For The Love of Fictional Characters: What Does The People's Sorcerer Mean To You?
A look at the phenomenon that is Satoru Gojo.
***SPOILERS for Jujutsu Kaisen manga*****
A year ago today, on the 24th September 2023, Satoru Gojo died.
Chapter 236 of popular shōnen manga Jujustu Kaisen (often abbreviated to JJK) revealed fan favourite supporting character Satoru Gojo had died in his battle against The King Of Curses. The leaks, which dropped the Wednesday before, hit the anime community like a bomb.
The uproar was immediate. Spoilers were impossible to avoid as fans at all stages of grief posted their reactions. #GojoSatoru began trending everywhere. There were reports of death threats being sent to creator Gege Akutami. Creator of Fly Me To The Moon, another manga, announced a hiatus in response to Gojo’s death. Fans in Santiago even transformed a billboard advertising the second season of the anime into an impromptu memorial. No one could believe it. It was Gojover.
Grieving a fictional death isn’t unheard of. Attack on Titan fans in China held a real life funeral for protagonist Eren Yaeger. In Wales a shrine was erected for Ianto Jones after his death in Torchwood. There’s even legends of mass fan grief as far back as 1893, when Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his beloved consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. Grief over a favourite fictional character is normal and expected. Regardless, I was struck by the sheer volume and intensity of the mourners for Gojo. His popularity has held firm since his death. He topped the fourth JJK popularity poll in 2024 with 113k votes, with second coming in with only 48k votes. Myanimelist.net ranks him as the 16th most popular anime character with 60k favourites. His influence has even broken containment, with Usher making a memorial TikTok for him in cosplay1. I’ve participated in fandom for quite a while now and I don’t know if I’ve experienced something like this.
Why Gojo?
I guess we should start by asking who is Gojo.
Satoru Gojo is a powerful jujutsu sorcerer in the shōnen battle anime/manga Jujutsu Kaisen. He made his debut in creator Gege Akutami’s short series Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School, which would go on to become the prequel to the anime phenomenon both Akutami and Gojo are known for. Here, he is introduced as protagonist Yuta Okkotsu’s goofy teacher. With only four chapters, there’s not a lot of time to spend developing Gojo’s character. Regardless the foundations for a fan favourite character are laid.
In the main series Gojo saves new protagonist Yuji Itadori from execution after he swallows the mummified finger of Ryomen Sukuna, a legendarily evil sorcerer from the golden age of Jujutsu2. His first interaction with Yuji/Sukuna introduces one of his most defining character traits. You see, Satoru Gojo is the strongest. He has inherited the six eyes and the limitless curse technique, which hasn’t been seen together in 400 years. His very birth changed the balance of the jujutsu world. He is not only strong, he is unparalleled. His first battle in JJK has him taking on the reincarnated King of Curses Sukuna. He’s nonchalant and playful in a way that comes across as utterly disrespectful. Sukuna here, without his full power, is not even close to being a match for Gojo. As the manga goes on we will see that no one really is.
Establishing Gojo as so unbelievably strong creates some tricky narrative obstacles. Namely, how do you create tension when the most fearsome foe is on your side. Much of the earlier part of the manga is spent devising ways of keeping Gojo out of the fight. Sometimes he’s away on another mission. Other times the heroes are trapped in a Gojo proof dome. Often he just doesn’t care to intervene. This hurdle is put to rest at the beginning of the infamous Shibuya Arc. The mastermind behind much of the stories conflict, Kenjaku, seals Gojo away in the prison realm by inhabiting the corpse of Gojo’s one and only friend, Suguru Geto.
The rest of the arc focuses on the other characters trying to save Gojo, only to fail. Gojo ends up spending 130 chapters, over three years in real time, in the prison realm. His only appearances in this time are in brief flashbacks, but he is basically absent for the entirety of two of the manga’s biggest arcs.
So, what’s the hype over this side character that’s missing for almost half of the manga?
No really, Why Gojo?
To explain the mass appeal of Gojo, I’m not only going to have to further explore his character, but I will have to further explore fandom in general.
Parasocial relationships with fictional characters have been the source of plenty of research. An interesting study on the topic was published in the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games in 2023, titled “Shippers and Kinnies: Re-conceptualizing Parasocial Relationships with Fictional Characters in Contemporary Fandom.” The study does a lot to break down the characteristics that attract parasocial interaction and the types of parasocial interactions that happen within parasocial relationships. The authors categorise these fan engagements into four different types: shipping, simping, kinning and self-shipping.
For those without a tumblr account, shipping is fan content or parasocial interactions related to an investment in a character's relationships (usually romantic and sexual). Thus self-shipping refers to making fan content for your own fictional (usually romantic) relationship with a character. Simping is similar, just with less role-play involved. People make fan cams or generally thirst over a character like they would a celebrity. Kinning is relating to character. People will make content exploring a characters attributes or their role in the story, using their own experiences to understand the text. These four categories bring to mind a certain type of fan: a young woman or femme presenting person, probably queer in some way, very online, but I think we can use these categories to break down Gojo’s fanbase as a whole.
The thing is, the volume of Gojo’s fanbase can be partly attributed to the range of fans he attracts. He’s equally popular with dude bros on reddit as he is with fan fiction writers on ao3. You’ll find him in the pfp’s of Twitter profiles pushing crypto and in the top ships on Tumblr. He’s used to sell energy drinks and body pillows alike. One character being equally appealing to such different demographics seems a little implausible, until you look at what each person is getting out of Gojo.
The Many Faces of Satoru Gojo
Gap-Moe is a term used to describe characters whose exterior persona severely clashes with their internal self. The volume ten extras for Jujutsu Kaisen include a number of panels where a question is posed to various characters: What is Satoru Gojo to you? Some of his students gush over him, others disregard him as a fool. His peers write him off as self-centred or unserious. No matter what anyone says, they all agree on one thing. His defining characteristic is his strength.
Everything that is said about Gojo in these panels is proven in canon. As mentioned above, his power is indisputable. Him being a god amongst sorcerers is a common theme in his story. This leads to a certain arrogance. He takes little seriously, he doesn’t have much time for manners or respect. This makes him unpopular amongst his peers, but he doesn’t seem to care. We see him pulling pranks on other sorcerers or messing around with his students. Gojo is fun. I define him in an archetype that I like to call the hyper-competent buffoon. His lax and goofy attitude is a stark contrast to just how deadly of an opponent he is.
This comic relief allows Gojo appeal to a wide audience, but the hyper focus on his strength makes him popular with those in the fandom called ‘powerscalers.’ Powerscaling is a form of discussion where people take two or more characters and rank their power and abilities next to each other. Think fantasy football with anime characters. Kaya Mendelsohn discusses fan engagement in relation to gender in her book Gender in Fandom. She explains that men tend to participate in fandom curatorially. They work in canon facts and use those facts to support arguments or meta-discussions. Powerscaling is a great example of this. In a sense, some Gojo fans are interested in him the same way someone would be interested in a sports team. During the Shinjuku Showdown, the 13-chapter long battle that led to Gojo’s death, fans tuned in each week with eager anticipation to see how their favourite is faring. Is he winning? If not, how can he pull through? It caused eager discussion that set forums alight.
Regarding the Shippers & Kinnies framework, you can argue that these fans are kinning Gojo. They’ve tied their identity to his strength and success in the same way sports fans identify with their favourite team. It’s their connection with him that drives their investment.
He Alone Is The Honoured One
Gojo’s inhuman abilities could’ve made him unrelatable, but Akutami’s choice to focus on Gojo’s loneliness brings interesting depth to his character. As alluded to before, the only people that really like Gojo in the canon of JJK are his students. The adults around him find him annoying or obnoxious, mostly because he is. Yet people’s distaste for him never seems to bother him, he doesn’t even seem to notice it. On the surface he seems above it all with no need to call anyone a friend. With the exception of one person.
Okay. Now we get to talk about Hidden Inventory.
Chapter 65 (and episode 25 of the anime) opens a new arc for Jujutsu Kaisen, one that takes us 12 years into the past to meet Gojo in his school days. There’s a lot that is familiar about this Gojo. He is still obnoxious and arrogant, despite having not realised his full power. Even here he is the strongest. Well, he is part of the duo of the strongest.
Gojo’s Past Arc introduces us to a friendship that has been hinted at since JJK0. Fellow second year Suguru Geto is the only sorcerer that matches Gojo’s strength. Despite this, he couldn’t be any more different to Gojo in demeanour. This isn’t the audiences first introduction to the curse spirit manipulating sorcerer. Suguru Geto is the main antagonist of the aforementioned JJK prequel. The Geto of JJK0 is defined by his hated of non-sorcerers, and his wish to exterminate them all. When we meet Geto at the start of the Hidden Inventory Arc (the first of the two arcs that make up Gojo’s Past Arc) he is kind and respectful. Unlike Gojo he wants to use jujutsu to protect those weaker than him. This sets up an emotionally wrought journey towards him becoming a eugenist.
The strongest duo’s friendship is easy to see from the beginning of the arc. There’s a natural banter between them. They look out for each other and they work together seamlessly. Geto is the only person Gojo respects, so much so that Gojo uses him as his moral compass. I won’t bore those of you who have already read or watched the arc with a recap, and won’t spoil it for those who haven’t, but this arc is some of the most emotionally affecting storytelling in Jujutsu Kaisen. Through the course of the arc Gojo comes to his full power, but his and Geto’s innocence is sacrificed in the process. Now, Gojo alone is the strongest. The inseparable best friend’s diverge as the toll of jujutsu society leads Geto down a path with no return.
It’s impossible to read this arc without recontextualising Gojo as an incredibly lonely individual. Gojo’s memories of his youth mean everything to him, he is stuck in past. We see this in his character design: a formless all black suit that resembles his school uniform. He’s constantly filling his students lives with childish fun, and we now see this as an attempt to prevent them from losing what he lost when he was their age. His inability to talk about his friendship with Geto in the past tense seems almost delusional after Geto tries to kill his students, forcing Gojo to kill him, but it really highlights how much Gojo holds onto this blue spring.
Before Gojo’s past arc it’s easy to see him as someone who doesn’t really care about anything except for power. In fact this is very much the Gojo we meet at the start of Hidden Inventory. He mocks people for being weak and he constantly lauds the fact that him and Geto are the strongest. This arc really shows us how far Gojo has come. After Geto’s defection he chooses to use his power and influence to protect the next generation of sorcerers. While his whole motivation is changing the structure of jujutsu society that failed him and his friend, you can also see a selfish angle to Gojo’s quest. He’s training a younger generation of sorcerers so one day they will match his strength. At least partially, he is handing down his own burden in the hopes of being less alone. He may be a god, but he is still painfully human.
The relationships between Gojo and his students has been the inspiration for a lot of fan content and discussion. These works tend to be transformative, taking little pieces of canon and expanding on them. The humanising elements of these relationships and his arc through Hidden Inventory and Premature Death offer a lot of substance for fans to project. It’s easy to kin the parts of him that had to grow up too fast, or that feel disconnected from the world around him for the way he was born. The mask he presents may be what draws him to fans who are interested in projecting a power fantasy onto him, but there’s so much to analyse for the fans who are interested in exploring Gojo’s story and how it fits into the overarching themes of the whole story.
Playboy or Gayboy?
His lack of meaningful relationships with characters his age leaves him without a concrete canon love interest. Gojo is canonically a very good looking man. The allure of his design at least partially comes from the elements that fit into the bishōnen archetype. Bishōnen describes an androgynous male hero who is often considered incomprehensibly beautiful within their text. Gojo’s fluffy white hair, his long eyelashes framing his signature blue eyes and his glossed lips3 attracts hordes of fangirls in the story and out. He’s not lacking for so-called simps.
Within the story of Jujutsu Kaisen, Gojo’s lack of traditional romance leaves a lot of opportunity for fan engagement. In a JJK fan book, author Gege Akutami once noted that they could not see Gojo “being faithful to any particular woman.” This statement is loadedly vague. Many have taken it on its face that Gojo, with all his power and money, is a shameless womaniser. This does a lot to endear him to his more traditionally masculine fanbase. He has plenty of fans who are interested in him as a cool guy who can do whatever he wants, whether that means he sleeps with hundreds of women or he is above the need for validations from women due to him being basically a god depends on the fan. As I’ve probably proven, I feel this is a very surface level reading of Gojo’s character that is basically contradicted in canon. I digress.
There’s also a reading of these interpretations that would serve the fans interested in self-shipping. With no explicit love interest for Gojo there’s a lot of room for people to insert themselves into the narrative to fill this role. The ‘Gojo Satoru x Reader’ tag on Tumblr is followed by 16k users. This tag is filled with stories, often written in the second person or staring the infamous y/n, depicting Gojo as a lover. These stories fall into a variety of categories, everything from fluff (nice feel good stories) to smut (porn). Taming a bad boy who has never wanted to commit before has been a staple of the romance genre far longer than people have been writing anime fan fiction. His gap moe, regarding his selfish exterior and his more caring interior, also lends itself to him being a compelling romantic lead. They really believe they can fix him.
I can’t conclude this essay without talking about shipping. Gojo is not only one half of the most popular ship in the fandom, but the same ship is this year’s fifth most popular ship on fan favourite fan fiction website Archive Of Our Own. The popularity of the ship between Gojo and Geto (known as SatoSugu) is pretty predictable if you’ve ever been in shipping spaces before. It’s almost stereotypical for a character to be shipped with their same gendered best friend. Regardless, canon gives the shippers a lot to work with.
While there is a subset of Gojo’s male fanbase that would be highly offended to hear this statement, I don’t feel Gojo’s queer coding is particularly subtle. Even excluding Gojo’s lack of interest in women, it’s hard to ignore such painfully romantic moments like the scene at the end of JJK0 in which Gojo finds Geto on death’s door after his fight with Yuta. Although the two face each other from two ideologically opposing sides, they speak to each other without animosity. In the movie adaptation it’s animated with a beautiful sunset with emotional music. Gojo ends Geto’s life, but not before he tells him one last thing which is censored for the viewer. Later it’s revealed after his death Gojo didn’t cremate his body. This led to Kenjaku possessing his body specifically to use against Gojo, knowing Geto would be a weakness for him.
There’s more I could explore, but someone else can write that essay. The point is there’s a lot of aspects of Geto and Gojo’s story that would be interesting to tragic romance fans. Even the fact Gojo could be read as queer would appeal him to queer fans who are looking to project onto him. Yet the ambiguity leaves room for denial for those who would dislike a character being canonically gay. Really, there’s a reading of Gojo for everyone.
Conclusion
A year after Gojo’s death, the manga is coming to a close. It final chapter will release this Sunday. Even now, there’s a large subsection of fans that are convinced Gojo is coming back. I don’t think he will and, despite my love for his character, I hope he doesn’t. The chapter of his death shows him reunited with everyone he has lost, all of whom are shown as they were in Gojo’s Past Arc. The title of the chapter, Going South, references something one of Gojo’s peers Nanami says, “…She said if you’d like to become someone new, go north. If you’d like to return to who you once were, head south.” That’s all Gojo ever wanted, and his ending finally gives that to him. I think it’s an incredibly respectful ending.
Many fans joke that Akutami hates Gojo, many others rage that Akutami is a bad writer. Even though the series has made some choices I don’t love4 I can’t bring myself to agree. Akutami is the reason we have Gojo, with his many layers and complexities. No matter how you see Gojo, if you like him or not, you can’t deny he’s a character that has made an impression on people. The love people have for him comes from Akutami’s writing. I can’t imagine that has come from a writer who hates him. That love had to come from somewhere, right?
Okay. This isn’t as random as it seems. The Usher song 'Daddy’s Home’ has kind of become Gojo’s unofficial anthem on TikTok, leading to calls from fans for Usher to play ‘Daddy’s Home’ at the Super Bowl half-time show.
I swear to god this series is good and serious you just gotta read it.
Personally, I think he’s scary looking. I think this really helps other him from the rest of the characters in the show. Just because I prefer looking at Gojo as an eldritch horror doesn’t mean most people aren’t into it. You do you boo.
Notice I didn’t bring up chapter 261? That’s because we don’t talk about chapter 261 in this household.