Highlights
- Maki and Mai Zen’in’s fierce competitive relationship stems from twinhood, love, and hate, making for a complex story arc.
- Aoi Todo and Yuji Itadori’s brotherly bond propels their rivalry, pushing each other to reach their full potential as sorcerers.
- Geto and Gojo’s clash of values showcases the complexity and emotional depth of their once strong friendship, leading to a tragic outcome.
Character rivalries in anime are hardly a new concept, and Jujutsu Kaisen is included in the tension and excitement they create within storylines and narratives, usually borne out of affiliation and competitiveness. Rivalries are also created by hate and several other emotions, and Jujutsu Kaisen exemplifies these rivalries through several of its characters.
Some, originating from as little as a conversation, the show has seen some of its characters evolve their competitive relationship to extreme levels in the spirit of spurring each other on, although some, in different jujutsu directions. For these characters and the series narrative, here are some of the best rivalries present within the show.
6 Maki Zen’in and Mai Zen’in
Similar Traits: Hatred For The Zen’in Clan
Born as twins and females, Maki and Mai were destined to live tough lives as Jujutsu sorcerers born into one of the three Great Families. In addition, Maki was born with a Heavenly Restriction, which meant she could not use cursed energy of her own. Mai, on the other hand, unlike her sister, was born with a pool of cursed energy smaller than that of the average sorcerer.
Their lives took on different paths when Maki decided to leave the Zen’in clan and become a sorcerer on her own, and that started what became a loving and competitive relationship disguised as hatred and indifference on each end of the sisters. Desperate to outdo the other, specifically Mai, the sisters maintained a relationship so fierce that an episode was dedicated to them in the show’s first season. Despite having much less screen time during the current season, their relationship will be further expanded as the story unfolds.
5 Aoi Todo and Yuji Itadori
Similar Traits: Love For Tall Women
The pair starts off in one of the most interesting and funny manners in the series, following their impromptu battle during the Kyoto Sister-School Goodwill Event that allowed Yuji to grow exponentially as they later face off against Hanami together. Their rivalry is representative of the popular ‘best friends who propel each other’ trope of rivalry commonly adopted in various anime. With contrasting personalities and qualities, Yuji finds Todo reasonably easy to get along with, to the point where Todo considers Yuji his best friend, much to the confusion of all the other Jujutsu High students.
Their closely knit brotherly relationship is the basis for the extreme competitiveness between the pair, as one will do all that he can not to get left behind by the other as Jujutsu sorcerers. Both determined to keep getting more powerful, the intensity of their rivalry peaked during their battle against the Special-Grade Mahito, which resulted in the pair drawing the totality of their latent potential and Todo even using the Black Flash Technique for the first time.
4 Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo
Similar Traits: Love For Jujutsu
Formerly best friends, Geto and Gojo were already considered the strongest at the time; they were students at Jujutsu High. Like Todo and Yuuji, the pair insistently refused to get left behind by the other regarding power and strength. Their paths, however, began to take different directions following their battle against Toji Fushiguro and the death of Riko Amanai as Gojo, during his near-death experience, perfected his reversed cursed technique, signaling the true beginning of his unrivaled power as the strongest.
Geto’s ideologies regarding jujutsu sorcerers began to take a darker shade until He set on a path of the destruction of humanity, with Gojo being the only one capable of standing in his way. Unable to reconcile their ideologies, both stood on different of the jujutsu world’s spectrum, with Geto hell-bent on eradicating humans from the world and creating a world for only jujutsu sorcerers and Gojo determined to stop Geto from carrying out. Their clash of values ultimately resulted in Gojo killing his best friend, ensuring that one of the series’s most complex and emotional relationships was shortlived.
3 Kenjaku and Sukuna
Similar Traits: Evil Ingenuity
For Kenjaku and Sukuna, theirs is a relatively silent and indirect rivalry. With both having lived during the Heian Era and Kenjaku being responsible for Sukuna becoming a cursed spirit in the first place, the pair have a relatively unspoken and somewhat one-sided relationship. Sukuna, obviously, is self-serving more than anything, and the same also applies to Kenjaku, but where they share an uncanny similarity is their ability to create chaos and be evil.
Known to be the most evil sorcerers in history, the pair, specifically Kenjaku, insistently outdo themselves in being evil. Both sinisterly strong and equally vile, the duo have displayed moments of evil ingenuity that defy logic in manners that challenge each other to come up with something even worse. However, their actions generally do not align with each other.
2 Sukuna and Gojo
Similar Traits: Unrivaled Strength
The curse of the strongest is loneliness and solitude within the multitude, which holds the same for both Sukuna and Gojo. Both are acknowledged to be undoubtedly the strongest sorcerers of their various eras. Hence, their relationship is neither of hate nor familiarity but simply the curiosity to find out who alone could be the strongest.
The pair clashed briefly at the beginning of the show following Itadori Yuuji’s introduction to the Jujutsu world, and it has remained a question of ‘who would come out victorious?’ ever since then. With both on either end of the show’s spectrum as a primary antagonist and a primary protagonist, the clash to determine the strongest seems inevitable. Still, until then, the pair will continue to sharpen their fangs in preparation for the appropriate moment.
1 Yuji and Mahito
Similar Trait: Vast Jujutsu Potential
Two of the most outstanding characters of the series, Yuji and Mahito, are essentially mirror versions of one another and, at the same time, polar opposites who both find themselves on different sides of the same coin, not by choice but by an act of fate. Theirs is a rivalry of hatred fueled by the circumstances through which their existences become entangled. Beginning with Junpei and topped off by the deaths of Nanami and Nobara, the pair share a similar desire to destroy the other.\
Fueled by this desire, they are both able to tap even deeper into their vast potential, leading them to become fearsome characters in terms of power and strength, respectively. Their heated relationship, spanning the two seasons of the show, may have come to an exhilarating halt following their battle in Shibuya, which left Mahito on the verge of death and in fear for his life.
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