[Sansa] Stop it!
You're spoiling it, you're spoiling everything!
I find it really concerning sometimes, how many anime series have this one character
that is objectively an absolute piece of garbage as a human being and yet SOMEHOW, ends up
as one of the my favorite characters.
That's exactly how I felt the moment when Toji entered Dagon's domain through the opening
everyone had just hoped to escape from.
Can anyone relate?
Well, Let me also tell you the moment my opinion of Toji Fushiguro was completely flipped on
his head.
The destroyed city of Shibuya.
The air thick with death, fear and chaos.
Sukuna's presence is piercing the air, and yet here, in this small side alley somewhere
on the battlefield, cramped between two buildings, a father and son stand in front of each other
without even knowing who the other is.
Megumi not remembering his father, that abandoned him as a child, now fully focused on getting
away from the monster that just easily took out one of the special grades without so much
as an inch of cursed energy.
Toji on the the other hand, a mindless beast on a killing spree, who despite all the powerful
people on the battlefield, has chosen Megumi as the strongest opponent.
Having just barely missed Megumis heart, he prepares for another deadly jab.
But suddenly a memory pierces his mind.
A memory of how he sold his only Son to the family he hated so much.
And in the next moment, despite the cursed technique controlling him, he takes control
again and ends his own life a second time with a smile on his face.
And I had tears in my eyes.
Tears because of the emotions, but also tears of joy for how criminally well this man is
written.
I had finally understood who Toji Fushiguro truly is as
a character.
For me, Toji is and always was strong contender in the categories shittiest shonen fathers
and side characters that are already dead, but somehow feel more exciting than some of
those that are still alive.
The core philosophy that Akutami gives Toji is basically not giving a fuck.
We are being told that Toji doesn't care about anything or anyone.
He doesn't care about his family, going his own way and doing his own thing.
He goes through weapons at an alarming rate, no matter if it's a cheap gun or a priceless
cursed weapon, when you think about it, you never see Toji using the same tool twice,
just switching to a new one whenever he needs to.
He doesn't care about his son and even about his own life, readily prepared to throw it
away, just to make a point.
When I first read the hidden inventory arc, not in my wildest dreams did I expect that
this sketchy looking guy, that is supposed to be Megumi's dead, I mean dad, would be
one of the most influential, powerful and deep characters of the story.
It didn't take long however for Toji to get my full attention, when he is revealed as
the mastermind behind the attack on Riko, a girl meant to fuse with the immortal sorcerer
Tengen so he could remain human.
Fully aware that Riko is with Gojo and Geto, the two most powerful sorcerers in the country
right now, who are in charge of protecting the girl until the ritual, he cleverly keeps
throwing diversions at them from behind the scenes.
He patiently waits until Gojo is so tired out from constantly being on guard with his
six eyes so he can launch a surprise attack on both.
And even though Gojo was of course already an absolute favorite of mine at this point,
Toji's fighting style and underdog status made it hard not to be impressed by him, as
he manages to take out all three of his targets, apparently even killing Gojo.
And despite how much of a dick he was, abandoning his son to gamble, drink and fight, the only
thing I thought was that this guy is purely badass.
At first glance, the fight between Gojo and Toji may seem like that of two powerful maniacs,
but it's actually based on Chinese mythology: The godly Buddha and the chaotic monkey king.
Gojo, who literally quotes the buddy after surviving his stabbing, has reached some sort
of enlightenment, now fully aware of the true nature of cursed energy and basically from
this moment onwards unstoppable.
He sees everything and is one with the world, able to manipulate space itself.
His domain expansion literally forces the universes true nature onto you, once you are
caught in it.
And, as he puts it himself, coming back from certain death, he is practically reborn in
the infinite cycle of reincarnation.
Toji meanwhile represents Sun Wukong, who rebelled against the gods.
Toji literally likes to call himself a monkey for not having cursed energy, basically making
fun of Geto, before he even goes mad.
Just like the monkey king, he is exiled from the heavenly order of the 4 clans.
Later on, we see him fully mastering playful cloud, just as Sun Wukong, was known for using
a staff and flying on top of a cloud.
Ultimately, just like in 'the journey to the west' the Buddha HIMSELF has to put an end
to his rebellion, just like Gojo is the only who could have stopped Toji.
And when Gojo has launched his new attack, hollow purple, and i turned the page, my entire
perspective on Toji completley changed.
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Okay, so I turn the page and two things happened, when a surprisingly calm Toji is standing
there with a big hole in the side of his body: Firstly, I finally understood, that I had
been idiot for seeing Toji as some sort of underdog fighting his way to the top.
That's not what makes him so relatable.
In fact, just like Gojo, he had been born with one of the strongest powers in the Jujutsu
world, right from the start.
Heavenly restriction, that has turned out to be an inherited technique in the Zenin
family, is only able to reach it's true potential, when the amount of cursed energy in the user
is exactly 0.
It made Toji an absolutely superhuman monster, that could not be detected, but easily overwhelm
cursed techniques using his ridiculous instincts and physical strength alone.
Gojo had to overcome his limits to take this man down.
Toji had always been one of the strongest, it's just that the Zenin clan defines strength
in terms of cursed energy, so they were quite literally blind to his true strength, just
like I was.
Even though Maki foreshadowed it so well.
And even more frustratingly, how Toji then foreshadowed it for Maki in turn later on.
And you know what, Maki losing her remaining cursed energy and essentially becoming the
Kill Bill version of Toji, has been one of the wildest rides in the story so far, and
that's saying something.
The SECOND thing that happened when Toji died, was that I realized that his philosophy of
not giving a damn about anything, was nothing but one big facade.
When he asks Gojo, missing half of his body, to help his son, the last thing he thought
about before dying, Akutami set the stage to make this character way deeper than I had
anticipated.
Until now, Toji was cool.
But now I was really curious.
If Toji had loved Megumi after all, how the hell did he end up like this?
Toji is pretty much the personification of the entire story of jujutsu Kaisen, uniting
the themes of love, strength and the dysfunctional coldness of the Jujutsu Society.
He is the result of the current toxic system.
Even though, Akutami never explicitly mentions anything about his time with the Zenin clan,
given his current state and what we know form Maki's experience, it doesn't take much imagination
to figure that his childhood must have terribly sucked.
Toji, and later Maki, are basically the badass, but tragic outcome of a society that denies
love and attention to anyone deemed to be weak in their eyes.
Whenever I see Toji OR Maki act the way that they do, you just know that the current system
has to be abolished.
Which is ironic, because the next arc will be about protecting said system.
And yet, I strongly believe that it'll the job of Itadori, Fushiguro and Kugisaki to
build a world in which someone like Maki can laugh and love and where someone like Toji
never has to become the emotionally crippled monster he is.
Completely deprived of any affection, Toji, even more than Maki, is unable to express
love and care, even though both their needs as a character is having a real loving family.
Instead, they try to fill the hole in their heart by becoming strong.
They want to be acknowledged by the clan that treated them as outcasts.
Toji not being able to deal with the death of Megumi's mother, decides to warp his usual
self, as he calls it, his loving self, and abandons his kid, thinking it will be better
of with the clan that rejected him.
I'm sure that plan would have worked out fantastically.
In this scene here, we are made to believe that Toji doesn't even remember his own kid's
name, and yet Megumi, the name he gave his son, literally means 'blessing'.
Even though you and I didn't know it yet, this right here is a man that struggles to
drown his love and worries for his child, because he just doesn't know how to deal with
it.
And realizing that really broke my heart.
And it gets even worse when you see that Megumi has pretty much inherited this trait.
Before growing with Yuji and Nobara, Megumi constantly is supressing his emotions AS WELL
as his powers, believing himself to be weak, before pulling a sudden domain expansion or
summoning Mahoraga.
Despite his fathers love for him, he had to grow up with no idea of what a family was,
except for his step sister.
with the same sense of isolation and distance from his family that Toji did, fully lacking
the unconditional love a child needs from his parents in order to grow up, because Toji
was never even around for Megumi.
Just by default he assumes that his father either didn’t love him, or just starighout
forgot about him.
That's why knowing that Toji actually had cared for him all along, makes his character
so incredibly bitter sweet.
It's only in Toji's very last moment, his second chance at dying a good death, as Itadori
would say, that he accepts that it was Megumi who was his true purpose all along.
Not revenge or money or power.
Just family and someone to care for.
The moral message of Jujutsu Kaisen.
The only thing Toji regrets as he’s dying from Gojo's attack all those years ago, is
not that he wasn’t strong enough.
He doesn’t even regret becoming a criminal, or rebelling against the Jujutsu world.
What he regrets is that he threw away his family in the process.
And now he gets to see that his son grew up just fine, well more or less, and that Megumi
is stating to walk his own path.
And so it hit me, that Toji actually dies the very way that Yuji wants to, with a smile
on his face, surrounded by the person he loves.
Someone who is not only incredibly powerful and badass for wrecking havoc in the jujutsu
world, but who deep down was a loving father who never had the chance to express it, until
he gets one last chance.
And that's why a human piece of garbage like Toji, is one of my favorite characters.
You should watch Megumi's video here next.