Would you rather:
Be Toji’s worm?
Or
Be Yuta’s girlfriend-turned-cursed-spirit?
Would you rather:
Have Toji/Maki’s heavenly restriction?
Or
Have Mechamaru’s heavenly restriction?
Would you rather:
Train at the Tokyo school?
Or
Train at the Kyoto school?
Would you rather:
Go shopping with Nobara?
Or
Have dinner with Nanami?
Would you rather:
Have to fight Todo?
Or
Have to fight Mahito?
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An antagonist is someone who directly stands in the way of the protagonist’s desires/goals. A good antagonist really helps heighten a story.
There’s also many type of antagonists like All for One who’s obviously just evil. He has selfish motives, ideals and hurts anyone and everyone to get what he wants.
Zeke however is an initially introduced as an antagonist as the Beast Titan – but as the story progresses this changed. Zeke is given his own backstory, morals and motives which makes him more sympathetic for viewers.
In Jujutsu Kaisen, Mahito is a character that just has childish and selfish motives with no care for anyone. But he seems well-liked because of his chaotic nature and impressive skills? Geto by comparison is given a lot more backstory, and is also shown when he was friends with Gojo and a student at Jujutsu Tech. What’s interesting about Geto too is that we initially believe this character we see is Geto but later find out it’s not him.
Do you have a favourite antagonist? What makes an antagonist well-written to you?
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In some series, it’s so easy to choose a favourite character. Team Edward? Or Team Jacob?
But so many people seem to struggle to pick favourite Jutjutsu Kaisen characters. I too fall prey to this. I love Yuji because he’s brave, compassionate and funny. I love Nobara because she’s a badass who loves shopping with a cool technique. I love Megumi because he’s private, has an interesting backstory/perspective and has an awesome technique. I love Maki because she’s insanely confident and powerful with interesting family dynamics. I love Nanami because of his ‘this is a 9-5 attitude’ and maturity. I love Inumaki because of his vocabulary, his reliability and his awesome technique marks. I love Choso because of his love of his brothers, his awesome technique and his beautiful character design. I could continue. You get the idea.
Perhaps it’s so hard to choose favourites because of character dynamics. Jujutsu Kaisen has some of the best dynamics! The first year trio, the second year trio, the Kyoto students, the first-second year Tokyo students, the Tokyo-Kyoto students, the teachers-students, the teachers, the villains… Again, I could continue. All of them have their moments and their own personalities so perhaps this makes it hard because we get to connect with all these characters.
I’ve put forward this ‘dynamics help showcase their qualities’ because there’s actually very little academic research done with regards to the topic of favourites. When researching the psychology of favourites, what shows up is papers regarding using children’s favourite characters/toys/something to help their educational development. Due to this lack of concrete understanding of how the psychology of favourites work, people assume it’s based upon: if a character is well written, if we relate to them, if they make us feeling something, if they draw in our interesting.
This definitely makes sense to me, as usually are favourites do actually tend to be characters that make us feel happy. This also links in with the idea that favourites are also based in our biology – as things that give us more happiness give us higher levels of happy hormones and this is how we know something is our favourite.
All of this allows me to conclude: it’s so hard to choose a favourite Jujutsu Kaisne character because so many of them make us feel happy because they’re well written, have interesting personalities, goals and backstories, have unique abilities, and have stellar character designs.
But what do you think? Do you have a favourite Jujutsu Kaisen character and if so, do you have a reason why?
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