Warning: Contains spoilers for Jujutsu Kaisen season 2, episode #21.While not as vital to the plot as Sukuna and Kenjaku, Mahito is still undeniably one of the biggest villains in Jujutsu Kaisen. As Yuji’s archnemesis, Mahito constantly pushed him to his limits, and the story always used Mahito’s nihilism as a means of challenging the ideologies of Yuji and the story, as a whole.
Mahito was always defined by his philosophical nature and the cruelty that sprung from it, but Jujutsu Kaisen’s anime has managed to highlight the real sort of character he is. Season 2, episode #21, “Metamorphosis”, covered the end of Yuji and Todo’s fight with Mahito, and the way that Jujutsu Kaisen’s anime expands on Yuji and Mahito’s final interaction does an incredible job of highlighting what Mahito is truly like underneath all of his attempts to be philosophical.
The basic progression of events was also in the manga, but the anime’s take on things does an even better job of getting its point across, and that’s great to see.
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Jujutsu Kaisen’s Anime Exposes Mahito As A Coward & Hypocrite
The way that the Jujutsu Kaisen anime handles Mahito’s final moments so well is by exposing his cowardice and hypocrisy. Just like in the manga, Mahito is so frightened by Yuji’s declaration of killing him that he runs away from him, and not only did the Jujutsu Kaisen anime extend the sequence of Mahito running from Yuji, but it had him crying and throwing mud at Yuji to try and make Yuji go away. Mahito had always talked about how people killing each other isn’t a big deal, so seeing him so thoroughly reject being on the receiving end of his own ideology perfectly showed off his cowardice and hypocrisy.
Something that further added to that was the original scene of Mahito breaking his ankle. Another core component of Mahito’s personality was the assertion that he understood the soul better than anyone else, but the fact that Mahito was unable to use Idle Transfiguration to fix his ankle showed that he never truly had a deeper understanding of the soul and could make mistakes surrounding it just as easily as anyone else. That moment, coupled with everything else in the scene, made Mahito’s overwhelming hypocrisy surrounding his ideologies even more apparent than in the manga, and that allowed the anime to elevate the scene to a whole other level.
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Jujutsu Kaisen’s Anime Makes Yuji’s Victory Over Mahito Even More Cathartic
Jujutsu Kaisen’s anime did a great job of highlighting Mahito’s true character, and that made Yuji’s victory even more cathartic. Yuji’s victory over Mahito was already a deeply cathartic moment after everything Mahito had put him through, but with the Jujutsu Kaisen anime doubling down on how pathetic Mahito was acting in his final moments, that makes Yuji’s victory all the more satisfying for viewers, especially since the anime had Yuji get in an extra hit on Mahito. Yuji’s defeat of Mahito was always one of the best moments in Jujutsu Kaisen, and the anime expanding on it so much has done wonders to show just why that is.
Jujutsu Kaisen releases new episodes on Thursdays on Crunchyroll.
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