Jujutsu Kaisen / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes (2024)

• Just the concept of Curses in general is this: an endless legion of evil spirits who's only instinct is to bring harm to as many humans as possible. They can't be seen normally, range from mild annoyances to gigantic man-eating monsters, and can spawn anywhere and at anytime. And many of them look like someone stitched a bunch of human facial features and limbs onto an animal carcass.
• Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses who's possessing Yuji Itadori's body. Too Many Mouths? Check. Slasher Smile? Check. Gleefully planning to commit a massacre the moment he emerges out of Yuji? Check. Not to mention that his aforementioned abundance of mouths occur in places where it shouldn't, such as Yuji's face or hand.
• Speaking of Sukuna, the story pulls no punches to show just how awful Yuji's situation with him is. Yuji, a 15-year-old boy with zero experience with the world of sorcerers and curses, is possessed by a curse, but not any curse, but by the Vengeful Cursed Spirit of the most powerful evil sorcerer known. Differently from many fantasy series where the protagonist's Superpowered Evil Side can be tamed with The Power of Friendship, is not wholly malevolent and/or can be weaponized against the greater threat, Sukuna is a sad*stic and sociopathic individual who actively hurts and sabotages Yuji because he can. To make matters even worse, because he is hosting the setting's equivalent to the Anti-Christ, Yuji's life is completely fortfeit, with multiple characters openly plotting to kill him eventually to neuter the danger Sukuna presents.
• Mahito is the Disaster Curse embodying all the fear, regret and hatred humanity feels towards each other, he's unsuprisingly one of the most demented and unsettling characters in the series.
  • There's something subtly off about his human looks, almost like something that's wearing a mask, but not getting what makes a human entirely right.
  • His Innate Technique, Idle Transfiguration, allows him to "change the shape of the soul". What this means for any humans unlucky enough to be touched by him is that their bodies transform past recognition, and they are left to slowly die, or serve Mahito, as grotesque abominations.

• Not that curses attacking civilians isn't always terrifying, but it's particularly haunting seeing the one that catches Yuji's friend Sasaki molesting her before attempting to eat her. That's after she had witnessed a gruesome, hand-like curse attach itself aggressively to Iguchi's head.
• Jogo demonstrates his power by lighting a whole restaurant on fire. Not the restaurant itself; everyone in it, one by one, is incinerated without him even getting up. He did this purely to vent excitement at the prospect of killing Gojo himself.
  • The anime prolongs this scene, with people reacting to each other suddenly catching fire before combusting themselves. The last victim, a waitress, watches everyone die in terror and barely reaches the door to safety before she combusts. This speaks volumes of Jogo's control over his abilities and his sad*stic streak.
  • While it is played for laughs moments before, a waiter could instinctively feel that he would die if he walked over to the table. He quits his job and runs out of the restaurant. With the incident that happens afterwards, he barely managed to avoid a gruesome fate.
• Junpei's death. The boy goes after his bullies, thinking them responsible for his mother's death. After a fight, Yuji manages to calm him and bring him to reason, only for Mahito to arrive and transfigure him. He dies from the damage, realising that Mahito had arranged his mother's death.
  • Mahito and Sukuna are left howling in laughter at his fate, the latter after denying Yuji's desperate request to save his friend.

• Quite literally everything about the creation of the Cursed Painting: Death Wombs, 9 Special Grade relics from the Meiji Era. These are the twisted result of a woman with the ability to give birth to human-Curse hyrids being taken hostage by Noritoshi Kamo, forcibly impregnated and aborted 9 times. What happened after that was apparently so horrific that all records of it were put to the torch, which says quite a bit about how awful it was that the 9 abortions was considered necessary information. The end result is one missing dead woman and 9 demonic and fully sapient fetuses with different varieties of Blood Magic sealed in jars for over a century with nothing to do but refine said Blood Magic techniques. And it was all a funny but ultimately failed little experiment to Kenjaku.

Hoo boy, as the Wham Episode to the series, get ready for lots and lots of Body Horror and Nightmare Fuel.

• In the lead-up to the Shibuya Event, a newly restored Kokichi Muta/Mechamaru faces off against Mahito, managing to do very well up until Mahito crashes into his co*ckpit with a Nightmare Face that encapsulates his entire Uncanny Valley vibe.
• Modern-day Shibuya is a massive party venue and experiences a staggering peak of activity on Halloween due to cosplay raves and similar events completely overtaking the area. The Curse Users' decision to attack this location on this day results in a huge number of helpless civilians being trapped and horribly killed.
• Kenjaku. This man, whose technique allows him to transplant his brain into other people, taking over their bodies and acquiring their techniques. He's said to be at least as old as Sukuna, and the worst part is that it's implied Suguru Geto is only one of many bodies he's taken over the years in the name of furthering his terrible goals.
  • How horrible is he? He took the body of Noritoshi Kamo, who 'impregnated a woman that can create a half-human, half curse hybrid, nine times in a row, just for experiments. Even more horrific is that he at one point took on the identity of Yuji's own mother, who at one point murdered Jin Itadori after conceiving Yuji.
  • His tool, the Prison Realm, looks like a simple fabric-wrapped cube with etchings, the still-alive remains of a Heian era Buddhist monk by the name of Genshin. When activated, it breaks apart to reveal a fleshy mass with a large, bleeding eyeball in the middle. Stay within its range for one minute, and it envelops your body, trapping you in place and removing any ability to fight back. Infinity doesn't even work against it. At a final command, it closes up, locking you in a hellish void where skeletons surround and grasp you. It will only release you after a thousand years have passed. Even worse? It doesn't take one actual minute to be trapped — it just has to feel like one minute to the victim. Gojo, flashing through 3 years of his life upon seeing Geto, had no chance to escape.
  • How does Kenjaku reveal himself? Gojo, while trapped, asks who the person in Geto's body is. Kenjaku responds by pulling a string that had been keeping the top of his head on, and takes it off like a cap complete with brain fluids oozing out over the rim, revealing a brain with teeth inside his skull. The startlingly large smile he flashes Gojo with, seemingly caused by Geto's facial muscles going completely slack, like a marionette puppet that's having a grin held up by it's master, is absurdly sinister.◊
• An earpiece of Mechamaru warns Yuji of what transpired with his teacher. In one sentence, it's revealed that the odds are now on the cursed spirits' and non-curse users' side and foreshadows everything going downhill from there.

  Satoru Gojo has been sealed.

  See Also

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• The Special Grade Curses show in this arc that they are Special Grade for a reason.
  • The ocean curse, Dagon, looks docile and silly. In Shibuya, after being punched, it to vomits out a whole mountain of bones from humans it has consumed. Then in rage, its body splits apart, revealing a far more menacing form. It then activates its Domain Expansion, Horizon of the Captivating Skandha. This is Nightmare Fuel for a few reasons:
    • One, its sure-hit attack consists of fish shikigami that could penetrate sorcerers. Nanami and Naobito lost their limbs because of that.
    • Two, said shikigami can appear out of nowhere, and
    • Three, the Uncanny Valley the scenery in the Domain can suspect viewers that the hideout for the cursed spirits is actually a Domain.
  • Jogo then makes the situation way more worse. How?
    • After the group escapes Dagon's Domain by Toji, Jogo then burns all 3 sorcerers. Nanami and Maki get burns, the former looking like Two-Face, while Naobito gets burned so badly that he dies from his injures.
    • Next, Jogo then feeds ten of Sukuna's fingers to Yuji while he is unconscious, with two curse users feeding him another beforehand, unleashing Sukuna. To say everything gets much more worse is an understatement.
    • First, the King of Curses slashes Jogo just because he only kneeled on one knee Sukuna is then not pleased with any perceived attempts to order him around, so he cruelly murders the two girls (read: cut in half and diced) and challenges Jogo to hit him in exchange for any assistance.
    • During the fight, Jogo summons a meteor down on the city. Sukuna, being an asshole that he is, threatens several witnesses (among them Panda and Kusakabe) to not move before the meteor hits or they die.
    • At the end of the fight, Sukuna then reveals that he can conjure a fire arrow to Jogo, which ultimately ends with his demise. Just who exactly is Sukuna?
  • Mahito. Somehow, this guy managed to be worse than ever from his previous appearances.
    • As Nanami, half dead, fights the transfigured humans, Mahito then appears and touches him with Idle Transfiguration. Nanami, after daydreaming about Haibara, gets his upper half exploded. Yuji, just reeling from Sukuna's destruction, is forced to watch it happen.

      Nanami: "You take it from here." (explodes)

    • After breaking down, Yuji then shouts and starts to fight Mahito.

      Yuji: "What the... WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU? MAHITO?!!!! "
      Mahito: "I CAN CLEARLY HEAR YOU!!!! ITADORI YUJI?!!!!"
      

    • As Yuji chases Mahito in a station, Nobara then appears and both of them see each other. Yuji, knowing what would happen to Nobara, tells Nobara to run only for Mahito to touch Nobara's eye.

      Yuji: "RUN, KUGISAKI!!!"

    • The end result of this is that Nobara's left eye explodes, creating a hole as Nobara falls down to ground. The anime makes it worse by having the first person POV of Nobara's eye hole as Yuji breaks down again.
    • Instant Spirit Body of Distorted Killing. Just from the name alone, it shows that things will be worse.
    • The form puts Mahito strength and durability much more than Yuji's in exchange for his Idle Transfiguration. The result is that Yuji can't even dent Mahito's body without Black Flash.
    • Yuji's Badass Boast to Mahito is both an awesome moment and a horrifying one, due to just how malicious and predatory it sounds, so much that it could very well be a villain speech:

      Yuji: You're right, Mahito. I'm you. I wanted to reject you, convince myself that you were wrong. But that doesn't matter now. I'm gonna kill you. Even if you come back as another curse, I'll kill you. Change your name. Change your form. I'll kill you again. I don't need to find meaning or a reason. Maybe in a hundred years after my death, the meaning behind my actions will become apparent. In the grand scheme of things... I'm probably nothing more than a cog. But I'll keep killing curses... for as long as I can. That's my role in all this.

• After dispatching the Special Grade, Sukuna meets, to his surprise, a former associate, Uraume. By the time they part, they appear to have arranged for a plan that would allow Sukuna to be free.
• Sukuna senses that Fushiguro has summoned his trump card across the city, and is very close to death. He leaves Uraume and manages to defeat the uncontrollable monster that Megumi summoned, saving the sorcerer. In the process, however, he unleashes his Domain Expansion and Fire Arrow, purposefully causing staggering amounts of damage in a 140 meter radius, cratering the area and killing most of the civilians taking shelter. He does all of this simply for the sake of violence and destruction, and ends his rampage making sure Yuji would remember all of it.
• In Chapter 137, A little girl whose scurrying around for food is lured by a very creepy humanoid kind of curse who continues to repeat what the girl has said to it, the little girl decides to offer the curse a drink. Right as she walks out the door, it is revealed the monstrous entity had used a dead body as bait to lure the girl out to devour her. Luckily for her, Yuta Okkotsu was around to save the day. Otherwise....
• The Shibuya Incident ends on a terrible note, as even though the Disaster Curses are gone, a very large number of civilians and sorcerers are left dead or injured. Gojo is sealed, while the unknown man in Geto's body escapes with Prison Realm and Mahito's techniques for future plans. The elders' response only worsens it: Gojo is declared an "accomplice" of the incident, exiling him from the world of jujutsu, with attempts to rescue him from the Prison Realm made a capital offense. Yaga is framed as a traitor for "inciting" both Gojo and Geto. Concurrently, Yuji's death sentence is reinstated, to be carried out immediately by Yuta Okkotsu, who harbors a grudge against him for Inumaki's loss of an arm in Shibuya. Finally, Geto has awakened the potential of nearly 1000 people (including Megumi's step-sister), and unleashed millions of curses, to sow chaos in the country for his agenda.
• The consequences Japan and its non-sorcerer citizens have to deal with after the Shibuya Incident. The government decides to publicly declare the existence of cursed energy, plans to evacuate millions of civilians have begun, and the economy is starting to unravel with Japanese yen dropping in value. The sudden huge loss of life alongside the massive crater left in Shibuya with no explanation will likely stir a panic within the country.

• Maki's rampage in chapter 150 is one of the most brutal displays of violence seen printed in the pages of Shonen Jump. After reaching Toji in terms of power through Mai's death, Maki singlehandedly takes down scores of the Zen'in clan cronies with her boosted restriction technique as penance for their abusive ways. The chapter begins with Maki brutally slaughtering the Zen'in personal guard with effortless movements, liberating arms from forearms, heads from shoulders, and penis from groin in one instance. One unfortunate soul is killed when Maki brings her blade up through his chin and into his skull, ultimately pulling his entire face off as she drags her blade out of his head. She effortlessly dispatches some of the highest ranked members of the Zen'in clan following this all at the same time, ripping one's throat out and decapitating another, throwing his head into a lake. The chapter ends with Naoya asking if Maki has "a human heart". Her response?

  Maki: No... It was taken from me.

• Chapter 159 is this crossed over with Tear Jerker. Through the backstory of culling game participant Hiromi Higuruma, we are treated to an utterly harrowing depiction of the Japanese justice system.
  • Prior to the game, Higuruma was formerly a criminal defense attourney who would frequently take on difficult cases while knowing his results in law school opening up pretty much any legal job he could have wanted, despite both Japan's 99% conviction rate and the psychological toll involved, in order to ensure his clients would at least have a chance of receiving a fair trial. However, due to the severe imbalance in resources between independent defence lawyers and public prosecutors, these attempts are implied to ultimately prove futile - with Higuruma's clients taking their subsequent anger and distress out on him.
  • The case that caused Higuruma to snap involved a man with a criminal record who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and subsequently blamed for a family's murder. The prosecution lazily convicted the man without even bothering to consider the ample evidence and circ*mstances surrounding the case that could've proven his innocence, causing Higuruma to furiously call for a retrial while awakening his cursed technique: a terrifying specter with stitched eyes and justice scales for its arms.

  Higuruma: Everyone come back. We're having a retrial.

• Chapter 163 has a chilling opening with a flashback of a bystander Amai Rin witnessing Yuji punching down bullies, with a near-blank expression the whole time.
• In Chapter 165, upon hearing Itadori bluntly admit to committing mass murder, the once stoic Judgeman’s face twists with anger and sentences Itadori to death.
• Chapter 173 introduces a Special Grade curse named Kurourushi. If its face didn't give you away, this ugly sucker is the result of humanity's fear of co*ckroaches, which Kurourushi controls and propagates as part of his Cursed Technique. Worse, it controls a rivers of co*ckroaches that can reduce a human to mere bones in seconds. It's also stated that Kurouroushi was hibernating up until Yuta killed one of the strongest Culling Game players in the colony, causing it to wake up and start eating now that its biggest obstacle was out of the way. Yuta meets it when it sicks its co*ckroach swarms on a group of civilians.
  • The cursed tool at its disposal isn't much better in that it doesn't stop at cutting things. Rather, it injects insect eggs into the unfortunate victim, which hatch into fully mature co*ckroaches that will proceed to eat the victim from the inside out.
• Chapter 200 reveals what Kenjaku's been up to all this time as well as the preparations he's done prior to Gojo's sealing. He went to various foreign countries and revealed to them the existence of the Jujutsu world in full, playing into the idea that cursed energy could be used as an alternate energy source. The Under Secretary of the U.S. office realizes what Kenjaku's playing at with this, namely that in order to study cursed energy to determine its viability, they need to capture Jujutsu Sorcerers and Curse Users. Kenjaku tells them they'll have all the study cases they need in November, i.e. the Culling Games. To reiterate, this guy has not only been playing Gojo and the others around for fools, but managed to convince foreign nations to secretly infiltrate Japan to seek out and capture anyone who can use cursed energy. Fridge Horror does not even begin to cover it.
• Chapter 202 has Kenjaku finally reveal his master plan: To merge all non-Sorcerers into a massive abomination using Master Tengen. The kicker? When Choso demands to know why, Kenjaku responds "It just sounds fun." All the suffering, the mass casualties, the pain our heroes have endured? All of it was for no greater reason than a madman's amusem*nt.
• Kenjaku finally reveals his Domain Expansion while fighting Yuki Tsukumo; An absolutely diabolical and abominable thing by the name of "All-Encompassing Womb Realm" that depicts mutilated corpses of women and mummified corpses sitting in prayer around what appears to be a tree made of faces caught somewhere between screaming and laughter. The effect it has isn't much better, easily peeling Yuki's Simple Domain apart before twisting one of her arms around by the elbow until the entire limb was a pretzel while simultaneously dunking her through the floor with enough force to shatter it.
  • The fact that Domain Expansions are Personality Powers incarnate, literally the person casting it's inner world projected onto the real one, and this is the shape it takes only speaks to the absolutely horror in store for this thing's victims, which might soon be all of mankind.
• Chapter 209: The soldiers are shown to have somewhat of a chance against modern-day sorcerers, tranquilizing a panicked Remi with ease and managing to kill Haba off-screen. But, they are completely outmatched by Cursed Spirits, who they have no expertise in handling. As the header image shows, one unfortunate soldier is treated to a Cursed Spirit that looks like a lumpy clove of heads on eerily long limbs wandering out of an underground passage to presumably eat him alive, completely freaking out without even knowing that his gun, which isn't a Cursed Tool, won't even dent it.
• Chapter 210: A Fishermen style curse has been using Soldiers (who are still relatively alive and conscious) as bait for the cursed fish below the building. Using said bait attracts one of the cursed fish and it snags onto the line, prompting the fisherman to whip it up to it's platform ontop and we're shown that there are other curses who feed upon both the cursed fish and the soldier inside. It shows us (The audience) that curses eat each other and can also care not for one another much like how humans can be toward one another.
• Chapter 212:
  • Tsumiki is revealed to have been fully possessed by an incarnated Sorcerer known as Yorozu, who absorbed her memories and flawlessly mimicked Tsumiki's personality up to the groups' meeting. After spending the points that the sorcerers achieved in trying to free Tsumiki of the Culling Game to enable travel between Colonies, she declares herself to the horrified Megumi as his big sister with an inhumanly wide smile.
  • Sukuna takes advantage of the chaos of Yozoru's impersonation of Tsumiki and effectively opening all of the Culling Game colonies to activate the forgotten Binding Vow he established with Yuji in Chapter 11. He takes over his body, knocks Hana out (And ONLY because of the Binding Vow keeping him from killing anyone), breaks Yuji's pinky off, and then feeds it to Megumi. In one minute Sukuna achieves what he has been working for since the beginning of the series: possessing Megumi. With Megumi essentially dead, Hana and Angel unconscious, Sukuna in control of the Ten Shadows Technique as well as being free of his Binding Vow / Yuji's influence, and everything Kenjaku has planned, this may be the Darkest Hour for the Jujutsu sorcerers.
• Chapter 213 comes to show just how much of a threat Sukuna has been ever since the Shibuya Incident, both power and intelligence.
  • Ever since he met Megumi, he’d sensed both his potential and tolerance to withstand him. But since there was a chance he could be a “cage” (like Yuji suppressing him) instead of a “vessel”, he waited for the exact moment Megumi’s spirit would break while regaining his power. And it worked. Now free from his former vessel's control, the first thing Sukuna does is send Yuji flying across the city with a single punch in the gut.
  • Worse, he now has access to Megumi’s Ten Shadows Technique, in which he summons a monstrous Nue several dozens of times bigger than the original to rain lightning down on the protagonists and allies. Considering it’s amplified by Sukuna’s Cursed Energy, one can only wonder how powerful his other shikigami can be, including Mahoraga.
  • The only threat to Sukuna now is Hana/Angel, who cancels out the summon and unleashes “Jacob’s Ladder”, a holy Kill Sat that completely shreds the ancient sorcerer as he screams in agony. However, Sukuna exploits Hana’s feelings for Megumi to cancel the technique by pretending to have been suppressed. Despite the Angel’s pleas, Hana falls for it and embraces him, to which the chapter ends with a very deranged Sukuna attempting to devour her whole.
• Chapter 217: This chapter particularly shows how some of the most Formidable sorcerers are not only interested in Ryomen Sukuna for Battle but also for a twisted sense and view of love like Yorozu. A sorcerer who is in fact an Insane Ax-Crazy loony bin with a fascination for dead corpses to marry and wants to kill and defeat Sukuna all so she can do just that and make a "ceremony" filled with dead heads of handsome men and Monkey brain pottage to feast on. Her excited demeanor and outlandish behavior doesn't make it any better.
  • This chapter showcased that even the more docile and gentle looking of Megumi's Shikigami, such as the Divine Dogs, can be twisted into vicious and bloodthirsty versions of their normal forms. This chapter ended with Sukuna summoning a ring above his head eerily similar to Mahoraga, the next chapter will be a beat down for Yorozu and it will be bad.
• Chapter 219: A glimpse into the Heian era is seen in that Yorozu was once a Country Bumpkin who was known to have an abhorrent interest in Sukuna and a tendency to be naked. Within her own home we see that she's highly abusive without a care in the world toward her servant and blatantly admits she abuses her everyday to her face so she should be "Used" to it. We are also shown through the conversation between some local noblemen that the teams of both the Sun-Moon-Stars and the Five Void Generals were rendered utterly unrecognizable as corpses by Ryomen Sukuna, and the now the imperial capital is trying to stay on Sukuna's good side in order to avoid the same fate upon themselves by holding festivities in his honor. No wonder folklore from Iwate in Real Life depicts Sukuna as a guardian god; this one made such a Mook Horror Show of the best of the best Japan had to offer at the time that appealing to his ego like this was the only way to survive.

• Chapter 238: We are told exactly what happened to the sorcerers who sharpen their skills against Ryomen Sukuna during his reign in the Golden Age of Jujutsu. Sukuna, armed with Kamutoke and Hiten in tow, faced off with the Five Void Generals and the Sun-Moon-Stars Squad of the Fujiwara Clan, of whom Uro was the leader. Sukuna slaughtered both groups and forced the Abe Clan's Desshichin Squad (where Angel came from) and the remnants of the Sugawara Clan (Gojo and Yuta's distant ancestors) to make a hasty retreat.