the Ken-Year Chronicle

Agenda Piece and Tiktok Kaisen

This section will speak of the anime and manga developments of the year. The most important two are One Piece, a pirate story by Eiichiro Oda, and Jujutsu Kaisen, a marital arts series by Gege Akutami with no aforementioned jujutsu. Now a few things to note, if your a normie. The western (out of Japan) community of fans is usually divided into three factions of viewership. The small minority of manga readers, the loud majority of anime only watchers, and some hybrids. I mention this because somehow the anime fans don’t receive much spoilers from manga fans openly talking about events at least 1 season ahead of their series. In discussions about a series, a majority of conversation is devoted to power scaling, or rating the fighting power of different characters. Depending on a characters tangible feats (actual actions) or intangible feats (the narrative, in-universe statements from others who know nothing) a character will gain or lose hype among the fanbase. For example, Jesus Christ only needing to three days to respawn (into a higher form mind you) should raise his hype. But haters can use various forms of slander to attack Jesus or ‘dickriders’ can use various forms of glazing to support Jesus. At the end of it, powerscaling is fruitless because no mangaka thinks that hard about their fight scenes. Some, namely Akira Toriyama, don’t even care. Last note, the meming of these two series specifically features variable layers that will not be all explained here although I’ll try since I know everything.

Gear 5: One Piece started in 1997 centering on a boy with rubber powers that remove his ability to swim. Monkey D Luffy would leave his home island to become the king of pirates, in a world made of islands, collecting a crew of superhumans along the way. As they traveled, he would invent upgrade for his rubber body. In his base form, he can stretch although not always like Mr. Fantastic. He mostly pulls himself back like a rubberband to attack. In one arc, faced with an indomitable challenge, he realized he needed more. Gear 2 would be his first evolution that forced his rubber heart and vessel to pump blood faster increasing the overall speed of his body. His Jet variant of punches now flew past the sound barrier, under my interpretations. Then came Gear 3, where Luffy would inflate his bones by biting into his thumb. This increased the size of which ever specific skeletal section to that of a giant, Luffy says himself. I’d say it was the size of a larger car or a smaller house. But it was enough rubber to break apart the conventional warship in three hits so it was pretty strong. But this was well before I started the series so I can only assume the reactions were ecstatic. Years later, Luffy would drop the Gear 4: Bounceman. This was a bit huge according to the reactions at the time. There had been a two year time-skip in the story for Luffy to train but he simply came back with new Haki techniques. Haki is a series of three techniques allowing the user to transform their own willpower. Observation Haki will increase one’s senses (to the point of replicating a meal from taste, seeing opponents miles away, and seeing into the future). Armament Haki will allow one to cover one self with willpower making them stronger defensively and offensively. Conqueror’s Haki allows one to express that willpower in a way to command others, knock them out, apply a crushing pressure on the environment, and also simply make the user hit harder because they want to. One must be born with this last one–so it is rare in the first place–and if two Conquerors come near each other, their vibes will literally clash with lightning strikes. Haki serves as a manifestation of the theme of willpower in the story so its not actually new to any character in-universe. Luffy can use all three efficiently so some fans didn’t think he needed a new form but his opponent, Donquixote Doflamingo, strongly disagreed. G2 is fast but too soft. G3 is strong but too slow. Luffy would never be able to beat him if he didn’t evolve. So Luffy took to Gear 4 by inflating his muscles via biting into his arm. This increased his upper body size by about three. This much rippling muscle would break him apart if he didn’t also use Armament over such muscles. In this form, Doffy did not have a chance. He could go on to be brutally beaten until Luffy punched him so hard the entire capital city of the country he ruled over folded. People were excited and since this form boosted both his all of his stats, it looked like to be the best one. There would be know other! Cars only have 4 gears anyway. Later on though, Luffy showed off Gear 4:Snakeman. This form centralized on his snake like attacks that can bounce off the air and in doing so, increase their speed after every punch. The form is also more slim making himself a smaller target but he doesn’t get to do as big attacks as Bounceman. So theories changed that if Luffy gets any new forms, they would be variants of G4 and maybe be a series of different animals such as lions and rhinos. Facing against the world’s strongest creature Kaido, Luffy was powerless. No matter what he did or how many tries, he could not knock the man down. Now, Luffy’s rubber power stems from a devil fruit; a food potentially made from a devil. Some df users have been shown to ‘awaken’ the essence of the devil thus evolving their ability to reshape the world on their on whims. Luffy’s awakening has been well theorized and people thought it might be one good way, an obvious way, to beat Kaido. These gears could’ve even just been the stairway onto accomplishing awakening and mastering his fruit. But as Luffy is making leaps and bounds in haki progress, some fans think he’s master his fruit in a different story arc if at all. The haki fans and the awakening fans would face disappointment when Luffy simply fucking died from Kaido. Fully fully dead. Other character could not hear his haki heartbeat and even Kaido was wallowing at the death of such a strong warrior. Luckly, there was no break next week. So as Kaido went on to kill the rest of his friends, Luffy whispered, “Nika…”. It was one of the most ominous panels in the whole manga. Next chapter, he revived himself with a new, whiter power which allowed him to rubberhose. If you don’t know, rubberhose is an old animation technique where characters and objects stretch, bounce, and whip around like they were made of balloons. You’d see this in Mickey Mouse cartoons, Popeye’s whole muscle building animation is rubberhose, and certainly in Looney Tunes. Recently, it was revenutred by the video game Cuphead and the Steven Universe antagonist Spinel although it isn’t a completely dead technique. Due to Planet Earth’s association of rubberhose to Tom & Jerry, Luffy’s new form would be most compared to it. It would be nicknamed Goofy by a few. Instantly there was a discord in the fandom; the powers are far too cartoony for One Piece while others thought it was the perfect consolidation of Luffy’s powers. The first group of people must’ve lost their memories to another df user who’s boogers are explosive, or to another character who dressed himself in noodles to fight, or another character (which is a cyborg) building a staircase midair as if he was in Fortnite. This is not a serious manga. Goofy’s new rubberhose aspects wouldn’t give him that much of an advantage over Kaido (Kaido’s that goated) but then he would be able to increase the size of of his fist large enough to punch Kaido into the Earth’s mantle where he could potentially die. Some theorists disagree. By the end of this battle, there would be growing appreciation for Goofy and yet still a stronger entrenching from haters. Not as a hater but I will point out that the rubberhose does not inherently make Luffy a top tier (despite the excitement of power scalers) again, he had to send Kaido into lava to kill him and he was still only challenging Kaido before him. A fresh Kaido would kill a fresh Goofy once more. But that would be a whole year before anime fans, a majority of the fanbase could see it. Of course, we were far too loud with posting the white haired Goofy everywhere for people to not be spoiled. Hell, official merchandise and promotions would’ve spoiled people. So for anime fans this year, they would be hyped to the adaption of Goofy into the anime rather than the raw introduction of it, which manga fans didn’t even expect. So their expectations were different and when the episode dropped, they would come to see why Goofy was so contentious and also see that it wasn’t so bad. The anime of course, was able to add amazing drumbeats that the manga characters only spoke of and the colors and camera movement that the manga could never deliver. So there was more to appreciate…in conclusion I didn’t see much hate of Goofy from anime watchers. In terms of memes, the conversation around Luffy devolved. Throughout the year, if you were a fan of any other anime character, they lost to Goofy. Goku sending a universal Kamehameha toward Goofy? Goofy would bounce it back like a cartoon. Naruto using his molecular deconstruction Rasenshuriken? Nah, Goofy spins it like a beyblade. Superman, Flash, or Thor using one of their godly abilities? Too bad, Goofy can bypass it. Reminder, this is all after Goofy couldn’t even beat Kaido, now their talking about he turns Thanos flat on the floor after running over him cartoonishly fast. Sure bro.

Agenda Piece: And so with this powerup comes the new powerscaling for a character that seems to have a different law of physics than everyone else. Luffy is ‘obviously’ a top tier One Piece character but is he Admiral or Yonko level? You see, for years, fans have had two over-arching political parties; the Marines and the Pirates (which are also the two main categories of characters). For the Marine Party, they believe that the three admirals at the head of the navy (along with the Fleet Admiral above them) can tackle four other characters known as the the Pirate Emperors of the Sea (Yonko, yon meaning four and ko meaning emperors shortened from ‘kotei’). The admirals have incredibly high end powers including super hot untouchable magma (Akainu), the inescapable ice (Kuzan), and the fastest of all light (Borsalino) along with so far not being incredibly challenged except when against each other. Another argument apart of the admiral agenda is that they will most likely be the last group of people Luffy fights in the story. Following the logic of power escalation usually displayed in a Shonen manga, the final villain is thus they strongest no matter how early they are introduced. The only flaw here is that OP is a bit more dynamic on the strength of characters rather than just raw power. But the Marine Party has always been the lesser populated group since the characters aren’t very active. Of course, the Emperors rule the sea from a stable location as well. The 4 include an acholic ogre/dragon (Kaido), a giant woman with 65 kids (Linlin), a spear wielding earth shaker (Newgate), and a simple guy with crazy haki (Shanks). The Yonko Party argue that since the navy needed all 3 admirals and 7 Warlords of the Sea (contractual privateers) to defeat just Newgate, they could hardly match up against the other three. And they didn’t even defeat Newgate’s crew, just the captain himself. The admirals are dogshit I guess. The power escalation also doesn’t matter as its only due to the raw power of the Emperors that they’ve retained their autonomy in the New World (a patch of unexplored sea along the equator of the planet). The Emperors quite basically have their own nations with independent economies and manpower for the military. They have been like this for at least a decade or two so it seems the Navy can’t really challenge them. This ignores the fact that logistically, it is not worth attacking the Emperors. Maybe 90% of the world is still safe from their piracy. And for Luffy, it took his entire life in order to defeat Kaido while his two other allies, Trafalgar D Water Law and Eustass Kidd, barely defeated Linlin by drowning her in the same mantle as Kaido. And so by now there are now a new set of Emperor and Admirals. The Navy has lost Kuzan and Akainu was promoted to Fleet Admiral. That leaves the blind gravity abuser (Issho) and a talking tree-man (Aramaki) a replacements. Luffy has become an Emperor along with his long time rivals; a clown who can’t be cut (Buggy) and the real life Blackbeard with the powers of darkness/void (Teach). Now the new admirals look quite a step down while the new emperors have younger and much more active pirates looking to change the status quo. Luffy has already declared war on the World Government that the navy protects, Teach continues to disturb every faction known to man, and Buggy has started to put bounties on marine officers. All of the while, the admirals have not gained a single w. The Yonko agenda is gaining….

Now currently, Luffy and the Strawhats are currently known as Egghead in which the Einstein of this world leave. He is known as Vegapunk. He does work for the government but a recent rebellious strategy of his forces him to rely on the Strawhat Pirates. Leopard-man and government spy Rob Lucci is first sent into to kill Vegapunk for his treachery but Luffy’s cartoonish powers prevented this. Luffy and Lucci have actually fought well before (about 600 chapters since they saw each other) but Lucci fans were just satisfied to see if Lucci has grown. Of course, if he lasted any longer against Luffy, those idiots would’ve started comparing Luffy to Kaido. So then Admiral Borsalino is sent in to kill Vegapunk and Luffy.

Egghead’s Detour: But before that, the story looks away to other events across the world which would go on to further develop various agendas. Firstly, an encounter between Teach and Law. Being the worst criminal, Teach easily breaks the law and in that case Law barely escapes with his life and his kung fu panda. The rest of his crew had died. Fans would mourn for Law as it was a highly liked character but just as many people like seeing Teach and his shenanigans. As for Kidd, he would be unfortunate enough to come across the global fan favorite Shanks. And just after a Shanks movie came out. It was also two only two relevant redheads in the series, both with one missing arm. Kidd would instigate battle but Shanks cut him down in one slash of his own weapon. The entire crew would be evaporated by two giant allies of Shanks leaving the 2000 Kidd fans to cry “JIKA!” Kidd would be made fun of by the entire fandom and it was an incredibly rough time to be a kid fan. I was in sorrow too but only until I remembered Oda doesn’t want to use Kidd and he wasn’t originally going to exist. Seeing Shanks fight for the first time, this was also a great boost to the fans that have him above the also fightless Mihawk. Dracule Mihawk is known as the greatest swordsman in the world and has previously defeated Shanks. But Shanks is a yonko, we can’t have a random warlord stronger than him just because Shanks holds a sword. This has caused that party to rely on the so called Haki-Man argument which states Shanks’ haki is so good and overwhelming that he should overall beat Mihawk. This continued evolving into making fun of Mihawk for having inferior Haki, that he paints his sword black with regular paint instead of haki, and that sword-skill can only take you so far. Whose to say? Shanks has a whole 3 feats (all involving haki) while Mihawk has 1 feat (clashing with a much weaker swordsman for one second).

Moving on to the next confrontation, Teach is the head of the Blackbeard Pirates who are based in Beehive Island. He has ten officers known as the Titans of which Kuzan recently became one. It was unknown why but most theorized it was because his philosophy around law differed with what the marines practiced. Him joining BBP hurts the Admiral reputation though as he is submitting to someone that fans predict is weaker to him. Well not everyone is in a martial society and we don’t know how close he is to Teach. But this year we saw him steal precious information from the remaining pirates of Linlin and along with defend Beehive Island from his old mentor, Monkey D Garp. Yes, Garp is Luffy’s grandfather, a vice admiral in the marines. He has no special powers besides brute strength which he calls the Fist of Love. In universe, he is a navy hero and well celebrated. His other mentee, Coby, is also celebrated as a hero. Garp is a bit of a maverick among the marines as he doesn’t always do what his superiors say. He would be a rank of admiral or even fleet admiral if he did but he doesn’t care. Because of that, fans see him as a top tier amongst the admirals as well. Side note, the other vice admirals are noticeably weak where any decent pirate should be able to defeat them if it wasn’t for their manpower. Now the BBP have kidnapped Coby along with a few civilians in order to hold him for ransom. Garp and his special ops team were of course quick to arrive on BBP’s island with Garp’s opening move, Galaxy Impact. The Impact left a huge impression of the fanbase that this old man was not yet ruined in power. Evidently, it didn’t leave the pirates badly damaged. While his students collected the hostages, Garp would solo fight against 3 Titans; the invisible Shiryu, island possessor Pizzaro (literally possessing the entire island), and cold hearted Kuzan. Finally, during this fight, fans would learn that Kuzan has some aligned goal with these pirates he joined and he thinks he’ll eventually reach the correct end by the end. That’s why must defeat Garp who is liberal and yet still constrained by the system. While Garp’s team is able to leave, Garp has to sacrifice himself although the BBP will most likely use him as a hostage anyways. Stocks or aka investment grew greatly for both Kuzan and Garp while Shiyru received slander for being a sneaky bastard. This fight in general also raised perception of the Egghead Arc although we haven’t seen Egghead in quite some time. Before we can get back, fans read along to Sabo retelling his infiltration into the world’s capitol; Mariejois. Sabo is the second place member of the Revolutionary Army, the best case scenario of France’s Committee of Public Safety. They would like to tear down the government due to its corruption and abuse in favor of ignorance. Now the government was holding a global convention of all the monarch in the world known as the Reverie (named so because it would be a dream if all those nobles could work together). The Reverie though basically as a congress for the world. The First Estate (about invited 20 nobles) can come together every decade to decided all kinds of policies. They assume they are at the top of the world. Sneaking around the meeting, Sabo discovers they in fact aren’t. Yes, there is the Gorosei or Five Elders, who administer the government on a daily basis but there is one autocrat above them…Imu. Sabo watches as Imu kills one dissident noble, Cobra (a former ally of Luffy), and attacks the Gorosei. Because he is caught on the cameras, they are able to blame the death of Cobra on him in the news; but in this current moment the Gorosei reveal unexpected powers transforming into various creatures and striking back at our pyrotechnic hero Sabo. He is able to fearfully escape and he completed his objectives which was disrupting the flow of food to the capitol. For that, Imu would icbm an island although Sabo saved most of the civilians there too. The GOAT of the Revos, a certain dragon could never. The Gorosei even having powers, and for it to be formidable enough to scare away Sabo would be a great boon for a close ally of the Marine Party….the Government Party. People that believed the Gorosei were once warriors and should be stronger than admirals via Escalation Theory. The argument against them was that even if they were warriors, they now look old and all they do is sit in the capitol so they would probably never fight. And at the same time, the Yonko Party can’t disagree with Escalation Theory in this case. That single chapter would flip powerscaling lists on their heads as Gorosei rose to the top ten and it was decided that the seemingly immortal Imu is the Top 1. Another character introduced at the same time, Figarland Garling of the God Knights, would be placed in the top tier simply because he was Shanks’ father. And if the God Knights are direct government agents unlike the admirals? The top ten is full, no room for Luffy or even the Strongest Creature Kaido. Apparently.

So it had been 10 chapters of a detour or around 5 months since Oda kept taking health breaks. This is quite unique since we only get long breaks from seeing the Strawhats due to flashbacks which are usually being told directly through them. It’s also unique due to how many events are simultaneously happening which gives way to the cutaway or it would all be offscreen. Ironically, Oda would edge us upon returning to Egghead, leaving the Strawhats only for the final panel of the chapter although it is a glorious shot of them standing over [COMLICATED SPOILER]. Woof, that would be like 300 words to explain.

The Geo Agenda : But wait…what’s that I hear? “Gear 5th is more iconic than Super Saiyan”. What? No it isn’t? Why is everyone saying all One Piece fans believe this? “Skypiea is an overrated arc” What? No it isn’t? What’s going on? “Wano is better than all Naruto,” okay now lets not get too crazy. But there are many many more examples. Agenda debates about One Piece span wide and far. From 4chan to Tiktok, there are many agendas to be tested against and many philosophers. That is, figureheads of One Piece that are so obsessed with the series that their content can become foundational to the fandom. King of Lightning, Rogersbase, and Tekking101 just to name a few youtubers along with Artur who translates chapters on his own and analyzes any possible reference of Oda. Then on Twitter, someone has risen within the last year; @geo_aw. The unfortunate thing with him is that he has skipped an integral story arc, Skypiea, and he otherwise has some of the worst takes in all anitwitter. He might get likes but every time he tweets something not already well agreed on, his replies are filled with distress and lost of faith. An image of a character named Judge stating “never cook again” to his son can be frequently found following his tweets. Its worse because some people seem to truly pay attention to Geo as if he isn’t just some teenager. If he says something against another series, the other fandoms start ranting about how unbearable One Piece fans are- WE DON’T EVEN AGREE WITH HIM. He says something about One Piece and a giant discourse breaks out with fans giving arguments and takes against a series of ghosts that are totally on the other side. I can’t really even hate him specifically for this hysteria but boy does it hurt to see schizo posting on the most cold takes just because he actually has hot takes.

Anyways, the rest of the year featured two other events in the OP manga. First was Luffy vs Borsalino where the latter was not very concerned and only aimed to kill Vegapunk. Receiving one hit from Luffy would drop his stock’s worth tragically as he took it harder than he should’ve. One of the Gorosei, Jay Garcia Saturn, also arrived showing how overwhelming he can be in the battlefield. Luffy would be too exhausted to fight him though allowing for the reintroduction of Kuma. Kuma was a loyal warlord for the government, an antagonist to the Strawhats, a Revolutionary Army member, a tyrant king, and a slave throughout his life and during the flashback, we get to see the truth of things. It was very painful and depressing for the fans, one of the saddest flashbacks to date, and it was for a barely shown character that many already love. We’ll see the conclusion next year as he gears up to attack Saturn.

the Shibuya Incident: Jujutsu Kaisen or “Endless Sorcery Battle” is a magic/action manga featuring high school kids fighting demons. You see, negative thoughts of humans like the fear of the ocean can give rise to somewhat or totally sentient demons known as curses. The curses love to consume humans and so sorcerers are tasked with excorcism them. Dubbed sorcerers because they actually use their own negative emotions, turn that into curse energy, manipulate that energy into special techniques and thus can kill a curse with them. Negative times negative equals positive. The story then centers on a boy, Itadori Yuji, who gets recruited to a school of sorcerers in Tokyo because he ate one of the 20 fingers of Ryomen Sukuna “King of Curses”. He did not die immediately so he may actually be of use as a container of the incredibly dangerous fingers which are known to expediate the spawn of curses or make them stronger. Yuji is teamed with Fushigoro Megumi, a discarded member of a powerful family of sorcerers who can summon animals from the shadows, and Kugisaki Nobara, a countryside girl with creepy dialogue and voodoo powers. His teachers include Satoru Gojo, the embodiment of MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This”, and Kento Nanami, whose powers revolve around the 70/30 rule. And so this gang ran around Japan solving the local curses. The manga started in 2018 but by the time i picked it up in 2020, it was still niche. I almost dropped it but then my online friends kept hyping up the Shibuya Arc as one of the greatest things to happen in Shonen manga. In my opinion, Shibuya was fine. It had lots of cool fights but that wasn’t a rarity in the series. In fact, it didn’t do anything but find a way to trap Gojo who is literally untouchable and is otherwise the strongest sorcerer. Now JJK’s popularity would continue to slowly increase with the season 1 of the anime and a film based on JJK 0. This year, with Season 2 covering the Shibuya Arc, popularity would sky rocket like the mushroom cloud off a nuclear bomb. At the end of the year, I can’t avoid online conversations around JJk and its own fans report that it’s reached the mainstream not just among weebs but also normies. This reporting comes form jjk being referenced in popular media like certain sports twitter accounts and celebrities making mention of it. Not anything on the level of Dragon Ball but yes of course this is a mainstream anime. It’s an action series from Weekly Shonen Jump, when do those not get popular? JJK’s season 2 would have to compete with other highly anticipated amines such as the final (or is it?) season of Attack on Titan and a season 2 of Thousand Year Blood War; along with new series like Mashle and Zom 100. Considering the popularity online, JJK could be announced the winner. Within the community, each episode would spawn a handful of new memes or reaction images to use in Discord. Hybrid fans also came up with an insane amount of spoiler content throughout the fall…

Tiktok Kaisen: While the series is not limited to any social media, tiktok is where I would be plagued the most by the hybrid audience. You see, manga fans already overhype Shibuya alot and so when it comes to animating it, those virgin anime viewers are only going to receive more hype. This came in the form of lowkey spoilers, if you worried about such a thing. Sounds and images on the app would be placed in videos of stuff that would happen much later. My main example lies in a quote at the very end of the season, “I’m you Mahito…a cog in the machine…I’ll keep killing you and killing you where ever you show up” (paraphrased I think). Now this was in the manga so seeing memes of this is no harm. But before the season was released, people were making edits of this scene and dialogue. Imagine trying to stay spoiler free! The events in Shibuya; Gojo getting sealed, the rampage of Sukuna and Toji, and the Mahito affair…of which all would be weekly spoiled. Then the episode came out doubling the volume of such memes. The memes would spread to twitter and Instagram and I would state it nearly reshaped the fandom in just 20 or so weeks. Probably less. It is thanks to Tiktok’s system of being able to place the audio of one video into any other video along with easily downloading the product of one creator to further edit or parody that on your own. If it was just twitter and Instagram, only a 10% of that content might’ve even seen the light of day.

The fandom would also take certain unrelated songs or sounds on tiktok and begin to associate them with JJK despite, you know, being unrelated in the slightest. One example is with the 2014 Adele song “Skyfall” where the bridge of “where you go, I go, what you see I see” would be used in clips featuring Yuji and Mahito (just one of those curse antagonists) in what I just quoted earlier. Yuji in-universe is following Mahito like a wolf hunting a rabbit ready to kill again and again. One study found that just showing the panel of Yuji stating, “I’m you” will activate the song in a JJK fan’s head. Another song is actually due to manga fans as this has not been animated yet. Later in the story is the Culling Games arc where revived and currently living sorcerers are forced to kill each other across Japan. One character, a gambling high schooler named Kinji Hakari has a special power in which he also needs to listen to a certain song to. The song and power comes from a pachinko machine (just real life gacha game) in-universe and is very specifically 4 minutes and 11 seconds long. He could not possibly be listening to one song but one edit by @nikov.x (i assume the first) of Hakari dancing to this other song would change everyone’s perspective on Hakari. The song is at 1 minute and 16 seconds, “Tuca Donka” by the team of Curseddevil, DJ FKU, and Skorde. A study conducted found that fans only think of this song when they look at Hakari and they fully expect the anime to deliver on this when the time comes despite the fact that it doesn’t fit his vibe at all. And this brainrot from the fanbase let researchers conclude something big…

Gojo vs Sukuna: ah but before we get to that, we need the manga fans to catch up. Spoilers if you want to start and finish this series but after the Shibuya Incident, the story goes into the Culling Games. Now, Gojo is the strongest character and in order to have the Culling Games; the main antagonist Kenjaku needed to seal him in a pocket dimension. That’s all what Shibuya accomlished for him. During the CG, the characters would run around the endless sorcery fight defeating other players but also trying to find a way to free Gojo. By the time they did, you remember that curse Yuji ate? Sukuna? Well he decided to finally possess Yuji with his special spell “Enchain”. Sukuna would then switch into the body of Megumi who would not be able to repress him, especially after he kills Megumi’s sister. But Gojo would be freed! And it would be time for the Shinjaku Arc where the strongest sorcerer in history, Sukuna, could fight the strongest sorcerer of the modern day, Gojo. It was a very hyped up fight and every fan was on the edge of their seat reading this. JJK has power scaling as well although I don’t know why as the characters already fit in a rank in-universe. And also, the author Gege, started off the first volume of the series admitting he likes plot twists no matter what happens and so far fights aren’t always straight whose stronger. But very quickly, parties had formed on either Sukuna winning or Gojo winning. Sukuna’s reasons for winning is that Gege publicly hates making Gojo so strong, has given Sukuna plenty of favor as if he was a main character, and Sukuna has access to Megumi’s deity-like shadow ‘Mahoraga the Opp Stoppa’. Mahoraga has the ability to adapt to any experience just once and can even counter it after a second experience. A weaker Majin Buu. This would allow Mahoraga to even adapt to Gojo’s infinite powers which create an asymptote between him and everything else. But Gojo should be able to win as he himself is confident enough to do so (another famous quote from the series) and his ultimate ability ‘Hollow Purple’ should be able to wipe anyone off the face of the planet. Of course, anyone previously hit by that wasn’t completely erased. Gojo also needs to win this since no other character among the protagonists would be able to defeat Sukuna afterwards. Gojo was also confident along with his fans that they would force Viz Media (who translates Weekly Shonen Jump for Anglos) to changes his response to “would you lose?” from “no” to “Nah, I’d win”. That latter phrase would be another earworm spread on Tiktok…For Sukuna, fighting Gojo means enjoying an exciting battle and then beating him means eating him and the rest of the human race. Sukuna would also like to win to prove the worth of his solitude and the ultimate strength it brought. The one to teach him about love is…And so the battle started with a bang causing all fans to rise up in greater excitement. From raw memory, I’ll tell you the fight was a real back and forth with one sometimes gaining the advantage for a decent bit of time or the both of them getting some kind of double-ended stick up their ass! The fans raged on tweeter with the louder and larger crowd in support of Gojo. Gojo would receiving unrestricted heavenly dickriding the likes of which Sukuna fans could never compete with. When Gojo’s throat was cut, they reasoned it was not fatal and he’d be able to regen (ofc but why did they bring in a doctor), and when both of their ultimate moves failed; Gojo was forgiven while Sukuna was nicknamed ‘Malfunctioning Shrine’ (from ‘Malevolent Shrine’. And they came up with unbearable slander as well. Before Sukuna officially summoned Mahoraga, they called him a baby that calls for his maho-mommy. Mahoraga is his father who needs to help him with the school bully Gojo. “SAVE ME MAHORAGA” would be posted and reposted anywhere. Sukuna would summon Mahoraga and another shadow ‘Agito’ and since Gojo was able to handle that, more hype grew for Gojo handling a 1v3. But Agito was there to further wear out Gojo and give time for Mahoraga’s adaption. So after a summer of receiving brutal insults from the fandom, Sukuna was able to release what I call, the ‘Malevolent Adaption’.

Leak Leak Kaisen: Now reading any manga online can be somewhat difficult but its still way easier than reading an American comic. The Japanese seem not to pay attention to copyright issues across the Pacific (and vice versa at some times) so the only issue comes from getting good translations. Well, as I’ve said, Weekly Shonen Jump has a legal provider with the company Viz Media. Every Sunday for the last few years, they release the newest chapters of each manga around noon EST. The translations are fine and in fact paid for along with the images being in high quality. But manga readers had adapted. Viz only started doing online releases to compete with freelance translation groups that use to do it on their own. They run their own shitter websites which only function enough so you can read the chapter which are still decently translated. The true problem lies in powerscaling and semantics. Some powerscalers are so specific on following the words and direct Japanese meaning (despite the Japanese language famously having double entendre and puns) that they need the most accurate translator and so sometimes they will prefer the freelancers over Viz. Of course, the freelancers are less than legal. The Japanese do not receive the manga on Sunday but sooner perhaps on Wednesday. The stores receive this and makes scans of each manga. They release it as leaks and then the freelancers translate the scans into ie scanlations. This comes out by Thursday or Friday, a whole 48 hours sooner than Viz. So there comes the problem of semantics arguemnts. Manga readers range from those who purely read leaks (leakers which can only perceive meaning from the images and vague translation of dialogue), read scans (scanners which can at lead read it in English), and normies (who just read officially translated stuff. If you don’t do powerscaling, none of this matters. I mention this only because spoilers for JJK only got worse as this fight wanned. Leaks would be posted on tiktok/twitter with out an ounce of a warning, I can’t imagine anime-only got away free. It was unbearable for me to have to avoid al social medias just because these people had to post about the chapter even 72 hours early. These people may even be why some chapters got early memes and why some people might’ve been misreading the fight.

Malevolent Adaption: The biggest spoiler, posted by @jjkmya on twitter days before official release, was the death of Satoru Gojo. The previous chapter Gojo had used Hollow Purple on a slightly guarded Sukuna. A side character (that has been incorrect spectating the fight so far) predicted he would be the victor. And so all of Gojo’s fans were hella excited. The next chapter opened with Gojo falling into the afterlife which was represented by an airport. His other dead friends/allies are there and he talks to his old best friend. He laments over his loss and admits that Sukuna was not even trying his hardest. But then he absolves as he didn’t die with any real regrets and he had fun dying. This is important as usually sorcerers die with regrets which can sometimes transform into a curse. Like a certain Toji Fushigoro, he died without a curse. To explain to a stranger, Mahoraga adapting’s to Gojo’s asymptote meant ignoring Gojo and instead cutting apart the entire universe. He does this once just cutting off Gojo’s hand a moment before. Sukuna then uses it bisecting Gojo at the waist. Gojo fans immediately thought this bisection was a rigging from the author, an asspull. But that’s just how Mahoraga works, he’s told us before and foreshadowed it with cutting off the hand. But its really unforgivable because it was ‘offscreen’ although it isn’t. The slash is just instantaneous. As fast as flipping the page of the manga. Well if you’re not just glancing at the leaks. But its still worse because Gojo gets hung up that Sukuna wasn’t trying his best as they were so convinced he was. I’ve never coped harder in my life. Before the year ended, Sukuna transformed into his peak demon body from 1000 years ago. He has 4 arms and two mouths now allowing him to do double the sorcery as before plus he extended his lifebar. He was not at his strongest before hand. Gojo? More like Lowjo, I would’ve handled Sukuna easier than that.

Small note, this fight took place in 13 chapters and about the same 5 month period of One Piece’s Egghead Detour. It was a crazy summer, with the Spider-Man and Barbenheimer happening at the same time.

Lobotomy Kaisen: Tiktok was ruining the brains of these jujutsu teens and it was not coming to a stop. Now the Shibuya Season was crazy with lots of main character deaths pairing with the death of Gojo and Kashimo (just a guy) in the manga. That aided by health breaks for Gege during the big fight and the aftermath seemed to cause this fanbase to lose their mind. “I’m you”. “Nah I’d win“. “With this treasure I summon” (an incantation to summon Mahoraga). “Would you lose?”. “As Sukuna opened his domain, Jogo stepped back”. “Stand proud, you are strong”. “Are you Satoru Gojo because you are the strongest or are you the strongest because you’re Satoru Gojo?” “If Sukuna were to completely regain his power, he might give me some trouble”. “We are the exception!”. “Those who inherited the curse of the Zenin Family, the one who couldn’t leave behind that curse, they would all bear witness to the bare flesh of the one who is free, the one who left it all behind and his overwhelming intensity!”. Those were all iconic quotes from the series (most of them in the Shibuya arc) which would become earworms for the fandom and ruin the JJK corner of tiktok. Whenever the anime or manga went on break, they would edit videos with just these quotes of their context but following each other as if it was a conversation. If you read the paragraph again, that is as or even more coherent than those posts. Comments would also just be filled with one or two of the quotes completely unrelated to the video. Near the end of the year, Gege had a three century break and since then, it’s been a permanent lobotomy. The lobotomy actually pairs with an earlier brainrot which I will discuss later.

Deku Vigilante: is a series of the most dogshit shitpost to ever grace the fandom for My Hero Academia. Thank God for Tiktok. They were I think primarily created by The DerpyZ made up of edits featuring Izuku Midoriya from MHA. Now, the anime and manga are fairly new but you don’t need to know much. During the more recent arc, Izuku in-story has decided to become a vigilante or otherwise do some unlicensed hero work. His design in this time period looks a little edgy and MHA fans were made fun of for liking it even just a bit. At the top of this year, This account started posting parody monologues of an overly edgy Deku (his nickname) doing his vigilante work OR his rizz-alante work. The edits would have him stutter over the last bit of the monologue because it could sound cool to a 14 year old but is obviously sounding stupid. They are objectively funny but this one is probably the best. I just wanted to quickly mention this.

Enough Time has Passed: what the? What’s that low drawned out sound? Who’s that swordsman? Man people found themselves asking this after the announcement of a new Shonen Jump manga; Kagurabachi. For a month, people only had 2 photos to go off of but they used them as much as they could to ironically overhype this new series. They were already calling it the manga of the year (due to a contention down below) and the phrased I used as a title would be considered the catchphrase of these fans. They even started to animate certain scenes as if to hype up an upcoming season for a manga that didn’t even start yet. Of course, it wouldn’t release for a few weeks but when it did, it exploded. The first week was big and memes flew out from every page as shitposters were trying to drive the point home. According to the stats of manga sites that track weekly readers, it would beat out Jujutsu Kaisen, One Piece, My Hero Academia, and Boruto for its first few weeks before it died off. Now some people were too suspicious thinking it was a conspiracy since it could never be that good. But again, they forget the point of irony. It was just funny to hype a completely new series from a new mangaka. It is descent so far.

Oh and we already talked about Boruto’s anime but keep in mind that the monthly manga had just gone through a timeskip in-universe. At the start of summer, Boruto fans would overhype Boruto’s new Sasuke inspired outfit despite the plotline of the manga not improving. They would be lauded by other fandoms as they alone could even respect that shitty manga.

One thing not support by Tiktok Kaisen was the spread of ‘Domain Expansion’ moves. Domain Expansion is what allows sorcerers to use their ultimate techniques like Hollow Purple or Malevolent Shrine. They create a pocket dimension of sorts that is furnished with their ‘innate domain’ which you can just think of as a personal space. In their, you can play or fight to whatever rules as that person’s domain permits. Power types like Sukuna or Gojo would just like to hit you with can’t-miss attacks. So imagine a character like Mickey Mouse and his domain would the Clubhouse in which you must help him do whatever the fuck that show was for. Domains would start to be applied to other anime characters or even real life people and just the phrase ‘Domain Expansion’ became a meme.

Also by the end of the year, Netflix produced a live-action season of One Piece‘s early arc although I cannot fathom they intend to continue it. The season did so well with billions of hype (and profit) around it that Netflix decided to also be the distributor for the anime in the next season next year. If you think JJK was in the mainstream, OP was in a much better place as regular older people watched that rubber goofball collect his first crewmates and grew to love him. I mean to them, it was just another Stranger Things just with a much bigger imagination.

Unrelated to that, Luffy got a float in the Macy’s Day Parade (which is on Thanksgiving). This was his first time joining Super Saiyan God Goku and Pikachu as the only Japanese characters in the parade. I don’t see Naruto or Ichigo here, interesting.

Agenda Wars: Okay this will be the last bit but with naredowells spreading blasphemy like Geo and people using ai to fabricate Gojo winning the fight, a fandom war would erupt across twitter. It was the greatest manga in history (One Piece) vs the greatest manga of today (Jujutsu Kaisen). It was a quick argument of which anime had the best year that soon spread to the other fandoms of Boruto, My Hero Academia, and Bleach. Boruto and MHA were overly ambitious as they don’t even have a good reputation in the first place. And then not too many people are concerned about the latter. Attack on Titan fans didn’t really argue as much as maybe they should’ve as many were left dissatisfied with the anime’s ending for the exact same reason the manga fans hated it last year. But last year they were way louder about it, it was so funny to watch. Demon Slayer fans also did not highly appreciate their newest season enough to deploy troops into war. Slander would be thrown between communities, comparing characters by depth of writing, art style, aura, power, or animation. I will note that JJK fans seem especially proud about their manga considering how new it was and how freshly it was still considered niche but they have no fundamental reason to like it this much. It just has really good fights. That’s it! You talk to a fan of Hunter x Hunter, Fullmetal Alchemist, or God forbid Berserk and they can talk about way more than fights. Still, people would even rate the popularity of anime but in the end, the OP and JJK fandoms learned to love each other. Hundreds of crossover art and memes would be created showing the comradery and cooperation that China and Russia wished they had. Apart of the alliance was a collaborative discussion on how immortal Buggy is against Sukuna. Sukuna’s ability allow him to cut basically anything (especially with Malevolent Adaption) but Buggy is a character who can’t be cut. Or I should say, if he gets cut, it doesn’t hurt or anything. He can just reattach himself, he can float around detached from his feet, and Malevolent Shine would leave him in pieces until he just reforms. He is the future Pirate King of course so that’s fair (spoiler). In the end, Kagurabachi won.

In small review, the current culture of agenda pushing by manga communities (most seen by One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen) is one where readers are pushing their own powerscaling over the substance of the story. “Maintaining the Agenda is our Top Priority”, not actually understanding the story. It is why you can make fun of any fan of action manga for their illiteracy when speaking to the characterization, themes, or setting of the story. The Agenda pushing is usually done with exploiting a specific failing of a character (like being out of breath) and making a series of memes making fun of them for that. Some OP fans on twitter note that their culture could be inspired by the same form of memescaling from the NBA fandom on twitter especially since manga fans borrow a lot of those NBA memes such as “Potential Man”. At a certain point, agenda posting is all about trolling your opposing x-tard (x is a character’s name, a Luffytard is someone who is so supportive of Luffy that they have become retarded) harder then they can troll you. By the end of the year, artists and ai prompters would employ themselves of making the most extravagant fanart just to push agenda. Let’s see what hits the hardest next year…