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linkspooky · 2 years

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YUTA OKKOTSU'S POWER OF FRIENDSHIP

So I’ve been writing analysis of every solo fight so far in the Culling Game arc, because for each of our four main participants (Yuji, Megumi, Yuta, Hakari) these fights are doing a good job of demonstrating the themes each character centers around, and challenging their ideologies. Yuji’s fight revolves around crime and punishment, because his main reason for fighting right now is his atonement for unleashing Sukuna in Shibuya, and he fights against a literal defense attorney. Megumi’s fight revolves around pushing his limits to be individually stronger, and also making the decision to kill for the first time because Megumi isn’t fighting to be a hero he just wants the power to save the select few he’s chosen to save including his sister.

Then we get to Yuta’s fight, which is so different from the first two fights and sets out to illustrate what makes Yuta so different as a character from Yuji and Megumi. Yuji and Megumi care about saving other people yes, but they’re also staunch individualists, they’re main strategy is to acquire strength for themselves and go off fighting alone following their own ideals. Yuta, while being the strongest of the three is a collectivist, and a borderline codependent one at that. While Yuji and Megumi both use their powers for their own goals, Yuta only seems to do things for the sake of other people, he’s entering into the tournament in the first place to help Megumi with his sister, and also kill Geto alone for Gojo’s sake so he won’t be forced to kill his best friend again. He’s even confused by his opponents fighting for themselves rather than their loved ones, which is why he stops in the middle of a fight to ask his opponent if it’s really worth fighting and dying in the culling game when you might have people who care for you.

1. Don’t You Have a Lover or Friends

So the main lesson Yuta Okkotsu learned in Jujutsu Kaisen Zero, is progressing from someone who wanted to die alone in his room so he would not hurt others anymore, to finding a reason to live in using his power to protect the people around him instead of being afraid of it. If Megumi and Yuji’s characters both revolve around two methods of saving people, Megumi who wants to pick and choose who he saves and Yuji who wants to save everyone he can, then Yuta’s character revolves around this idea of making connections to the people around him and finding strength from those connections. Ironically, of the three of them he’s the “power of nakama” Shonen protagonist guy.

In his original series he progresses from wishing to die alone, to wishing to live on with the other people around him. He even uses the power he was once so scared to use he was okay dying alone in a locked up room, to fight against and even kill Geto for the sake of protecting others. However, as Geto points out right away and as further characters will continue to point out there’s a bit of a self-centered element to the way Yuta sees the world. “How selfish - but it’s self-affirmation.” Basically, Yuta wants to be surrounded by friends to get validation from other people. If he didn’t receive that validation it’s likely Yuta wouldn’t have the strength to go on. Of course the same is true for a lot of people as well, everyone wants validation from others, but it’s important to understand Yuta’s entire mindset is constructed around this concept, Yuta literally only sees the world through the lens of the relationships between people.

When we’re reintroduced to him in Jujutsu Kaisen, right away we’re shown that his mindset has expanded since his fight with Geto. He personally doesn’t know Yuji, but because Yuji is important to his other classmates, Yuta will fight to defend him too.

However,there are a couple of things that are off about this scene. One, Yuta misunderstands Yuji in a subtle way when he’s tryingto comfort him. As I said Yuta has a pretty self-centered view of the world, not that he’s selfish because he literally does everything he does for the sake of other people but rather he’s only capable of understanding his own mindset. He doesn’t really comprehend the way that Yuji thinks. He only understands Yuji is an importnat person through his way of seeing people through their relationships, “Yuji is important to people who are important to me, so I should treat him that way.”

For context on how... weird... Yuta’s sense of empathy works. That line “you’re important to the people who are important to me” is a direct Hunter x Hunter reference. It’s something Neferpitou says when they’re attempting to heal Komugi for the sake of the king.

To give a really, really brief meta of this scene. The king of the chimera ants create three newborn soldiers to act as his royal guard, who are all unconditionally loyal to him. They represent three developing stages of empathy. The first one fights, but doesn’t question his orders at all, and doesn’t really develop any attachment beyond that. The second one (the butterfly one) is so aware of their own feelings, that they actively crave the chimera ant king’s love and validation and they also get jealous and attempt to monopolize him. The third Neferpitou is the only one who has a developed enough sense of empathy to realize that even though they might not personally care for Komugi, Komugi is important to the king, and therefore someone to be protected if they also want to take care of the king’s emotions.

This is also a pretty close parallel to the three stages of empathy development.

Cognitive empathy is being aware of the emotional state of another person.

Emotional empathy is engaging with and sharing those emotions.

Compassionate empathy involves taking action to support other people.

My point being that like, Yuta is a hugely empathic character yes, but he’s also being compared here to a frankenstein’s monster nonbinary cat who was born literally like a week ago and is just now developing a sense of empathy. If Gege is purposefully referencing Neferpitou here and drawing a line between the two characters, that means Yuta was probably in about stage two in Jujutsu Kaisen, Zero and is just now crossing the line into stage three. His empathy is still in the process of developing is all I’m saying, and we see signs of that throughout his fight.

There are a couple of things Yuta are shown doing, that both Yuji and Megumi don’t do in their fights, primarily because they’re so focused on themselves. For example, Yuta is the only one who attempts to reach out and understand his opponents, asking them questions like why they are fighting.

He’s also the only one of the three shown like, making an actual attempt to protect powerless people and innocents, even like having to give up Rika and fight significantly weakened against two strong opponents in order to protect a stadium of people who can’t fight for themselves.

In comparison Megumi, bless his heart, almost takes out the powerless Remi for betraying him in his fight, even though she was for the most part just a scared girl trying to survive in a bad situation and panicking and the only thing that stopped Megumi from finishing her off was his connection to Tsumiki.

Not only are Yuta’s priorities different from most of the other sorcerers, because he firmly values other people and his connections to other people over himself, he also really can’t comprehend why some of the ancient sorcerers are reincarnating and fighting in this battle thousands of years afterthey originally died if they don’t have any loved ones to fight for. Yuta’s entire mind is focused on protecting friends, but he also doesn’t understand how people who don’t have friends can even fight in the first place.

This is shown throughout the fight for Yuta to be both a weakness and a strength. Yuta has things to protect, and things to fight for and because he’s trying to do both at once (protect himself, and also keep other people in the culling game safe) he’s stuck fighting on multiple fronts and is severely weakened by not having Rika around because she’s off protecting other people.

In contrast he’s also fighting against two people who have basically no reason to live, no people to protect, and therefore nothing to lose. They’re putting it all into the fight and risking it all. Yuta also, can’t understand either of them. He doesn’t udnerstand the pompadour guy who is only fighting for the selfish desire of living a satisfied life, and he can’t understand what it’s like to have absolutely no reason to exist like the lady who was once a vassal of the Fujiwara.

Yuta is also even cornered in the fight despite his good intentions, and forced to withdraw Rika from protecting people in the stadium, and put them at risk because otherwise he would lose the fight and die right there. All of this to say, while Yuta’s very idealistic and empathic, he also is working in a really harsh reality where people have to constantly compromise on their ideals, and most people don’t really have the strength to protect everyone around them. Even Yuta does not wield that kind of strength to protect everyone all on his own, because he’s forced to put other people at risk by recalling Rika just to survive.

He’s also not completely capable of empathizing with others as he wants to be even if he reaches out. When he tries to reach out to the girl, he’s basically called out for the fact that, someone as powerful as he was who hasn’t lived through her circumstances really can’t understand her. Even if he has good intentions.

So, Yuta’s a pretty unique character in that he’s based on both the strengths and shortcomings of empathy. For one, Yuta’s cursed technique is copy (it’s implied he consumes people to copy their technique, as Rikka quite literally devours a piece of Uro’s arm and then he’s able to use her technique). He also is one of the few characters who makes attempts to reach out and understand their own opponents. He talks to Uro, and he also, has a moment of connection and clarity with pompadour guy.

Their reasons for fighting are very different, Ishigori fights for his own sake, Yuta doesn’t actually care about fighting it’s a means to an end he just wants to keep his loved ones around him. However, when he battles against him, Yuta is such a big empathy sponge that even though he doesn’t understand him, in their final showdown he relates to him just a bit and wants to give Ishigori the full power battle he’s seeking.

Yuta’s also a character who is very unique to the Jujutsu World at large, because he values other people so much he goes against the grain of the heavy individualist mindset For one, he spares opponents who may be a threat to him later. Ichigori even comments he’s not someone who could ever become as strong as Satoru Gojo or Sukuna, because he still takes into account the feelings and wills of other people instead of ignoring them entirely and focusing on himself.

Yuta is also, running contrary to where a lot of other character’s arcs are going. For example, Gojo was only able to become the strongest after abandoning his earlthy attachments to people like Geto and focusing on fighting entirely alone, at which point he became the pillar of jujutsu society. Even Maki reaches her potential, not out of cooperation with her sister, but after the death of her sister makes her let go of everything. In both Gojo and Maki’s mindsets, the people they were tethered too, the people who humanized them, were also holding them back from reaching their full potential for their physical strength so they let go and chose power over that connection

Yuta makes the opposite choice from almost all other characters in this pattern. Instead of choosing to become a singularly strong person, he keeps choosing again and again to hold onto the attachment of his comrades. And as I said, there are limits to Yuta’s empathic mindset. He doesn’t have the pure aggression of someone like Sukuna. He also can’t understand people like Uro who aren’t blessed and therefore “have nothing”. Yuta is only able to fight the way he does, because he’s naturally gifted with an extremely strong curse technique, and he also is surrounded by good friends.

Yuta even comments he might have killed both of the people he was fighting against, if his comrade hadn’t made it possible to transfer points without killing them in time. However, it’s because Yuta chooses to fight with those people instead of fighting alone, that makes him so much different from others sorcerers, even if it means he’s also more vulnerable. Maki destroyed her humanity and threw away her human heart when she lost Mai, whereas Yuta fights to keep his, even though that’s the more difficult path to walk as a sorcerer because everything in the world of sorcerers encourages you to destroy any vulernability you might have and fight alone.

Of course I wonder where this great conflict of Yuta’s that is set up is going next. As I previously established, he is basically the opposite of Maki.

I wonder if the reason Miwa showed up at the end of his fight is to tell him the news of what happened to Maki, as Maki showed up with Mai’s body in front of Momo and asked her to bury it, it’s understandable Miwa might know what’s happening. Either way, Yuta is definitely a character who is going to be continually challenged on his ideals, because fighting for togetherness and cooperation is basically fighting against the extremely individualist mindset of jujutsu society as a whole. There may even be a clash between Maki and Yuta in our future, because their ideals are so different, the way that Geto and Gojo despite being each other’s closest friends and closest thing to an equal eventually had to clash because their ideals became so different.

#yuta okkotsu #maki zenin #jjk meta #jujutsu kaisen meta #ishigori ryu #takako uro #jujutsu kaisen theory #jujutsu kaisen spoilers

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