Strength is not free in Jujutsu Kaisen, Oftentimes gaining strength comes with the cost of something in return for that strength. The quickest way to raise your level as a jujutsu sorcerer is a binding vow with the trade off being your life. The strongest sorcerers, although exempt from some of the rules of jujutsu can’t seem to escape this one truth. Often The Strongest Sorcerers in existence rather it be at the time or throughout all time pay for their strength in one way or another. Rather it be complete loneliness, being unable to show kindness, or a complete lack of empathy. The “Strongest” all seem to suffer the consequence of having absolute power. Rather it be a curse or an unknown binding vow formed without their consent, It's true for them all with the exception of maybe one but we’ll get to them later in the video. Kashimo, Yorozu, Toji, Gojo, & Sukuna are all the characters we’re going to be taking a look at today since they all held the title of The “Strongest” at one point in time and each had their own struggles with the position. While anomalies in power exist like crazy in the modern age with Yuta Okkotsu, Maki Zenin, Hakari Kinji, Yuj Itadorii, & even the potential man himself Megumi Fushiguro they only serve as proof the curse can be broken as one of the strongest Satoru Gojo set to gather these 5 as a way to end his own loneliness. But to not waste anymore time let’s get started. Kashimo is a sorcerer born around 400 years before the main story takes place so he’s not from the Heian era but he’s from around the time Ryu is except by time Ryu was active as a sorcerer Kashimo was already an old man or at least at the time of this flashback where he agrees to enter into Kenjaku’s binding vow and come back in the culling games. Kashimo is an absolute monster upon being introduced to the story it’s revealed he’s unalived around 40 players in the culling game and scored 200 points after adding a rule. I mention that just so everyone knows despite his on screen 1 Win 2 Loss record his title of The Strongest isn’t cap in the slightest regard. Kashimo struggles with connection more specifically connecting with those he feels are beneath him because of his seat of power he even mentions to Sukuna that he was always surrounded by those as feeble as the dirt beneath his feet. Kashimo’s position here is pretty interesting to me all things considered he’s very powerful but he’s strong without the use of a Domain Expansion, SImple Domain, and a one use self sacrificing cursed technique. Taking that into account Kashimo should be on the weaker side but that’s not all that’s interesting about this to me a more interesting part is how he could feel this way after being beaten by Hakari. Sure Kashimo didn’t use his Cursed Technique on Hakari but the only reason he was even breathing past chapter 190 is because Hakari needed his points and if he passed they would disappear. I understand Kashimo didn’t use his cursed technique and Hakari said he didn’t count it as a win but that’s not what’s important here. While a byproduct of Kashimo being the strongest might be that he’s never lost a fight his problem isn’t that he’s never lost it’s that he’s never known weakness. Even The Strongest characters can be put in positions of weakness and come out on top this is not true for Kashimo though. Hakari had him on the ground completely out of cursed energy with Kashimo saying Hakari can go ahead and take his life. He was put in a position of weakness and not just a disadvantage or something he literally lost everything that made him strong. aside from this like I’ve already mentioned he was shown mercy and given props for his performance by Hakari so I’m a bit confused why he still thinks this way after his battle with Hakari. I guess it’s possible he needed to hear the words or get the answer from the strongest sorcerer of all time but it’s still a bit weird to me how he can claim to know nothing of weakness. I do acknowledge however that Hakari is a giant anomaly in terms of the guy you’re fighting, he's immortal for one and can keep using his domain expansion over and over again. Hakari also made things way easier on himself by dumping Kashimo into the ocean to expend all of his cursed energy. Kashimo also did put on a show against Sukuna landing multiple strikes thanks to his Cursed Technique sadly it was a weakened form of Sukuna so it doesn’t make him top 3 or anything but it was still cool. Yorozu’s position of being the strongest is pretty similar to Gojo’s where she understands the complete loneliness that comes with ultimate power and she wants to show that to Sukuna in order to get his hand in marriage. Yorozu is also someone constantly downplayed by the community for her fight with Sukuna somehow or someway everyone convinced themselves that Sukuna didn’t deem Yorozu worthy of using his cursed technique on which is why he used Megumi’s technique but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Sukuna claims to want to take her down using Megumi’s technique in order to sink Megumi’s soul even deeper giving him better control over his body by unaliving his sister with his own hands essentially. I’d like to point everyone to the beginning of page of chapter 218 where the narrator claims in terms of output Yorozu was on par with the toughest fighters of the heian era this in and off itself is impressive but this only gives us a vague idea of her power considering we don’t really know the toughest fighters from the Heian Era. Despite her output being great “Construction” her cursed technique had an immense consumption of cursed energy without saying every detail she thought about how 3 different insects were capable of extremely grandiose things a butterfly crossing the sea, wasps flying over 100 kilometers in a day, and other insects biting immeasurably strong, lifting several times their own weight, and flying at incredible speeds. Considering these factors she decided an insect like armor was the ultimate thing she could create with her cursed technique and she could manage mid range combat as long as she continued to feed it cursed energy to control the liquid metal. This is also extremely impressive but the next part is the most impressive, easily. While using this armor Yorozu defeated The Five Empty Generals, which equaled the sun, moon, and stars squad that Uro led and thus was acknowledged by the Fujiwara clan. This is impressive because Uro is one of the strongest fighters we’ve seen so far up until chapter 250 everyone, myself included thought Yuta was holding back in Sendai Colony against these sorcerers but Sukuna confirmed at least for Ryu anyway that Ryu is more durable than Yuta so much so to the point Sukuna needed to use Cleave on Ryu instead of using dismantle which Cleave can be adjusted to the opponents durability. Sukuna says he needs to touch both Yuta & Yuji to land a lethal blow even though they don’t surpass Ryu in toughness. Essentially what this means is Yorozu probably beat the squad that equaled Uro’s squad with little to no difficulty because she understands better than anyone the loneliness that comes with peerless strength. This isn’t to say Yorozu would beat up Yuta or anything, I don’t really care who would win that match up If you think Yuta would also low diff Uro and a squad full of people who are more than likely weaker than her just going off of other squads we’ve seen in the manga where the leader is the strongest then it’s fine to think Yuta could do that but Yuta isn’t some average everyday sorcerer Yorozu even being in his tier puts her on the upper tiers of power in terms of the rest of the sorcerers in the franchise. Beyond that though this is more so to explain that Yorozu more than earned her title as the strongest in her specific area and when it comes to power she is criminally underrated by the majority of the community. Not to mention her having created a perfect sphere that when it comes into contact with anything it just erases it because it generates infinite pressure and that inside of her domain that sphere becomes a sure hit technique even when not imbued into a barrier. I’m just not sure why someone losing to 15 Finger Sukuna and Mahoraga could get them so disrespected by the majority of people. Toji is someone who doesn’t get called out for this position enough because unlike the others Toji wasn’t cursed by his strength and instead it allowed himself to be free of curses and leave everything behind. Due to his strength the Zenin Clan basically wanted nothing to do with Toji so while he was subject to abuse from them as a child which ultimately led to him receiving the scar on his lip he wasn’t required to meet any of the expectations other sorcerers from the clan would have to. Aside from this as an adult or at some point in time we don’t really know Toji possessed the power necessary to end the entire Zenin Clan if he wanted to and decided against it. This is stated by Ranta whenever Maki is tearing through the Zenin Clan that the clan only continues to exist because of Toji whim and that Maki has become just like him which that second part isn’t entirely true but we’ll circle back to it in a minute. Obviously this gets confirmed to be true by Maki actually ending the entire clan and even further gets confirmed by Naoya and his thoughts during his fight with Maki in chapter 151. I know Naoya gets clowned a lot for getting whooped by Maki twice but if you actually read his dialogue aside from his weird Toji glazing he’s saying things that apply to the verse at large. While claiming that Maki is not Toji which is in direct contrast with Ranta’s earlier statement that she is just like Toji. Naoya claims that the sin of the insignificant is ignorance of strength and that no one understood Toji except maybe Gojo. Naoya is doing a lot of glazing here but he’s right and wrong in some kind of ironic ways, while he is correct in that Maki is not like Toji yet as she hasn’t received her second awakening, he’s wrong in saying that he’s stronger than Maki and that she’s an imposter I mean she literally one shot him and saw through his cursed technique while he was at top speed so not much more explaining is needed. Naoya also starts to see Toji in Maki when she receives her second awakening so it does at least confirm Naoya pretty much knows what he’s talking about and it even fits into Gojo’s Narrative as well as Yorozu & Kashimo’s where no one really understands those people or at least their peers don’t because of their immense power. In Gojo’s own words “You can make a flower bloom but you can’t tell that flower to then, understand you”. Toji aside from just being strong is a complete anomaly to the Jujutsu World he’s got absolutely 0 cursed energy and that gives him the power to interfere with things not normally able to be interfered with in the Jujutsu society. It’s mentioned by Tengen that the Six eyes, Star Plasma Vessel, & Tengen themselves are all tied together by fate paraphrasing just a bit here Kenjaku tried to stop this fate multiple times by ending the lives of six eyes users even a baby at one point but at the time of the merger things always fall into place but Toji who was free from cursed energy was able to interfere here where Kenjaku couldn’t unaliving the Star Plasma Vessel preventing the merger, forcing Tengen to evolve & The Six Eyes user to awaken or in Tengen’s words break them all free from their destinies. Yuki also chimes in on this where she says 12 years ago when Toji showed up is when everything began to get warped. Someone might mention how Gojo is stronger than Toji because Toji had to wear Gojo down in order to actually unalive him and yea while that is true that Toji did wear Gojo down it’s kind of in character for him to not make extra trouble for himself cuz he’s kind of a lazy bum. He even mentions this as the reason why he won’t kill Geto and says him fighting Gojo the second time was purely for pride since he doesn’t work for free and that him doing that was him deviating from his true self. I’d also like to say I think Toji cursed himself taking this second fight with Gojo someone on Twitter had pointed out to me that curses in JJK normally appear as a black text box that got me thinking to look back here and sure enough Toji’s uneasiness appears in a black text box. To be completely transparent the appearance of a Black Text Box doesn’t inherently mean its a curse but I think given the evidence that curses appear this way and the fact that Toji literally went against his own morals and walked into guaranteed death taking this second fight that it’s safe to say his uneasiness that he was ignoring was him cursing himself. Aside from this you have Yuki saying Geto shouldn’t feel bad for losing to Toji because Toji is a true superhuman even though at this point both her and Geto are Special Grades. Toji’s feats also speak for themselves even the fact he can exercise special grade cursed spirits alone is insane and a disaster curse at that. For perspective the only people known to have exorcised a special grade cursed spirit Alone are Gojo, Kenjaku, Sukuna, Yuta, Yuki, & Takaba All combatants of a special grade level or higher. I guess I should mention Megumi took out a special grade as well but he did it while the special grade was off guard and Toji beat Megumi up badly anyway.
Gojo’s part in this is definitely the most well known we’ve all seen the page of him standing alone as The Strongest and Chapter 236 definitely tied a lot of the pieces of this together. What people should pay more attention to aside from the page where Gojo is proclaimed the strongest are all the answers of the people before this page every panel contains a different answer to the question What is Satoru Gojo to you and although each panel contains a different answer every person here Yuji, Megumi, Nobara, Maki, Panda, Inumaki, Nanami, & Todo all agree that he is The Strongest and that is what he is to them. This is how Gojo is essentially defined by his strength aside from everything any personality traits he may have or how anyone feels about him they all share the same thought in that this guy is the strongest this chapter extra placed on chapter 88 is just before Gojo gets his title as The Strongest stripped away but let’s walk it back for just a moment to chapter 84 “It doesn’t matter who the sorcerer is. Anyone who fights alongside Satoru Gojo just gets in the way. So let’s use the even-more-inferior Non-Sorcerers to restrict his movements.” Gojo down in the Shibuya train station is strong that’s for sure but he’s not the strongest in this area anymore. Literally using his morality to benefit their position Kenjaku & The Curses successfully put Gojo in a tough spot where had he fully committed to his title of being The Strongest he never would’ve been in if Gojo expanded his Unlimited Void and took out the civilians alongside the Curses he never would’ve gotten sealed inside Prison Realm which brings me to chapter 90 when Gojo stares prison realm in the eye and loses his identity I think this for a few reasons but the main one being this panel where his face is covered by Prison Realms eye I interpret this panel as prison realm not caring about who Gojo is he’s still going to get sealed anyway, his identity, what he looks like doesn’t matter. Gojo does get unsealed Eventually in chapter 221 but while it’s undeniable Gojo’s students and others have love for him the entire reason they ever mention unsealing him is for the strength he possesses in order to clean up the mess made of the current world. Not an unreasonable ask who doesn’t want the world to be better but something he’s tasked with because of his strength. The only student who considers how Gojo feels instead of just saying he’ll fix everything when he comes back is Yuta when he claims he’ll unalive Kenjaku so Gojo doesn’t have to do that to his best friend again. This is kind of Yuta’s whole thing though he cares about everyone and I mean he is second to Gojo after all. I could probably say more about Gojo but the general idea is here and if I was to actually expand this to its full potential I’d be here for an extra 30 minutes. Sukuna is going to be the guy I have the least words for here because while he doesn’t have something in return for his strength the guy also doesn’t care he has a complete lack of empathy for other people and only cares about himself he’s basically just a really strong psychopath. His words put him in line more with what a Sociopath would be but the extremely violent nature he has definitely makes him a psychopath because while it’s true that not all Sociopaths or people with ASPD are Psychopaths all Psychopaths are Sociopaths. People who live without ASPD are likely to not want to give up their empathy and other things but to someone like Sukuna that just doesn’t matter considering he doesn’t even remember if he was always the Strongest it’s likely he’s always been this way and it’s not something that developed overtime as Sukuna mentions to Jogo humans flocking together curses flocking together comparing themselves to those around them leads to weakness and stunts growth he probably never compared himself to anyone around to know if he was the Strongest and since he lives by basically the guidebook on how to become the Strongest which is a grand sense of self and a disregard for others he was likely always the strongest or quickly became it. Even as a cursed object it’s mentioned Sukuna’s fingers continue to grow in power everyday he’s truly a character with no limit to his power.
