Highlights
- Yuji's mysterious talent is finally explained through the revelation of his mother, Kaori Itadori, who is none other than the evil mastermind Kenjaku.
- Kenjaku is an ancient curse user with an innate cursed technique of body-swapping, allowing him to take over bodies and gain their abilities, including Yuji's mother's powerful 'antigravity system' technique.
- Kenjaku's grand scheme involves setting up the Culling Game to merge the population of Japan with Master Tengen and create a massive cursed spirit, with Yuji being created as a Death Painting to serve as the vessel for Sukuna.
The reason for Yuji's strength and ability to resist Sukuna has been the topic of much debate ever since the first episode of Jujutsu Kaisen was released. This is because Yuji, despite being the main character of the series, has a fairly mysterious backstory which doesn't initially explain the cause of his overwhelming talent. But, the fans only found out about it later in the manga.
A lot of the vague nature of Yuji's backstory comes from his mother, Kaori Itadori. Kaori is an extremely elusive character that has only been shown in a single panel in the entire manga, but that panel was enough to give fans an answer to many of the questions that they had been asking about who Yuji is and why he is so special. So, let's take a look at the curious case of Kaori Itadori.
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Kaori's True Identity
In the first (and only) appearance of Kaori in the manga, Gege dropped a bombshell with her reveal as readers saw the familiar stitch marks going across her forehead. These marks showed Kaori to be none other than the evil mastermind of the Jujutsu Kaisen universe, Kenjaku. This reveal went on to show how meticulous Kenjaku's planning had been for all this time, as this entire situation with Kaori was part of his grand scheme.
Kenjaku is an ancient curse user who has lived for over 1000 years thanks to his Innate Cursed Technique; body-swapping. Kenjaku's true face is unknown, but fans most easily associate him with Pseudo-Geto after he took over the body of Suguru Geto at some unspecified point after his death at the hands of Gojo. Whenever Kenjaku takes over a new body, he gains access to its Innate Technique as well as all of the users' cursed energy, to the point where even the Six Eyes can't differentiate between him and the body he has taken over.
Kenjaku takes the form of a brain with a mouth on it, and the way he possesses a body is that after a person has died, he cuts open their head and supplants the brain into it, sewing it back up with the iconic stitch marks that are left on the victim's forehead. Kenjaku also took over the body and identity of Noritoshi Kamo and created the Cursed Womb Death Paintings, a heretic act that branded Noritoshi Kamo as the most evil sorcerer in history.
The true reason for Kenjaku doing this in the first place was to set the pieces in place for the Culling Game. In this Game, he wanted to pit strong sorcerers from different eras against one another to leak enough cursed energy to merge the population of Japan with Master Tengen and create one massive Cursed Spirit. With Kaori Itadori especially, he created Yuji as a Death Painting to serve as the perfect vessel for Sukuna.
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Kaori's Powerful Cursed Technique
In his fight against Yuki Tsukumo and Choso, it was revealed that Kenjaku could use multiple Cursed Techniques at the same time; his own body-swapping, the technique of the body he is currently inhabiting and the technique of the body he previously inhabited. Due to this, Kenjaku could use Kaori Itadori's Innate Cursed Technique 'antigravity system', which he stole by inhabiting her body after her death.
The 'Antigravity system' allows the user to manipulate the force of gravity, seemingly allowing them to eliminate gravity for a target or even themselves, though the ability has never been fully explored. Through using Cursed Technique Reversal, the user of this technique can also greatly increase the gravitational pull of an area of 2 to 3 meters around them for approximately 6 seconds, as seen when Kenjaku increased the gravity to avoid the projectiles thrown at him by Yuki and Choso. This is a versatile and very powerful technique.
Jujutsu Kaisen can be streamed on Amazon Prime and Netflix.
