He’d never be able to defeat Sukuna at this pace.
Summary:
- Fans are waiting for Yuji to finally go against Sukuna.
- However, he just can’t beat him with his current techniques.
- Yuji not being able to use Domain Expansion is a trope subversion, but it’s not something that would make sense.
The reception of the latest Jujutsu Kaisen chapters has been less than stellar. It seems that the manga has been stuck in a very odd loop. Chapter after chapter, the events tend to play out the same way.
Characters lose to Sukuna and die, and the fandom continues to make memes about Sukuna holding back and “technique that hasn’t been used since the Heian era.”
The big question of the arc, however, is when Yuji is going to stand up against him and end this cycle of suffering for both the characters and the readers.
The only problem, however, is that Yuji definitely isn’t strong enough to defeat Sukuna as of now. In general, he is not that strong by JJK standards, and him winning against Sukuna wouldn’t make much sense.
Yuji just can’t compare to other characters in the series
Jujutsu Kaisen is full of very strong characters — or, well, was until many of them got killed. However, Yuji, despite being the protagonist, isn’t really one of them. By the current point of the manga, his abilities are just not that strong.
There’s nothing in Yuji’s arsenal that wasn’t already used by other characters. Reverse Cursed Technique, while initially mentioned as one of the most complex techniques in the series, is something about a dozen characters shown during the run of the manga.
Yuji’s other notable abilities include Black Flash — a move that is outclassed at this point in the manga, which also could be used by anyone — and a couple of other abilities that suffer from the same issues.
There’s really no way he could defeat Sukuna at this point unless he unlocks a Domain Expansion — but that wouldn’t even make sense. It would be incredibly unrealistic for him to just be able to suddenly do it, when the entire point was that he wasn’t able to.
This is unusual for battle shounen manga
This also brings up the point that Yuji getting severely outclassed by many characters in his own series says something about Gege’s writing. While some think it’s more realistic this way, others feel like the mangaka is too cruel to his own character.
A standard trope of battle shounen is the protagonist getting stronger and learning the strongest techniques of the power system of the series.
This doesn’t seem to be the case for Jujutsu Kaisen, though: Yuji isn’t on par with the strongest characters in the manga. While it’s a nice trope subversion, sometimes we wish he finally got a break.