Understanding Toji Fushiguro - The Monkey Who Killed a God (Jujutsu Kaisen)

I wanted to take down the Pinnacle of the jiujitsu world they say that if you're not a member of the zenin family you are not worthy as a jiujitsu sorcerer and if you're not a jiujitsu sorcerer you're not worthy as a human being toi zenan would learn that in some of the most cruel ways he was harassed and abused from the moment he was born despised by his own family for his weakness even thrown into a swarm of cursed Spirits creating that scar on his mouth toi would become known as The Invisible Man for his

ability to mask his presence and still I think that was something he learned growing up in the zenan clan overshadowed by so many talented jiujitsu Sorcerers toji would learn how to fight by honing his five senses using his innate physical gifts and outwitting the more gifted quote blessed opponents along with physical abuse the zenan family left an even greater scar on the Heavenly restricted child he would go on to later refer to himself as a monkey when in the presence of Gojo and ghetto calling them blessed these are words I'm sure that toi didn't just

come across these are words that he was psychologically abused with the zenan family already sees nju Jutsu Sorcerers as less than human and so a monkey is the perfect relative toi would grow to see himself as worthless and inadequate and would leave this family with a burning desire to prove himself this worldview created the perfect assassin a heartless Stone Cold killer who specialized in Sorcerers a man who was incredibly insecure and who chased after the chance to prove himself to what felt like the entire world that he was enough toji and macki differ because Maki

can walk away and make a clean break aiming to take the system down and to become head of the clan one day flipping the system onto its head but toi internalizes the hatred his family had shown him he had become a prisoner of their attitudes and their abuse and it makes sense for the Invisible Man he didn't have anyone no friends no family he didn't even have a twin to share at least a tiny bit of that burden toi lives a life of solitude being known as a sorcerer killer coupled with his disposition that he

has developed everything toi does is out of spite and revenge for his treatment his worldview was shaped by the zenin clan no matter how backwards their teachings were he internalized it all if he is a monkey and jiujitsu Sorcerers are the ones worthy to be called human beings it's only right for him a monkey to prove to his Elders what his value truly is toi's diligence and most of all his pride led him to become one of the most formidable assassins in the jiujitsu world the sorcerer killer is incredibly diligent when studying his prey we

see that in the fight against Gojo not only does he remember the six eyes he makes sure to inform himself about all of his abilities and all of his techniques noting that he is the first Gojo family sorcerer in hundreds of years to wield both six size and aimus technique but more than that he knows exactly what these abilities entail he brought very specific cursed tools and Spirits to counteract the particular effects of blue and red and of the sixi toi devised a plan to overload Gojo's senses and to use his Heavenly restriction as his

primary tool to get the great sorcerer on the defensive and to force a stoppage of his curs technique all the while toi rarely calls Gojo by his name more than once toi refers to Gojo as the six eyes The Invisible Man is meant to contrast both ghetto and Gojo but he is much like Gojo in one aspect like the six eyes he too places great importance on strength for him it's because he searches for affirmation and for Gojo it's the tool that can bring significant change in the world toji is incredibly powerful the Heavenly restriction

has given him superhuman strength speed and senses he is a master of a multitude of weapons he is a master planner because his jiujitsu knowledge is vast he has used all the resources available to him toi was able to correctly assess ghetto ability and the type of sorcerer he was in mere moments forcing ghetto to fight in close quarters his one weakness his battle with Gojo tells you all that you need to know he is a meticulous planner and a tactical Mastermind he killed Gojo temporarily that should have been a massive Triumph for toi's philosophy

it's all the proof he needs to rise above his massive insecurity he finally gets proof of his value and yet when he defeats Gojo and ghetto that is when he calls himself a monkey he calls them blessed toi has an inferiority complex created by the zenan family he is unable to see how gifted he truly is unable to see how blessed he is toi had all of this all of these abilities all of these triumphs he defeated Gojo and ghetto the two strongest Sorcerers alive and yet it couldn't fill him up it could not satisfy

him he needed more and so Gojo rises from the dead when Gojo returns there's an initial look of fear on toi's face but in the panels that follow his look has become Elation the sorcerer killer is Overjoyed at the fact that Gojo has returned and he is hungry for a battle against the fully realized Limitless technique against the fully realized six eyes toji now has a chance to defeat the strongest sorcerer alive the Satur Gojo the panel where he runs into into battle with a grin plastered on his face is such a memorable one toi's

pride and his ego are really only filled when he can defeat Sorcerers and it only lasts mere moments toi has run away before and he finds no harm in that but here he ignores this uneasiness he ignores his Instinct his fear toi throws his fear aside when there is a chance to do something Monumental when there is a chance for toi's insatiable desire for affirmation can be realized he throws it all away here is a chance for him to discredit the entire jiujitsu world the entire jiujitsu system to crush it to discredit the zenen family

who has tortured him and who has made him suffer taking down the Pinnacle of the jiujitsu world this is what toi desires here is that pride and that insecurity and that desire to prove himself all on full display toi's head and heart were at odd and he allowed his heart to take over the toi at his core desired something he could never really gain approval he says that he deviated from his true self but one could argue that this is toi's true self all of the years of torment and suffering have created an unstable man

and that is the true toi someone who desires to crush the beliefs and dreams of his abusers by any means necessary a man who has lost his morality along the way and only understood the world in terms of power he wants to prove all of that to others but most of all to himself he's fighting an internal battle constantly and here for once he finally loses by sharing off that uneasiness and warning but he isn't angry or upset that he lost toi's upset at the fact that he lost his way this ego driven individual that

was the man he was before meeting his wife that was the true sorcerer killer it's why he says he's Rusty that he's only remembering how to do this because he hasn't been the sorcerer killer The Invisible Man in a long time that anger that Pride those were the emotions of a different man this and in household the family causes instability in toi but he mellowed out once he met his wife he gave up his pride perhaps in hopes to heal and to build a life with this woman whom he loved deeply toji fushiguro was a

new man a clean break he deserted one of if not the most powerful jiujitsu family he even renounced his Z in name he would connect with his true self he said but when she dies the cruelty of the World shows itself once again to toi aside from megumi he lost the only good thing in his life the one person who was able to help him change for the better and he responds to this by adopting this nonchalant despondent attitude he deles into gambling again he doesn't care about anything and morality is a part of that

as well he will do any job anything for the right price running away wasn't an issue for him nor was accepting the fact that he was a monkey without a blessing he tried to make himself believe that he wasn't fighting for anything anymore that it was just for money his apathy simply masked it all I don't care I don't care anymore he said toji was truly spiraling without his wife on a path to self-destruction fighting Gojo for the second time was where that Journey ended for him one of the most consistent themes in jiujitsu Kaizen

is a sorcerer or a character's regret when they die this is toi's he really believed that he had moved on from the zenin clan he thought he'd put all of those years of suffering behind him but again I think losing megumi's mother brought him back to the self-loathing angry vengeful person that he was his loneliness grew and those feelings came crawling back his pride yearned for something he regrets that this is the person he has become toji even tears up over it he regrets that he wasted his life yearning for approval and validation from people

who never cared about him that he spent his whole life trying to prove to himself that he was worthy that he was strong I said that one could argue that this was toi's true self this angry self-loathing person but on the other hand I truly believe that his circumstances created the man he was that his true self is the mellow out calm person we were never able to see toi's true maybe Kinder self was hidden underneath all that pain that is a man we will never know instead we know the stone cold killer the man

who took out a harmless child who took out two teenagers nearly killed one of them in the end the self-proclaimed monkey was a prisoner of Fate with a hole in the left side of his body toi's last thoughts were about his son the one person he did care about he now has to leave behind for good all because of his Petty Pride after all this the last piece of the fushiguro puzzle is toi's role as a father when Megami is first mentioned to toi he replies nonchalantly even asking who that is whether he genuinely forgot

about megumi's existence or not whether he never even cared whether he did we'll never know but toi is a curious case as a father his son has no idea who he is he has no idea of his past or anything he means nothing to him for megumi toi abandoned him and his sister for megumi toi didn't even care to figure F out his gender as his name is a feminine given name that is his view of his unknown father but there is more to that puzzle toi named his son megumi a name that he intentionally

chose which means blessing toi truly views megumi as a blessing in his life one of his only blessings since he was born a monkey as he would call himself megumi and his mother were the two things in his perception that were untainted that not even his jeans his cursed jeans could affect this boy Megami was a gift from his wife whom he truly loved and who helped him in a world in which he felt truly alone and I think he viewed his son in a similar light we also know that megumi is the one who

inherited the T Shadow a curs technique set to even rival the Limitless technique which means that megumi like Gojo and like ghetto was a truly blessed sorcerer who could One Day become strong and while he may have thought of his son in such a positive light he abandoned his child toi perhaps felt that he had no business caring for a child a man so unstable so broken as he was possibly thought that it was better for his mother to take care of him we learned that after megumi's mother's death toi planned to even sell megumi

to the zenin clan the same family that abused him that tortured him that made him this way it seems cruel at face value and yet there was a level of understanding that the zenan clan could possibly do a better job of raising megumi into a powerful sorcerer than he could knowing that megumi was a prodigious sorcerer toi knows that the Zen incline is particularly horrible to women and to those without cursed energy so megumi and toi's treatment would have been radically different he understood that and he believed that that life would be better than what

he could provide especially considering the dejected apathetic man he becomes after megumi's mother passes in his final moments he thinks about his son and his wife and while he initially wanted to die without any last words he instead tells Gojo about megumi toi respects Gojo the only man who was able to see him a part of him believed in Gojo in the lengths that he went to save that girl in the man that he was maybe because he offered toji respect and a chance to say his final words maybe because of all this he believed

that Gojo could raise megumi better than the Zen in cenwood so he tells the sorcerer about his son maybe toi has become such a prisoner to power a slave to strength that he entrusted his son to the most powerful sorcerer alive he entrusts his son's future into Gojo the very man that killed him at least in his final moments toi had a bit of clarity despite his failures as a father I believe that toi loved megumi in the few moments that he regained his humanity and buya he gives his son a rare genuine smile and

he was proud that his Blessing took his mother's name his name and toi took his own life so he didn't have to kill his son toi is but a product of the jiujitsu system it of course doesn't justify anything that he's done but we understand the reason behind who he is we understand what makes him tick toi is another one of jiujitsu kaizen's tragic characters another one who died full of regrets toi believe that he had risen above his conditioning above his own temperament but in the end he became a victim of it a victim

of the zenin clan a prisoner forever Shackled by his family's abuse Shackled by his own Pride toi though was given a second chance at this time toi took his final breaths in control at least free to choose the circumstances of his own death this time for a reason toi died as a proud father