Warning! Spoilers ahead for My Hero Academia chapter 338!
The ineffectiveness of how mangaka Kohei Horikoshi continues to portray Yuga Aoyama as a traitor in My Hero Academia has always been painfully obvious but comparing the way in which Jujutsu Kaisen dealt with Kokichi Muta‘s betrayal only further underscores the former manga’s failure.
It’s odd that Jujutsu Kaisen making Kokichi Muta a traitor worked just because he was only a minor supporting character. He didn’t even attend the same school as the series’ main protagonists Yuji Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro. He went to the rival school Kyoto Jujutsu High, so even though he wasn’t one of the Kyoto students actively trying to kill Yuji upon Yuji’s acceptance to the Tokyo school, readers still considered him a pseudo-enemy and therefore didn’t care if he betrayed anyone. What made readers care about him was his tragic past, and it’s much more of a tragedy than Yuga’s.
Kokichi agreed to serve as a mole for the cursed spirit Mahito and ancient sorcerer Pseudo-Geto to help his horrific affliction. The young sorcerer always felt as though his body was being stabbed with needles because of the sensitivity of his skin, which prevented him from going into the sun since natural light would hurt him even more. He, therefore, spent his time away from everyone and only interacted with people through cursed corpse puppets like the Mechamaru he controlled remotely. Making matters worse, Kokichi didn’t have a right arm and was paralyzed from the waist down. Readers couldn’t help but feel sorry for Kokichi when Jujutsu Kaisen revealed he only entered the traitorous pact with Mahito and Pseudo-Geto on the condition that his fellow classmates wouldn’t get hurt. They felt sorrier still after the villain Mahito healed Kokichi before proceeding to try and kill him, for all Kokichi could think about during the battle was being with his friends in his healed body. But he never got that chance because Mahito killed him.
Yuga’s situation in My Hero Academia isn’t enviable either. Yuga was born quirkless so his parents made a deal with the villain All For One. In return though, Yuga would have to serve as a mole. While not enviable, Yuga only suffered from keeping his betrayal secret and living with the shame of being born quirkless. But he never had to deal with the isolation he so feared, unlike Kokichi who was killed after he thought he avoided his tragic destiny. Meanwhile, basically all of Yuga’s friends and teachers have forgiven him. Even though Yuga doesn’t feel he deserves their forgiveness, it makes his fate less pitiable.
It’s odd that Jujutsu Kaisen‘s traitor arc felt effective since readers shouldn’t have cared if anyone from the Kyoto school betrayed anyone. It’s for that reason why readers didn’t flinch when they learned that Yuga Aoyama was the traitor. Up until that point, My Hero Academia had foolishly focussed on every class 1-A student, diluting their backstories. Worst of all, My Hero Academia separated the last moment in the manga when Yuga was a major character from his traitor reveal by 100 chapters. Conversely, readers learned about Kokichi’s backstory about 40 chapters before Jujutsu Kaisen introduced him as the mole, so the memory of what happened was still fresh in readers’ minds. Jujutsu Kaisen definitely helped readers connect with Kokichi more than My Hero Academia by introducing Kokichi as the mole closer to the last time in the manga when he took center stage. But it truly all comes down to how much the experience negatively affected the traitor, and readers can’t help but feel more for Kokichi Muta than Yuga Aoyama.
