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psychewritesbs · 2 years

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Chapter 199: Resentful Names—Yes, Destined One, everything IS, in fact, going too well...

Are you having a happy JJK-Sunday?

Naoya is gone at last, no one we care about has died, our boys are back, daddy Sukuna is back, we’ve got major plot progression...

What else could we ask for when everything is going so smoothly for our heroes?!

Ok but, am I the only one who’s super... idk... paranoid about how well things have been going?

No one has died in a Battle Royale that is, literally, about death (I’ve literally been waiting for SOMEONE to die this whole time)... and Megumi’s plan is going according to... well... planned.

This is the definition of a story arc without conflict... and “conflict” is what makes stories interesting.

And the fact that Gege, literally, wrote “but isn’t this going too well?” might as well be him saying “right, time to let all hell loose.”

Or maybe I am just jaded and paranoid and need to learn to see the glass half full...

Anyways... the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place at last.

Maki and friends defeat Naoya

Yay, lets celebrate this predictable outcome.

Ok maybe I AM jaded after all...

Moving on with our lives... So long pretty boy Naoya, you will now be but a distant memory no one ever thinks about.

Mommy issues...

So given the title of this chapter, I was curious about Maki asking her mom about her name (which I do wonder wether she was just saying that) before killing her (which, excuse you?! one does not simply kill one’s mom!), so I went looking at the meaning of Maki’s name.

真 (ma): true, reality

希 (ki): hope, beg, request, pray, beseech, dilute (acid), rare, few, phenomenal

In case anyone is curious, Mai’s name is a lot simpler:

真 (ma): true, reality

依 (i): reliant, depend on

So, who knows what mom told Maki her name meant to earn her wrath.

Truly... who knows what her mom told Maki as it feels that mom might have never been able to express her true feelings and instead kept them to herself.

After all, the Zenin clan doesn’t exactly look like the kind of family where it’s safe to express your feelings and emotions.

Perhaps, with such a polarized kanji as 希 (ki), mom told her the meaning of her name was something along the lines of true rare (as a derogative term) or dilute acid, when in reality maybe it meant something along the lines of true hope. Unfortunately it looks like Maki’s mom was never going to come out and say something like that.

Who knows... but... it’s the look on Maki’s face as she talks about killing her mother that really got me.

Like... is she sad that she killed her mom? Or is the look on her face devoid of emotion and regard for her mother’s life? Maybe it’s just that Gege has a way to go in learning to depict conflicted emotions in his panels.

Either way... one does not simply kill one’s mother.

At least it looks like Maki does feel some remorse for how she handled things. She definitively seems to have had a very ambiguous and difficult relationship with her mother.

Tragedy. Tragedy all around I tell you.

Given that JJK is pretty dark, I love how Gege is using the Cursed Twins trope.

If you want to read more stories with cursed twins, I recommend CLAMP’s Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and, of course, Tokyo Babylon. Gohou Drug also has cursed twins but is not as good.

Resentful Names vs. Epithets

Time to get nit picky about the translations used in this chapter.

So the TBC scanlation uses “epithet” as the title of this chapter vs. the official translation which uses “resentful names”, and for once I feel like both are right.

Why does it matter what word(s) is/are used?

Not only do we have the meaning of Maki’s name alluded to as a resentful name in this chapter, we also have Nori’s name.

I’m not feeling like going in and breaking down the kanji in Nori’s name, and I kind of don’t need to because we’ve been told before that Kamo Nortioshi is known as an evil sorcerer from back in the day, and we also know it’s because Kenny had made himself at home in the real Noritoshi’s body.

Ironically, in contrast to Maki’s mom, Nori’s mom’s intentions in giving Nori a “resentful name” were all about getting her son to leave the clan.

So at least for Nori and Maki it makes sense why this chapter is titled “resentful names”.

But what about the other character in this chapter with a name loaded with meaning?

Megumi.

This is where epithet feels more appropriate. While we can still think about Megumi as having been given a “resentful name”, I prefer to head canon that his name was given to him out of love.

I, of course, can’t prove that (I don’t think), and yet I prefer to think that his name is more of an epithet given its meaning (惠 = blessing), rather than a resentful name.

Epithet: an adjective or descriptive phrase expressing a quality characteristic of the person or thing mentioned.

and...

Epithets also commonly appear next to or in place of a person’s name like a nickname such as Catherine the Great, Ivan the Terrible, etc...

Megumi the Destined/Chosen/Blessed One

Fck yeah here we go!

First, this is the first time (that I know of) that Gege uses the word destiny instead of the word fate.

運 (un): luck

命 (mei): decree, destiny, life

Up until now, Gege has mostly used the word fate.

因 (in): causal

果 (ga): fruit

Which can be literally translated to “causality” or “the fruits of causality” aka “fate”.

I’ve written about the subtle difference between the two in my Megumi symbol analysis (which is reported to crash phones bahaha, such is fate). We still don’t know how Gege is going to use the symbols so, as always, read with a grain of salt and an open and flexible mind (because, you know, mental gymnastics).

Second, can we take a moment to appreciate the fact that Hana, of all people, is the one calling Megumi the Destined One?

Like... what does it all mean?!!!! *sequals like a pig*

Literal picture of me reading this chapter 🐷.

Ok ok.

FOCUS, v, focus!

Truth is, we just don’t know much about her and this chapter has opened a can of worms about her character that I totally did not expect...

More about her in a little bit.

Everything is going according to planned, but that’s not necessarily a good thing

Quick recap as retold by Megumi:

The reference to Patrasche is very tragic. You can read about A Dog of Flanders in Wikipedia, which has a quick summary of the story and mentions a couple of anime adaptations of the story.

In a nutshell, A Dog of Flanders is about a boy (who happens to be an orphan like a certain someone) with a very tragic life and his very tragic death. But I am not sure that there is anything more to it than Gege making a reference to a beloved childhood story.

Unless he’s using the story as foreshadowing of Megumi’s death. I guess we’ll find out but, until proven wrong, I shall continue to delude myself into thinking he’s surviving the JJK-scheme of things.

Anyways, I loved seeing Megumi take what looks like a deep breath of relief...

That is... Before he second guesses his good fortune.

So... remember how before Megumi manifested Chimera Shadow Garden he kept loosing?

He got his ass kicked by the Cursed Spirit in chapter 1

He got his ass kicked by Sukuna in chapter 8-9ish

He got his ass kicked by Todo before the Kyoto sister school event

He did not get his ass kicked by Nori but he realized that Nori had been holding back on him the whole time

He got his ass kicked by Hanami

And then... all of a sudden he scores a big win:

He has a major level up, manifests the strongest technique a Jujutsu sorcerer can manifest (Domain Expansion), and exorcises a Grade 1 (or was it Special Grade? I don’t remember) Cursed Spirit. Something he previously would not think himself capable of doing.

This time I wonder whether we have the opposite happening... His wins could be a deceptive plot device leading up to a major loss.

Not only is everything going according to plan, Megumi has been growing more and more confident in his skills as a sorcerer. He’s been racking up one win after another.

My money is on something happening soon which will push Megumi to have to face loss big time. I don’t know what that will look like, it just does feel like everything has been happening in their favor (too good to be true), and he’s about to get served a cold platter of tragedy.

This is what jaded people say by the way.

We’ll see. I also used to think Hakari had a major death flag, but as we saw, he’s still walking around. He lost an arm, but he’s still alive.

Plus, if Megumi is The Destined/Chosen/Blessed One, for all we know, Megumi has luck (運) in his favor and he will continue to be able to trump fate (因果) and its machinations.

The Angel

I have to say that seeing how Gege uses and expands upon symbols in JJK is one of my favorite things ever.

I just want to remind anyone reading this that symbol analysis requires mental flexibility. It starts with taking a symbol, like say, the Angel, and finding the many possible meanings it can have across cultures.

When I wrote about the symbolism of Hana’s character, I focused mostly on Judeo-Christian imagery because she physically resembles a Judeo-Christian Angel.

And lo and behold, here we go... Gege is going with the Angel/Fallen Angel symbol.

But before we get to that, there were a couple of interesting details to nit pick on...

Hana appears to be a host to Angel but can retain her consciousness just like Yuji

I totally did not see this one coming even though Kenny did say he was releasing a bunch of malevolent Yuji Itadoris out into the wild.

I had speculated that Hana and Megumi might have a shared past together and that they are entangled somehow. Looks like I was partially right even though I actually meant they shared experiences in the distant past in another lifetime (i.e. she knows one of Megumi's ancestors).

But in the end it may just be a shared childhood event in this lifetime.

I got the impression she might have had a crush on Megumi from the panel above. And since Megumi seems to have no memory of her, I wonder if Hana is someone he met in his childhood.

I would not be surprised if he defended her from bullies since she appears to have a meek personality.

I mention this because I am fascinated by how symbol analysis can predict certain things with a certain degree of accuracy. Sometimes I am completely off the mark, sometimes it’s somewhat accurate, and sometimes it’s on point depending on how Gege uses the symbols.

And maybe I am just a massive dork. Who knows.

In the end, JJK feels like a puzzle that you put together one piece at a time, and making wild speculations about the big picture is always half the fun.

Whatever the case, I totally did not see it coming that Angel is choosing to co-exist with Hana’s consciousness.

Which means that Hana’s consciousness is from the present day Japan. This also confirm that she’s not Tsumiki or Yuko from chapter 64.

This is interesting because Yuji and Sukuna are the opposite. Yuji and Sukuna are fighting over conscious control over Yuji’s body, and yet, they co-exist.

Regardless, that makes Hana and Angel conjoined psychic twins the way Yuji and Sukuna are two different mind consciousnesses sharing the same soul and body.

Is Angel a self-righteous Christian/Catholic “sorcerer” (missionary) from the past?

Angel’s introduction into the story brings with it the idea of a spiritual Higher Intelligence underscoring reality.

For me, the idea that she wants to uphold “the laws of God” or “the order of things” is what is most relevant.

She’s someone who does not want for God to be challenged even if challenging God, or the order of things, might mean that humans might become “enlightened”. More on this later.

Since some of the reincarnated sorcerers are from as far back as Heian, historically-speaking, I also wonder what era Angel is from since the 700s saw the spread of Christianity through the crusades of medieval Europe but the first Christian missionary did not enter Japan until 1549.

Anyways, it’s fascinating to see this character get thrown into a story with strong Buddhist themes. And as I’ve mentioned before, my understanding is that Buddhism doesn’t necessarily acknowledge or deny the existence of a God.

Historically, the implications for this are interesting because the introduction of Christianity into Japan was a political move that challenged the political stronghold that Buddhism had on Japanese society at the time.

The history of Kirishitans in Japan, as they were called, is very fascinating. Who knows how much of it Gege will use as inspiration, but you can read about it here if you want to learn more.

Now, seeing as Hana and Angel are of two different minds, I think that it’s not Hana that is not to be trusted, but rather Angel herself.

Ok, I’ll admit that maybe I’m hanging onto my distrust of Angel when maybe there’s nothing to mistrust about her, but...

She’s clearly going to use Megumi for her own goals and we still don’t know why she’d want to target “the Disgraced One” (as per the official translation).

Why does she want to pass judgment on him?

And let’s say they do fight and kill the Disgraced One, will she keep her promise?

Either way, I get the feeling we’re going to find out pretty soon how and why daddy Sukuna became the Disgraced One.

Ah... swoon.... and the smug look on his face as he admits to being the Disgraced One? This character... Yes more please!

Anyways, this brings us into Fallen Angel territory.

The Fallen Angel

Now... TBC scans specifically made a point to make a distinction about the kanji used...

And I think it’s because we shouldn’t be thinking of Sukuna as a Fallen Angel per se. Or at least someone who once stood at God’s side and then fell from Grace.

Regardless, the connotation of falling from Heaven’s Grace is still present as though Heaven (Nirvana?) was an ideal state of mind or being:

堕: degenerate, descent to, lapse to

天: heaven

Given the lack of the kanji for Angel in The Fallen, I am not sure whether we can link Sukuna to a figure like Lucifer, the Fallen Angel or the Bringer of Light. Regardless, there’s still something very telling about how he “descended from heaven and degenerated into who he is”.

Basically, there’s something here about how his persona degenerated and lost any semblance of morality.

No regard for others, right?

He’s also been called a storm. Which, from a Buddhist perspective, the enlightened mind should be one that is calm and clear (I think) enough to reflect upon itself.

Plus, the fact that Sukuna owns to the title so readily is very interesting.

I do have to wonder why Gege omitted the kanji for angel (使) as part of the idea that Sukuna is the Fallen.

I say this because, historically, Ryomen Sukuna is said to have been revered by the people of his province and stood up against the Emperor.

If you think of the metaphor of Lucifer as the Bringer of Light, there is a small connection there in which perhaps JJK Sukuna challenged God, the Emperor or maybe the order of things for a greater goal.

Who knows.

But... everyone and their Jujutsu-mom has been trying to kill him from the start of the story.

Is it truly because he’s a dangerous and aberrant creation that should not exist? Or is there something we don’t know?

My money is on the audience missing important information and Sukuna being an aberration.

I’ve heard podcasts about books that go into how the story told by Christianity is a rehash of other myths. In other words, you can think of the Devil/Lucifer as a sort of misunderstood antagonist.

That is not to say that evil doesn’t exist. It’s just that evil got equated with challenging the status quo (God).

i..e did you know Lucifer is actually a metaphor for the planet Venus’s movement in the sky as a metaphor for a Sumerian Goddess moving through the underworld?

And if The Angel is truly only interested in her own goals, then we know she’s only interested in upholding the status quo in a world where a being like Sukuna challenges the status quo.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now but... JJK is starting to resemble the underlying themes in x/1999.

What with the battle for the end of the world and the two opposing sides, the Dragons of Heaven seeking to protect humanity, and the Angels of Earth who have lost regard for humanity (sounds familiar?) and are seeking to overthrow the status quo.

Basically, Gojo is not getting unsealed anytime soon. Now what?

All that to say... considering Yuji went through the effort to remind us that if he dies, Sukuna dies, I think it’s safe to say that once everyone finds out that The Fallen is Sukuna, asking Angel to unseal Gojo is probably out of the question.

Smart move Gege.

If he takes Gojo out of the box, Gojo can fix everything because he’s OP. Best to keep him sealed so that our heroes can have their character growth.

So, to answer Megumi’s question from the beginning: yes, Destined One, everything IS, in fact, going too well...