Highlights
- Kasumi Miwa’s character arc in Jujutsu Kaisen has fallen short, leaving fans feeling unsatisfied with her development and abilities.
- Despite her charm and initial likability, Miwa’s lackluster combat record and stagnant role in the story have disappointed viewers.
- Miwa’s persona as a kind-hearted person in a cruel world symbolizes a larger theme in Jujutsu Kaisen, but her potential remains largely untapped.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Jujutsu Kaisen, now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Kasumi Miwa is useless – at least that’s what Jujutsu Kaisen’s narrative, its fans, and even the character herself all say about her abilities as a sorcerer and her role in things. It’s treated as a joke at first, but as the story becomes more serious, this joke hasn’t translated to the best of character arcs, turning the label of “useless” into something of a curse on the story itself.
Ask the fans, and they’ll tell you that Jujutsu Kaisen either has some of the best women in the shōnen genre or some of the most underutilized, of which Miwa is often grouped into the latter. Her lack of effectiveness in battle has resulted in some ridicule, especially after the tail end of the Shibuya Incident arc, yet it’s very telling that she’s not a universally disliked character.
Who Is Kasumi Miwa?
Miwa is a student of Kyoto Jujutsu High and a sorcerer trained in the New Shadow Style. She specializes in the use of the Batto Sword Drawing technique, which builds up cursed energy while the blade is sheathed, leading to a devastating attack once drawn. By combining this with a simple domain, she creates an area-of-effect attack where she will instantly draw her blade on any target that enters her domain.
Many fans find Miwa to be incredibly adorable and charming and a lot of this has to do with how she is introduced early on. On an aesthetic level, she immediately stands out for the professional look of her black suit and the katana at her hip, contrasted against her bright blue hair and bubbly personality. Her being a Satoru Gojo superfan was just the icing on the cake and presented her as a kind soul among the initially hostile cast of the Kyoto school.
How The Story Sets Her Apart
Miwa also stands out in terms of how she has come to terms with – and expresses – her flaws. In several fights in this arc, the Kyoto students tend to wield their past hardships as justifications for their bleak attitudes and to rationalize their loathing of their opponents. It’s a common theme tying Mechamaru, Momo, and Mai’s fights together, but Miwa acts completely differently.
Not only does she apologize for her school’s plotting, but she bluntly states that she’s becoming a sorcerer, so she can make money to support her siblings. The lack of tragedy in her delivery of this line compared to her peers isn’t just funny – it suggests that she’s somewhat content and honest with herself. It commands respect in addition to being generally endearing, even as what follows is the beginning of an unflattering trend.
Miwa’s Less-Than-Stellar Combat Record
The first time the audience sees her fight in the series proper, she gets defeated in quite a spectacular display that emphasizes the strength of Miwa’s opponent, Maki. The next time fans see her in combat is a brief moment in the prequel, Jujutus Kaisen 0, when she eviscerates a few minor curses and gets saved by Mechamaru. Then, she isn’t seen again in person until the end of the Shibuya Incident, when the Kyoto students attack Kenjaku.
Now, in Miwa’s defense, everyone drops the ball here, but her quickdraw attack, in particular, is given a lot of dramatic weight at that moment, but Kenjaku just catches her sword and breaks it as if it were nothing. To add insult to injury, Miwa made a binding vow to put everything into her attack at the cost of never wielding a sword again.
By the end of Season 2, Miwa has not had much time to grow and develop as a character, and if her binding vow is symbolic of anything, she’s been forcibly retired from combat. Sure, she could wield another weapon, but she hasn’t done so yet in the manga. It’s a very peculiar state for her character to be in that invites some shade from readers/watchers who are understandably asking what the point of her existence is.
Why Is Kasumi Miwa?
While her story isn’t technically over just yet, an argument could be made that the point of Kasumi Miwa is ultimately the same thing that made her appealing in the first place. She is a remarkably kind-hearted person and, no, that doesn’t immediately make her compelling, but it means a lot more as this story continues.
A big theme of Season 2 was the unmasking of the ugliness of Jujutsu Kaisen’s world, notably in the greed, selfishness, and thoughtless consumption of life exhibited by those at the top. Mei Mei symbolizes this perfectly once the writing drops all pretense and reminds the viewer that she’s not a completely good person. Meanwhile, altruistic souls like Kento Nanami – who cared about protecting the students – are snuffed out.
How Miwa Fits into This Society
In a world like this, Kasumi Miwa is too good of a person to be a jujutsu sorcerer. Her compassion is what kept Kokichi Muta morally tethered even as he betrayed everyone to try and attain a healthy body. In the face of the world’s overwhelming cruelty, he believed that her kindness was worth protecting most of all. Even with minimal time to develop their bond, there’s ample tragedy in the last moments between Miwa and the boy who loved her.
So yes, there is a purpose for her within the story, but no one is laughing at her characterization because her place in the world isn’t illustrative of a larger theme. Far fewer would argue that her appeal is somehow elusive. If it were, barely anyone would be upset about how she is written. People are upset because nothing substantial has been done with her since the Shibuya Incident arc concluded, and her purpose, while meaningful, doesn’t suggest much agency on her part.
The Fans Are Right to Laugh
These aforementioned defenses can’t quite erase the grain of truth behind the jokes people like to make about her, because unfortunately, it is funny that she fails. It’s funny in the worst way possible, because by the time she attacks Kenjaku, and he throws Uzumaki at her seemingly out of spite, it doesn’t feel like a joke anymore. On the train with Kokichi, she’s a lot more hurt by the thought that she’s useless.
Because of the pacing, the scale of the current conflict in the manga, and how close the end has become, Miwa might not get the chance to be more than that label placed on her. In this way, she joins many characters who have been underutilized, several of whom have been fan-favorite women. For all of its greatness, Jujutsu Kaisen is shorter than a lot of the most popular shōnen, and the greatest casualty of this tends to be the supporting cast.
Kasumi Miwa is a good person in a world where good people are disadvantaged, but rather than developing from a conflict with this harsh reality, she has instead been made a victim of it. Her role is stagnant, but if her strongest scenes have proven anything, it’s that it wouldn’t take much for Jujutsu Kaisen to give her story a fitting conclusion.