Jujutsu Kaisen: Gege Akutami didn’t actually want to kill fan-favorite character

Jujutsu Kaisen has a reputation for gut-wrenching deaths, but there’s one that creator Gege Akutami actually resisted at first.

Those who survive in Jujutsu Kaisen are a rare breed. Strength alone doesn’t help anyone in that universe, where curses kill without discrimination.

We’ve had many major Jujutsu Kaisen deaths, across sorcerers and curses, and Gege has opened up about one of the most crushing defeats, when Kento Nanami was killed.

“Sometimes it feels like the script progresses and evolves depending on the characters themselves,” Gege reveals in an interview for the Jujutsu Kaisen exhibition in Tokyo.

“I didn’t want Nanami to die at that point, but I was thinking that maybe there was no way around it, but Itadori burst in and well, you know how it went.”

We do know how that went. Nanami gets heinously burned before his body is exploded during the Shibuya Incident Arc. It’s a real shock to the system, because he was an efficent sorcerer who was beloved by fans.

Gege had to weigh up who gets narrative armor, and who doesn’t. “I originally felt that Nanami had surpassed the script but when I put it into words like this, Nanami was the motivation and Itadori was the one who overcame the script,” he says.

Yuji is present when Nanami dies, so Gege is really saying some characters serve as motivation for others, and that became the case for those two. Narratively it works, but emotionally? It’s tough to forgive, but such is Jujutsu Kaisen.

We recently found out Jujutsu Kaisen is ending soon, something that’s been in offing since the battle against Sukuna kicked off in earnest. The King of Curses is being worn down by the sorcerers, slowly but surely, although we reckon there’s a little while to go yet.

Nonetheless, have a look at our guide to Chapter 264 to see what’s currently going on.