Warm-up sketch of Mikey!! My bestie is so funny and badass! UwU

"Sure. So for Geto it's mostly that I don't like villains with a bigoted ideology and he's too incompetent to even fall in the "love to hate" category. Really, the worst thing a villain can be is incompetent and Geto in Vol 0 is barely better than your average disney villain. Doesn't help that he never gets pushback on his ideals. Gojo tells him in Premature Death that killing people is bad, but that's it. He spouts his bullshit about how genocide is totally necessary and Yuuta stands there like "idk you might be right, but you want to kill people I care about and that's the real crime here". Nobody really engages with his ideology except Yuki I guess, but that was before he became an antagonist. I could forgive that to a degree if he was at least a real threat, but he isn't. You don't get any of that with Geto, he's not even fun to hate because he barely provides any pushback. He's a bad villain and I dislike him as a person as well. His descent into embracing the superiority of sorcerers and resolving to kill all non-sorcerers was well written, but I don't feel for him at all. Good riddance to the guy, I'm glad he's now dead both in body and mind."

I was so sad, when reading this, what do you think?

When previously asked about JJK Antagonists I didn't mention Geto even though... he is my favorite.

It should also be said that, in terms of scary movies, I love a good creature feature or a deluge into the supernatural but, the scariest movies to me? Will always be the ones with human villains because they're far more plausible.

That summation of Geto is that person's opinion so I, personally, am unmoved by it. I've seen so many piss poor interpretations of Gojo and Geto's characterizations that it's honestly just best to let the story play out so people can retroactively come to some sort of understanding. Moreover, I think there are a lot of people who struggle to concede that, between Gojo and Geto, there was always love. Without that, you can't understand his spiral, you can't acknowledge the humanity of the villain. Moreover, to not understand Geto is to not understand Gojo. And.. since JJK seems to very much be a circular parallel between SatoSugu and ItaFushi, if you can't understand them you miss the whole story.

I'd be curious what villain doesn't have a bigoted and/or radical ideology, especially in shonen? They're meant to be horrible and hard to empathize with. Unless that person's tolerance for villainy is Oikawa from Haikyuu? Most stories hinge on the main character espousing a piece of whatever makes villains.. villains. RE: Yuji being a cursed vessel, Denji being a devil, Tanjiro's proximity to demons, Eren being a titan, Kaneki being a ghoul... I'd argue Naruto and Nine Tails but literally haven't seen the show at all to confidently compare.

Even so, let's get into Geto.

Gorgeous, gorgeous boy. So earnest, so upright... so forged to break.

I recently went on a tirade about SatoSugu which I won't rehash here because... then I'll feel inclined to add more and no one wants to see an adult woman cry today.

As a character, Geto attempts to be incredibly principled. Design wise, he is stylized with features that liken him to Buddha which I think he individually plays into as well to give himself some sort of identity. From his long hanging lobes signifying wisdom and compassion capable of hearing the cries of the suffering, to his gentle chastising of Gojo's flippancy. He believes that the strong should protect the weak while also keeping the strong in check. But... how would a jujutsu outsider come to such a noble ideal?

We know next to nothing about Geto's parents except that they were not sorcerers and, based on his affectionate ability to recognize family beyond blood ties, I think it'd be fair to make some assumptions about what typically informs a characters predilection for the found family trope. 👀

His cursed technique, I think, creates an impetus for purpose. I don't know how he figured out he could do curse manipulation. But we know he swallows the curse, the likes of which is compared to a rag that had been used to mop up vomit, in order to subjugate it. This process, this martyrdom of ingesting the negative run off of mankind has to have a reason to justify his suffering. Because, as the only person we see with this technique, it must feel like a burden only he knows. Moreover, with a special class technique, it's not like he's given much of a choice. But if it helps people, if it has meaning, purpose... he can endure.

We've seen the perfect storm of events that, don't necessarily challenge his pre-existing ideals, but... force him to question whether the ends justify the means. We can call each of these events a moral injury and I don't think it's a stretch to say that there is a link between staunch morality and radicalism which I'm going to bastardize as saying a person may have their ideals on a righteous pedestal. Believing that if I do "A" and "B" then "C" is sure to follow and it allows them purpose and reason. But life is seldom free of other stimuli. I'm not going to go into great depth about examples of this but suffice it to say, this break in Geto's belief system caused an internal chasm we see immediately.

When Gojo asks him if he should kill the believers that applauded Riko's death, Geto said "no, there'd be no reason" which I believe is sufficient for Gojo since he readily leans on Geto as a moral compass. But Geto keeps rationalizing further, likely to curb his own impulse to kill those gathered ignorantly in celebration. OP talks about no pushback on his ideals but the truth of the matter is the biggest pushback for Geto is internal.

When he decided to slaughter that village, he didn't leave a margin of error to come back from. He had to keep moving forward, keep pushing to achieve this impossible world because to not would mean that the atrocities he committed were done in vain and we know, from his characterization, that he would not be able to accept that. Gojo speaks of Geto not starting a war he can't win during JJK0 which is empirically incorrect. When they parted ways in high school, Geto relented that with Gojo's power, his vision could come into fruition. They both knew he didn't have the means to achieve this but he didn't have anything else to stand on. So he hurled himself further and further from his previous path of righteousness and further from himself. He'd committed too great a sin to not give it meaning. To question it now would shatter him completely.

So much of what makes Geto compelling is the fact that he is inherently characterized as a good person, forthright and gentle. He'd have been a great teacher. In fact, the events that transpired between Gojo and Geto are why Gojo is a teacher in the first place. I believe he tried to be a great father figure to Nanako and Mimiko (again, let's forget the murder for a minute) because he pointedly did not raise them in the ways or traditions of jujutsu society. He protected them as best he could even though they still didn't survive their teenage years because they were ignorant about binding vows with sorcerers! Crazy when you think about it. Even what he thought to be a kindness to them cost them fatally.

Things happened to him, likely intentionally, to create this departure from reality and the jujutsu world. He was forged to break because he lacked the flexibility and nonchalance to not be overly concerned for others. He wasn't a diabolical genius, he was overly compassionate and at a complete and total loss when terrible things continually happened to good people who were already sacrificing so much. Riko Amanai was resigned to give up her short life to guarantee the future of Japan. Haibara was a ray of sunshine who, with the means to do so, wanted to help people. The twins were simply cursed to see things the other villagers couldn't, a burdensome reality that damned them to a life he was finding no meaning in, himself. His weakness perhaps lay in a weakness of character? but I wouldn't even say that, honestly. He's like placid water hiding a violent undercurrent deep below the surface.

The gap between who he was and who he died as should be jarring. It should be a demonstration of the grisly reality of jujutsu society. Where classes of 2-3 children are regularly pressed to fight beyond their means against horrors only they know. The sacrifices of the few to protect the many regardless of their virtue. That's the point. He was a casualty of a system that would always lead him toward a moral crisis.