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Satoru Gojo - The Limited Man

In Jujutsu Kaisen, Satoru Gojo is the character who is presented both to the story and to its readers as perfect; the very pinnacle of humanity and the most powerful being in all of existence. Gojo portrays a common ideal that each and every one of us has, of a human who is untouchable, a human who has complete control of the universe where nothing is outside their grasp. With his esteemed heritage, he is the Limitless man. Nothing can contain him.

Yet, the more you pay attention to the character of Satoru Gojo, the more you’ll realise how limited he really is. The entire premise of Gojo’s character within Jujutsu Kaisen is a façade. Within the story’s narrative he is constantly heralded as the absolute strongest by those around him and proclaims as much himself, going as far as to declare to his opponent: “Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honoured one.” while in the midst of battle. This is Gojo’s most iconic line and for good reason, because it not only defines his personality but it also exhibits the greatest contradiction to his character.

Despite being deemed the strongest by so many, it isn’t even clear that this is actually the case. Yes, his power far exceeds almost everyone in the story, to the point that the main antagonist Kenjaku had completely abandoned the idea of killing him. Kenjaku, who had centuries of knowledge, experience and resources around his belt; who alone was capable of destroying a nation by himself, and even had multiple allies, each with capabilities rivalling his own. Despite ALL of these factors, Kenjaku concluded that it would still be impossible to kill Satoru Gojo. This plot point couldn’t emphasise more just how ridiculously powerful Gojo is when compared to almost everyone else in the series.

However, as I was hinting at earlier, there is one other character who sits atop the same pedestal of power as Gojo, and this character is also given a very intentional parallel to Gojo within the story’s narration. While Gojo states himself to be the “honoured one”, the narration specifically refers to Sukuna in the exact same way, in this case from a third person perspective. This is an interesting parallel as these are the only two characters to be associated with this title, while also being the only two characters who have been portrayed to be leagues stronger than even the other top tiers within the series. There’s also a foiling between Gojo and Sukuna here, as Gojo is arrogant enough to state himself that he alone is the “honoured one”, meanwhile Sukuna has the narration state this for him and does not feel the need to speak of these sentiments himself. At the beginning of the story, Gojo declared that if he and Sukuna were to fight each other at their strongest, he would win. However, over the course of the series it’s been made clear that when Gojo and Sukuna fight for real, the outcome of their fight could go either way. Both of them strive to be the strongest character in Jujutsu Kaisen, so from the context of the story it should be inevitable that these two will eventually fight each other, possibly to the death. So, Sukuna serves as one factor in the narrative which contradicts the notion of Gojo being the very best, what about his other limitations?

Well, another glaring contradiction is of course his cursed technique, which is aptly called the “Limitless”. Unsurprisingly, the name and abilities of this technique are a ruse to trick everyone into believing that Gojo’s cursed technique is unquestionably unbeatable and cannot be rivalled by any other power in the series. If you pay attention to the story however, you’ll already know this not to be true. Despite possessing the Limitless, Gojo once lost to and almost died fighting against Toji Fushiguro. While yes, this was a much younger Gojo who had far less experience and skill at the time; and yes, Toji had prepared various tactics beforehand which were specifically designed to counter Gojo; this doesn’t detract from the fact that the Limitless can be beaten. To top it all off, Toji was merely a human who only possessed heightened physical abilities in exchange for having absolutely zero cursed energy. After losing to Toji, in his desperation, Gojo had awakened various new abilities which until that point were inaccessible to him. This event led to Gojo officially becoming recognised as the strongest, where he could now beat Toji with relative ease.

Over a decade later, Gojo had refined all of his skills even further, placing himself far above his other fellow special grade sorcerers. However, despite being called the “Limitless”, it appears that Gojo has now completely mastered his powers and has achieved the peak of his abilities. The concept behind the Limitless is in reference to the infinite space there is in the universe, yet this power ironically has defined limitations which prevent it from evolving further. Even more ironically, Gojo’s closest friend Suguru Geto happens to possess a cursed technique which, within Jujutsu Kaisen’s power system, could be considered more boundless than the Limitless itself, “Cursed Spirit Manipulation”. In its most basic function, cursed spirit manipulation is the total control of cursed spirits, and essentially allows the user to absorb and stockpile an unlimited amount of cursed energy. In theory, this technique is more worthy to be given the title “Limitless”, yet this is heedlessly overlooked because of the characters associated with their respective techniques. This dynamic between Gojo and Geto’s abilities are kept subtle to the readers as Gojo just happened to master his cursed technique while Geto remained stagnant due to his personal shortcomings, which resulted in him deviating from his healthy rivalry with Gojo and ultimately led to him becoming an enemy of Jujutsu society.

Another point could also be made here that, regardless of being the strongest at this point, Gojo was incapable of stopping his closest friend from straying down a dark path, which is perhaps Gojo’s greatest failing in the series. This failure also comes back to bite him much later on as Kenjaku’s ace in the hole to finally checkmate Gojo involved surprising him with the now possessed body of Geto, which distracted Gojo long enough for him to be successfully sealed by the prison realm. Once again, the vast amount of power that Gojo had attained turned out to be completely useless in preventing his own sealing, which has now placed him in an inactive role for over half of Jujutsu Kaisen’s duration. Earlier in the story, Gojo once said: “Ironic, isn’t it? Given everything, but unable to do anything.” when referring to the function of his own domain. This was another intentional use of foreshadowing to describe the dilemma that Gojo was inevitably going to face himself. Satoru Gojo is no limitless man, for no one man is without his limits.

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taro-rat

2 years ago