Jujutsu Kaisen, Chapter 213 Thoughts
Besides setting the entire fandom on fire, Sukuna’s ultimate objective being possessing Megumi’s body is a twist that just makes sense considering the themes of both the culling game arc, and the manga as a whole. Body-possession is a reoccurring idea, the manga starts with Yuji consuming a finger and having Sukuna take over his body, Geto’s body is stolen by Kenjaku a body hopping immortal, Riko Amanai was expected to give up her body as the star plasma vessel, every ancient sorcerer in the culling games is possessing the body of a modern day person.
Body possession, body horror, it’s something that happens over and over and for a manga where the main theme is how the lives of youths are continually taken away and sacrificed in the name of the previous generation and the status quo this just makes sense. MORE under the CUT.
1. Mind, Body and Soul
Jujutsu Kaisen is a manga where the youth have very little rights, not just to make their own choices with their lives, but even in several case their bodily agency is wrested away from them. There are countless villains who mutilate, or even completely take possession of a young person’s body.
In the first four chapters, Gojo’s interference doesn’t spare Yuji from his execution, it only delays it. The only reason he even gets to delay and live his life a little bit longeris because he willingly offers himself up to eat the fingers of Sukuna and be used as a vessel, a task he will get no reward for because he’s going to get executed anyway at the end.
If you use the youth losing control of their bodies and becoming vessels, as a metaphor for losing control of their lives, from this point Yuji’s fate is sealed. He is no longer allowed to live his life the way he wants to, he’s given a choice that isn’t really a choice, die now, or die later.
Yuji is literally referred to as a vessel, an empty thing that only exists to be filled with something else. Yuji himself does not act like he believes he has free will or a choice in the matter, he refers to himself as a cog multiple times, he even refers to the job of collecting fingers Gojo gave him as a “Role” like he’s a character in a script.
If Gojo’s goal is to create children who are free to live out their youths, think for themselves, and are allowed to grow up into their own people rather than existing to be tools of the elders then he has essentially failed with Yuji, Yuji doesn’t want to live his own life, he doesn’t expect even to grow up, he just mindlessly obeys what jujutsu society wants him to do and only sees himself as a cog.
One of the first villains we are introduced to is Mahito, who while he does not take control of epople’s bodies, he touches their souls and warps them into a still living but horribly mutated version of themselves. e does not just do it to side characters or extras, we see him use his abilities on Junpei causing one more young life to be tragically cut short in the most horrific way possible. Junpei’s not just killed, his body is horribly violated and he’s reduced to a mindless thing that exists a few minutes in tremendous pain before it’s heart gives out.
It’s not just his life that’s taken from him, but his body as well. The next arc features Koichi, a character who is born with impressive and unique abilities as a sorcerer in exchange for a body that is barely able to live and in constant pain. Koichi’s body is not being possessed, but it’s not really his own. He’s not free to move around and be a part of the world. His body is like a painful cage with bars made of barbed wire, the more he struggles against it the more he hurts himself, every second of his existence is uncomfortable. The only way he can interact with the world at all is by puppeteering a series of fake bodies.
This is another character who surprise surprise is butchered by Mahito, as a consequence for being desperate enough to try to make a deal to fix their body so they could gain a little freedom to leave their life support and hospital bed behind and be a part of the same world as everyone else. In the origin of obedience arc we are treated to the gruesome method of how Choso and his brothers acquire their bodies, by being forcefully inserted into a completely naked and helpless man.
That’s why possession in Jujutsu Kaisen works so as a metaphor not just for the taking away of young people’s control of their lives, but also the way their bodies are violated, physically, and also yes sexually the subtext is there. Choso and his brothers themselves are the result of a woman’s body getting experimented on, forcefully impregnated, violated (once again... probably sexually) all for the sake of Kenjaku a one thousand year old elder.
Move forward to the star plasma vessel arc, there is Riko Amanai who is expected to give up her body for the sake of the greater good, literally merging with Tengen to become someone and something else.
There is also Toji who is rejected by his clan and has abuse heaped upon him, because he was born with a body unable to use cursed energy that the Zen’in Clan deemed wrong. Despite being just as competent as sorcerers like Gojo and Geto he’s no longer considered even human and refers to himself as a monkey. When Toji returns in the Shibuya arc, it’s at the behest of a necromancer named Grandma.
In the volume extras it states Grandma kidnaps her grandchildren as young children, and basically grooms them into willingly offering their bodies to her to make them into puppets to summon vessels for dead spirits. Then there is Ui Ui who has to literally offer his body up to die as a part of his older sister’s Mei Mei’s technique, he’s expected to sacrifice himself for her benefit and exist to help her even though he is so much younger than her.
Then there is the most obvious candidate of bodily possession, Geto’s corpse is stolen away from them and turned into a puppet for Kenjaku, it’s been his modus operandi for one thousand years, taking the bodies of other, younger people and then using it for their own benefit. Kenjaku not only violated Choso’s mother, created the Death Painting Siblings and then abandoned them (they are literally aborted fetuses, the child abuse metaphor there is not subtle), they are also responsible for hundreds of people living in the modern era (including children like sumiki) having their bodies taken away from them by ancient sorcerers who want to participate in the culling games.
It’s also pointed out frequently that a lot of these ancient sorcerers have basically no motivation or reason at all that would explain why they are so desperate to steal someone’s life away to prolong their own.
Pompadour guy is a walking apettite, nothing will satisfy him and he’s killed another living human being, and he’s probably not going to be satisfied by that either.
Uro talks about how in their first life, they were a victim never allowed to have a name and a face, but they quite literally have not only made someone else a victim, they’ve stolen away the name and the body of a completely innocent woman. They take another life away as their life was taken. But if they’re owed retribution for the tragic backstory they suffered in a previous life, then isn’t the body they’ve taken owed their own retribution. Which is my point exactly, these older sorcerers representing the previous generation are continually stealing from the youth, but like, they aren’t even aware of what they want.
Kenjaku, Uro, Pompadour, they’re taking for the sake of taking. The bodies are a metaphor for the ability and freedom to live in this world.
Choso himself even states that the reason he sided with the curses over the humans is because he believed that the bodies of his brothers would be rejected, which would make it harder and more painful for both of them to live in this world... which true, they’re experiments, if they went to jujutsu college they probably would have just been executed, Nobara killed them pretty guilt free. They weren’t seen as human or even people with the right to live.
Kenjaku even entices the united states and other world powers to invade the culling games in order to kidnap sorcerers, so their bodies can be experimented on by the state for its own gain. They are reducing the bodies of human beings to resources.
It’s clear over and over again, bodies, especially the bodies of young people are abused, violated and outright stolen from them by older people, people in power, even their direct family or parents for their own selfish gain.
Which is where we finally get to both Megumi and Tsumiki, and while their possession is tragic it’s almost the perfect completion of this metaphor. Megumi’s life has never been his own to begin with. He’s a human being who was sold by his father, you know, sold, like he’s an object or a slave.
The fact that he was born with the Ten Shadows Technique has just made him more or less a tool to be passed around and utilized by others, Naobito wished to make him the head of the clan because of his inheritance of the ten shadows, Toji sold him for money, Gojo arrived and positioned him as Megumi’s savior, but really he just recruited Megumi to his own side because of the Ten Shadows Technique was a useful tool to Gojo’s own agenda. Megumi, and by extension Tsumiki are children who were abandoned by the adults around them and because of that have had very little control of their own lives.
They are children in foster care with no money, and no ability to survive in this world and the people who should be doing their jobs and helping them are exploiting them instead.
These two children, with no power, control or choices over their own lives have now even lost their own bodies, both of them taken away by elders who’s only wish is to exploit them for their own personal gain... but really, weren’t they already being exploited?
Megumi was never free to control his own life. He never possessed his own body, he always belonged to someone else. Megumi’s lack of control is just a lot more literal now.
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Piacenza, Estate Farnese: gli eventi dal 12 al 18 settembre
Piacenza, Estate Farnese: gli eventi dal 12 al 18 settembre.
Si è tenuta stamani, mercoledì 7 settembre in Municipio, la conferenza stampa di presentazione degli eventi in calendario la prossima settimana nel cartellone di “Estate Farnese”. Accanto all’assessore alla Cultura Christian Fiazza, sono intervenuti i direttori artistici dell'Etoile Ballet Theatre, Walter Angelini e Ines Albertini, unitamente al maestro di ballo Nader Hamed, nonché, in rappresentanza della Società Filodrammatica Piacentina, Angela Longeri e l’autrice e regista Francesca Chiapponi.
Un cartellone ricco e coinvolgente
“Anche per quest’ultima settimana – ha sottolineato l’assessore Christian Fiazza - il cartellone della rassegna “Estate Farnese 2022” si presenta ricco, composito e capace di coinvolgere il tessuto associativo del territorio, valorizzando non solo una pluralità di generi di spettacolo, artisti e talenti ma, una volta ancora, gli storici spazi di Palazzo Farnese, sempre più vivi e frequentati, sia dai turisti che dalla comunità piacentina".
"Un ringraziamento particolarmente sentito va quindi ai partner - continua Fiazza - che anche quest'anno hanno sostenuto l’Estate Farnese, dalla Fondazione Teatri a Iren, in un lavoro corale teso a far conoscere e promuovere il patrimonio storico, artistico e architettonico della nostra città".
"Rivolgo inoltre un “grazie” particolare - conclude l'assessore . a tutte le associazioni e le realtà culturali e artistiche che hanno preso parte alla stagione di appuntamenti estivi, e che hanno offerto rappresentazioni teatrali, concerti, proiezioni cinematografiche e spettacoli di altissimo livello, largamente apprezzati e capaci di richiamare un pubblico sempre più ampio e diversificato”.
La commedia “Tütta culpa d’una seina”
All’intervento dell’assessore Fiazza, è seguito quello di Francesca Chiapponi, autrice e regista della commedia dialettale in due atti “Tütta culpa d’una seina”, in programma martedì 13 settembre alle 20.45 a Palazzo Farnese. “Tratta dal grande successo prima teatrale e poi cinematografico “La cena dei cretini” del francese Francis Veber – ha evidenziato -, l’opera adattata in vernacolo mantiene le qualità di uno spettacolo altamente comico, ma con un retrogusto amaro capace di far riflettere lo spettatore.
Il “Gala della Pace”
Sabato 17 settembre, alle 21, sempre nella prestigiosa cornice del Cortile di Palazzo Farnese, sarà invece la volta del “Gala della Pace”, a cura della compagnia professionale di balletto Étoile Ballet Theatre, con sede a Piacenza, diretta dai Primi Ballerini internazionali Ines Albertini e Walter Angelini, con la guida del Maître de Ballet Nader Hamed. “La serata – hanno detto - sarà l’occasione per celebrare l’arte della danza portando in scena estratti dai balletti “La Bayadere”, “Spartacus” e “La Sylphide”.
"Le Otto Stagioni"
Uno spettacolo adatto a tutte le età, per il pubblico amante del balletto ma non solo, e capace di intrattenere ogni genere di spettatore attraverso la rivisitazione anche dei classici del balletto in una chiave più attuale”. Infine, domenica 18 settembre, alle 20.45, l’Orchestra Farnesiana di Piacenza proporrà il concerto dal titolo “Le Otto Stagioni”, che prevede l’esecuzione delle “Quattro stagioni” di Antonio Vivaldi, con il violinista Francesco De Angelis, primo violino solista del Teatro alla Scala, e delle “Quattro stagioni” di Astor Piazzolla, con la partecipazione della violinista Daniela Cammarano, solista di fama internazionale.
Ad accompagnare i due solisti, sarà appunto l’Orchestra Farnesiana, formata da musicisti piacentini già affermati in realtà come il Teatro alla Scala e l’Arena di Verona e nata da un’idea dei fratelli Gabriele e Marcello Schiavi con l’obiettivo di diffondere la cultura musicale e sviluppare e proporre il repertorio sinfonico e operistico anche nel territorio piacentino.
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