He doesn’t deserve to be treated this way by the story.
Major Jujutsu Kaisen manga spoilers ahead!
Summary:
- Megumi was a promising character who barely did anything impactful for the story.
- Yet the story keeps hinting at his potential.
- Megumi’s “potential” became a meme in the fandom.
There is one thing that Sukuna and the Jujutsu Kaisen fandom agree on: Megumi is special. But they approach it in different ways. Sukuna thinks Megumi is a great vessel for his soul, while the fandom thinks he’s an especially nice meme-generator.
Megumi had been receiving his fair share of criticism even before his body was taken over by Sukuna. The story kept dropping hints at Megumi’s power and importance, and yet it never properly explored them.
Too Many Promises, Too Little Exploration
All the words about Megumi’s greatness remained one thing: words. It’s like looking at a black wall, and someone keeps telling you that the wall is white. You hear their words, but they don’t change your mind: you still think the wall is black.
Jujutsu Kaisen was really trying to hype Megumi up. He had the Ten Shadows Technique, which included Mahoraga, an extremely powerful shikigami. He was revealed to be a descendant of the Zenin Clan.
The series kept saying that he could rival Gojo one day. Everything we heard about this character screamed “potential,” and it has become a meme.
Potential to Become a Meme
Fans love joking about Megumi’s “potential,” since it’s all the story provided him with. His input in the series is hardly greater than anyone else’s. The most significant thing he did was to let Sukuna “borrow” his body.
There was also great potential in Megumi’s Mahoraga, but it was wasted, too. Megumi never got the chance to properly fight the shikigami, and fans think it’s a major missed opportunity.
That’s how the meme started. No one takes Megumi and claims about his potential seriously anymore. Even his last words "With this treasure, I summon...", which is the beginning of the incantation to summon Mahoraga, became a meme.
And it’s upsetting that it came to this. This is not another fan joke, but Megumi did have potential indeed. Perhaps not to rival Gojo, but to become an actually interesting and impactful character.
Megumi used to be part of the main trio, and it was obvious that he was strong. After all, until the latest manga chapter he was the only one who had some sort of Domain Expansion out of the trio. It was unfinished, yes, but it’s still impressive.
There’s still hope that we’ll see Megumi again, but each new chapter of the manga makes this hope bleaker. It will take some major damage control to make fans believe that Megumi is not just a running joke of the series, but a character worthy of poetic words.