JJK 149. Mai Zen'in

JJK 149. Mai Zen'in

It’s fascinating for a battle shounen manga to have a character like Mai who is diametrically opposed to the ideals of strength and self-improvement that are usually valourized in this genre. Mai doesn't die because she can’t get stronger, but because she doesn’t want to. And although that attitude is evidently incompatible with an existence within the world and situation she found herself in, there is no negative value judgment imposed by the narrative itself condemning her unwillingness to unlock her "full potential".

JJK has always foregrounded competing worldviews and how individuals’ different perspectives and values can either coexist or conflict with others. Maki's ambition to transform the Zen'in clan vs. the Zen'ins' regressive conservatism; Gojou's vision for the jujutsu world vs. the higher ups' ; Yuji's "I want to save everyone" vs. Megumi's "I choose who I save" ; Mei Mei's "I'm on the side of money" vs. Nanami leaving a lucrative job to save people out of compassion, and so on.

So it's particularly impressive that, while operating within the shounen genre, the story continues to maintain its respect for this ideological diversity by preserving Mai’s belief in her own worldview to the very end. Simply put, not everyone wants to become powerful even if they may have the potential to. Not everyone wants to live a life of violence, and not everyone wants to be a saviour for others at the direct expense of their own sanity.

It would be perhaps the more optimistic yet potentially oppressive narrative move to demand for Mai's character to undergo a transformation from a character who resists the shounen ideals to one who accepts them. This type of transformation would by no means be inherently negative; I'm definitely not saying that going down this path would have been bad for Mai's character or for the story. But it would succumb to a temptation to move towards a kind of 'sameness' rather than difference in its depiction of ways of acting in the world. I think Mai's ending is all the more striking because it resists this temptation.

Because I think that the more typical - and optimistic - development arc for Mai would have been for her to learn how to be willing to become stronger as a sorcerer and eventually fight alongside Maki.

But instead, Mai never ends up conforming to those dominant values of strength and ambition. Neither is she subjected to the kind of development traditionally favoured by the genre that are along the lines of, 'you just need to believe in yourself and work hard' -- because if we really think about it, often times a lot of feats in shounen are accomplished by sheer willpower and self-conviction. (JJK is not always an exception to that trope, nor is it necessarily a bad thing!). Mai had previously firmly stated her opposing point of view, and this essential attitude never changes even when we perhaps most expect it to.

In this situation, rather than working to improve her technique to create stronger objects without it costing her life, Mai passively accepts that her weakness will require self-sacrifice.

It’s a fatalistic attitude resulting from having never wanted to partake in a life of violence and hardship.

On the one hand, inflexibility and the inability to adapt are not exactly commendable traits; Mai is certainly fixed in her resignation and refusal to work towards her full potential as a sorcerer. On the other hand, to use Nanami's words, being a sorcerer is shit. All the suffering and regret in the story so far has only continued to reaffirm that sentiment. So we also can't fully condemn Mai for rejecting that way of life to the extent that she would rather sacrifice herself than to push forward to have her own "shounen power-up" moment. Because the aftermath of that would be a path likely filled with death, brutality, and suffering.

The wish to live a normal life is a legitimate and valid one. In an ideal world, her clan would not punish her for it. In an ideal world, opposing perspectives, especially ordinarily pacifist ones like Mai's, would be allowed to exist. Mai having to die because she was unable to escape or adapt to the ruthlessness of the jujutsu world exemplifies how cruel that world is. Mai's persistence in her wish for a normal life, and her "failure" as a sorcerer is not her failure at all; her death reflects a failure of the violently rigid jujutsu clan culture.

In this light, it is all the more tragic that Mai's death was entirely preventable, and fated not by the inevitability of actual "fate", but rather entirely by a radically traditionalist clan system.

At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, I find it impressive for Gege to have allowed Mai to hold onto her values. Just as Maki has always stayed true to her dreams of overturning the Zen'in clan by becoming a powerful sorcerer, Mai has always stayed true to her resistance to that dark and difficult path. From a writing perspective, I think it's interestingly respectful to Mai's character in that way. It's also for this reason that I consider this chapter to be a worthy good-bye to Mai, as she is faithful to her own way of being in the world until the end. It may not conform to the demands of the optimistic self-improvement narrative generally preferred by shounen, but it is a valid perspective, and it is never depicted to be 'lesser than' or 'inferior to' the shounen narrative.

I'm always interested in stories in which there is a genuine dialogue of a diversity of voices, each with their own perspectives and viewpoints even as they conflict with each other - or in other words stories that prioritize 'difference' over 'sameness' in ways of being, thinking, and acting. It's not necessarily uncommon - most if not all stories will feature different character motivations within a given cast. But I think JJK does this particularly well in a particularly convincing way, and 149 is further confirmation of this for me.

Finally, it is notable that Mai herself seems to acknowledge this sentiment. She may have been unwilling to imagine a stronger future version of herself, which is opposite to the advice Gojou had given Megumi if he wanted to reach his full potential. But she died for the sake of believing in the stronger future version of Maki, and this is how she is victorious even in death. All the way to the end, Mai had her way of viewing and acting in the world in her individual way, and Maki had hers; importantly, Mai ends up encourages this difference. Right after she states that "You are me, and I am you", that sameness is undercut when Mai immediately after points to their contrasting motivations:

Mai ultimately encourages Maki to live in the way that Maki wants to live - to the fullest potential of her power and the fullest potential for her capacity to force change upon a corrupt system. Before, Mai had resented Maki for moving on without her ("why didn't you fall down the hole with me?") - she resented how Maki couldn't be the same as her in how she viewed the world. In her final chapter, Mai conversely acknowledged that she herself could never see the world exactly the same as Maki.

Therein lies the cornerstone of her character development; before, she resented that difference between them for those twofold reasons. In the last moments of her life, she no longer resents Maki for moving on without her; she encourages her to move forward into the future. It is of course undeniably tragic, as it must be a future without Mai. And no amount of power gained from such a loss could ever be consolation for that tragedy.

It is fitting, then, that Mai's final message to Maki is full of despair -- yet it is also not without hope. In the interplay between 'construction' and 'destruction', it is ironic yet poetic that Mai wished for her object-construction technique's final and greatest creation to be used to destroy - indeed, to "destroy everything". There is undoubtedly despair both in that command, and in Maki's drive to destruction when she emerges from that room. But somewhere, somehow, there must also be the hope that that destruction will be in the service of "construction", of creating a better future for others, even if it is too late for it to be a future in which they can live in together.

Twitter Japan after the latest JJK chapter:

“Niichan doko” [”Where’s big brother?”] is trending 😂

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