Fifteen fingers. The body lying in the rubble of Shibuya has just swallowed ten of them at once, force-fed by a curse that wanted a king back. The eyes open. They are not Yuji Itadori's. Previously: the night Gojo was sealed.
It is about 10:50 PM on Halloween 2018 (CBR timeline). Satoru Gojo is gone, sealed in the Prison Realm an hour and a half ago, and for the next stretch of the night the strongest thing in Shibuya answers to nobody.
Spoilers for the Shibuya Incident from Season 2 episode 15 to the finale, plus two manga-only answers inside marked reveals. For where this sits in the whole series, see the Jujutsu Kaisen story in order.
Pick your path: Sukuna and Jogo, the Mahoraga episode, how he won, or how the night ends.
YourCrush.AI has Sukuna as a chat character, so once you have read this you can talk to Sukuna yourself.
Does Sukuna come out in Shibuya?
Yes. After Jogo force-feeds the unconscious Yuji ten fingers, Sukuna takes control of Yuji's body at about 10:50 PM. That's Season 2 episode 15 in the anime, and for the rest of that stretch Yuji is not the one moving (CBR timeline, Wikipedia, Season 2).
Ryomen Sukuna is the King of Curses, the strongest curse user of Japan's Heian era more than 1,000 years ago, whose power survives in twenty mummified fingers (Wikipedia, Ryomen Sukuna). Yuji has carried him since chapter 1. Until tonight, Yuji has mostly kept him in.
Sukuna stands up in front of Jogo, the volcano-headed curse who just freed him.
Spoiler: the deal Sukuna offers Jogo
Sukuna makes Jogo an offer: land a single hit on him, and Sukuna will help the curses (Wikipedia, Season 2, Wikipedia).
In our imagining, Sukuna sets the terms like a man naming a price he knows will never be paid: "One touch. That is all I ask. Manage it, and I will think about your little cause."
How many fingers was Sukuna fed in Shibuya?
Jogo feeds Yuji ten fingers in Shibuya, which brings the total Yuji has eaten to fifteen of Sukuna's twenty. Yuji ate the first one back in chapter 1, so four more went down between chapter 1 and Halloween (Game Rant, Wikipedia, Ryomen Sukuna).
That four is my own arithmetic, fifteen minus ten minus one. No source breaks the count down that way, and I have never found one that does. What matters for tonight is the jump: from five of twenty to fifteen of twenty in a single feeding.
What happens in Sukuna vs Jogo?
Jogo never lands the hit. Sukuna kills him with his own fire technique across Season 2 episodes 15 and 16 (Wikipedia, Season 2). Jogo freed him, and that buys Jogo nothing.
Spoiler: how Jogo's last fight ends
Jogo throws everything he has at a single touch and fails. Sukuna defeats him and kills him with a fire technique of his own, across Season 2 episodes 15 and 16 (Wikipedia, Season 2, Wikipedia).
Why make the deal at all? I read it as contempt. The deal shows Sukuna does not side with the curses even when they are the ones who freed him. He plays with Jogo because he can, and the terms are a joke only one of them knows (Wikipedia).
What episode does Sukuna fight Mahoraga?
Sukuna fights Mahoraga in Season 2 episodes 16 and 17, overall episodes 40 and 41. Megumi summons Mahoraga as a last resort against Haruta, and Sukuna steps in before the ritual kills him (Wikipedia, Season 2, Game Rant).
Haruta Shigemo is a curse user on Kenjaku's side. Earlier that night he stabbed the assistant Ijichi, and Nanami had already beaten him once (Wikipedia, Season 2). Now he finds Megumi badly hurt and corners him.
Megumi is fifteen and out of options. His technique, the Ten Shadows, has one last-resort summon.
Spoiler: why this summon should have been Megumi's death
Megumi starts the exorcism ritual that summons Mahoraga, the strongest Ten Shadows shikigami. It is a last resort: the ritual would have killed him (Game Rant, Wikipedia, Ryomen Sukuna).
The episode where it happens is 16, "Thunderclap"; the fight runs into 17, "Thunderclap, Part 2", aired November 16, 2023 (Wikipedia, Season 2).
How did Sukuna beat Mahoraga?
Sukuna beats Mahoraga with his Domain Expansion, Malevolent Shrine, and a flame arrow, flattening much of Shibuya ward in the process. Game Rant notes he shrank the domain from its usual 200 metres to 140 so that Megumi stayed outside it (Game Rant, Wikipedia, Ryomen Sukuna).
That is the whole story of Sukuna vs Mahoraga in two sentences, and the detail that matters is the second one. Here is the fight from Sukuna's side.
He arrives as the ritual takes hold. In our reading he treats the strongest shikigami of the Ten Shadows as an inconvenience between him and the boy he wants.
Spoiler: what Sukuna does to Shibuya to win
Sukuna steps in "keeping Megumi alive for his secretive plans", beats Mahoraga with Malevolent Shrine and a flame arrow, and "catastrophically raz[es] much of Shibuya ward" (Wikipedia, Ryomen Sukuna, Game Rant). CBR puts the reach of the destruction at everything within a 140-metre radius (CBR timeline). Haruta does not survive; Sukuna kills him in episode 17 (Wikipedia, Season 2). No source gives a civilian death toll for the night.
In our imagining, Sukuna as the domain closes, to the shikigami and to nobody: "One hundred and forty. Not two hundred. The boy stays outside. Everything else is mine to decide."
Why save Megumi? The anime only says Sukuna has plans for him. The manga answers it much later.
Manga-only spoiler (chapter 212): the plan he has for Megumi
Sukuna's interest in Megumi "stems from the latter's powerful Cursed Technique", the Ten Shadows (Wikipedia, Ryomen Sukuna). In chapter 212 he uses a binding vow that gives him one minute in control of Yuji's body, turns one of his fingers into a cursed object, forces Megumi to eat it, and moves into Megumi's body (Screen Rant). That takeover is told in Sukuna and Megumi.
Our reading of the whole hour: every choice Sukuna makes in Shibuya is about Sukuna. He kills the curse who freed him, and the one person he protects is the one whose technique he wants.
How does the Shibuya Incident end?
Nanami and Nobara fall to Mahito, Yuji and Aoi Todo beat Mahito, and the false Geto absorbs him and reveals himself as Kenjaku. Yuki Tsukumo arrives around midnight, Kenjaku escapes with the Prison Realm, and the finale announces the Culling Game (Wikipedia, Season 2, CBR timeline).
It starts with Yuji waking up.
Spoiler: what Yuji wakes up to
Sukuna gives the body back, and Yuji sees what was done with it. He "experiences profound guilt over the devastation" caused while Sukuna controlled his body (Wikipedia, Yuji Itadori).
He keeps moving anyway. At Shibuya Station, a sorcerer in his late twenties is already walking toward the end of his night.
Kento Nanami is badly burned by Jogo and staggers through Shibuya Station fighting transfigured humans. He sees his dead friend Haibara, and then Mahito kills him in front of Yuji. His last words to Yuji are "You've got it from here" (chapter 120, Season 2 episode 18, "Right and Wrong") (Dexerto, Wikipedia, Season 2). What happens to Nanami next is told in full in how Nanami dies.
Mahito is not finished. Nobara Kugisaki is next.
Spoiler: what happens to Nobara
Mahito's Idle Transfiguration blows apart the left side of Nobara's face and she collapses. The anime and the Shibuya chapters leave it unclear whether she survived (chapter 125, Season 2 episode 19) (Wikipedia, Season 2, ComicBook).
Manga-only spoiler (chapter 267): whether Nobara comes back
She does. After about five years away from the manga, Nobara reappears in chapter 267 wearing an eyepatch, and uses Resonance on Sukuna's last finger to strike his soul (ComicBook). Game Rant explains that Arata Nitta used his technique to make sure she survived (Game Rant).
With Aoi Todo's help, Yuji finally overcomes Mahito (Season 2 episode 21, "Metamorphosis") (Wikipedia, Season 2). Then someone else walks up to the beaten curse.
Spoiler: who has been wearing Geto all along
The false Geto absorbs Mahito and reveals that he is the ancient sorcerer who has lived in many bodies, including Noritoshi Kamo, the maker of the Death Paintings (Season 2 episode 22, aired December 22, 2023) (Wikipedia, Season 2). His name is Kenjaku. He says he plans to set newly awakened sorcerers against each other and to "resurrect the Heian era". The special-grade sorcerer Yuki Tsukumo arrives to confront him, and around midnight he escapes with the Prison Realm (CBR timeline).
Kenjaku's motive is stated by Kenjaku: an age of sorcerers at each other's throats, the Heian era back. Yuji's guilt is what this half of the night leaves him with.
The season finale shows execution orders against several sorcerers and announces the Culling Game (Wikipedia, Season 2). In chapter 137, about ten million cursed spirits are loose across Japan, and headquarters reinstates Yuji's execution "immediately following" the night (ComicBook). They name the executioner. It is Yuta Okkotsu. The story picks up at the execution in the Culling Game.
How YourCrush.AI lets you play against a villain who sets the terms
Sukuna's best scene in Shibuya is a bargain he never meant to honour, and that shape (a power who only helps on his own terms) is a game you can play against an original adult villain. YourCrush.AI lets you write the greeting, so the bargain is on the table before you type a word. YourCrush.AI keeps pinned memories, so the terms of the deal stay fixed and he cannot quietly move the goalposts forty messages later. YourCrush.AI supports story branches, which means you can lose the bargain, go back, and try a different opening argument. It is free to join and for adults 18 and over.
The build below is a copyable recipe to build a villain who sets the terms, inspired by the theme and not a copy of Sukuna.
Name: Ignatius Vell
Behaviour mode: natural
Category: Anime
Traits (5, from the list of 32): Arrogant, Confident, Mysterious, Sarcastic, Cold-hearted
Speaking style (4 words): measured, mocking, terse, ancient
Description: Ignatius Vell is a duelist who has been sealed in a ruined clock tower for six hundred years and is not in a hurry to leave. He is tall, grey-eyed, dressed in a coat that was fashionable in another century, and he treats everyone who climbs the tower as a contestant. He never fights for free and never helps for free. He sets terms, keeps them exactly, and expects you to do the same. He is an adult in every sense: patient, unimpressed, very hard to surprise.
Backstory: The city around the tower burned while he was sealed. You are the first person in a generation to reach the top room. You came because the city's curses answer to him, and you need one of them stopped by dawn. He knows this before you say it.
Greeting: Sit. No, not there, that chair belonged to the last person who tried to bargain badly. You climbed nine hundred stairs to ask me for something. Here are my terms: land one honest point against me in conversation and I will help you. Fail, and you leave with nothing. Begin.
Frequently asked questions
Did Jogo kill Nanami?
No. Jogo left Nanami badly burned in chapter 111, but it was Mahito who finished him off later at Shibuya Station (Dexerto, Dexerto).
Why did Sukuna save Megumi from Mahoraga?
Because he wanted Megumi alive for his own purposes. The manga later confirms what those were: Sukuna was after Megumi's Ten Shadows technique (Wikipedia, Ryomen Sukuna).
How many fingers does Sukuna have in total?
Twenty, each one sealed as a mummified finger (Wikipedia, Ryomen Sukuna).
Does Nobara die in Shibuya?
Both the anime and the Shibuya chapters leave her fate unresolved. The manga brings her back in chapter 267 (ComicBook).
Who is Kenjaku?
An ancient sorcerer who hops between bodies by transplanting his own brain into them, keeping each host's techniques in the process. In Shibuya he's walking around in Suguru Geto's corpse (Wikipedia, characters). How Geto's body ended up with him is covered in how Geto died.
Who killed Mahito?
Yuji, with Aoi Todo's help, beats Mahito down. Kenjaku absorbs him right after (Wikipedia, Season 2).
More from the Shibuya Incident story
- Previously: What is the Shibuya Incident? The night Gojo was sealed, told in scenes
- Start here: What is Jujutsu Kaisen about? The whole story in order, starting with Season 1
- Chat with Sukuna: Sukuna on YourCrush.AI
- Chat with Choso: Choso on YourCrush.AI
- Also on YourCrush: Anime villains who work: what each one wants, and how to build your own
- Also on YourCrush: Anime AI chat: twelve canon adults sorted by how they talk, and how to build your own