Every original Innate Cursed Technique user in Jujutsu Kaisen season 1
Jujutsu Kaisen creator, Akutami Gege, is infamous for regularly dumping extensive amounts of information on his readers regarding just how his world works, and his explanations on cursed energy and techniques are no exception. While this does add to the immersive quality of the canon universe, even manga readers require constant cross-referencing with previous chapters to understand and keep up with the constant flux of new information.
This is even more of a problem for anime watchers, who are often so dazzled by the story, fights and animation, that absorbing a working knowledge of all the myriad cursed techniques takes a backseat. So, with Jujutsu Kaisen 0 premiering on December 24, 2021, let’s refresh our memory of how cursed techniques work.
What are innate cursed techniques?
The best description of cursed techniques is given by Gojo Satoru while explaining it to Itadori Yuuji. If cursed energy is like electricity, cursed techniques are like appliances that help channel that electricity and use it more efficiently.
Even among cursed techniques, there are those such as barrier techniques that anyone with enough cursed energy can learn to erect, and innate techniques, which only those born with them can use. Sometimes, these are techniques passed on through generations, but that would constitute a separate list altogether.
This list deals with characters with original innate cursed techniques, revealed in season 1 of the anime.
Every character with an original innate cursed technique in Jujutsu Kaisen season 1
Kugisaki Nobara
Nobara’s “Straw Doll Technique” is her innate cursed technique, which only she can use. Resembling the concept of voodoo dolls, she can can imbue nails, her hammer, and dolls made of straw with cursed energy, making the various forms of her technique almost like a remote curse-detonator, or as in case of “Resonance”, a lethal and efficient a long-range attack.
Nanami Kento
Nanami is another powerful sorcerer in Jujutsu Kaisen who has an innate cursed technique. His “Ratio Technique” lets him divide anything into ten parts and forcibly creates a weakness at a point of 7:3. Being a grade 1 sorcerer, Nanami is also able to extend his innate technique into what he calls “Collapse”, allowing him to create a weak spot in his environment and destroy it in one fell stroke.
Zenin Mai
The Zenin clan is one of the oldest and most influential families in the jujutsu world, with their own inherited innate cursed techniques. But members of the clan can also have their original techniques, as is the case with Zenin Mai.
Mai’s “Construction” allows her to use cursed energy to create small objects out of nothing. In the Jujutsu Kaisen anime, currently her limit is using the technique once a day to create objects as large as a bullet.
Todo Aoi
Todo Aoi has one of the most interesting innate cursed techniques in season 1. Called “Boogie Woogie”, it allows him to switch places with people or objects within the range of his technique. He can even change places between two people without himself getting in the way.
This switching of places is usually triggered by his clapping his hands, but not necessarily with both hands as he can trigger his ability by clapping his hand against his opponents. Coupled with his superhuman strength, reflexes, observation skills and intelligence, Boogie Woogie makes Todo a terrifying opponent.
Nishimiya Momo
Nishimiya Momo’s innate cursed technique is “Tool Manipulation”, which allows her to telepathically control her broom and use it to fly. The broom doubles as a weapon for unleashing her extended technique, “Wind Scythe”, which blasts gusts of cursed energy wind towards her opponents.
Gakuganji Yoshinobu
Nobody expected the principal of the Kyoto school to whip an electric guitar out of a case to fight curses, but that is exactly what he does. His cursed technique allows him to use his body like an amplifying device, converting music into waves of cursed energy. The electric guitar is his weapon of choice. The name of his innate cursed technique has not been revealed in the Jujutsu Kaisen anime.
Mei Mei
A grade 1 sorcerer, seen only briefly during the Kyoto Goodwill Exchange Event arc, Mei Mei’s innate cursed technique “Black Bird Manipulation” allows her to control crows with cursed energy. In the anime, she is shown sharing her vision with the crows, revealing that she can control multiple birds simultaneously. But her true potential hasn’t been touched upon yet in Jujutsu Kaisen season 1.
It's not only humans who can use innate cursed techniques in Jujutsu Kaisen, but cursed spirits as well.
Ryomen Sukuna
Unsurprisingly, the King of Curses, Ryomen Sukuna, has his own arsenal of cursed techniques. According to legend in the Jujutsu Kaisen universe, Sukuna was originally a jujutsu sorcerer of overwhelming skill in his lifetime over a thousand years ago, dubbed “Imaginary Demon” even while alive.
After his death, he became an extremely powerful cursed spirit, with a near complete knowledge of cursed and reversed curse techniques. He can use both, something only one other person in the series can do, Gojo Satoru.
Not much of the true nature of Sukuna’s innate cursed technique is known, only that he has an affinity towards fire. The techniques he has been shown to use in Jujutsu Kaisen season 1 are “Dismantle” and “Cleave”, both being slashing attacks, with “Cleave” being a more fine-tuned version. Sukuna’s cursed energy adjusts itself to the opponent or the obstruction to cut it down with a single attack.
Jogo
Jogo, or Itadori’s “atama Fuji-san!!” is a very powerful special-grade cursed spirit in his own right. His innate cursed techniques are fire-based, but more specifically, manifests as volcanic eruptions and explosions, due to him being a true cursed spirit born of natural origins.
In the anime, he is shown to use both his “Disaster Flames” which is his ability to create mini volcanos, as well as his “Ember Insects” which are exploding insects, in a bid to defeat Gojo in the Jujutsu Kaisen anime.
Hanami
Another special-grade cursed spirit in Jujutsu Kaisen like Jogo, Hanami's innate cursed technique appears as variations of distorted plants and flowers. While technically manipulating cursed energy to realize nightmarish illusions of branches and roots, Hanami can actually create them in a way similar to Mai's "Construction", as well as remove these projections according to his convenience. Hanami also possesses the ability to leech out life energy from plants and convert it into cursed energy.
Mahito
Mahito is possibly one of the most dangerous and fascinating cursed spirits revealed in the Jujutsu Kaisen anime. Nanami observes that he is still an infant, and even in the midst of a fight, he is shown to evolve constantly, even managing to create his own Domain Expansion.
His innate cursed technique is as unique as it is destructive, his "Idle Transformation" granting him the power to disfigure and reshape human souls by touching them. But considering the rate at which he is evolving, we can expect to see more variations of Mahito's cursed technique in future seasons of Jujutsu Kaisen.
Jujutsu Kaisen hosts a huge number of jujutsu sorcerers, curse-users and cursed spirits, with distinctive and powerful abilities. There are simply too many to be described in one go. With the manga currently in the middle of the Culling Game arc, more such characters appear, promising fans some mind-blowing abilities, accompanied by Akutami's detailed explanations of how these abilities work.
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Mason J. Schneider