What does true evil look like?
It's a question that many screenplays and Anime have failed to answer over the years.
And Mahito, is one of the best answers I have come across in a long while.
And in this video I will explain to you exactly why.
Why this handsome little Frankenstein here, is one of the most eerie, repulsive and horrifying
villains in all of Anime.
A villain that clearly has been carefully crafted with a clever mix of human psychology
and Gege Akutami's ingenious storytelling abilities, to creep the hell out of you and
make you loath him with every pore of your body.
A core piece of what makes the story of Jujutsu Kaisen so fantastic.
That - aaand what's the deal the with all the hands.
This is the story of the most horrible and human curse of them all, Mahito.
With Sukuna, I have already discussed one of the three major villains of Jujutsu Kaisen,
and yet, just like Geto, Mahito is a completely different trope of antagonist.
All three of them represent fundamentally different versions of evil, which makes the
story so much more interesting and versatile.
And yet, out of all three, Mahito is the only one that Akutami has created with the intent
to portray true evil.
The most dangerous and vile cursed spirit in the story right now, and I would even go
as far as to say overall.
But as you probably have figured out already, Mahito's horror lies not within how powerful
he is, but in his personality.
Don't you think it's interesting that he is the only curse that takes the form of a human
in the story?
Mahito is all soul this and hands that, oh, and he has the same blue eyes that Gojo has.
The genius of Mahito's character, that will be crystal clear if you make it to the end
of this video, is completely based on the unique role he takes in the Jujutsu world.
Despite being teased to us as one of the most scary curses, what stands out most about Mahito
is actually his extremely human appearance.
The Frankenstein-esk appearance paired with a quite extroverted and curious personality,
as well as a soft and kind voice that lets every hair on my neck stand on end, at first
glance make him hard to differentiate from the equal quirky looking Jujutsu students.
In fact, it takes quite a while before we even get a sense that this is actually the
most purely evil character out of all in this story.
Especially his early relationship with the harshly bullied Junpei creates the illusion
that this might be an exceptionally nice curse.
Well, you know how that turned out in the end.
- Mahito serves as the embodiment of human selfishness, cruelty and desire.
If you pay close attention, you will see that all of his terrible traits and flaws are perfectly
human ones.
Human pettiness.
Human jealousy.
Human fickleness.
Mahito represents all the bad that humans do to themselves and to others.
The worst of us.
What Akutami has done here is masterfully embody the moral theme of his story this character.
Curses vs. humans.
Because, just like Yuji is both human and curse, Mahito is also both curse and human.
And this parallel is no accident.
In general, as the main antagonist of the major first part of the story, Mahito's most
obvious role in is being a foil to the protagonist.
As so often is the case, these two characters mirror each other in many ways and find themself
inextricably drawn to each other.
Both Itadori and Mahito are newcomers to the Jujutsu game.
Itadori was just a regular high school student until the other day, while Mahito has only
quite recently been awakened.
Now, this is just me speculating, but I would bet my left ball that that someone had their
hands in creating Mahito, the guy LITERALLY IS STITCHED TOGETHER, but we'll have to wait
and see.
Nonetheless, both of them are extremely powerful and have very polarizing views of the world.
As becomes clear in their first encounter under Nanami, both of them are basically children.
They both want to get stronger, test their abilities and have their influence on the
world, while responsibly thinking through their actions and motivations.
Just kidding, they're of course both crazily impulse-driven and keep dramatically underestimating
those around them.
Both Itadori and Mahito live in their own little world, where they are the hunters,
the Gojo's who force their will on the world.
Yuji trying to save anyone and anything that moves.
And Mahito literally going full reptile brain, basically only following every impulse he
ever has.
Food.
Kill.
Play.
BLurrrb....
Mahito with a child's curiosity is testing his own powers, learning about the world and
even spending time with humans to transfigure out of they work.
-
The funny thing is, that Mahito's biggest desire is proving to himself and to everyone
that he is the purest curse, the king of courses if you will.
- Sorry.
He tries to convince Junpei to live more like a curse, and yet the big irony here, is that
Mahito actually doesn't get how curses REALLY are.
Take the other intelligent curses with him: Jogo, Nanami and baby Cuthulu.
These guys are probably ancient, born from peoples fear of nature.
They behave quite differently from Mahito.
Yes, they are all somewhat murderous and hateful towards humans and they all seem to be dominated
by their impulses, BUT they also: plan ahead, they have a higher purpose that they are willing
to die for and they even care about their comrades.
- hell, let's be real, Hanami is probably nicer than half of the jujutsu sorcerers themselves.
Mahito on the other hand, is like a textbook sociopath, he does everything impulsively,
he manipulates those around him for his own sake, when things get tough he decides to
run and afterwards is smug about it, and he doesn't really care about the other curses
around him.
Now, I'm gonna drop a big bombshell on you here, and if you didn't know this you'll have
to subscribe.
Jujutsu Kaisen is not only heavily inspired by other SHounen like Bleach or Hunter x Hunter,
it is also filled to the brim with the psychological concepts of Freud and Jung, who both are considered
the founders of modern psychoanalysis.
While both men had different models of the human mind, both of them had the theme of
the Id, the ego or the shadow, that basically describes the unconscious part of your personality,
that you are unaware of, but that drives your basic needs, desires and instincts, compared
to our active conscious mind.
It's something that nowadays you might call the feeling and the thinking brain.
And while we all love to think that we make rational decisions all the time, guess what:
The feeling brain is in command.
As the psychologist Jonathan Heidth put it, we are basically the elephant and its rider.
We can consciously try to steer our feeling brain in the direction we want to go, but
if the elephant reaaaally wants to do something, it'll do it and there's nothing you can do
about it.
Mahito is the embodiment of exactly that.
He is pure feeling brain.
Pure instinct.
Pure pleasure.
Pure doing what feels good in the moment.
He is only that.
No emotions and no rational, something that even the other curses have to some extend.
And that's what makes Mahito so absolutely terrifying.
Why he creeps you the f''k out.
Mahito is a mirror for us humans in which we see our rawest and darkest instincts reflected
back at us.
Mahito is the essence of human evil and human darkness compiled into a character.
And the reason why Itadori hates him so much, is exactly because of that.
He sees himself reflected in Mahito.
All the stuff that he feels insecure about.
His values and ideals.
Itadori's big thing is saving people and under no circumstances hurt them.
And yet, Mahito not only plays with the life of his own comrades, but he also forces Yuji
to kill himself and break his rules.
But I think the true reason lies even a bit deeper.
Consider this scene here, where Gojo asses Yuji's personality: - Yuji wants to save everyone
and condemns killing, but he has no problem, right from the start to absolutely decimate
curses, even though they still take the form of living creatures.
To him, curses are all the same.
Their existence doesn't have any worth in itself, and he doesn't flinch to terminate
them if needed.
Does that sound familiar?
- Mahito shows Yuji that they are pretty much the same, just on opposite sites.
And the fact that the lines between curses and humans keep blurring more and more as
the story continues just places more contrast on this.
Mahito in a very interesting way, slowly but steadily forces Yuji to deal with his own
insecurities, his own values and his own hypocrisy as a person.
It's not good enough to think that every human life is valuable, he now has to find an answer
as to why.
We can see this clash of their ideals in how both of them try to push Junpei to act in
the sense of their respective values.
But there is even more humanity in Mahito, that makes his horror and evil seem even greater
than it already is.
If I were to ask you why x random psycho monster in y scary movie is evil, you might say something
like: Well he is evil, cause he doesn't have a heart or a soul.
So what does Akutami do?
Make Mahito all about that.
Mahito can literally see and manipulate souls, the
essence of everything.
And so for him, the soul is nothing special, but just something else that is just there.
No difference between a plant and an ant and a human, except for human reasoning, which
Mahito explicitly detests.
He transforms and plays with people's souls to try out his powers.
Using people's souls and their deaths to break Yuji?
Exhilarating.
The harrowing fact that Mahito is playing with the most valuable thing a human has,
their soul, which at least in the Jujutsu world is a real thing, is Wonderfully represented
by the concept of hands.
- Mahito has the power to touch the essence of who you are.
His hands are literally the touch of death.
And that's also what makes Mahito so brilliant as a piece of writing.
He represents you as a human, but also death itself.
It's all torment, violence and cruelty.
Notice how people keep reflecting on their ideas about and relationship towards death
whenever they come into contact with Mahito.
- Nanami, Junpei, Itadori.
Looking at Mahito not only mirrors human life, it also mirrors human death.
The essence of human experience.
And that is an absolutely terrifying thing to do, contemplating our own mortality and
faultiness.
Which exactly why Mahito, in my eyes, is absolutely perfectly written evil.
Something that as Akutami mentioned in an interview, he was absolutely going for.
So: Is Mahito all evil then?
No character arc, except growing stronger and more cruel?
I would say no.
Mahito's answer the central moral question of the story, what does it mean to live a
life worth living is simple: Life is worthless, so I should enjoy myself and follow my instincts.
Now, can we actually say that this is wrong.
I think we can.
The answer that Akutami is going for, for all his characters, is that a good life worth
living always includes forming relationships and bonds with others.
You can even see the curses doing it, in their small little curse family, where they care
for each other.
In short: The moral of JuJutsu Kaisen is that true happiness and purpose comes from acting
compassionate towards others.
That's why Mahito is wrong.
And the fact that he tries so hard to be the perfect curse, just underlines how human he
is.
This irony is actually wonderfully represented by his name.
Do you know what Mahito literally means?
True human.
Yeah.
Ironic - Mahito is on a journey to figure out the essence of his own soul, who he really
is.
And at some point, he might have to face the fact that he is actually more human than curse.
And I really hope we get to see more of that, as I think he is the perfect antagonist for
Yuji in the story.
Sukuna is absolutely fantastic, but he is way to complex and cool in my opinion to have
the same sense of evil and horror that Mahito spreads on such a fundamental level.
-
Now for the bonus pay off of this video.
Why does Mahito also have this beautiful blue eye that reminds us so much of Gojo?
I think this is done quite on purpose, as the two of them share some quite interesting
traits.
Their body language, especially their eyes radiate absolute certainty of their superiority.
They might appear childish and frivolous on the surface, but if you plunge their depths
they have a deeper understanding of themselves and their desires than most other characters
in the series.
They might not get other people, but that’s not their priority either.
And as we know, the eyes are the gates to the soul.
What makes both of them so special, is that both Mahito and Gojo can see things others
can't.
Gojo's six eyes allow him to perceive everything about a person, while Mahito is capable of
seeing the soul itself.
This results in both of them seeing everything which results in both of them being unable
to see people as individuals.
- And that's why Mahito has the same blue eye as Gojo.
As we all know though, what is much more important than your soul.
Is having a well defined six pack.
Which is why the next video is about - my feast friend -
Make sure to watch Todo's video here.
Thanks for watching.
Peace.