Pushing Forward

The cursed spirits set their sights on the strongest sorcerer alive. Jogo grows confident enough to volunteer for the job personally, betting his life on a reward. At the school, Megumi and Nobara sharpen their close-range fighting under the upper-years, and Gojo turns his attention to drawing out Yuji's raw potential rather than fixing what he lacks.

Jogo reacts with excitement on learning that Pseudo-Geto holds the forbidden Prison Realm, but his rising temper heats the diner around them. A waiter who cannot perceive curses still senses the menace and bolts in primal fear, the manager dies from the heat, and an annoyed Jogo finishes off the rest of the building's occupants. When Geto rates Jogo's strength as roughly equal to eight or nine of Sukuna's fingers, the spirit's pride swells and he offers to slay Gojo alone in exchange for the Prison Realm. Elsewhere, Megumi calls on Tadashi Okazaki's mother, confessing his early hesitation about rescuing the detained inmates and his failure to recover her son's body. He returns Tadashi's nametag, bows, and apologizes for being unable to save him.

Back at the college, Maki, Panda, and Toge run Megumi and Nobara through close-combat training. Gojo decides it is time to begin Yuji's instruction in sorcery. Using soda cans as a teaching aid, he separates cursed energy from cursed technique: energy blasts the can apart, while a technique focuses that energy to twist it. Since the use of jujutsu rests on innate talent that Yuji does not possess, Gojo first concentrates on teaching him to reinforce his physical strikes with cursed energy. Yuji had once channeled it instinctively against the cursed womb but cannot replicate it now, lacking control over the emotions that triggered it. Gojo's plan to fix that is to have him watch movies.

This is the twelfth chapter of the series and falls within the Fearsome Womb Arc. It corresponds to Episode 6 of the anime and appeared in Weekly Shonen Jump issue 26 of 2018. The diner scene introduces the dynamic between Jogo and Pseudo-Geto that drives much of the early curse-side plotting, and it marks an early step in Yuji's development as a sorcerer.