‘Jujutsu Kaisen’: Sukuna’s Domain Expansion Is as ‘Malevolent’ as He Is
Jujutsu Kaisen’s Sukuna is one bad motherf***er.
Just the worst. Totally the pits. A major buzzkill. Worse than Wendy’s surge pricing plan. Worse than the Willy Wonka Experience disaster (but not by much). He’s the most powerful Jujutsu sorcerer to ever live in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen. And as such, he has one of the most powerful Domain Expansions the world has ever seen.
What is a Domain Expansion again?
A Domain Expansion is a highly advanced barrier technique that is considered by many to be the ultimate display of a jujutsu sorcerer’s power. It involves expanding one’s innate domain outward into the physical world and then placing a barrier around the outside of the domain.
What is an innate domain? An innate domain is the mental landscape of a sorcerer. Their “mind palace” if you will. You know that freaky place with the blood floor and the ribcage ceiling where Skunk sits on a throne made of bones? That’s his innate domain. It’s a reflection of his soul. His seriously messed up “I need therapy” soul.
By tapping into one’s cursed energy reserves, one is able to manifest one’s innate domain outside of their own body. Using cursed energy, a sorcerer traps their foes inside of this domain with a barrier made out of their cursed energy to create a fully realized Domain Expansion. Because a Domain Expansion is essentially a sorcerer’s inner world made tangible, all attacks that sorcerer uses inside of the Domain Expansion are guaranteed to hit. Essentially, if you’re caught in an enemy’s Domain Expansion, it’s game over.
However, the technique does have its downsides. The massive amount of cursed energy necessary to create a Domain Expansion means that a sorcerer is not able to expand it indefinitely or maintain it for very long. It’s a gamble. Trap a foe inside your Domain Expansion and you win. If they managed to avoid your Domain Expansion, you may not have the cursed energy left to keep fighting, leaving you vulnerable to a counterattack.
What is Sukuna’s Domain expansion?
Every Jujutsu Sorcerer worth their cursed salt has a cool name for their Domain Expansion. Sukuna’s is called Malevolent Shrine. And boy is it. The landscape of Malevolent Shrine is centered around a creepy-looking perversion of a Buddhist shrine where the statues are demonic instead of divine. The shrine itself is surrounded by murky water with skulls and horns floating inside it. The shrine itself is also decorated with human skulls. Worst of all, the four entrances to the shrine take the form of humanlike mouths complete with teeth and tongues.
Malevolent Shrine’s ability allows Sukuna to shred things apart until nothing but dust remains. Sukuna’s two techniques are Cleave and Dismantle. The former he uses for enemies with cursed energy, and the latter he uses against inanimate objects. The names change, but the effect is the same. Dust.
The worst thing about Sukuna’s Domain Expansion is this: it doesn’t require a barrier. Most Domain Expansions (pretty much all of them) require the user to create an outer boundary to the Domain. Even Satoru Gojo’s Unlimited Void requires an outer shell barrier, which can be broken by external forces. However, because Sukuna’s Domain Expansion lacks an external barrier, it can paradoxically only be broken by attacking Sukuna himself. The only way to escape Malevolent Shrine is to injure Sukuna so badly that the Domain Expansion collapses. Easier said than done.
While most sorcerers and cursed spirits (yes, cursed spirits can use Domain Expansions too) are able to use their Domain Expansion only once a day, Sukuna is able to use Malevolent Shrine seemingly without limit. In his battle with Satoru Gojo, Sukuna uses the technique three consecutive times. Yikes. If Satoru Gojo wasn’t able to injure Sukuna in their fight, it’s likely that the King of Curses could have been able to keep on going indefinitely.
By using binding vows, Sukuna is also able to change the dimensions and abilities of his Domain Expansion in order to quickly change up his strategy depending on the foe. In his fight with Mahoraga, the most powerful shikigami in the series, Sukuna was able to defeat the beast by narrowing the range of his domain and ripping apart everything with cursed energy within a radius of one hundred and forty meters. This included buildings, unfortunate civilians, and Toge Inumaki’s arm. Sukuna, you’re a jerk.
(Featured Image: MAPPA)
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