I´m pretty sure the physical fight is over, otherwise it makes no sense why Sukuna is back in his Yujikuna form and neither he nor Yuji show any damage.
Also sidenote: from what i´ve read online it appears that Yuji domain sign is linked to a bodhisattva who refuses to reach nirvana until all souls have been guided to enlightenment and the hells are empty. Making him a patron to all hellbound beings. I don´t like the idea of Yuji trying to help Sukuna move on (beyond sending him to his next reincarnation), but it seems somewhat fitting.
Honestly she didn't do that much, she had not having a shallow crush over Sakura but she was irrelevant to the overall narrative and then died as a tool for Yuji's suffering. We need to stop giving shounen girls awards for doing the bare minimum for seemingly doing better than Sakura especially very early on into a manga's lifespan (seemingly being the key word here because I honestly think Sakura's overall characterisation and relevancy is better than Nobara)
Edited by Mami on Aug 1st 2024 at 12:11:46 PM
I absolutely cannot help but adore handsome 2D boysI feel like Nobara had a more mature (relative to the Shonen genre at least) characterization than Sakura. Her motivation is independent of a getting a boy to like her, for starters. She's got a fun personality and isn't a tsundere stereotype. She had a lot of potential that just seems like it was squandered. Why couldn't she come back for the Culling Game? Maybe due to the unique soul-linking nature or whatever of both her Cursed Technique and Mahito's, have her develop Idle Transfiguration or something. Use that as an excuse for her to heal her eye. Plus with Idle Transfiguration, she could have played a role in defusing Tengen, or separating Sukuna from Megumi.
Still feels like it was being needlessly dragged out at times even if it wasn't meant to be a big reveal. We had two big moments of Yuji mentioning Nobara and how it didn't seem like he knew she was dead, first when he met up with Megumi and Maki post-Shibuya, then when he thought Hana was gonna replace Nobara and him stating he didn't like the idea, and both opportunities would have been perfectly fine spots to mention, even in passing, that she was dead. Instead, it just moved past the conversation both times and left readers wondering about an Uncertain Doom for years, not helped by the last time we saw her having Arata Nitta claiming it's possible to save her, even if only a slim chance, as if the story was indeed leaving open the possibility she was alive.
If the intent was for her to be dead this entire time, maybe don't play coy with the readers and just say outright she didn't make it. At least the anime had the decency of giving a Really Dead Montage to hammer home this was her death, and make Arata's comment more copium for Yuji's sake.
Edited by RebelFalcon on Aug 1st 2024 at 8:58:31 AM
Rodimus: Self-sacrifice, Magnus— It's cheap. It's a cheap way out. I need to live so I can make amends.Girl doesn't even get the dignity of an onscreen death. She's mortally injured, we get a "we might be able to save her" bit, and then 100 chapters later it's obliquely referred to that nope she actually died after all.
Bewitching EyesI can't believe I'm saying this, but I honestly think Midnight of all characters was handled with more dignity and grace then Nobara was.

Seething Sukuna looks great.