The Father

Aside from all my complaining about the tragedy of JJK, I do want to say that Gege is absolutely incredible when it comes to constructing parallels between characters and their relationships. There’s Itadori and Geto down to the ingestion of curses/cursed items in order to gain their power, wanting to be the hero in a story that prevents them from doing so (i.e. wanting so badly to do good but their power is inherently destructive, causing them to unravel), and Gojo and Fushiguro are also a given, with their narratives deconstructing the typical trope of the “chosen one”.

[id: it’s two screenshot of jujutsu kaisen panels, the first of Sukuna grabbing his neck as Itadori takes his body back, and the second of Kenjaku grabbing his neck as Geto tries to take his body back. /end id]

[id: it’s a screenshot of Gojo and Fushiguro from jujutsu kaisen when they’re first meeting. Megumi is young, about six years old, and Gojo is his eighteen-year-old self with his hair down and sunglasses on his nose. /end id]

But then you look further and you get stuff like Getou and Nanami, who were both heavily impacted by the death of a close, mutual friend, and how they dealt with that. They both stray off their paths, but their response to their disillusionment is vastly different: Geto fully plunges into a delusional quest for justice (finding the twins was just the final straw that he needed) whereas Nanami does the opposite and runs away. And then there’s Toji vs Maki, where they’re both scorned despite their immense power and considered outcasts. Toji had something to hold him back from killing the entirety of the Zen’in clan (Megumi) but Maki had lost hers (her heart had been taken from her, after all).

[id: it’s two screenshots of the jujutsu kaisen manga. The first is of the panels where Maki and Toji are drawn in the same stances, and the second is of Naoya asking Maki whether she has a human heart, to which she replies “No… it was taken from me.” /end id]

There’s so much to unpack even down to the framework of the relationships that Gege sets up, like Satosugu versus Itafushi, and how it’s set up to a point where Fushiguro will likely be the one to either a) kill Itadori, or b) break the cycle that started with Geto and Gojo. You can even look at Nanami and Haibara vs Nanami and Itadori, and how Itadori is almost a reflection of Haibara, at least through the eyes of Nanami, and how Haibara’s death influenced how Nanami treated Itadori. I could ramble for ages about this, but honestly, the bottom line is it’s actually really impressive, especially for a shonen manga where the genre doesn’t typically focus on that sort of thing.

i'm happiest when i'm with you

ALL OF THEM?

"No matter how goofy and foolish he is, he is just as much a trickster and mastermind. These sides of his character are not at extremes. It all comes around. His ambitions, his promise with Shigeshige, his bond and shared past with Gintoki. These are some of the driving forces behind every action he takes. " YES ALL OF THIS. So well said. I've been thinking of this, and of something similar (his love of the spotlight in the present day vs his war-era leadership style - both sides are true).

Right! Although maybe it isn’t necessarily that he wishes to hoard the spotlight, but judges that that’s what’s necessary in the fight he’s fighting at the moment? 🤔 

I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to say here but I think you hit on something hmm. A key idea on the factions in Gintama is how they revolve around certain leaders. Nizo’s take on this was that they exude a certain light and charisma. He was infatuated with Takasugi’s so he wanted to take down other perceived lights like Katsura’s and Gintoki’s. Moths gather to flames. Later on we have arcs revolving around different characters who despite being flawed, portray significant leadership roles. Hijikata, Sakamoto, Shigeshige, NobuNobu, etc. In the end, Katsura’s way of reforming the government lends to the idea of the importance of everyone being their own king or leader.

Although it’s no question that when Katsura’s quirky personality starts leaking into serious business, he turns into the regular show-off drama queen we love. 😂 However that’s partially the result of reuniting with Gintoki and redeveloping a newfound love and attachment to people and the community. Unlocking his true personality comes after he was stuck in a negative mindset closer to Takasugi’s at the beginning of the series.

In the Joui war, his true personality was largely repressed by the pressure and strain of leadership. The battle they were fighting then (survival) was heavier than the one present-day Katsura is fighting (for the future). Nowadays, Katsura has more room to breath and live and goof around like everyone else.  

On a more casual level though, when he’s going around complaining about being on stand-by or having little screen time or his character overlapping with Kyuubei’s… it’s more than just a comedic 4th wall break because it speaks about his character. Actually, he does seem to get a lot of down time when he’s out of a job or not doing Joui things. 😂 So we see him hanging out with Hasegawa and Gintoki often, but his unique position at the edge of the law puts him at conflict with half the cast that regularly participates in shenanigans. As a result he seems to get a little lonely at times, haha. Even on stand-by, he seems to just be hoping for a good moment to come out. It would lead to disappointment, but he has an absurd amount of patience haha. Poor Zura. It does make sense for him to be attention-seeking. 

While catching up with the recent chapters, I got to this panel in chapter 533, and something about it made me pause. It’s the almost offhand way Katsura slips into an old memory of the war and discloses it to Kondo, offering it up like some sort of badge of friendship, as though implying, “You’re a comrade now, so I can tell you things about my comrades from before.”

And the memory itself paints such a vivid image: Gintoki as a tactician, burning his own ships, sacrificing whatever is necessary for the war effort; Sakamoto, in contrast, still in love with ships, still holding onto dreams that exist outside of war. You can see why Gintoki and Takasugi got along so well back then. You can also see, in that one phrase, the inclinations that would later lead Sakamoto to literally leave the planet and swap his burnt boats for spaceships.

The most significant thing about this panel, though, is what it says about Katsura. I can’t recall any other moment in this series when a member of the Joui talked about the war with someone who had not fought in it. But Katsura is able to offer up this recollection so easily. Once upon a time, yes, they fought a hopeless war and suffered catastrophic losses, but he also remembers the camaraderie and banter in the midst of that; he can face the past while also looking towards the future. In contrast, Gintoki bottles it up and can’t bring himself to talk about it. In contrast, Takasugi never even managed to leave the war zone. Out of Shouyou’s three students, Katsura ended up being the strongest emotionally.

we did it fellas

makki why

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