#i doubt there's much overlap between jujutsu kaisen enjoyers and horror fans but

[linkspooky]

WHOOO that was a loaded answer and I loved every word of it OP! I am curious if you've seen the movie hereditary. I know some other post on tumblr talked about how the movie had a massive influence on Gege and it's shown pretty clearly between Megumi and Sukuna, so I was wondering if you had any input on that out of curiosity.

I've seen the movie hereditary. I think you're referring to this post about Hereditary's influence on Jujutsu Kaisen. I wouldn't put it past Jujutsu Kaisen to be inspired by other media, it's also a manga with several horror elements itself from the premise to the existence and designs of the curses.

For those who haven't seen the movie hereditary he's a quick and silly summary:

A woman buries her mother and it's heavily implied that the mother was abusive. Also she was a Satanist who didn't approve of her daughter's non-satan loving lifestyle. The mother Annie has two children Peter, and Charlie. Annie thinks her daughter Charlie is kind of annoying so she tells Charlie to go to a party with her brother and stop bothering her. At the party Charlie eats a weed brownie and has an allergic reaction to it, and so they rush her home in the car. However, Peter is speeding too fast and Charlie's sticking her head out the window so she gets instantly decapitated and dies.

Then - and this is the greatest scene in any movie ever made. Instead of calling the cops, or the hospital, or his parents Peter just drives home, parks the car in the garage, and then leaves his sister's dead body as a fun little surprise for someone to find in the morning.

After that a cult pretending to be a grief support group tricks Annie into using a ouiji board to summon Charlie's ghost back, but instead they summoned the demon Paimon, who takes over her son's body at the end of the movie.

The post I linked above posits the Megumi and Sukuna possession plotline, which has basically been the longest running arc involved with Megumi in themanga was directly inspired by the ending twist to Hereditary where Peter is made to host Paimon. Even if it's not a direct inspiration it's a pretty apt comparison. Hereditary is basically a movie about trauma being passed down through three generations until it culminates on Peter as the last link in this chain of abuse.

It's heavily implied that Grandma Satan worshipper was not a good mother, and at the beginning of the movie before tragedy even strikes Annie is completely checked out on both of her kid's lives. She's not really a mother in this family unit before the family destroying tragedy. You could say Charlie's death happens in the first place because her mother didn't want to put up with her and sent her away instead. Then after the tragedy, Annie's got a clear scapegoat to blame in Peter who caused the car accident yeah, but number one it was a pure accident, and number two he's a teen.

Grandma Mrs. Satan's poor parenting -> Annie not liking her kids -> Neglecting Charlie -> Charlie's death -> Annie scapegoating Peter for Charlie's death -> Peter is possessed by the same cult that Grandma Satan belonged to.

There's a circular quality to this grief because it's implied towards the beginning of the film while Grandma Satan didn't get along with Annie she started to connect with her daughter's children soon after Charlie was born because she saw Charlie as a prospective host for Paimon. So, it leaves the question that this might have been the plan all along, Grandma always planned to take one of the kid bodies and their mother was unable to break the cycle or interrupt grandma's plans because she was too caught up in the circle of grief too.

Ari Aster has gone on record saying the movie is about familiar trauma being passed on through generations:

I knew that I really wanted to make a film about the corrosive effects of trauma on a family unit. I knew that I wanted to make a film that had sort of an ouroboros quality about a family that’s basically eating itself in its grief. [SOURCE]

Megumi, much like Peter is the last link in a chain of trauma. I explore that concept in more depth in this post, but basically Megumi is the last link on the chain that starts with the Zen'in and Toji. Toji is rejected by his clan and basically has no family or support inside of Jujutsu Society. He flees it, finds some stability in Megumi's mother for awhile but after losing her he decides to stop caring about himself or others.

Toji then repeats the cycle. Toji is the famous sorcerer killer but in story we see him victimize several children. He kills Riko Amanai in cold blood for cold cash right in front of Geto and Gojo, the aftermath of which would affect them for years to come. He then absolutely brutalzies both Geto and Gojo who were also teenagers at the time though they were incredibly powerful ones. FInally, he also abandons his own son, sells him to the Zen'in and leaves him without a guardian or adult in his life to take care of.

The trauma that began with the Zen'in -> leads to -> Toji's actions as the sorcerer killer -> leads to -> Toji's abandonment of Megumi and Megumi having no parental figures in his life to take care of him.

Gojo is also a chain link in this cycle. His loss to Toji is something Gojo still remembers to this day, as the first and only time someone ever made him feel fear in a fight. He literally cites Megumi's resemblance to Toji as the reason that he has no problem fighting Sukuna while he's in Megumi's body.

Then, is Gojo trying to overcome this cycle of abuse by intervening in Megumi's case and making sure he wasn't sold to the Zen'in Clan?

Well, Kiiiiiiind of. It's clear is motivation is to try to save Megumi from becoming like Geto. After Geto's defection Gojo comments that being strong isn't enough to save people you have to save people who want to be saved and then goes to find Megumi early, like he's trying to intervene earlier because he regrets not being there in time with Geto.

However, this is where I say Gojo's lost to Toji gave him trauma he has yet to recover from. Ever since Gojo's awakening as "the strongest" he believes that strength is the solution to every problem. Yes, even after he had the revelation that being the strongest isn't enough to save some people. Yes, it's a contradiction. Gojo's brain is a complicated and scary place, us mere humans aren't meant to totally comprehend what goes on inside there.

Since his awakening against Toji, Gojo has always solved his problems by being the strongest, and being the strongest alone. His solution is to raise allies who will be as strong, or even stronger than him. Megumi who has the Zen'in Clan's strongest inherited technique, and one that supposedly killed a six-eyes user with the limitless in the past seems like the natural candidate.

On top of that it's clear Gojo sees a lot of himself in Megumi. They're both child prodigies born to one of the three great clans, with that clan's strongest single technique. Considering Naobito made Megumi the Clan Head in his last will and Testament, if Megumi had been raised by the Zen'in he probably would have been given a similiar childhood to Gojo's (spoiled child prodigy raised as a tool for the clan). However, Megumi is not Gojo and Gojo seems to have trouble ferreting out those differences.

Which is why we see some frustration on Gojo's end that despite the fact they have their respective clan's powerful techniques, at his second year Gojo was already a special class and well on his way to being considered the strongest while Megumi himself has a tendency to coast on his talent instead of applying himself and doesn't think it's even remotely possible for himself to get as strong as Gojo.

Gojo does not understand why Megumi doesn't "swing for the fences" the way that Gojo and Yuji does. Why he comes off as so unomotivated and fails to capitalize on any of his blessings.

However, while Gojo is able to notice the symptoms, he doesn't understand the disease or rather the cause of Megumi's behavior. The first being that Megumi is not Gojo. Gojo may find a lot of things similiar about their situations, but no matter how much Gojo tries to mold Megumi into a successor Megumi is not going to be Gojo.

That's where we get back to the connection to Hereditary. In hereditary basically the cult's grand scheme in the movie is to manipulate events to mould Peter into the next successor to Paimon, and Peter himself is not only a bit of an agenciless victim to all of their schemes as the cult progresses, but because of the failure of their mother they have no parent or adult to protect them from the cult's actions. Peter has a missing parent figure, and another figure trying to actively manipulate him until he's worn down enough to fall victim to Paimon's possession.

Not only is the story a tragedy in the genre sense, hamlet, romeo and juliet, etc. etc. but the victim Peter is agenciless in his actions like most victims in tragedies are. Everything in the world just wears him down, he has no support from adults, and no escape, he has little choice in the things that happen to him until eventually he gets his body taken away from him. HIs agency is literally stolen because he no longer can control even his own body.

Someone on reddit put this better than me:

Hereditary portrays how one might lose conscious control over his or her actions; be overwhelmed by the subconscious: possessed. It's symbolised with decapitation – a separation of mind and body. The body is what keeps the head up top and grounded upright. If they're separated, a person disorientates and loses his/her sense of up and down. Suffering without being able to interpret it is torturous and can make you want to stop trying to interpret all together. If you think of home as a person's frame of interpretation, the treehouse is where the film's themes come together:

Decapitation is a pretty common image used in the movie hereditary. Two characters die from swift decapitation. Is there a clearer symbol for loss of bodily control then having your head chopped off? Losing all five senses? Losing your ability to move your body?

Megumi is also a character who has lost control over his body and actions since Sukuna's possession of him, and the grief over loss of a sister has caused him to stop fighting for control entirely but did Megumi have a lot of control over his own life before that?

There are no adult figures who are trying to protect and care for Megumi. That was his father's job, but Toji abandoned him. Megumi and Tsumiki are essentially left to fend for themselves in the world of adults with little choices.

Megumi is given two choices, go to the Zen'in who are going to raise him to be a sorcerer, or go to Gojo who will raise him to be a sorcerer in a slightly less misogynistic environment. There's no option where Megumi gets to choose not to be a sorcerer because Gojo's "help" comes with the huge asterisk* *If you don't work as a sorcerer for jujutsu high we won't pay for your food.

Megumi was already being molded into being what someone else wanted for him to be - in this case Gojo. He was being raised as one of Gojo's allies and successors with little to no input with what Megumi wanted out of life. In the process Sukuna ends up hijacking Megumi's body and moulding Megumi to be useful for Sukuna's ambitions instead. Which is why this is so similiar to the tragedy in Hereditary it kind of feels like in traditioanl tragedy fashion Megumi has the agency of the main character of a tragedy. No matter what he does he's playing into someone's hands. So many people have plans for Megumi and how they want to use him and Megumi's just some teenage kid caught in the middle of it.

Sukuna sets up his plan for possessing Megumi at the start of the story. Megumi was taken in by Gojo and turned into a sorcerer and his tool against the elders before the start of the story. Annie's grandma always planned on putting Paimon into one of her children, and Annie doesn't figure it out until it's too late and we're already seeing the effects of her grandmother's long game plans.

So yeah, Hereditary and Jujutsu Kaisen are both about this intergenerational cycle of trauma, and how it will always affect the weakest members on the chain (children).