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Warning: this article contains spoilers for the Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter #163, “Tokyo No. 1 Colony, Part 3,” by Gege Akutami, John Werry, and Snir Aharon, available in English via Viz Media.
Jujutsu Kaisen’s ongoing story arc in the manga continues to intensify each week since the Jujutsu High students have joined the Culling Game. Yuji and Megumi entered the game with a specific objective in mind. They needed to find a sorcerer named Hiromi Higuruma who has already garnered 100 points. In other words, a man who has already killed 100 people.
Yuji and Megumi planned to use Higuruma’s 100 points to add a rule that would nullify the aspect of the Culling Game that forces participants to kill each other. The two Jujutsu High first-years ended up getting separated and Yuji is the one who eventually found Higuruma. Yuji explained their intent to him and asked if they can use his 100 points but Higuruma immediately refused. Thus, the stage was set for what could be one of Jujutsu Kaisen’s most captivating fights yet.
The most interesting fights in any work of fiction are those between complex characters who have clashing philosophies. Yuji vs. Higuruma has everything it needs to be exactly that. In a way, these two are the perfect opponents because of how they each view the act of killing another person, what they consider right or wrong, and the fact that they met as participants in a game where the entire point is to kill people.
Higuruma was a criminal lawyer who was passionate about making things right. He said himself that ever since he was a kid, he couldn’t leave things alone if something wasn’t right. He always knew that the law wasn’t truly impartial, so he took it upon himself to always keep his eyes open to that unfairness and try to help those in need. Unfortunately, because of how corrupt the system is, more often than not his efforts were proven futile.
Higuruma tolerated his clients taking out their anger on him when he wasn’t able to get them an innocent verdict because he understood their frustrations and sympathized with them. However, being an outlet for his client’s anger and hatred combined with his own anger at the corrupted law system took a toll on his mental state, and eventually, he reached a breaking point. This is how he became the man who killed 100 people in the Culling Game and doesn’t care about much anymore.
RELATED: Jujutsu Kaisen: Yuji and Megumi Finally Join the Culling Game – and Meet Trouble
Yuji has never been okay with killing people. Not even when they were turned into Cursed Spirits and no longer looked like humans. He still felt remorse even if they were his enemies. This was particularly evident after he and Nobara fought the Cursed Womb: Death Paintings, Eso and Kechizu. He felt guilty for killing them and actually apologized to Eso as he landed the finishing blow. It doesn’t help that later on, he remembered that Kenjaku is his parent, which technically makes Choso, Eso, and Kechizu his brothers.
What makes Yuji the character with the guiltiest conscience isn’t actually something he did. Sukuna used his Domain Expansion during the Shibuya Incident arc and massacred an innumerable amount of civilians who were present in the area. Yuji sees this as his own fault and that resulted in him having a mental breakdown. This traumatic incident hasn’t been brought up in a while, but during his fight against Higuruma would be a great time for it to be addressed once again.
Higuruma’s Cursed Technique has yet to be revealed. The only thing fans know for sure is that he has a creepy Shikigami with balancing scales hanging from it. The popular theory is that his technique has to do with judging his targets and deciding whether they are innocent or guilty and to what extent. If this is actually the case, it’s not surprising that he’s killed 100 people during his time in the Culling Game. After all, random people are going around murdering each other, and a lot of those murdered people were probably innocent. That alone warrants finding the killers guilty.
The irony of Higuruma’s character is that he’s no longer any more innocent than anyone he may consider guilty, considering he’s murdered 100 people. Even if they’re technically bad people, he’s in no position to decide who deserves to live or die. It would be a different story if he found some way to incapacitate and imprison them, but that isn’t the case. If his Cursed Technique somehow allows him to find out how guilty a person is, or at least how guilty they feel, then Yuji is definitely going to have a difficult time fighting him.
Interestingly, after Amai led Yuji to Higuruma in Chapter #163, he told him that Higuruma once beat Haba to a pulp. This might imply that Higuruma found it unnecessary to kill Haba, which means he isn’t just a maniac killing anyone he runs into. It’s also possible that Haba was able to escape instead of having been let go. This could potentially become a relevant point of interest down the line.
Higuruma told Yuji that the reason he doesn’t want the Culling Game to end is that essentially the rules work in the impartial way he wishes the law and court system would. He sees it as a wonderful thing that people who break the rules in the game are sure to be punished. In theory, that wouldn’t be a bad thing if the punishment wasn’t death 100% of the time. He even expressed his desire to witness the Cursed Technique removal at least once, which is basically a death sentence.
This fight could be an opportunity for Higuruma to regain his humanity. Yuji is a pure-hearted teenager who technically hasn’t done anything wrong but feels a lot of remorse for situations that were out of his control anyway. Higuruma learning about Yuji and having someone like him listen and try to make him see reason could help him realize that the way he’s doing things isn’t right.
If Yuji is able to get through to Higuruma somehow during their fight, it would be a favorable outcome for JJK readers. Higuruma has already become a fan-favorite character because of his backstory and unhinged demeanor as an antagonist. Fans are hoping for the fight to conclude without him dying. Knowing that Gege Akutami is an author who doesn’t shy away from killing off characters only adds to the intensity of the showdown.
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