Episode 9 – “Young Fish and Reverse Punishment”
Junpei Yoshino is a young Satozakura High School that is often bullied by his classmates. They claim that he was sexually harassing a female student. Junpei is the boy we saw questioning Mahito at the end of Jujutsu Kaisen episode 8. He skips school to see Earthworm Man 3 his bullies also had the same idea. They make noise during the film making it impossible for Junpei to enjoy the film. Suddenly, Mahito kills them for being rude. Junpei witness this massacre from his seat and runs to chase Mahito. When he catches up to him he asks “if there was any way he could do the things that he does.”
Yuji Itadori and Kento Nanami a Grade 1 Sorcerer arrive to investigate the deaths. Nanami is a dear friend of Gojo but he claims that he doesn’t respect him. He doesn’t like that Gojo breaks the rules and regulations of higher-ups. Nanami doesn’t consider Yuji a “full-fledged sorcerer” yet, something that Yuji aims to change. In the present, Nanami teaches Yuji to see the residual curse energy that gets left behind after a cursed technique is used. Yuji quickly uses it, seeing footprints from Mahito. The residual leads them to a nearby rooftop. As soon as they arrive they notice two cursed spirits. Nanami tells Yuji to fight the one peeking around the wall and he handles the other.
Nanami’s Cursed Technique
Nanami explains his powers. He jujutsu is called Black Flash. It’s a technique that “creates spatial distortion when a user connects with an impact of Cursed Energy within 0.000001 seconds of a physical hit.” He takes out the creature with one strike of his sword. Yuji gets a chance to show off his new techniques. In a flashback, we see that Yuji has a “time lag” when drawing out cursed energy. This results in him turning “one strike into two impacts.” Yuji uses Divergent Fist, he punches a hole into the chest of the curse. It was a devastating attack. Before Nanami can finish off the creature he notices that it was wearing a watch. Stunned, he takes a picture of the creature.
Shoko Ieiri confirms that the curses are humans that have been mutated by a curse technique. Shoko assures Yuji that he didn’t kill them but he becomes enraged. Nanami is surprised that Yuji can be genuinely sad for the victims. Later Nanami tells Yuji that he believes that Mahito has deliberately been leaving residuals to trap them. Elsewhere, Mahito teaches Junpei how curses manifest. According to Mahito, curses are created from “human’s collective fears.” Mahito claims that fear of natural disasters can manifest curses. So a curse like Jogo was likely born of people’s fear of volcanic eruptions.
Can cursed spirits come from anything?
An interesting concept has been introduced in Jujutsu Kaisen episode 9. If the source of cursed spirits is simply anything a group of human fear then anything is on the table, spiders, dogs, water, and clowns. Considering that humans are never going to be cured of fear, I wonder if a curse like Jogo gets killed if he would come back? Or would another curse spirit be born from people’s fear of volcanic eruptions? I think it’s a clever source of spirits and it has an infinite number of possibilities.
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