Summary
- Hiromi Higuruma's talent impresses even the powerful Sukuna, who compares him to the genius Gojo.
- Higuruma's natural talent for cursed energy puts him in the same league as Gojo and Sukuna, considering he has been a sorcerer only for two months.
- However, Higuruma's lack of combat experience may be his downfall in the battle against Sukuna.
Warning: SPOILERS for chapter #246 of Jujutsu Kaisen
The heroes of Jujutsu Kaisen have been struggling since Satoru Gojo was brought down by archvillain Sukuna, but it seems that the replacement of the "honored one" is not Yuji, as fans expected, but another, less likely jujutsu sorcerer: Hiromi Higuruma.
In chapter #246 of Jujutsu Kaisen, a team of sorcerers is trying to bring down Sukuna after he dispatched both Gojo and Hajime Kashimo in sequence. Their strategy revolves around Hiromi Higuruma's cursed technique, Judgeman. While the first gambit fails, fans learned something very valuable in the process.
It appears that even the King of Curses Sukuna, the strongest sorcerer and curse to ever walk the Earth, recognizes the talent of Higuruma, going as far as comparing him to Gojo, the only opponent who ever earned Sukuna's respect.
Higuruma's Raw Talent Puts Him In The Same Class As Gojo
Higuruma is a relatively new character in the series, one of the many introduced during the controversial Culling Game arc. He is a former defense attorney who abandoned his profession when the justice system unfairly found his most recent client guilty despite the overwhelming evidence in his favor. At the same time, Higuruma awakened as a jujutsu sorcerer as a result of Kenjaku's use of remote Idle Transfiguration to kickstart his Culling Game. Higuruma has thus been able to use cursed energy for less than two months, which is why Sukuna comparing him with Gojo is so impressive.
While Higuruma surely possesses a powerful cursed technique, one that allows for the instant death or defeat of his opponents, this is not very different from any other high-level sorcerer's Domain Expansion, where hits cannot be avoided. In fact, Higuruma cannot even use reverse cursed technique to cure his wounds, as Yuji points out in this chapter, meaning he is at great disadvantage in battle. However, as Sukuna clearly sees, Higuruma's greatest asset lies in his natural talent for wielding cursed energy, which indeed was also an attribute of Satoru Gojo.
Jujutsu Kaisen does not focus much on the concept of "success through effort" like many other shonen series do. Instead, things like talent and natural predisposition are key to its power system and rankings. Sukuna and Gojo, for example, shared the overwhelming loneliness that comes from being the strongest due to their natural talents, and even Yuji was born with (still mostly unexplained) superhuman physical abilities and attitude for cursed energy. The fact that Higuruma also has that level of predisposition thus puts him in the same league as Gojo and Sukuna, "the honored ones".
Higuruma's Lack Of Experience Will Likely Be His Downfall
In chapter #246, Higuruma shows he can already use Domain Amplification, which manages to leave Sukuna fascinated. The statement that Higuruma possesses "the same talent as Satoru Gojo" must have come as a shock to fans, but this doesn't mean that Higuruma is actually on the same level. As he its in the chapter, Higuruma lacks actual combat experience. No matter how much raw talent and attitude one possesses, practice is still needed to express the maximum potential of cursed energy, and few had more practice than the thousand-years-old Sukuna. It would surely be tragic if Jujutsu Kaisen declared Higuruma as the new Gojo only to have him die a couple of chapters later, but it's exactly the type of shocking development that fans of the series are used to.
Jujutsu Kaisen is available from Viz Media and MANGA Plus.
