curse user · 3mo
what i meant is that it took yuji a long time to mention nanami since shibuya, because as i was following the manga since then i remember thinking it was odd he didn’t mention him at all immediately after that arc but of course it happened later on, i wasn’t saying nanami didn’t mean anything to yuji because of that. and this is why i disagree with gojo needing a “conclusion” because gege isn’t the type to put things and relationships explicitly on the page, to spoonfeed the audience or spell things out for us instead of letting us infer what’s going on from pieces of dialogue or a couple of panels. jjk has always been vague in many aspects and i honestly prefer that over heavy-handed, corny storytelling like the characters getting together to mourn the big character who saved them… like just imagining that gives me endgame vibes when tony stark dies idk. it just doesn’t fit with jjk’s tone at all imo, especially because we’ve already seen how the story handles and acknowledges deaths of other characters, it would be really out of place imo.
i think you and i view the word "mourn" in a very different way. in the specific context of jjk, when i say mourn, as i mentioned, i dont mean melodrama, but just a sense of awareness. a huge part of the jujutsu world has died, and i dont want an teary-eyed eulogy, but just for them to recognize that that's what happened. between the gritty nothingness and the "corny, heavy handed" mcu-esque sentimentality is where my opinion lies.
i also politely disagree on your perspective on gege, but for a specific thing only. yeah, he mostly handles relationships with subtely, but when it comes to character deaths, he's always very straightforward and clear. when a character dies, their death is always pointed out. when a character dies, we always see how the characters closest to them feel. this was the case for nanami, choso, yaga, mai, junpei, kechizu, eso, haibara, MECHAMARU, yuki (though mostly choso's reaction; it's a shame we did not get anything from todo, but todo put on the bus for the bulk of the story), etc. gege always provides in terms of reactions to characters' deaths, even if it's only an acknowledgement. it just so happens that a lot of characters have very few connections, and so we only specifically see the reactions he considers relevant, and then he moves on. i used to think like you did in regards to how little characters mourned, but after nobara's comeback, i realized it was mostly treating her character as dead what clouded my perspective. once jjk dies, i plan to go over the topic of how gege handles character deaths in a very detailed way and maybe you'll come around to see what i mean.
as for nanami i think that's just the nature of gege's storytelling with most things. he's extremely economical. he keeps the writing focused and tight on the present (this is why the latest chapter feels so meandering, in my opinion). keep in mind culling games wasn't even really a very yuuji-heavy arc, so his relative presence in the story wasn't that grand. when he was present, he was focused other things, fitting for his mentality of being a cog and focused on his goals in order to stay alive. once the time for mentioning nanami came, it was meaningful.
