Geto staying as an antagonist might have lead to a jujutsu society civil war type of scenario, perhaps even involving humanity as more than oblivious sheep to be protected and gore fodder. Which could have been interesting, clashing ideologies, shifting values, more MAPPA animator torture, etc. An overall fun and grey conflict. As things stand, motivationless Sukuna is the big bad set up to lose or do nothing with a win, and Kenjaku is a filthy little backshot taker whose existence meant something when he was the mastermind giving curses a united front. Right now both his victory or loss is meaningless since he did it because "why not".

I love Kenjaku as a villain but I also love Geto so I had really mixed feelings when trying to decide which I prefer, but after this video I got to agree with you it would have been more compelling if Geto took Kenjaku's place there's just so much missed potential.

Great video. I personally love Geto, he had the potential to be one of the greatest villains in all of anime. Very charismatic and complex character. wish that we could've seen his character fully grow and evolve. He wasn't given the time to shine.

If geto lived, it wouldve been really interesting seeing him fully prepped after years of plotting fighting gojo and possibly winning, having this mixed sense of victory or something like that

I think Brain boy is an amazing villain, but Geto staying the villain would honestly be very very interesting and it has a lot of potential

You make a great point. A good portion of the JJK fandom is worried about Kenjaku being the main villain and outlasting Sukuna because nobody cares about him, and I mean the students. Yuta is the closest one to hating hin but he has more beef with Sukuna than he does with Kenny. This version of events would've given us two top tier villains (i like Kenny) whose endings would be clouded in mystery, rather than "this one can't win and it would make the most sense if that one died to this character"

Though I understand having a preference for a more sympathetic secondary villain, I feel that it would be very forced to have Geto work with the other villains, I see no possible reason for Geto to seek to bring sukuna back or work with the disaster curses once you realize that creating a world of only curses is the opposite desire of Geto’s. A thing to consider is that by being so old and having lived through so many political maneuvers, kenjaku can thematically represent the conservatism of jj society, thematically clashing with maki and hakari if need be. I don’t think reducing kenjaku’s presence to Geto’s mannerisms is fair as his comedic style, which is one of my favorite parts of the character, Adult Geto holds himself with grace having his comedic moments come from a over friendly and casual behavior in conversation, as opposed to kenjaku’s goofy side like blowingbubbles sticking his tongue out or going with mahito shenanigans, it is just so refreshing to have a villain that can be goofy while keeping his treat. I’ll finish by mentioning that so much happens because of Kenny’s planning that not having him play a part leads to so many changes that it is basically a different story.

You really hit the nail on the coffin with geto. His hatred definitely feels a little forced to me. He had a lot of potential tho.

It's not that hard to justify his fall. Geto was Gojo's best friend. The two of them were much more similar than they seemed. Back then, Gojo's ego and contempt for those weaker than him were obvious. Geto was much the same, but in a more subtle way. He always viewed himself as above them, but suppressed the negative aspects of this view through his paternalistic attitude of protecting them. He may not have realized it, but he saw non-sorcerers were almost like animals to be shepherded to safety by their betters. Their flaws could be excused as ignorance. That's why the Hidden Inventory hit him so hard: he witnessed just how evil those he promised to protect could knowingly be and it broke his immature viewpoint. If he couldn't rationalize non-sorcerers as purely innocent anymore, then he couldn't see what he and others around him did as a higher calling. However, that alone wasn't the cause of his spiral. What really got him was that he was easily beaten by someone without a drop of Cursed Energy. At the time, he fully believed himself to be the strongest alongside Gojo, but he couldn't lay a finger on one hired gun. Immediately afterward, Gojo came back stronger than ever and slaughtered him. Now Geto had to admit to himself that he just wasn't in Gojo's league anymore. His ego was completely crushed. So now that he couldn't see himself as either a righteous savior or one of the strongest anymore, he was left with basically nothing to define himself. The grind of protecting the weak and ignorant from monsters they unknowingly make while the only people he can at all relate to are brutally killed in this never-ended job slowly broke him. He came to place the blame for all his suffering and loneliness on the non-sorcerers that he had already long resented. He came to completely despise them, wishing for nothing more than to kill them to vent his frustrations. The only reason he didn't is because he still clung to his ideal that he must have a reason to kill before doing it. Those villagers attacking two innocent sorcerer children just happened to give him the reason he had been unknowingly waiting for. It's insane reasoning, but Geto stopped being a truly rational man long ago. He's a man driven by hatred and his sense of superiority mixed with a twisted version of his old ideologies. He's living for his desires now and his desire to kill non-sorcerers far outweighs his desire some sorcerer utopia.

I love your points. I wondered it but didnt expmore it as much as you did. Its almost like in exchange for getting Kenjaku, hes more cunning and powerful - but i wondered why not both? If we had Geto intially, hsd him die, then get taken by Kenjaku, it wouldve completed a character arc potentially as well as give us even more weight for other character motivations. It wouldve just been more to work with snd more to springboard off of emotionally. And i wouldve been so down for even better character writing.

I fully get your point, i personally didn't find myself thinking of the story of Kenjaku like this (mainly due to personal bias) since i noticed that the story is strikingly similar in structure to a cyberpunk story. With those similarities I found a good argument for the show's purpose being the fact that shit just sucks sometimes. Every win our "good" guys got has been undercut by their actions essentially being meaningly in the scheme of the story as a whole. Their lives and contributions don't have real impact because at the end of the day, shit just sucks cause oppressive power will remain oppressive power no matter what you as an individual do. The corporations always win in the end and the efforts of the main character is ultimately not even a hinderance to them continuing. This is why i feel Kenjaku works better than Geto, i like Geto more but that's the problem. Kenjaku is truly indifferent to people's struggles, just like Sukuna, and whatever a cyberpunk protag would be facing. Having said that I like this aspect because i like this sort of storytelling, where everything ends with the protag's efforts amounting to nothing and everything's still as bad as before. but it's also not something everyone would like

Yeah in my mind Kenjaku should have stayed in Yuji's mom body and just have been one of Sukuna's groupies! While in this whole thing Geto would have been the mastermind. Sukuna just feels weird if he is the final villain as he doesn't connect enough well with any character in the present that we know. If the theory that Yuji is a reincarnation of Sukuna's twin he cannibalized created by Kenjaku then this maybe alright!😒

While I feel where you’re coming from and I think Geto was especially a victim of the volume zero effect, I think Kenny is a better villain in a more entertaining way. I say this because while it would be fun to see a full scale war between geto and jujutsu society, I don’t think he has the intelligence, cunning, and experience that Kenny has. I also think Kenny’s motivation is a fun one as well, while Geto serves to have a more self righteous motivation rooted in trauma, Kenny has a motivation rooted in pure boredom and curiosity, which really provides no rhyme nor reason for why he does what he does, which makes him more unpredictable. He also represents what’s wrong in jujutsu society,(even tho we don’t really see that bar the Zenin clan and a lil bit for the Kamo clan), the corruption and evil within the society. Kenny and Sukuna also work in a pairing to show us the life style Henin sorcerers lived in. Representing being evil for the fun of it, and like Sukuna said you don’t need to understand him because he will do what he wants when he wants, which provides a bombastic and unpredictable character. Overall tho W video and it would be cool to see a video on the other things you mentioned at the start

I don't think Kenjaku's goal is uninteresting nor the current antagonists uninteresting at all if anything I'm gripping my seat since these guys just might actually get their unrealistic dreams. Kenjaku lived so long and yet came to the conclusion that creating what could basically be a God was worth it at the cost of everything around out of a boredom that's bound to happen with immortality. I do wish we had more of Geto and his goals in the story but the current situation right now is very entertaining.

Geto always viewed non-sorcerers as inferior to him, so really, he only went from thinking they deserved to be protected intrinsically to deciding that they didn't. He always saw them for their weakness. That's why it was so easy for him to become prejudiced against them.

Gege started cooking again. Not the recipe you'd expect, though. Can't really go into detail for fear of joining with the spoiler crowd so I've had to rephrase this comment about a dozen times.

Kenjaku's pretty underwhelming as a villian, realy needa his backstory done.

He was a villain. Geto had an entire movie dedicated to him. He lost. He died. His corpse got body snatched. The only thing letting Geto live would have accomplished was make Gojo look like even more of a chump. Moreover, his arc was completed. Geto was not some higher being seeking some obscure endgame, he wanted genocide because he had lost his mind. By his own admission he would never have been able to live with the "monkeys". He was a rabid dog that needed to be, and was, put down. Also, Geto was incompetent. He is not Kenjaku who maximized Cursed Spirit Manipulation and discovered the true value of Maximum Uzumaki, he is not the guy who planned Shibuya and generally had an advantage on nearly every character for hundreds of chapters, he is the guy who got wrecked by Toji and then brought down by Yuta in a straight up 1v1 THAT HE WANTED. Kenjaku is a superior villain in every sense, and is not cliche at all. He follows tropes, like the mad scientist, but he is distinctly his own character with many unique personality traits that set him apart from other antagonists.

im curious as to what you think about yuta okkostu

Good video but i feel like Geto wouldn't work thematically as a main villain because jjk seems to forgo moral arguments in mosts of it's idealogies in it's characters, Yuji is a clear exception but the battle with him and Mahito, is about how there's no point in arguing who is wrong or right in their actions, and that people and curses are justs doing the things that they want to do. I feel like having Geto as the main or secondary main antagonists would be a stark contrasts to everything that Mahito vs Yuji represented. In a version of the story where morality is addressed as more typical in shounen, I feel as if for instance the disaster curses would have been handled differently. In current jjk no sorcerers acknowledge the plight of the disaster curses being that they're foreign entities who want to exists in a society or world of their own because no sorcerer has a reason to care, it doesn't matter if they have a sympathetic reason to do what they do, they're curses and curses and sorcerers are enemies, but in another series I feel as if characters would treat the disaster curses with more a sense of empathy. I also feel like it's for that reason that neither Gojo or shoko or anyone else in the hidden inventory arc treat Geto as if he's evil after his fall from grace, because none of them view him as evil, he's broken the code by which jjk sorcerers are supposed to live and will be rejected by the society, and he's chosen to live in a way that directly opposes the way Gojo and characters like Nanami would live, but honestly I don't think characters like shoko or mei mei would oppose Geto directly.

Great video man

After rewatching hidden inventory, I don’t think Geto ever really believed in protecting the weak. I think him lecturing Gojo was him trying to convenience himself thats what he really thought. He falls fast and hard. but when you think about it as him living his life in service of people he doesn’t like or respect, who are ungrateful at best and prejudiced at worst. It kind of makes sense that he would jump at the first chance he has to claim his bigotry is morally correct.

I think this is a really interesting video. I also thought the same thing briefly when I started JJK way back when. I just couldn't believe Geto would be eliminated. I was like uh really? All that build up and story and now he's just gone? I still think Kenjaku and Sukuna are more engaging and entertaining for me but I see your point. Also just want to add that whatever happened was not Yuki's fault. I know you didn't mean it like that but I'm really tired of people blaming Yuki for something that is entirely Geto's fault. That's the only thing I disagree with. Other than that yeah, this video was a very interesting what if!

Although yeah everyone being jujutsu sorcerors is cool and all, almost every jujutsu sorceror we meet not part of jujutsu education is just flat out an awful person. Hell the zenin clan is basically a clan of just shady individuals

Bruh, but Geto's motivation is stupid. Killing 8 billion people just to lesson the suffering of hundreds of sourcerers is one of the most unusual justifications to be a villain. It's impossible to kill 8 billion people and even if your miraculously succeed, the technology and services would go obsoleted

i do prefer geto to kenjaku as a character since hes more fleshed out but at the same time kenjakus motivation being what it is, is very thematically relevant since kenjaku dispite everything, is a sorcerer. his motivation being basically curiosity and all based on his own satisfaction without caring who can see or knows what he knows is very sorcerer of him

I love Gojo as a villain but also think that Gojo not being able to kill Geto would make no sense. If he did not deliberately spare him, Gojo's six eyes would see every not dieing scenario. I always thought Geto gaining temporarily control was primarily to showcase an importance of body-soul relationship which would lead to a solution of jujutsu world in the end. I like Kenjaku as well. He represents an interesting take on immortality. What would you do when you get tired of repeated scenarios and start to search something new and fun. Searching human limits, different forms cursed energy can take. When your life is so much longer than regular humans it is understandable why Kenjaku regards it so little. Idea of what would happen if he merged Tengen to humanity might start as a fun thought experiment. Than Kenny tried it and failed. Tried again and failed. Again and again. And some point it became obsession, drive to live and persevere. When introduced Kenjaku comes out as a level headed mastermind when in reality he is twisted psychotic obsessed immortal. Also his existence adds depth to Yuji.

I do agree with you seeing geto as a villain would add more weight. But having kenjaku is still important as he has ties to yuji which i think could be important later or at least should be otherwise we´d have a plothole. So many people in the jjk community are making videos or atleast talking about the wasted potential of some characters well i can only count 3 main ones Kashimo, Yuki and now geto oh wait you also have nobara for some people. Maybe it´s my lack of attachment to some of these characters but i find their end to be pretty fitting not everyone gets to reach their full potential. It´s cool to see these kinds of videos it really shows how gege crafted a story with great characters that people really care about.

I feel like although I don't care that much about Kenny, it's because of him that the Shibuya incident arc and parts of the following arcs were so good. His actions and plans are so aggressive and lacking in care for human life. We would never get something like that if Geto had remained as the villain. However an interesting fix for this would've been to have Kenjaku's merge with Geto's brain fail, causing them to share a brain. We would get to see the payoffs of Suguru's character development and ideology, but combined with the un-hinged nature and diabolical plans of Kenjaku. This would also serve as somewhat of a parallel between him and Yuji.

I personally really don’t think geto would stay all that interesting as a villain mostly because of gojo, the reason i feel kenjaku works better is because he has 100+ experience and knowledge to plan things out thoroughly, geto would NEVER seal gojo or would even know where to get something that would, plus he’s actually really like kenjaku a bit more granted i get geto is a bit more interesting objectively but i can’t help but just think he’s a slightly worse sensui from yu yu hakusho, not saying he’s bad all i still like geto as a villain, i just he played his part and it was ended well enough, kenjaku while i get he just wants to do it for shits and giggles, that’s kinda what I like about him, I really don’t see that a lot, i think him having a bit of geto’s personality helps as well so he’s not boring at all, this is just my personal opinion but 100% good video non the less 👌

Ive been trying to find a video or forum about this!!! Geto is such a good character I wish after yuta he got locked up and escaped or something. Hes also my favorite character and is iced out head to toe

True kenjaku is kinda boring

ISKANDAR PFP based

Kanal dere bukvalno

Sigh, always someone complaining about something, no matter the era.