Mahito

To the sorcerers who face him, Mahito reads as a curse in human shape, his face a patchwork and his eyes gray, though the anime swaps in heterochromia, pairing a dark-blue left eye with a gray right one. His grayish-blue hair drops past his neck in three thick strands tied off at the ends, and seams of stitching cross his whole body, making him look stitched together.

For clothing he favors a black shawl divided into three pieces at the left sleeve, worn with matching trousers and, on occasion, white shoes.

Sadistic and immature, Mahito delights in playing with people's feelings. Convinced he sprang from human wrongdoing, he styles himself the living shape of mankind's mutual loathing, and so he backs human extinction and treats curses as the planet's proper masters. Next to the hotheaded, prideful Jogo, he keeps a relatively cool, playful air in combat, yet he truly cares for his fellow curses, dressing down Kenjaku for endangering Jogo and guarding Hanami from Haruta Shigemo. Souls fascinate him deeply; he insists the soul comes before the body, an obsession that gave rise to Idle Transfiguration, which he turns on victims as cruel experiments for knowledge. Human life means nothing to him, nor does his own, his loyalty bent toward resurrecting Sukuna and cementing the reign of curses.

That talent for psychological manipulation may trace back to his birth. He feeds on hatred, grief, and insecurity to push people past all reason, as he did with Junpei Yoshino, whose mother he indirectly killed before nudging the boy into becoming a curse user and tossing him aside once spent. Kento Nanami compared his extraordinary childishness to Satoru Gojo's. His first loss to Yuji steeled his resolve and bred a colder indifference, even toward his disaster-curse allies; he barely flinched at Hanami's death and grew fixated on crushing Yuji's spirit, billing their rematch a clash of truths. Threaten his own safety, however, and the swagger crumbles: Nobara's Straw Doll Technique reaching his soul, and later Yuji's killing intent, left him terrified, exposing a cruel, cowardly hypocrite who relished harm only while safe. Death did not change him; for decades he refused rebirth so he might torment Yuji again, rebuilding Shibuya to savor the prospect of transfiguring his soul.

As an unregistered special grade, Mahito already outstripped the strength of three or more of Sukuna's fingers when he first crossed paths with Yuji, and he only climbed higher, evolving mid-fight on several occasions despite being younger and weaker than Jogo at the start. He swamped the grade 1 Nanami by canceling out his technique, leading Nanami to argue he had to be exorcised before turning into something too terrible to stop. Pitted two-on-one against Nanami and Yuji, he would probably have triumphed but for Sukuna's interference, summoning his own Domain Expansion under duress. Shibuya saw him advance further still, spawning flawless clones, honing his soul manipulation, and, after landing Black Flash on Yuji and Aoi Todo, unlocking his distorted-killing true form.

Physically he is brutal, leaving Yuji bloodied while bragging he could have cracked his skull with more force, demolishing waves of Mechamarus, and pinning Nanami down. His speed carried him past Nanami's guard by reshaping his legs and let him outrun both Yuji and Todo, his reflexes matching even Boogie Woogie. Durability sets him further apart, as his technique voids physical strikes and his soul resists damage so well that Yuji's reinforced punches did nothing in his distorted-killing form. Sharp-witted, he gauges a foe's skill and technique inside a handful of exchanges, lays traps for hunters, and tends to be his faction's strategist. His cursed energy is immense, enough to transfigure over a thousand people in Shibuya and keep fighting even after splitting half of it into a clone, and his control grew refined enough to fold Domain Expansion into one step.

Idle Transfiguration, his innate technique, reworks souls to mutilate victims, mend his own injuries, forge limbs into weapons, and produce clones. Its branches include Soul Multiplicity, fusing souls to spark rejection; Body Repel, hurling that rejection outward; Polymorphic Soul Isomer, binding weakly rejecting souls into self-moving attackers; and the Instant Spirit Body, his brawny Distorted Killing true form, reached by ripping off his human face. He also wields Black Flash, the Curtain barrier, and the Domain Expansion Self-Embodiment of Perfection, which ties him to every soul within for instant transfiguration and can be flickered on in 0.2-second bursts.