dollar bounties placed on his head. He lived through his entire childhood  being constantly reminded of his abilities and what they meant. There’s not much more to  say about his life before hidden inventory, but I just want to say that part of why I’m making  this video is that I feel Gojo is a seriously misunderstood character. Now, any interpretation  of a character is fine… well almost any, but I feel as though Gojo is often interpreted to be a  victim of his strength when I don’t necessarily think that was the intention of the story. We  see nothing to indicate that his childhood was bad or that he was abused, although I sometimes  see this brought up like it’s a fact. While yes, having assassins after you at age 6 would probably  change the way you view the world, the truth is we don’t know much about this time of Gojo’s life. The next point we see him is in hidden inventory.

[00:01:43]I’ve talked about this arc a lot between my videos  on Geto and Toji, but it’s such a fundamentally important arc. The hidden inventory arc is about  the direction sorcery should go in, and the split we see between all of its main characters shows  the different ways it could go. Before we get there, we see early on in this arc that Gojo has  developed an extremely confident and braggadocious attitude. He argues directly with Geto about  the necessity of sorcerers, and argues that it shouldn’t be their job to protect the weak.  Geto argues that it is their inherent duty as people with immense talent and ability to use it  to help others, a fact Gojo still disagrees with.

[00:02:15]The reasoning for this is shown in the next fight,  Gojo is untouchable. Ever since he was a kid he’s known it. There is nobody alive strong enough to  challenge him, so for pretty much all these early fights he can just coast around and beat up the  bad guys. Conversely, we see Geto actually having to put in effort into his fights. Regardless, at  this point they are both called “the strongest” together. Due to this title, the duo are assigned  to watch Riko Amanai, the next vessel for Tengen, and her caregiver. Despite some roadbumps,  the 4 of them eventually end up chilling in Okinawa having fun. Geto notices that Gojo has  had infinity going for several days straight and hasn’t been sleeping, but Gojo says that he’s  fine. Gojo isn’t the type that needs pity from others, nor does he want it. That isn’t to say  that he responds rudely to Geto or something, but he wants to be able to do everything himself,  after all, he’s never known anything else. When they finally get back to Jujutsu high, Gojo  disables his infinity for the first time in days. He remarks that the whole experience has  been exhausting, and just when you think we’re home free, the sorcerer killer reappears. Toji had  been planning to kill Gojo for days, and the whole long trip was pretty much entirely planned by  him. The reason is that he not only needs to kill Riko for money, but also because he wants Gojo  dead. The fight with Toji is the first time we see Gojo go all out. He’s really trying his best  here, doing everything he can to kill Toji, but he wasn’t ready for Toji’s trump card. Using the  inverted spear of Heaven, Toji nullifies Gojo’s infinity before slicing him up and down. This  moment forever changed Gojo. This encounter with Toji showed him that being stagnant wasn’t good  enough. He needed to get better, become stronger, to help others. Gojo’s loss here leads to Riko and  Kuroi’s death, as well as Geto being brutalized by Toji. Luckily, in a display of his immense  natural ability, Gojo learned reverse cursed technique right before death and saved himself. He  then tracks Toji down and immediately starts going for the kill. In this scene, Gojo has reached a  completely new state of mind. When Gojo is truly challenged, pushed to his limits, we see this side  of him come out. Toji even remarks that he’s high.

[00:04:10]In this enlightened state, Gojo admits that he’s  not really doing what he’s doing for Riko, and rather just out of a sense of appreciation for the  world. This battle high Gojo gets is the result of his mastery of Jujutsu. He comes to appreciate  all that’s around him, and the fact that he has such immense strength. Using Hollow Purple, Gojo  makes quick work of Toji. In his final breath, Toji tells Gojo that he has a son who will be sold  to the Zenin clan, before he falls. The reason Toji tells Gojo this is because he’s the strongest  person Toji knows and someone who will inevitably fight for what’s right. After killing Toji, Gojo  goes to receive Riko’s body from the cult, where he meets up with Geto for seemingly the first  time since reviving himself. The room is full of non-sorcerers applauding the death of Riko,  being completely oblivious to all the struggle the two go through. Gojo asks Geto if they should kill  everybody there, Geto replies by saying that there isn’t a point since the cult will disband. To  which Gojo asks if a point is needed. Gojo is far more emotionally directed than Geto at this  time. He’s willing to do what he thinks is right, which is the same reason he killed Toji when  he really didn’t have to. After this moment, a year passes in one of the best episodes of the  whole series to me. It’s narrated by Geto so we don’t really hear Gojo’s inner thoughts, but in  the time since Toji, Gojo has trained to have infinity on constantly. Here is where I want to  talk about how Gojo’s cursed technique amazingly mirrors his life. At this moment, Gojo, Geto, and  Shoko are all pretty isolated from each other.

[00:05:32]Infinity literally makes it so that no matter  how close you think you are to Gojo, you’ll never reach him. As Gojo perfected his technique  to keep people out, he ended up inadvertently closing himself off from his friends. This is  the point where Gojo alone is referred to as the strongest. Geto has been completely left behind,  both literally and mentally. I think it’s hard to fully blame Gojo for Geto’s feeling of isolation,  since they both had different responses to their trauma with Toji. Gojo felt as though he needed  to become stronger in order to never lose again, and so he left Geto to pursue his own power,  meanwhile Geto couldn’t find a purpose. While he is strong, in fact he’s said to be one of the  strongest sorcerers of the time, he saw sorcery as a practice to be unsustainable and didn’t  see a way out. This takes us to the KFC scene, which takes place after Geto slaughters dozens  of non sorcerers. Gojo can’t believe that Geto would do this, saying that it goes completely  against his ideals. This really shows how Gojo was truly not paying attention to Geto’s mental  decline. It’s in this moment where we hear Geto’s true opinions about Gojo’s strength. Geto is  frustrated by Gojo’s lack of intention. He sees Gojo as maintaining the very same Jujutsu system  that killed Riko, Haibara, and even almost got the two of them killed. Gojo could console himself  with Riko’s death because of his natural ability.

[00:06:45]He could become strong enough to never lose again,  but Geto, while extremely gifted, could never reach his level. This is where the “Are you the  strongest because your Satoru Gojo” question comes from. I discussed it in my Geto video, but this  quote refers to the question of whether or not Gojo’s strength was something he was born with  or something only he could hone. The question is debatable because one could argue that only  Satoru Gojo could train himself to use the peak of Limitless and the Six Eyes, but another could  argue that since Gojo was born with this ability, it completely defined him. At this moment, Gojo  prepares to kill Geto, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He can’t kill one of the only people who  ever loved him for him. And so we see Gojo revert back even further into his shell. With Geto gone,  he has nothing left to do but to become stronger, and we see exactly that 10 years later. Jumping to Jujutsu Kaisen 0, Gojo has now become a teacher at Jujutsu High. In between this and  Hidden Inventory, Gojo took care of both Megumi and Tsumiki, until Tsumiki eventually mysteriously  became ill. As a teacher, Gojo is well-liked by the few students that he has. Even the suspended  Hakari and Kirara would recount him as being nice to them. Around this time Yuta is introduced and  we see Gojo fight the higher ups to postpone his execution. Gojo even directly threatens  them, saying that if push comes to shove, he’ll defend Yuta with his life. This is a pretty  obvious parallel to Riko in hidden inventory, except here we see that the higher ups truly  do fear Gojo. He really is the strongest now, and can make big decisions like this himself.  Gojo encourages Yuta to further himself as a sorcerer. He sees potential in him and knows  that he can hone his strength. The young Yuta probably reminds Gojo of Geto to an extent. A  boy who has completely given up on his own life, believing that there is no way he can help  other people. With more experience and maturity, Gojo can guide Yuta so that he doesn’t go down the  same path as Geto, and to further this parallel, Geto returns to see Gojo for the first time since  Hidden Inventory. While there, he declares war on Jujutsu High and says that he will attack Shinjuku  on christmas eve. This moment shows how much Gojo has come to resent his friend. There is a side to  him which blames himself for not killing Geto when he had the chance, but at the same time there’s a  part of him that still couldn’t bring himself to do it. It’s around here that Gojo also says that  love is the greatest curse of them all, explaining why Rika and Yuta are so interconnected. I don’t  think it’s hard to see how this relates to Gojo’s own relationship with Geto. As the night of Geto’s  attack arrives, something seems off to Gojo. He realizes that Geto did this whole plan to absorb  Rika, and so he sends Panda and Inumaki back to Jujutsu High. The fight between them all and Geto  isn’t really relevant to this conversation, but it ends with Geto losing, being gravely injured  by Yuta. As he lies in an alleyway accepting his fate, Gojo catches up with him. The emotional  weight of this moment is obvious. There’s no begging from Geto for Gojo to spare him, rather  they just catch up after so long apart. Geto remarks that Gojo is cruel for sending Panda and  Inumaki to him when he knew Geto could’ve killed them, but Gojo claims that Geto never would’ve  killed young sorcerers. It shows that despite everything, Gojo still has some kind of trust for  Geto deep down. Gojo then tells Geto something we never hear as the audience. Despite what people  say online, there’s no real confirmation of what this is and I think it’s better left that way.  This is a very intimate moment between these two and I like the idea that there’s so much of their  relationship that we don’t know as an audience member. It shows how people close to Gojo knew  how he felt about Geto, but they couldn’t fully understand it. As he’s about to die, Geto asks  Gojo to curse him at the end, a clear callback to Gojo saying love is the greatest curse of them  all. Gojo’s feelings towards Geto prevented him from stopping Geto when they were younger, but  he doesn’t make the same mistake twice. Geto Suguru is in this moment killed by Gojo Satoru,  another scene which we don’t get to see. In the end of the movie, Gojo returns Yuta’s ID that  Geto stole, when Yuta asks how he got it, Gojo says it’s from a friend: his one and only.  While there’s still a lot more to Gojo’s life, I think he and Geto have one of the better written  relationships in Jujutsu Kaisen. There’s so much nuance here and a lot to be analyzed from the  way they both see the modern Jujutsu world. In regards to Geto, Gojo was punished for having  such a close attachment to him. His own love for him was what prevented him from stopping  Geto. However, when they were young his hunger and need to become stronger is what initially  alienated Geto in the first place. It makes you wonder how different things could’ve been between  them had Gojo never abandoned him, had Geto been more honest with him. Regardless, The Geto saga is  over, and we move one year later to the Yuji era.

[00:10:53]We’re now onto Season 1 of JJK, where Gojo was a  brand new character to the audience. Because of this, I’ll be skipping a lot through this since  the early establishment of his character isn’t actually too important for an analysis. We see  that he has become seemingly even stronger than he was a year ago, effortlessly crushing 1-finger  Sukuna. We see that his ideals are still the same, with him protecting Yuji from execution, at least  until they get all of Sukuna’s fingers. In a later scene, we see Gojo reaffirm his belief in being  the strongest, with him claiming that even if Sukuna regained all his strength, he’d win their  fight. This part of the show has Gojo at his most confident, and it makes sense why. He really  is the physically strongest being in the show at this point. Even Kenjaku knows that all the  disaster curses and himself would lose to Gojo.

[00:11:35]After Yuji’s death at the detention centre, Gojo  claims that the higher ups purposefully led him into combat with a special grade curse in order  to kill him. This is the closest we see Gojo to killing them, with him contemplating the massacre  before Yuji miraculously wakes up. Gojo then takes Yuji directly under his wing, training the boy  karate kid style. Later we see that during the sister-school event, Kenjaku puts up a barrier  just to keep Gojo out. It’s clear from this that he really is a problem. This fight is pretty  much just “can we survive until Gojo arrives”.

[00:12:03]This takes us to the Shibuya incident, which  is where everything established so far really gets turned on its head. We just spent the  last season showing how Gojo is invincible, but now we’re gonna really put that to the test.  On Halloween in Shibuya, Kenjaku and the disaster curses suddenly attack the subway station. Gojo’s  fight with Kenjaku’s lackeys displays that same battle high we saw with Toji, but to a lesser  extent since he’s challenged less here. However, the point of this fight isn’t to kill Gojo, shown  when they all start ignoring him and begin killing random people. As Mahito explains, Gojo can’t  bear to see all of these people die for no reason, so he will have to make a desperate action  at some point. This results in the miniscule domain expansion, another display of how truly  unstoppable Gojo is… well near unstoppable. As he recuperates for a moment, he notices the prison  realm on the floor. Preparing to move away from it, he hears a familiar voice. This is one of the  best scenes in all of Jujutsu Kaisen. Gojo all of a sudden sees his friend that he buried with  his own hands standing right in front of him, as he runs through all the possibilities,  he realizes that it’s really him. This faint smile he gives transitioning into horror is  awful. It shows how even after all this time, Gojo still wasn’t 100% sure that killing Geto was  correct. He still misses him, and somewhere in the back of his mind he wishes that he was still  alive. Even though it isn’t actually “correct”, we’ve seen that Gojo is far less objective than  someone like Geto. He can’t deny his feelings.

[00:13:29]As all of the memories of his youth flood to his  mind, Gojo is ensnared by the prison realm. He demands to know who or what stands in front of  him, claiming that despite all of the objective information saying that Geto stands before him,  Gojo knows that can’t be correct. The little “how did you know” moment is so disturbing. Imagine  seeing the person who you had the deepest bond with take off the top of their head revealing  someone else piloting them. As Gojo accepts the reality of the situation, he tells Kenjaku  that he has full confidence in his students before allowing himself to be sealed. This is the  second time Gojo loses. The first is against Toji where his naivete at his invulnerability made  him not wary of something like the inverted spear of heaven, this time Gojo loses because of  his humanity and his connection with Geto. It’s another representation of how Gojo is punished for  his kindness and soft spot for Geto. Even though Geto turned into something objectively evil, I  think even Gojo would admit that, he can’t bring himself to truly hate him. It shows how human  Gojo is. He’s flawed. Regardless, this is where the anime ends. Gojo is shown in some flashbacks  for the Culling Games, but nothing imperative to his character. So if you’re anime only, click  off because we’re headed to manga territory.

[00:14:36]After the many fights and sacrifices of the team  throughout the Culling Games, Gojo is eventually unsealed due to Angel’s Jacob’s Ladder. Much has  changed since Gojo last saw the outside world.

[00:14:46]Sukuna has found himself a new body and the same  guy who was slicing heads off in Shibuya is now the best brother a guy could ask for. Not much  has changed with Gojo since we last saw him, keeping the same playful attitude he always  had. He makes quick work of Uraume before approaching Sukuna and Kenjaku. The three  agree to give each other a month to prepare, and this is another display of Gojo’s belief in  fair battle. He doesn’t do something like sneak Sukuna in between this training period. He has  his own code of honor that he pretty much always follows. As d-day creeps ever closer, Gojo makes  the decision to kill all the higher-ups. This was done after Gojo realized that Jujutsu was a  fundamentally broken system and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he thinks about Geto. In the  first 2 seasons, Gojo tried to make things work with the established system, but it was so rotten  to its core that he had to just hard reset it by killing all the old conservatives in charge (hey  this Gojo saying it, not me). Seemingly after this moment, he talks with Gakuganji, who was the only  old sorcerer he spared. Gakuganji questions why, to which Gojo says that there’s clearly some good  in him since he never divulged how to make Cursed Corpses. Gojo believes in change through kind  actions. When Yaga died and called the knowledge of how to make Cursed Corpses a curse in itself,  I believe this is what he meant. It changed the way Gakuganji saw the world. There are a few  more scenes that technically happen here, but for the sake of dramatic pacing, we’re gonna  skip to the Sukuna fight. As he approaches the strongest sorcerer of the past, he looks deadly  serious, before Yuji gives him a pat on the back, giving him a sort of new-found confidence.  There’s a recurring theme throughout Gojo’s life of him being sort of held back by his  relationships with others. This is something that was touched on a bit earlier in the story by  Sukuna. In his fight with Yorozu, Sukuna mentions how he never has experienced love, and that such  a feeling is worthless. I’m gonna skip over a lot of this fight, since this is a character analysis  and not a fight analysis, but throughout we see the true strength of both these characters for the  first time. Ever since his encounter with Toji, Gojo has never had a chance to go all-out, and  this is exactly that opportunity. He gains an extreme battle high here, looking straight up  crazed in some panels. However, I think there’s something deeply sad about this fight. Gojo is  fighting Sukuna within Megumi’s body, who, keep in mind, is basically Gojo’s adoptive son. I’m  not saying this from a powerscaling perspective, I truly don’t think that Gojo held back because  he was in Megumi’s body, but it definitely had some impact. Gojo wasn’t planning on straight up  killing Sukuna here, it just doesn’t make sense.

[00:17:08]We hear some inner monologue suggesting this and  the fact that he wrote Megumi that letter shows that he believed the boy would come back.  Also I admit that this is very unfounded, but this panel of Gojo suddenly hugging Sukuna  always makes me sad. Makes you wonder if this was Gojo trying to comfort the boy after he took the  burden of unlimited void. The fight concludes with Gojo unleashing hollow purple on Sukuna, which  destroys his cursed energy reserves. It’s obvious, Gojo won. JUST KIDDING! We flash to something of  a dream/postmortem sequence, where Gojo talks to all of his dead friends. He admits here that he  truly lost to Sukuna, there was nothing else he could’ve done and he was truly overpowered. This  is the third time we see Gojo lose, and there’s a pattern each time. With Toji, he believes himself  to be unbeatable and therefore he lets his guard down, against Kenjaku and the disaster curses,  he lets his guard down upon seeing Geto, and against Sukuna it was a combination. Not only was  he physically overpowered, but the knowledge that he saved all his students and Megumi must’ve been  weighing on his mind. There’s a reason that this panel is structured in the way it is. He literally  is taking his eyes off the prize and we hear the reaction of everyone else, they all let themselves  be distracted. It’s what separates Sukuna from Gojo. In both the physical aspect and the mental  aspect. We hear this later on when Kashimo dies, with Sukuna calling him greedy for both wanting  the love and appreciation of others, but also wanting to be the strongest. It’s impossible to  have both, and we see that reality with Gojo. He lost to Toji due to strength and then tried to  train himself to become the strongest, but he could never truly reach that point because of the  people he cared for. Sukuna doesn’t have a Geto, there is nobody in his life that could distract  him into being taken by the prison realm, not even Uraume. Gojo on the other hand has so many people  he cares about, and we see repeatedly that it holds him back. Speaking of other people in Gojo’s  life, we hear his opinion on them in this scene.

[00:18:56]Gojo gives one of my favorite quotes of the whole  manga, saying that you can make a flower bloom, admire it, but you can’t ask it to understand you.  This quote has several meanings but I attribute two main ones to it. First, the quote can refer to  Gojo himself. He represents the flower, training himself and isolating himself from his friends  in his youth, but that very isolation is what causes nobody to understand him. Gojo points out  that it’s unfair of him to want people to admire the flower (see him as the strongest), but also  understand him. The second interpretation I see is the quote referring to Gojo and his students.  Gojo can try his best to create a strong new generation of sorcerers that don’t have the same  loneliness issues that he did, but in doing that, he’s ensuring that nobody understands him. None of  them will grow up to be like him, and he doesn’t know whether that’s what’s right or wrong for  the world. Regardless we go on to hear Gojo say that he died without regrets, going against  what Yaga said. Ironically though, it turns out that he did have a regret, regretting that he  couldn’t do more for Geto when they were younger.

[00:19:53]It’s a truly somber idea, that Gojo’s biggest  regret was not helping Geto, showing that for all this time he somewhat blamed himself for how  he turned out. Gojo goes out happy, hoping that what he’s seeing isn’t a dream. This is not where  the video ends though, since we see Gojo again, or at least his body. Yuta takes over Gojo’s body,  and in doing so it shows how even after his death, Gojo’s strength was something imperative  to the fight. Despite their love for him, his students needed the strength of his dead body  in order to win, really cementing how the jujutsu world saw him as a weapon. Now, the final time we  truly see Gojo is in his last conversation with Yuji. He tells Yuji that the world has had enough  of people like Satoru Gojo, and that true strength isn’t just physical prowess, but something that  only Yuji can hone. This advice is what leads to Yuji’s adoption of his original philosophy before  Mahito. He sees the good in humanity and knows that people can change, which was a mindset he  could only come back to after talking to Gojo. In between Gojo’s sealing, Yuji’s soul becomes more  and more broken, but afterwards we see how his advice and teaching helped his students. This is  the exact flaw in Sukuna’s thinking. Sure, if Gojo cared about nobody and exclusively trained and  honed his strength for his whole life, he may have won their duel, but through the relationships he  has with his students, he can guarantee a better future for the world. In a way, he made his debt  up to Geto by creating a new generation of sorcery and eliminating the previous one, which was in a  way Geto’s exact wish. Gojo Satoru is the perfect mentor, and this is seen repeatedly throughout the  story of Jujutsu Kaisen. Through his experience as “the strongest” he understands that physical  strength on its own is not enough to make a true difference in the world, all that will lead to is  a self-serving life of constant dissatisfaction, seen in his parallel Sukuna. Gojo understands that  true strength doesn’t come from self-isolation, but through understanding and forming  relationships, it’s as he told Geto, love is the strongest curse of them all. Gojo ends his life  satisfied because he knows he’s done all he can, he doesn’t regret not putting more effort into his  strength, rather he remains at peace with the idea that he raised a whole generation of bright young  sorcerers. He’s confident that Sukuna was wrong, love isn’t useless, because Gojo’s greatest  strength was his ability to love those around him.